TOKYO??(AFP) ? The US?s top military officer said in Japan Thursday that his troops were ready to act if North Korea turned its increasingly bellicose rhetoric into action.
?We are seeking to deter North Korea from provocation,? General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told soldiers at the Yokota Air Base, about an hour?s drive west of the Japanese capital.
?I can assure you that we are postured with our Japanese allies in order to protect our citizens, their citizens, our facilities, their facilities.?
Dempsey?s remarks follow a visit to South Korea and China, North Korea?s chief ally, as regional tensions rise over fears about Pyonyang?s recent threats to attack its southern neighbour and wage nuclear war on the United States.
The Korean peninsula was already engulfed in a cycle of escalating tensions ? triggered by the North?s nuclear test in February ? when Pyongyang decided on April 3 to block all South Korean access to the Kaesong industrial zone, a rare joint project between the two countries.
Dempsey, who has also met with Chinese military officials and President Xi Jinping, said the US wanted closer ties with Beijing.
But he reiterated earlier official remarks that the US would defend Japan if it came under attack ? as Beijing and Tokyo remain embroiled in an increasingly bitter territorial dispute.
?The theme (of talks with Chinese officials) was that we both aspired to a new, different and better relationship,? Dempsey said.
?But that relationship has to be approached in the context of our other responsibilities, and alliances in the region.
?Will we trade off our relationship with Japan in order to have stronger relationship with China? The answer is no. That?s not going to change.?
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe vowed Tuesday to ?expel by force? any Chinese landing on a chain of islands in the East China Sea, which are administered by Japan as the Senkakus but also claimed by Beijing as the Diaoyus.
His statement came after a flotilla of eight Chinese government vessels sailed into the disputed waters, the biggest number to do so in one day since Tokyo?s nationalisation of some of the islands in September.
The US is engaged in a ?pivot? to Asia after years of conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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Nowadays we're spoiled with options in the Bluetooth speaker market, and many of the high-end ones -- especially those from Soundfreaq and Nokia -- even feature dual-system streaming (DSS) that lets one speaker pair with another to enable true stereo playback. But if you already have a pair of old but nice-sounding speakers with 3.5mm input on both, then here's a quick and easy way to add Bluetooth to them. Dubbed Vertus, this Kickstarter project features the above pair of receivers based on CSR's TrueWireless Stereo, a nifty technology that's been made available since early 2009.
Similar to any DSS system, one of the Vertus dongles (the right channel, in this case) acts as the master to receive the stereo stream from a Bluetooth source, and then it'd throw the left-channel stream to the other dongle. So provided that your speakers have their own power source, it's just a matter of charging these aluminum dongles up (a single charge lasts up to 10 hours), plugging them in and then pairing the right receiver with your audio source. Simple! That said, at $120 this kit may struggle to gain traction in retail, so hopefully the audio quality will somewhat justify the price. Introductory video after the break.
Auburn Seminary recognizes leaders healing the world; honorees to lead panel discussion on need for moral economy.
New York, NY (PRWEB) April 25, 2013
WHAT: Auburn Theological Seminary is honoring Lauren Bush Lauren, CEO and Co-Founder, FEED Projects; Sister Simone Campbell, SSS, Executive Director of NETWORK, a National Catholic Social Justice Lobby in Washington, D.C. and leader of NETWORK?S ?Nuns on the bus? tours, and Congresswoman Tammy Duckworth, U.S. Representative for Illinois? 8th Congressional District for their ongoing pursuits of social justice that cross boundaries and unite faiths.
Auburn will also honor three young members of its Face to Face | Faith to Faith program, which has brought together hundreds of Christian, Jewish and Muslim teenagers from Northern Ireland, the Middle East, South Africa and the U.S. to develop a new generation of leaders able to negotiate a multifaith global society.
Following the awards ceremony, honorees will lead a provocative panel discussion, ?Building a Moral Economy with Resources for All.? During the conversation, the honorees will discuss the need to protect human dignity and to bring strength to the vulnerable among us. Given the ongoing national debates about immigration, the federal budget and deficit and even food assistance for the poor, this promises to be a timely conversation. The Rev. Dr. Welton Gaddy, host of the weekly nationally broadcast radio show State of Belief, will moderate.????
WHEN and WHERE: 7 a.m. to 10:30 a.m., May 1 at Cipriani 42nd Street, 110 E. 42nd Street, New York.
WHY IT?S IMPORTANT: This year, women and young leaders shaped the public discourse on pivotal social issues like equality and gender issues, a moral economy and ending hunger and poverty, and propelled justice-minded candidates to victory. The important multifaith work of women and young people is critical to advancing social justice, but these leaders are seldom recognized for their work, particularly women. The Lives of Commitment ceremony is on opportunity to underscore the incredible work happening across faiths and the world.
ABOUT THE HONOREES:
Lauren Bush Lauren is the CEO and Co-Founder of FEED Projects, a charitable company with a mission to create good products that help feed the world. Sales of FEED products support the UN World Food Programme and UNICEF and have provided nearly 60 million school meals to children worldwide. Lauren has visited many countries to learn firsthand about the realities of poverty and hunger, which inspired her to design the initial FEED bag in 2005.
Sister Simone Campbell, SSS, a Sister of Social Service, is Executive Director of NETWORK, a National Catholic Social Justice Lobby in Washington, D.C. and leader of NETWORK?S ?Nuns on the bus? tours. She is a religious leader, attorney and poet with extensive experience in public policy and advocacy for systemic change. Last year, she led the ?Nuns on the Bus? tour to highlight the work Catholic Sisters do to meet the needs of people at the economic margins.
Congresswoman Tammy Duckworth is an Iraq War Veteran and the first Asian-American woman elected to Congress from Illinois. She was awarded a Purple Heart for combat injuries sustained during Operation Iraqi Freedom. As Director of the Illinois Department of Veterans Affairs and as Assistant Secretary of Veterans Affairs she implemented many first-in-the-nation programs, including those combating post-traumatic stress disorder among vets and addressing the unique challenges facing female veterans.
Salem Abdelrhman was a participant in the Face to Face | Faith to Faith Jerusalem program in 2004. He enjoys exploring how music crosses boundaries and helps people think about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in a new way.
Miki Joelson co-facilitated the Face to Face | Faith to Faith Jerusalem program in 2011 and 2012. She takes pride in combining the study of her Jewish heritage with contemporary Israeli-Palestinian dialogue.
Alexander Posner was a participant in the Face to Face | Faith to Faith program in 2012. He has also teamed with ?Magicians Without Borders? to bring entertainment to hospitalized veterans.
AVAILABLE FOR INTERVIEWS: Auburn Seminary President the Rev. Dr. Katharine Rhodes Henderson and Sister Simone Campbell, SSS are available for interviews. Please contact Erin White, erin(at)caminopr(dot)com or 212.255.2575, for scheduling.
