Mars Cave-Exploration Mission Entices Scientists

NASA is mapping out a strategy to return bits of rock and soil from the Martian surface to Earth, but the most intriguing Red Planet samples lie in underground caverns, some scientists say. The space agency's next steps at Mars are geared toward mounting a sample-return mission, which is widely viewed as the best way to look for signs of Red Planet life. Such signs are perhaps more likely to be found in material pulled from the subsurface, so some researchers hope NASA's first Martian sample-return effort won't be its last. "While I'm very much interested in a surface sample-return to get us over this hump of doing it, of course I immediately want to go on and start sampling more cryptic materials in lava-tube caves," said astrobiologist and cave scientist Penny Boston, of the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology in Socorro. "I would love that." The Martian underground Subterranean formations are quite common on Mars, Boston said. Orbiting spacecraft have spotted many snaking lava tubes, for example, which were created by long-ago Red Planet volcanism. [Photos: Mars Caves and Lava Tubes] "I could probably scrape up a few hundred examples on Mars, and I think that the numbers are only going to increase as the interest in these structures increases," Boston told SPACE.com. Such caverns may preserve a bounty of information about Martian history and evolution, including its past and current potential to host life. "Something like the lava tubes could be wonderful traps for material from past climate regimes, particles from previous epochs on Mars," Boston said, noting that liquid water is known to have flowed across the Martian surface long ago. Lava-tube caves on Earth commonly trap volatile materials such as water, she added. "We suspect that there may be examples of that on Mars," Boston said. "The ability to tap into frozen volatiles would be fabulous. And maybe bug bodies — maybe frozen little bodies. You never know." [Related: Crew picked for ultimate space voyage] The frigid, dry and radiation-bombed Martian surface is unlikely to host life as we know it today, many researchers say. But organisms might be able to survive in a Red Planet lava tube or other underground habitat, where conditions could be far more benign. "The subsurface is going to be radically different from the surface," Boston said. "Every indication we have from caves of all different kinds all over this planet shows that it doesn't take much separation vertically for a radically different environment." No easy task Exploring the surface of another world with a rover is a challenging enough proposition, and investigating the subsurface would be even more difficult. [The Boldest Mars Missions in History] For starters, any potential cave-exploration mission would need to make a pinpoint landing quite close to the cavern mouth, Boston said. NASA has improved its Martian touchdown precision greatly over the years — landing-zone ellipses have shrunk from 62 by 174 miles (100 by 280 kilometers) for the 1976 Viking mission to just 4 by 12 miles (6 by 19 km) for the Curiosity rover, which landed this past August — but further strides would likely be necessary. The actual cavern exploration would require technological advances as well. Cave rovers would have to be far more autonomous than their surface brethren, for example, since overlying rock would decrease the ability to communicate with Earth, said roboticist Red Whittaker, of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. [Slideshow: Dazzling distant galaxies] Cave robots would need to be nimble navigators, constructing maps of their dark surroundings and then picking their way through the boulder-strewn tunnels. Just getting into a Martian lava tube — and getting out again, in the case of a sample-return mission — also presents a daunting challenge. Some can be accessed via "skylights," holes in the ground where the tube's roof has collapsed. A rover might be able to rappel down the side of such holes, Whittaker said Nov. 14 at the 2012 NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts meeting in Virginia. But this maneuver could knock rocks loose, potentially endangering the robot and the mission. So another option is to string a line across the hole's mouth and have the tightrope-walking robot descend to the floor on a tether like a spider. "I like simple, so that's a good choice," Whittaker said. Alternatively, the spelunking robot could leap into the cave, behaving like a "self-contained cannon," he added. Whittaker is considering such options as he develops a NIAC-funded prototype mission concept called "Spelunker," which would explore a lunar skylight and cave. Reason for optimism Scientists and engineers aren't ready to send cave-exploring robots to Mars yet, but such a misson is eminently possible, Whittaker said. "What we're discussing here is just the grand leap," Whittaker said. "It's not just new in terms of destination and agenda, but the technologies that are required to do these missions are both very new to space and also within reach." Boston voiced optimism that a spelunking Mars robot could be ready to launch by the early 2030s or so. Development of the necessary technologies should be helped along by the fact that they have important applications here on Earth, she said, citing autonomous search-and-rescue robots as one example. "I think we're really working up to it," Boston said. "I think we're coming into an era where a lot of things that we've found very, very difficult in the past are going to become increasingly easy. And so I'm certainly hoping [a mission could occur] within the next 20 years, where I can hope to still be alive to see it," she added with a laugh. Aiding human exploration An unmanned mission to explore the Martian underground could also aid efforts to send astronauts to the Red Planet, Boston said. Lava tubes are probably the most promising spots to establish human settlements on Mars, she said. But scientists would need to send robotic scouts to such sites first, to make sure they're safe for habitation and to check them out for indigenous life-forms (which could theoretically harm, or be harmed by, astronauts in their midst). Launching a lunar-cave mission — something along the lines of Whittaker's Spelunker concept, perhaps — would be a good way to get the ball rolling toward a similar effort on Mars, Boston said. And the success of near-surface Mars sample-return could set the table for a sister mission to a Red Planet cave. "I think that once we get over this technological and psychological barrier of finally bringing something back from Mars that we can study, that the next step is going to be easier, because we'll already have looked over that cliff, and jumped over and gotten to the other side," Boston said. "It will embolden us, I hope, at the same time that the technology is advancing."

