BANGUI, Central African Republic (AP) ? A rebel leader who proclaimed himself president of the Central African Republic after his fighters invaded the capital has appointed a new cabinet.
New minister of information Christophe Gazam Betty announced the makeup of the new government on national radio late Sunday. It includes both rebels and civilians.
The Seleka rebel movement began its advance on the capital in December before agreeing to peace talks with the government of President Francois Bozize. The deal signed in January allowed Bozize to finish his term in return for a number of concessions.
The deal was broken this month when rebel leader Michel Djotodia led fighters into Bangui, forcing Bozize to flee.
Djotodia named himself president despite an international outcry.
Tired of seeing ads for cars and soda before the films you watch at the theater? Well, a successful crowdfunding campaign at Indiegogo will see a trimmed down version of NASA's 'We Are Explorers' video aired before showings of the upcoming Star Trek: Into Darkness in theaters all over the country. "Most people recognize space as a key expression of our character. They know our space programs as a globally recognized brand of ingenuity. The recently landed Mars Curiosity Rover was the latest reminder that space systems are the crown jewels of our scientific and technical prowess. Less known is the indispensable value space systems bring to our everyday lives. Space provides irreplaceable capabilities for defense, public health, finance, medicine, energy, agriculture, transportation, development and countless other fields. Investments in space programs are precisely about improving and protecting life on Earth. ... By funding this campaign, we can remind students and the general public that our nation's space agency is working hard on the next era of exploration." The campaign's funding goal was reached in just six days ? their stretch goal will increase the number of theaters for the clip from 59 screens to 750. The movie comes out on May 17th.
Six years ago, the video ?Shift Happens? (2007) was featured at our school?s professional development day. I clearly remember one take-away:
We are currently preparing students for jobs that don?t exist using technologies that do not exist in order to solve problems we don?t even know are problems yet.
The video was created by Karl Fisch, and modified by Scott McLeod.?The slides provided statistics on the rapid exponential growth in population and in information, highlighting the differences between the present and what was successful in the past, specifically England?s position on the world stage in 1900. Several slides are alarming in calling attention to the building tsunami of information available to students with examples such as ? there is more information in a week?s worth of the?The New York Times?than what an average person knew in the 1700s?. Since 2007, there have been several updated versions of ?Shift Happens? uploaded to YouTube; there have also been many imitations.
I thought of this video this week when I drove past a sign on a large office building: Strategic Information Technologies.
?What does that mean?? I asked my friend Catherine, ?Is the technology stategic because of geography? Strategic because of a choice of software or hardware?? I continued, ?I don?t know what a ?strategic information technologist? does?Is this one of the unknown new jobs were are ?preparing? our 21st Century students to take?? I referenced the video.
?That?s ridiculous!? Catherine responded, ?The people who ?prepared? us for the 21st Century were not worried about what new jobs would be?available?in our future. In fact,? she continued, ?they taught us what they knew?what they thought we should know, and we are doing just fine.?
I was startled. Could a ?Shift Happens? video place a misguided emphasis on adjusting skills and content in order to prepare students for the unidentified problems they?don?t even know are problems yet?
?After all,? she continued, ?We are the generation that created these new technologies that we didn?t know would exist today.?
When I reflect on her statement I think about how my favorite teachers in grades K-12 ?(Sister Ella, Mrs. Rowland, Miss Montessi) were not obsessed with preparing me for some unidentified job in the future. Instead, their collective obsession was to prepare me with basic skills and content so that I could be a productive member of?society? I was taught to think, to read well, write well, speak well, know math, appreciate history, recognize science, and, since I attended Catholic school, recite my?Catechism.
Perhaps, educators cannot predict the future for their students, but educators can address trends. For example, in 1957, the American public began to reconsider how the role of public education may contribute to winning the Space Race with the Soviets once Sputnik had been released. The investments in education made as a consequence resulted in increased scientific advancements and many spin-off technologies. In contrast, however, predictions such as those at the?1964 NY World?s Fair of a future with flying cars, jet packs, vacation trips to Mars and beyond, underwater cities, and robot laborers have never came to fruition.
