eureka moment for cheap coal gasification

GlobeandMail | Scientists in Texas say they have found a way to convert coal into gasoline at a cost of less than $30 (U.S.) a barrel - with zero release of pollutants.

Researchers at the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA) announced last month that they have developed a clean way to turn the cheapest kind of coal - lignite, common in Texas - into synthetic crude. "We go from that [lignite coal] to this really nice liquid," Brian Dennis, a member of the research team, said in describing the synthetic crude that can be refined into gasoline.

Assuming that these Texas folk are correct, this advance in technology could represent a historic moment in energy production - for Canada as well as for the United States. Canada has huge reserves of lignite coal in Manitoba, Alberta and Saskatchewan (which already gets 70 per cent of its electricity from this common coal) - not to mention in Nova Scotia.

The Texas researchers, who worked on the project for about 18 months, expect the cost to drop further. "We're improving the cost every day. We started off some time ago at an uneconomical $17,000 a barrel. Today, we're at ... $28.84 a barrel," Rick Billo, UTA's dean of engineering, told an Austin television reporter.

Texas lignite coal sells for $18 a tonne. The coal conversion technology uses one tonne of coal to produce 1.5 barrels of crude oil. One barrel of crude produces 42 U.S. gallons of gasoline. In other words, $18 worth of coal yields 63 gallons of gasoline: 0.28 cents a gallon.

In her report of the announcement, Dallas Morning News energy writer Elizabeth Souder said the U.S. government has approved construction of a small-scale microrefinery to test the UTA lab-based breakthrough. This prototype microrefinery should be in operation by year-end. "While the process doesn't create renewable fuel, it would create a domestic source for vehicle fuel and plastics," she reported.

water oxidation advance

Emory | Emory University chemists have developed the most potent homogeneous catalyst known for water oxidation, considered a crucial component for generating clean hydrogen fuel using only water and sunlight. The breakthrough, to be published in "Science" and released online by the journal March 11, was made in collaboration with the Paris Institute of Molecular Chemistry.


The fastest, carbon-free molecular water oxidation catalyst (WOC) to date "has really upped the standard from the other known homogeneous WOCs," said Emory inorganic chemist Craig Hill, whose lab led the effort. "It's like a home run compared to a base hit."



In order to be viable, a WOC needs selectivity, stability and speed. Homogeneity is also a desired trait, since it boosts efficiency and makes the WOC easer to study and optimize. The new WOC has all of these qualities, and it is based on the cheap and abundant element cobalt, adding to its potential to help solar energy go mainstream.
 


Benjamin Yin, an undergraduate student in Hill's lab, is the lead author on the Science paper. Emory chemists who are co-authors include Hill, Yurii Gueletii, Jamal Musaev, Zhen Luo and Ken Hardcastle. The U.S. Department of Energy funded the work.
 Fist tap Dale.


human germ trails - or germ human trails....,

Reuters | People leave more than fingerprints when they touch stuff -- they also deposit a tell-tale trail of germs that could help investigators solve crimes, U.S. researchers reported on Monday.

They were able to map a unique bacterial genetic signature left by nine different people, and said this germy DNA lasted though day-to-day temperature changes, humidity and sunlight.

"Each one of us leaves a unique trail of bugs behind as we travel through our daily lives," Noah Fierer, a researcher at the University of Colorado at Boulder who led the study, said in a statement.

"While this project is still in its preliminary stages, we think the technique could eventually become a valuable new item in the toolbox of forensic scientists," he said.

Researchers have been learning that people are colonized with billions of microbes, both inside and on the body. And studies have shown that these colonies are unique to the individual and even to the place on the body.

Fierer's team wanted to see how much of a trail might be left by these mostly benign bacteria. So they swabbed the computer keyboards of volunteers to show that indeed, each person left not only a trail of unique bacteria, but one that lasted.

In each case, they could show the DNA from the keyboards and computer mice more closely matched DNA from germs on the hands of the owners than they did anybody else's hands.

The technique was about 70 to 90 percent accurate, Fierer's team reported the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The University of Colorado team had previously found that a typical person carries about 150 bacterial species on the hands, and that any two given people only share about 13 percent of these different species.

"The obvious question then was whether we could identify objects that have been touched by particular individuals," Fierer said.

