Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/281598144?client_source=feed&format=rss
Happy Halloween! Star Wars Episode 7 miranda lambert luke bryan NBA jfk airport faith hill
Thursday, January 31, 2013
Dreaming of a warm getaway with your man? Bring Miami, Mexico & more to your da...
Sorry, Readability was unable to parse this page for content.
mary mary sag aftra merger dj am bully bohemian rhapsody bohemian rhapsody spike lee
Navy Housing Earns 2012 Awards for Outstanding Service in Military Housing
WASHINGTON (NNS) -- Navy Housing announced Jan. 30 several staff members were recognized by their industry peers for their service in 2012.
The Professional Housing Management Association (PHMA) announced the winners of its annual awards last week, which reward superior service and achievement in military housing.
"Navy Housing is dedicated to being an advocate for service members and their families, wherever they live around the world," said Corky Vazquez, CNIC N93 Housing program manager. "Having our employees' exemplary dedication recognized by an organization like PHMA is rewarding. I offer my sincerest congratulations to all of the 2012 military housing award winners."
Navy Housing congratulates all of its PHMA awardees:
* Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, Cuba Housing Department: Winner, Outstanding Housing Installation Team - Traditional Locations.
* Joint Base Charleston-Weapons Family Housing/Balfour Beatty Communities: Winner, Outstanding Housing Installation Team - Privatized Locations.
* Jesse Hopkins, Naval Air Station Key West: Winner, Outstanding Housing/Billeting Employee.
* Culinary Specialist 1st Class Deforest L. Pittman, Commander Fleet Activities, Yokosuka Japan: Winner, Outstanding Mid-Level Housing Manager.
* Kelly Knowland, Naval Explosive Ordnance Disposal School, Eglin Air Force Base: Winner, Outstanding Senior Housing Manager.
For more news from Commander, Navy Installations Command, visit www.navy.mil/local/cni/.
LEAVE A COMMENT
Your opinion counts. All comments open to the general public but will be reviewed before being posted.
Please refrain from using inappropriate language.
Source: http://www.navy.mil/search/display.asp?story_id=71741
hgtv dream home patriots vs broncos contraband denver vs new england denver broncos vs new england patriots cruise ship sinking vernon davis
Nintendo returns to profit, lowers sales forecasts
Shoppers take escalators under the logo of Nintendo and Super Mario characters at an electronics store in Tokyo, Wednesday, Jan. 30, 2013. Japanese video game maker Nintendo Co. has returned to the black for the first nine months of the fiscal year but remains pessimistic about sales prospects. The Kyoto-based maker of Super Mario and Pokemon games reported Wednesday that April-December profit totaled 14.55 billion yen ($160 million), a reversal from the 48.35 billion yen loss reported a year earlier. (AP Photo/Shizuo Kambayashi)
Shoppers take escalators under the logo of Nintendo and Super Mario characters at an electronics store in Tokyo, Wednesday, Jan. 30, 2013. Japanese video game maker Nintendo Co. has returned to the black for the first nine months of the fiscal year but remains pessimistic about sales prospects. The Kyoto-based maker of Super Mario and Pokemon games reported Wednesday that April-December profit totaled 14.55 billion yen ($160 million), a reversal from the 48.35 billion yen loss reported a year earlier. (AP Photo/Shizuo Kambayashi)
Men play Nintendo video games at an electronics store in Tokyo Wednesday, Jan. 30, 2013. Japanese video game maker Nintendo Co. has returned to the black for the first nine months of the fiscal year but remains pessimistic about sales prospects. The Kyoto-based maker of Super Mario and Pokemon games reported Wednesday that April-December profit totaled 14.55 billion yen ($160 million), a reversal from the 48.35 billion yen loss reported a year earlier. (AP Photo/Shizuo Kambayashi)
TOKYO (AP) ? Japanese video game maker Nintendo Co. returned to the black for the first nine months of its business year and more than doubled its profit forecast for the full year, getting a perk from a weaker yen, despite pessimism about sales prospects.
April-December profit for the Kyoto-based maker of Super Mario and Pokemon games totaled 14.55 billion yen ($160 million), bouncing back from the 48.35 billion yen loss reported a year earlier, it said Wednesday. Nine-month sales inched up 2.4 percent to 543 billion yen ($6 billion).
Nintendo raised its profit forecast for the business year through March 2013 to 14 billion yen ($154 million) from 6 billion yen ($66 million). The dollar has strengthened about 14 percent against the yen in the past three months on expectations a new government would relax monetary policy to boost Japan's moribund economy.
But Nintendo, which didn't break down quarterly results, isn't upbeat about its sales prospects and lowered its full year sales forecast to 670 billion yen ($7.4 billion) from 810 billion yen ($8.9 billion).
Game machines have taken a beating from the proliferation of smartphones and tablets that also offer games and other entertainment, competing for people's leisure time. Some analysts say the global market for game machines is saturated with offerings from Nintendo, Microsoft Corp., Sony Corp. and others.
Nintendo spokesman Makoto Wakae said sales had gone relatively well during the key holiday shopping season late last year, but that was quickly running out of momentum. The company expects to post an operating loss for the year ending March 2013, the second straight year of operating losses, he said.
The company forecasts it will sell 4 million Wii U consoles for the fiscal year, down from its earlier estimate of 5.5 million units. The Wii U, which went on sale late last year, was the first major new game console to arrive in stores in years.
Nintendo, also behind the Donkey Kong and Zelda games, lowered its full year sales forecast for Wii U game software units to 16 million from 24 million.
Nintendo's success was rooted in its appeal to so-called casual gamers, but they may be the kind of people for whom smartphones and iPads are proving attractive alternatives.
What's coming as a godsend for Nintendo is the weakening yen, against both the dollar and the euro, as that helps raise the value of its overseas earnings. Currency gains for the period totaled 22 billion yen ($242 million), according to Nintendo.
Nintendo has a lot riding on the Wii U, which has a touch-screen tablet controller called GamePad and a TV-watching feature called TVii. Nintendo said it sold 3 million Wii U machines so far around the world.
Nintendo sank into a loss the previous fiscal year largely because of price cuts for its hand-held 3DS game machine, which shows three-dimensional imagery without special glasses. It has sold nearly 30 million 3DS machines so far.
___
Follow Yuri Kageyama on Twitter at www.twitter.com/yurikageyama
Associated Pressmichael robinson joe paterno memorial service taco bell breakfast menu ener1 national chocolate cake day epstein joshua komisarjevsky
She's No Oprah, But We'll Watch Kris Jenner's Talk Show!
The latest move in the Kardashian family's ongoing bid to dominate the world? Fifty-seven-year-old matriarch Kris Jenner has signed a deal to host her own talk show, Kris. Several Fox-owned stations in cities such as New York and L.A. will air the daily one hour gab fest (with celeb interviews and discussions on lifestyle, fashion and beauty trends) for six weeks this summer.
matt kenseth bridge to nowhere primary results dale earnhardt jr michigan primary daytona 500 winner cleveland plain dealer
Mechanism behind wear at atomic scale
Jan. 30, 2013 ? Wear is a fact of life. As surfaces rub against one another, they break down and lose their original shape. With less material to start with and functionality that often depends critically on shape and surface structure, wear affects nanoscale objects more strongly than it does their macroscale counterparts.
Worse, the mechanisms behind wear processes are better understood for things like car engines than nanotech devices. But now, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania's School of Engineering and Applied Science have experimentally demonstrated one of the mechanisms behind wear at the smallest scale: the transfer of material, atom by atom, from one surface to another.
The research was conducted by Tevis Jacobs, a doctoral student in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, and Robert Carpick, department chair of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics.
Their research was published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.
On the nanoscale, wear is mainly understood through two processes, fracture and plastic deformation. Fracture is where large pieces of a surface break off at once, like when the point of a pencil snaps off in the middle of a sentence. Plastic deformation is what happens when the surface changes shape or compresses without breaking, like when the edge of knife gets dull or bent.
