NASA to Unveil 2014 Budget Request, Asteroid Lasso Plan Today

NASA's funding outlook for the next year will be revealed today (April 10), when President Barack Obama releases his 2014 federal budget request.

A boost over the $17.7 billion allocated to the space agency in last year's request would be a surprise in these tough fiscal times. But NASA is expected to receive $100 million to jump-start a bold asteroid-capture mission, which would drag a 500-ton space rock near the moon for research and exploration purposes.

"NASA is in the planning stages of an innovative mission to accomplish the president's challenge of sending humans to visit an asteroid by 2025 in a more cost-effective and potentially quicker time frame than under other scenarios," a senior administration official told SPACE.com.

"This mission would combine the best of NASA's asteroid identification, technology development and human exploration efforts to capture and redirect a small asteroid to just beyond the moon to set up a human mission using existing resources and equipment, including the heavy-lift rocket and deep-space capsule that have been under development for several years," the official added, referring to NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion spacecraft. [NASA's Asteroid-Capture Plan (Video)]

U.S. Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL) said last week that the proposed mission aims to get astronauts to the captured space rock by 2021, which is also the year that SLS and Orion are scheduled to begin carrying crews.

The overall cost of the robotic asteroid-retrieval mission ? not including the astronaut visit ? is estimated at about $2.6 billion, according to a feasibility study led by Caltech's Keck Institute for Space Studies that was published last year.

The 2014 budget request follows closely on the heels of sequestration, which on March 1 imposed a broad 5-percent cut on many federal agencies, including NASA. Sequestration and several other small cuts have reduced the space agency's actual 2013 budget to around $16.6 billion, so NASA is now looking for ways to trim costs.

NASA chief Charles Bolden has said that SLS, the $8.8 billion James Webb Space Telescope and the commercial crew program are top agency priorities, so they may not be affected much by the cuts. NASA's planetary science program, on the other hand, may have to cough up a relativately large share.

Planetary science also suffered in last year's federal budget request, which cut the robotic exploration program by about 20 percent while keeping NASA's overall top line pretty much flat.

Bolden will discuss NASA's 2014 budget during a White House press conference today at 1:30 p.m. EDT ?(1730 GMT) and a NASA teleconference today at 3 p.m. EDT (1900 GMT).

You can follow the NASA 2014 budget briefings live on SPACE.com, courtest of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and NASA TV.

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter?@michaeldwall.?Follow us?@Spacedotcom,?Facebook?or?Google+. Originally published on?SPACE.com.

Copyright 2013 SPACE.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/nasa-unveil-2014-budget-request-asteroid-lasso-plan-120400437.html

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Neutrons help explain ozone poisoning and links to thousands of premature deaths each year

Apr. 9, 2013 ? A research team from Birkbeck, University of London, Royal Holloway University and Uppsala University in Sweden, have helped explain how ozone causes severe respiratory problems and thousands of cases of premature death each year by attacking the fatty lining of our lungs.

In a study published in Langmuir, the team used neutrons from the Institut Laue-Langevin in Grenoble and the UK's ISIS Neutron Source to observe how even a relatively low dose of ozone attacks lipid molecules that line the lung's surface. The presence of the lipid molecules is crucial for the exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide, as they prevent the wet surfaces of the lung from collapsing.

Ozone is mostly produced in the upper atmosphere as the sun's UV light splits oxygen molecules, but it can also form at ground level from burning fossil fuels. It is known to harm our respiratory systems and is linked to asthma, bronchitis, heart attacks, and other cardiopulmonary problems. A recent study published by the Bloomberg School's Department of Environmental Health Sciences found that stricter ozone emission regulations in the US could prevent over a thousand premature deaths and over a million complaints of respiratory problems each year [1].

However, it remains unclear how exactly ozone causes this damage. One theory is it attacks the lung's surface layers which consist of a layer of water sitting below a mixture of fatty molecules called lipids and proteins that are together known as lung surfactant. The surfactant aids the exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide during breathing. It does this by reducing surface tension, i.e. the attraction that molecules feel for each other, in the liquid surface layer above, causing these fluids to spread out and provide a greater surface area for gas exchange.

Critically, a lack of adequate surfactant, a deficiency often found naturally in babies born prematurely, can produce similar respiratory health complaints to those mentioned above, even resulting in death in some cases.