Similarly, Karl Fisch?s video alerted educators to the rapid changes in education and the global implications in preparing students for the real world. He wrote:
??it?s a different world out there. A world whereanyone?s?ideas can quickly spread if they happen to strike a chord.?
This was certainly true of the ?Shift Happens? video which had great success without??a large company or a huge public relations effort to make an impact.? Fisch continued:
This is just one of the reasons that I believe our schools need to change. They need to change to reflect this new world, this flatter world, this information-abundant, globally connected, rapidly changing, technology super-charged world that they are going to spend the rest of their lives in.
Fisch made no silly ?predictions? like those at the NY World?s Fair. Instead, his video served to bring attention to trends that require an increase in the skills of ?communication and sharing information.
In order to communicate and to share, students from grades K-12 must think, read well, write well, and speak well regardless as to what predictions are being made about new industries or technologies.?In trying to anticipate the future, educators must not discount how the generations of students who learned these important skills became the graduates who are now responsible for evolving changes of the present.
Shift is not an entirely new enterprise on the world stage, for example, ?the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the Reformation, the Industrial Revolution are all examples of global ?shifts?. In the six short years since the ?Shift Happens? video, Facebook has replaced MySpace as the world?s most?formidable?social network; Twitter has evolved into a powerful communication tool. The role of educators is not ?to predict the next Steve Jobs or Bill Gates or company that will spawn new jobs or dominate an industry or the next ?shift?. Instead, the role of educators must be to teach the skills of thinking, reading, writing, and speaking well that contributed to the ?shift? that is happening for our students.
There is no surprise that ?Shift Happens?, and the students who are prepared to think, to read well, to write well, and to speak well will not be surprised either.
At this year's New York International Auto Show BMW is expanding its portfolio of connected apps -- by four. The company announced iOS integration for Audible, Glympse, Rhapsody and TuneIn Radio and we couldn't help but swing by to check them all out. This integration (which also will work on Connected Minis) entails an update to those existing iOS apps. In other words, you won't need a dedicated BMW app nor second versions of these individual apps. You can use the ones you already know and love.
Join us below for a little more information on how that works, and a look at the company's in-car LTE router that's also on display.
Last year, for the first time, I attended the Australian Fitness & Health Expo?in Sydney. Packed with all the latest gym equipment, training aids, apparel, music, boxing equipment and nutritional products,?this event is the largest of its kind in the southern hemisphere!?
This year the?Australian Fitness & Health Expo?will be held on April 20-21 at the Sydney Convention & Exhibition Centre and I'm?definitely?attending again!
Last year highlights were for me the Healthy Eating Zone and the Zumba Main Stage with live demonstrations. It was also great fun to try and discover many new health foods and by the end of the day I had collected quite a few samples and brochures!
Giveaway
Like last year, I have teamed up with the Australian Fitness & Health Expo??again?and have not one but 3?double-passes to giveaway to three lucky Sydney-based readers?to attend the event!?Each double pass is worth $59.
To enter?:
Head-over to?Mademoiselle Slimalicious? Facebook Page?(make sure you LIKE the page if you haven't already) and leave a?comment on my?Facebook page?wall telling me?why you would like to attend the expo and who you would like to go with!
Giveaway is open to residents of NSW (Australia) and closes on?15th April 2012 at?9 pm?(EAST).?The winners will be?announced?on Facebook shortly after the end of the competition. Prizes kindly donated by Australian Fitness & Health Expo, total prize pool value: $118
Image credit: Australia Fitness & Health Expo website
The 1704 "Betts" Stradivari violin was crafted by Antonio Stradivari, an Italian manufacturer of string instruments. Of the estimated 1,000 violins originally crafted by Stradivari, about 650 still exist. New research suggests these instruments mimic the vowel sounds of the female soprano voice.
By Tia Ghose LiveScience
Virtuosos who describe the singing voice of a violin may be on to something. The great violin makers, such as Stradivari and Guarneri, may have designed violins to mimic the human voice, new research suggests.
