Gay Marriage: Will Justices Follow Popular Opinion?

The Supreme Court's announcement that it would hear two cases challenging laws prohibiting same-sex marriage has reinvigorated one of the most hotly contentious social debates in American history, a debate that has been fueled by a dramatic change in attitudes.

With some states taking significant steps towards legalizing gay marriage, the hearings come at a critical moment.

This week in Washington State, hundreds of same-sex couples lined up to collect marriage licenses after Gov. Christine Gregoire announced the passing of a voter-approved law legalizing gay marriage.

"For the past 20 years we've been saying just one more step. Just one more fight. Just one more law. But now we can stop saying 'Just one more.' This is it. We are here. We did it," Gregoire told a group of Referendum 74 supporters during the law's certification.

Washington is just the most recent of several states to pass legislation legalizing same-sex marriage, signifying a significant departure from previous thinking on the controversial subject.

READ: Court to Take Up Same-Sex Marriage

A study by the Pew Research Center on changing attitudes on gay marriage showed that in 2001 57 percent of Americans opposed same-sex marriage, while 35 percent of Americans supported it.

The same poll shows that today opinions have greatly shifted to reflect slightly more support for same-sex marriage than opposition -- with 48 percent of Americans in favor and 43 percent opposed.

In fact, just two years ago, 48 percent of Americans opposed same-sex marriage while only 42 percent supported it -- indicating that opinions have changed dramatically in the last couple of years alone.

David Paul Morris/Getty Images

Supreme Court Set to Tackle Same-Sex Marriage Watch Video

Gay Marriage: Supreme Court to Examine Marriage Equality Watch Video

Marijuana, Gay Marriage Win in 2012 Election Results Watch Video

Check Out Same-Sex Marriage Status in the U.S. State By State

It's hard to imagine that only 16 years ago, the fervent gay marriage debate led to the conception of the Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as a union solely held between a man and a woman.

While debating the Defense of Marriage Act in September 1996, former Sen. Robert Byrd said: "If same-sex marriage is accepted, then the announcement will be official: America will have said that children do not need a mother and a father. Two mothers or two fathers will be OK. It'll be just as good. This would be a catastrophe."

Even a few short years ago a newly-elected President Obama did not support the legalization of gay marriage. It wasn't until earlier this year, at the end of hiss first term and with the impending election in sight, that the president told ABC's Robin Roberts the he'd "been going through an evolution on this issue."

Obama went on to attribute his shift in stance to the influence of his daughters.

"You know, Malia and Sasha, they've got friends whose parents are same-sex couples. It wouldn't dawn on them that somehow their friends' parents would be treated differently," he said. "That's the kind of thing that prompts -- a change in perspective."

Obama isn't the only one to experience an evolution in thinking on the matter of gay marriage. Attitudes towards same-sex marriage have shifted dramatically over the past decade across the board, particularly in the past few years.

Gone are the days when a majority of people opposed same-sex marriage; the days when gay politicians and supporters of same-sex marriage could not get elected.

Get more pure politics at ABCNews.com/Politics and a lighter take on the news at OTUSNews.com

Today, nine states and the District of Columbia allow same-sex unions -- a number likely considered inconceivable just a few short years ago. And yet, the same-sex marriage debate still begs for the answering of a question: Will this newfound public opinion, largely driven by young people, women and Democrats, have an effect on the Supreme Court's ultimate decision on the matter?

"I think (gay marriage is) just not a big deal for a lot of young people," Elizabeth Wydra of the Constitutional Accountability Center says. "The justices are human beings so they're not completely immune to public opinion. ... I think the real question for them is going to be do they want to be on the wrong side of history?"

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Hagfish slime could slink to the height of fashion

Move over organic cotton. Clothes made from hagfish slime could one day be the height of sustainable fashion.

Synthetic fabrics such as nylon and polyester are made from petroleum. A green, natural alternative would be a protein-based cloth made from spider silk - or the thick slime made by the hagfish (Myxine glutinosa) to help it escape predators. The slime contains myriad protein threads 100 times thinner than a human hair.

