The Big Baird Family News

Due Date is September 7th (+/-).

It's a *BOY*.

First name is picked (William). Avrora and Lyuda are going to pick the middle name.

This was one of the big announcements I have been sitting on.

Arctic Circle Dino Eggs Found

Witness the team's latest find, a diverse stash of dinosaur fossils laid down just a few million years before the big impact, along what's now the Kakanaut River of northeastern Russia. Even accounting for continental drift, the dinos lived at more than 70 degrees of latitude north, well above the Arctic Circle.

And they weren't lost wanderers, either. The fossils include dinosaur eggshells - a first at high latitudes, and evidence of a settled, breeding population.

It's true the Arctic was much warmer back then, but it wasn't any picnic. The size and shape of fossilized leaves found with the bones enabled Godefroit's team to estimate a mean annual temperature of 50 degrees Fahrenheit, with wintertime lows at freezing.

[...]

The research was detailed in the journal Naturwissenschaften.

argh! Not in a journal I have access to. Probably not in a language I can read in technicalese either.

oy.

"A few million years before the impact..."

Does that make it maastrichtian or campanian?

Vindhyan Fossils Show Cambrian Forms...1 *BILLION* Years Earlier

The controversial “Cambrian” fossils of the Vindhyan are real but more than a billion years older

1. Stefan Bengtsona,b,1,
2. Veneta Belivanovaa,
3. Birger Rasmussenc and
4. Martin Whitehouseb,d

-Author Affiliations

1.
aDepartment of Palaeozoology and
2.
dLaboratory for Isotope Geology, Swedish Museum of Natural History, SE-104 05 Stockholm, Sweden;
3.
bNordic Center for Earth Evolution, SE-104 05 Stockholm, Sweden; and
4.
cDepartment of Applied Geology, Curtin University of Technology, Perth, WA 6845, Australia

1.

Edited by James P. Kennett, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, and approved March 24, 2009 (received for review December 11, 2008)

Abstract

The age of the Vindhyan sedimentary basin in central India is controversial, because geochronology indicating early Proterozoic ages clashes with reports of Cambrian fossils. We present here an integrated paleontologic–geochronologic investigation to resolve this conundrum. New sampling of Lower Vindhyan phosphoritic stromatolitic dolomites from the northern flank of the Vindhyans confirms the presence of fossils most closely resembling those found elsewhere in Cambrian deposits: annulated tubes, embryo-like globules with polygonal surface pattern, and filamentous and coccoidal microbial fabrics similar to Girvanella and Renalcis. None of the fossils, however, can be ascribed to uniquely Cambrian or Ediacaran taxa. Indeed, the embryo-like globules are not interpreted as fossils at all but as former gas bubbles trapped in mucus-rich cyanobacterial mats. Direct dating of the same fossiliferous phosphorite yielded a Pb–Pb isochron of 1,650 ± 89 (2σ) million years ago, confirming the Paleoproterozoic age of the fossils. New U–Pb geochronology of zircons from tuffaceous mudrocks in the Lower Vindhyan Porcellanite Formation on the southern flank of the Vindhyans give comparable ages. The Vindhyan phosphorites provide a window of 3-dimensionally preserved Paleoproterozoic fossils resembling filamentous and coccoidal cyanobacteria and filamentous eukaryotic algae, as well as problematic forms. Like Neoproterozoic phosphorites a billion years later, the Vindhyan deposits offer important new insights into the nature and diversity of life, and in particular, the early evolution of multicellular eukaryotes.

Not at work so I can't look at the paper pdf...but what they are claiming is true. Or my understanding of it that is...

Whoa.

UPDATE:

There are specific fossils they looked at. None of them are animal life, so no Burgess Shale critters here. There are gas bubbles found from cyanobacterial mats (gas got trapped in a mat and mud covered it) and what look like tubes secreted by specific kinds of algae (filamentous algae such as Spirogyra). There are other fossils as well, but they are not examined in detail. Chambalia (or soemthing like it) also makes an appearance. The age is rock solid though (sorry for the bad pun). This stuff is a billion years older and very similar to Cambrian equivalent taxa, but not necessarily actually Cambrian taxa.

PlanetSpace Protest of NASA COTS...*DENIED*

PlanetSpace, a partnership set up by Lockheed Martin Corp, Boeing Co and Alliant Techsystems Inc has had its protest denied by the U.S. Government Accountability Office on Wednesday.