QUOTES:
?It is an honor to take part in Auburn Seminary?s 17th Annual Lives of Commitment Awards Benefit Breakfast. Auburn seminary has played a vital role in bringing people of all faiths together to achieve social justice. I admire and support how Auburn equips leaders with the tools and resources they need to bridge religious divides and strengthen our communities.? ? Congresswoman Tammy Duckworth
?My experience is that the Holy Spirit is alive and well and making mischief! It is this surprising Spirit that stirred up the opportunity for Nuns on the Bus! I am honored, humbled and grateful that the living God is so alive in these challenging times and that we can respond with our part to God?s call to do justice.? ? Sister Simone Campbell, SSS
"Auburn does amazing work to unite people from all faiths to take action in social justice campaigns. Auburn?s work represents the best of what religion teaches us to do. For my part, I was motivated to start FEED after seeing the realities of hunger and poverty that so many live in around the world. It is unacceptable to me that some do not have even the most basic human necessities ? food and clean water ? and I have seen many religious groups around the world unite around helping with this very important issue." ? Lauren Bush Lauren
Erin White Auburn Theological Seminary (212) 255-2575 Email Information
LONDON (AP) ? Remember when tweeting was for the birds?
The BBC is hoping to revive that simpler time with "Tweet of the Day" ? an early-morning radio program dedicated to British birdsong.
Veteran naturalist David Attenborough will host the 90-second show, which will feature the song of a different bird each weekday, along with background on the species' behavior and habits.
The show on the BBC's main speech station, Radio 4, may be best appreciated by those who rise with the birds. "Tweet of the Day" will be broadcast at 5:58 a.m.
The BBC said Wednesday that 265 different birds will be featured during the year-long series, which begins next month with a recording of the cuckoo. Attenborough will host for the first month, and be followed by other BBC presenters.
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Among young women diagnosed with breast cancer, black and Hispanic patients were more likely to wait weeks for treatment, in a new study from California.
Researchers found treatment delays were also more common among poor women and those without private insurance - and that a woman's chance of surviving at least five years after cancer surgery was lower when it was put off.
"This study adds to a number of other studies that have also documented treatment delays that are patterned by race or socioeconomic status," said Sam Harper, who has studied racial differences in breast cancer diagnosis and survival at McGill University in Montreal.
"What the study does identify is that there are differences? the study really can't tell us much about why that's occurring," he told Reuters Health.
For example, Harper said, it's possible minority patients are sicker than whites, on average, and doctors wait to treat them for good reason. Or, poor women may have more trouble taking time off from work and getting to their appointments.
"Of course, there's the potential for discrimination in treatment," said Harper, who wasn't involved in the new research. "I think that's what's most concerning about findings like this."
For their study, Hoda Anton-Culver from the University of California, Irvine, and colleagues analyzed records of 8,860 women age 15 to 39 that were diagnosed with breast cancer in 1997 through 2006. Although cancer is rare in that age group - accounting for 5 to 6 percent of all breast cancers - it's typically more aggressive than in older women, the researchers noted.
They found the time between diagnosis and treatment - whether surgery or chemotherapy - was delayed more than six weeks in 8 percent of white women and 15 percent of both Hispanic and black women.
Likewise, between 9 and 10 percent of privately-insured women had their treatment delayed more than six weeks, compared to 18 percent of those who had no insurance or were covered by Medicaid.
And for women treated with surgery, in particular, outcomes were substantially worse after a long delay: 80 percent of those women lived at least five years after surgery, compared to 90 percent of patients who waited less than two weeks for treatment.
Anton-Culver said younger women are a unique group because they're often in between insurances or in between jobs.
"Our healthcare system does not allow for access to healthcare by all people in the same manner," she told Reuters Health.
"Without having a real standard of care (for type of treatment and time to treatment) that the healthcare system is accountable for, you will see those differences."
DIFFERENCES FOR THOSE ON MEDICAID?
In another study published concurrently in JAMA Surgery, researchers from the University of Toledo Medical Center found women with early-stage breast cancer had larger tumors at diagnosis, and were more likely to be treated with breast-removing surgery, if they were covered by Medicaid.
Sixty percent of those women had a mastectomy, compared to 39 percent of patients with private insurance. The National Institutes of Health endorses breast-conserving surgery - rather than mastectomy - for early-stage breast cancer, the team led by Dr. Linda Adepoju noted.
The studies are consistent with prior research which has shown, for example, that black women are more likely to die of breast cancer - in part due to segregation and lower neighborhood and family incomes (see Reuters Health story of March 21, 2012 here: http://reut.rs/GFcJLF ).
However, with so many questions about the potential causes behind disparities in cancer treatment and outcomes, it's hard to know where to go next, Harper noted.
"It really should push us to try to get at some of those questions for understanding: how much of these differences may be due to discrimination, or where people live and access to treatment?" he said.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/K8qAyI JAMA Surgery, online April 24, 2013.
Apr. 24, 2013 ? Researchers have identified a burst of high-energy radiation known as 'dark lightning" immediately preceding a flash of ordinary lightning. The new finding provides observational evidence that the two phenomena are connected, although the exact nature of the relationship between ordinary bright lightning and the dark variety is still unclear, the scientists said.
"Our results indicate that both these phenomena, dark and bright lightning, are intrinsic processes in the discharge of lightning," said Nikolai ?stgaard, who is a space scientist at the University of Bergen in Norway and led the research team.
He and his collaborators describe their findings in an article recently accepted in Geophysical Research Letters -- a journal of the American Geophysical Union.
Dark lightning is a burst of gamma rays produced during thunderstorms by extremely fast moving electrons colliding with air molecules. Researchers refer to such a burst as a terrestrial gamma ray flash.
Dark lightning is the most energetic radiation produced naturally on Earth, but was unknown before 1991. While scientists now know that dark lightning naturally occurs in thunderstorms, they do not know how frequently these flashes take place or whether visible lightning always accompanies them.
In 2006, two independent satellites -- one equipped with an optical detector and the other carrying a gamma ray detector -- coincidentally flew within 300 kilometers (186 miles) of a Venezuelan storm as a powerful lightning bolt exploded within a thundercloud. Scientists were unaware then that a weak flash of dark lightning had preceded the bright lightning.
But last year, ?stgaard and his colleagues discovered the previously unknown gamma ray burst while reprocessing the satellite data. "We developed a new, improved search algorithm?and identified more than twice as many terrestrial gamma flashes than originally reported," said ?stgaard. He and his team detected the gamma ray flash and a discharge of radio waves immediately preceding the visible lightning.
"This observation was really lucky," ?stgaard said. "It was fortuitous that two independent satellites -- which are traveling at 7 kilometers per second (4.3 miles per second) -- passed right above the same thunderstorm right as the pulse occurred." A radio receiver located 3,000 kilometers (1864 miles) away at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina detected the radio discharge.
The satellites' observations combined with radio-wave data provided the information that ?stgaard and his team used to reconstruct this ethereal electrical event, which lasted 300 milliseconds.