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Freed scientist finds little change or hope in Russia

KRASNOYARSK, Russia (Reuters) - Grey, pale and thin, Valentin Danilov has changed more than the country that jailed him in 2004 for selling state secrets to China. The 66-year-old Russian physicist, whose face is now criss-crossed with deep wrinkles, could not be blamed for suffering from "deja vu" when he was released on Saturday from a Siberian penal colony on spying charges he says were politically motivated. President Vladimir Putin, now 60, is back in the Kremlin for a third term, corruption is rife, the unreformed economy is creaking under the weight of its dependence on energy exports, and opponents are still being imprisoned. Danilov, whose case human rights activists cite as evidence that Putin uses Russia's weak courts to persecute his enemies, sees little hope of rapid change. "Nothing has changed," Danilov said in an interview, putting some of the blame on Russia's 142 million people. "The authorities do not descend on us from the moon. They are the choice of the nation. So the authorities reflect the state of the nation," he told Reuters a few hours after his release from the high-fenced penal colony. News of one major change did reach him during his last year in the colony in a grimy industrial area outside the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk, 6,500 km (4,000 miles) east of Moscow - reports that people had taken to the streets to protest. Demonstrations against Putin in Moscow and other big cities began a year ago, caused by anger over allegations of fraud in a parliamentary election won by the Kremlin leader's party, but they have largely lost momentum and the opposition is divided. Reflecting on the possibility of free and fair elections, and the possibility of political upheaval, Danilov said: "The nation is not yet ready." NEW CRACKDOWN? Dressed formally in a red tie and grey jacket, Danilov was speaking in an apartment in the city where he was born and jailed, and which was once part of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin's network of Gulag prison camps. A researcher at Krasnoyarsk State University, he was first arrested in 2001. He admitted selling information about satellite technology to a Chinese company but he, other scientists and human rights activists said the information had already been available from public sources. An initial decision to acquit him was overturned and he was sentenced to 14 years in prison in a second trial. A Krasnoyarsk court granted him parole earlier this month, citing good behavior and poor health. Asked how he felt about finally stepping outside the prison walls, he said "there were no feelings", but added that he had no regrets and that he regarded himself as a political prisoner. At the time of Danilov's trial, Putin's opponents said the president was clamping down on academics who had contacts with foreign countries. They say his release showed that the Kremlin no longer regarded the physicist as a threat. Opposition members see similarities between what happened to Danilov and the pressure being put on them now in Moscow. Citing legal cases such as the sentencing of members of the Pussy Riot punk band over an anti-Putin protest in a Russian Orthodox Church, they say the Kremlin is using the legal system to smother dissent. Putin denies this but several opposition leaders face criminal charges and the parliament has adopted a slew of laws over the last half year which opponents say could be applied against them. These include tightening checks on lobby and campaign groups that have foreign funding, forcing them to register as "foreign agents", and broadening the definition of treason. "As for President Putin, I guess everybody would be the same as him in his place. The court makes the tsar," Danilov said, avoiding direct criticism of the president but condemning the circle around him. "The problem is not one of law but of how the judging is done." He read widely about Russia's legal system during his time in prison, and said the judiciary was still open to political manipulation. NO PLANS TO ENTER POLITICS After nearly a decade behind bars, including in colonies populated by murderers, Danilov's brown eyes are still penetrating and his wits sharp. He deflects questions about his health but is not a broken man. He does not want to look back, refusing to go into detail about his life in prison or his health. "It's like serving in the army, only that a man in the army has fewer rights. By taking the military oath, a soldier gives up some of his rights. While in prison, the prisoner can at least call in a lawyer and make complaints about abuse of rights," he said. Among people he admires, he listed several Putin critics - opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, former world chess champion Garry Kasparov and human rights campaigner Lyudmila Alexeyeva. He praised the entry into politics of Mikhail Prokhorov, a rich tycoon who challenged Putin in the March presidential election while denying accusations of being a "Kremlin stooge". Beyond retirement age, and worn down by his years in prison, Danilov signals that a new fight with the state or taking on a role in opposition is the last thing on his mind. He wants to go back to work soon to try out ideas he developed while he had time on his hands in jail. He also says he is ready to play an advisory role on how to reform Russia's outdated penal system. He aims to rebuild his strength and family ties with his daughter, granddaughter and wife of 41 years who lives in Novosibirsk, also in Siberia. Danilov said he had no plans to flee Russia or deal with space research again. He plans to keep in touch with people he met behind bars, including a man sentenced for murder whom he helped to obtain higher education. Putting a positive spin on his years in jail, he said: "They say that to get to know a country well, one must visit its cemeteries and prison. I used to visit cemeteries often and now I've been to prison too. "So you can really believe me when I say I know perfectly fine now what Russia is," he said. He paused for a moment and, smiling, switched to English to quote the title of a Shakespeare play: "All's well that ends well."

