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PASADENA, Calif. – Paul Mahaffy, the scientist in charge of the largest instrument on NASA's next Mars rover, watched through glass as clean-room workers installed it into the rover.

 

The specific work planned for this instrument on Mars requires more all-covering protective garb for these specialized workers than was needed for the building of NASA's earlier Mars rovers.

 

The instrument is Sample Analysis at Mars, or SAM, built by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

 

At the carefully selected landing site for the Mars rover named Curiosity, one of SAM's key jobs will be to check for carbon-containing compounds called organic molecules, which are among the building blocks of life on Earth.

 

The clean-room suits worn by Curiosity's builders at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., are just part of the care being taken to keep biological material from Earth from showing up in results from SAM.

 

Organic chemicals consist of carbon and hydrogen and, in many cases, additional elements. They can exist without life, but life as we know it cannot exist without them.

 

SAM can detect a fainter trace of organics and identify a wider variety of them than any instrument yet sent to Mars. It also can provide information about other ingredients of life and clues to past environments.

 

Researchers will use SAM and nine other science instruments on Curiosity to study whether one of the most intriguing areas on Mars has offered environmental conditions favorable for life and favorable for preserving evidence about whether life has ever existed there.

 

NASA will launch Curiosity from Florida between Nov. 25 and Dec. 18, 2011, as part of the Mars Science Laboratory mission's spacecraft.

 

The spacecraft will deliver the rover to the Martian surface in August 2012. The mission plan is to operate Curiosity on Mars for two years.

 

 

 

 

 

 

“If we don't find any organics, that's useful information,” said Mahaffy, of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. “That would mean the best place to look for evidence about life on Mars may not be near the surface. It may push us to look deeper.”

 

It would also aid understanding of the environmental conditions that remove organics.

 

“If we do find detectable organics, that would be an encouraging sign that the immediate environment in the rocks we're sampling is preserving these clues,” he said. “Then we would use the tools we have to try to determine where the organics may have come from.”

 

Organics delivered by meteorites without involvement of biology come with more random chemical structures than the patterns seen in mixtures of organic chemicals produced by organisms.

 

Mahaffy paused in describing what SAM will do on Mars while engineers and technicians lowered the instrument into its position inside Curiosity this month.

 

A veteran of using earlier spacecraft instruments to study planetary atmospheres, he has coordinated work of hundreds of people in several states and Europe to develop, build and test SAM after NASA selected his team's proposal for it in 2004.

 

“It has been a long haul getting to this point,” he said. “We've taken a set of experiments that would occupy a good portion of a room on Earth and put them into that box the size of a microwave oven.”

 

SAM has three laboratory tools for analyzing chemistry. The tools will examine gases from the Martian atmosphere, as well as gases that ovens and solvents pull from powdered rock and soil samples.

 

Curiosity's robotic arm will deliver the powdered samples to an inlet funnel. SAM's ovens will heat most samples to about 1,000 degrees Celsius (about 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit).

 

One tool, a mass spectrometer, identifies gases by the molecular weight and electrical charge of their ionized states. It will check for several elements important for life as we know it, including nitrogen, phosphorous, sulfur, oxygen and carbon.

 

Another tool, a laser spectrometer, uses absorption of light at specific wavelengths to measure concentrations of selected chemicals, such as methane and water vapor. It also identifies the proportions of different isotopes in those gases.

 

Isotopes are variants of the same element with different atomic weights, such as carbon-13 and carbon-12, or oxygen-18 and oxygen-16.

 

Ratios of isotopes can be signatures of planetary processes. For example, Mars once had a much denser atmosphere than it does today, and if the loss occurred at the top of the atmosphere, the process would favor increased concentration of heavier isotopes in the retained, modern atmosphere.

 

Methane is an organic molecule. Observations from Mars orbit and from Earth in recent years have suggested transient methane in Mars' atmosphere, which would mean methane is being actively added and subtracted at Mars.

 

With SAM's laser spectrometer, researchers will check to confirm whether methane is present, monitor any changes in concentration, and look for clues about whether Mars methane is produced by biological activity or by processes that do not require life. JPL provided SAM's laser spectrometer.

 

SAM's third analytical tool, a gas chromatograph, separates different gases from a mixture to aid identification. It does some identification itself and also feeds the separated fractions to the mass spectrometer and the laser spectrometer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

France's space agency, Centre National d'Études Spatiales, provided support to the French researchers who developed SAM's gas chromatograph.

 

NASA's investigation of organics on Mars began with the twin Viking landers in 1976. Science goals of more recent Mars missions have tracked a “follow the water” theme, finding multiple lines of evidence for liquid water – another prerequisite for life – in Mars' past.

