Sunday, February 17, 2013

Power restored to most parts of Syrian capital

AMMAN, Jordan (AP) ? A top Syrian government official says electricity has been restored in most parts of the Syrian capital and that power will gradually reach southern areas.

A power outage plunged Damascus into darkness late Saturday. Much of southern Syria, mainly the provinces of Daraa and Sweida, which abut the Jordanian border, also was affected by the outage.

Electricity Minister Imad Khamis told the state news agency, SANA, Sunday that technical teams were working around the clock to restore power in the south. He said electricity was back on in most parts of Damascus.

He blamed the blackout on an unspecified fault in high-tension lines.

The Syrian capital's 2.5 million residents have grown used to frequent power cuts as the country's conflict has damaged infrastructure and sapped government revenue.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/power-restored-most-parts-syrian-capital-102159686.html

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Artificial finger grips evolution

It seems intuitive that fingerprints should have something to do with grip, but showing this has not been easy.

Many experiments that have run human skin across various surfaces have found few if any friction benefits from the little lumps and bumps.

But new tests using an artificial finger may provide some fresh insight.

A Dartmouth College team took its mechanical digit into the field and ran it over natural materials like tree bark and found a big friction increase.

The observation is interesting because it could say something quite deep about the evolution of primates.

Only our order of animals, with a few exceptions, has these ridges, or dermatoglyphs, on the ends of fingers and toes.

The research would suggest therefore that the prints gave our ancestors a unique advantage as they clambered through ancient forests.

It is striking, says Dartmouth's Nathaniel Dominy, that the advantage shows up particularly well when natural materials are used in the experiments. Previous laboratory tests have tended to use many fingers moving across a smooth standard surface, such as a glass.

In the Dartmouth approach, it is the finger that is the control and the substrates that are varied.

Biology matters

"If you take biological materials like tree barks, something that primates are regularly gripping with their hands, we find that when the bark is being rubbed across our artificial finger there are big friction differences associated with orientation.

"In fact, the coefficient of friction increases by about 50%," said Dr Dominy.

He was talking about his work here in Boston at the annual meeting for the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

The artificial digit has a pad made from silicon to mimic the way the skin on the end of a finger moves and stretches as it drags across a surface.

Impressed upon this pad are print designs produced by the Dartmouth, New Hampshire, team.

The whole apparatus is small enough to take outside the lab to locations with natural materials with interesting textures.

"We're finding that when you rub a natural biological surface that has an orientation - that has a grain, if you will - and you run that grain perpendicularly to the long axis of the ridges, we find a dramatic increase in friction," Dr Dominy told BBC News.

"This stands in stark contrast to earlier studies that found the orientation of rubbing really didn't matter, and that lack of difference has been a line of evidence that some people have used to argue that friction cannot be the explanation for the ridges.

"Our data differ from those earlier studies because we're finding that on a biological surface, a rough surface, that orientation does matter."

What is suggested to be at work here is the concept of asperities - the idea that if you take two rough surfaces and rub them together, the peaks in one will couple with the troughs in the other, increasing friction.

Jonathan.Amos-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk and follow me on Twitter: @BBCAmos

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21480654#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa

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Saturday, February 16, 2013

Proteins Behind Mad-Cow Disease Also Help Brain to Develop

Prion proteins Prion proteins cause pathologies such as hamster scrapie when they misfold (right) ? but the same protein has benign functions when folded correctly (left). Image: N. Engl. J. Med. 344, 1516-1526 (2001)

Prions are best known as the infectious agents that cause ?mad cow? disease and the human versions of it, such as variant Creutzfeldt?Jakob Disease. But the proteins also have at least one known useful function, in the cells that insulate nerves, and are suspected to have more. Now researchers have provided the first direct evidence that the proteins play an important role in neurons themselves.

The team reports in the Journal of Neuroscience that prions are involved in developmental plasticity, the process by which the structure and function of neurons in the growing brain is shaped by experience.?

Prions come in two main forms: the normal version and the misfolded, infectious version. The normal version, known as cellular prion protein (or PrPC), is present in every cell of the body and helps to maintain the myelin sheath in the cells that protect the nerves.

But the molecule is abundant in neurons themselves, especially during development. Because it is tethered to the membrane, it is widely assumed to be involved in signaling between nerve cells, but little direct evidence has been found for this.

Neurobiologist Enrico Cherubini of the International School for Advanced Studies in Trieste, Italy, and his colleagues therefore decided to look at the effects of electrical stimulation on slices of tissue from the hippocampus of healthy 3?7-day-old mice and of animals genetically engineered to lack the gene that encodes the prion protein.?

They used electrodes to stimulate individual cells at the same time as the networks of young neurons showed bursts of spontaneous electrical activity, or to simultaneously stimulate pairs of cells that are connected to each other.

In the tissue from healthy animals, both procedures strengthened the links between neurons, a phenomenon known as long-term potentiation.

In mice without the prion gene, however, the stimulation had the opposite effect. In these animals, the procedure induced long-term depression, or a weakening of neuronal connections.

Ups and downs
Further experiments revealed that the potentiation in mice with cellular prion protein was caused by activation of an enzyme called protein kinase A. In the absence of cellular prion protein, however, activation of a related enzyme, called protein lipase C, caused a long-term lowering of the neuron's activity.