The research, described in the current issue of Savart Journal, found the violin produced several vowel sounds, including the Italian "i" and "e" sounds and several vowel sounds from French and English.
Study author Joseph Nagyvary, an emeritus biochemistry professor at Texas A&M University,?previously proved that the violin masters?Stradivari and Guarneri del Ges? had soaked their wood in brine and borax to fight a worm infestation that swept through Italy in the 1700s. Those chemicals treatments led to the unique sounds that violin makers have struggled to reproduce.
But he had also long argued that the great violin masters were making violins with more humanlike voices than any others of the time. [25 Amazing Facts from Science]
"It has been widely held that violins 'sing' with a female soprano voice," Nagyvary said in a statement.
To test that claim, Nagyvary recorded Metropolitan opera singer Emily Pulley singing a series of vowel sounds. He then compared those sounds with a 1987 recording of virtuoso Itzhak Perlman playing a scale on a 1743 Guarneri violin.
"I analyzed her sound samples by computer for harmonic content and then using state-of-the art phonetic analysis to obtain a 2-D map of the female soprano vowels. Each note of a musical scale on the violin underwent the same analysis, and the results were plotted and mapped against the soprano vowels," Nagyvary said in a statement.
The two "voices" could be mapped on the same scale, with the violin creating several English and French vowel sounds, as well as two Italian vowel sounds.
The findings suggest that makers of Guarneri and Stradivarius violins?of the 1700s were striving to imitate the human voice in their instruments. Guarneri violins now routinely sell for between $10 million and $20 million.
The new analysis could also provide a more objective way to rate violin quality.
"For 400 years, violin prices have been based almost exclusively on the reputation of the maker ? the label inside of the violin determined the price tag," Nagyvary said in a statement. "The sound quality rarely entered into price consideration, because it was deemed inaccessible. These findings could change how violins may be valued."
Follow Tia Ghose on Twitter @tiaghose.?Follow?LiveScience @livescience, Facebook?andGoogle+. Original article on?LiveScience.com.
Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
ROME (Reuters) - Italy's political parties remained far apart on Friday as President Giorgio Napolitano searched for a way out of the month-long stalemate since deadlocked elections left no group able to form a government alone.
Napolitano met political leaders on Friday after center-left chief Pier Luigi Bersani, who won the largest share of the vote but fell short of a majority in parliament, failed to reach a deal with other parties that would allow him to govern.
Former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi insisted that the only solution was for Bersani to accept a coalition deal that would give the media tycoon a share in power but he was immediately rebuffed by a senior Democratic Party official.
The 76-year-old billionaire said there was "no other solution" than a coalition and he ruled out backing a technocrat government like the one led by outgoing Prime Minister Mario Monti, whom he blames for pushing Italy into recession.
"Our position has not changed. We expressed it with absolute clarity to the president," center-right leader Berlusconi told reporters after the meeting with Napolitano.
Luigi Zanda, Senate leader for Bersani's Democratic Party(PD), said it was "very difficult" to imagine a coalition with Berlusconi's People of Freedom (PDL) party.
"There are too many important issues in PDL policies that are light years from those of the Democratic Party," he told SkyTG television.
After five days of talks that ended on Thursday, Bersani failed to get a deal with either Berlusconi or Beppe Grillo's populist 5-Star Movement, which holds the balance of power.
Five Star repeated on Friday that it would not back a government led by any of the big parties it blames for Italy's social and economic crisis. It also rejected any "pseudo-technocrat" administration.
"Give them a vote of confidence? Those are swear words in the mouths of people like them," Grillo said in a live video broadcast on his popular blog. "They should all just go home."
A deal between center-right and center-left has been blocked by Bersani, who says Berlusconi is untrustworthy and also rejects the latter's demand to nominate a successor to Napolitano, whose mandate expires in May.
Berlusconi said there had been no deal on the presidency but it was "in the logic of things that if you form a coalition government you discuss the best president of the Republic".