 

The Mars Science Laboratory mission will seek more information about those wet environments, while the capabilities of its SAM instrument add a trailblazing “follow the carbon” aspect and information about how well ancient environments may be preserved.

 

The original reports from Viking came up negative for organics. How, then, might Curiosity find any? Mahaffy describes three possibilities.

 

The first is about locations. Mars is diverse, not uniform. Copious information gained from Mars orbiters in recent years is enabling the choice of a landing site with favorable attributes, such as exposures of clay and sulfate minerals good at entrapping organic chemicals.

 

Mobility helps too, especially with the aid of high-resolution geologic mapping generated from orbital observations.

 

The stationary Viking landers could examine only what their arms could reach. Curiosity can use mapped geologic context as a guide in its mobile search for organics and other clues about habitable environments.

 

Additionally, SAM will be able to analyze samples from interiors of rocks drilled into by Curiosity, rather than being restricted to soil samples, as Viking was.

 

Second, SAM has improved sensitivity, with a capability to detect less than one part-per-billion of an organic compound, over a wider mass range of molecules and after heating samples to a higher temperature.

 

Third, a lower-heat method using solvents to pull organics from some SAM samples can check a hypothesis that a reactive chemical recently discovered in Martian soil may have masked organics in soil samples baked during Viking tests.

 

The lower-heat process also allows searching for specific classes of organics with known importance to life on Earth. For example, it can identify amino acids, the chain links of proteins. Other clues from SAM could also be hints about whether organics on Mars – if detected at all – come from biological processes or without biology, such as from meteorites.

 

Certain carbon-isotope ratios in organics compared with the ratio in Mars' atmosphere could suggest meteorite origin. Patterns in the number of carbon atoms in organic molecules could be a clue.

 

Researchers will check for a mixture of organics with chains of carbon atoms to see if the mix is predominated either by chains with an even number of carbon atoms or with an odd number.

 

That kind of pattern, rather than a random blend, would be typical of biological assembly of carbon chains from repetitious subunits.

 

“Even if we see a signature such as mostly even-numbered chains in a mix of organics, we would be hesitant to make any definitive statements about life, but that would certainly indicate that our landing site would be a good place to come back to,” Mahaffy said.

 

A future mission could bring a sample back to Earth for more extensive analysis with all the methods available on Earth.

 

JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Science Laboratory mission for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, Washington.

 

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NICE, Calif. — The seventh-annual Festival of Tulips will be held Saturday, March 26, from noon to 5 p.m. at the Tulip Hill Winery in Nice.

 

The event will feature wine, food, and entertainment set amid the winery’s gardens that bloom each year with 30,000 tulips imported from Holland.

 

 

Admission to the Festival of Tulips includes a Tulip Hill wine glass for unlimited tastings, sumptuous hors d’oeuvres from several upscale Lake County restaurants, live music, winery tours, barrel tastings, demonstrations and more.

 

 

During the event, tours of the winery include the crush pad, the cellar, and the bottling room. Special deals on wine and wine-related products will be offered during the festival.

 

 

Tulip Hill Winery opened in 2004 on the site where the Bartlett Springs Water Bottling Plant once operated.

 

The first owners of Bartlett Springs began bottling mineral water as early as the 1870s, claiming the water cured many ailments.

 

Revered in Europe as well as the United States, the famous plant drew thousands of tourists to Lake County in the 1800s, and after changing hands over the years, closed down in the late 20th century.

 

It wasn’t until the Brown family arrived that the historic site would once again have a purpose – this time for the production of wine.

 

 

In addition to its winery and tasting room in Nice, Tulip Hill Winery operates a second tasting room in Rancho Mirage, near Palm Springs in Southern California.

 

Tickets to the Festival of Tulips are $40 per person in advance and may be purchased online; or $45 at the door.

 

Tulip Hill Winery is located at 4900 Bartlett Springs Road, Nice. For more information, call 707-274-9373 or visit www.tuliphillwinery.com .

 

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Many trusts documents waive the trustee’s duty to account and to report to the beneficiaries. This is allowed by law subject, however, to a court nonetheless requiring such an accounting when necessary to protect the beneficiaries.

 

The duty to provide accountings is often waived by the trust’s creator because the creator wants to reduce trust administration costs associated with preparing the accounting.

 

Trust beneficiaries, however, need to know the particulars relating to the trust assets and trustee’s use of them in order to protect themselves against the trustee’s breach of trust.

 

Recently enacted legislation now reinforces the trustee’s duty under California Probate Code section 16060, “… to keep the beneficiaries of the trust reasonably informed of the trust and its administration,” which cannot be waived, unlike the trustee’s statutory duty to furnish an accounting under Probate Code section 16062 which may be waived.