?This shows that [the cellular prion protein] controls the direction of plasticity in the developing hippocampus,? says Cherubini, adding that he and his colleagues now want to identify the molecules that transfer the prion signal from the membrane into the cell. ?

Long-term potentiation in the hippocampus is thought to be crucial for learning and memory, but the importance of prions is still unknown, and Cherubini would like to investigate how the proteins are involved in behavior. He also speculates that prions have a similar role in other parts of the developing brain, such as the visual cortex, and in adults.

"The function of cellular prion protein is quite mysterious, but this convincingly demonstrates that it has a crucial role in strengthening synaptic connections within developing neural networks," says R. Douglas Fields, chief of the Neural Development and Plasticity Section at the National Institute for Child Health and Development in Bethesda, Maryland.

This article is reproduced with permission from the magazine Nature. The article was first published on February 14, 2013.

Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=c6e7eaa859fed41a07dd965bf45a065f

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Cruise passengers return home, feds probe fire

The cruise ship Carnival Triumph is moored at a dock in Mobile, Ala., Friday, Feb. 15, 2013. The ship, which docked Thursday in Mobile after drifting nearly powerless in the Gulf of Mexico for five days, was moved Friday from the cruise terminal to a repair facility. The ship carrying more than 4,200 passengers and crew members had been idled for nearly a week in the Gulf of Mexico following an engine room fire. (AP Photo/Dave Martin)

The cruise ship Carnival Triumph is moored at a dock in Mobile, Ala., Friday, Feb. 15, 2013. The ship, which docked Thursday in Mobile after drifting nearly powerless in the Gulf of Mexico for five days, was moved Friday from the cruise terminal to a repair facility. The ship carrying more than 4,200 passengers and crew members had been idled for nearly a week in the Gulf of Mexico following an engine room fire. (AP Photo/Dave Martin)

Carnival Triumph cruise ship passengers arrive by bus in Galveston, Texas on Friday Feb. 15, 2013. Hundreds of passengers opted to take an eight-hour bus ride to Galveston from Mobile. Galveston is the home port of the ill-fated ship, which lost power in an engine-room fire Sunday some 150 miles off Mexico's Yucatan peninsula. (AP Photo/The Galveston County Daily News, Jennifer Reynolds) MANDATORY CREDIT

Patricia Wagner, right, hugs her sister Mercedes Perez de Colon,as their group is reunited after taking separate buses from Mobile, Ala., where the disabled Carnival ship Triumph docked, on Friday February 15, 2013 in Galveston, Texas. Hundreds of passengers opted to take an eight-hour bus ride to Galveston from Mobile. Galveston is the home port of the ill-fated ship, which lost power in an engine-room fire Sunday some 150 miles off Mexico's Yucatan peninsula. (AP Photo/The Galveston County Daily News, Jennifer Reynolds) MANDATORY CREDIT

Passengers from the disabled Carnival Triumph cruise ship arrive by bus at the Hilton Riverside Hotel in New Orleans, Friday, Feb. 15, 2013. The ship had been idled for nearly a week in the Gulf of Mexico following an engine room fire. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

Passengers from the disabled Carnival Triumph cruise ship arrive by bus at the Hilton Riverside Hotel in New Orleans, Friday, Feb. 15, 2013. The ship had been idled for nearly a week in the Gulf of Mexico following an engine room fire. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

MOBILE, Ala. (AP) ? Passengers of the Carnival Triumph tried to put the memories of their nightmarish cruise behind them Friday, boarding buses and planes for home after five harrowing days aboard a vessel adrift at sea without power or working toilets.

Many of the roughly 3,000 passengers were bused to New Orleans to catch a flight home or to the ship's home port in Galveston, Texas. And as if they hadn't suffered enough, one of the buses broke down during the two-hour ride to New Orleans. Passengers on a different bus reported losing their luggage.

"I'm very frustrated that now our luggage is gone and missing," said Deborah Day of Piano, Texas, adding that she had made sure to check through every transfer point herself, only to lose it when she trusted Carnival to put it on a separate truck instead of the bus she was riding on.

But she had kind words for the crew aboard the disabled ship, adding, "Those people were incredible."

Other passengers were taking things more in stride as they got closer to home.

Georgia Jackson, 66, of Cedar Hill, Texas, said that while the cruise was not ideal, it was not all bad either.

"About the only thing that's been reported is the bad and Carnival has been treating us like VIPs since the boat docked," she said in Galveston, adding that the crew did the best they could with a terrible set of circumstances.

"The ship looked like vagabond city," Jackson said, "but by and large people got along great."

While some called the journey a horrible experience, others spoke of bonding with fellow passengers during the long, exhaustive struggle to get home.

As ship conditions deteriorated after an engine-room fire Sunday, travelers formed Bible study groups, shared or traded precious supplies and even welcomed strangers into their private cabins. Long after they've returned to the everyday luxuries of hot showers and cold drinks, passengers said, they will remember the crew and the personal bonds formed during a cruel week at sea.

The tired tourists finally reached land Friday and gave a glimpse into the intensely uncomfortable journey they had endured.

Sandy Jackson, of Houston, was fortunate to have an upper-level room with a balcony and a breeze that kept the air in her cabin fresh. Rooms on the lower decks were too foul or stifling, so Jackson took in five people, including four strangers.

"We knew one. The others we're very good friends with now," Jackson said. "Everyone was very cordial in sharing supplies."