This link was further established in 2011 by the same team from Birkbeck who demonstrated that ozone reacted very strongly with the lipid layer, damaging it. However, what exactly is going on and how these reactions might impede the surfactant from doing its job was still unclear.

To investigate further Dr Katherine Thompson from Birkbeck and her team ran neutron reflection studies at the Institut Laue-Langevin in Grenoble and ISIS Neutron Source in Oxfordshire on an artificial lipid monolayer, created to mimic the lung surface. The lipid layer was exposed to a dilute gaseous mixture of ozone, and changes in its structure or surface tension were studied in real time. The concentration of ozone was around 100 parts per billion (0.1 ppm), equivalent to what you might get in a polluted city in the summer.

The use of neutrons meant that Dr Thompson could label different parts of the sample using deuteration, a process whereby a heavier isotope of hydrogen, deuterium, is introduced and contrasted with undeuterated samples to pick out the location of hydrogen atoms. This allowed them to monitor different parts of the molecule separately as they reacted with the ozone.

Using this technique Dr Thompson's team showed that one of the lipid's upwards-facing tails, known as the C9 portion, breaks off during the ozone degradation and is lost from the surface completely. The portion still attached to the lipid head then re-orientates itself and penetrates into the air?water interface. The loss of the C9 portion causes an initial decrease in surface tension which temporarily increases surface area for gas exchange and efficient respiration. However this effect is short-lived as the penetration of the rest of the molecule into the water results in a slow but pronounced rise in surface tension, producing an overall net increase.

Note:

1. Health Benefits from Large-Scale Ozone Reduction in the United States -- Berman et all, Oct 2012

2. Royal Holloway is one of the UK's leading universities. We have a distinguished history of world-changing research and innovative teaching, with an international outlook. Our close-knit community enables students to benefit from a personalised experience, with staff collaborating across facilities to enhance health, science, culture and security on a global scale. Set in 135 acres of parkland in Surrey, our campus is recognised as one of the most beautiful in the world, and the pioneering spirit of our founders continues to inspire teaching and research today.

3. Birkbeck, University of London, is a world-class research and teaching institution, a vibrant centre of academic excellence and London's only specialist provider of evening higher education.Our flexible approach attracts many non-traditional students and we offer them the opportunity to fit university studies around busy lives. Birkbeck encourages applications from students without traditional qualifications and it has a wide range of programmes to suit every entry level.18,000 students study at Birkbeck every year. They join a community that is as diverse and cosmopolitan as London's population.

4. About ILL and ISIS -- the Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL) in Grenoble and ISIS at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in the UK are international research centres which have led the world in neutron scattering science and technology. They operate intense neutron sources, feeding beams of neutrons to a suites of 30 to 40 high-performance instruments that are constantly upgraded. Each year 1,200 researchers from over 40 countries visit each of ISIS and ILL to conduct research into condensed matter physics, (green) chemistry, biology, nuclear physics, and materials science. The UK, along with France and Germany is an associate and major funder of the IL; ISIS is owned and operated by the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council.

5. STFC -- The Science and Technology Facilities Council is keeping the UK at the forefront of international science and tackling some of the most significant challenges facing society such as meeting our future energy needs, monitoring and understanding climate change, and global security. The Council has a broad science portfolio and works with the academic and industrial communities to share its expertise in materials science, space and ground-based astronomy technologies, laser science, microelectronics, wafer scale manufacturing, particle and nuclear physics, alternative energy production, radio communications and radar.

The next step for Katherine and her colleagues is to look at adapting the model, to represent the condition of people with various forms of chronic respiratory problem and attempt to understand why ozone seems to affect them worse than others.

Dr Katherine Thompson, Birkbeck, University of London said: "We are not completely sure what causes the second stage of tension increase. The damaged lipid might be slowly dissolving in the water and leaving the interface entirely, or a slow reaction might be occurring that is damaging another part of the lipid not directly attacked by ozone. What we can say is that the slow increase in surface tension that occurs as a result of the ozone exposure would certainly damage the ability of our lungs to process oxygen and carbon dioxide, and could account for the respiratory problems associated with ozone poisoning."

Dr Martin King from Royal Holloway University said: "This important study shows how a key air pollutant has a detrimental effect on the human lung and could impair breathing. It is essential that a complex mixture of air pollutants -- for example Ozone and nitrogen oxides -- and the effect of inhaled particulate matter on the lung, is looked at next."