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Science fund cuts could hurt EU recovery, scientists warn

LONDON (Reuters) - Cutting science funding in the European Union would threaten economic recovery in the bloc, the heads of scientific organisations said on Friday after such cuts were proposed. "We believe it would be deeply damaging to future economic growth if we were to cut funding now," Andrew Harrison, director general of Grenoble-based neutron research centre the Institut Laue-Langevin, told Reuters. EU leaders on Friday abandoned talks to find a deal on the bloc's budget for 2014-2020 but European Council President Herman Van Rompuy, who chaired the summit, proposed cuts in a number of areas, including research and innovation, in an effort to reach a deal. According to a document seen by Reuters, Van Rompuy's proposal penciled in a 139.5 billion euro ($180.8 billion) budget under the competitiveness-for-growth heading, which includes the EU's flagship Horizon 2020 research funding programme. This is a further cut from a Van Rompuy proposal earlier this week of 152 billion euros and down sharply from an original Commission proposal of 164 billion euros. Although it is unclear if there would be any knock-on effect from the proposed cuts on Horizon 2020 when talks resume early next year, the original budget for the research programme was 80 billion euros, roughly half the original pot. European scientists, whose funding is already under pressure from the economic downturn, will be alarmed at the prospect of cuts to one of the biggest science budgets in the world. Harrison, of the Grenoble-based research centre, joined in a lobbying effort with seven other world-leading research organisations calling on the Commission to defend science funding ahead of the budget summit. In a letter to Commission President Jose-Manuel Barroso that was also signed by Rolf Heuer, director general of the CERN research centre near Geneva, the organisations warned that science should be central to Europe's long-term prosperity. "At a time when a return to growth is the most pressing policy priority across Europe, it is absolutely vital that investment in our scientific resources (both human and technical) is sustained," they said. The signatories also included Iain Mattaj, head of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory; Alvaro Gimenez Canete, director of science and robotic exploration at the European Space Agency and Tim de Zeeuw, head of the European Southern Observatory (ESO). "We are all world leading in our fields," said Harrison. "We are cautioning very strongly against cuts now." LONG-TERM BENEFITS Harrison said that although researchers needed to do a better job in demonstrating the economic value of research, there was no doubt about the long-term benefits of investment in science. "Europe is not going to compete in the mass labour market or in natural resources, we are only going to compete because we are smarter," he said. "Right now I'm not fantastically confident." Van Rompuy's proposal earmarked nearly 13 billion euros for specific projects, including Galileo, the European replacement for the Global Positioning System satellite network, and the ITER nuclear fusion research project. But Horizon 2020 will be the mainstay of EU research grants and the implications for the funding programme remain unclear. "Science isn't going to die if they don't implement Horizon 2020 fully," said Bruno Leibundgut, director for science at ESO. "But these countries are going to suffer from this five or 10 years down the line." ($1 = 0.7717 euros)

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Scientists: Galapagos tortoise can be revived

LIMA, Peru (AP) — Lonesome George, the late reptile prince of the Galapagos Islands, may be dead, but scientists now say he may not be the last giant tortoise of his species after all. Researchers say they may be able to resurrect the Pinta Island subspecies by launching a cross-breeding program with 17 other tortoises found to contain genetic material similar to that of Lonesome George, who died June 24 at the Pacific Ocean archipelago off Ecuador's coast after repeated failed efforts to reproduce. Edwin Naula, director of the Galapagos National Park, said in a telephone interview on Thursday that the probability is high it can be accomplished. "It would be the first time that a species was recovered after having been declared extinct," Naula said. But it won't happen overnight. "This is going to take about 100 to 150 years," Naula added. Scientists took DNA samples from 1,600 tortoises on Wolf volcano, and found the Pinta variety in 17, though their overall genetic makeup varied. Through cross-breeding, "100 percent pure species" can be achieved, said Naula, a biologist. He said the 17 tortoises were being transferred from Isabela island, where the volcano is located, to the park's breeding center at Santa Cruz, the main island on the archipelago whose unique flora and fauna helped inspire Charles Darwin's work on evolution. The results are to be published in the journal Biological Conservation, the park said. The study on Wolf volcano was conducted by Yale University and the Galapagos park with financial help from the Galapagos Conservancy. In a news release, the park said scientists speculate that giant tortoises from Pinta island might have arrived at Wolf volcano after being taken off by whaling ships for food and later cast overboard. At least 14 species of giant tortoise originally inhabited the islands' 620 miles (1,000 kilometers) off Ecuador's coast and 10 survive. A visit to Lonesome George became de rigueur for celebrities and common folk alike among the 180,000 people who annually visit the Galapagos. Before humans arrived, the islands were home to tens of thousands of giant tortoises. The number fell to about 3,000 in 1974, but the recovery program run by the national park and the Charles Darwin Foundation has succeeded in increasing the overall population to 20,000. Lonesome George's age at death was not known, but scientists believed he was about 100, not especially old for a giant tortoise.