?stgaard and his team suspect that the flash of dark lightning was triggered by the strong electric field that developed immediately before the visible lightning. This strong field created a cascade of electrons moving at close to the speed of light. When those relativistic electrons collided with air molecules, they generated gamma rays and lower energy electrons that were the main electric current carrier that produced the strong radio pulse before the visible lightning.
Dark and bright lightning may be intrinsic processes in the discharge of lightning, ?stgaard said, but he stressed that more research needs to be done to elucidate the link.
The European Space Agency is planning on launching the Atmospheric Space Interactions Monitor (ASIM) within the next three years, which will be able to better detect both dark and visible lightning from space, said ?stgaard, who is part of the team that is building the ASIM gamma-ray detector.
Dark lightning has remained a perplexing phenomenon due to scientific limitations and a dearth of measurements, ?stgaard explained.
"Dark lightning might be a natural process of lightning that we were completely unaware of before 1991," he noted. "But it is right above our heads, which makes it very fascinating."
A grant from the European Research Council and the Research Council of Norway funded this research.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by American Geophysical Union.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
N. ?stgaard, T. Gjesteland, B. E. Carlson, A. B. Collier, S. Cummer, G. Lu, H. J. Christian. Simultaneous observations of optical lightning and terrestrial gamma ray flash from space. Geophysical Research Letters, 2013; DOI: 10.1002/grl.50466
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.
Scared that CISPA might pass? The federal government is already using a secretive cybersecurity program to monitor online traffic and enforce CISPA-like data sharing between Internet service providers and the Department of Defense.
The Electronic Privacy Information Center has obtained over 1,000 pages of documents pertaining to the United States government?s use of a cybersecurity program after filing a Freedom of Information Act request, and CNET reporter Declan McCullagh says those pages show how the Pentagon has secretly helped push for increased Internet surveillance.
?Senior Obama administration officials have secretly authorized the interception of communications carried on portions of networks operated by AT&T and other Internet service providers, a practice that might otherwise be illegal under federal wiretapping laws,? McCullagh writes.
That practice, McCullagh recalls, was first revealed when Deputy Secretary of Defense William Lynn disclosed the existence of the Defense Industrial Base (DIB) Cyber Pilot in June 2011. At the time, the Pentagon said the program would allow the government to help the defense industry safeguard the information on their computer systems by sharing classified threat information between the Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security and the Internet service providers (ISP) that keep government contractors online.
?Our defense industrial base is critical to our military effectiveness. Their networks hold valuable information about our weapons systems and their capabilities,? Lynn said. ?The theft of design data and engineering information from within these networks greatly undermines the technological edge we hold over potential adversaries.?
Just last week the US House of Representatives voted in favor of the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, or CISPA ? a legislation that would allow ISPs and private Internet companies across the country like Facebook and Google to share similar threat data with the federal government without being held liable for violating their customers? privacy. As it turns out, however, the DIB Cyber Pilot has expanded exponentially in recent months, suggesting that a significant chunk of Internet traffic is already subjected to governmental monitoring.
In May 2012 less than a year after the pilot was first unveiled, the Defense Department announced the expansion of the DIB program. Then this past January, McCullagh says it was renamed the Enhanced Cybersecurity Services (ECS) and opened up to a larger number of companies ? not just DoD contractors. An executive order signed by US President Barack Obama earlier this year will let all critical infrastructure companies to sign-on to ECS this June, likely in turn bringing on board entities in energy, healthcare, communication and finance.
Although the 1,000-plus pages obtained in the FOIA request haven?t been posted in full on the Web just yet, a sampling of that trove published by EPIC on Wednesday starts to show just exactly how severe the Pentagon?s efforts to eavesdrop on Web traffic has been.
In one document, a December 2011 slideshow on the legal policies and practices regarding the monitoring of Web traffic on DIB-linked systems, the Pentagon instructs the administrators of those third-party computer networks on how to implement the program and, as a result, erode their customers? expectation of privacy.
In one slide, the Pentagon explains to ISPs and other system administrators how to be clear in letting their customers know that their traffic was being fed to the government. Key elements to keep in mind, wrote the Defense Department, was that DIB ?expressly covers monitoring of data and communications in transit rather than just accessing data at rest.?
?[T]hat information transiting or stored on the system may be disclosed for any purpose, including to the government,? it continued. Companies participating in the pilot program were told to let users know that monitoring would exist ?for any purpose,? and that users have no expectation of privacy regarding communications or data stored on the system.
According to the 2011 press released on the DIB Cyber Pilot, ?the government will not monitor, intercept or store any private-sector communications through the program.? In a privacy impact assessment of the ECS program that was published in January by the DHS though, it?s revealed that not only is information monitored, but among the data collected by investigators could be personally identifiable information, including the header info from suspicious emails. That would mean the government sees and stores who you communicate with and what kind of subject lines are used during correspondence.
The DHS says that personally identifiable information could be retained if ?analytically relevant to understanding the cyber threat? in question.
Meanwhile, the lawmakers in Congress that overwhelmingly approved CISPA just last week could arguably use a refresher in what constitutes a cyberthreat. Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) told his colleagues on the Hill that "Recent events in Boston demonstrate that we have to come together as Republicans and Democrats to get this done,? and Rep. Dan Maffei (D-New York) made unfounded claims during Thursday?s debate that the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks is pursuing efforts to ?hack into our nation?s power grid.?
Should CISPA be signed into law, telecommunication companies will be encouraged to share Internet data with the DHS and Department of Justice for so-called national security purposes. But even if the president pursues a veto as his advisers have suggested, McCullagh says few will be safe from this secretive cybersecurity operation already in place.
The tome of FOIA pages, McCullagh says, shows that the Justice Department has actively assisted telecoms as of late by letting them off the hook for Wiretap Act violations. Since the sharing of data between ISPs and the government under the DIB program and now ECS violates federal statute, the Justice Department has reportedly issued an undeterminable number of ?2511 letters? to telecoms: essentially written approval to ignore provisions of the Wiretap Act in exchange for immunity.
"The Justice Department is helping private companies evade federal wiretap laws," EPIC Executive Director Marc Rotenberg tells CNET. "Alarm bells should be going off."
In an internal Justice Department email cited by McCullagh, Associate Deputy Attorney General James Baker is alleged to write that ISPs will likely request 2511 letters and the ECS-participating companies ?would be required to change their banners to reference government monitoring.?
"These agencies are clearly seeking authority to receive a large amount of information, including personal information, from private Internet networks," EPIC staff attorney Amie Stepanovich adds to CNET. "If this program was broadly deployed, it would raise serious questions about government cybersecurity practices."