These mechanisms typically affect thousands or millions of atoms at a time, whereas nanoscale wear often proceeds through a much more gradual process. Determining the mechanisms behind this more gradual process is key to improving such devices.
"At the nanoscale, wear is a very significant problem," Jacobs says. "Nanotechnology is developing smaller and smaller parts for very tiny machines. Their contact interfaces wear out very quickly, sometimes surviving for hundreds of cycles when they need to survive for trillions or more."
One wear mechanism that had been hypothesized for the nanoscale is a process known as atomic attrition. There, atoms from one surface are transferred to the other surface via a series of individual bond-forming and bond-breaking chemical reactions. Other researchers have attempted to test this process by putting two surfaces in contact and sliding one against the other.
Those previous investigations involved Atomic Force Microscopes. Using an AFM involves dragging a very sharp tip mounted on a flexible cantilever over a surface while a laser aimed at the cantilever precisely measures how much the tip moves. By using the tip as one of the surfaces in a wear experiment, researchers can precisely control the sliding distance, sliding speed and load in the contact. But the AFM doesn't visualize the experiment at all; the volume of atoms lost from the tip can only be inferred or examined after the fact, and the competing wear mechanisms, fracture and plastic deformation can't be ruled out.
The Penn team's breakthrough was to conduct AFM-style wear experiments inside of a transmission electron microscope, or TEM, which passes a beam of electrons through a sample (in this case, the nanoscale tip) to generate an image of the sample, magnified more than 100,000 times.
By modifying a commercial mechanical testing instrument that works inside a TEM, the researchers were able to slide a flat diamond surface against the silicon tip of an AFM probe. By putting the probe-cantilever assembly inside the TEM and running the wear experiment there, they were able to simultaneously measure the distance the tip slid, the force with which it contacted the diamond and the volume of atoms removed in each sliding interval.
"We can watch the whole process live to see what happens while the surfaces are in contact," Jacobs said. "Then, after each pass, we use the TEM like a camera and take an even higher magnification picture of the tip. We can trace its outline and see how much volume has been lost, down to as small as 25 square nanometers, or about 1250 atoms.
"We are measuring changes in volume that are one thousand times smaller than can be seen using other techniques for wear detection."
While this new microscopy method can't image individual atoms moving from the silicon tip to the diamond punch, it enabled the researchers to see the atomic structure of the wearing tip well enough to rule out fracture and plastic deformation as the mechanism behind the tip's wear. Proving that the silicon atoms from the tip were bonding to the diamond and then staying behind involved combining the visual and force data into a mathematical test.
"If atomic attrition is what's happening," Carpick said, "then the rate at which those bonds are formed and the dependence on contact stress -- the force per unit area -- is well-established science. That means we can apply chemical kinetics, or reaction rate theory, to the wear process."
Now that they could measure the volume of atoms removed, the distance the tip slid and the force of the contact for each experimental test, the researchers could calculate the rate at which the silicon-diamond bonds form under different conditions and compare that to predictions based on reaction rate theory, a theory that is routinely used in chemistry.
"The more force the atoms are under, the more likely they are to form a bond with an atom on the opposing surface, so the wear rate should accelerate exponentially with additional stress," Jacobs said. "Seeing that in the experimental data was a smoking gun. The trend in the data implies that we can predict the rate of wear of the tip, knowing only the stress levels in the contact, as long as this wear mechanism is dominant."
For now, those predictions can only be made about the wear of silicon on diamond in a vacuum, though the selection of those two materials was not accidental. They are common in nanoscale devices and tools for nanomanufacturing.
The math behind the atomic attrition mechanism could eventually be applied in a fundamental way.
"The goal of this avenue of research is to get to the point where you tell me the materials in contact, and you tell me the period they are in contact and the stresses applied and I will be able to tell you the rate at which atoms will be removed," Jacobs said.
"With a fundamental understanding of wear, you can cleverly design surfaces and choose materials to make longer lasting devices," Carpick said.
This fundamental, predicative understanding of wear could vastly improve nanomechanical design, increasing functionality and decreasing costs.
The research was supported by the National Science Foundation's Nanomanufacturing Program and Penn's NanoBio Interface Center.
Share this story on Facebook, Twitter, and Google:
Other social bookmarking and sharing tools:
Story Source:
The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Pennsylvania.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
- Tevis D. B. Jacobs, Robert W. Carpick. Nanoscale wear as a stress-assisted chemical reaction. Nature Nanotechnology, 2013; DOI: 10.1038/nnano.2012.255
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/matter_energy/physics/~3/VDlPqGsjSXE/130130121643.htm
completely wrong mila kunis stacey dash christopher columbus columbus day columbus day Stacy Dash
All The President's Plans
By MICHAEL FALCONE ( @michaelpfalcone )
NOTABLES:
OBAMA IN VEGAS: President Obama maps out his immigration plan at this afternoon in Las Vegas where, a senior administration official tells ABC's Reena Ninan, he will focus largely on what he's discussed before. The president won't put forward a bill - instead he'll support the Senate's principles outlined yesterday and explain what else needs to be done. The White House feels Las Vegas is a community symbolic of the growing Latino population in both the state and the nation and since immigration reform is a pledge the president made during the campaign, the White House says he wants to deliver.
EL DIABLO IS IN THE DETAILS: Even the senators who wrote the immigration reform proposal outlined yesterday admitted there's lots of work still ahead. One land mine: Some Republicans want to link getting green cards to whether the border is secure. Border security still a gray issue. If the Gang of Eight's efforts fall apart the president's team will step in with its own proposal, Ninan notes.
SECRET CONGRESSIONAL GROUP WORKING ON IMMIGRATION ALTERNATIVE: A separate bipartisan group of lawmakers in the House of Representatives is on the verge of finalizing its own designs for comprehensive immigration reform, ABC's John Parkinson reports. The discussions, which top aides close to the talks discussed on the condition that they not be identified, are described as "Washington's best-kept secret." Multiple sources say those involved in the talks include Democratic Reps. Xavier Becerra (California), Luis Gutierrez (Illinois), Zoe Lofgren (California), and Republican Reps. Mario Diaz-Balart (Florida), Sam Johnson (Texas) and John Carter (Texas). The House's not-yet-finalized proposal is expected to address five general areas of immigration reform, according to aides close to the negotiations. Secure the border, implement a permanent E-verify system nationwide, reform the visa system, address the predicament of how to handle immigrants already in the country illegally in a "fair" and "legal manner" while determining how to handle those who have applied for legal immigration and are currently waiting in line, and reform the immigration system for future applicants. http://abcn.ws/WnjOfh
THE ROUNDTABLE:
ABC's RICK KLEIN: What could possibly go wrong? The bipartisan Senate proposal is on the table, with boldfaced names like McCain, Rubio, Graham, Schumer, Durbin, and Menendez signed on. The House isn't far behind. And the president takes up the mantle himself today, as he lobbies the public to force action at last on immigration reform ? Wait, this could get interesting, after all. The White House has had mixed results with letting Congress handle the details of much of anything. But these are the kinds of details that members of Congress from both parties have spent months if not years wrestling through; witness the twin failures of immigration reform, in 2006 and 2007, under the leadership of a different president. The real question for the White House: Will heavy involvement - and pushing in directions the Gang of Eight doesn't want to go - be more harmful for helpful?
ABC's MICHAEL FALCONE: At yesterday's bi-partisan news conference announcing the Gang of Eight's immigration reform principles, Sen. John McCain's answer about why Republicans were so eager to move on the issue was telling. "Elections, elections," the Arizona senator said. "The Republican Party is losing the support of our Hispanic citizens." He's right: Hispanic voters are becoming a larger share of the electorate and GOP presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, won just 27 percent of the vote among the group compared to 71 percent who supported President Obama. There was also something striking about watching Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, a member of the immigration reform group, launch into Spanish during the press conference. Neither Rubio's language skills nor his familiarity with the immigration issue are breaking news, but I imagine it will give other potential 2016 Republicans pause.