They also left the bacteria out in the open for two weeks to see if they would break down, but they did not. "That finding was a real surprise to us," said Fierer. "We didn't know just how hardy these creatures were."

genetically engineered humans born a decade ago

dancooper.org | The world is now populated by dozens of children who were genetically engineered. It still sounds like science fiction, yet it’s true.

In the first known application of germline gene therapy — in which an individual’s genes are changed in a way that can be passed to offspring — doctors at a reproductive facility in New Jersey announced in March 2001 that nearly 30 healthy babies had been born with DNA from three people: dad, mom, and a second woman. Fifteen were the product of the fertility clinic, with the other fifteen or so coming from elsewhere.

The doctors believe that one cause for failure of women to conceive is that their ova contain old mitochondria (if you don’t remember your high school biology class, mitochondria are the part of cells that provides energy). These sluggish eggs fail to attach to the uterine wall when fertilized.

In order to soup them up, scientists injected them with mitochondria from a younger woman. Since mitochondria contain DNA, the kids have the genetic material of all three parties. The DNA from the “other woman” can even be passed down along the female line.

The big problem is that no one knows what effects this will have on the children or their progeny.

In fact, this substitution of mitochondria hasn’t been studied extensively on animals, never mind Homo sapiens. The doctors reported that the kids are healthy, but they neglected to mention something crucial. Although the fertility clinic’s technique resulted in fifteen babies, a total of seventeen fetuses had been created.

mitochondrial dna varies within an individual

The Scientist | Mitochondrial genomes are not uniform across cells of the body as previously believed, but vary between different tissue types, according to a study published online today (March 3) in Nature.

The findings may affect forensics and the search for biomarkers, both of which utilize mitochondrial DNA.

"I was surprised," said molecular cell biologist Hans Spelbrink of the University of Tampere, Finland, who was not involved in the research. "Mostly the assumption is that from the start of life individuals are homoplasmic," meaning that within an individual, mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is the same. However, the results of this study demonstrate "that each individual is a mosaic of multiple [mt]DNA types in various frequencies in different tissues," he said.

Previous studies have documented some degree of heteroplasmy -- variation in mtDNA in an individual -- but these findings were limited and mostly restricted to people with mitochondrial disorders, "where one would expect" to find such variation, Spelbrink said. "This is the first time [mitochondrial variation] was properly documented" in normal individuals.

banking on hope

The Scientist | Ten years ago, scientists discovered stem cells in the dental pulp of human teeth. Despite the fact that there are still no FDA-approved therapies using these cells, companies are emerging that charge consumers up to $1,600 to extract and store them. But is there enough scientific evidence to support this type of cellular banking?

"We simply don't know how useful these cells will be for tissue engineering and regeneritve medicine," said Pamela Robey, a cell biologist at the National Institutes of Health.

Research on dental stem cells is still in its early days. One area of focus is their use in treatments for neurodegenerative diseases. Possibly due to the neural crest origin of dental pulp, "dental stem cells appear to be, based on current data, very potent to neurogenesis," said stem cell biologist George Huang of the Boston University School of Dental Medicine. Indeed, by grafting undifferentiated, untreated stem cells from the dental pulp of rhesus macaques into the hippocampus of immunosuppressed mice, Anthony Chan of Emory University and his colleagues stimulated the growth of new neural cells, many of which formed mature neurons, and initiated a variety of expression changes that promoted proliferation, cell recruitment, and maturation of progenitor cells that persisted for up to 30 days (Stem Cells 26: 2654-2663, 2008). These results suggest that dental stem cells could one day be used to stimulate neuronal growth and repair in the central nervous system.

stem cells - home of hiv?

The Scientist | Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) can infect bone marrow cells -- including, possibly, hematopoietic stem cells, according to a study published online today (March 7) in Nature Medicine.

The findings suggest the virus can hide in an inactive state for long periods of time, evading treatment, even in individuals without detectable viral loads.

"It's a little bit surprising to see that [HIV infects] progenitor cells, and [possibly] stem cells as well," said virologist Michael Bukrinsky of The George Washington University in Washington, DC, who was not involved in the research. It's a "novel and important" discovery that "will have big implications for pathogenesis of the disease and potential treatment of these patients."