 

The question becomes then, what information must a trustee still provide pursuant to section 16060?

 

That issue was presented to the California Supreme Court in Salter v Lerner (2009).

 

Unfortunately, the court’s decision does not provide clear guidance, except to say, that, “[t]he trustee is under a duty to communicate to the beneficiary information that is reasonably necessary to enable the beneficiary to enforce the beneficiary's rights under the trust or prevent or redress a breach of trust.”

 

The Salter decision went on to say that whether the information requested by a beneficiary is information that must be provided under section 16060 or may be withheld by a trustee of a trust that waives an accounting would have to be decided by a trial court in the course of litigation.

 

As newly amended, the law now provides that a trust becomes irrevocable, a trustee must provide the, “requested information about the assets, liabilities, receipts, and disbursements of the trust, the acts of the trustee, and the particulars to the beneficiary relating to the administration of the trust relevant to the beneficiary's interest, including the terms of the trust.”

 

Before the foregoing addition of the worded “requested” the statute did not require that trustee to provide requested information relevant to the beneficiary’s interest it only required the trustee to provide information.

 

While the law has strengthened in favor of disclosing information to the beneficiary, there is still room for improvement.

 

A trustee might still contend that the requested information is the sort of information that would amount to an accounting and is not therefore required to be provided if the trust waives an accounting.

 

Under the Salter case decision, the outcome of such a dispute would need to be determined by a court during litigation.

 

Lastly, while accountings can be burdensome and costly for a trustee to prepare, they are often prepared by trustees of trusts that waive the accounting in order to achieve finality as to issues that would otherwise remain open sources of future litigation.

 

That is, a trustee who relies on a trust waiver of an accounting and does not prepare an accounting will continue to be subject to legal actions by the beneficiaries indefinitely.

 

By providing an accounting the trustee can limit the three-year statute of limitations period, and even reduce that down to 180 days by petitioning the court for an order approving the accounting.

 

Dennis A. Fordham, attorney (LL.M. tax studies), is a State Bar Certified Specialist in Estate Planning, Probate and Trust Law. His office is at 55 First St., Lakeport, California. Dennis can be reached by e-mail at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or by phone at 707-263-3235.

 

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LAKEPORT, Calif. – A man who invited two friends from Maine to come to California to work for him in his marijuana operation will stand trial for their murders.

 

Judge Richard Martin ruled Friday that 30-year-old Robby Alan Beasley will stand trial for the shooting deaths of former Augusta residents Yvette Maddox, 40, and her husband, Frank Maddox, on the side of a remote road near Lower Lake, Calif., on Jan. 22, 2010.

 

Beasley received the news while sitting alongside his defense attorney, Stephen Carter.

 

Throughout the proceedings Beasley – dressed in a black and white striped jail jumpsuit – has looked stern-faced, with few changes in his expression.

 

The ruling came one day short of the one-year anniversary of the killings.

 

At the Friday morning hearing in the court's Lakeport division, Martin found there was sufficient evidence to hold Beasley to answer to two counts of murder, as well as a charge of being a felon in possession of a firearm.

 

He said he was not required to make a finding at this time on Beasley's previous felony convictions in Maine.

 

The judge also ruled there was evidence showing that Beasley committed the crimes with the intent to inflict great bodily injury on the victims, having shot Frank Maddox first in the leg and then in the head, and shooting him in the head a second time after it appeared he was still alive.

 

Likewise, Martin noted that Yvette Maddox was shot once in the head, with Beasley allegedly shooting her a second time when she, like her husband, showed signs of life.

 

Martin's decision came after three days of testimony from several witnesses, including Elijah Bae McKay, Beasley's 28-year-old friend and co-defendant in the case.

 

McKay, like Beasley, came to the West Coast from Maine, and originally invited Beasley to come to California to work for him growing marijuana.

 

The Maddoxes' shootings occurred at a turnout on the side of Morgan Valley Road outside of Lower Lake, according to McKay's statements on the stand.

 

Beasley – who had allegedly asked the Maddoxes to drive him to the airport, having told them that his grandmother had died – is alleged to have drug their bodies off the road and down an embankment, where he shot them each a final time, McKay testified.

 

Prosecutor Art Grothe on Friday morning called McKay's two-hour testimony on Tuesday “very comprehensive.”

 

Grothe said McKay's statements corroborated and confirmed several items of physical evidence, including the couple's manner of death and the 9 millimeter handgun used. McKay had given Beasley the gun to protect himself after the Clearlake apartment where Beasley had an indoor marijuana grow was burglarized and several pounds of marijuana were stolen.