Dr Richard Campbell from the Institut Laue-Langevin said: "Neutrons are an ideal tool for studying biological materials, particularly their reactions and interactions on surfaces and across interfaces. They are highly sensitive to lighter atoms such as carbon, hydrogen and oxygen that make up these organic molecules and isotopic labelling can be used to determine the structure and composition of interfacial layers. As one of the world's brightest neutron sources, the ILL has a long history of modelling important micro-scale processes that take place inside our bodies and providing ground-breaking insights that inform the next generation of treatments."

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Royal Holloway, University of London, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/most_popular/~3/P39my8Nuvq4/130409211934.htm

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The Clock Is Ticking: Spring Forward for Lyme Disease

Every Spring, my wife exhibits bouts of delusional parasitosis. She starts to feel itchy. She imagines insects crawling over her skin. She demands immediate inspection of hard to reach parts of her body and she subjects our children to rigorous head-to-toe inspections at bedtime. Her symptoms are brought on not by any of the typical causes of delusional parasitosis. She has no psychological disorder such as schizophrenia or clinical depression. It is not menopause or skin allergies. She does not obsessively clean her skin. She simply finds a deer tick. It might be on her sleeve, on one of the kids or the dog, but it appears to have miraculous powers beyond the normal reach of Ixodes scapularis, commoonly known as the black-legged deer tick. She itches long after the tick has been disposed of in a thimbleful of Scotch. Such is the power of suggestion that a nymph tick, which is no larger than a poppy seed, induces not only my wife but millions of people up and down the east coast and throughout the mid-west into similar bouts of delusional parasitosis. Truly a tick that could! For those unfortunates who are not delusional and who actually suffer from a tick bite, they too are in good company. An estimated 4.3 million people contracted Lyme Disease in 2011 which probably means that at least ten times that number encountered a deer tick and removed it prior to infection. It is a serious problem not least because Lyme Disease is, at best, temporarily debilitating and at worst, ruinous to your health. My wife has contracted it twice, happily with short term symptoms, but many horror stories abound. Katy Reid, who testified at a Connecticut Senate panel on Lyme Disease suffered for eleven years with Lyme disease. Symptoms are manifold and take up two pages on the Lyme Disease Association's website. In terms of distribution, the North-East is prime Lyme country as the reported cases indicate in the table below: These are the 'woodland states' with dense populations of white-footed mice and deer, where the black-legged ticks make it their home for two to three years. Be especially careful in brushy areas, where leaf litter abounds and in tall grasses. In their three year life span, deer ticks have only three blood meals. In year 1, they hatch into larvae and take their first blood meal off a mouse, deer or small bird. They then go dormant until the following Spring. In their second year, they evolve into nymph ticks and take their second blood meal anytime between May-early July. These are the ticks that usually cause Lyme Disease, largely because they are so small and hard to see. You will find that a standard stereo microscope is helpful in this regard while a magnifying glass is also helpful in removing them, effectively. Nymphs prefer warm, moist areas such as the groin, armpit or hair and they look like a freckle, which does not help in identification. The good news is that they require 36-48 hours to infect you so with adequate checks during Spring, you can remove them in time. By the fall of Year 2, they have grown into adult ticks. Males will attach but they do not feed for long. As a result, they rarely transmit the bacterium, Borrelia burgdorferi. It is the females that are the problem. Larger than the males and red or orange colored, they feed for several days and can increase in weight by up to 100 times. During this long feeding, the bacterium has ample time to infect your blood, which is why it is so important to remove a tick as soon as possible. In the first 24 hours, she is really only at the aperitif stage so it is unusual for infections to occur in that time span. Spring, therefore, is a critical time for tick checks. Most of us in the North-East are a bit confused by Spring this year. It snowed last week. However, my wife is under no illusion about the imminent reawakening of ticks in the garden and our body inspections will start soon. Over the years, she has removed at least 3-4 ticks annually off the four of us and one year, I stopped counting after picking no less than fifty eight ticks off a Wheaton Terrier. I am certain that her inspections have helped limit us to delusional parasitosis although in spite of my best efforts, the dog in question contracted Lyme Disease. It makes me itch just thinking about it and while you too may suffer from delusional parasitosis this Spring, do not delude yourself more than necessary. Spring is here and, so to speak, the clock is ticking! Follow Scientific American on Twitter @SciAm and @SciamBlogs. Visit ScientificAmerican.com for the latest in science, health and technology news.
? 2013 ScientificAmerican.com. All rights reserved.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/clock-ticking-spring-forward-lyme-disease-113200672.html

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A Few Ingenious Kitchen Organizing Systems | Care2 Healthy Living

?Kitchen organizing systems? conjures up images of expensive custom closet solutions (at least in my mind). However, there are kitchen organizing systems that are free or cheap, and can be made with items that you already own. With time, patience, and some creativity, your kitchen could become the organized haven that you always dreamed of. Here?s how to get magazine-quality results, on the cheap.