Brandi Dorsett, of Sweeny, Texas, said people were antsy and irritable at times, and there was tension. But it never got out of hand.

"People were bartering. Can I have your cereal for this? Can I have your drink for that?" she said. "We had one lady, she was begging for cigarettes for diapers. There were no diapers on the boat. There was no formula on the boat."

The ship carrying 4,200 people left Galveston, Texas, on Feb. 7 for a four-day jaunt to Cozumel, Mexico. The fire paralyzed the ship early Sunday, leaving it adrift in the Gulf of Mexico until tugboats towed the massive 14-story vessel to Mobile. It arrived late Thursday to cheers and flashing cameras. It took four hours for all of the passengers to disembark.

"Sweet Home Alabama!" read one of the homemade signs passengers hung over the side.

To pass the time, passenger Joseph Alvarez said, about 45 people gathered in a public room on the lower deck for Bible study.

"It was awesome," he said. "It lifted up our souls and gave us hope that we would get back."

Because many passengers were sleeping on the outside deck, Dwayne Chapman of Lake Charles, La., used his pocket knife to cut decorative rope to make tents out of bed sheets. At first, other passengers told him they thought he was going to get in trouble, but later, everyone wanted to borrow his knife to do the same thing.

"I really think we've made some lifelong friends going through this ordeal," Chapman's wife, Kim, said.

When it was over, many passengers were just grateful for simple pleasures. After days of warm drinks, Cheryl McIntosh and her husband were glad to see coolers full of ice.

"The first thing we did was open up those Diet Cokes and we drank some," McIntosh said.

Others were still recuperating from the ordeal.

"I have an upset stomach pretty bad. I'll be seeing a doctor this afternoon," 53-year-old Sandy Jackson said as she checked out of a downtown Mobile hotel Friday, where relatives drove to pick her up. "Stress, food, everything. It was hard to eat properly."

A day's worth of car rides back home to Indiana wasn't very daunting for Brianna Adkins after the cruise, which she called the worst experience of her life.

Invited on the cruise by a relative who got a free trip for memorizing Bible verses, the 18-year-old preacher's daughter was shocked by conditions aboard the ship. The trip that began so great ? swimming with dolphins in Cozumel and watching Las Vegas-style shows in the ship's theater ? ended with her dissolving into tears in an Alabama cruise terminal after the ship had docked.

"You never think it will happen to you, but it did," Adkins said.

Tugs pulled the ship away from the dock Friday, moving it down a waterway to a shipyard where it will be repaired. Carnival Cruise Lines spokesman Vance Gulliksen said the damage assessment was ongoing.

The cleanup seemed daunting. Passengers described water-logged carpet, sewage seeping through the walls, overflowing toilets and a stench so bad people choked when they tried to endure it.

But by most accounts, the crew did as much as they could, using disinfectant and picking up plastic bags of excrement after toilets stopped working.

Six investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board were in Mobile to look into the cause of the engine-room fire, which happened some 150 miles off Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula.

NTSB spokesman Keith Holloway said the agency was working with the Coast Guard and the Bahamas Maritime Authority, which will serve as the primary investigative agency.

The Bahamian government is taking the lead in the investigation because the Triumph is a Bahamian-flagged vessel and it was in international waters at the time of the incident, Holloway said.

The NTSB will be studying the mechanics of the ship "just like we would in any investigation, trying to determine what caused the fire, where the breakdown was," Holloway said. The investigation could also look at the ship's emergency procedures for passengers, he said.

Passengers described a horrifying scene after the fire. Some said they smelled smoke and received conflicting instructions about every 15 minutes over the PA system. Others ran for lifeboats.

No one was hurt in the fire, and just two people were taken off the ship for medical conditions as a precaution.

Connie Ede, of Houston, was on the cruise with her husband. During the fire, the two got their life jackets ready and put cellphones, passports, money and credit cards in their pockets.

"All in all, I wish it hadn't happened, but it did, and we survived," she said.

Carnival CEO Gerry Cahill apologized to passengers, saying late Thursday, "We pride ourselves on providing our guests with a great vacation experience, and clearly we failed in this particular case."

The cruise line offered passengers a full refund of the cruise and transportation expenses, a future cruise credit equal to the amount spent for the cruise, reimbursement for some shipboard expenses and $500 per person.

But those gestures may not be enough. Less than 24 hours after the boat docked, the first lawsuit was filed against Carnival Corp. by passenger Cassie Terry, who said she feared for her life and worried about falling seriously ill from the raw sewage and spoiled food. Her complaint seeks unspecified damages.

Gulliksen said the company hadn't seen the suit and was not in a position to comment.

___

Associated Press writers Danny Robbins in Dallas; Mike Graczyk in Houston; Ramit Plushnick-Masti in Galveston; Stacey Plaisance in New Orleans; Bob Johnson in Montgomery, Ala.; Melissa Nelson-Gabriel in Mobile, Ala., and Joan Lowy in Washington contributed to this report.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2013-02-16-Disabled%20Cruise%20Ship/id-c6c9d63311524fc6a94690092b5948cb

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Oscar Pistorius' Family Delivers Home-Cooked Meal to Prison | TMZ ...

Oscar Pistorius' Family
Delivers Home-Cooked Meal to Prison

Exclusive

0214_pistorius_tmz_02
Oscar Pistorius is living it up behind bars -- a rep for the South African prison where he's locked up tells TMZ, Oscar's family just delivered the Olympian a home-cooked meal and some blankets to make his stay more comfy.