Even patients who respond to highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) can harbor undetectably low viral loads, which can be reactivated later in life to cause a resurgence of the disease. Resting T cells can conceal such latent infections, and are the only well established and characterized HIV reservoirs. But a recent study found circulating viral genomes that differ from those found in T cells, suggesting that additional reservoirs may also exist.

the new jim crow

Democracy Now | A new book by legal scholar and civil rights advocate Michelle Alexander argues that although Jim Crow laws have been eliminated, the racial caste system it set up was not eradicated. It’s simply been redesigned, and now racial control functions through the criminal justice system.

JUAN GONZALEZ: President Obama’s election a year and a half ago continues to be lauded for ushering in a new era of colorblindness. The very fact of his presidency is regarded by some as the final nail in the coffin of Jim Crow. Yet, today there are more African Americans under correctional control, whether in prison or jail, on probation or on parole, than there were enslaved in 1850. And more African American men are disenfranchised now because of felon disenfranchisement laws than in 1870.

A new book by legal scholar and civil rights advocate Michelle Alexander argues that although Jim Crow laws have been eliminated, the racial caste system it set up was not eradicated. It’s simply been redesigned, and now racial control functions through the criminal justice system.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re joined now from Columbus, Ohio by Michelle Alexander, author of the new book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. Her latest article exploring how the war on drugs gave birth to what she calls a permanent American undercaste is available at tomdispatch.com. She’s a former director of the Racial Justice
Project at the ACLU of Northern California. She now holds a joint appointment at the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity and the Moritz College of Law at Ohio State University.

Michelle Alexander, welcome to Democracy Now! Nearly half of America’s young black men are behind bars or have been labeled felons for life? That’s an astounding figure. Also, what does it mean in terms of their rights for the rest of their lives?

MICHELLE ALEXANDER: Yes, thanks largely to the war on drugs, a war that has been waged almost exclusively in poor communities of color, even though studies have consistently shown that people of color are no more likely to use or sell illegal drugs than whites. The war on drugs waged in these ghetto communities has managed to brand as felons millions of people of color for relatively minor, nonviolent drug offenses. And once branded a felon, they’re ushered into a permanent second-class status, not unlike the one we supposedly left behind. Those labeled felons may be denied the right to vote, are automatically excluded from juries, and my be legally discriminated against in employment, housing, access to education, public benefits, much like their grandparents or great grandparents may have been discriminated against during the Jim Crow era.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, you mention that the—in the war on drugs, four out of five people arrested have actually been arrested for use of drugs, not for—or possession or use of drugs, not for the sale of drugs. Could you talk about how the—both political parties joined in this increasing incarceration around drug use?

MICHELLE ALEXANDER: That’s right. The war on drugs, contrary to popular belief, was not declared in response to rising drug crime. Actually, the war on drugs, the current drug war, was declared in 1982 by President Ronald Reagan at a time when drug crime was actually on the decline. A few years later, crack cocaine hit the streets in poor communities of color across America, and the Reagan administration hired staff to publicize crack babies, crack mothers, crack dealers in inner-city communities, in an effort to build public support and more funding, and ensure more funding, for the new war that had been declared. But the drug war had relatively little to do with drug crime, even from the outset.

The drug war was launched in response to racial politics, not drug crime. The drug war was part of the Republican Party’s grand strategy, often referred to as the Southern strategy, an effort to appear—appeal to poor and working-class white voters who were threatened by, felt vulnerable, threatened by the gains of the civil rights movement, particularly desegregation, busing and affirmative action. And the Republican Party found that it could get Democrats—white, you know, working-class poor Democrats—to defect from the Democratic New Deal coalition and join the Republican Party through racially coded political appeals on issues of crime and welfare.

the military's war on earth..,

Bloomington Alternative | Use as many low-energy lightbulbs as you like, turn down the thermostat and drive a hybrid car, but whatever you do as an individual -- indeed, the sum of what we all do for the environment --does almost nothing to alleviate the U.S. military's destruction of the earth.

In The Green Zone: The Environmental Costs of Militarism, Barry Sanders writes that like other capitalist institutions, "each military branch ... must grow larger and fatter each year; expansion is the life blood of imperialism." Further, Sanders asserts, "The military can brook limits of no kind whatsoever. ... The Pentagon conducts its business behind very thick and very closed doors. It writes its own rules and either follows them or violates them, depending on the situation."

Almost all "military numbers remain off of official reports, secret and out of sight." Sanders obtained the information he cites in the book by gleaning what he could from "arcane reports" and obscure Web sites belonging to the Department of Defense and Government Accounting Office, plus books and articles.