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Timeline - How the world found out about global warming

(Reuters) - A U.N. conference in Qatar next week is the latest attempt to combat global warming after mounting evidence that human activity is disrupting the climate. Here is a timeline of the road to action on global warming: 300 BC - Theophrastus, a student of the Greek philosopher Aristotle, documents that human activity can affect climate. He observes that drainage of marshes cools an area around Thessaly and that clearing of forests near Philippi warms the climate. 1896 - Sweden's Svante Arrhenius becomes the first to quantify carbon dioxide's role in keeping the planet warm. He later concluded that the burning of coal could cause a "noticeable increase" in carbon levels over centuries. 1957-58 - U.S. scientist Charles Keeling sets up stations to measure carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere at the South Pole and at Mauna Loa, Hawaii. The measurements have shown a steady rise. 1988 - The United Nations sets up the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to assess the scientific evidence. 1992 - World leaders agree the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, which sets a non-binding goal of stabilising greenhouse gas emissions by 2000 at 1990 levels - a target not met overall. 1997 - The Kyoto Protocol is agreed in Japan; developed nations agree to cut their greenhouse gas emissions on average by at least 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12. The United States stays out of the deal. 2007 - The IPCC says it is at least 90 percent certain that humans are to blame for most of the warming trend of the past 50 years. It also says signs that the planet is warming are "unequivocal". 2009 - A conference of 193 countries agrees to "take note" of a new Copenhagen Accord to fight climate change, after U.N. talks in Denmark. The accord is not legally binding and does not commit countries to agree a binding successor to the Kyoto Protocol when its first stage ends in 2012. 2011 - U.N. climate talks in Durban, South Africa, agree to negotiate a new accord by 2015 that is "applicable to all" and will come into force from 2020. Sources: Reuters, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, "Why We Disagree about Climate Change" by Mike Hulme, founding director of the Tyndall Centre.

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Cave Artists Had Leg Up On Moderns

Who was the better artist, a caveman or Leonardo da Vinci? It turns out that early depictions of four-legged animals walking are more accurate in some ways than modern ones—even those crafted by the Renaissance master. The study is in the journal PLoS ONE. [Gabor Horvath et al, Cavemen Were Better at Depicting Quadruped Walking than Modern Artists: Erroneous Walking Illustrations in the Fine Arts from Prehistory to Today] Without fancy cameras, we two-leggers can have trouble visualizing the sequence of leg motion in a quadruped's gait. Hungarian scientists recently analyzed a thousand statues, paintings and other art created in prehistory or more recently. Specifically, the researchers checked how the legs of ostensibly moving quadrupeds hit the ground, to see if these depictions matched actual animal locomotion. Of course, 19th century photographer Eadweard Muybridge famously captured a horse's motion in stop-motion photographs. Artwork in the centuries prior to his photos got the legs wrong 84 percent of the time. The error rate dropped to 58 percent after his photos came out. But prehistoric artists topped all with just a 46 percent error rate. Perhaps those cave painters paid such close attention to detail because they wanted to avoid being starving artists.

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Women can tell a cheating man just by looking at them: study

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Women can tell with some accuracy whether an unfamiliar male is faithful simply by looking at his face, but men seem to lack the same ability when checking out women, according to an Australian study published on Wednesday.

In a paper that appeared in the journal Biology Letters, the researchers found that women tended to make that judgment based on how masculine-looking the man was.

"Women's ratings of unfaithfulness showed small-moderate, significant correlations with measures of actual infidelity," wrote the team, led by Gillian Rhodes at the ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders at the University of Western Australia in Perth.

"More masculine-looking men (were) rated as more probable to be unfaithful and having a sexual history of being more unfaithful."

Attractiveness was not a factor in the women making the link.

In the study, 34 men and 34 women were shown colour photographs of 189 Caucasian adult faces and asked to rate them for faithfulness.

The researchers compared their answers to the self-reported sexual histories of the 189 individuals and found that the women participants were better able to tell who was faithful and who was not.

"We provide the first evidence that faithfulness judgments, based solely on facial appearance, have a kernel of truth," they wrote in the paper.

Men, on the other hand, seemed to have no clue. They tended to perceive attractive, feminine women to be unfaithful, when there was no evidence that they were, the scientists noted.

Faithfulness is seen as important in the context of sexual relationships and mate choice, the scientists wrote in the paper. Men with unfaithful partners risk raising another man's child, while women with unfaithful partners risk losing some, or even all, parental and other resources to competitors.