ABC's SHUSHANNAH WALSHE: Currently, the prevailing theory about Sarah Palin is that because she doesn't have the megaphone of Fox News anymore, the "Palin moment" is now officially over. It might be true, but there have been so many "Ends of Sarah Palin" that it's almost hard to keep track. She was over when she lost the 2008 campaign, she was over when she quit the Alaska governorship, she was over when she decided to do a reality show, she was over when she decided not to run for president. Now she's over because she severed her ties with Fox. But the reality is different. Even after she decided to resign as governor and to pass up a 2012 presidential bid, people who both love her and hate her still just couldn't get enough information about her. Palin still got an incredible amount of coverage and her voice was heard - loud and clear. It's yet another example of what she's able to pull off that others who came before or after just aren't: She's been written off since Day One, but she keeps coming back.
ABC's JASON RYAN: The FBI has released new gun background check data yesterday showing that the week after the Newtown massacre (December 14, 2012) was the busiest for gun background checks ever, followed by the week President Obama announced new gun control proposals on January 16, 2013. As ABC News has reported, gun sales have been booming since Newtown. After previously denying journalists access to gun data, National Instant Check System figures show that overall in December 2012 there were more than 2.78 million background checks carried out to purchase firearms surpassing the previous record from November 2012 when more than 2 million checks were performed. The number of total sales during the first month of the new year will be released in the first few days of February.
VIDEO OF THE DAY: MEET DEFIANT DEMOCRAT, HEIDI HEITKAMP. Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D., defied the odds in November when she won the closest senate race in the country, and now that she's arrived in Washington, she's defiant as ever. But now, instead of defying the pollsters, she's defying the Democratic caucus by taking divergent opinions on issues central to the President Obama's second term agenda, ranging from gun control to the environment. Heitkamp, who says growing the economy is her top priority, is concerned that the president is changing his focus to issues like climate change and gun control. "I think, you know the one thing that has gotten lost by everyone is one of the best ways that we can perform here is by getting people back to work, making sure that this economic recovery, slow as it is, gets amped up and moves forward," Heitkamp tells ABC's Jonathan Karl, host of "Politics Confidential." "It's one of the reasons why I've been such a big proponent of the Keystone Pipeline. There's a shovel ready, private sector jobs program, good paying jobs." WATCH: http://yhoo.it/TQOxTJ
BUZZ
IMMIGRATION REFORM PLAN INCLUDES A PATHWAY TO CITIZENSHIP. The Senate's plan does not grant undocumented immigrants automatic "amnesty," rather it requires them to go through an arduous process that includes undergoing a background check, paying fines, back taxes and learning English and American civics over the course of a number of years, reports ABC-Univision's Jordan Fabian. The new law would grant eligible undocumented immigrants permission to live and work in the U.S. legally, but would not confer permanent legal status, or a green card, until the border is deemed to be secure. Young people brought into the U.S. illegally as minors and some agricultural workers would face an easier path to citizenship. "We will never put these people on a path to citizenship until we have secured the border," New York Sen. Chuck Schumer said yesterday. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who helped lead the last effort on a comprehensive immigration bill in 2007 said, "We have been too content for too long to allow individuals to mow our lawns, grow our food, clean our homes, and even watch our children while not affording them any of the benefits that make our country so great." http://abcn.ws/YBGY4Q
OBAMA TALKS GUN VIOLENCE WITH POLICE CHIEFS. President Obama is enlisting the help of police chiefs from communities devastated by mass shootings as he continues a public push for Congress to act on his proposals to curb gun violence, ABC's Mary Bruce notes. "No group is more important for us to listen to than our law enforcement officials," the president told reporters before a White House meeting yesterday with sheriffs and police chiefs from across the country. "They are where the rubber hits the road." The president and members of his cabinet met with the police chiefs who responded to the deadly shootings in Aurora, Colo., Oak Creek, Wis., and Newtown, Conn, along with representatives from the Major Cities Chiefs Police Association and the Major County Sheriffs' Association. "I welcome this opportunity to work with them; to hear their views in terms of what will make the biggest difference to prevent something like Newtown or Oak Creek from happening again," Obama said.
CHICK-FIL-A CEO AND GAY ACTIVIST FIND COMMON GROUND. The leader of a national gay-rights group says he's coming out-as a friend of Chick-fil-A CEO Dan Cathy, ABC's Chris Good reports. "I've gotten to know Dan, he's gotten to know me. He's shared concerns about young people, about Chick-fil-A being used for certain purposes," Shane Windmeyer, executive director of Campus Pride, told ABC News. Last year, Cathy sparked a national controversy by telling a radio host that "we're inviting God's judgment on our nation when we shake our fist at him and say we know better than you as to what constitutes a marriage. And I pray God's mercy on our generation that has such a prideful, arrogant attitude that thinks we have the audacity to redefine what marriage is all about." Windmeyer said that Cathy called him last year, during the heat of the controversy that led national gay-rights groups to protest Chick-fil-A. Cathy reached out seeking advice and understanding, Windmeyer said. Windmeyer was a guest of Cathy's at this year's Chick-fil-A Bowl between LSU and Clemson at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta. The activist also says Chick-fil-A has stopped donating to anti-gay groups, according to his review of the company's 990 tax forms. http://abcn.ws/WxuchC
GOVERNMENT WASTE IN THE SPOTLIGHT. The Government Accountability Office is due to produce its biannual report on the areas of the government that present the highest risk for squandering tax payer dollars in the next couple weeks. Though the GAO does not preview this list ahead of time, ABC's Sarah Parnass takes a look at what might be targeted: http://abcn.ws/113uncb
WHO'S TWEETING?
@DavidMDrucker : How central to immigration reform's success is @marcorubio?I'll predict that if he ever backs out bill is dead in House. W/ him: it passes.
@ByronYork: Speaking of deal killers, what will Chairman Leahy do to Gangof8 plan in Sen Judiciary Committee? http://ow.ly/hdUOC
@onetoughnerd: Speaking at @GOVERNING Magazine conference in DC today about how we're reinventing Michigan. http://ow.ly/hdUkP #govlive
@JoshDorner: 4 years ago today, President Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. It was opposed by all but 8 Congressional Republicans.
@kjplotkin: RT @BobbyJindal: Let's Meet, Mr. President http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/bobby-jindal-to-fix-medicaid-listen-to-governors/2013/01/28/ff5c8e5e-6711-11e2-85f5-a8a9228e55e7_story_1.html ?
Also ReadSource: http://news.yahoo.com/presidents-plans-note-142323398--abc-news-politics.html
Butterball mashed potatoes Apple Black Friday how to cook a turkey emma stone Frys tryptophan
German Proposal For Search Engines To Pay For Displaying Publishers? Text Snippets Gets 2nd Reading, Google Rails Against ?Mad Law?
Google is sounding a warning klaxon about a proposed law change in Germany which aims to strengthen copyright law for press publishers by requiring search engines and online news aggregators to pay a royalty to display snippets of copyrighted text ? such as the first paragraph of an article displayed within a Google News search. If the ancillary copyright law passes, fines would be imposed for unlicensed use of publishers? snippets.
The draft ancillary copyright law (online here in German) gets its second reading today (German law requires three readings before a law can be passed), and is backed by the majority of the governing coalition ? having being included in the coalition agreement between the Christian Democratic Union and the Free Democratic Party.
Currently displaying text snippets is free and legal in Germany so Google argues that the proposed amendement is a complete legal reversal.?The issue is known as ?Leistungsschutzrecht?f?r Presseverleger? in German, and has also?colloquially been dubbed a ?Google tax?.
Mountain View is of course ideologically opposed to the proposal ? calling it a ?mad law? and arguing that it breaks the ?founding principle? of the Web?s hyperlink-based architecture. From a business perspective the company questions why it should have to pay for helping publishers to acquire readers. ??We are bringing massive traffic to the publishers? websites,? Google Germany spokesman?Dr.?Ralf?Bremer told TechCrunch. ?We cannot see a reason why we should pay them for bringing them the readers.?