These kitchen organizing systems are especially useful if you are staging your house in order to sell it. Systematizing your kitchen organization is an important part of the clearing of clutter that you need to do when staging a house for a sale.

Keep clutter off the counter: I spotted this ingenious kitchen organizing system on Hometalk.com. Christina K. from the blog No. 29 Design did the coolest thing: she took all of the objects that she stored on her kitchen counters, and she suspended them above the counters. She did it in a very aesthetically pleasing way. Christina K. hung rails above her counters, and hung cute matching baskets from those rails. Into the baskets went matching canisters with chalkboard labels, in which she stashed all of the stuff that had been living on her counters. A word of advice: Find the studs in your kitchen walls before hanging the rails, as Christina K. did. She avoided a costly call to a Boston drywall repair contractor by patiently and assiduously using a stud finder.

Create zones: This system of kitchen organizing takes zero dollars, but a lot of sense. Divide your kitchen storage spaces into zones. Group items by type and by frequency of use. For example, divide your cooking utensils into two groups: The utensils that you cook with on a daily basis, and the utensils that you cook with less frequently. Store the utensils that you cook with on a daily basis within reach of your range or food prep area. Group pantry ingredients by type and by the frequency in which you use them. Put the spices that you cook with every day on the lowest cabinet shelf, and store lesser used ingredients on the hard-to-reach top shelf. Group pots together, plates together, and cups together. Thank you to Anna Moseley of Ask Anna for posting pictures of how she organized her own kitchen this way.

Man the command center: Do papers and mail clutter your kitchen counters and/or table? If the answer is ?yes?, you need a kitchen command center. A kitchen command center is essentially a staging area for paper. A bulletin board and three wall-mounted bins are a perfect solution. Mark bins according to the kind of paper clutter you have, for example: Unopened mail, bills to be paid, and coupons. A local handyman can hang the baskets for you, or you can do it yourself.

Photo by chuckcollier/istockphoto.com.

Related
Kitchen Storage Inspired By Julia Child
Natural Ways to Banish Kitchen Odors
4 Chic and Simple Storage Ideas

Source: http://www.care2.com/greenliving/a-few-ingenious-kitchen-organizing-systems.html

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The art of the political flip-flop: 'I now support same-sex marriage'

Since Joe Biden blurted out his support for same-sex marriage last May, 23 U.S. Senators have formally endorsed it in statements or interviews.

These "I now support same-sex marriage" statements have a certain mechanical poetry. The speaker is admitting that at some previous point, he or she did not. I think the penal implications of flip-flopping have been sufficiently lamented, but let's at least acknowledge the point: These are politicians going out of their way to emphasize that they have changed their minds.

Some go further than others. Claire McCaskill wrote a four-paragraph blog post that meditated on the difficulties of the decision and called on Corinthians for an assist. When South Dakota Democrat Tim Johnson issued his reversal on Monday, he did so in 37 words that begin: "After lengthy consideration, my views have evolved sufficiently to support marriage equality legislation."

It's easy to find common themes running through these messages. McCaskill, Kay Hagan, D-N.C., and Tom Carper, D-Del., all cite the influence of conversations with their families and friends. Hagan and a few others cite their religion.

I found six themes in reading through all the statements. They are as follows, with examples:

Love is all you need. See Tom Udall, D-N.M.:

"Two people, who are committed to one another, who love one another, should not be denied the fundamental right of marriage, or the legal rights that marriage includes."

Marriage is a civil right. See Biden:

"I am absolutely comfortable with the fact that men marrying men, women marrying women, and heterosexual men and women marrying another are entitled to the same exact rights, all the civil rights, all the civil liberties."

I've evolved. See Mark Warner, D-Va.:

"Like many Virginians and Americans, my views on gay marriage have evolved, and this is the inevitable extension of my efforts to promote equality and opportunity for everyone."