According to the rep, the family dropped off the care package roughly an hour ago. They also brought a pillow from home for him to sleep on.

The rep insists the care package is NOT considered special treatment -- every inmate is allowed to receive similar packages from family and friends.

We're told Oscar's family left shortly after dropping off the goods, and he's currently resting comfortably in his cell.

Oscar -- who stands accused of murdering his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp -- is set to appear before a judge tomorrow.

Source: http://www.tmz.com/2013/02/14/oscar-pistorius-family-prison-home-cooked-meal-blankets/

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Friday, February 15, 2013

Released Lebanese Terrorist: Kill Collaborators with Israel

A terrorist who was released by Israel in a swap with the Hizbullah terror group has called to kill anyone who is caught collaborating with Israel.

The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) has translated and released a clip of the statement which was made by terrorist Samir Kuntar and which aired on Hizbullah?s Al-Manar TV on January 26.

?When it comes to the collaborators, there is no room for values or anything,? Kuntar said. ?I am the son of the Islamic resistance, and I say, loud and clear, in its name, that the great mistake committed by the Islamic resistance is its lenient treatment of collaborators. We are paying the price for this now, and we will continue to pay it for generations to come.

?A collaborator released by a judge must be killed,? he continued. ?People from the younger generation who care about the resistance should take the initiative. If the state is too lenient, and says ?You can take $60,000 from Israel, and then spend two years in prison?... The young men who care about the future of the resistance should take action.?

Asked by the moderator, ?Is this a call to kill them?? Kuntar replied, ?Of course it is. These people are collaborators.?

Kuntar is known for the brutal murder of four Israelis in the northern Israeli town of Nahariya in 1979, including four-year-old Einat Haran, whom he murdered by smashing her skull after killing her father in front of her.

He was also found guilty in the death of two-year-old Yael Haran, Einat's sister, who suffocated to death while being hidden by her mother during the attack.

During his stay in Israeli prison he became a folk hero among Hizbullah supporters in southern Lebanon. He was released from prison in 2008 in exchange for the bodies of Israeli soldiers Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser, and was greeted by massive celebrations and kudos from political leaders in Lebanon and Syria.

Lebanon regularly arrests local citizens and charges them with spying for Israel. In October of 2010?more than 30?Lebanese citizens were convicted on charges of collaborating with Israel and becoming citizens of the Jewish State. All received 15-year prison terms.

At least five people have been sentenced to death in Lebanon in recent years, after being convicted on charges of?spying for Israel.

Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/165275

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Accelerated protons confirm origin of cosmic rays

Accelerated protons confirm origin of cosmic rays [ Back to EurekAlert! ] Public release date: 14-Feb-2013
[ | E-mail | Share Share ]

Contact: Natasha Pinol
npinol@aaas.org
202-326-6440
American Association for the Advancement of Science

This release is available in Japanese.

We are constantly being bombarded by speedy, energetic, and yet unassuming, particles called cosmic rays. These charged particles (mostly protons), continuously assail the Earth from outer space. There is general consensus among scientists that supernova remnants (the leftovers of a supernova explosion) are the sources of cosmic rays, but the final proof has been elusive since cosmic rays are deflected on their way from the source to Earth.

A new study offers conclusive evidence that cosmic ray protons within our galaxy are accelerated in the shock waves produced by supernovae. The research appears in the February 15 2013 issue of the journal Science.

"For the first time were able to detect the 'smoking gun' feature of the accelerated protons, that is, the spectral cutoff in the gamma ray spectrum due to the decay of neutral pions," said Stefan Funk, assistant professor of physics at Stanford University and co-author of the study.

Pions are subatomic particles produced when accelerated cosmic rays interact with the interstellar material surrounding supernovae. Pions quickly decay into gamma rays which can then be detected with special telescopes.

The problem is that there are multiple processes in the Universe that produce gamma rays. When gamma rays enter in a detector, scientists are unable to determine if these rays have been created by high-energy protons or by high-energy electrons.

Stefan Funk and a team of researchers spent four years (from 2008 to 2012) observing gamma rays with the Large Area Telescope (LAT), which sits onboard the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. They observed two supernova remnants named IC 433 and W44. Both are located within in our galaxy IC 443 is roughly 5,000 light years away from Earth in the constellation Gemini, while W44 is located about 10,000 light years away, in the constellation of Aquila.

Analyzing the data, the researchers spotted the characteristic signature of neutral pion decay in the gamma ray spectrum, which unambiguously connects gamma rays to accelerated protons in supernova remnants.

"While we have demonstrated that supernova remnants accelerate cosmic rays, the next step will be to determine exactly they do it, and also up to what energies they can do so," said Funk.

###

Fermi LAT data related to this research is available from the Fermi Science Support Center.

Please note that this work will be the subject of a 9:00 a.m. US EST news briefing on 2/14 at the AAAS Annual Meeting in Boston. Reporters who are registered for SciPak can access the briefing via our Annual Meeting Virtual Newsroom at: http://www.eurekalert.org/aaasnewsroom/.