Setting aside the inconvenience to its business, Google also argues that?the law will be damaging for web users because it will make it harder for them to find German documents because the context provided through use of snippets will be lost. Why should German publishers be treated differently to other publishers, it says. There?s no question of Google agreeing to pay for the snippets ? you can imagine the company viewing that path as a slippery slope leading to an avalanche of copyright claims falling on its head.
There?s little doubt Google is being directly targeted by the proposed law. It specifically cites search engines as the target entity for the additional publisher ?protection? ? and Google is far and away the dominant search engine in Germany. But Mountain View claims the law is not just going to cause it pain ? but could also apply more broadly to other online companies and startups that make use of text snippets.
The text of the current draft of the law states that the proposed protection ?is only against systematic access to the?publishing performance by the search engine providers? (translated from German via Google Translate)?? and goes on to add that?other web users are not included (?such as Blogger, other industrial companies in the economy,?Associations, law firms and private and voluntary users?). However Google says the wording of the draft law also references ?suppliers of search engines and suppliers of such services, who process content similar to search engines? as falling within its remit ? a vague definition that it says could even apply to social networks.
?The question ? which services are meant by the latter [portion of the draft law's wording] ? is controversially debated. The latest interpretations, we have seen, assume that Twitter, Facebook and the like will also be affected,? said Bremer. He argues that every web service or information-based startup that wants to use publishers? snippets could potentially be affected ? adding that many such companies won?t have ?Google-levels of resources? to ensure they are able to comply.
?As soon as this law comes into place there will have to changes made by every platform working on the web,? he said. ?It?s not just a law about Google? it?s about the entire startup scene that we have in Germany, and especially in Berlin. Because potentially every company that works on the web has to deal with snippets, more or less, in their business.?
?From the day this law comes into place, every company that wants to use these snippets? would have to reach out to publishers and call them individually ? ?hi, can you please allow me to use your snippets and what do I have to pay for that?? And if you understand there are more than 1,200 publishers you can imagine that it is simply not possible,? he added.
Another problem with the draft law, as Google tells it, is that it does not nail down the definition of a snippet ? meaning it would be left to courts to decide whether a snippet means a few sentences, a few words or even just a URL. ?It is not even sure the pure hyperlinks are free because some hyperlinks contain part of the text,? Bremer added.
If the law is passed ? and Bremer concedes it looks likely, thanks to the backing of the governing coalition ??Google says it would have to pull German snippets from search results. Setting aside the ideological position of not being willing to pay for something it believes should be free to use, it argues that the legal risk of displaying snippets when the law is so ambiguous would be too ?fraught?.
According to Bremer Germany?s big publishing houses originally lobbied for the law change. He describes them as politically well connected ? and also points out that it?s an election year in Germany this year, arguing that politicians are more likely to want to cosy up to publishers than counter their wishes. ?Pressure from the publishers is really high to get this law done within the coming months,? he said.
Bremer said today?s second reading ? which will involve input from a panel of eight experts (ostensibly independent but three of whom Google argues ?belong to the publishers? lobby?) and at which Mountain View has not been invited to speak ??could be ?the last change to get this law off the table or to shape it in a way that is not so dangerous today for the web architecture?. Google?s hope, says Bremer, is for the governing coalition to listen to the views of the independent experts and think again.
?The arguments against this law are very strong. The arguments for this law are very weak,? he added.
So what about the arguments for the proposed law? German publisher Axel Springer?? whose publications include the newspapers Die Welt and Bild ? is an active supporter of the proposals. Asked to respond to Google?s arguments against the copyright extension,?Christoph Keese,?Senior Vice President of?Investor Relations and Public Affairs for the company and chair of the joint copyright committee of Germany?s newspaper and magazine association, told TechCrunch that ?Google?s statements are unfair and disproportionate? and ?in no way represent what this law is really about?.
Keese also rebutted criticisms about the potential scope of the law, claiming it will ?have no effect on the right to quote or link?, and that ?citations and links stay free?.
He continued:
It is neither ?mad? nor will it harm users, the internet, open society or information pluralism. To the contrary: This reform brings German copyright law much closer to the US concept where publishers traditionally enjoy strong rights. Over here publishers have no rights on their own to this very date even though music, film, television and performing arts have enjoyed ancillary rights since the mid sixties.
What this reform does is very simple: It establishes on opt-in model for commercial copies of content and parts of content. This will lead to license agreements between publishers and aggregators.
On the specific point about the impact on startups, Keese argued that being as the pricing for licensing the snippets will be ?reasonable? then ?no business model shall be discouraged?,?adding:
We have carefully considered impact on the thriving start-up culture especially in Berlin. There will be no negative effects. To the contrary: New innovative business models will arrive built on legally licensed content. Even before the law comes to effect we observe rising demand by start ups seeking investment and licensing opportunities.
This law will help establish a market for aggregator content which at the moment is non-existent. Google (>90% market share) displays monopolistic behavior by trying to impose its legal view on publishers to protect its margin. While publishers respect Google?s technological and entrepreneurial achievements we are not prepared to give content away for free. Search indexing is more than welcome. But aggregators have gone far beyond that.
The royalty rate that publishers would charge has not been determined yet. On the question of pricing, Keese said: ?Parliament has not decided yet if it wants the right to be exercised through a collecting society or not. Absent this decision it would be premature to speculate about pricing.?
September 7, 1998
NASDAQ:GOOG
Google provides search and advertising services, which together aim to organize and monetize the world?s information. In addition to its dominant search engine, it offers a plethora of online tools and platforms including: Gmail, Maps, YouTube, and Google+, the company?s extension into the social space. Most of its Web-based products are free, funded by Google?s highly integrated online advertising platforms AdWords and AdSense. Google promotes the idea that advertising should be highly targeted and relevant to users thus providing...
? Learn moreSource: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/83ts042U-vo/
anna paquin warren buffett 2012 nfl schedule dishonored april 18 delonte west vanessa williams
Wednesday, January 30, 2013
Jason London arrested after Arizona bar fight
Scottsdale Police via Reuters
Jason London's booking photo from Jan. 27.
By Alex Dobuzinskis, Reuters
"Dazed and Confused" star Jason London has been arrested in Arizona and charged with assault and disorderly conduct over a bar room fracas in which he is accused of throwing punches and later defecating in a patrol car on his way to jail, a police report showed on Tuesday.?
The 40-year-old actor, who played the main character of Randall "Pink" Floyd in the 1993 coming-of-age comedy "Dazed and Confused," responded on Twitter that he was attacked and injured and that the allegations against him were false.
"I would never say or do the crap they are reporting," he said in the message on Tuesday. "Have faith in me. The truth will come out and you will see."
"Some guy thought I was hitting on his girl and had me jumped," London tweeted. "My wife was in the next room, had no idea what even happened. I hate Arizona." London is married to actress Sofia Karstens.
Police said London was at the Martini Ranch bar in the Phoenix suburb of Scottsdale on Sunday when an unidentified person complained London had sneezed on him and the person asked him to apologize.
Instead of apologizing, London punched the person, the report from Scottsdale police said. He was escorted out by bouncers and during that time he hit them, leading the security guards to "defend themselves" against London, it added.
A 26-year-old Martini Ranch bouncer, whose name was not released, was listed by police as a victim in the incident. London was charged with assault with intent to injure and disorderly conduct, the report said.
"London showed obvious signs and symptoms of extreme alcohol impairment," one of the responding officers wrote in the report.
Because of swelling and bruising around his right eye from the fracas, London was seen by paramedics but "became belligerent and started cursing" at them, the report said.
While seated in the back of the patrol car on the way to jail, one of the officers saw London "lean to the left and defecate in his pants" after the actor complained about the odor in the vehicle, the police report said.