SpaceX and Orbital Sciences Corp can now resume work on contracts worth up to $3.5 billion. The contracts call for a total of 20 flights to the space station to deliver cargo after the space shuttles are retired in 2010.

bu-yah!

California Effort to Change Its Constitution

Fed up with the budget crises and partisan battles that have paralyzed California for years, some influential voices believe it's time to tear open the state constitution and start anew.

Once dismissed as a hokey gimmick, support for a proposed constitutional convention has been building in the nation's most populous state. Even Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, has indicated he would back an effort to retool the document to make state government function more smoothly.

Opponents of the step say it's just a ruse to raise taxes and could expose the constitution to a host of ideological and special interest-driven changes.

[...]

But in California, a tradition of ballot initiatives and other expressions of direct democracy have made the state's constitution among the longest and most complicated in the world. The best known of these initiatives is Proposition 13, a constitutional amendment passed in 1978 that slashed property taxes and helped spark a taxpayer revolt across the country.

"The system is broken because the constitution is outdated and has been amended more than 500 times, and each new amendment pays no attention to last year's amendment," said John Grubb of the Bay Area Council, a San Francisco business organization spearheading the constitutional convention effort.

Backers of the constitutional convention want to put a proposal on the November 2010 ballot that would narrowly focus the convention on budget reform and a few other specific matters. Divisive social issues like gay marriage would be excluded.

At issue is the requirement that a two-thirds vote of the California Legislature is needed to pass the state's budget and tax increases. California is one of just a handful of states requiring such a supermajority, and most years it leads to a weeks-long budget impasse. Convention backers want to drop the two-thirds majority rule to 55 percent.

The budget situation was particularly acute this year, as the state nearly went broke while lawmakers locked horns over how to close a projected $42 billion gap. Schwarzenegger signed a budget agreement in February but it will not go into effect unless voters approve several provisions of the agreement in a special election scheduled for May 19.

Polls show the ballot measures will likely fail, throwing the state back into fiscal chaos.

"Look anywhere in California and you'll find a crisis," Grubb continued. "Our education system used to be the best in the country, now we're 49th or 50th. Our transit network is the worst in the nation, our water system is on the verge of collapse, and our prison system is overflowing. The Legislature is responsible and they aren't able to do their jobs."

hmmmmm....

I may need to sign up to help with this. OTOH, unless we fix, permanently, the issues generated by the direct democracy ballot measures, this may not be such a good idea at all.

Single Cell Needed for Sequencing Now

“As long as you can isolate a single cell, pick it from the environment, lyse it, you can generate millions of copies of that genome and gain access to the information inside that organism,” Woyke confirmed. “One of the key issues that still needs refining is the lysis step, since many microbes will not lyse with alkaline solutions, the most common agent for the job. But we are actively working on that.”

Sweet! Not the firs time, but even so...wow. I could think of all sorts of nifty applications once we have a very large data base of bacterial genomes.

Methane Calthrates Not Source at End of Ice Age

An expansion of wetlands and not a large-scale melting of frozen methane deposits is the likely cause of a spike in atmospheric methane gas that took place some 11,600 years ago, according to an international research team led by Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego.

The finding is expected to come as a relief to scientists and climate watchers concerned that huge accelerations of global warming might have been touched off by methane melts in the past and could happen again now as the planet warms. By measuring the amount of carbon-14 isotopes in methane from air bubbles trapped in glacial ice, the researchers determined that the surge that took place nearly 12,000 years ago was more chemically consistent with an expansion of wetlands. Wetland regions, which produce large amounts of methane from bacterial breakdown of organic matter, are known to have spread during warming trends throughout history.

"This is good news for global warming because it suggests that methane clathrates do not respond to warming by releasing large amounts of methane into the atmosphere," said Vasilii Petrenko, a postdoctoral fellow at University of Colorado, Boulder, who led the analysis while a graduate student at Scripps.

The results appear in April 24 editions of the journal Science.

I'll need that paper, folks, please!

More press releases here and here.

Some Reefs Show Great Resiliency

The Wildlife Conservation Society announced today a study showing that some coral reefs off East Africa are unusually resilient to climate change due to improved fisheries management and a combination of geophysical factors. WCS announced the results of the study at the International Coral Reef Initiative (ICRI), which is meeting this week in Phuket, Thailand.