3D printing service Shapeways has raised a $30 million round led by Andreessen Horowitz. Current investors including Union Square Ventures, Index Ventures, and Lux Capital also chipped in. Chris Dixon, partner at Andreessen Horowitz, is joining the Shapeways Board. The company plans to grow their team and add more factories to allow for more local production of products. “We’ve come a long way with Shapeways,” said co-founder and CEO Peter Weijmarshausen. “We’ve made 3D printing and production really accessible. We’re making 3D printing more relevant to people.” The company currently hosts 10,000 “shops” where 3D designers can sell physical objects that are printed on demand by Shapeways machines. The service stores 1 million products and 60,000 new designs are added monthly. Dixon sees Shapeways as the vanguard of a new industry. “In particular 3D printing is at a point where it’s been used for a long time and at the hobbyist level,” he said. “We’re making kind of a bet now that it’s ready to go more mainstream.” When asked whether they would even invest in a home 3D printer company, Dixon demurred but was still optimistic. “Maybe some day they’ll come down in price. There is value in both the printer model and the service model,” he said. “The Internet has made it easy for a software engineer to become a software entrepreneur,” said Weijmarshausen. “Now we do the same thing for designers. 3D printing is on its way to change the way we think about products.” Dixon himself is a big fan of the service. “I printed out the Inception totem. It’s in my office,” he said. He did not report if it toppled upon spinning.
The MID8065 ($149.99 list) is the tweener of the bunch in?Coby's latest crop of low-cost, Google-certified Android tablets. Sporting an?8-inch screen with a 4:3 aspect ratio, like the Apple iPad, the 8065 eschews the more common 16:9 found on most Android tablets. Otherwise, the MID8065 shares the same internal components as the smaller MID7065?and larger MID1065. As such, expect the same so-so performance coupled with a decent selection of ports, and access to Google Play, which you don't always get with bargain-bin tablets.
Editors' Note: The Coby MID8065 is virtually identical to the?MID7065?and?MID1065?except for screen size and price, so we're sharing a lot of material between these three reviews. That said, we're testing each device separately?and comparing it with the competition in its size/price range.
Design and Features The 8-inch screen and 4:3 aspect ratio may have you thinking iPad mini, but aside from the similar proportions there's really no comparison. The MID8065 is made from nondescript black plastic and is squat and heavy at 8.3 by 6.25 by 0.45 inches (HWD) and 1.07 pounds. It's closer in size to the Amazon Kindle Fire 8.9". Along the right edge are the power plug, 3.5mm headphone jack, micro USB port (for syncing, not charging), and a mini HDMI port. There are Power and Volume buttons along the right side, with a microSD card slot on the left. ?
The 8-inch 1,024-by-768-pixel LCD lies somewhere between the fairly good IPS LCD found on the larger MID1065 and the subpar 7-inch LCD found on the MID7065. It looks reasonably sharp and offers good viewing angles, but like the MID7065, the screen doesn't get all that bright. Colors also tend to show a bluish hue, especially on white backgrounds. It's a much lower quality display than the one found in the Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0, but that tablet is in another stratosphere when it comes to price. The 4:3 aspect ratio is pretty rare for Android devices, and while it's good for browsing desktop websites, apps designed for phones look awkwardly stretched and squat. Apps written for tablets look good.
This is a Wi-Fi only tablet that connects to 802.11b/g/n networks on the 2.4GHz frequency, and you get Bluetooth 2.1, which is a nice bonus for a budget-minded tablet. The MID8065 comes in a single 4GB model, and our 32 and 64GB SanDisk cards worked fine in the tablet's card slot. There's also a 2-megapixel rear-facing camera and a 0.3-megapixel front-facing camera.
Android and Performance The MID8065 is powered by the same dual-core 1.2GHz Amlogic Cortex A9 processor with 1GB RAM and a MALI 400 GPU found in the larger MID1065. It topped the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 (10.1) with its dual-core 1GHz Cortex A9 CPU in our benchmarks, but can't match the Kindle Fire HD 8.9" with its dual-core 1.5GHz TI OMAP4470 CPU.
Coby uses a different touch screen digitizer that doesn't feel quite as imprecise as the one found on the MID1065, so things are less choppy here. Performance is basically equal on all three Coby tablets?there's some occasional lag, but it feels on par with the Galaxy Tab 2. There's a delay between when the Power button is pressed and when the display wakes up.?
Android 4.0 "Ice Cream Sandwich" is now two versions behind the latest 4.2 "Jelly Bean" build, but Coby at least left it unskinned, which makes it appealing to Android purists. Newcomers, however, might be better served by the more polished, easy-to-use custom Android skins like Samsung's TouchWiz or the heavily modified Android featured on Amazon's Kindle Fire tablets. If you're a fan of pure Android, however, you'd be better served by the Google Nexus 7.
For video support, you get Xvid, DivX, MPEG4, H.264, and AVI at up to 1080p resolution. For audio, MP3, AAC, FLAC, OGG, WAV, and WMA are supported. Screen mirroring worked fine using a mini HDMI cable, and the tablet was able to output video at 720p or 1080p resolution. The 2-megapixel rear-facing camera takes pretty abysmal still images and choppy, noise-ridden video. The 0.3-megapixel camera should be strictly reserved for the occasional Skype call and nothing more.
In our battery rundown test, which loops a video with screen brightness set to max and Wi-Fi on, the MID8065 lasted an unimpressive 3 hours, 11 minutes. The Kindle Fire HD 8.9" turned in 7 hours and 14 minutes, while the Nexus 7 lasted 10 hours, 30 minutes in the same test.
Conclusions The MID8065 lands in the middle of the pack of Coby's latest tablets, with the same middling performance, but an unorthodox screen size and aspect ratio. As with the larger MID1065 and smaller MID7065, the MID8065 is simply a serviceable Android tablet for the budget constrained. It's got a better screen than the MID7065, so if you're between those two, the MID8065 is the one to get. Spending $50 more can get you a much better tablet, like the Nexus 7, while stepping up $120 will get the vastly superior Amazon Kindle Fire HD 8.9" that also has four times the internal storage.
NEW YORK (AP) ? Strong earnings from a range of U.S. companies are driving stock prices higher in the early going on Wall Street.
Coach, Travelers and Lockheed Martin were among the winners shortly after the opening bell after the companies reported better results than analysts were expecting.
The Dow Jones industrial average was up 110 points at 14,678 early Tuesday, a gain of 0.8 percent.
Other indexes also rose. The Standard & Poor's 500 index was up 11 points, or 0.7 percent, to 1,573. The Nasdaq composite rose 25 points, or 0.8 percent, to 3,285.
Netflix soared 22 percent to $213 after reporting a big gain in subscribers in the first quarter.
PromiseUp, a new iOS app that sees its full launch today, has a simple but rather lofty mission: To make people keep their promises, and ultimately, make the world a better place. It hopes to achieve this with a mixture of social and gamification in which users earn (or lose) virtual currency depending on whether or not they keep the promises they make to one another.
WEST, Texas (AP) ? Gas tanks damaged by a massive explosion at a Texas fertilizer plant are leaking and have triggered small fires that are keeping displaced residents from returning to see what's left of their homes, officials said Saturday.
The initial blast at the West Fertilizer Co. on Wednesday killed 14 people, injured more than 200 others and damaged or completely destroyed at least 80 homes. The new fires at the site are small, have been contained and have not caused any further injuries, said Bryce Reed, a paramedic and spokesman for the town of West.