PRESIDENT TAKES THE INITIATIVE
After Bersani's failure, the 87-year-old Napolitano is holding a quick round of meetings with the main parties to assess what options remain to prevent another election.
The refusal by Berlusconi and his allies in the Northern League as well as Grillo to back a technocrat government appears to narrow his options greatly and made it much less likely that an independent figure will be able to lead a non-political administration - which many see as the only way out of deadlock.
"We were against the Monti government and if there is to be another government of that type it's a thousand times better to have new elections," League leader Roberto Maroni said.
Among the names which had been considered possible candidates as a technocrat leader are Fabrizio Saccomanni, director general of the Bank of Italy or the head of the constitutional court Franco Gallo.
The political gridlock has fed growing worries about Italy's ability to confront a prolonged economic crisis that has left it in deep recession for more than a year, with a 2-trillion-euro ($2.6-trillion) public debt and record unemployment, especially among the young.
Rumors have been circulating for days that ratings agency Moody's is preparing to cut its rating on Italy's sovereign debt, which is already only two notches above "junk" grade, partly due to the uncertain political outlook.
Napolitano has made clear that he does not want Italy to go back to new elections immediately, not least because the widely criticized election law is likely to just repeat the deadlock.
But many are already preparing to vote again, with Berlusconi's center-right confident that the momentum created by his surge towards the end of the last campaign will continue.
A poll by the SWG company on Friday showed the center-right had pushed Bersani's bloc into second place since the vote.
($1 = 0.7788 euros)
(Additional reporting by Naomi O'Leary; Editing by Barry Moody and Michael Roddy)
FILE - In this Dec. 14, 2012 file photo provided by the Newtown Bee, a police officer leads two women and a child from Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., shortly after Adam Lanza opened fire, killing 26 people, including 20 children. State's Attorney Stephen Sedensky III asked a judge in Danbury Superior Court, Wednesday, March 27, 2013 to limit the information to be made public from warrants in Newtown school shooting, due to be released Thursday. (AP Photo/Newtown Bee, Shannon Hicks, File) MANDATORY CREDIT: NEWTOWN BEE, SHANNON HICKS
FILE - In this Dec. 14, 2012 file photo provided by the Newtown Bee, a police officer leads two women and a child from Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., shortly after Adam Lanza opened fire, killing 26 people, including 20 children. State's Attorney Stephen Sedensky III asked a judge in Danbury Superior Court, Wednesday, March 27, 2013 to limit the information to be made public from warrants in Newtown school shooting, due to be released Thursday. (AP Photo/Newtown Bee, Shannon Hicks, File) MANDATORY CREDIT: NEWTOWN BEE, SHANNON HICKS
FILE - In this Friday, Dec. 14, 2012 file photo provided by the Newtown Bee, Connecticut State Police lead a line of children from the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. after Adam Lanza opened fire, killing 26 people, including 20 children. State's Attorney Stephen Sedensky III asked a judge in Danbury Superior Court, Wednesday, March 27, 2013 to limit the information to be made public from warrants in Newtown school shooting, due to be released Thursday. (AP Photo/Newtown Bee, Shannon Hicks, File) MANDATORY CREDIT: NEWTOWN BEE, SHANNON HICKS
NEW HAVEN, Conn. (AP) ? An arsenal of weapons including guns, more than a thousand rounds of ammunition, a bayonet and several swords was found in the home of the gunman who carried out the Newtown school shooting, according to search warrants released Thursday.
Adam Lanza killed 26 people inside Sandy Hook Elementary School and took his own life within five minutes of shooting his way into the building, State's Attorney Stephen J. Sedensky III said in a statement accompanying the release of the warrants in the Dec. 14 massacre. Lanza was found dead in the school wearing military-style clothing.
The inventory of the evidence seized from Lanza's home and the car he drove to carry out the massacre provided glimpses into the world of a troubled young man, but it does not answer the question of what could have motivated the attack. Investigators say it will take until June or later to complete the investigation.