Sanders describes, in horrifying detail, how the military is "the largest single source of pollution in this country and in the world: the United States military -- in particular the military in its most ferocious and stepped-up mode -- namely, the military at war." He goes on to say, "When we declare war on a foreign nation, we now also declare war on the Earth, on the soil and plants and animals, the water and wind and people in the most far-reaching and deeply infecting ways."

why don't honest journalists take on roger ailes and faux news?

WaPo | One question has tugged at my professional conscience throughout the year-long congressional debate over health-care reform, and it has nothing to do with the public option, portability or medical malpractice. It is this: Why haven't America's old-school news organizations blown the whistle on Roger Ailes, chief of Fox News, for using the network to conduct a propaganda campaign against the Obama administration -- a campaign without precedent in our modern political history?

Through clever use of the Fox News Channel and its cadre of raucous commentators, Ailes has overturned standards of fairness and objectivity that have guided American print and broadcast journalists since World War II. Yet, many members of my profession seem to stand by in silence as Ailes tears up the rulebook that served this country well as we covered the major stories of the past three generations, from the civil rights revolution to Watergate to the Wall Street scandals. This is not a liberal-versus-conservative issue. It is a matter of Fox turning reality on its head with, among other tactics, its endless repetition of its uber-lie: "The American people do not want health-care reform."

Fox repeats this as gospel. But as a matter of historical context, usually in short supply on Fox News, this assertion ranks somewhere between debatable and untrue.

The American people and many of our great modern presidents have been demanding major reforms to the health-care system since the administration of Teddy Roosevelt. The elections of 1948, 1960, 1964, 2000 and 2008 confirm the point, with majorities voting for candidates supporting such change. Yet congressional Republicans have managed effective campaigns against health-care changes favored variously by Presidents Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and Clinton. Now Fox News has given the party of Lincoln a free ride with its repetition of the unexamined claim that today's Republican leadership really does want to overhaul health care -- if only the effort could conform to Mitch McConnell's ideas on portability and tort reform.

It is true that, after 14 months of Fox's relentless pounding of President Obama's idea of sweeping reform, the latest Gallup poll shows opinion running 48 to 45 percent against the current legislation. Fox invariably stresses such recent dips in support for the legislation, disregarding the majorities in favor of various individual aspects of the reform effort. Along the way, the network has sold a falsified image of the professional standards that developed in American newsrooms and university journalism departments in the last half of the 20th century.

Whatever its shortcomings, journalism under those standards aspired to produce an honest account of social, economic and political events. It bore witness to a world of dynamic change, as opposed to the world of Foxian reality, whose actors are brought on camera to illustrate a preconceived universe as rigid as that of medieval morality. Now, it is precisely our long-held norms that cripple our ability to confront Fox's journalism of perpetual assault. I'm confident that many old-schoolers are too principled to appear on the network, choosing silence over being used; when Fox does trot out a house liberal as a punching bag, the result is a parody of reasoned news formats.

the forced-birth movement never quits...,

Alternet | On Thursday, a Utah legislator withdrew a bill that would have allowed sentences of up to life in prison for a woman who experienced a miscarriage or stillbirth as a result of her “reckless” behavior. This move has been attributed to a “firestorm” of opposition. Almost immediately, however, Utah legislators revised the bill to exempt women who commit reckless acts but to permit the prosecution of women who commit “knowing” acts that may result in stillbirths and miscarriages from the earliest stages of pregnancy.

What does this mean? Under this bill, pregnant women who “know” that their cancer medications or other prescription medications could risk harm or cause pregnancy loss could still be arrested. Pregnant women who stay with abusive husbands who they “know” to be angry about the pregnancy could still be arrested under this law. Pregnant women who continue working in jobs they “know” pose hazards to their pregnancies could still be arrested under the law. And even pregnant women who “know” from reading the side of their cigarette packages that smoking is hazardous to their pregnancies could be arrested under this law.

Representative Wimmer, the bill’s sponsor, has assured critics that the bill would only be applied “in the most glaring of cases.” But whatever his intention, cases from around the country demonstrate that once law enforcement officials have the discretion to arrest, and judges have the opportunity to interpret the law, legislators no longer have control. In fact there have already been cases where government officials seeking to protect the “unborn” have sought to keep pregnant women from obtaining cancer treatment.