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Trafficked maids to order: The darker side of richer India

NEW DELHI, Dec 4 (TrustLaw) - Inside the crumbling housing estates of Shivaji Enclave, amid the boys playing cricket and housewives chatting from their balconies, winding staircases lead to places where lies a darker side to India's economic boom.

Three months ago, police rescued Theresa Kerketa from one of these tiny two-roomed flats. For four years, she was kept here by a placement agency for domestic maids, in between stints as a virtual slave to Delhi's middle-class homes.

"They sent me many places - I don't even know the names of the areas," said Kerketa, 45, from a village in Chhattisgarh state in central India. "Fifteen days here, one month there. The placement agent kept making excuses and kept me working. She took all my salary."

Often beaten and locked in the homes she was sent to, Kerketa was forced to work long hours and denied contact with her family. She was not informed when her father and husband died. The police eventually found her when a concerned relative went to a local charity, which traced the agency and rescued her together with the police.

Abuse of migrant maids from Africa and Asia in the Middle East and parts of Southeast Asia is commonly reported.

But the story of Kerketa is the story of many maids and nannies in India, where a surging demand for domestic help is fuelling a business that, in large part, thrives on human trafficking by unregulated placement agencies.

As long as there are no laws to regulate the placement agencies or even define the rights of India's unofficially estimated 90 million domestic workers, both traffickers and employers may act with impunity, say child and women's rights activists and government officials.

Activists say the offences are on the rise and link it directly to the country's economic boom over the last two decades.

"Demand for maids is increasing because of the rising incomes of families who now have money to pay for people to cook, clean and look after their children," says Bhuwan Ribhu from Bachpan Bachao Andolan (Save the Childhood Movement), the charity that helped rescue Kerketa.

Economic reforms that began in the early 1990s have transformed the lifestyles of many Indian families. Now almost 30 percent of India's 1.2 billion people are middle class and this is expected to surge to 45 percent by 2020.

Yet as people get wealthier, more women go out to work and more and more families live on their own without relatives to help them, the voracious demand for maids has outstripped supply.

BEHIND CLOSED DOORS

There are no reliable figures for how many people are trafficked for domestic servitude. The Indian government says 126,321 trafficked children were rescued from domestic work in 2011/12, a rise of almost 27 percent from the previous year. Activists say if you include women over 18 years, the figure could run into the hundreds of thousands.

The abuse is difficult to detect as it is hidden within average houses and apartments, and under-reported, because victims are often too fearful to go to the police. There were 3,517 incidents relating to human trafficking in India in 2011, says the National Crime Records Bureau, compared to 3,422 the previous year.

Conviction rates for typical offences related to trafficking - bonded labor, sexual exploitation, child labor and illegal confinement - are also low at around 20 percent. Cases can take up to two years to come to trial, by which time victims have returned home and cannot afford to return to come to court. Police investigations can be shoddy due to a lack of training and awareness about the seriousness of the crime.

Under pressure from civil society groups as well as media reports of cases of women and children trafficked not just to be maids, but also for prostitution and industrial labor, authorities have paid more attention in recent years.

In 2011, the government began setting up specialized anti-human trafficking units in police stations throughout the country.

There are now 225 units and another 110 due next year whose job it is to collect intelligence, maintain a database of offenders, investigate reports of missing persons and partner with charities in raids to rescue victims.

Parveen Kumari, director in charge of anti-trafficking at the ministry of home affairs, says so far, around 1,500 victims have been rescued from brick kilns, carpet weaving and embroidery factories, brothels, placement agencies and houses.

"We realize trafficking is a bigger issue now with greater demand for labor in the cities and these teams will help," said Kumari. "The placement agencies are certainly under the radar."

NATIONAL HEADLINES

The media is full of reports of minors and women lured from their villages by promises of a good life as maids in the cities. They are often sent by agencies to work in homes in Delhi, and its satellite towns such as Noida and Gurgaon, where they face a myriad of abuses.

In April, a 13-year-old maid heard crying for help from the balcony of a second floor flat in a residential complex in Delhi's Dwarka area became a national cause célèbre.

The girl, from Jharkhand state, had been locked in for six days while her employers went holidaying in Thailand. She was starving and had bruises all over her body.

The child, who had been sold by a placement agency, is now in a government boarding school as her parents are too poor to look after her. The employers deny maltreatment, and the case is under investigation, said Shakti Vahini, the Delhi-based child rights charity which helped rescue her.

In October, the media reported the plight of a 16-year-old girl from Assam, who was also rescued by police and Shakti Vahini from a house in Delhi's affluent Punjabi Bagh area. She had been kept inside the home for four years by her employer, a doctor. She said he would rape her and then give her emergency contraceptive pills. The doctor has disappeared.

ONE ON EVERY BLOCK

Groups like Save the Children and ActionAid estimate there are 2,300 placement agencies in Delhi alone, and less than one-sixth are legitimate.