London has in recent years had a number of guest appearances on television shows, such as the political drama "Scandal." In 2000, he starred in the TV movie "Jason and the Argonauts" and in 1999 was in horror movie "The Rage: Carrie 2."
Related content:
los angeles kings earth day timothy leary jonathan frid pujols watchmen hitch
Billboard redesign brings charts streaming into the 21st century
Back in the old days, music charts were mostly good for hit single montages in movies about struggling bands. These days, chart-making stalwart Billboard's looking to offer up something more, bring its services into the era of streaming media, with a redesign that harnesses Spotify, Rdio and Myspace functionality, letting users listen to the day's tracks in order of popularity, the way they were meant to be listened to, we guess.
Filed under: Internet, Software
Source: Billboard
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/01/29/billboard-redesign/
lebron james magic mike trailer Alan Turing brave Stephanie Rice Meet the Pyro Karen Klein
Herschel finds past-prime star may be making planets
Jan. 30, 2013 ? A star thought to have passed the age at which it can form planets may, in fact, be creating new worlds. The disk of material surrounding the surprising star called TW Hydrae may be massive enough to make even more planets than we have in our own solar system.
The findings were made using the European Space Agency's Herschel Space Telescope, a mission in which NASA is a participant.
At roughly 10 million years old and 176 light years away, TW Hydrae is relatively close to Earth by astronomical standards. Its planet-forming disk has been well studied. TW Hydrae is relatively young but, in theory, it is past the age at which giant plants already may have formed.
"We didn't expect to see so much gas around this star," said Edwin Bergin of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Bergin led the new study appearing in the journal Nature. "Typically stars of this age have cleared out their surrounding material, but this star still has enough mass to make the equivalent of 50 Jupiters," Bergin said.
In addition to revealing the peculiar state of the star, the findings also demonstrate a new, more precise method for weighing planet-forming disks. Previous techniques for assessing the mass were indirect and uncertain. The new method can directly probe the gas that typically goes into making planets.
Planets are born out of material swirling around young stars, and the mass of this material is a key factor controlling their formation. Astronomers did not know before the new study whether the disk around TW Hydrae contained enough material to form new planets similar to our own.
"Before, we had to use a proxy to guess the gas quantity in the planet-forming disks," said Paul Goldsmith, the NASA project scientist for Herschel at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "This is another example of Herschel's versatility and sensitivity yielding important new results about star and planet formation."
Using Herschel, scientists were able to take a fresh look at the disk with the space telescope to analyze light coming from TW Hydrae and pick out the spectral signature of a gas called hydrogen deuteride. Simple hydrogen molecules are the main gas component of planets, but they emit light at wavelengths too short to be detected by Herschel. Gas molecules containing deuterium, a heavier version of hydrogen, emit light at longer, far-infrared wavelengths that Herschel is equipped to see. This enabled astronomers to measure the levels of hydrogen deuteride and obtain the weight of the disk with the highest precision yet.
"Knowing the mass of a planet-forming disk is crucial to understanding how and when planets take shape around other stars," said Glenn Wahlgren, Herschel program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
Whether TW Hydrae's large disk will lead to an exotic planetary system with larger and more numerous planets than ours remains to be seen, but the new information helps define the range of possible planet scenarios.
"The new results are another important step in understanding the diversity of planetary systems in our universe," said Bergin. "We are now observing systems with massive Jupiters, super-Earths, and many Neptune-like worlds. By weighing systems at their birth, we gain insight into how our own solar system formed with just one of many possible planetary configurations."
Herschel is a European Space Agency (ESA) cornerstone mission, with science instruments provided by a consortium of European institutes and with important participation by NASA. NASA's Herschel Project Office is based at JPL, which contributed mission-enabling technology for two of Herschel's three science instruments. NASA's Herschel Science Center, part of the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena, supports the United States astronomical community. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.
More information is online at http://www.herschel.caltech.edu , http://www.nasa.gov/herschel and http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Herschel .
Share this story on Facebook, Twitter, and Google:
Other social bookmarking and sharing tools:
Story Source:
The above story is reprinted from materials provided by NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/space_time/astronomy/~3/Vqb4sehg5j0/130130135905.htm
dalai lama tamera mowry slow jam the news madden cover obama slow jams the news metta world peace ron artest
Epson Expression Photo XP-850 Small-in-One
To a casual glance, the Epson Expression Photo XP-850 Small-in-One ($299.99 direct) seems almost identical to the Editors' Choice Epson Expression Premium XP-800 Small-in-One that we recently reviewed. Not only do the two models look alike, they share most of the same features, from their 3.5-inch touch screens to their Ethernet and Wi-Fi network support, to their ability to print on optical discs. Given that it has so much in common with an Editors' Choice model, the XP-850 obviously offers enough to make it worth considering.
The key difference between these two models is that they use different ink systems, with the XP-850 using six inks, with light cyan and light magenta added to the usual mix of cyan, yellow, magenta, and black. The XP-800 uses only five inks, with both matte black and photo black.
The additional colors in the XP-850's ink system are designed to give the printer better photo quality, which is why Epson touts the XP-850 as "ideal for photo enthusiasts and families." In truth, however, it also offers enough office-oriented features?including a 30-page automatic document feeder (ADF)?to make it a good choice for a home office or micro office as well. And given its small size, at 7.5 by 15.4 by 13.3 inches, you shouldn't have any trouble finding room for it.
Basics
The XP-850's long list of MFP features includes a few you may never have thought of. In addition to printing and faxing from, as well as scanning to a PC, including over a network, it can work as a standalone copier and fax machine. It can also both scan to and print from a memory card or USB memory key and can print directly from PictBridge cameras. In addition, you can not only print on optical discs from your computer, you can print on them directly from a memory card or USB key, and you can use a Copy command to scan an image and print it on a disc.
Beyond that, the XP-850 offers support for a variety of mobile printing options, including printing through the cloud, if the printer is on a network, and using Apple AirPrint or Epson iPrint to print from smartphones and other mobile devices by way of a Wi-Fi access point on your network. Even better, because the printer also supports Wi-Fi Direct, you can connect to it by Wi-Fi and print from a mobile device using iPrint, even if the printer isn't on a network. In principle it should also work with AirPrint with Wi-Fi Direct, although Epson doesn't claim that it does.
Paper handling suffers from a meager 100-sheet input capacity, which limits the XP-850 to light duty use even by personal printer standards. However, there's also a manual feed slot, a photo tray that holds up to 20 sheets of photo paper as large as 5 by 7 inches, and an automatic duplexer (for two-sided printing). And because the ADF also duplexes, you can copy both single- and double-sided originals to your choice of single- or double-sided copies. In addition, the ADF will let you fax and scan duplex documents easily. It can also handle legal-size pages, which won't fit on the letter-size flatbed.
Setup, Speed, and Output Quality
For my tests, I connected the XP-850 to a wired network and ran the tests from a Windows Vista system. Setup was standard fare.
One of the few differences in the specifications for the XP-800 and XP-850 is that Epson rates the XP-850 as being a bit slower. Our tests agree. On our business applications suite (using QualityLogic's hardware and software for timing), I clocked the XP-850 at an effective 4.9 pages per minute (ppm), just a tad slower than the Epson XP-800's 5.2 ppm.
Even 4.9 ppm is fast for the price. As a point of comparison, the Editors' Choice Canon Pixma MG8220 Wireless Inkjet Photo All-in-One managed only 2.9 ppm on our tests. The XP-850 also did reasonably well on photo speed, averaging 1 minute 3 seconds for a 4 by 6.
Unfortunately, the XP-850's overall output quality isn't in the same league as its speed. Its photo quality is par for an inkjet overall, and better than par for color photos, but text and graphics quality are both a touch below par.
Text is at the low end of a relatively wide range that includes the vast majority of inkjet MFPs. If all or most of what you print is at 10 or 12 points, the quality is easily good enough for most business, home, or school needs. If you have a particularly demanding eye, however, or you need good quality text at smaller font sizes, you should probably look elsewhere.