The news was another setback for evacuated residents who have waited anxiously to return and assess what remains after the blast. Many are hoping to find key documents such as insurance papers and family records to help with recovery. Others simply hope to reclaim any belongings that might be buried under splintered homes.
Reed said there are dozens of portable, white tanks at the site that are typically filled with anhydrous ammonia from larger storage tanks for when farmers request them. The tanks get weak when they are exposed to fire, he said, and bleed.
"The whole place is still on fire, smoldering, all that kind of stuff. It could spark up," Reed told a hotel lobby crammed with residents waiting to get beyond police blockades to their homes. But, he said, "there isn't really enough structure left to light up and burn."
The tanks are attached to plows pulled by tractors and feed streams of the chemical into the ground as the plow passes to fertilize. Reed said they resemble large, horizontal propane tanks, and told residents to imagine a very big hot water heater.
He told residents, "You're safe where you're at. Otherwise I'd be dragging you out of here myself."
Gene Anderson, 64, said Reed's comments would help avoid panic: "He just nipped it in the bud like it should be."
But closer to the site, things were far more tense. Ron Price, a 53-year-old construction worker, said he approached the police barricade Saturday to check on his son's home, which was damaged in the explosion Wednesday night.
Price said he drove his truck up to the roadblock and was trying to get in when state troopers "came flying down the road" from a half block away and told everyone to get back because there was another chance of explosion. People in their backyards outside the barricade were also told to get back, he said.
"It was pretty scary everybody just jumped and took off running," Price said. "They jumped in their cars and we all started heading back."
Displaced residents have been expressing increasing frustration that the area around the blast site has remained off-limits. Among them was Dorothy Sulak, who lost her home and her job.
Sulak worked as a secretary at the fertilizer plant that exploded in a thunderous fireball. She fled so fast she only had time to leave with the clothes on her back. There's a hole in her roof now, and her medicine, cash, even her glasses are somewhere in the rubble.
"Yes, it's just stuff. But it's my stuff," said Sulak, 71, who used reading glasses to see for three days, but finally got a ride to nearby Waco on Saturday to get fitted for new prescription frames.
The blast, which charred a four-to-five block radius extending from the plant, also smashed an apartment building, schools and a nursing home with its incredible force and fire. Sulak said she had been told that her home on North Reagan Street was so close to the explosion site that she may not be able to return until at least Monday.
The death toll remained steady at 14 and federal and state emergency-response teams that had once been searching for survivors had shifted entirely to recovery efforts.
The cause of the blast is still unknown, although authorities have said it appears to be nothing more than an accident. Franceska Perot, a spokeswoman for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said investigators still were combing through debris.
Ernesto Castro works for a local church and has been allowed past the police barricades to feed investigation teams working inside. He said that if authorities determine homes are structurally sound, they've told him they plan to begin letting residents return in in waves, but only to pick up essentials at first.
"There are people raising all kinds of Cain because they can't get back," Castro said. "But it's not safe yet."
___
Associated Press writer Paul J. Weber in West, Texas, contributed to this report.
UFC on Fox 7 started out with a knockout, followed by a knockout and then a knockout. Before fans at the fights in San Jose had eaten lunch, the competition was already fierce for the Knockout of the Night.
It started with Yoel Romero, an Olympic wrestler who knocked out Clifford Starks with a flying knee 1:32 in the first round.
Anthony Njokuani followed Romero's knockout with a pasting of Roger Bowling. Njokuani ruined Bowling's UFC debut with a second-round KO.
T.J. Dillashaw kept the KO-party going with a knockout of Hugo Viana at 4:22 of the first round. Jorge Masvidal won a bloody technical decision over Tim Means and then the knockout fun started all over again.
Joseph Benavidez dominated Darren Uyenoyama for two rounds, then finished up with a TKO with just 10 seconds left in the second round.
Myles Jury stayed undefeated with a knockout of Ramsey Nijem at 1:02 in the second round. Francis Carmont and Lorenz Larkin broke the KO streak with a decision. The judges saw it 29-28 on all three cards for Carmont, thought Larkin controlled the bout and had stellar takedown defense.
Chad Mendes finished off the knockout-filled preliminary card with a KO of Darren Elkins in 1:08. It's his third straight win since losing to Jose Aldo in his first title shot. After the fight, he asked for another one.
What did you think of the prelims? Speak up on Facebook or in the comments. Get in the fight night conversation by following Cagewriter on Twitter.
Mayo Clinic anesthesiologist earns APS's Walter B. Cannon AwardPublic release date: 20-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Donna Krupa dkrupa@the-aps.org 617-954-3976 Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology
Michael Joyner, M.D., to discuss physiology's enduring relevancy
BOSTONIn the early 1990s, biomedical researchers interested in finding the causes and cures for diseases, were rapidly narrowing their focus from the broad interconnected regulatory networks of the human body to genes. For many years, these small snippets of genetic information seemed to hold the key toward vastly improving human health.
However, in recent years, there's been a reappraisal, says Mayo Clinic anesthesiologist and exercise researcher Michael Joyner, M.D. His work, concentrating on understanding the mechanisms behind a broad array of biomedical experiences linked with health and disease, including blood pressure, blood flow during exercise, and blood sugar control, and the research efforts of many other scientists are now showing that there are many different ways of regulating key bodily functions. Thus, a single genetic glitch within a human network might not be problematic as other elements in the network adapt and compensate for the glitch. This redundancy vastly complicates what some researchers had hoped might be a series of simple, easy to fix, one-gene problems that would explain most diseases.
In honor of his illuminating work and contributions toward advancing physiology as a field, the American Physiological Society (APS) has selected Dr. Joyner to present the Walter B. Cannon Memorial Lecture at the Experimental Biology 2013 meeting (EB 2013). This lecture is the Society's pre-eminent award lecture and is designed to recognize an outstanding scientist for his or her contributions to the field.
Several Systems, One Goal
Dr. Joyner became interested in physiology and medicine after a lackluster start at the University of Arizona in 1977. "I was a terrible student, almost flunking out of college," he says.
A walk-on athlete on the school's track team, Dr. Joyner was asked to volunteer for a physiology study to examine lactate threshold. After visiting the physiology lab several times, he was hooked. His grades rapidly improved, and he decided to attend medical school so he could continue his research on human subjects. Dr. Joyner is now a practicing anesthesiologist in addition to being an exercise physiology researcher. "Exercise and anesthesiology are two sides of the same coin," he explains. Systems that are activated by exercise are turned off by anesthesia, he says.
Looking at these systems broadly, Dr. Joyner and his colleagues have spent decades delving into the mechanisms behind complex phenomena, such as the controls for blood pressure. Dr. Joyner's work has emphasized that blood pressure comes about through many different components, including systems that reside in the kidney, heart, and brain.
"My blood pressure may be the same as yours, but how we each got there could be very different," he says.
Similarly, by using drugs to systematically block factors associated with increased blood flow to skeletal muscles during exercise, Dr. Joyner and his colleagues have shown that many factors are responsible and each explains only a small percentage of changes in blood flow.