 

Grothe said cell phone calls and texts submitted by investigators also supported the allegations against Beasley, and an examination of Beasley's computer yielded evidence of an Internet search for guns as well as his marijuana growing activities.

 

One e-mail message Beasley sent a friend warned to watch out for the Maddoxes, which Grothe said was evidence of Beasley's belief that the couple had stolen marijuana from him.

 

That belief, Grothe had argued on Thursday, had been the “final push” to kill the couple, who he said were already causing concern for Beasley and McKay's marijuana growing and sales activities.

 

In addition to witness and investigator statements and cell phone records, Grothe said a Wal-Mart surveillance camera showed Beasley on the day after the murder, purchasing cell phones – to replace the cell phones McKay testified to burning, along with Beasley's blood-covered clothes, the previous night – as well as Armor All wipes.

 

The prosecution alleges the wipes were used on the couples' pickup, which Beasley and McKay moved from Lower Lake to a remote area near Middletown on Jan. 23, the day following the murders.

 

Carter offered no arguments against the findings Friday.

 

Beasley will appear before Judge Stephen Hedstrom in Lake County Superior Court's Clearlake division on the morning of Feb. 8 for an arraignment on the charges in preparation for trial.

 

On Martin's order, Beasley will continue to be held without bail in the Lake County Jail in Lakeport.

 

Judge reviews hearsay evidence to be stricken

 

At the start of the court session, before issuing his holding order for Beasley's trial, Judge Martin went over witness testimony involving hearsay statements by the Maddoxes that Carter had made a motion to exclude earlier in the proceedings.

 

Martin had indicated Thursday that he would grant Carter's motion based on the importance of the confrontation clause, which allows a defendant to confront and cross-examine his accusers.

 

Grothe had argued that the testimony should be admitted under a new California evidence code that allows hearsay evidence to be used when a defendant has attempted to procure a witness' absence, which he said Beasley had done by killing the couple and hiding their bodies.

 

Martin reviewed transcripts provided by the two court reporters who worked during the preliminary hearing in deciding which testimony to exclude from consideration.

 

On Tuesday, Elvin Sikes and Tyreshia Celestin-Willis were the hearing's first two witnesses. Both had been friends of the couple, with Sikes stating he had taken them in and allowed them to live with him in December 2009.

 

As to Sikes' statements about Yvette Maddox approaching him to ask for a place to stay, “The court is not going to exclude that,” said Martin.

 

But he did go on to strike Sikes' testimony about the couple mailing items to Maine, statements he siad they made about driving Beasley to the airport, his conversation with them in which he asked if they had stolen marijuana and Frank Maddox's request to wash his truck in Sikes' driveway before leaving to drive to the airport.

 

Martin admitted Sikes' statements about knowing the couples' nicknames and watching Frank Maddox wash his truck, as well as his identification of their vehicle.

 

He disallowed Carter's lengthy cross-examination of Sikes, which touched on the hearsay evidence.

 

“We have no dispute with that,” said Grothe.

 

Sikes' statements telling the couple not to drive Beasley to the airport were to be stricken, Martin added.

 

Regarding Celestin-Willis' testimony, her statements in which she recounted Yvette Maddox saying Beasley had threatened her will not be admitted, said Martin. Also stricken was testimony regarding an argument between Yvette Maddox and Beasley over issues including a laptop, and Carter's cross-examination.

 

Allowed for consideration are Celestin-Willis' recollections of meeting the couple and her knowledge of them being married, Martin said.

 

Much of the testimony of three witnesses from Maine who appeared on Thursday will not be considered in the case, Martin ruled.

 

That includes the statements regarding the couple given by Starr Larrabee, Yvette Maddox's daughter Yvette Colon and Maria Carrion, he said, although Martin allowed Carrion's testimony about being a friend of Yvette Maddox's.

 

Martin said that, while not all of the testimony was being considered in his decision to hold Beasley due to its hearsay nature, all of it would remain in the court's final transcript, which he said would enable a higher court to review it later if necessary.

 

With the ruling to go forward now made, Grothe said Friday he and District Attorney Don Anderson will sit down and decide whether the case will be handled as a death penalty prosecution or another option, such as life without the possibility of parole.

 

Grothe said he doesn't have a time frame for when that decision will be made but indicated it will have to take place well in advance of McKay's preliminary hearing, the date for which is expected to be set at an April 5 hearing.

 

E-mail Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . Follow Lake County News on Twitter at http://twitter.com/LakeCoNews , on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Lake-County-News/143156775604?ref=mf and on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/user/LakeCoNews .