My faith supports it. See Hagan:

"But after much thought and prayer on my part, this is ??where I am today."

It's right for Democracy. Udall again:

"Our Constitution enshrines the principle of equality ? equal rights for all."

Some of my best friends? Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV):

"In talking with my children and grandchildren, it has become clear to me they take marriage equality as a given."

What follows is a list of every statement made since Biden's, including President Barack Obama's and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's, coded by which of the six major themes I found. This list does not include the 34 current senators who had already confirmed their support by the time Biden did, since they typically did so with less fanfare.

?

The "I've evolved" category is interesting not only because of the flip-flop implications. Many people are changing their minds on this subject, as pollsters discover again and again. It is not only those handful of Democratic senators who voted for the Defense of Marriage Act who seem to feel the need to emphasize that this is a phase shift. The implication, I think, is that?unlike war, health care, abortion, deficit reduction, tax hikes, a chained-CPI model of social security, Gitmo, immigration reform, assault weapon bans and climate change?unlike virtually everything else, gay marriage is one topic on which it's politically acceptable to change your mind.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/six-ways-senators-say-i-now-support-gay-marriage-interactive-165410672.html

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Anne Heche?s Blog: Yes, That Was My Child Screaming ?I Hate This Toy!?

In her latest blog, Heche tackles a public temper tantrum - and support from another mother gets her through.

Source: http://feeds.celebritybabies.com/~r/celebrity-babies/~3/D63ugUYC1Co/

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Cold case arrest prompts cross-country probe

In this Monday, March 4, 2013 photo, Samuel Little, a suspected serial killer, appears at Los Angeles Superior Court in Los Angeles. Little, 72, was arrested in Louisville, Ky., in September by U.S. Marshals on an unrelated narcotics warrant while investigators built their case. He later waived extradition and was brought to Los Angeles, where he was charged with three murder counts and the special circumstance allegation of multiple murders. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

In this Monday, March 4, 2013 photo, Samuel Little, a suspected serial killer, appears at Los Angeles Superior Court in Los Angeles. Little, 72, was arrested in Louisville, Ky., in September by U.S. Marshals on an unrelated narcotics warrant while investigators built their case. He later waived extradition and was brought to Los Angeles, where he was charged with three murder counts and the special circumstance allegation of multiple murders. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

In this Monday, March 4, 2013 photo, Samuel Little, a suspected serial killer, appears at Los Angeles Superior Court in Los Angeles. Little, 72, was arrested in Louisville, Ky., in September by U.S. Marshals on an unrelated narcotics warrant while investigators built their case. He later waived extradition and was brought to Los Angeles, where he was charged with three murder counts and the special circumstance allegation of multiple murders. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

In this Monday, March 4, 2013 photo, Samuel Little, a suspected serial killer, appears at Los Angeles Superior Court in Los Angeles. Little, 72, was arrested in Louisville, Ky., in September by U.S. Marshals on an unrelated narcotics warrant while investigators built their case. He later waived extradition and was brought to Los Angeles, where he was charged with three murder counts and the special circumstance allegation of multiple murders. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

In this Monday, March 4, 2013 photo, Samuel Little, a suspected serial killer, appears at Los Angeles Superior Court in Los Angeles. Little, 72, was arrested in Louisville, Ky., in September by U.S. Marshals on an unrelated narcotics warrant while investigators built their case. He later waived extradition and was brought to Los Angeles, where he was charged with three murder counts and the special circumstance allegation of multiple murders. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

Timeline follows the life of Samuel Little

LOS ANGELES (AP) ? When Los Angeles cold case detectives caught up with Samuel Little this past fall, he was living in a Christian shelter in Kentucky, his latest arrest a few months earlier for alleged possession of a crack pipe. But the LA investigators wanted him on far more serious charges: The slayings of two women in 1989, both found strangled and nude below the waist ? victims of what police concluded had been sexually motivated strangulations.

Little's name came up, police said, after DNA evidence collected at old crime scenes matched samples of his stored in a criminal database. After detectives say they found yet another match, a third murder charge was soon added against Little.

Now, as the 72-year-old former boxer and transient awaits trial in Los Angeles, authorities in numerous jurisdictions in California, Florida, Kentucky, Missouri, Louisiana, Texas, Georgia, Mississippi and Ohio are scouring their own cold case files for possible ties to Little. One old murder case, in Pascagoula, Miss., already has been reopened. DNA results are pending in some others.