"There are so many agencies and we hear so many stories, but we are not like that. We don't keep the maids' salaries and all are over 18," said Purno Chander Das, owner of Das Nurse Bureau, which provides nurses and maids in Delhi's Tughlakabad village.

The Das Nurse Bureau is registered with authorities - unlike many agencies operating from rented rooms or flats in slums or poorer neighborhoods like Shivaji Enclave in west Delhi. It is often to these places that maids are brought until a job is found.

There are no signboards, but neighbors point out the apartments that house the agencies and talk of the comings and goings of girls who stay for one or two days before being taken away.

"There is at least one agency in every block," says Rohit, a man in his twenties, who lives in one of scores of dilapidated government-built apartment blocks in Shivaji Enclave.

With a commission fee of up to 30,000 rupees ($550) and a maids' monthly salary of up to 5,000 rupees ($90), an agency can make more than $1,500 annually for each girl, say anti-trafficking groups.

A ledger recovered after one police raid, shown by the charity Bachpan Bachao Andolan to Thomson Reuters Foundation, had the names, passport pictures and addresses of 111 girls from villages in far-away states like West Bengal, Jharkhand, Assam and Chhattisgarh, most of them minors.

The Delhi state government has written a draft bill to help regulate and monitor placement agencies and has invited civil society groups to provide feedback.

But anti-trafficking groups say what is really needed a country-wide law for these agencies, which are not just mushrooming in cities like Delhi but also Mumbai and other towns and cities.

The legislation would specify minimum wages, proper living and working conditions and a mechanism for financial redress for unpaid salaries. It would also specify that placement agencies keep updated record of all domestic workers which would subject to routine inspection by the labor department.

In the meantime, victims like Theresa Kerketa just want to warn others.

"The agencies and their brokers tell you lies. They trap you in the city where you have no money and know no one," said Kerketa, now staying with a relative in a slum on the outskirts of south Delhi as she awaits compensation.

"I will go back and tell others. It is better to stay in your village, be beaten by your husband and live as a poor person, than come to the city and suffer at the hands of the rich."

(TrustLaw is a global news service covering human rights and governance issues and run by the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters)

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Fast-growing fish may never wind up on your plate

WASHINGTON (AP) — Salmon that's been genetically modified to grow twice as fast as normal could soon show up on your dinner plate. That is, if the company that makes the fish can stay afloat.

After weathering concerns about everything from the safety of humans eating the salmon to their impact on the environment, Aquabounty was poised to become the world's first company to sell fish whose DNA has been altered to speed up growth.

The Food and Drug Administration in 2010 concluded that Aquabounty's salmon was as safe to eat as the traditional variety. The agency also said that there's little chance that the salmon could escape and breed with wild fish, which could disrupt the fragile relationships between plants and animals in nature. But more than two years later the FDA has not approved the fish, and Aquabounty is running out of money.

"It's threatening our very survival," says CEO Ron Stotish, chief executive of the Maynard, Mass.-based company. "We only have enough money to survive until January 2013, so we have to raise more. But the unexplained delay has made raising money very difficult."

The FDA says it's still working on the final piece of its review, a report on the potential environmental impact of the salmon that must be published for comment before an approval can be issued. That means a final decision could be months, even years away. While the delay could mean that the faster-growing salmon will never wind up on American dinner tables, there's more at stake than seafood.

Aquabounty is the only U.S. company publicly seeking approval for a genetically modified animal that's raised to be eaten by humans. And scientists worry that its experience with the FDA's lengthy review process could discourage other U.S. companies from investing in animal biotechnology, or the science of manipulating animal DNA to produce a desirable trait. That would put the U.S. at a disadvantage at a time when China, India and other foreign governments are pouring millions of dollars each year into the potentially lucrative field that could help reduce food costs and improve food safety.

Already, biotech scientists are changing their plans to avoid getting stuck in FDA-related regulatory limbo. Researchers at the University of California, Davis have transferred an experimental herd of genetically engineered goats that produce protein-enriched milk to Brazil, due to concerns about delays at the FDA. And after investors raised concerns about the slow pace of the FDA's Aquabounty review, Canadian researchers in April pulled their FDA application for a biotech pig that would produce environmentally friendly waste.

"The story of Aquabounty is disappointing because everyone was hoping the company would be a clear signal that genetic modification in animals is now acceptable in the U.S.," said Professor Helen Sang, a geneticist at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland who is working to develop genetically modified chickens that are resistant to bird flu. "Because it's gotten so bogged down — and presumably cost AquaBounty a huge amount of money — I think people will be put off."

AGAINST THE CURRENT

The science behind genetic modification is not new. Biotech scientists say that genetic manipulation is a proven way to reduce disease and enrich plants and animals, raising productivity and increasing the global food supply. Genetically modified corn, cotton and soybeans account for more than four-fifths of those crops grown in the U.S., according to the National Academies of Sciences.