Moreover, sending the message that what women “know” and do while pregnant may be a crime also influences how doctors and nurses treat pregnant women. They become less likely to help women and more likely to judge them. In Iowa, it was a health care provider who called the police when a distraught pregnant woman sought help after she fell down a flight of stairs. The young woman was arrested for “attempted feticide.” The police eventually withdrew the charge but only after this young mother had been taken into custody, spent several days in jail and several weeks terrified about what was going to happen next.

too many women dying in u.s. while having babies

Time | Amnesty International may be best known to American audiences for bringing to light horror stories abroad such as the disappearance of political activists in Argentina or the abysmal conditions inside South African prisons under apartheid. But in a new report on pregnancy and childbirth care in the U.S., Amnesty details the maternal-health care crisis in this country as part of a systemic violation of women's rights.

The report, titled "Deadly Delivery," notes that the likelihood of a woman's dying in childbirth in the U.S. is five times as great as in Greece, four times as great as in Germany and three times as great as in Spain. Every day in the U.S., more than two women die of pregnancy-related causes, with the maternal mortality ratio doubling from 6.6 deaths per 100,000 births in 1987 to 13.3 deaths per 100,000 births in 2006. (And as shocking as these figures are, Amnesty notes that the actual number of maternal deaths in the U.S. may be a lot higher, since there are no federal requirements to report these outcomes and since data collection at the state and local levels needs to be improved.) "In the U.S., we spend more than any country on health care, yet American women are at greater risk of dying from pregnancy-related causes than in 40 other countries," says Nan Strauss, the report's co-author, who spent two years investigating the issue of maternal mortality worldwide. "We thought that was scandalous." (See the most common hospital mishaps.)

According to Amnesty, which gathered data from many sources, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, approximately half of the pregnancy-related deaths in the U.S. are preventable, the result of systemic failures, including barriers to accessing care; inadequate, neglectful or discriminatory care; and overuse of risky interventions like inducing labor and delivering via cesarean section. "Women are not dying from complex, mysterious causes that we don't know how to treat," says Strauss. "Women are dying because it's a fragmented system, and they are not getting the comprehensive services that they need."

The report notes that black women in the U.S. are nearly four times as likely as white women to die from pregnancy-related causes, although they are no more likely to experience certain complications like hemorrhage. Fist tap Dale.

a lesson from the great depression

Hotchalk | During the Depression, along with restoring a collapsed economy, the United States government recognized the need for a "national unity". The government viewed the economically devastated public as "a people without a unifying central culture". Back then, it was as important to the government to cultivate a unified American society as it was to return the country to economic stability. Eleanor Roosevelt brilliantly understood the need to develop a national sense of esteem and identity, and pressured her husband to take action. Between 1933 and 1934, the Public Works of Art Project One was initiated by the government to create murals on public buildings. It employed 3700 artists and resulted in over 15,000 works of art. The Federal Art Project, a division of the Works Progress Administration- or WPA- was created in 1935. It employed over 5000 artists and produced 225,000 works of art for the American public. Artists such as Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Willim de Kooning and Diego Rivera were among those employed as muralists during the depression. Regionalism, art that depicted specific national regions, became popular through artists such as Grant Wood and Edward Hopper. Artists, writers and musicians were paid to create. Visual artists had complete freedom over their subject matter and medium unless they were being commissioned to create a mural. Divisions within the Project One included a teaching project which employed artists to teach classes at neighborhood houses or community centers. Over two million students attended W.P.A. art classes during the eight years of the program.

As important as it was to support the arts during the worst financial crisis in American history, it is equally as important to do so now. One of the major factors in the development of creating a "national unity" during the Depression was to prevent a sense of disenfranchisement and despair in the youth during that time. It was essential to instill a sense of hope in the upcoming generation, so that they would believe they could attain a quality life. It is for this very same reason that we need to keep the arts alive and healthy today in classrooms, community centers, businesses and industry. It is the arts that provides our youth and our people with a venue for creative contribution; a way to make sense of a world that has become increasingly complex and difficult. Our art is our way. Technology and innovation have their place, but they are not what esteems us as a society. It is the arts that have been our cultural heritage and will serve as our legacy to the generations of tomorrow.

church in our times - common security clubs

EnergyBulletin | The Reverend Cecilia Kingman, of Cascade Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in East Wenatchee, Washington, feels the church has a unique role to play in this moment of crisis: “All of the old stories are failing us, and we need new stories. Religion is the only institution that creates new stories, and a new theology.”