Graphics output on plain paper is also at the low end of the range for inkjet MFPs. Here again, the output on our tests was suitable for most schoolwork or internal business needs. Depending on how much of a perfectionist you are, however, you may not consider it good enough for, say, PowerPoint handouts.
Photo quality is par overall for an inkjet, with better than typical quality for color photos, but an obvious tint showing at some shades of gray in black and white photos. This obviously makes the printer a poor choice if you expect to print many black and white photos, but also makes it a great choice if you're concerned only with printing color photos.
More generally, there are two good reasons for considering this printer: the long list of MFP features and the high-quality color photo output. If the MFP features are your primary interest, you're probably better off with the Epson XP-800, if only because it costs less. On the other hand, if you need high-quality color photos, aren't too concerned about other kinds of output, and can also take advantage of the long list of MFP features the printer offers, the Epson Expression Photo XP-850 Small-in-One can be a compelling choice.
More Multi-function Printer Reviews:
??? Epson Expression Photo XP-850 Small-in-One
??? Canon imageClass D530 Multifunction Copier
??? Epson WorkForce WF-3540
??? Canon Pixma MG6320 Wireless Photo All-in-One Printer
??? Dell C1765nfw Color Multifunction Printer
?? more
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/-6LvewN8zS0/0,2817,2414501,00.asp
2012 dunk contest edgar vs henderson berkshire hathaway ufc 144 james jones james jones aladdin
HTC Droid DNA?s 1,080P Display Outduels Galaxy S III, iPhone 5 Screens
Smartphone shoppers the last few years have become much more savvy when comparing potential purchases. The typical smartphone purchaser understands designations such as pixel density and resolution, dual versus quad core processors, what RAM memory actually means, and other technical information. The last year really saw a huge uptick in both display size and resolution on our smartphones, and in an attempt to create a signature phone, smartphone manufacturer HTC released the powerful and full-featured Droid DNA 4G at the end of 2012.
The HTC Droid DNA is available for a reduced sale price now starting at $99.99.
Running on the Verizon Wireless 4G LTE system in the US, the handset arrived on November 21 right in time for the holiday shopping season. The handset runs Android?s 4.1 Jelly Bean operating system with the popular HTC Sense 4+ UI overlay, and takes display clarity and resolution on mobile handsets to a new high. The HTC Droid DNA 4G arrives in a slim, light and tough polycarbonate unibody with distinctive red side grills and ultra-matte finish that make for a very sleek and attractive handset. But it is the large, high-resolution 5.0 inch screen that raises the bar for the entire smartphone marketplace.
When you see the designation HD applied to a smartphone, it means that display is either 720P (true HD) or 1,080P (full HD). And any time you see a pixel density (the amount of pixels located over every inch of display space) over 300, you are going to be looking at a very attractive display. The Samsung Galaxy S III delivers a huge 4.80 inch screen with 720P display and generous 306 ppi pixel density. The best-selling iPhone 5 offers a smaller 4.0 inch display, but pixel density runs high at 326 ppi. The HTC Droid DNA runs an incredible and industry-leading 441 ppi, giving its massive 5.0 inch screen a full HD 1,080P resolution (1,080 x 1,920 pixels).
The Taiwan based manufacturer?s Droid DNA 4G even packs a free HD video game on board, in Reign of Amira. Firing up that game on the large high-resolution display which is supported by an Adreno 320 graphics processor, 1.5 GHz quad core central processor and 2.0 GB of RAM memory really illustrates how impressive the ImageChip ISP S-LCD 3 display is. The 5.0 inch screen is built from edge to edge and corner to corner, making for the smallest possible footprint.
At 0.38 inches (9.73 mm), the Droid DNA 4G is slim, and the display is protected by a layer of Gorilla Glass. A full 12.6 hours of talk time is provided from a single charge, and 16 GB of storage are built-in. Built into the back of the handset is an 8.0 megapixel camcorder capable of 1,080P HD video recording, and the exclusive Beats Audio sound package joins a YouTube video player and built-in music player in the handset?s multimedia suite.
You can purchase the HTC Droid DNA at a discounted price tag now starting at $99.99.
carmelo anthony nurse jackie nurse jackie peeps nhl playoffs masters 2012 masters
Ga. car tax law makes leasing less attractive | Online Athens
Ga. car tax law makes leasing less attractive
ATLANTA ? A new law on Georgia car taxes has made leasing a vehicle a less attractive and more expensive option than buying a car outright.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (http://bit.ly/Uzy1FH) reports a bill that eliminated the birthday tax on new cars does not account for car leases ? which represent about 42 percent of new car transactions in the state.
After March 1, consumers who buy new cars will pay a single 6.5 percent sales tax at the time of purchase. Consumers who lease cars will pay the same 6.5 percent title tax as people who buy cars outright, but will also have to continue paying monthly sales taxes in the jurisdiction in which they leased the car.
The Georgia law may be the first of its kind, said Danielle Fagre, senior vice president of the American Financial Services Association, whose members include lease-financing companies.
"We don't know any other state that treats leases negatively compared to purchases from a tax perspective," Fagre added. He said Georgia has a higher rate of leases than most other states. The national car-leasing average is about 17 percent compared to 42 percent in Georgia, according to Experian Automotive.
The newspaper reports state lawmakers will likely tweak the-car tax bill this year.
"Almost every time, there will be one or two or three things that will wind up with unintended consequences, and things not turn out the way we had intended to at the time," said Rep. Mickey Channell, R-Greensboro. "The car title thing is certainly one of them."
Rep. Tom Rice, R-Norcross, has filed proposed legislation aimed at addressing the issue by lowering the initial title tax on leased cars to 4 percent. However, the proposed legislation would not address the monthly sales tax, and Rice says the Legislature may struggle to help cities and counties recover projected revenue losses from the elimination of the birthday tax.
"We need to ensure there's enough revenue on these vehicles to make up for the lost (birthday tax)," Rice said. "That's why there's any title fee on leased vehicles at all."
Source: http://onlineathens.com/breaking-news/2013-01-29/ga-car-tax-law-makes-leasing-less-attractive
meghan mccain wilson chandler bristol motor speedway prometheus grand canyon skywalk tonga pid
BlackBerry Z10 spotted at retailers prior to BB10 event
Looks like retailers might be jumping the gun a bit on the about-to-be-announced BlackBerry Z10 smartphone ahead of the upcoming event. Twitter user @bandozer spotted one at a UK Phones4U retailer and managed to snap a pic (after the break), saying that "it looks and feels good," while our own tipster forwarded us the above image that came from another store. Looks like the only thing that'll stop the numerous leaks is when RIM finally announces the darned thing -- sometime in the next hour or two.
[Thanks, Anonymous]
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, RIM
Via: The Verge
Source: @Bandozer (Twitter)
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/01/30/blackberry-z10-spotted-at-uk-retailer-prior-to-bb10-event/
Dictionary.com Chicago teachers strike september 11 2001 september 11 2001 blake lively serena williams Espn Fantasy Football
NASA to launch ocean wind monitor to space station
Jan. 29, 2013 ? In a clever reuse of hardware originally built to test parts of NASA's QuikScat satellite, the agency will launch the ISS-RapidScat instrument to the International Space Station in 2014 to measure ocean surface wind speed and direction.
The ISS-RapidScat instrument will help improve weather forecasts, including hurricane monitoring, and understanding of how ocean-atmosphere interactions influence Earth's climate.
"The ability for NASA to quickly reuse this hardware and launch it to the space station is a great example of a low-cost approach that will have high benefits to science and life here on Earth," said Mike Suffredini, NASA's International Space Station program manager.
ISS-RapidScat will help fill the data gap created when QuikScat, which was designed to last two years but operated for 10, stopped collecting ocean wind data in late 2009. A scatterometer is a microwave radar sensor used to measure the reflection or scattering effect produced while scanning the surface of Earth from an aircraft or a satellite.
NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have studied next-generation replacements for QuikScat, but a successor will not be available soon. To meet this challenge cost-effectively, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and the agency's station program proposed adapting leftover QuikScat hardware in combination with new hardware for use on the space station.
"ISS-RapidScat represents a low-cost approach to acquiring valuable wind vector data for improving global monitoring of hurricanes and other high-intensity storms," said Howard Eisen, ISS-RapidScat project manager at JPL. "By leveraging the capabilities of the International Space Station and recycling leftover hardware, we will acquire good science data at a fraction of the investment needed to launch a new satellite."
ISS-RapidScat will have measurement accuracy similar to QuikScat's and will survey all regions of Earth accessible from the space station's orbit. The instrument will be launched to the space station aboard a SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft. It will be installed on the end of the station's Columbus laboratory as an autonomous payload requiring no interaction by station crew members. It is expected to operate aboard the station for two years.
ISS-RapidScat will take advantage of the space station's unique characteristics to advance understanding of Earth's winds. Current scatterometer orbits pass the same point on Earth at approximately the same time every day. Since the space station's orbit intersects the orbits of each of these satellites about once every hour, ISS-RapidScat can serve as a calibration standard and help scientists stitch together the data from multiple sources into a long-term record.
ISS-RapidScat also will collect measurements of Earth's global wind field at all times of day for all locations. Variations in winds caused by the sun can play a significant role in the formation of tropical clouds and tropical systems that play a dominant role in Earth's water and energy cycles. ISS-RapidScat observations will help scientists understand these phenomena better and improve weather and climate models.
The ISS-RapidScat project is a joint partnership of JPL and NASA's International Space Station Program Office at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, with support from the Earth Science Division of the Science Mission Directorate in Washington.
For more on NASA's scatterometry missions, visit: http://winds.jpl.nasa.gov/index.cfm . For more information about the International Space Station, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/station .
You can follow JPL News on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/nasajpl and on Twitter at: http://www.twitter.com/nasajpl . The California Institute of Technology in Pasadena manages JPL for NASA.
Share this story on Facebook, Twitter, and Google:
Other social bookmarking and sharing tools:
Story Source:
The above story is reprinted from materials provided by NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/130129151735.htm
huntingtons disease rob the firm new york philharmonic marines urinating on taliban critics choice awards super pac
FMYI Converts To Twitter Bootstrap To Simplify Social Network Development
Last week I stopped by the offices of FMYI, a small Portland-based company that is one of the first enterprise social networks to use?Twitter Bootstrap.Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/PQxDWbm2hRs/
sasquatch david choe national wear red day gunner kiel gunner kiel groundhog soulja boy
Regular travellers most likely to 'go rogue' | Buying Business Travel
Frequent business travellers are more likely to ?go rogue? and book travel outside their corporate travel programme, according to new research by technology firm Amadeus.
Amadeus UK commissioned ICM Research to survey more than 400 business travellers in the UK and Ireland who work for large companies and are regularly road warriors.
The report, entitled?Amadeus Business Travel Insights: the 21st?Century Business Traveller, found that one-third of travellers had booked their own travel arrangements during last year but this went up to 51 per cent for those who made 11 or more trips in 2012. There were also 18 per cent who booked out of programme at least five times during the year.
There were also mixed signals for travel managers with only 51 per cent of travellers fully understanding their companies? corporate travel policy while 47 per cent said that their travel departments ?neither helped nor hindered their business?. Another 15 per cent said that travel managers actually ?hindered their ability to do business?.
The report found that 66 per cent of travellers could now use online booking tools to arrange their trips but only 34 per cent were currently able to book travel through their smartphones or tablet devices, such as iPads.
Other findings from the survey were that 51 per cent of respondents had to make changes to their travel plans during 2012 with 37 per cent having to change flights while on the road.
Diane Bouzebiba, Amadeus? UK and Ireland managing director, said: ?These findings clearly identify opportunities for travel departments to introduce new services and technologies that will deliver additional value to travellers.
?Over the course of this year, a particular priority for Amadeus UK is to help corporate travel departments better understand the emerging needs of the 21st century business traveller.?
The majority of travellers (62 per cent) also put convenience as their top priority when travelling ahead of costs (22 per cent) and comfort (15 per cent).
Just under a third of travellers (32 per cent) also said they wanted to have the ability to combine their business travel with holidays by extending their trips at their own cost.
Amadeus will be officially launching the report at next week's Business Travel Show with a keynote address on Tuesday 5 February at 13.30.
Source: http://buyingbusinesstravel.com/news/2920290-regular-travellers-most-likely-go-rogue
cruise ship sinking vernon davis starship troopers starship troopers cruise ship italy patriots broncos game saints
Scouts' future uncertain if ban on gays is dropped
NEW YORK (AP) ? The Boy Scouts of America's proposed move away from its no-gays membership policy has outraged some longtime admirers, gratified many critics and raised intriguing questions about the iconic organization's future.
Will the Scouts now be split between troops with gay-friendly policies and those that keep the ban? What will a National Jamboree be like if it brings together these disparate groups with conflicting ideologies? Will the churches long devoted to scouting now be torn by internal debate over the choices that may lie ahead?
A top official of the Southern Baptist Convention, whose conservative churches sponsor hundreds of Scout units that embrace the ban, was among those alarmed that the BSA is proposing to allow sponsoring organizations to decide for themselves whether to admit gays as scouts and adult leaders.
"We understand that we are now a minority, that it is not popular to have biblical values, not popular to take stands that seem intolerant," said Frank Page, president of the SBC's executive committee. "This is going to lead to a disintegration of faith-based values."
Page had been scheduled to speak in July at the Scouts' National Jamboree in West Virginia, and he's now apprehensive there could be conflict as troops with differing policies converge. Asked if he might decide not to speak, Page said he would pray about it.
Of the more than 110,000 scouting units across the U.S., nearly 70 percent are chartered by religious organizations. Some were pleased by the proposed change, others were troubled.
Triggering the angst was the Boy Scouts' announcement Monday that it was considering replacing its long-standing ban on gays with a policy that would let troop sponsors make their own decisions. The change is expected to be discussed next week at a meeting of the BSA's national executive board.
The ban on gays, which the U.S. Supreme Court upheld as constitutional in 2000, has provoked a multitude of protest campaigns over the years. Numerous Scout councils and Scout leaders have expressed disagreement with the policy, and some corporate donors last year said they were suspending gifts to the BSA until the policy changed.
One of these companies, New Jersey-based drug-maker Merck & Co., said Tuesday it was pleased the BSA was reconsidering its position, but declined further comment.
Another form of protest involved Eagle Scouts who returned their medals and badges to Boy Scout headquarters. Among them was Nate May, a 25-year-old musician from Huntington, W.Va., who depicted the Scouts' new proposal as "a step in the right direction."
Later this year, more than 40,000 Scouts from across the country are expected to participate in the annual National Jamboree at a 10,600-acre site being built in southern West Virginia.
If the new policy is in place by then, May said, there could be some teasing and hurt feelings as gays make their public debut at the Jamboree. But overall, he predicted a positive experience.
"It would potentially open up some really interesting dialogues," May said. "I think it will probably show troops that continue to have the ban that a troop can exist in harmony, even with gays in it."
In Philadelphia, scoutmaster Ann Perrone said she's spent the past 13 years fighting the ban by writing letters, speaking out and wearing gay-rights rainbow symbols.
"I've done everything I can think of to make a local difference," Perrone said. "I'm really thrilled."
Perrone, an African-American, said she benefited from white support for the civil rights movement and now, as a straight woman, sees a chance to help expand the rights of gays and lesbians.
She said the proposed change could prompt some churches to cut ties with Scouting, but suggested other congregations will step up to fill the gaps.
"This is something that will probably flare up and, if handled properly, will be allowed to die down," Perrone said.
The no-gays policy has fueled a protracted legal fight in Philadelphia. The Scouts' Cradle of Liberty Council has used a city-owned building rent-free for decades, and officials have been trying to evict them because the ban violates a local anti-discrimination law. A federal jury ruled in favor of the Scouts, but the city has appealed.
