BOSTON (AP) — A 90-year-old Holocaust survivor has made his orchestral debut with renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma.
Ma and George Horner performed together Tuesday night for about 1,000 people at Boston's Symphony Hall.
The two men played music composed 70 years ago at the Nazi prison camp where Horner, who now lives near Philadelphia, was incarcerated. They received a standing ovation.
The performance benefits the Terezin Music Foundation. The organization is dedicated to preserving the work of artists and musicians killed in the Holocaust.
The foundation is named for the town of Terezin, site of an unusual Jewish ghetto in what was then German-occupied Czechoslovakia. Even amid death and hard labor, Nazi soldiers there allowed prisoners to stage performances.
NEW YORK (AP) — New Orleans hip-hop artist Big Freedia is twerking his way to TV screens.
The openly gay rapper, a representative of the city's vibrant underground music scene, debuted his weekly Fuse show, "Big Freedia: Queen of Bounce," earlier this month. He's helped bring bounce music — the energetic brand of hip-hop born in New Orleans that's conducive to the mid-section, hip-shaking dance move known as twerking — to the masses.
"It's been around for two decades. It's the culture there, it's history there," he said of the dance.
Last month, Big Freedia earned a Guinness World Records title for most people twerking simultaneously with more than 250 people in New York's Herald Square.
The performer said his new series, which airs Wednesdays, will reveal more layers of his personality.
"They get to see me on a more personal level. They get to see some of the struggles that I go through day-to-day," he said.
Big Freedia, who has opened for the Postal Service's tour this year, discussed his music, Miley Cyrus' twerking and homophobia in hip-hop in an interview with The Associated Press.
____
AP: I've been hearing that twerking is dead. Do you agree?
Big Freedia: Twerking is definitely not dead. I've been twerking for the last three years, converting one twerker at a time all around the world.
AP: Miley Cyrus twerked at the MTV Video Music Awards, among other places. What's your take on her twerking?
Big Freedia: She really didn't twerk, you know. She attempted to twerk, but she didn't really twerk properly and so people were confused and little baffled about the dance moves that she did do.
AP: What is proper twerk technique?
Big Freedia: Definitely practice in the mirror before you attempt it. You have to use your body in the upright position, you can use your knees for support and that's the only way you can twerk.
AP: How accepted do you feel in the rap community?
Big Freedia: I feel very accepted, like I never have any slander. I never have any issues. You know, like, when people see me, they respect me. It's all about how you carry yourself.
AP: Are you ever offended by homophobic lyrics?
Big Freedia: Not at all. I know who I am, I stand firm on who I am. Those artists are going to vent out and say what they feel and as long as it's not, you know, directed to say one person, that's fine. It's lyrics. It's gonna be around for a long time.
AP: When are you going to release new music?
Big Freedia: I have an EP coming out ...I also have an album coming out ... And I'm about ready to go on my fall tour for five weeks, travelling all around the world and spreading the goodness of bounce music.
____
Online:
http://www.bigfreedia.com/
http://www.fuse.tv/shows/big-freedia
____
Follow John Carucci at http://www.twitter.com/jacarucci
Model plant misled scientists about multicellular growth
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
22-Oct-2013
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Contact: c.j.bunting@leeds.ac.uk c.j.bunting@leeds.ac.uk 0044-113-343-2049 University of Leeds
Scientists have misunderstood one of the most fundamental processes in the life of plants because they have been looking at the wrong flower, according to University of Leeds researchers.
Arabidopsis thalianaalso known as thale cress or mouse-ear cressgrows abundantly in cracks in pavements all over Europe and Asia, but the small white flower leads a second life as the lab rat of the plant world.
It has become the dominant "model plant" in genetics research because of its simple genetics and ease of use in a research environment. Thousands of trays of the humble weed are cultivated in laboratories across the world, but it turns out they may actually contain a rather oddball plant.
A study by researchers at the University of Leeds found that Arabidopsis thaliana was exceptional in not having a "censorship" protein called SMG1.
SMG1 was known to play a vital role in the growth of animals as multicellular organisms, but scientists thought that plants built their complex life fundamentally differently. That conclusion, it turns out, was built on a dummy sold by Arabidopsis thaliana.
Professor Brendan Davies from the University of Leeds' School of Biology, who led the study, said: "Everybody thought that this protein was only in animals. They thought that because, basically, most of the world studies one plant: Arabidopsis thaliana."