Little's more than 100-page rap sheet details crimes in 24 states spread over 56 years ? mostly assault, burglary, armed robbery, shoplifting and drug violations. In that time, authorities say incredulously, he served less than 10 years in prison.

But Los Angeles detectives allege he was also a serial killer, who traveled the country preying on prostitutes, drug addicts and troubled women.

They assert Little often delivered a knockout punch to women and then proceeded to strangle them while masturbating, dumping the bodies and soon after leaving town. Their investigation has turned up a number of cases in which he was a suspect or convicted.

Police are using those old cases ? and tracking down surviving victims ? to help build their own against Little.

"We see a pattern, and the pattern matches what he's got away with in the past," said LAPD Detective Mitzi Roberts.

Little has pleaded not guilty in the three LA slayings, and in interviews with detectives after his September arrest he described his police record as "dismissed, not guilty, dismissed."

"I just be in the wrong place at the wrong time with people," he said, according to an interview transcript reviewed by The Associated Press.

Still, as more details emerge, so do more questions. Among them: How did someone with so many encounters with the law, suspected by prosecutors and police officers of killing for decades, manage to escape serious jail time?

"It's the craziest rap sheet I've ever seen," said Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney Beth Silverman, who has worked many serial killer cold cases. "The fact that he hasn't spent a more significant period of his life (in custody) is a shocking thing. He's gotten break after break after break."

Deputy Public Defender Michael Pentz, who represents Little, declined to comment.

Authorities have pieced together a 24-page timeline tracking Little's activity across the country since his birth. His rap sheet has helped them pinpoint his location sometimes on a monthly basis. Law enforcement agencies are now cross-referencing that timeline with cold case slayings in their states.

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement is leading a review of that state's unsolved murders and helping coordinate the effort among 12 jurisdictions. The department published an intelligence bulletin alerting authorities in Florida, Alabama and Georgia about Little's case, noting he lived in the area on and off in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s.

"We strongly encouraged them to look at any unresolved homicides that they had during those time frames and then consider him as a potential suspect," said Jeff Fortier, a special agent supervisor at the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. The department is re-examining DNA evidence in about 15 cases that was collected before advances in forensic science allowed for thorough analysis, Fortier said.

"We are in the infancy stages of what we expect will be a protracted investigation," he said.

In Mississippi, Pascagoula cold case Detective Darren Versiga is re-investigating the killing of Melinda LaPree, a 22-year-old prostitute found strangled in 1982. Little had been arrested in that crime but never indicted, Versiga said. The detective has tracked down old witnesses and is working to reconstruct the case file because much of it was washed away during Hurricane Katrina.

Little, who often went by the name Samuel McDowell, grew up with his grandmother in Lorain, Ohio. His rap sheet shows his first arrest at age 16 on burglary charges. After serving time in a youth authority he was released and, months later, arrested again for breaking and entering.

In an hour- and 15-minute interview with Los Angeles detectives, Little spoke openly about his past and his time in the penitentiary, where he started boxing as a middleweight against the other inmates. "I used to be a prizefighter," he said.

In his late 20s, Little went to live with his mother in Florida and worked at the Dade County Department of Sanitation and, later, at a cemetery. Soon, he began traveling more widely and had more run-ins with the law; between 1971 and 1974 Little was arrested in eight states for crimes that included armed robbery, rape, theft, solicitation of a prostitute, shoplifting, DUI, aggravated assault on a police officer and fraud.

"I've been in and out of the penitentiary," he told the California officers.

"Well, for what?" a detective asked, to which Little responded: "Shoplifting and, uh, petty thefts and stuff."

Then came the 911 call of Sept. 11, 1976, in Sunset Hills, Mo.

Pamela Kay Smith was banging on the back door of a home, crying for help, naked below the waist with her hands bound behind her back with electrical cord and cloth. Smith, who was a drug addict, told officers that she was picked up by Little in St. Louis. She said he choked her from behind with electrical cord, forced her into his car, beat her unconscious, then drove to Sunset Hills and raped her.

Officers found Little, then 36, still seated in his car near the home where Smith sought refuge, with her jewelry and clothing inside. Little denied raping Smith, telling officers: "I only beat her." The case summary was recalled in court papers filed by prosecutors in Los Angeles.