The Fermi LAT Collaboration acknowledges support from a number of agencies and institutes for both development and the operation of the LAT as well as scientific data analysis. These include NASA and DOE in the United States, CEA/Irfu and IN2P3/CNRS in France, ASI and INFN in Italy, MEXT, KEK, and JAXA in Japan, and the K. A. Wallenberg Foundation, the Swedish Research Council and the National Space Board in Sweden. The work received additional support from INAF in Italy and CNES in France for science analysis during the operations phase.

The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is the world's largest general scientific society, and publisher of the journal, Science as well as Science Translational Medicine and Science Signaling. AAAS was founded in 1848, and includes some 261 affiliated societies and academies of science, serving 10 million individuals. Science has the largest paid circulation of any peer-reviewed general science journal in the world, with an estimated total readership of 1 million. The non-profit AAAS is open to all and fulfills its mission to "advance science and serve society" through initiatives in science policy; international programs; science education; and more. For the latest research news, log onto EurekAlert!, www.eurekalert.org, the premier science-news Web site, a service of AAAS.


[ Back to EurekAlert! ] [ | E-mail | Share 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.


Accelerated protons confirm origin of cosmic rays [ Back to EurekAlert! ] Public release date: 14-Feb-2013
[ | E-mail | Share Share ]

Contact: Natasha Pinol
npinol@aaas.org
202-326-6440
American Association for the Advancement of Science

This release is available in Japanese.

We are constantly being bombarded by speedy, energetic, and yet unassuming, particles called cosmic rays. These charged particles (mostly protons), continuously assail the Earth from outer space. There is general consensus among scientists that supernova remnants (the leftovers of a supernova explosion) are the sources of cosmic rays, but the final proof has been elusive since cosmic rays are deflected on their way from the source to Earth.

A new study offers conclusive evidence that cosmic ray protons within our galaxy are accelerated in the shock waves produced by supernovae. The research appears in the February 15 2013 issue of the journal Science.

"For the first time were able to detect the 'smoking gun' feature of the accelerated protons, that is, the spectral cutoff in the gamma ray spectrum due to the decay of neutral pions," said Stefan Funk, assistant professor of physics at Stanford University and co-author of the study.

Pions are subatomic particles produced when accelerated cosmic rays interact with the interstellar material surrounding supernovae. Pions quickly decay into gamma rays which can then be detected with special telescopes.

The problem is that there are multiple processes in the Universe that produce gamma rays. When gamma rays enter in a detector, scientists are unable to determine if these rays have been created by high-energy protons or by high-energy electrons.

Stefan Funk and a team of researchers spent four years (from 2008 to 2012) observing gamma rays with the Large Area Telescope (LAT), which sits onboard the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. They observed two supernova remnants named IC 433 and W44. Both are located within in our galaxy IC 443 is roughly 5,000 light years away from Earth in the constellation Gemini, while W44 is located about 10,000 light years away, in the constellation of Aquila.

Analyzing the data, the researchers spotted the characteristic signature of neutral pion decay in the gamma ray spectrum, which unambiguously connects gamma rays to accelerated protons in supernova remnants.

"While we have demonstrated that supernova remnants accelerate cosmic rays, the next step will be to determine exactly they do it, and also up to what energies they can do so," said Funk.

###

Fermi LAT data related to this research is available from the Fermi Science Support Center.

Please note that this work will be the subject of a 9:00 a.m. US EST news briefing on 2/14 at the AAAS Annual Meeting in Boston. Reporters who are registered for SciPak can access the briefing via our Annual Meeting Virtual Newsroom at: http://www.eurekalert.org/aaasnewsroom/.

The Fermi LAT Collaboration acknowledges support from a number of agencies and institutes for both development and the operation of the LAT as well as scientific data analysis. These include NASA and DOE in the United States, CEA/Irfu and IN2P3/CNRS in France, ASI and INFN in Italy, MEXT, KEK, and JAXA in Japan, and the K. A. Wallenberg Foundation, the Swedish Research Council and the National Space Board in Sweden. The work received additional support from INAF in Italy and CNES in France for science analysis during the operations phase.

The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is the world's largest general scientific society, and publisher of the journal, Science as well as Science Translational Medicine and Science Signaling. AAAS was founded in 1848, and includes some 261 affiliated societies and academies of science, serving 10 million individuals. Science has the largest paid circulation of any peer-reviewed general science journal in the world, with an estimated total readership of 1 million. The non-profit AAAS is open to all and fulfills its mission to "advance science and serve society" through initiatives in science policy; international programs; science education; and more. For the latest research news, log onto EurekAlert!, www.eurekalert.org, the premier science-news Web site, a service of AAAS.


[ Back to EurekAlert! ] [ | E-mail | Share 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.


Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-02/aaft-apc020613.php

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Thursday, February 14, 2013

Pa. attorney general rejects lottery contract

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) -- Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane on Thursday rejected a long-term contract sought by Gov. Tom Corbett that would let a British firm manage the $3.5 billion Pennsylvania Lottery, saying parts of it contravene the state constitution or are not authorized by state law.

Her politically fraught decision came after Corbett undertook a nine-month process to find and hire a private company to replace state employees atop one of the nation's largest lotteries. Corbett, who had endured months of criticism about the policy and process from Democrats, settled on London-based Camelot Global Services, the United Kingdom's official lottery operator.

Kane announced her decision in a short statement read at news conference at her Harrisburg offices, but declined to take questions from reporters.

"It is important that my office perform its role in the system of checks and balances that our government desperately needs and that our citizens deserve," she said.