Gene expressionthe process by which the information from a genome is converted into the differentiated cells that make up complex liferelies on processes that turn genes on, when their genetic messages are required, and off when they are not.
"Switching genes on and off is really what life is about. If you can't do that, you can't have life," said Professor Davies. "There are various ways this is done, but one way in more complex life such as animals and plants is through a sort of 'censorship' process. The system looks at the messages that come out of the nucleus and effectively makes a judgement on them. It says 'I am going to destroy that message now' and intervenes to destroy it before it takes effect."
Scientists know that this "censorship" processcalled Nonsense Mediated mRNA Decay (NMD)is used by both plants and animals, but thought the two types of organism did it in different ways.
Because Arabidopsis thaliana does not have SMG1, which plays a key role in triggering the censorship system in animals, scientists had concluded that SMG1 was not present in any plant.
However, the Leeds researchers discovered that the plant that has established itself as the standard reference plant for all of biology is in fact an anomaly.
"We have found that SMG1 is in every plant for which we have the genome apart from Arabidopsis and we have established that it is being used in NMD. Rather than being just in animals, we are suggesting that the last common ancestor of animals and plants had SMG1," Professor Davies said.
The study also found SMG1 in Arabidopsis lyrata, a close relative of Arabidopsis thaliana, which suggests that the missing protein has been lost relatively recently in evolutionary time, perhaps in the last 5-10 million years.
The next key question for researchers is to explain how organisms without SMG1, such has funghi and Arabiposis thaliana, work without the protein.
As for Arabidopsis thaliana, it may not have met its Waterloo just yet. "It is still a fantastically useful model. We would not be anywhere close to where we are in understanding plant biology without it, but this is a lesson to us all about the dangers of extrapolating from a single model, however successful that model has been, and the importance of studying processes in a range of models. Evolution does strange and unpredictable things," Professor Davies said.
The flower, which is a member of the mustard family, was first recorded by Johannes Thal in the Harz mountains of northern Germany in the 16th century, but its scientific career really took off at the very end of the 1970s and the early 1980s when molecular geneticists chose it as the ideal model.
Its simple genome, small size, ease of cultivation, and rapid life cycle have since made it an institution in plant genetics with books, web sites and academic conferences devoted to it. In 2008 alone, 3,500 papers on Arabidopsis thaliana were added to the PubMed database, which logs important publications in the life sciences.
The plant has a history of leaving scientists scratching their heads. In the 18th century, it was categorised as one of the Arabis genus but had to be renamed "Arabidopsis," meaning "resembling Arabis" after the original classification was found to be incorrect.
###
The paper, published in The Plant Journal, was co-authored by Professor Davies and University of Leeds PhD student James Lloyd. The research was funded by a grant from the Gatsby Charitable Foundation.
Further Information:
Professor Brendan Davies and James Lloyd are available for interview.
Contact: Chris Bunting, Senior Press Officer, University of Leeds; phone: +44 113 343 2049 or email c.j.bunting@leeds.ac.uk
The full paper: James P. B. Lloyd, Brendan Davies, 'SMG1 is an ancient nonsense-mediated mRNA decay effector' The Plant Journal (2013) is available to download (DOI 10.1111/tpj.12329; URL: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/tpj.12329/abstract)
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Model plant misled scientists about multicellular growth
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
22-Oct-2013
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Contact: c.j.bunting@leeds.ac.uk c.j.bunting@leeds.ac.uk 0044-113-343-2049 University of Leeds
Scientists have misunderstood one of the most fundamental processes in the life of plants because they have been looking at the wrong flower, according to University of Leeds researchers.
Arabidopsis thalianaalso known as thale cress or mouse-ear cressgrows abundantly in cracks in pavements all over Europe and Asia, but the small white flower leads a second life as the lab rat of the plant world.
It has become the dominant "model plant" in genetics research because of its simple genetics and ease of use in a research environment. Thousands of trays of the humble weed are cultivated in laboratories across the world, but it turns out they may actually contain a rather oddball plant.
A study by researchers at the University of Leeds found that Arabidopsis thaliana was exceptional in not having a "censorship" protein called SMG1.
SMG1 was known to play a vital role in the growth of animals as multicellular organisms, but scientists thought that plants built their complex life fundamentally differently. That conclusion, it turns out, was built on a dummy sold by Arabidopsis thaliana.