The study, published in the online journal Aquatic Conservation: Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems, provides additional evidence that globally important "super reefs" exist in the triangle from Northern Madagascar across to northern Mozambique to southern Kenya and, thus, should be a high priority for future conservation action.

Authors of the study include Tim McClanahan and Nyawira Muthiga of the Wildlife Conservation Society, Joseph Maina of the Coral Reef Conservation Project, Albogast Kamukuru of the University of Dar es Salaam's Department of Fisheries Science and Aquaculture, and Saleh A.S. Yahna of the University of Dar es Salaam's Institute of Marine Sciences and Stockholm University's Department of Zoology.

The study found that Tanzania's corals recovered rapidly from the 1998 bleaching event that had wiped out up to 45 percent of the region's corals. Along with monitoring Tanzania's reefs, WCS helps coral conservation in this region through training of park staff in protected areas.

The authors attribute the recovery of Tanzania's coral reefs due in part to direct management measures, including closures to commercial fishing. Areas with fishery closures contained an abundance of fish that feed on algae that can otherwise smother corals, while the few sites without any specific management measures remain degraded; one site had experienced a population explosion of sea urchins—pests that feeds on corals.

The findings also showed that the structure of the reefs played a major factor in their resiliency. Tanzania's reefs are particularly complex and experience unusual variations in current and water temperature. These factors allow for greater survivorship of a higher diversity of coral species, including those that can quickly re-colonize after bleaching.

There's hope then. It really depends on us managing the reefs properly then...

Is His Reputation About to Collapse?

Hat tip to James and his discussion. Link at the top and also please read the discussion on James' LJ.

Good Bye HELSTF

Today, HELSTF is being shuttered. The toxic brew they used for the chemical lasers has been drained and carted off. Today the contractors are being escorted off site. It has been almost 8 years since I left, but in many ways, the camaraderie we had amongst the doers was great and missed. Shooting things down with a freakin flash light (albeit powered by deuterium and fluorine instead of a battery) was one of the kewler things I've done in my career.

I had wanted to walk through the LSTC one last time. And the Test Cells.

Obviously, the Govie management couldn't adapt to the solid state world. That doesn't surprise me.

*sighs*

Goodbye, HELSTF. It was fun. Even if the drive wasn't.

New Tyrannosaur and Ornithomimosaur Found

A Tyrannosaurus rex ancestor and an ostrich-mimic have emerged as two new dinosaur species found among a treasure trove of skeletons in China's Gobi Desert.

The T. rex relative had a mouthful of 70 teeth, and stood 5 feet tall at the hip while weighing almost a third of a ton. Scientists say that its discovery helps fill in a "missing link" in the giant carnivore's evolution.

However, the earlier dinosaur "was still a fly weight predator compared to its heavy-weight relatives," said Peter Makovicky, curator of dinosaurs at the Field Museum in Chicago. The Field Museum houses the largest known T. rex specimen, named Sue, which stood at nearly 14 feet tall at the hips and weighed between 6 and 7 tons.

Fills a big gap

Such large tyrannosaurs represent the later evolutionary killing machines in the family, and scientists have also found the earliest tyrannosaurs from China and England. The new relative helps fill in a large gap between the early and late chapters of tyrannosaur evolutionary history.

Chinese and American scientists who found the T. rex ancestor named it Xiongguanlong baimoensis, with Xiong Guan meaning "grand pass" and long being the Mandarin word for dragon.

"Xiongguanlong sheds light on the missing 40 [million] to 50 million years of tyrannosaur evolution," said Mark Norell, a paleontologist at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

The new dinosaur stands out from its late tyrannosaur family by having a very long and narrow snout, rather than the wide, massive skull of T. rex built for powerful bites. But Norell noted that it possessed body features which reveal the tyrannosaur evolution from small and mid-sized predators to top predators, including modified "nipping" teeth at the front of its mouth and expanded vertebral structures to support a larger head.

The team also found the new ornithomimosaur, or ostrich-mimic dinosaur, called Beishanlong grandis. Beishanlong weighed an estimated 1,400 pounds and rivaled the late Cretaceous ornithomimosaur called Gallimimus in size.