Cecilia has served several congregations in the past decade, and has observed a heightening amount of anxiety and depression in her congregations over that time. “People are overwhelmed by grief and anxiety...part of my job is to put grief work before them on a regular basis. I try to be deft about it--one upcoming service is about “how to keep moving forward in times of despair”, dealing with climate change, the economy, and so on. Rather than provide the congregation with false assurances, I’m approaching it through the story of Jonah (in the belly of the whale): we have to feel the loss and despair first. If we are clinging to trying not to feel bad, then there’s no possibility of real transformation.”

I work for the Institute for Policy Studies as an organizer, and my main project is the Common Security Club (CSC). CSCs are groups of about 20 people who come together to face the economic crisis in community. A facilitator takes them through a 5-session curriculum with three intents: learning together about the economy, fostering mutual aid and cooperation among group members, and moving into taking larger actions to create a livable economy. The Clubs create an intimate environment in which people are honest about their finances, their troubles, and their fears about the future. Slowly and cautiously, a space is formed in which people can face the reality that we are not going back to a growth economy, that our earth is truly imperiled, and that we must create the new world now.

We have found the Common Security Club a particularly effective tool for strengthening congregations in this time of economic and ecological crisis. These groups may seem unique, but really they help recreate the role that churches have always played in communities. The crisis we face is too big for us to hold alone. It’s imperative that we find communities in which to share our grief, pledge our support, and receive the aid and generosity of others.

Jim Antal is the conference Minister and President of the United Church of Christ in Massachusetts. Jim preaches in a different congregation every Sunday, and 90% of his sermons focus on climate change. Jim believes that “the unit of survival going forward is the local town--and guess what? There’s a church in every town! The circumstances of the planet require that churches embrace a new vocation--for all faiths. We must realize that “our “neighbor is all of creation, not just human beings, and we must think of unborn generations as our neighbors too. This idea has theological purchase, it grabs people, and then they can begin to change their lives, to do the things we can and should do for the earth, things which are in fact spiritual practices.”

our energy supply - some basics

The Oil Drum | If a person were to listen to Energy Secretary Steven Chu or National Geographic's Aftermath: World Without Oil, one might think that our energy problems are fairly minor and distant. We can easily add sufficiently renewable energy to substitute for fossil fuels in a fairly short time frame. All we need to do is put our minds (and pocketbooks) to it.

But if one looks at the situation more closely, one discovers that the situation is quite different. Our energy problems are close at hand, and solutions using what are optimistically called "renewables" are distant and may very well sink the country further into recession.

Figure 1- US energy consumption by source, based Energy Information Administration (EIA) Monthly Energy Review Table 1.3.
*Year 2009 estimated based on data through November.

US energy consumption is already down quite a bit--some might say due to recession, but it seems even more likely that the result is the other way around--high energy prices squeezed the financial system. This in turn caused credit availability to drop and demand for oil, gas, and coal to drop. We have put a huge amount of effort and subsidies into wind and solar, but they hardly show up on the chart. Ethanol isn't shown separately in the chart this data was taken from--instead it is combined with wood and with other biofuels in a category called "biomass" in the EIA data. The biomass line has thickened a bit, but it is still pretty insignificant.

one step beyond

the electric universe

sacred geometry

secret christianity?

brand obama - conspicuous consumption collides with collapse

NYTimes | Long before the State Dinner party crashers and the tension with her White House colleagues and the strain in her relationship with the first lady, Desirée Rogers began to understand she was in trouble when David Axelrod summoned her to his office last spring to scold her.

Ms. Rogers had appeared in another glossy magazine, posing in a White House garden in a borrowed $3,495 silk pleated dress and $110,000 diamond earrings. But if the image was jarring in a time of recession, Mr. Axelrod was as bothered by the words and her discussion of “the Obama brand” and her role in promoting it, according to people informed about the conversation.

“The president is a person, not a product,” he was said to tell her. “We shouldn’t be referring to him as a brand.”

The confrontation that day between Ms. Rogers, the White House social secretary, and Mr. Axelrod, the senior adviser to President Obama, put at odds two longtime Chicago friends of the first family. And it foreshadowed a deeper, wrenching conflict that would eventually cost Ms. Rogers her job and tear at the fabric of the close-knit inner circle around Mr. Obama.