Professor Brendan Davies from the University of Leeds' School of Biology, who led the study, said: "Everybody thought that this protein was only in animals. They thought that because, basically, most of the world studies one plant: Arabidopsis thaliana."
Gene expressionthe process by which the information from a genome is converted into the differentiated cells that make up complex liferelies on processes that turn genes on, when their genetic messages are required, and off when they are not.
"Switching genes on and off is really what life is about. If you can't do that, you can't have life," said Professor Davies. "There are various ways this is done, but one way in more complex life such as animals and plants is through a sort of 'censorship' process. The system looks at the messages that come out of the nucleus and effectively makes a judgement on them. It says 'I am going to destroy that message now' and intervenes to destroy it before it takes effect."
Scientists know that this "censorship" processcalled Nonsense Mediated mRNA Decay (NMD)is used by both plants and animals, but thought the two types of organism did it in different ways.
Because Arabidopsis thaliana does not have SMG1, which plays a key role in triggering the censorship system in animals, scientists had concluded that SMG1 was not present in any plant.
However, the Leeds researchers discovered that the plant that has established itself as the standard reference plant for all of biology is in fact an anomaly.
"We have found that SMG1 is in every plant for which we have the genome apart from Arabidopsis and we have established that it is being used in NMD. Rather than being just in animals, we are suggesting that the last common ancestor of animals and plants had SMG1," Professor Davies said.
The study also found SMG1 in Arabidopsis lyrata, a close relative of Arabidopsis thaliana, which suggests that the missing protein has been lost relatively recently in evolutionary time, perhaps in the last 5-10 million years.
The next key question for researchers is to explain how organisms without SMG1, such has funghi and Arabiposis thaliana, work without the protein.
As for Arabidopsis thaliana, it may not have met its Waterloo just yet. "It is still a fantastically useful model. We would not be anywhere close to where we are in understanding plant biology without it, but this is a lesson to us all about the dangers of extrapolating from a single model, however successful that model has been, and the importance of studying processes in a range of models. Evolution does strange and unpredictable things," Professor Davies said.
The flower, which is a member of the mustard family, was first recorded by Johannes Thal in the Harz mountains of northern Germany in the 16th century, but its scientific career really took off at the very end of the 1970s and the early 1980s when molecular geneticists chose it as the ideal model.
Its simple genome, small size, ease of cultivation, and rapid life cycle have since made it an institution in plant genetics with books, web sites and academic conferences devoted to it. In 2008 alone, 3,500 papers on Arabidopsis thaliana were added to the PubMed database, which logs important publications in the life sciences.
The plant has a history of leaving scientists scratching their heads. In the 18th century, it was categorised as one of the Arabis genus but had to be renamed "Arabidopsis," meaning "resembling Arabis" after the original classification was found to be incorrect.
###
The paper, published in The Plant Journal, was co-authored by Professor Davies and University of Leeds PhD student James Lloyd. The research was funded by a grant from the Gatsby Charitable Foundation.
Further Information:
Professor Brendan Davies and James Lloyd are available for interview.
Contact: Chris Bunting, Senior Press Officer, University of Leeds; phone: +44 113 343 2049 or email c.j.bunting@leeds.ac.uk
The full paper: James P. B. Lloyd, Brendan Davies, 'SMG1 is an ancient nonsense-mediated mRNA decay effector' The Plant Journal (2013) is available to download (DOI 10.1111/tpj.12329; URL: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/tpj.12329/abstract)
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Share
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
In this Oct. 18, 2013, photo, Aledo's Daythan Davis, left, runs past Western Hills Jacoby Powell (6) , and Desmond Mize as he races for a first down in the first quarter of a football game in Aledo, Texas. Aledo defeated Western Hills 91-0. A parent at Western Hills high school has filed a bullying complaint against the winning coach. (AP Photo/The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Bob Haynes) MAGS OUT; (FORT WORTH WEEKLY, 360 WEST)
In this Oct. 18, 2013, photo, Aledo's Daythan Davis, left, runs past Western Hills Jacoby Powell (6) , and Desmond Mize as he races for a first down in the first quarter of a football game in Aledo, Texas. Aledo defeated Western Hills 91-0. A parent at Western Hills high school has filed a bullying complaint against the winning coach. (AP Photo/The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Bob Haynes) MAGS OUT; (FORT WORTH WEEKLY, 360 WEST)