Little was found guilty of assault with the intent to ravish-rape and was sentenced to three months in county jail. Pascagoula Detective Versiga, who reviewed the Smith case, believes Little may have pleaded to a lesser charge and received a shorter sentence because of the victim's lifestyle. The case file refers to Smith as a heroin addict who often failed to appear in court.

After that, the charges against Little grew more serious.

In Pascagoula, LaPree went missing in September 1982 after getting into a wood-paneled station wagon with a man witnesses later identified as Little. A month later her remains were found, and Little was arrested in her killing and the assault of two other prostitutes. Versiga believes grand jurors failed to indict in part because of the difficulty in determining a precise time of death but also because of credibility problems due to the victim and witnesses working as prostitutes.

Little, nevertheless, remained in custody and was extradited to Florida to be tried in the case of another slain woman.

Patricia Ann Mount, 26 and mentally disabled, was found dead in the fall of 1982 in rural Forest Grove, Fla., near Gainesville. Eyewitnesses described last seeing her leaving a beer tavern with a man identified as Little in a wood-paneled station wagon.

According to The Gainesville Sun's coverage of the trial, a fiber analyst testified that hairs found on Mount's clothes "had the same characteristics as head hairs taken from" Little. But when cross-examined the analyst said "it was also possible for hairs to be transferred if two people bumped together."

A jury acquitted Little in January 1984.

By October 1984, Little was back in custody ? this time in San Diego, accused in the attempted murder of two prostitutes who were kidnapped a month apart, driven to the same abandoned dirt lot, assaulted and choked. The first woman was left unconscious on a pile of trash but survived, according to court records. Patrol officers discovered Little in a car with the second woman and arrested him.

The two cases were tried jointly, but the jury failed to reach a verdict. Little later pleaded guilty to lesser charges of assault with great bodily injury and false imprisonment. He served about 2.5 years on a four-year sentence and, in February 1987, he was released on parole.

As he told the LA detectives in his interview, Little then moved to Los Angeles, where three more women were soon discovered dead: Carol Alford, 41, found on July 13, 1987; Audrey Nelson, 35, found on Aug. 14, 1989; and Guadalupe Apodaca, 46, found on Sept. 3, 1989. All were manually strangled.

It is for those slayings that Little now stands charged. No trial date has been set, though Little is due back in court this month for a procedural hearing. If convicted, Little would face a minimum of life in prison without parole, though prosecutors said they may seek the death penalty.

When the case landed on Detective Roberts' desk, she had no idea it would grow from two local cold case slayings to a cross-country probe into the past of a man with some 75 arrests. As she studied her suspect, Roberts also began calling agencies that had dealt with Little most recently.

He had been arrested on May 1, 2012, by sheriff's deputies in Lake Charles, La., for possession of a crack pipe and released with an upcoming court date. At Roberts' request, deputies tried finding him but came up empty. Then last September deputies called with a hit tracing an ATM purchase by Little to a Louisville, Ky., minimart. Within hours he was found at a nearby shelter.

In his interview with police, Little said he didn't recognize the slain LA women. Detectives said that DNA collected from semen on upper body clothing or from fingernail scrapings connect him to the crimes.

Roberts and others who've investigated Little through the years said some cases may not have gone forward because DNA testing wasn't available until the mid-1980s and, even when it was, wouldn't have been useful in these cases unless authorities tested clothing, fingernails or body swabs. Due to this perpetrator's particular modus operandi, DNA wouldn't necessarily be found through standard rape kit collection.

Even in those cases that did go to trial, they said, jurors may have found the victims less credible because of their backgrounds, and the witnesses ? often prostitutes ? in some cases disappeared. Because Little was also a transient, Roberts said: "I don't think he stuck in a lot of peoples' minds much."

"But what's different now, we're just not going to allow that to happen," she said. "I think we owe it to the victims. I think we owe it to the families."

Tony Zambrano was 17 when he learned his mother, Guadalupe Apodaca, was killed after going out for a drink one night.

"My brother told me she left, she went to go have a couple beers, and never came home," he recalls. Soon after he learned of her slaying.

For years Zambrano tried to find out what happened to his mother. When Roberts called him following Little's arrest, he was grateful. But he's also upset.

"My mom shouldn't really be dead now. For all those charges in San Diego, who gets four years?" Zambrano said. "This thing ain't over for a long shot."

___

Abdollah can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/latams

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2013-04-07-Serial%20Strangling%20Suspect/id-6b5e1a680e504fe094ff6216909ceb09

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