Sedensky said Lanza killed all 26 victims inside Sandy Hook Elementary School with a Bushmaster .223-caliber rifle before taking his own life with a Glock 10 mm handgun. He says Lanza had another loaded handgun with him inside the school as well as three, 30-round magazines for the Bushmaster.
Sedensky said 154 spent .223 casings were recovered at the scene. A loaded 12-gauge shotgun was found in the Honda Civic Lanza drove to the school with two magazines containing 70 rounds of Winchester 12-gauge shotgun rounds.
At the house, investigators found books about autism and Asperger's syndrome as well as an NRA guide to pistol shooting. Another book found at the home with tabbed pages is titled: "Train Your Brain to Get Happy."
Writings and journals that belonged to Lanza were seized by police and turned over to the FBI for analysis. They also found three photos containing images of what appears to be a dead person covered with plastic and blood.
Police said they found a smashed computer hard drive, a gaming console and a gun safe in the house. An unnamed person told investigators that Lanza was an avid gamer who played "Call of Duty" and other games and rarely left his home.
Investigators found a holiday card containing a check made out to Lanza for the purchase of a firearm, authored by his mother, Nancy Lanza. Adam Lanza shot and killed his mother in their Newtown home before driving to the school to carry out the massacre.
Documents indicate authorities found a gun safe with shotgun shells in the house and numerous boxes of bullets. In a bedroom closet, they found ear plugs, a handwritten note regarding ammunition and magazines, paperwork on guns and a metal bayonet.
In a top drawer of a filing cabinet, they found paper targets. In a duffel bag, they found ear and eye protection, binoculars, numerous paper targets and an NRA certificate that belonged to Adam Lanza.
Authorities found numerous knives, including samurai swords. They found a military-style uniform in Lanza's bedroom and handwritten notes containing the addresses of local gun shops. The guns found at the home included a .323-caliber Enfield Albian bolt-action rifle, a .22-caliber Savage Mark II rifle, a BB gun and a .22-caliber Volcanic starter pistol.
Among the items seized was a news article on a 2008 school shooting at Northern Illinois University.
A judge's order to seal the warrants expired on Wednesday, and a Danbury Superior Court judge granted a request by Sedensky to withhold some details. Sedensky asked to redact the name of a witness, saying the person's safety might be jeopardized if the name were disclosed. He also asked that the release not include other information such as telephone numbers, serial numbers on items found and a few paragraphs of an affidavit.
Until now, prosecutors had made few details of the Newtown investigation available, despite pressure to do so from the governor, who criticized leaks to the press and lawmakers who clamored for more details as they craft legislation on mental health and gun control.
Gov. Dannel P. Malloy announced last week that additional information would be released at his request. He expressed concern that some information about the shooting rampage at Sandy Hook reportedly disclosed by a top state police commander at a recent law enforcement seminar in New Orleans was leaked.
In his statement, Sedensky said he ordered a stop to any presentations involving evidence in the case to prevent such disclosures. He said the investigation is ongoing.
"No conclusions have been reached and no final determinations have been made," Sedensky said.
Senate President Donald E. Williams Jr. said this week that legislative leaders are eager to review the search warrant documents before finishing work on a bipartisan bill that addresses gun control and other issues related to the massacre.
___
Associated Press writers Dave Collins and Michael Melia in Hartford contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Defense Departmentcivilian employees will have to take 14 days of unpaid leave this year instead of the 22 previously planned after Congress adjusted Pentagon funding in a measure signed by the president this week, an official said on Thursday.
The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel decided on Wednesday to reduce the number of furlough days facing most of the Pentagon's nearly 800,000 civilian employees to 14 from 22.
The Pentagon had been set to send out furlough notices to employees last week, but delayed the move after Congress passed a measure that funded the government through the end of the fiscal year on September 30. The department said it needed two weeks to see how the measure affected Pentagon finances.
The Defense Department is facing more than $40 billion in budget cuts this year under a process known as sequestration after Congress and the White House failed to reach an agreement on alternative ways to reduce deficits. The new cuts went into effect on March 1.