"Each set of experiments highlights the redundancy present in the human body," he adds.
Redundant Systems, Not a Redundant Field
"These are very integrated, multicomponent, redundant systems that defy simple genetic or one-off explanations. These complex responses and interactions are a hallmark of physiology," Dr. Joyner explains.
Increasingly, he adds, researchers are discovering that most human disease follows a similar, many-branched pathway, challenging the idea that genetics holds all the answers. Though many universities' physiology departments shrank or disappeared altogether in the last couple of decades, the need for such multi-directional thinking is inspiring a comeback.
"Two decades ago, physiology was seemingly pass. People thought there was nothing left to learn," he says. "But now we're learning that there's danger in reductionist thinking. Physiology has always been non-reductionist. It's an integrated approach to explain things not explainable through reductionism."
Dr. Joyner will discuss his research and the enduring relevancy of physiology when he presents this year's Cannon Lecture, "Is Physiology Redundant?", on Saturday, April 20, 2013 at 5:30 pm at the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center, Room 210.
###
Walter B. Cannon Award Lecture
The Cannon Award lectureship, established in 1982, is the APS' highest award. The individual selected is an outstanding physiological scientist chosen by the President-Elect, with the consent of Council, to lecture on "Physiology in Perspective" during the plenary session of the Society's annual meeting. Since 1984, the presentation has been known as "Physiology in Perspective: The Walter B. Cannon Lecture."
About Experimental Biology 2013
Six scientific societies will hold their joint scientific sessions and annual meetings, known as Experimental Biology, from April 20-24, 2013, in Boston. This meeting brings together the leading researchers from a broad array of life science disciplines. The societies include the American Association of Anatomists (AAA), American Physiological Society (APS), American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB), American Society for Investigative Pathology (ASIP), American Society for Nutrition (ASN), and American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics (ASPET). Additional information about the meeting is online at http://bit.ly/ymb7av.
About the American Physiological Society (APS)
The American Physiological Society (APS) is a nonprofit organization devoted to fostering education, scientific research, and dissemination of information in the physiological sciences. The Society was founded in 1887 and today represents more than 11,000 members and publishes
14 peer-reviewed journals.
NOTE TO EDITORS: To schedule an interview with Dr. Joyner, please contact Donna Krupa at DKrupa@the-aps.org, 301.634.7209 (office) or 703.967.2751 (cell) or @Phyziochick on Twitter.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Mayo Clinic anesthesiologist earns APS's Walter B. Cannon AwardPublic release date: 20-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Donna Krupa dkrupa@the-aps.org 617-954-3976 Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology
Michael Joyner, M.D., to discuss physiology's enduring relevancy
BOSTONIn the early 1990s, biomedical researchers interested in finding the causes and cures for diseases, were rapidly narrowing their focus from the broad interconnected regulatory networks of the human body to genes. For many years, these small snippets of genetic information seemed to hold the key toward vastly improving human health.
However, in recent years, there's been a reappraisal, says Mayo Clinic anesthesiologist and exercise researcher Michael Joyner, M.D. His work, concentrating on understanding the mechanisms behind a broad array of biomedical experiences linked with health and disease, including blood pressure, blood flow during exercise, and blood sugar control, and the research efforts of many other scientists are now showing that there are many different ways of regulating key bodily functions. Thus, a single genetic glitch within a human network might not be problematic as other elements in the network adapt and compensate for the glitch. This redundancy vastly complicates what some researchers had hoped might be a series of simple, easy to fix, one-gene problems that would explain most diseases.
In honor of his illuminating work and contributions toward advancing physiology as a field, the American Physiological Society (APS) has selected Dr. Joyner to present the Walter B. Cannon Memorial Lecture at the Experimental Biology 2013 meeting (EB 2013). This lecture is the Society's pre-eminent award lecture and is designed to recognize an outstanding scientist for his or her contributions to the field.
Several Systems, One Goal
Dr. Joyner became interested in physiology and medicine after a lackluster start at the University of Arizona in 1977. "I was a terrible student, almost flunking out of college," he says.
A walk-on athlete on the school's track team, Dr. Joyner was asked to volunteer for a physiology study to examine lactate threshold. After visiting the physiology lab several times, he was hooked. His grades rapidly improved, and he decided to attend medical school so he could continue his research on human subjects. Dr. Joyner is now a practicing anesthesiologist in addition to being an exercise physiology researcher. "Exercise and anesthesiology are two sides of the same coin," he explains. Systems that are activated by exercise are turned off by anesthesia, he says.
Looking at these systems broadly, Dr. Joyner and his colleagues have spent decades delving into the mechanisms behind complex phenomena, such as the controls for blood pressure. Dr. Joyner's work has emphasized that blood pressure comes about through many different components, including systems that reside in the kidney, heart, and brain.
"My blood pressure may be the same as yours, but how we each got there could be very different," he says.
Similarly, by using drugs to systematically block factors associated with increased blood flow to skeletal muscles during exercise, Dr. Joyner and his colleagues have shown that many factors are responsible and each explains only a small percentage of changes in blood flow.
"Each set of experiments highlights the redundancy present in the human body," he adds.
Redundant Systems, Not a Redundant Field
"These are very integrated, multicomponent, redundant systems that defy simple genetic or one-off explanations. These complex responses and interactions are a hallmark of physiology," Dr. Joyner explains.
Increasingly, he adds, researchers are discovering that most human disease follows a similar, many-branched pathway, challenging the idea that genetics holds all the answers. Though many universities' physiology departments shrank or disappeared altogether in the last couple of decades, the need for such multi-directional thinking is inspiring a comeback.
"Two decades ago, physiology was seemingly pass. People thought there was nothing left to learn," he says. "But now we're learning that there's danger in reductionist thinking. Physiology has always been non-reductionist. It's an integrated approach to explain things not explainable through reductionism."
Dr. Joyner will discuss his research and the enduring relevancy of physiology when he presents this year's Cannon Lecture, "Is Physiology Redundant?", on Saturday, April 20, 2013 at 5:30 pm at the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center, Room 210.
###
Walter B. Cannon Award Lecture
The Cannon Award lectureship, established in 1982, is the APS' highest award. The individual selected is an outstanding physiological scientist chosen by the President-Elect, with the consent of Council, to lecture on "Physiology in Perspective" during the plenary session of the Society's annual meeting. Since 1984, the presentation has been known as "Physiology in Perspective: The Walter B. Cannon Lecture."
About Experimental Biology 2013
Six scientific societies will hold their joint scientific sessions and annual meetings, known as Experimental Biology, from April 20-24, 2013, in Boston. This meeting brings together the leading researchers from a broad array of life science disciplines. The societies include the American Association of Anatomists (AAA), American Physiological Society (APS), American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB), American Society for Investigative Pathology (ASIP), American Society for Nutrition (ASN), and American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics (ASPET). Additional information about the meeting is online at http://bit.ly/ymb7av.