Still growing

Perhaps most surprising, the Beishanlong specimen had not finished growing yet when it died millions of years ago. Researchers analyzed a cross section of a lower leg bone to determine the dinosaur's age.

"Growth line counts revealed that the animal perished during its 14th year of life," said Gregory Erickson, a paleobiologist at Florida State University. "Although it is hard to fathom, this giant was still actively growing when it died."

Other finds from the Chinese-American expeditions show evidence of environmental separations among different kinds of dinosaurs. Horned dinosaurs and sickle-clawed dinosaurs tend to dominate red rocks deposited under dry conditions across almost all Cretaceous localities in the Gobi Desert, whereas tyrannosaurs, ornithomimosaurs, and duck-billed dinosaurs tend to occur in rocks deposited in wetter environments.

The asiatic environmental segregation is rather interesting.

Oh and did anything actually evolve in NorAm during the Cretaceous or were they all imports? What happened to the Evolve American Movement?

Remembering...

I used to be really, really into stealth aircraft and really wanted to design them. However, as I was getting ready to go to college, it became apparent that the aerospace world was contracting massively and there'd be few if any new programs to make a mark with in the post cold war world. Alas. I headed towards physics and astronomy...and ended up doing everything else instead.

Puijila darwini: Pinniped Ancestor?

Researchers from the United States and Canada have found a fossil skeleton of a newly discovered carnivorous animal, Puijila darwini. New research suggests Puijila is a "missing link" in the evolution of the group that today includes seals, sea lions, and the walrus. The analysis of the skeleton and support for the hypotheses that pinniped origins can be found in the Arctic will be described in the April 23 issue of the journal Nature.

Modern seals, sea lions, and walruses all have flippers—limb adaptations for swimming in water. These adaptations evolved over time, as some terrestrial animals moved to a semi-aquatic lifestyle. Until now, the morphological evidence for this transition from land to water was weak.

"The remarkably preserved skeleton of Puijila had heavy limbs, indicative of well developed muscles, and flattened phalanges which suggests that the feet were webbed, but not flippers. This animal was likely adept at both swimming and walking on land. For swimming it paddled with both front and hind limbs. Puijila is the evolutionary evidence we have been lacking for so long," says Mary Dawson, curator emeritus of Carnegie Museum of Natural History.

Portions of the Puijila darwini specimen were found in 2007 in deposits that accumulated in what was a crater lake in coastal Devon Island, Nunavut, Canada. A subsequent visit in 2008 yielded the basicranium, an important structure for determining taxonomic relationships.

Paleobotanic fossils indicate this location during the Miocene had a cool, coastal temperate environment, similar to present-day New Jersey. Given that freshwater lakes would freeze in the winter, it is likely that Puijila would travel over land to the sea for food. The transition from freshwater to saltwater in semi-aquatic mammals has been hypothesized for some time, first by Charles Darwin, who wrote in On the Origin of Species by the Means of Natural Selection, "A strictly terrestrial animal, by occasionally hunting for food in shallow water, then in streams or lakes, might at last be converted in an animal so thoroughly aquatic as to brace the open ocean."

"The find suggests that pinnipeds went through a freshwater phase in their evolution. It also provides us with a glimpse of what pinnipeds looked like before they had flippers," says Natalia Rybczynski, leader of the field expedition.

Aren't we on target with the walrodont evolutionary path then!

Ceres Lander Being Considered

As the exploration of the solar system progresses, some scientists are considering missions to often overlooked worlds. One of these is Ceres, the smallest known dwarf planet which lies within the asteroid belt.

Investigations have shown that Ceres is an excellent target for exploration and may even have astrobiological significance.

Joël Poncy is in charge of interplanetary advanced projects within the Observation and Science Directorate of Thales Alenia Space, a European company that works on satellite systems and other orbital infrastructures. This organization has been involved in many scientific missions, including the Huygens probe, CoRoT, ExoMars, Mars Express and Venus Express. Poncy and his team, in association with Olivier Grasset and Gabriel Tobie from LPG-Nantes, now have turned their eyes to Ceres.

Ceres Polar Lander

Preliminary plans for a Ceres Polar Lander are currently being drawn up. The idea is to build a low-cost mission using reliable existing technology to complement other larger missions, while benefiting from NASA's Dawn mission results. Assuming launch by a Soyuz rocket, the spacecraft would take around four years to reach Ceres. It would then enter orbit before attempting a landing.