The Pentagon budget also has been squeezed by a temporary funding mechanism that left it with a shortfall in the main account used to pay civilian personnel.
The funding measure signed by Obama this week kept the budget cuts under sequestration intact but allocated more money to the account used to pay civilians, letting the Pentagon reduce the amount of unpaid leave.
The Pentagon has not announced how many of its nearly 800,000 civilians will have to take unpaid leave, but officials have predicted it could be in the range of 80 percent.
Officials have said civilians supporting the war effort would not be affected, but a final decision on how many other essential personnel would be exempted has not been announced.
(Reporting by David Alexander; Editiing by Vicki Allen)
CHIMAYO, N.M. - Tens of thousands of people are expected to visit one of the most popular Catholic shrines in the Americas this weekend for Easter, which comes just weeks after the first pope from the Americas was elected.
Around 50,000 people are expected to descend on El Santuario de Chimayo (CHEE'-mah-YOH') in New Mexico, and officials say even more may make the trip due this year to the excitement over Pope Francis.
The adobe chapel in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, sometimes called the "Lourdes of America," attracts its biggest crowd around Holy Week.
Some pilgrims will make the 90-mile, three-day walk from Albuquerque to the shrine that houses "el pocito," a small pit of holy adobe-colored soil that some believe possesses curing powers.
Santa Fe County Sheriff Robert Garcia says traffic patrols will increase from Thursday to Sunday for safety.
Facebook just announced some improvements to the mobile app install ads that it launched last fall, allowing app developers to target their ads with more nuance. These ads run in Facebook's news feed, and when clicked on, they open up the download page in the Apple App Store and Google Play marketplace. The company says that by using these ads, Poshmark has seen a 3x increase in ROI compared to "other advertising channels" and its user acquisition cost on Facebook has gone down 30 percent.
As the calendar approaches April, the pre-draft spin cycle will soon hit overdrive.
The rules are simple.? Teams that don?t like a player will say good things about him, hoping that someone with a higher pick will take the player, which will push a more viable prospect down the board.? Teams that like a player will say bad things about him, hoping that he?ll still be there when the team makes its pick.
It?s important to keep those rules in mind when considering any off-the-record assessments of players by scouts and coaches who, depending on the teams for which they work, may be hoping to influence what other teams will or won?t do.
Jason Cole of Yahoo! Sports spoke to scouts and coaches from multiple unnamed teams who attended the Monday Pro Day workout of Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te?o.? And none of those folks regard Te?o as a first-round pick.
?Nice player, but not worth a first-round pick.? Not in my view,? said an unnamed ?AFC personnel man.?
?He?s not a star,? an AFC head coach said.? ?If I?m taking a linebacker in the first round, I want a guy who can change my defense.? Trust me, I?ve been wrong about linebackers before, but this guy doesn?t fit the bill of what I spend a high pick on.?
?[H]e?s not good enough in my view,? an NFC defensive coordinator said.
We don?t doubt for a second that these sources said what Cole says they said.? But without knowing which team they work for, it?s impossible to know whether they really mean it.
It?s a common reality of the pre-draft process.? Scouts and coaches knock certain players, possibly because the scouts and coaches believe what they?re saying ? and possibly because they have an agenda.? When it comes to the draft, everyone has an agenda.? When it comes to the strategy-driven NFL, everyone periodically (or more often) tells untruths to advance their agenda.
We?re not saying it?s right or it?s wrong.? That?s just the way it is.? But that makes it impossible to put much stock in the things being said by unnamed sources who may be secretly hoping that the player they?re knocking slides into their laps.
MADRID (Reuters) - A Spanish association representing open-source software users has filed a complaint against Microsoft Corp to the European Commission, in a new challenge to the Windows developer following a hefty fine earlier this month.
The 8,000-member Hispalinux, which represents users and developers of the Linux operating system in Spain, said Microsoft had made it difficult for users of computers sold with its Windows 8 platform to switch to Linux and other operating systems.