In this Aug. 31, 2013 photo, Aledo High School football coach Tim Buchanan watches from the sideline during the second half of a game against Highland Park, in Allen, Texas. A parent at a Texas high school that lost a football game 91-0 has filed a bullying complaint against the winning coach. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports that Aledo High School coach Buchanan learned of the online complaint against him Saturday, Oct. 19, 2013, the day after his team beat Western Hills in a 4A matchup. (AP Photo/The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Bob Booth) MAGS OUT; (FORT WORTH WEEKLY, 360 WEST)
In this Oct. 18, 2013, photo, Aledo High School player Ryan Newsom (17), runs between Western Hills players Shane Little, left, and Jacoby Powell during the first quarter of a football game in Aledo, Texas. Aledo defeated Western Hills 91-0. A parent at Western Hills high school has filed a bullying complaint against the winning coach. (AP Photo/The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Bob Haynes) MAGS OUT; (FORT WORTH WEEKLY, 360 WEST)
In this Oct. 18, 2013, photo, Aledo's Jess Anders races past Western Hills's Desmond Mize to score the touchdown during the second quarter of of a football game in Aledo, Texas. Aledo defeated Western Hills 91-0. A parent at Western Hills high school has filed a bullying complaint against the winning coach. (AP Photo/The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Bob Haynes) MAGS OUT; (FORT WORTH WEEKLY, 360 WEST)
In this Aug. 31, 2013 photo, Aledo High School football coach Tim Buchanan watches from the sideline during the second half of a game against Highland Park, in Allen, Texas. A parent at a Texas high school that lost a football game 91-0 has filed a bullying complaint against the winning coach. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports that Aledo High School coach Buchanan learned of the online complaint against him Saturday, Oct. 19, 2013, the day after his team beat Western Hills in a 4A matchup. (AP Photo/The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Bob Booth) MAGS OUT; (FORT WORTH WEEKLY, 360 WEST)
Texas high school coach Tim Buchanan benched his starters after only 21 plays, kept to a conservative ground game and even allowed the clock to run uninterrupted after halftime to hasten the final whistle. Still, his Bearcats won 91-0.
Now the coach is facing formal accusations of bullying.
The impressive victory for undefeated Aledo High School, a football powerhouse in suburban Fort Worth that has put up similar numbers against other schools, has forced an investigation after a parent from the opposing team filed a bullying complaint. The complaint, which must be investigated under state law, says Buchanan should have done more to prevent the lopsided score.
"It wasn't good for anybody," Buchanan said of the Friday win over Western Hills in a Class 4A matchup. "I've sat and gone over and over and over it on what we could have done differently. The score could have very easily been 150 to nothing."
Western Hills coach John Naylor told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram that he disagreed with the bullying allegation, which Buchanan said suggested his coaches "should have made their payers ease up and quit playing that hard." Naylor did not immediately return a call from The Associated Press seeking comment Tuesday.
Under state law, Aledo's principal must investigate the complaint and prepare a report. The complaint was filed with the school district, which the law requires to provide bullying complaint forms on its websites.
The University Interscholastic League, the governing body for high school sports in Texas, only has a mercy rule for six-man football that ends a game when one team gets ahead by 45 points by halftime or later. There is no mercy rule for 11-man football, though coaches can agree to end a game early, UIL spokeswoman Kate Hector said.
Buchanan said Tuesday he wasn't aware of that option.
There were about 1,500 fans still in the stands at the end of the game, most of them Aledo's, he said. About 5,000 were at the Bearcats' stadium in Aledo at the beginning because it was a recognition night for band members' parents. A cold front that brought rain added another reason to leave when the game started to get out of hand, Buchanan said.
While blowouts are not uncommon in Texas high school football, Aledo has racked up several of them this season, due in part to being placed in a new district that has not been as strong in football. The Bearcats' average victory margin in four district games is 77 points.
The University Interscholastic League bases its realignment decisions on enrollment and geographic location to minimize travel time, a move aimed at reducing class absences. When Aledo was placed in a different district before last season, its travel time to the furthest location was cut from two hours to about 35 miles, Buchanan said.
Buchanan's team, which is averaging 69.3 points a game with a 7-0 record, ran just 32 plays but scored on about every third one during Friday's game. Aledo rushed for 391 yards. It scored eight touchdowns on the ground, two each on passes and punt returns, and one on a fumble recovery.
"It certainly didn't seem like they were trying to run up the score in this case," Hector said.
Western Hills had 79 yards rushing and 67 yards passing.