Poncy adds that "the lander would separate from the carrier, brake, land close to the target site while automatically avoiding boulders and permanent shadows. We would then perform an analysis similar that that of NASA's Mars Phoenix Lander of the surrounding soil and release a mini-rover to explore further. Astrobiological experiments similar to ExoMars can be envisaged."

huh. I wonder if I could convince them to write a letter of intent wrt buying a Team Phoenicia space-hardened lander. hrm.

I HEART E-VIlle

The drying up of venture capital for alternative-fuel projects ought to have been a death knell for Emeryville, Calif., a square-mile sliver of land near Silicon Valley that until recently advertised itself as a "green corridor" for biofuel businesses. But, while the talk of a biofuel boom to rival the tech boom across the bay now sounds outlandish, this city of 6,800 people so far seems to be weathering the recession and the drop in oil prices that are hurting other parts of the green-tech sector.

Emeryville has a history as a rollicking industrial hub, with meatpacking, steelmaking, and paint companies sharing the streets with brothels and gambling houses. The 1970s marked a low point, but the town was cleaned up and revived by the ensuing technology boom. Today, a single, 24-hour gambling house remains: the Oaks Card Club, situated across the street from Pixar Animation Studios. "The town has completely changed," says John Tibbets, who owns Oaks.
A Foundation Already in Place

The city's push to be a hub for biofuels isn't as contrived as it might appear. Biotech and pharmaceutical firms, including giants such as Roche and Novartis NVS, have had facilities in Emeryville for years, and they rely on some of the same processes used to make biofuels. Geoffrey Sears, who heads a real estate firm called Wareham Development, leases offices to many biotech labs, and his clients now include two large biofuels ventures, Amyris Biotechnologies and the federally funded Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI). Sears says the economic downturn has not hurt rentals in Emeryville. The biofuels labs have held firm, and "more and more money is flowing" into existing biotech and pharmaceutical companies. "Our occupancy is 97%. We are planning some new buildings," which should be ready by 2011, he says.

Emeryville has been proactive in trying to reinvent itself and continually reinvent itself since the 1980s. Urban blight was the word that best described the implosion that E-Ville had during the 70s and 80s. From around 1988, the residents through the city government spent a lot of time turning the city around. Now its becoming one of the hotspots of the Bay, biotech wise and to live in. The problem is that it's not quite family friendly: its very, very good for young singles or couples or people with kids before school age, but the schools leave much to be desired as yet. I've loved living here since I moved to the Bay Area in 2001. However, with Avrora pending kindergarten...we're going to move. Alas.

However, profitable biofuels at $50/barrel. Discuss!

Terrestrial World Found Around Gliese 581

There's a UC Berkeley team that has been working on hunting terrestrial planets. I've spoken to some of them and asked if I could be part of breaking the news. They're going to get back to me on that. Their set up, once it's done being calibrated, will crank out terrestrial planet finds quite quickly.

They Say Fountain of Youth, I Say Genie of the Lamp!

France Wants Europe to Develop Medium Lift Capability

EADS Astrium officials are urging that Europe begin preparing a design for a medium-lift launch vehicle that could provide an eventual replacement for the Russian-built Soyuz.

For the medium term at least, it is clear that European's medium-lift fortunes will continue to ride on the improved Soyuz 2, which will begin operating at the end of this year from a new 344 million euro ($450 million) launch pad that is nearing completion in Kourou, French Guiana. Thanks to the extra lift afforded by this near-equatorial location, Soyuz 2 will be capable of orbiting most of the European Space Agency's Earth observation satellites, as well as small telecom spacecraft up to 3.2 metric tons.

Soyuz will complement Europe's heavy-lift Ariane 5 ECA and its new Vega light launch vehicle, due to enter service early next year.

"But in the long run, it would be surprising if Europe didn't have its own [midsize] launcher, Astrium Space Transportation Division CEO Alain Charmeau said recently at the division's main development and production facility here. For one thing, he said, Russia is already working on a two-stage follow-on to Soyuz, for which contractors were selected early this month, and there's no guarantee that Russia will be willing to share this capability indefinitely.