Douglas Fudge at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, and colleagues previously isolated some of these threads and found them to be 10 times the strength of nylon. Now they have gone a step further, using forceps to draw a slender cord of protein fibres from a dried solution of hagfish slime (Biomacromolecules, doi.org/jwh).

The team will not need to rely on slime if they can genetically engineer bacteria to make the slime proteins. Efforts to produce spider silk proteins in this way have run into difficulties because it is hard for bacteria to make the large proteins in spider silk. Genetically modified goats can be made to secrete the proteins in milk, but using mammals rather than microbes significantly raises the cost.

The proteins in hagfish slime are several times smaller than those in spider silk, so it should be easier for bacteria to make them. The real pay-off would be if we could use bacterial hagfish proteins as a sustainable replacement for synthetic fibres, says Fudge, but the method will have to be improved before we can manufacture textiles in this way.

Christopher Holland of the Oxford Silk Group at the University of Oxford agrees. "If we can find better mechanisms to process natural materials into fibres, then either slime or spider silk could be our next generation of high-performance materials," he says.

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Killer typhoon turns back towards Philippines

MANILA: A typhoon that has killed hundreds of people and left tens of thousands homeless in the southern Philippines has turned back towards the country and will hit it again, forecasters said on Saturday.

Typhoon Bopha will slam into the northern tip of the main island of Luzon early Sunday, packing gusts of up to 160 kilometres (around 100 miles) an hour, the state weather service said.

It was likely to bring heavy rainfall to the area, civil defence office director Benito Ramos told a news conference. "People there need to take precautions," he added.

The eye of the cyclone was 230 kilometres west of the northern town of Sinait at 4:00pm (0800 GMT) and moving slowly northeast, the service said.

Heavy to intense rainfall was expected within the typhoon's 400-kilometre footprint, it added.

Bopha smashed into the east coast of the southern island of Mindanao with gusts of up to 210 kilometres an hour on Tuesday. At least 548 people have been killed and about 500 others missing.

Some 212,000 other people have also been left homeless, according to the civil defence office.

- AFP/xq

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Apple and Google making joint bid for Kodak patents, report says

Apple and Google might be opponents competing for smartphone and
tablet customers, but according to a Bloomberg report they have joined forces to acquire Eastman Kodak's 1,000 imaging patents for more than $500 million. The Wall Street Journal first reported on the possible alliance in August. Previously, the Journal reported that Apple and Google were each leading separate consortiums to purchase the patents in the range of $150 million to $250 million.

Eastman Kodak, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in January, needs to sell the patents to help pay down a $950 million loan from Citigroup. The company said that it expects to exit bankruptcy in 2013. Court documents earlier this year revealed that the company valued its patent portfolio in the range of $2.6 billion.

Read: Foss Patents: Rumors of Apple-Google alliance to buy Kodak patents show smartphone giants' auction fatigue

Apple and Google were on opposite sides in another contest for high-stakes technology patents. In July 2011, a consortium of technology companies comprising Apple, EMC, Ericsson, Microsoft, Research In Motion, and Sony bought some 6,000 patents and patent applications from Nortel Networks for $4.5 billion. Rivals Google and Intel reportedly began the bidding for the intellectual property, which included patents and patent applications for wireless, wireless 4G, data networking, optical, voice, Internet, and semiconductor technologies, at $900 million.

The digital imaging patents, which are relevant to cameras, smartphones and other devices, could help both Apple and Google who are engaged in numerous patent disputes. Apple has been embroiled in patent disputes with Samsung and other Google
Android-based vendors. The joint effort to procure the patents could auger a less litigious atmosphere in the future.

Don Reisinger and Steven Musil contributed to this report.

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Plants Grow Fine Without Gravity

When researchers sent plants to the International Space Station in 2010, the flora wasn't meant to be decorative. Instead, the seeds of these small, white flowers—called Arabidopsis thaliana—were the subject of an experiment to study how plant roots developed in a weightless environment.