About the American Physiological Society (APS)
The American Physiological Society (APS) is a nonprofit organization devoted to fostering education, scientific research, and dissemination of information in the physiological sciences. The Society was founded in 1887 and today represents more than 11,000 members and publishes
14 peer-reviewed journals.
NOTE TO EDITORS: To schedule an interview with Dr. Joyner, please contact Donna Krupa at DKrupa@the-aps.org, 301.634.7209 (office) or 703.967.2751 (cell) or @Phyziochick on Twitter.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Two hours after the Boston Marathon bombing, suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev tweeted, ?Ain't no love in the heart of the city, stay safe people? ? and a day later said he was ?stress-free.?
The Twitter account (handle: @J_tsar), which borrowed heavily from song lyrics by the likes of Eminem and Jay-Z, ?has not been active since Wednesday, when Tsarnaev?retweeted a post by a Muslim scholar: ?Attitude can take away your beauty no matter how good looking you are or it could enhance your beauty, making you adorable.?
Tsarnaev?s Twitter feed is full of typical teenage banter, pop culture quotes and jokes, but the tweets he made in the days before and after the bombing are now being parsed for extra meaning.
His ?stay safe? tweet -- which drew from the Jay-Z song title "Heart of the City (Ain't No Love)" -- came at 5:34 p.m. on Monday. A few hours later, he followed up with: ?There are people that know the truth but stay silent & there are people that speak the truth but we don't hear them cuz they're the minority.?
On Monday and Tuesday he replied to tweets from other accounts that were protected, so it was unclear what was being discussed.
But Tsarnaev?did make one direct reference to the marathon tragedy, replying to a tweet of a widely-circulated photo that showed a bombing victim on the ground and falsely said the man crouched over her was her boyfriend.
?Fake story? he wrote, without further comment.
In another Tuesday tweet, he used the lyrics of the Eminem rap "Forgot About Dre" to complain: ?Nowadays everybody wanna talk like they got somethin to say but nothin comes out when they move their lips; just a bunch of gibberish?
A few hours later came this declaration: ?I'm a stress free kind of guy.?
The final post came on Wednesday, when he retweeted Mufti Ismail Menk, who describes himself a Muslim scholar who studied in Saudi Arabia but who appeared to be based in Zimbabwe.
ST. LOUIS (AP) ? A powerful spring storm system stretching from southern Texas to northern Michigan unleashed a wave of weather extremes on the Midwest Thursday and threatened to bring its mix of hard rains, high winds and severe thunderstorms to the East by the weekend.
The massive system was wreaking havoc from the Rockies to the Rust Belt. Up to a foot of snow was expected in parts of Minnesota and the Dakotas. Snow and ice closed highways in Colorado and Wyoming. Rivers surged beyond their banks from downpours in Missouri, Iowa and Illinois. Tornadoes caused scattered damage in Oklahoma. Hail caused a wreck that injured a high school teacher and her students. Lightning temporarily knocked out a nuclear power plant. Rain caused a sinkhole that devoured three cars in Chicago.
In the Plains and Midwest, seemingly every community was under some sort of watch or warning.
Alex Sosnowski, a meteorologist for AccuWeather, said the storm's biggest punch had come from its intense rainfall: "There's been a general 3 to 6 inch swath of rain from portions of Oklahoma all the way up to southern Wisconsin."
The system will thin out as it heads east but could still spell trouble in the Appalachian Mountain region Friday and in some spots along the East Coast by Friday night, Sosnowski said.
Midwesterners will be glad to see it go.
In Clarksville, Mo., a small, scenic Mississippi River town about 60 miles north of St. Louis, some 100 people were working feverishly to build a makeshift levee of gravel, plastic overlap and sandbags in a bid keep downtown dry. The heavy rain caused a sudden surge in the river, with a crest expected by early Sunday.
"I'm confident it will work, but I'm not confident we're going to get it done in time," Clarksville resident Richard Cottrell, 64, said of the sandbag levee. "It's a race against the clock."
City Clerk Jennifer Calvin said the Federal Emergency Management Agency was bringing in 500,000 additional sandbags, but the nearest available gravel had to be trucked in from nine miles away, and there weren't enough available trucks to expedite the effort.
The Mississippi is expected to crest 8 to 12 feet above flood stage at several spots in Iowa, Illinois and Missouri. The Missouri River was also expected to exceed flood stage by up to 10 feet at some Missouri locations.
Other rivers were rising quickly, too.
The town of Wyoming, Mich., evacuated about 25 homes in the path of the flooding Grand River. The Grand Rapids suburb called in all available police, firefighters and public works employees to help with sandbagging.
In suburban Chicago, Nick Ariano helped rescue a friend's grandmother, who became trapped in a home filling with water after a branch of the flooding DuPage River spilled over its levee.
Ariano, his friend and another man raced to a sporting goods store to buy inflatable rafts, then paddled out to the home and got Mille Andrzejewski, in her mid-80s, to safety. The three friends got some enjoyment out of the raft ride, despite the eeriness of floating over submerged cars and mailboxes.
"As kids growing up we used to raft down the river," Ariano said with a laugh.
In Gary, Ind., a flood-fighting drill scheduled for Friday was canceled ? because of real flooding. Sandbagging operations were under way along the Little Calumet River.
Flash flooding was common. In Utica, Ill., the fire department evacuated a mobile home park. In Marshall County, Ill., boats were needed to rescue trapped morning commuters.
In Ava, Mo., a school bus carrying several children stopped because of water on the road. The driver turned around to go back, only to find flooding behind him, too. The driver and kids waited at a nearby home until help arrived.
Perhaps the storm's most bizarre scene came in Chicago, where a massive sinkhole opened and swallowed two parked cars and one that was driving through. The driver was hospitalized but was expected to survive.
Flooding from all-night rain storms forced authorities to close sections of several major expressways around Chicago, canceled classes at some schools and scrapped around 550 flights at O'Hare International Airport.
The storm-swollen Chicago River was being allowed to flow into Lake Michigan, in part to relieve sewer backups. Meanwhile, workers were furiously filling sandbags and putting up barricades along the Chicago River's north branch. The river was diverted away from the lake more than a century ago to keep pollution out of the lake, the source of the city's drinking water.
Winds, possibly from a tornado, damaged dozens of homes in Spavinaw, Okla., injuring one person. Another twister damaged a few buildings near Paris, Mo. High winds also blew two tractor-trailers off a highway near Monroe City, Mo.
In Kansas, large hail was blamed for an accident that injured six high school students and their teacher. The Kansas Highway Patrol said the wreck happened Wednesday on Interstate 70 near Russell. The group was returning to school from an art exhibition when the teacher lost control of the SUV and struck a car.
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said a lightning strike knocked out power to a northern Illinois nuclear plant for several hours Wednesday night, but emergency generators kicked in to keep the site running. Exelon Generation said reactors will remain offline until safety checks and procedures are completed.
Up to a foot of new snow was expected in northern Minnesota. Duluth has already received 24 inches of snow this month, and the additional snowfall could push it past the April record of 31.6 inches set in 1950
Snow and ice forced closure of sections of Interstate 70 and Interstate 25 in Colorado. The Wyoming Department of Transportation warned drivers to watch for black ice.