In North Carolina, news of the possible policy change was welcomed ? cautiously ? by Matt Comer of Charlotte, who said he was forced out of his Boy Scout troop at the age of 14 after troop leaders confronted him over being gay.
"It was very intimidating," said Comer, now 26. "The scoutmaster said, 'If you choose to live that lifestyle, you choose not to be a Boy Scout.'"
"I lost a lot of good friends when I had to leave," Comer said. "I really did enjoy Scouts. I wanted to get my Eagle Scout and go on to be a Scout leader."
Now, he has mixed views about the proposed change, and anticipates there could be problems when troops with different stances mingle at jamborees and summer camps.
He also questioned whether adult leaders would have the necessary training and insight to deal well with gay scouts who come out if the ban is eased.
In Durham, N.C., the proposed change prompted some careful moral calculations by the Rev. Allen Jones, associate minister of Antioch Baptist Church and scoutmaster of the church-sponsored Troop 481.
"Personally, I believe homosexuality is a sin and you can go to hell for it," Jones said. "But the Gospel also speaks to the inclusion and acceptance of people with a cross to bear. If someone openly gay comes in and wants to participate, then that's between them and God. We're not going to discriminate."
Two of the biggest sponsors are the Mormons' Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, whose units serve roughly 420,000 scouts, and the Roman Catholic Church, which serves about 280,000 Scouts. Mormon and Catholic leaders, who have signaled support for the no-gays policy in the past, declined any official response to Monday's announcement of the possible change.
"We've had 100 years of a very conservative approach to scouting," said Kay Godfrey, a spokesman for Boy Scouts in the Great Salt Lake Council. "A major shift along these lines could change the face of scouting, but we'll have to just wait and see."
Scott Barr, a scoutmaster in McKinney, Texas, said his Mormon-chartered troop would likely wait for guidance from the national Mormon church.
"I don't know what the position would be," said Barr, who's been involved in scouting for 25 years. "I wouldn't even dare to speculate."
The Assemblies of God, one of the largest Pentecostal denominations, said it was "saddened and disappointed" by the proposed change.
"Homosexual behavior contradicts biblical teachings and God's created order for the family and human relationships," said the Rev. George O. Wood, the denomination's leader. "We pray BSA will give careful consideration to this matter and hold firm to the beliefs that have made it a strong and influential organization for more than 100 years."
The United Methodist Church, the second largest sponsor of Scout units after the Mormons, expressed support for the change ? saying it was in line with church policy opposing discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.
News of the proposed change came just ahead of "Scout Sunday" next weekend ? an annual event in which churches across the nation have special worship services and luncheons to honor scouts.
Frank Page, the Southern Baptist leader, said that proposing the policy change so close to Scout Sunday is causing a lot of consternation.
"Churches have not had time to think and pray and consider this," he said.
Page said all Southern Baptist churches are independent and can set their own policies, but he expects the SBC executive committee to discuss the issue and possibly offer a resolution when it meets in Nashville in mid-February.
Some conservative activists sought to organize e-mail and phone call campaigns aimed at pressuring the Boy Scouts to maintain the mandatory no-gays policies.
Among them was John Stemberger, a former scout and now president of the conservative Florida Family Policy Council.
"If the BSA departs from its policies on allowing openly homosexual scoutmasters and boys in the program it could destroy the legitimacy and the security of this iconic institution," Stemberger wrote to his supporters. "I pray that the BSA does not open a can of worms that would cause a mass exodus from a program that America needs now more than ever."
More optimistic was another former scout, Jay Mechling, who is professor emeritus of American Studies at the University of California, Davis, and author of "On My Honor: Boy Scouts and the Making of American Youth."
"If the BSA makes this move, which I dearly hope they will, the world will not end," Mechling said in an e-mail. "People will hardly notice."
___(equals)
Associated Press writers Travis Loller in Nashville, Tenn.; Nomaan Merchant in Dallas, Kathy Matheson in Philadelphia, Mike Biesecker in Raleigh, N.C., Brady McCombs in Salt Lake City and John Raby in Charleston, W.Va., contributed to this report.
___(equals)
Boy Scouts: http://www.scouting.org/
___(equals)
David Crary can be reached at http://twitter.com/CraryAP
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/scouts-future-uncertain-ban-gays-dropped-211234480.html
space weather sunspots pac 12 tournament sun storm tri international criminal court ios 5.1
Drill reaches deep Antarctic lake
28 January 2013
Last updated at 06:12 ET
An American attempt to bore down into Lake Whillans, a body of water buried almost 1km under the Antarctic ice, has achieved its aim.
Scientists reported on Sunday that sensors on their drill system had noted a change in pressure, indicating contact had been made with the lake.
A camera was then sent down to verify the breakthrough.
The Whillans project is one of a number of such ventures trying to investigate Antarctica's buried lakes.
In December, a British team abandoned its efforts to get into Lake Ellsworth after encountering technical difficulties.
The Russians have taken water samples from Lake Vostok, although they have yet to report any big discoveries.
Lake Whillans is sited in the west of Antarctica, on the southeastern edge of the Ross Sea.
It is less of a lake and more of a dense system of streams, almost like a delta, that covers some 60 square km. The liquid body is quite shallow - just a few metres in depth.
The Whillans Ice Stream Subglacial Access Research Drilling (Wissard) team has been using a hot-water drill to melt a 30cm-diameter hole through the overlying ice.
Breakthrough to the lake surface was reported on the project's website.
The intention, now that the hole is secure, is to lower various sampling tools and sensors into the lake to study its properties and environment.
Some of the samples will be assessed onsite at the ice surface in temporary labs, and others will be returned to partner universities for more extensive analysis.
The Wissard blog said the thickness of the overlying ice was measured to be 801m, which agreed well with the estimates from seismic imaging.
More than 300 large bodies of water have now been identified under the White Continent.
They are kept liquid by geothermal heat and pressure, and are part of a vast and dynamic hydrological network at play under the ice sheet.
Some of the lakes are connected, and will exchange water. But some may be completely cut off, in which case their water could have been resident in one place for thousands of years, and that means they probably play host to microorganisms unknown to modern science.
The Whillans area is not as deep as either Vostok (4km) or Ellsworth (3km), and its water is exchanged frequently by the under-ice streams over months and years.
Indeed, satellite measurements have revealed the lake rapidly filling and draining. This was evident from measurements of the height of the overlying ice surface, which raised itself in response to an increase in water volume, and then slumped down as the water spread to a new location.
Scientists are keen to study Antarctica's subglacial hydrological systems because liquid water beneath the ice sheet will influence its movement (the ice above Lake Whillans is moving at about 300m per year). Modelling the sheet's long-term stability in a warming world has to take this into account.
These under-ice environments may also provide fascinating insights into the potential habitability of some moons in the Solar System.
Europa, a satellite of Jupiter, and Enceladus, which orbits Saturn, both have large volumes of liquid water buried beneath their icy crusts.
Astrobiologists think such moons are promising places to go look for extra-terrestrial microorganisms.
Dr David Pearce from the UK's Ellsworth team described the Whillans breakthrough as "exciting".
"I always viewed the projects as very complementary," the British Antarctic Survey researcher told BBC News.
"The Ellsworth project was very much in the Trans-Antarctic Mountains, at the highest point. Vostok was on the plateau region in the central East Antarctic, and the Whillans project was towards the coast in a delta region; and between the three projects, they would have given us a really good understanding of what's happening under the ice," he explained.
"We'll need to wait to see what they find [at Whillans], but it wouldn't surprise me if there were marine organisms or evidence of marine incursion. If Whillans is open to the marine system, it is open to incursion."
Jonathan.Amos-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk and follow me on Twitter: @BBCAmos
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21231380#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa
morosini death jacoby ellsbury jacoby ellsbury lionel richie kenny rogers avatar the last airbender david wright
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)