The UIL follows NCAA rules, but most other states follow guidelines of the National Federation of State High School Associations, said Bob Colgate, the federation's director of sports and sports medicine.
Colgate said many of the federation's 48 member states and the District of Columbia have adopted a mercy rule in 11-man football. He noted that a survey published in February found that 16 states reported using a mercy rule with point margins, which are set by individual states, ranging from 30 points to 50 points.
Aledo Principal Dan Peterson said his report on the bullying complaint should be completed this week. It will be given to the father who filed the complaint and the staff at Western Hills.
Hector said anyone can submit a proposal for a rule change which could then be considered by the UIL's legislative council.
Buchanan said his school, winner of four state titles since 1998, and district are very supportive of the football program. The same, he said, cannot be said of Western Hills.
"It's not so much money as it is lack of emphasis," he said. "If you're going to have a program, support it."
NEW YORK (AP) — New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, director Julie Taymor and actor Mark Rylance gathered Tuesday in Brooklyn to help cut the ribbon for a jewel box-sized, shiny new theater, the first permanent home for Theatre for a New Audience in its 34 year existence.
It is the city's first new theater designed expressly for Shakespeare and classic drama since 1965, and is the first permanent home for the itinerant company, which was founded in 1979 by Jeffrey Horowitz. He estimates it will attract an audience of between 30,000-to-40,000, many public school children.
"Friends, Romans, Brooklynites," the mayor intoned inside the $69 million theater, which was created with public and private pledges. "Lend me your ears. We come not to praise Shakespeare, but to stage him."
In addition to a 299-seat main theater, the 27,500-square-foot company's home also houses a 50-seat rehearsal space and a lobby cafe. It overlooks a new public garden plaza and sits along a walking path between the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Opera House and Harvey Theater. The city pledged some $34 million to the project.
Designed by Hugh Hardy of H3 Hardy Collaboration Architecture, the new theater has a large glass facade, gunmetal gray panels, a 35-foot-tall main stage, a second-floor lobby and a central staircase. The building went up in a former parking lot and has been named the Polonsky Shakespeare Center after a gift from the Polonsky Foundation.
The new theater boasts an ability to morph into seven different stage and seating configurations. Hardy said building it posed an interesting challenge: "How do you make a small building important?" The answer was to tilt the square structure and help it stand out by using glass and shiny metal.
"I can imagine a child coming in here and saying, 'Yeah, but it's empty. It's got nothing in it,'" said Rylance, the two-time Tony Award-winning English actor who is alternating between starring in "Twelfth Night" and "Richard III" on Broadway. "It's wonderful for plays. It doesn't have a character that forces itself on you. It's a neutral space that is waiting for the words of the actors to fill it."
Taymor, of "The Lion King" and "Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark" fame, has accepted the theater's invitation to direct the official 2013 inaugural production, "A Midsummer Night's Dream." Taymor has already directed four plays for the troupe, including Carlo Gozzi's "The Green Bird," which moved to Broadway in 2000.
Taymor has already been hard at work getting "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and her cast of 36 ready for its Nov. 2 opening. "I've been in the dark. Oh, I shouldn't have said that," she joked, referring to her rocky ride with the comic book musical.
"I love being here. It's the perfect play to open this theater because it is a blessing of the house," she said. "The theater is flexible and it's small and intimate. How many times do you get a space that's dedicated to that and dedicated to experimentation?"
___
Online:
http://www.tfana.org
___
Follow Mark Kennedy on Twitter at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits
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SAP reported strong revenue growth in its HANA in-memory database and cloud businesses, but also saw revenue from software decline in the third quarter.
The company said Monday that its revenue in the quarter was up 2 percent year-on-year to €4 billion ($5.4 billion), according to IFRS (international financial reporting standards). Profit soared 23 percent to €762 million.
Software revenue, however, fell 5 percent from the same quarter last year to €975 million, even as cloud subscriptions and support grew by a whopping 203 percent to €191 million. Support revenue grew by 4 percent to a little over €2 billion, while overall software and software-related service revenue grew 5 percent year-on-year to about €3.4 billion.
SAP said it is well on its way to reach €1 billion in HANA software revenue since market launch about two years ago. In the quarter, HANA software revenue was up 79 percent at actual currencies to €149 million, and over 2,100 customers. Competitor Oracle announced in September an upcoming in-memory option for its recently released 12c database.
IBM and Microsoft are also working on in-memory database products.
