April Jobs report: Best gain in four years and One ocean, four (or more) killer whale species

#1
This is talking about how In another sign that the recovery in the U.S. economy is taking hold, employers added significantly more jobs to payrolls in April, according to a government report released Friday.There was a gain of 290,000 jobs in the month, up from a revised 230,000 jobs added in March. It was the largest number of jobs added to the labor force since March 2006. The results were much better than expected. Economists surveyed by Briefing.com had forecast a gain of 187,000 jobs. Also After nearly two years of job losses, the economy has now added jobs in five of the last six months. With upward revisions for both March and February, there has been a gain of 573,000 jobs since the start of the year.
"It clearly shows that this economic recovery can no longer be seen as a jobless one," said Bart van Ark, chief economist of The Conference Board, a leading business research firm. "Companies apparently are finding they can't squeeze out any more output without adding workers."
The report also includes a separate survey of households that it uses to estimate the unemployment rate, which increased to 9.9%. Economists had forecast the rate would hold steady at 9.7%.The rise in the unemployment rate is actually a sign of improving perception of labor market conditions. The increase was due to an uptick in job seekers who had previously been discouraged and dropped out of the job market. There was a jump of 805,000 workers returning to the labor force in April alone. "When you think about the force it takes to get 800,000 beaten-down people off the couch and back on the street looking for work, that's pretty significant," said Lakshman Achuthan, managing director of Economic Cycle Research Institute.Broad-based gains: The job picture got a lift from the addition of 66,000 jobs by the U.S. Census Bureau, which is in the process of completing the once-in-a-decade headcount of the U.S. population. But the gains went far beyond that one-time Census boost, as private sector employers added 231,000 jobs. And the gains were broad based, as nearly two-thirds of industries across the private sector added jobs rather than cutting staff.Manufacturing did exceptionally well, adding 44,000 jobs, the biggest one-month gain in the sector since August 1998. Construction added 14,000 jobs, the second straight month of gains after nearly three years of uninterrupted job losses in that battered sector.Retailers added 12,400 jobs, and the leisure and hospitality industries added 45,000 jobs on a seasonally adjusted reading, a sign that employers in those sectors see increased consumer demand.Temporary help services added 26,200 jobs, which economists see as an important sign of future hiring, since employers often take on temporary workers before they add permanent staff. Temp workers have now increased by 330,000 over the last seven months after roughly three straight years of job losses there.Looking ahead: Still, the gain in jobs this year has barely made a dent in the 8.4 million jobs that were lost in 2008 and 2009. And the 15.3 million unemployed workers are suffering a great deal. A record 46% have been out of work six months or longer. This is talking about the the jobs are going up. I think that this can use less information.
#2
This is talking about
New genetic analysis splits killer whales into multiple taxa
By Tina Hesman Saey
May 22nd, 2010; Vol.177 #11 (p. 8)
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EnlargeDifferent killer?The northeast Pacific transient killer whale may be a distinct species. Dave Ellifrit, NOAA Alaska Fisheries Science Center
Determining whether animals belong to the same species is not as black and white as you might think.
Take killer whales. Scientists have long debated whether the ocean-dwelling mammals all belong in one species. Now, DNA evidence suggests that killer whales should be classified in at least four species, and maybe more.
Scientists once thought killer whales all belonged to the species Orcinus orca. But as researchers began observing more closely, they discovered that the whales seem to belong to different groups, called ecotypes, with distinct feeding habits and appearances. Killer whales from different ecotypes don’t seem to breed with each other — one criterion for being classified as separate species. So some scientists proposed that killer whales should be grouped into different species.
Early genetic analyses didn’t support that idea. Studies that looked at pieces of mitochondrial DNA, a type of genetic material that can be used as a molecular clock to measure the time since two genetic lineages split, concluded that the various killer whale groups are similar enough to fall into a single species.
But recently, researchers have come to realize that not all molecular clocks keep the same time. The mitochondrial DNA of Adélie penguins, for example, evolves faster than previously thought (SN Online: 11/17/09). Killer whales and other cetaceans, on the other hand, have molecular clocks that tick more slowly than other species’ clocks do, says Phillip Morin, a marine mammal geneticist at the Southwest Fisheries Science Center in La Jolla, Calif.
Morin and colleagues analyzed the mitochon­drial genomes of 139 killer whales from around the globe and found that the animals fall into several genetically distinct groups.
“The genetic data show that they are each independently evolving lineages,” Morin says.
There is enough evidence to split off three new killer whale species, Morin and his colleagues propose in a study published online April 22 in Genome Research.