Species: Mesodinium chamaeleon

Habitat: seawater around Scandinavia and North America, chowing down on a new generation of slaves

Many animals transform themselves almost beyond recognition in the course of their lives. Caterpillars become butterflies and tadpoles become frogs, and if we couldn’t watch them do so we might not even suspect that the two stages were the same creature.

Spectacular as these shifts are, they are only shape-shifting. A tadpole and a frog are both animals, so both must take in food from their surroundings.

Not so Mesodinium chamaeleon. This newly discovered single-celled organism is a unique mixture of animal and plant.

M. chamaeleon is a ciliate – a kind of single-celled animal covered in hundreds of tiny “hairs” called cilia. It was discovered in Nivå bay in Denmark by Øjvind Moestrup of the University of Copenhagen, also in Denmark, and his team. Other specimens have since been found off the coasts of Finland and Rhode Island.

Ciliates using their hair-like cilia to motor around rapidly in water. Most get their food by eating other organisms, rather than by synthesising the nutrients themselves. This marks them as quite animal-like.

Some Mesodinium species are different, though. They engulf other microorganisms, generally algae called cryptomonads. The two then form a partnership: the algae produce sugars by photosynthesis, while the Mesodinium protects them and carries them around.

Such hybrid organisms are animals and plants at the same time. One such species, M. rubrum, only eats red algae and is often found in the algal blooms that form the famous red tides.

These hybrids play merry hell with our attempts to classify organisms into neat groups. “The division between plants and animals is collapsing completely,” Moestrup says. Instead, many microorganisms may be animal and plant at once, or switch between the two, like M. rubrum.

The new M. chamaeleon breaks yet another barrier. It is halfway between a pure animal and a hybrid.

M. chamaeleon takes in algal cells, just like M. rubrum, but it doesn’t keep them permanently. Nor does it digest them immediately, as a hungry animal-like organism might. Instead, the cells remain intact for several weeks before being broken down, during which time they keep producing sugar by photosynthesis. M. chamaeleon also changes colour depending on whether it is hosting red or green algae or both.

“It is quite unusual,” says Moestrup. Other Mesodinium species either retain their captured cells for ages or digest them immediately.

The ability to take in other cells and put them to work is called endosymbiosis, and is one of the most important inventions in the history of life. Some 2 billion years ago, a single cell swallowed a bacterium and used it as an energy source. The descendants of the enslaved bacterium eventually became the mitochondria that now power all complex cells, including ours. Without endosymbiosis, there wouldn’t be any multicellular life.

While the first endosymbiosis may have been a lucky chance, the process now seems to be common, at least among the more complex single-celled organisms. Some are so good at taking in cells that over the years they have switched symbionts. “It happens quite regularly,” Moestrup says.

M. chamaeleon may offer a snapshot of how endosymbiosis developed: the organism is still on the road from simply eating other cells to keeping them alive within itself.

Source: New Scientist.

*Taken from CNBC.

Regulators will announce Wednesday that Google will pay $500 million to settle government charges that it has illegally shown ads for online pharmacies that operate outside the law, according to two people briefed on the investigation.

The investigation was first revealed in May, when Google [GOOG  520.63    1.81  (+0.35%)   ] said in a government filing that it set aside $500 million for the potential settlement of a Department of Justice investigation into its advertising practices, which decreased its quarterly profits by 22 percent.

At the time, government officials said the investigation concerned ads from online pharmacies that operate illegally by failing to require a prescription or selling counterfeit drugs. Google has said in the past that regulating these pharmacies on its site is a cat-and-mouse game, because when it introduces rules to prevent them from advertising, they find new ways to appear on Google.

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*Taken from CNBC.

About 47 percent of total flat-panel televisions shipped in four years will have Internet connectivity, as manufacturers bet on the expansion of Netflix and direct-to-consumer offerings from content producers like Time Warner’s[TWX  36.88    -0.04  (-0.11%)   ] HBO.

This figure, about 138 million units, is up from 25 percent of flat panels with WiFi capability shipped this year, according to a quarterly report by DisplaySearch, a unit of research firm NPD group. By the end of 2015, more than 500 million connected TVs will be shipped, according to DisplaySearch.

It may be no coincidence then that Netflix[NFLX  289.63    21.64  (+8.07%)   ] jumped to an all-time high on Tuesday, the same day as the release of this report. Investors also seemed to cheer the announcement from the leader in Internet streaming that it would be expanding into Latin America. The company had previous success with its first international move into Canada.

“The adoption of connected TV is not just taking place in developed regions,” said Paul Gray, DisplaySearch director of TV electronics research, in the report. “Emerging markets often have good broadband services, and there is a thirst from consumers to get the best content available.”

CONTINUED..