In a memo she sent Thursday to Corbett's Department of Revenue, which oversees the lottery, Kane's office revealed that it had asked Corbett to withdraw the contract because of a pending lawsuit filed by Democratic lawmakers and the union that represents lottery employees. Corbett refused.

Kane's office subsequently decided that state law does not allow the governor to privatize the operation or management of the lottery nor does it allow the expansion of gambling that the contract would permit.

Her office also concluded that the "indirect expenses" that Camelot can claim under the contract ? essentially a management fee of up to 0.75 percent of the annual profit, or hundreds of millions of dollars over the life of the deal ? are an unconstitutional waiver of the state's "sovereign immunity" protection against paying certain damages or claims.

Corbett and Camelot each later released statements saying they were disappointed. Corbett also reiterated that his motivation is to ensure that lottery profits keep pace with rising demand for programs for senior citizens that the lottery funds.

Successfully shifting lottery management to Camelot is a crucial test for Corbett, who promised when he ran for governor that he would look to privatize state services wherever he could.

Meanwhile, the rejection is likely to fuel animosity to the relationship between Corbett, a Republican, and Kane, a Democrat who has been in office barely four weeks.

Kane ran on a pledge last year to be an independent voice and to investigate how the attorney general's office under Corbett handled the child sexual abuse investigation into former Penn State assistant coach Jerry Sandusky in 2009 and 2010.

For now, it seems the lottery will remain managed by state employees, while it is not clear what will happen next with the contract.

Corbett can challenge Kane's decision in court, but would only say Thursday that he did not agree with the attorney general's analysis and was reviewing his legal options. Camelot's bid expires Saturday, and it would not say Thursday whether it will agree to extend it.

House Republican leaders said they expected that the Legislature will review Kane's decision, while the state Republican Party called Kane's decision "blatantly political." Democrats and labor unions were effusive.

Sen. John Yudichak, D-Luzerne, criticized Corbett's "misguided plan to privatize one of our most consistent and predictable sources of revenue." Rep. Mike Sturla, D-Lancaster, called the contract "ill-conceived" and riddled with loopholes and liabilities.

The attorney general's office reviews state contracts for form and legality, and Kane's office insisted Thursday that the contract's rejection was not politically motivated and was handled by professional staff who had worked for Corbett when he was attorney general.

"We certainly didn't tell them what to conclude one way or the other," First Deputy Attorney General Adrian King Jr. said. "We told them to do their job and follow the law."

The lottery employees' union, Council 13 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, endorsed Kane in her fall campaign and gave her campaign $30,000.

Corbett, whose administration signed the agreement last month, has said he believes Camelot can produce higher and more stable lottery profits. Democratic lawmakers have criticized Corbett as diverting money from programs for the elderly to a foreign firm at a time when the state employees who run the lottery are achieving strong gains in profits and sales and keeping overhead low.

Corbett's agreement with Camelot is for 20 years. Camelot guaranteed at least $34 billion in profit to the state in that period and could earn another 10 years in extensions if it meets certain performance benchmarks. It was allowed to charge the management fee and receive cash incentives for exceeding its annual profit commitments. Those incentives were capped at 5 percent of annual profits.

Besides the lawsuit, other challenges were pending. Treasurer Rob McCord, a Democrat, had warned that he may withhold payment to Camelot unless he was satisfied that the company's still-vague plans to expand the scope of lottery gambling were allowed by current law.

Currently, profits from the 41-year-old Pennsylvania Lottery benefit programs for the elderly, including transit, rent and property tax rebates, prescription drug assistance, senior centers and long-term care services. Two other states, Indiana and Illinois, have hired private lottery managers, while New Jersey is moving in that direction.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/pa-attorney-general-rejects-lottery-173742543.html

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Kleverbeast Launches Into Public Beta, Bringing App Creation To The Masses For $29/Month

KB_Logo_BlackKleverbeast, co-founded by Hatch Labs CEO and founder Dinesh Moorjani, is today launching in public beta to bring quick and easy app creation to the multitudes, letting anyone (even someone with no programming experience) build a beautiful, content-rich app in a matter of minutes. The service employs a simple drag-and-drop dashboard to help users figure out how to lay out their preferred media. Ten or fifteen years ago, website creation was relegated to those who either new how to code or had the money to hire developers. Today, sites like Tumblr and WordPress make it easy for almost anyone to build their own web site. But apps are a different story, especially if your vision is a complex, professional-looking app. Moorjani explains that it can cost anywhere between $20,000 on the low-end to six or seven figures on the high-end to get a team together to build an app. Kleverbeast eats that model for breakfast, offering a full suite of app creation tools starting at just $29/month. Plus, once you build the app it can be released onto all major platforms, including iPhone, iPad and Android. The service supports all kinds of media, including photos, videos, animations, image effects, and social media integration. You can also update your app contents anytime, and test out the app on your actual mobile device as you build it. Here are some examples. Kleverbeast offers up a bunch of customizable templates built by Kleverbeast’s own expert design team, but eventually Moorjani believes that the platform may be more open for developers to submit their own templates. The app creation space has been heating up of late, with services like Yapp Events and Appy Couple letting people get a taste for simplified app development, but no one has the same all-encompassing platform as Kleverbeast, covering verticals like fashion, photography, advice, design, small businesses, and almost anything else that would fit into an app format. To prove just how easy it is to build an app on Kleverbeast, the team made me an app in about twenty minutes during the course of our meeting. Here’s a screenshot of the homepage: The service is available as a public beta starting today, and the company is offering a free seven-day trial to let you test out the service.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/obN2-MEvrl4/

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Thai marines kill 16 militants who attacked base

NARATHIWAT, Thailand (AP) ? Marines fending off a major militant assault on their base in Thailand's violent south killed 16 insurgents in an overnight shootout, authorities said Wednesday. It was the deadliest toll the Muslim guerrillas suffered since more than 100 died in a single day nearly a decade ago.