Gravity is an important influence on root growth, but the scientists found that their space plants didn't need it to flourish. The research team from the University of Florida in Gainesville thinks this ability is related to a plant's inherent ability to orient itself as it grows. Seeds germinated on the International Space Station sprouted roots that behaved like they would on Earth—growing away from the seed to seek nutrients and water in exactly the same pattern observed with gravity. (Related: "Beyond Gravity.")

Since the flowers were orbiting some 220 miles (350 kilometers) above the Earth at the time, the NASA-funded experiment suggests that plants still retain an earthy instinct when they don't have gravity as a guide.

"The role of gravity in plant growth and development in terrestrial environments is well understood," said plant geneticist and study co-author Anna-Lisa Paul, with the University of Florida in Gainesville. "What is less well understood is how plants respond when you remove gravity." (See a video about plant growth.)

The new study revealed that "features of plant growth we thought were a result of gravity acting on plant cells and organs do not actually require gravity," she added.

Paul and her collaborator Robert Ferl, a plant biologist at the University of Florida in Gainesville, monitored their plants from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida using images sent from the space station every six hours.

Root Growth

Grown on a nutrient-rich gel in clear petri plates, the space flowers showed familiar root growth patterns such as "skewing," where roots slant progressively as they branch out.

"When we saw the first pictures come back from orbit and saw that we had most of the skewing phenomenon we were quite surprised," Paul said.

Researchers have always thought that skewing was the result of gravity's effects on how the root tip interacts with the surfaces it encounters as it grows, she added. But Paul and Ferl suspect that in the absence of gravity, other cues take over that enable the plant to direct its roots away from the seed and light-seeking shoot. Those cues could include moisture, nutrients, and light avoidance.

"Bottom line is that although plants 'know' that they are in a novel environment, they ultimately do just fine," Paul said.

The finding further boosts the prospect of cultivating food plants in space and, eventually, on other planets.

"There's really no impediment to growing plants in microgravity, such as on a long-term mission to Mars, or in reduced-gravity environments such as in specialized greenhouses on Mars or the moon," Paul said. (Related: "Alien Trees Would Bloom Black on Worlds With Double Stars.")

The study findings appear in the latest issue of the journal BMC Plant Biology.

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Federal Agencies Brace for Deep Cuts Post-'Cliff'

Dec 7, 2012 4:22pm

Toby Jorrin/AFP/Getty Images

With the “fiscal cliff” quickly approaching, federal agencies are stepping up preparations for deep automatic budget cuts that will kick in Jan. 2 unless the White House and Congress can reach a deal.

The Office of Management and Budget told ABC News that a memo went out to federal agencies earlier this week seeking “additional information and analysis” in order to finalize spending cuts required if we go off the cliff.

The agencies are considering which workers to furlough, projects to put on hold and offices that will have to close.

The request follows the administration’s release of a 400-page report in September that outlined the budget areas to be impacted by the $1.2 trillion in automatic spending cuts and what percentages they would be slashed.

READ MORE: White House Details ‘Doomsday’ Budget Cuts

Billions of dollars could be slashed from defense operations and maintenance programs. Medicare would take a two-percent hit, trimming millions in payouts to health care providers. Scientific research programs would be gutted. Aid for the poor and needy would be sharply curtailed.

The report also detailed operations that would be exempt from any cuts, including active-duty military operations, nuclear watchdogs, homeland security officials, veterans care and other critical areas.

READ: Pentagon Begins Planning for ‘Cliff’ Cuts

Asked about the agency preparations underway, White House spokesman Jay Carney said Wednesday that OMB “must take certain steps to ensure the administration is ready to issue such an order should Congress fail to act.”

“Earlier this week, OMB issued a request to federal agencies for additional information to finalize calculations on the spending reductions that would be required,” Carney said.

“This action should not be read … as a change in the administration’s commitment to reach an agreement and avoid sequestration.  OMB is simply ensuring that the administration is prepared, should it become necessary to issue such an order,” he said. “OMB will continue to consult with agencies and will provide additional guidance as needed.  This is just acting responsibly because of the potential for this happening.”