But there have always been critics who are wary of tinkering with the genes of living animals. They say the risk is too great that modified organisms can escape into the wild and breed with native species. Not that we don't already eat genetically altered animals. Researchers say the centuries-old practice of selective breeding is its own form of genetic engineering, producing the plumper cows, pigs and poultry we eat today.

"You drive a hybrid car because you want the most efficient vehicle you can have. So why wouldn't you want the most efficient agriculture you can have?" asks Alison Van Eenennaam, a professor of animal science at University of California, Davis.

Aquabounty executives say their aim is to make the U.S. fish farming industry, or aquaculture, more efficient, environmentally friendly and profitable. After all, the U.S. imports about 86 percent of its seafood, in part, because it has a relatively small aquaculture industry. Aquaculture has faced pushback in the U.S. because of concerns about pollution from large fish pens in the ocean, which generate fish waste and leftover food.

Aquabounty executives figure that the U.S. aquaculture industry can be transformed by speeding up the growth of seafood. The company picked Atlantic salmon because they are the most widely consumed salmon in the U.S. and are farmed throughout the world: In 2010, the U.S. imported more than 200,000 tons of Atlantic salmon, worth over $1.5 billion, from countries like Norway, Canada and Chile.

Using gene-manipulating technology, Aquabounty adds a growth hormone to the Atlantic salmon from another type of salmon called the Chinook. The process, company executives say, causes its salmon to reach maturity in about two years, compared with three to four years for a conventional salmon.

Aquabounty executives say if their fish are approved for commercial sale, there are several safeguards designed to prevent the fish from escaping and breeding with wild salmon. The salmon are bred as sterile females. They also are confined to pools where the potential for escape would be low: The inland pens are isolated from natural bodies of water.

And the company says that these pens would be affordable thanks to the fast-growing nature of Aquabounty's fish, which allows farmers to raise more salmon in less time. Overall, the company estimates that it would cost 30 percent less to grow its fish than traditional salmon.

TOUGH SALE

But getting the fish to market hasn't been easy.

The company began discussions with the FDA in 1993. But the agency did not yet have a formal system for reviewing genetically modified food animals.

So Aquabounty spent the next decade conducting more than two dozen studies on everything from the molecular structure of the salmon's DNA to the potential allergic reactions in humans who would eat it. By the time the FDA completed its roadmap for reviewing genetically modified animals in 2009, Aquabounty was the first company to submit its data.

After reviewing the company's data, the FDA said in a public hearing in September of 2010 that Aquabounty's salmon is "as safe as food from conventional Atlantic salmon." The FDA also said the fish "are not expected to have a significant impact" on the environment.

But as the company has inched toward FDA approval it has faced increasing pushback from natural food advocates, environmentalists and politicians from salmon-producing states. In fact, following the FDA's positive review of the fish, the House of Representatives passed a budget that included language barring the FDA from spending funds to approve a genetically engineered salmon.

"Frankenfish is uncertain and unnecessary," said Rep. Don Young of Alaska, who authored the language. The Senate did not adopt the measure.

Despite such opposition, environmental groups such as the Food and Water Watch say that FDA approval seems inevitable. "We think there is a clear bias toward approving genetically modified animals within the FDA," said Patty Lovera, assistant director of Food & Water Watch, a nonprofit that promotes environmentally friendly fishing and farming practices. "This thing is trapped in a regulatory process that is predisposed toward approving it."

But the delay could cause Aquabounty to go bankrupt before its salmon reaches supermarkets.

Aquabounty, which started in 1991 focusing on proteins used to preserve human cells, changed direction after acquiring the rights to gene-manipulation technology from researchers at the University of Toronto and Memorial University of Newfoundland. Initial financing came from Boston-area investors and biotech-focused venture capital funds, but the company has burned through more than $67 million since it started.

According to its mid-year financial report, Aquabounty had less than $1.5 million in cash and stock. And it has no other products besides genetically modified salmon in development.

In February, the cash-strapped company agreed to sell its research and development arm to its largest single shareholder, Kakha Bendukidze, a former Republic of Georgia finance minister turned investor, in return for his help raising $2 million in cash to stay afloat. Aquabounty's CEO Stotish fretted that Bendukidze, who controlled nearly 48 percent of Aquabounty's public stock, would move the company overseas. But in October Bendukidze's investment fund sold its shares to Intrexon, a biotech firm headquartered in Germantown, Md.

Stotish views the sale as a positive development, but he still worries that the U.S. government is unwilling to approve the technology at the heart of his company's work.

"This is about more than Aquabounty and more than salmon," Stotish says. "And shame on us if we allow this to slip away because of partisan bickering and people who oppose new technology."

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Tapping citizen-scientists for a novel gut check

WASHINGTON (AP) — The bacterial zoo inside your gut could look very different if you're a vegetarian or an Atkins dieter, a couch potato or an athlete, fat or thin.

Now for a fee — $69 and up — and a stool sample, the curious can find out just what's living in their intestines and take part in one of the hottest new fields in science.