About 30 militants wearing military-style uniforms attacked the marine corps base in Bacho district in Narathiwat province just after midnight Wednesday, said Capt. Somkiat Ponprayun, the provincial marine corps special task force chief.

The shootout ended with 16 militants killed and the rest fleeing, Somkiat said. The death toll was reduced from the initial figure of 19 given out earlier Wednesday by regional army spokesman Col. Pramote Promin.

He said the insurgents ? most of them armed and wearing flak jackets ? opened fire at the base and were counterattacked by the security forces. Authorities confiscated 13 rifles, 3 pistols and a pickup truck at the scene.

Somkiat said the marines who fended off the attack suffered no casualties, as they had been tipped-off by the locals and prepared for the assault.

"There have been frequent attacks this month, so every unit has been on the lookout. Officers have been assigned on a night watch at every base," Somkiat told reporters. "This week, residents in Bacho district have also informed the soldiers of small armed movement here and there, which put us on extra alert."

Fighting in Thailand's three southernmost provinces has occurred on a near daily basis since the insurgency flared anew in 2004, and more than 5,000 people have been killed. Security forces, as well as teachers, have been targeted by insurgents because they are seen as representatives of the government.

Muslims in the deep south, a Muslim-majority region in the Buddhist-dominated country that was once independent, have long complained of discrimination by the central government in Bangkok, and the insurgents are thought to be fighting for autonomy. But the insurgency itself remains murky, with militants making no public pronouncements on their goals.

The losses Wednesday were the most since guerrillas launched simultaneous attacks on police stations and checkpoints in the three provinces in April 2004, triggering clashes in which more than 100 militants were killed, 32 of them at the Kreu-Sae mosque in Pattani where they were holed up.

The Thai government has attempted to gain support from local residents and separatist sympathizers in solving the insurgency issues throughout the past decade, but progress has been slow. However, experts said the militant's targeting of soft targets such teachers and civilians might have made the locals turn to the authorities.

"Some sympathizers are now fed up with the widespread, unspecific killings from the militants because they, too, are affected by the losses," said Jaran Maluleem, a Muslim expert and political scientist at Thammasat University in Bangkok. "Still, the government must be able to explain to the public why this mass killing of insurgents is justified."

Cmdr. Thammanoon Wanna, who oversees the marine corps base, said the troops had braced for Wednesday's assault after authorities discovered a sketch that mapped out the insurgents' plans on a militant who was shot dead in recent days.

Regional army commander Lt. Gen. Udomchai Thammasaroraj said in an interview on ThaiPBS channel that the army has declared a curfew for the area within 5 kilometers (3 miles) of the base for Wednesday night into Thursday. Security forces have conducted searches to find the rest of the fleeing militants, some of whom are believed to have been wounded.

"The insurgents were uplifted because of a surge in their successful attacks in recent weeks, so this is a significant loss on their side," said Sunai Phasuk, a Bangkok-based researcher for Human Rights Watch. "From now, authorities will certainly have to be very concerned about their retaliation."

Narathiwat is located 800 kilometers (500 miles) south of Bangkok.

On Sunday, suspected militants killed five soldiers and wounded five others in two attacks that included a car bomb blast in Yala province that was detonated as a truck carrying six soldiers passed. The militants then opened fire on the soldiers, killing five of them, and took away the dead soldiers' rifles.

Officials from security agencies are scheduled to meet Friday to discuss safety measures for the southernmost provinces.

___

Associated Press writer Thanyarat Doksone contributed to this report from Bangkok.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/thai-marines-kill-16-militants-attacked-054853687.html

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Wall Street rally stalls, S&P 500 skims November 2007 high

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks were little changed on Wednesday amid investor caution after the S&P 500 index briefly hit its highest intraday level since November 2007.

The benchmark index got a boost from Comcast Corp , which said it will buy the rest of NBC Universal for $16.7 billion from General Electric Co .

Equities have been strong performers until recently, buoyed largely by healthy growth in corporate earnings, which helped the S&P 500 to rise 6.5 percent so far this year. The Dow industrials are about 1 percent away from an all-time intraday high, reached in October 2007.

Those gains have left the market vulnerable to a pullback as investors are likely to take profit amid a dearth of new catalysts. While analysts see an upward bias in stocks, recent daily moves have been small and trading volumes light with indexes at multi-year highs.

"I was expecting a 12-15 percent return on the S&P for the whole year of 2013, and we have done about half of that in just 5-6 weeks," said Jack De Gan, principal at Harbor Advisory in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

"We will hit resistance, but the fundamentals and (microeconomic) picture are looking good, so if there is a correction, it's going to be a brief one."

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> was down 39.17 points, or 0.28 percent, at 13,979.53. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was up 0.80 points, or 0.05 percent, at 1,520.23. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was up 7.01 points, or 0.22 percent, at 3,193.50.