Get more pure politics at ABCNews.com/Politics and a lighter take on the news at OTUSNews.com.

More ‘Fiscal Cliff’ Coverage From Today:

SHOWS: World News

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Captured: the moment photosynthesis changed the world

BILLIONS of years ago, a tiny cyanobacterium cracked open a water molecule - and let loose a poison that wrought death and destruction on an epic scale. The microbe had just perfected photosynthesis, a process that freed the oxygen trapped inside water and killed early Earth's anaerobic inhabitants.

Now, for the first time, geologists have found evidence of the crucial evolutionary stage just before cyanobacteria split water. The find offers a unique snapshot of the moment that made the modern world. With the advent of photosynthesis came an atmosphere dominated by oxygen and, ultimately, the diversity of life forms that we know today.

"This was the biggest change that ever occurred in the biosphere," says Kevin Redding at Arizona State University in Tempe. "The extinction caused by oxygen was probably the largest ever seen, but at the same time animal life wouldn't be possible without oxygen."

Photosynthesis uses light and a source of electrons to generate energy and power an organism. In the world as we know it, that source of electrons is water, with oxygen the waste product. But there are no signs that oxygen was being formed when photosynthesis first appeared around 3.4 billion years ago, so early photosynthesisers probably scavenged electrons by splitting other molecules like hydrogen sulphide instead.

That had changed by about 2.4 billion years ago, when deposits of oxidised minerals tell us that oxygen was beginning to accumulate in the atmosphere. Photosynthesis as we know it had evolved.

To help work out how this happened, Woodward Fischer at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena and his colleagues studied South African rocks that formed just before the 2.4-billion-year mark. Their analysis shows that although the rocks formed in the anoxic conditions that had prevailed since Earth's formation, all of the manganese in the rock was deposited in an oxidised form.

In the absence of atmospheric oxygen, manganese needs some sort of catalyst to help it oxidise - it won't react without a bit of help. The best explanation, say Fischer's team, is that a photosynthetic organism was using manganese as an electron source. That left unstable manganese ions behind, which reacted with water to form the oxides. Fischer presented the findings at the American Geophysical Union's conference in San Francisco on 6 December.

Every researcher contacted by New Scientist has hailed the significance of the study, in part because the evidence exactly matches what evolutionary theories have predicted.

A close look at today's plants and algae shows that manganese oxidation is still a vital part of photosynthesis. Within their photosynthetic structures are manganese-rich crystals that provide the electrons to drive photosynthesis. The crystals then snaffle electrons from passing water molecules to restore their deficit. It is this electron raid that cracks open water molecules and generates the oxygen we breathe.

This complicated process must have had simpler roots. In 2007, John Allen at Queen Mary, University of London, and William Martin at the University of Düsseldorf, Germany, suggested one scenario (Nature, doi.org/bs65kb). They believe that modern photosynthesis was born when early cyanobacteria by chance floated into a watery environment rich in manganese, and quickly adapted to take advantage of the new source of electrons.

Later, because manganese is a relatively scarce resource that can't be tapped indefinitely, the cyanobacteria evolved a different strategy. They incorporated manganese directly into their photosynthetic structures and used it as a rechargeable battery: draining it of its electrons, but allowing its supplies to be replenished by stealing electrons from another, more plentiful source - water.

What Fischer's team has found is evidence of the initial step in this process: an anoxic environment rich in manganese that has been stripped of electrons and left in an oxidised state, almost certainly by primitive cyanobacteria. "There had to be some intermediate step in the evolutionary process," says Redding.

"This is big news," says Martin. He adds that we can expect publications in the near future that provide more evidence compatible with the theory. "But this somewhat more direct geochemical evidence is really exciting."

If you would like to reuse any content from New Scientist, either in print or online, please contact the syndication department first for permission. New Scientist does not own rights to photos, but there are a variety of licensing options available for use of articles and graphics we own the copyright to.

All comments should respect the New Scientist House Rules. If you think a particular comment breaks these rules then please use the "Report" link in that comment to report it to us.