The snow didn't bother 63-year-old Bill Zubke, a retired motivational speaker who was relaxing in the lobby of a downtown Sioux Falls, S.D. Zubke, from Watertown, S.D, described the unpredictable weather as "just April in South Dakota," though temperatures ordinarily reach into the 60 this time of year.
"We're South Dakotans," he said. "We can handle it."
___
Keyser reported from Chicago. Associated Press writers Maria Sudekum in Kansas City, Mo., and Dirk Lammers in Sioux Falls, S.D., contributed to this report.
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Apr. 17, 2013 ? A team of Australian engineers at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) has demonstrated a quantum bit based on the nucleus of a single atom in silicon, promising dramatic improvements for data processing in ultra-powerful quantum computers of the future.
Quantum bits, or qubits, are the building blocks of quantum computers, which will offer enormous advantages for searching expansive databases, cracking modern encryption, and modelling atomic-scale systems such as biological molecules and drugs.
The world-first result, to be published in Nature on April 18, brings these machines one-step closer, describing how information was stored and retrieved using the magnetic spin of a nucleus.
"We have adapted magnetic resonance technology, commonly known for its application in chemical analysis and MRI scans, to control and read-out the nuclear spin of a single atom in real time," says Associate Professor Andrea Morello from the School of Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications at UNSW.
The nucleus of a phosphorus atom is an extremely weak magnet, which can point along two natural directions, either "up" or "down." In the strange quantum world, the magnet can exist in both states simultaneously -- a feature known as quantum superposition.
The natural positions are equivalent to the "zero" and "one" of a binary code, as used in existing classical computers. In this experiment, the researchers controlled the direction of the nucleus, in effect "writing" a value onto its spin, and then "reading" the value out -- turning the nucleus into a functioning qubit.
"We achieved a read-out fidelity of 99.8 per cent, which sets a new benchmark for qubit accuracy in solid-state devices," says UNSW Scientia Professor Andrew Dzurak, who is also Director of the Australian National Fabrication Facility at UNSW, where the devices were made.
The accuracy of the UNSW team's nuclear spin qubit rivals what many consider to be today's best quantum bit -- a single atom in an electromagnetic trap inside a vacuum chamber. The development of this "Ion Trap" technology was awarded the 2012 Nobel Prize in physics.
"Our nuclear spin qubit operates at a similar level of accuracy, but it's not in a vacuum chamber -- it's in a silicon chip that can be wired up and operated electrically like normal integrated circuits," says Morello. "Silicon is the dominant material in the microelectronics industry, which means our qubit is more compatible with existing industry technology and is more easily scaleable."
Morello's PhD student Jarryd Pla is the lead experimental author of the work, which was conducted in collaboration with the groups led by Dzurak and Professor David Jamieson at the University of Melbourne. Morello, Dzurak and Jamieson are all Program Managers in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Quantum Computation and Communication Technology.
In September 2012, the same UNSW team reported in Nature the first functional quantum bit based on an electron bound to a phosphorus atom embedded in silicon, "writing" information onto its spin and then "reading" the spin state back out.
With their latest result, the team has dug even deeper into the atomic structure to manipulate and measure the spin of its nucleus. This is the core of an atom, containing most of its mass, but its diameter is only about one-millionth that of the atom's diameter.
"This means it's more challenging to measure, but it's almost completely immune to disturbances from the outside world, which makes it an exceptional quantum bit," says UNSW engineering PhD student Jarryd Pla. "Our nuclear spin qubit can store information for longer times and with greater accuracy. This will greatly enhance our ability to carry out complex quantum calculations once we put many of these qubits together."
Electron spin qubits will likely act as the main "processor" bits for quantum computers of the future, coupled with other electrons to perform calculations. But nuclear spin qubits could also be integrated and could provide a useful memory function or help implement two-bit logic gates between the electronic qubits, the researchers say.
Demonstrating quantum memories and two-qubit logic gates is the main focus of the UNSW team for the near future. They are also exploring ways of improving the accuracy of their nuclear and electron spin qubits even further, by moving to a purer form of silicon.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of New South Wales, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
Jarryd J. Pla, Kuan Y. Tan, Juan P. Dehollain, Wee H. Lim, John J. L. Morton, Floris A. Zwanenburg, David N. Jamieson, Andrew S. Dzurak, Andrea Morello. High-fidelity readout and control of a nuclear spin qubit in silicon. Nature, 2013; 496 (7445): 334 DOI: 10.1038/nature12011
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.
3D printing service Shapeways has raised a $30 million round led by Andreessen Horowitz. Current investors including Union Square Ventures, Index Ventures, and Lux Capital also chipped in. Chris Dixon, partner at Andreessen Horowitz, is joining the Shapeways Board. The company plans to grow their team and add more factories to allow for more local production of products. “We’ve come a long way with Shapeways,” said co-founder and CEO Peter Weijmarshausen. “We’ve made 3D printing and production really accessible. We’re making 3D printing more relevant to people.” The company currently hosts 10,000 “shops” where 3D designers can sell physical objects that are printed on demand by Shapeways machines. The service stores 1 million products and 60,000 new designs are added monthly. Dixon sees Shapeways as the vanguard of a new industry. “In particular 3D printing is at a point where it’s been used for a long time and at the hobbyist level,” he said. “We’re making kind of a bet now that it’s ready to go more mainstream.” When asked whether they would even invest in a home 3D printer company, Dixon demurred but was still optimistic. “Maybe some day they’ll come down in price. There is value in both the printer model and the service model,” he said. “The Internet has made it easy for a software engineer to become a software entrepreneur,” said Weijmarshausen. “Now we do the same thing for designers. 3D printing is on its way to change the way we think about products.” Dixon himself is a big fan of the service. “I printed out the Inception totem. It’s in my office,” he said. He did not report if it toppled upon spinning.
Anthony Njokuani followed Romero's knockout with a pasting of Roger Bowling. Njokuani ruined Bowling's UFC debut with a second-round KO.
T.J. Dillashaw kept the KO-party going with a knockout of Hugo Viana at 4:22 of the first round. Jorge Masvidal won a bloody technical decision over Tim Means and then the knockout fun started all over again.
Joseph Benavidez dominated Darren Uyenoyama for two rounds, then finished up with a TKO with just 10 seconds left in the second round.
Myles Jury stayed undefeated with a knockout of Ramsey Nijem at 1:02 in the second round. Francis Carmont and Lorenz Larkin broke the KO streak with a decision. The judges saw it 29-28 on all three cards for Carmont, thought Larkin controlled the bout and had stellar takedown defense.
Chad Mendes finished off the knockout-filled preliminary card with a KO of Darren Elkins in 1:08. It's his third straight win since losing to Jose Aldo in his first title shot. After the fight, he asked for another one.![[ Back to EurekAlert! ]](http://www.eurekalert.org/images/back2e.gif){kind=small}
Public release date: 20-Apr-2013
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