Investors shrugged off the latest economic data, which showed that retail sales rose just 0.1 percent, as expected, in January as tax increases and higher gasoline prices restrained spending.

The S&P 500 was well above its 50-day moving average of 1,460.92, a sign the market could be overbought.

Comcast agreed late Tuesday to buy General Electric Co's remaining 49 percent stake in NBC Universal for $16.7 billion. Comcast jumped 4.4 percent to $40.70 as the S&P's top percentage gainer while Dow component GE was up 3.3 percent to $23.33.

Deere & Co reported earnings that beat expectations and raised its full-year profit outlook. After initially rallying in premarket trading, the stock fell 3 percent to $91.13.

According to the latest Thomson Reuters data, of the 353 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported results, 70.3 percent have exceeded analysts' expectations, above a 62 percent average since 1994 and 65 percent over the past four quarters.

Fourth-quarter earnings for S&P 500 companies are estimated to have risen 5.3 percent, according to the data, above a 1.9 percent forecast at the start of the earnings season.

Industrial and construction shares fell, though President Barack Obama, in his State of the Union address late Tuesday, called for $50 billion in spending to create jobs by rebuilding degraded roads and bridges.

The Dow Jones Home Construction index <.djushb> was off 0.5 percent.

(Editing by Kenneth Barry and Bernadette Baum)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/stock-index-futures-point-slightly-higher-start-101356289--finance.html

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China tensions with Japan sell fireworks?

Some manufacturers of New Year fireworks are profiting from strong anti-Japanese sentiment related to territorial disputes. Just check out the names of certain pyrotechnics for sale on Beijing streets.

By Peter Ford,?Staff Writer / February 6, 2013

A vendor walks out from a room where boxes of firecrackers with the words 'Tokyo Big Explosion' are stored in Beijing, Wednesday. The vendor said Chinese authorities have asked that the fireworks not be sold due to its name on the package. China and Japan are in a tense dispute over East China Sea islands that have inflamed anti-Japanese sentiment among Chinese.

Andy Wong/AP

Enlarge

Nothing defines Chinese New Year like fireworks. On the stroke of midnight, Beijing erupts in a riotous, deafening barrage of explosions that out-bangs any war zone.

Skip to next paragraph Peter Ford

Beijing Bureau Chief

Peter Ford is The Christian Science Monitor?s Beijing Bureau Chief. He covers news and features throughout China and also makes reporting trips to Japan and the Korean peninsula.

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This year?s celebration, though, will carry ugly undertones of real war in the midst of rising tensions with neighboring Japan. On sale on the city?s streets in advance of Saturday night?s festivities is a box of pyrotechnics called ?Tokyo Explosion.??

Most fireworks here bear more benign names. ?Golden Snakes Dancing Crazily? is expected to be popular, as Chinese welcome in the Year of the Snake. ?Wish You Get Rich? and ?Billionaire? play to traditional desires.

But some manufacturers are seeking to profit from a seething undercurrent of anti-Japanese sentiment that has bubbled to the surface as a dispute with Japan over ownership of a group of uninhabited islands in the East China Sea grows increasingly bitter.

?I Love the Diaoyu Islands? is one such product, referring to the Chinese name for the islands. In Japan they are known as the Senkakus.

?Aircraft Carrier Shows China?s Might? is another, celebrating the October 2012 launch of the Liaoning, China?s first carrier, which has become a symbol of Beijing?s growing military strength.

Tensions around the islands edged up another notch this week, when the Japanese government revealed that a Chinese naval frigate had ?locked on? to a Japanese vessel with its missile-guidance radar system.

On Wednesday, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe called the incident a ?dangerous? and ?provocative? act ?that could have led to an unpredictable situation.?

On the Chinese Internet, however, angry micro-bloggers hailed the Chinese action.

?We should shoot at Japanese vessels before we warn them,? advocated Li Xu on Sina.com?s popular Twitter-like Weibo platform. ?The only way to punish Japan is to annihilate all Japanese,? added another commentator calling himself Truelove Leo.

The aggressively named fireworks reflect an anti-Japanese mood that the Chinese authorities sometimes seem eager to feed. Government and ruling Communist Party officials orchestrated anti-Japanese demonstrations last year when the island dispute broke out, and Chinese TV is flooded with drama series ? one much like another ? set during the Sino-Japanese war (1937-1945), featuring inhuman ?Japanese devils? as the popular Chinese phrase has it.

There is even a theme park in Shanxi Province where tourists can dress up as soldiers in the Eighth Route Army, the Communist Party?s main military force during the war, sing anti-Japanese war songs, and join in mock guerrilla battles against the Japanese invaders.

A public opinion poll released at the end of last year found that 87 percent of Chinese had a negative opinion of Japan, up from 66 percent a year earlier. And the feeling is mutual. A Japanese government survey in December found sympathy for China at a record low, with less than 20 percent of respondents reporting an affinity for their giant neighbor.

Not everybody buys into the prevailing atmosphere, however. When one Chinese blogger posted a screenshot from a recent TV drama capturing a particularly gory and ludicrous scene of a Chinese man tearing a ?Japanese devil? in half with his bare hands, most of the comments were scathing.

?Another brainwashing drama,? scoffed one. ?The Communist Party is unparalleled in this field.?

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/csmonitor/globalnews/~3/wcyelXd30ig/China-tensions-with-Japan-sell-fireworks

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