If you are having a technical problem posting a comment, please contact technical support.

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India's government wins second reform vote

NEW DELHI : India's minority government survived a final vote in parliament on Friday when lawmakers backed its controversial move to allow in foreign supermarkets, giving a boost to its reform agenda.

After four days of debate, lawmakers in the nominated upper house gave their support to the government and kicked out an opposition motion against the decision to open up the retail sector to foreign firms such as Walmart.

The US giant aims to be one of the first to set up foreign-owned megastores in India, which opposition parties warn could drive the country's millions of mom-and-pop stores out of business.

The vote in Rajya Sabha saw the opposition motion defeated by a margin of 14 votes, handing the Congress-led government a victory of 123 votes against 109 in its second test of parliamentary strength in three days.

"The motion is negative," announced Indian Vice President Hamid Ansari, who serves as speaker in the upper house.

On Wednesday, the motion was routed by a margin of 35 in the lower house where the government gained 253 votes against 218. This was the first major vote faced by the coalition since it lost its majority in September.

A loss for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh would not have reversed the policy, but would have dealt the shaky government an embarrassing blow and slowed efforts to push through other investor-friendly and pro-market reform measures.

- AFP/ms

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My Best Tech Gift Ever: A 133MHz IBM PC 350

A 14-year-old Christopher MacManus (seated) hunches over his beloved computer in 1998. A long-forgotten chum looks on.

(Credit:
Christopher MacManus)

Every day this week, a different CNET writer or editor is recalling a tech or geek-centric present that left a mark. Read past stories by Eric Mack, Jeff Sparkman, Jay Greene, and Dan Ackerman, and look for another installment tomorrow at midnight PT.

On a chilly autumn day in 1997, I came home from school to find that my mom had a brand-new IBM PC 350 in her office. It was an astonishing computer, especially considering our previous machine was a DOS/Windows 3.1 slowpoke that could barely run Wolfenstein 3D.

For its time, the PC 350 had it all -- a screaming Pentium 133MHz processor, a 1.6GB hard drive, 64MB of RAM, and 4MB of video memory. Though my mom bought it for the household and not for me exclusively, it was the best tech gift I ever got, as it truly turned me into a geek and gamer (and therefore the person I am today).

For some reason, that IBM computer changed everything about me. In just a matter of days, I was no longer a mild-mannered suburban kid who stayed outside until dusk and built forts in his spare time. I became obsessed with SimCity, SimTower, and 3D games (such as Star Wars: Rebel Assault II, SubSpace, and The Dig). It wasn't long until my mom made the leap and got 56.6K dial-up Internet service through Mindspring, which turned me into a full-fledged computer nerd.

What's the best tech gift you ever got? Send your stories and photos to crave at cnet dot com (subject line: Best Tech Gift) for possible inclusion in an upcoming feature.

As for other activities, I spent a lot of time chatting with people at Decipher's Star Wars: Customizable Card Game Palace server (which I'm awkwardly doing in the above picture). I also spent a lot of time playing a Star Wars multiuser dungeon, which is a text-based adventure game. As a precursor to years of running successful Web sites, I built my first Web site on Geocities through that computer. Gee, that doesn't sound geeky at all.

The PC 350 also kicked off my interest in computer hardware. Sometimes when Mom was asleep I would take the computer into my room and unscrew the hinges of the case, just so I could look at all the components inside. I just had to know what everything did. I even upgraded the RAM from 32MB to 128MB without ever telling my mom -- well, until now.

Find a memorable gift for the people in your life by visiting CNET's 2012 Holiday Gift Guide.

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Space Pictures This Week: Lunar Gravity, Venusian Volcano

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  Cassiopeia’s Bubble

  Image courtesy T.A. Rector, UAA/WIYN/NOAO/NSF

  A new camera called the One Degree Imager, located at Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona, is responsible for this enticingly crisp image of the Bubble Nebula. Released on December 4, this closeup highlights the sphere of gas blown out by the nebula's central star, which is 45 times larger than our own sun.