Those competitors' efforts are "too little, and a little bit late" to market, said SAP executive board member Vishal Sikka, who heads all product development, during a conference call Monday.
The business software company also said it had reached a run-rate of over €1 billion in annual cloud revenue, with about 33 million cloud users. Non-IFRS "deferred cloud subscription and support revenue" was €382 million at the end of the quarter, a year-over-year increase of 79 percent, the company said. Deferred cloud subscription and support revenue includes committed future cloud subscription and support revenue already paid by the customer for subsequent quarters of the year.
The business from cloud-based e-commerce vendor Ariba that SAP acquired last October is also doing well with the Web-based business trading community now connecting 1.2 million companies, SAP said.
In the Americas region, the company saw third quarter non-IFRS software and cloud subscription revenue grow 17 percent year-over-year at constant currencies, helped by software revenue growth in Latin America and strong non-IFRS cloud subscription and support revenue growth in North America.
The company's non-IFRS software and cloud subscription revenue in the Asia Pacific Japan region returned to growth with "solid single-digit growth" at constant currencies, backed by a strong performance in China. SAP's non-IFRS software and cloud subscription revenue in the region declined 7 percent in the second quarter.
The 2013 revenue and profit figures include the revenue and profits from Ariba, SuccessFactors and Hybris, a commerce technology company SAP acquired in August. The comparative numbers for 2012 do not include SuccessFactors, Ariba and Hybris for varying periods.
However, SAP is apparently giving up on Business ByDesign, its cloud-based ERP (enterprise resource planning) suite, as a major pillar of its cloud strategy.
A worker walks inside the turbine hall of the Sizewell nuclear plant in eastern England in 2006. The U.K. government on Monday announced that French-owned EDF would build the first new British nuclear power station in 20 years.
Lefteris Pitarakis/AP
A worker walks inside the turbine hall of the Sizewell nuclear plant in eastern England in 2006. The U.K. government on Monday announced that French-owned EDF would build the first new British nuclear power station in 20 years.
Lefteris Pitarakis/AP
Britain has approved the construction of the country's first nuclear power station in 20 years.
NPR's Philip Reeves, reporting on the announcement for our Newscast unit, said the move goes counter to a European trend to phase out nuclear power in the aftermath of Japan's Fukushima disaster in 2011.
"Most of Britain's 16 nuclear reactors are coming to the end of their lives. Now the government's inked an agreement with a consortium led by the French company EDF Energy to build two new nuclear reactors at Hinkley Point in southwest England. Two state-owned Chinese companies are expected to have a sizable stake. Anti-nuclear sentiment in Britain is low-key compared to some European nations: Germany's phasing out nuclear power after the Fukushima disaster. But this deal will be controversial. Attention is focusing on China's involvement — and the price. The consortium is footing the massive construction costs in return for a guaranteed fixed price for the electricity it produces — that's far higher than current rates."
But as the BBC notes the announcement isn't legally binding. EDF will make a final decision on the project in 2014. The project also needs European Commission clearance.
Still, the news prompted us to look at nuclear energy use across Europe and elsewhere. Here's what we found:
As has been the case for years, France relies on nuclear power for more than three-quarters of its energy needs. And nuclear power enjoys broad public support in the country — at least until the Fukushima disaster.
But France and now Britain are among the few European states that see nuclear power as playing a significant role in the future. Across much of Europe, it's a different story.
Existing plants are being phased out, including in Belgium and Germany.
Indeed, Germany's goals are far-reaching: It plans to close all nuclear power stations by 2022. The aim, as NPR's Eric Westervelt reported last year, is "to have solar, wind and other renewables account for nearly 40 percent of the energy for Europe's largest economy in a decade, and 80 percent by 2050."
But, there are growing doubts about that timeline, too, as Eric noted:
"The fact is, the post-Fukushima consensus in Germany has given way to growing concerns about rising energy costs. The debate is intensifying over just who will pay for the transition to renewable energy, how it will happen, how fast — and through whose backyards."
Further afield, Japan was a major proponent of nuclear power until the Fukushima disaster. Until 2011, about 30 percent of electricity in Japan came from nuclear sources. The plan was to increase the share to 40 percent by 2017. But last year, just 2.1 percent of Japan's electricity came from its nuclear plants.
We all have stories, as engineers, of fixing some crazy thing at the last minute right before the demo goes up. We have all encountered situations where we needed to fix something that was our fault and we needed to fix it now.
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