Hmm. Europeans are talking about getting their own capability and that Russia may not share nicely anymore. At the same time Russia is seeking European backing for some of their rocket development. I think that Europe is not as trusting a they used to be. Huh. I wonder why.

Early Tetrapods' Evolution Was Convoluted

Both extinct species, known as Ichthyostega and Acanthostega, lived an estimated 360-370 million years ago in what is now Greenland. Acanthostega was thought to have been the most primitive tetrapod, that is, the first vertebrate animal to possess limbs with digits rather than fish fins.

But the latest evidence from a Duke graduate student's research indicates that Ichthyostega may have been closer to the first tetrapod. In fact, Acanthostega may have had a terrestrial ancestor and then returned full time to the water, said Viviane Callier, who is the first author of a report on the findings to be published in today's issue of the journal Science.

"If there is one take-home message, it is that the evolutionary relationship between these early tetrapods is not well resolved," Callier said.

Co-author Jennifer Clack of the University Museum of Zoology in Cambridge, England -- where she supervised Callier's work for a master's degree -- found the fossils embedded in rocks collected from East Greenland.

Rather than trying to remove them -- an action that would have destroyed much of the evidence -- the researchers studied the fossils inside the stone with computed tomography (CT) scanning. Callier "reconstructed" the animals using imaging software (Amira and Mimics) to analyze the CT scans, focusing on the shapes of the two species' upper arm bones, or humeri.

The CT slices revealed that Clack had found the first juvenile forms of Ichthyostega. Previously known fossils of Ichthyostega had come from adults.

Anatomies can morph as animals move towards adulthood, Callier said. And such shifts can help scientists deduce when in development the animal acquired the terrestrial habit. The fossils suggest that Ichthyostega juveniles were aquatically adapted, and that the terrestrial habit was acquired relatively late in development. The fossils bore evidence that the muscle arrangement in adults was better suited to weight-bearing, terrestrial locomotion than the juvenile morphology. It is possible that Ichthyostega came out of the water only as a fully mature adult.

In contrast, in Acanthostega "there is less change from the juvenile to the adult. Although Acanthostega appears to be aquatically adapted throughout the recorded developmental span, its humerus exhibits subtle traits that make it more similar to the later, fully terrestrial tetrapods," Callier said

Because the shapes of its adult limbs seemed the most fin-like, scientists had previously concluded that Acanthostega was "more primitive," Callier said. "But now, if we look at the details of the humeri, Ichthyostega's are actually more similar to earlier fishes."

Ironically, the shape of Acanthostegas limb's, in both adult and the newly-discovered juvenile forms, is more "paddle-like" than Ichthyostega's, Callier said. "They would have been really good swimmers. So, although Acanthostega had limbs with digits, we don't think it was really terrestrial. We think even the adults were aquatic."

"If Ichthyostega is actually more primitive than Acanthostega, then maybe animals evolved towards a terrestrial existence a lot earlier than originally believed," she said. "Maybe Acanthostega was actually derived from a terrestrial ancestor, and then, went back to an aquatic lifestyle."

I saw this over the weekend, but didn't have time for posting. Paleoblog has a link to the paper. Also a link to the Eureka Alert.

Oracle Buys Sun

Oracle Corp. snapped up computer server and software maker Sun Microsystems Inc. for $7.4 billion Monday, pouncing on an opportunity that opened up after rival IBM Corp. abandoned an earlier bid to buy one of Silicon Valley's best known — and most troubled — companies.

The deal will end Sun's 27-year history as Silicon Valley's brash independent and give Oracle ownership of the Java programming language, which runs on more than 1 billion devices around the world. Oracle also will take charge of the Solaris operating system, which already has been a platform for much of Oracle's products.

It's far from Oracle's biggest acquisition during a four-year shopping spree that has cost more than $40 billion, but it may be the boldest.

Oracle, a Redwood Shores, Calif.-based business software maker, will be branching more into storage and computer hardware as it accelerates its attempts to become a one-stop technology shop for more than 300,000 corporate, government and academic customers.

"With the acquisition of Sun, Oracle is now able to make all of the pieces of the technology stack fit together and work well," Oracle Chief Executive Larry Ellison said during a Monday conference call.

Wow. Here's a contrast: Sun bought for $7.4 billion. SGI for $25 million. The mighty systems companies of the past are all falling. Ellison in charge of Sun...*shudders*