My Two Cents: Mr. King can always write a check then, the government will take it if he truly wants to give more. These people always call for higher taxes, yet they don’t donate directly to the federal government. Maybe there is something they find romantic about having it done with a gun to their head instead of voluntarily. King is a hack who hasn’t written a good book in decades and even then his skills are questionable. The only thing good to come from his work is the film version of ‘The Shining’ and that is because of Stanley Kubrick. End Two Cents.

*Taken from Gallup.

Gallup’s analysis of party affiliation in the U.S. states shows a marked decline in the number of solidly Democratic states from 2008 (30) to 2010 (14). The number of politically competitive states increased over the same period, from 10 to 18, with more limited growth in the number of leaning or solidly Republican states.

Even with Democratic Party affiliation declining during the past two years, Democratic states still outnumbered Republican states by 23 to 10 last year, and there were 14 solidly Democratic states compared with 5 solidly Republican states.

Still, the political map this year looks very different from the Democratic-dominated map in 2008.

Looking more closely at the changes in state party affiliation since 2008, only one state moved from a Democratic positioning to a Republican positioning — New Hampshire, which was solidly Democratic in 2008 but now is considered leaning Republican. Alabama, Kansas, Montana, and South Dakota moved from a competitive designation to solidly or leaning Republican status. A total of 12 states — Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Louisiana, Maine, Missouri, Nevada, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Virginia, and Wisconsin — shifted from solidly or leaning Democratic to competitive. No states have moved in a more Democratic direction since 2008. (A listing of each state’s classification for 2008, 2009, and 2010 is available on page 2 of this report.)

Gallup has documented the decline in Democratic Party affiliation at the national level from its recent peak in 2008 and early 2009. After several years of increasing Democratic affiliation beginning in late 2005, the current political situation is similar to what it was in the mid-2000s, when the parties were more or less even.

In fact, every state and the District of Columbia had fewer residents identifying as Democrats, or identifying as independents but leaning Democratic, in 2010 than in 2008. The greatest declines were in Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Maine, and Hawaii; the smallest were in North Dakota and Mississippi.

These results are based on Gallup Daily tracking, and include interviews with more than 350,000 Americans each year since 2008. In 2010, Gallup interviewed at least 1,000 adults in every state but North Dakota as well as the District of Columbia.

All respondents are asked whether they identify as Democrats, Republicans, or independents. Those who say they are independents or who express no party preference are asked whether they “lean” more to the Republican Party or the Democratic Party.

The data reported here for party affiliation take into account both party identification and leaning. This allows for a better comparison of party strength across states, given that the percentage of independents varies widely — from a low of 28% in Kentucky in 2010 to a high of 58% in Rhode Island. Many of the states with higher proportions of independents are dominated electorally by one party, so leaned party identification gives a better sense of the true political orientation of each state. The full 2010 party affiliation data for each state are available on page 3.

The state classifications do not necessarily indicate how each state would vote in a given election, because the results are based on all state residents rather than the smaller voting electorate in each state. Usually, Democratic affiliation is higher in the general population than in the electorate, given generally higher rates of voter participation by Republicans.

Wyoming, Utah Most Republican; D.C. and Several States Most Democratic

In addition to the District of Columbia, the most solidly Democratic states are Maryland, Massachusetts, Vermont, and Hawaii, all showing at least 20-percentage-point advantages for the Democratic Party in the party preferences of their state residents. The most solidly Republican states are Wyoming, Utah, and Idaho, with at least 20-point Republican advantages.

In general, New England and Middle Atlantic states make up most of the 10 most Democratic states. Most of the top 10 Republican states are from the Mountain West or Plains regions.

Wyoming, Utah, Idaho, and Alaska have been the four most Republican states in each of the last three years, with Utah topping the list in 2008 and Wyoming in 2009 and 2010.

Apart from the District of Columbia, Rhode Island ranked as the most Democratic state in 2008 and 2009, but is tied for sixth this year after showing one of the steepest declines in Democratic affiliation. Maryland has been in the top 10 each year but has moved steadily up the list, from eighth in 2008 to fourth in 2009 to second in 2010.

Implications

The United States, both nationally and in every state, has moved in a more Republican direction during the last two years. Though the losses are not welcome news for the Democratic Party, the decline since 2008 is from a high point in the party’s support, the highest in at least two decades. Thus, while the losses have clearly hurt the party’s positioning compared with what it was as President Barack Obama was taking office, its strength is generally back to where it was in the mid-2000s, before a series of events including the Iraq war, high gas prices, and the recession eroded public confidence in George W. Bush and the Republican Party.

At the same time, the Democratic losses have not led to major gains in Republican affiliation. Rather, Gallup finds greater increases in the number of competitive states than in solid or leaning Republican states.