  Located in the constellation Cassiopeia, the Bubble Nebula is ten light-years across. Intense radiation from the massive star causes the otherworldly glow that lights up what looks like a celestial soap bubble.

  (Related: "Amazing Hubble Images.")

  Published December 6, 2012

  
  











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  Midnight Light

  Photograph by Frank Olsen, My Shot

  Delicate green auroras light up the water at Buksnesfjord, Norway, in a picture taken just after midnight on December 4.

  (See pictures of auroras sparked by a massive solar flare.)

  Published December 6, 2012

  
  











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  Great Escape

  Image courtesy SDO/NASA

  Sheets of plasma—or superheated gas—break off from the surface of the sun in this image taken in extreme ultraviolet light. Before floating free, the plasma rose up and danced along pathways determined by magnetic fields. These unseen forces pushed and pulled the gas into contorted shapes.

  (Learn about the sun.)

  Published December 6, 2012

  
  











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  New Look

  Image courtesy NASA

  What looks like a jawbreaker is actually a gravity map of the moon. Red areas indicate places with higher gravity fields while blue areas indicate lower gravity fields.

  (Learn about lunar exploration.)

  Twin probes circling the moon—part of NASA's GRAIL mission—since 2011 have been recording changes in gravity as they fly over peaks and valleys on the lunar surface. As one probe flies over an area with a greater gravity field, the washing-machine-size instrument speeds up slightly, increasing the distance between it and its sister probe. These minute changes in position have enabled scientists to construct this very detailed view of local changes in the moon's gravity.

  (How well do you know your moon myths? Take our quiz.)

  Published December 6, 2012

  
  











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  Grainy Picture

  Illustration courtesy L. Calçada, ESO/NAOJ/NRAO
  

  In this artist's conception of fine-grained particles around a brown dwarf—or a failed star—bits of debris are on their way to becoming a rocky planet.

  Current thinking on Earthlike, rocky planet formation says that random collisions between tiny debris occur in the disc of material surrounding newborn stars. But the recent discovery of such a disc surrounding a brown dwarf has some astronomers rethinking that hypothesis. If planets can form from the debris around these failed stars, then rocky planets may be much more common than previously thought.

  (Related: "Coldest Star Found-No Hotter Than Fresh Coffee.")

  Published December 6, 2012

  
  











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  Night Vision

  Image courtesy Jesse Allen and Robert Simmon, Suomi NPP/NASA

  The Suomi NPP satellite captured this nighttime image of the aurora australis over the Antarctic coast south of South Africa. Despite the winter darkness and a waning crescent moon, the auroras produced enough light for sensors on board the new NASA and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration satellite to capture the boundary between the ice shelf and what some scientists call the Southern, or Antarctic, Ocean (dark line across the bright center swirl).

  Launched last year, Suomi NPP enables scientists to capture nighttime images of the Earth's atmosphere and surface. The new sensor is so sensitive, it can capture the lights from one ship at sea.

  (Learn about Antarctica.)

  Published December 6, 2012

  
  











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  Pearl Islands

  Image courtesy Michael Taylor, Landsat/NASA

  In NASA's Landsat 5 satellite image, the Mergui Archipelago shows off the vibrant greens of its rain forests and the brilliant blues of the surrounding tropical ocean. Located along the southern border of Myanmar (Burma), next to Thailand, the area is known for valuable pearl oysters (Pinctada maxima) and a highly diverse concentration of plants and animals.

  (See photos of Myanmar.)

  Published December 6, 2012

  
  











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  Venusian Volcano

  Illustration courtesy AOES Medialab/ESO

  The Venusian atmosphere is made mostly of carbon dioxide, along with periodic spikes in sulfur. Recent research has found that volcanoes on the planet's surface, seen here in an artist's conception, are likely injecting that sulfur into the upper atmosphere. Direct confirmation is difficult, however, since Venus's thick atmosphere precludes a peek at its peaks.

  Published December 6, 2012

  
  











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  Image courtesy SSI/ISA/ESA/NASA

  Published December 6, 2012

  
  

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