Wait a minute: How many average Joes really want to pay for the privilege of mailing such, er, intimate samples to scientists?

A lot, hope the researchers running two novel citizen-science projects.

One, the American Gut Project, aims to enroll 10,000 people — and a bunch of their dogs and cats too — from around the country. The other, uBiome, separately aims to enroll nearly 2,000 people from anywhere in the world.

"We're finally enabling people to realize the power and value of bacteria in our lives," said microbiologist Jack Gilbert of the University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory. He's one of a team of well-known scientists involved with the American Gut Project.

Don't be squeamish: Yes, we share our bodies with trillions of microbes, living communities called microbiomes. Many of the bugs, especially those in the intestinal tract, play indispensable roles in keeping us healthy, from good digestion to a robust immune system.

But which combinations of bacteria seem to keep us healthy? Which ones might encourage problems like obesity, diabetes or irritable bowel syndrome?

And do diet and lifestyle affect those microbes in ways that we might control someday?

Answering those questions will require studying vast numbers of people. Getting started with a grassroots movement makes sense, said National Institutes of Health microbiologist Lita Proctor, who isn't involved with the new projects but is watching closely.

After all, there was much interest in the taxpayer-funded Human Microbiome Project, which last summer provided the first glimpse of what makes up a healthy bacterial community in a few hundred volunteers.

Proctor, who coordinated that project, had worried "there would be a real ick factor. That has not been the case," she said. Many people "want to engage in improving their health."

Scott Jackisch, a computer consultant in Oakland, Calif., ran across American Gut while exploring the science behind different diets, and signed up last week. He's read with fascination earlier microbiome research: "Most of the genetic matter in what we consider ourselves is not human, and that's crazy. I wanted to learn about that."

Testing a single stool sample costs $99 in that project, but he picked a three-sample deal for $260 to compare his own bacterial makeup after eating various foods.

"I want to be extra, extra well," said Jackisch, 42. Differing gut microbes may be the reason "there's no one magic bullet of diet that people can eat and be healthy."

It's clear that people's gut bacteria can change over time. What this new research could accomplish is a first look at how different diets may play a role, "a much better understanding of what matters and what doesn't," said American Gut lead researcher Rob Knight of the University of Colorado, Boulder.

"We don't just want people that have a gut-ache. We want couch potatoes. We want babies. We want vegans. We want athletes. We want anybody and everybody because we need that complete diversity," added American Gut co-founder Jeff Leach, an anthropologist.

One challenge is making sure participants don't expect that a map of their gut bacteria can predict their future health, or suggest lifestyle changes, anytime soon.

"I understand I'm not going to be able to say, 'Oh, my gosh, I'll be susceptible to this,'" said Bradley Heinz, 26, a financial consultant in San Francisco. He is paying uBiome $119 to analyze both his gut and mouth microbiomes; just the gut is $69.

"The more people that participate, the more information comes out and the more that everybody benefits," he added.

Participants can sign up for either project via the social fundraising site Indiegogo.com over the next month. They also can send scrapings from the skin, mouth and other sites, to analyze that bacteria. Sign up enough family members or body sites, or be tracked over time, and the price can rise into the thousands. American Gut researchers plan some free testing for those who can't afford the fees, to increase the experiment's diversity.

Don't forget the pets: "We sleep with them, play with them, they often eat our food," Leach said. What bacteria we have in common is the next logical question.

Already, American Gut researchers are preparing to compare what they find in the typical U.S. gut with a few hundred people in rural Namibia, who eat what's described as hunter-gatherer fare. Also, Leach will spend three months living in Namibia next year, and is storing his own stool samples for before-and-after comparison.

But diet isn't the only factor. Your bacterial makeup starts at birth: Babies absorb different microbes when they're born vaginally than when they're born by C-section, a possible explanation for why cesareans raise the risk for certain infections. Taking antibiotics alters this teeming inner world, and it's not clear if there are lasting consequences, especially for young children.

Then there's your environment, such as the infections spread in hospitals. In February, a new University of Chicago hospital building opens and Gilbert will test the surfaces, the patients and their health workers to see how quickly bad bugs can move in and identify which bacteria are protective.

Whatever the findings, all the research marks "a huge teachable moment" about how we interact with microbes, Leach said.

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Study: Drug coverage to vary under health law

WASHINGTON (AP) — A new study says basic prescription drug coverage could vary dramatically from state to state under President Barack Obama's health care overhaul.

That's because states get to set benefits for private health plans that will be offered starting in 2014 through new insurance exchanges.

The study out Tuesday from the market analysis firm Avalere Health found that some states will require coverage of virtually all FDA-approved drugs, while others will only require coverage of about half of medications.

Consumers will still have access to essential medications, but some may not have as much choice.

Connecticut, Virginia and Arizona will be among the states with the most generous coverage, while California, Minnesota and North Carolina will be among states with the most limited.

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