Lawyer and Hispalinux head Jose Maria Lancho said he delivered the complaint to the Madrid office of the European Commission at 0900 GMT (4 a.m. EST) on Tuesday.
In its 14-page complaint, Hispalinux said Windows 8 contained an "obstruction mechanism" called UEFI Secure Boot that controls the start-up of the computer and means users must seek keys from Microsoft to install another operating system.
The group said it was "a de facto technological jail for computer booting systems ... making Microsoft's Windows platform less neutral than ever".
"This is absolutely anti-competitive," Lancho told Reuters. "It's really bad for the user and for the European software industry."
Microsoft said UEFI was an industry standard aimed at improving computer security and the approach had been public for some time.
"We are happy to answer any additional questions but we are confident our approach complies with the law and helps keep customers safe," Microsoft spokesman Robin Koch said in a statement.
A spokesman for EU Competition Chief Joaquin Almunia declined to comment.
But in written comments dated March 4 to a query from an European Parliamentary lawmaker, Almunia said his administration was aware of the Microsoft Windows 8 security requirements.
"The Commission is monitoring the implementation of the Microsoft Windows 8 security requirements. The Commission is however currently not in possession of evidence suggesting that the Windows 8 security requirements would result in practices in violation of EU competition rules," he said in the letter posted on the website of the European Parliament.
The European Commission has fined Microsoft, the global leader in PC operating systems, 2.2 billion euros ($2.83 billion)over the past decade, making it the world's biggest offender of European Union business rules.
Microsoft's relations with the EU executive have been tense since 2004, when the EU found that the company had abused its market leader position by tying Windows Media Player to the Windows software package.
The company took a more conciliatory approach in recent years, settling another antitrust investigation in 2009 related to the choice of a browser in its Windows operating system.
It also lodged its own complaints to the Commission about the business activities of rival Google.
But Microsoft broke its 2009 pledge and was fined 561 million euros by the EU Commission on March 6 for failing to offer users a choice of web browser.
(Additional reporting by Teresa Larraz; Editing by Julien Toyer, Tom Pfeiffer and Clelia Oziel)
LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Fans addicted to AMC's "Breaking Bad" who want to avoid egregious spoilers, be extra careful: A script belonging to star Bryan Cranston has been stolen, a spokesman for the Bernalillo County Sheriff's Office told TheWrap.
An arrest was made Saturday in the theft, Officer Aaron Williamson of the Bernalillo County Sheriff's Office said. The actor, who stars as meth dealer Walter White in the hit Albuquerque-set drama, reported the theft on March 1.
Xavier McAfee was charged with smashing the window of Cranston's car and stealing the actor's shoulder bag, which contained his iPad and the script, according to Albuquerque's ABC affiliate KOAT-TV. The arrest came after Taryn Feingold, an employee of Cranston's, was contacted by a confidential informant, who had overheard McAfee in a local bar bragging about having the script, Williamson said.
Williamson told TheWrap the script hasn't yet been recovered by the sheriff's department, and the investigation is ongoing.
It's unknown how the theft and the potential leak of storyline secrets will affect the filming of the crime drama's final season, set to begin airing in July.
Sony, which produces the series, has issued the following statement today regarding this incident: "We applaud the efforts of the Albuquerque police in their arrest of the alleged perpetrator and we look forward to sharing the incredible last season with viewers when the series premieres later this year."
The comet that may put on a spectacular light show during a November date with the sun, was observed by the Deep Impact mission. The spacecraft has also had close fly-bys of comet's Tempel 1 and Hartley 2 and scientific observations of Garradd.
By Joe Rao Space.com
The promising Comet ISON continues on its way in toward a late November rendezvous with the sun, cosmic close encounter that will bring the celestial object to within 800,000 miles (1.2 million km) of the sun's surface.
Many have already christened ISON as the "Comet of the Century," but this may be premature, since the comet?s performance will hinge chiefly on whether it can survive its extremely close approach to the sun on Nov. 28. During that encounter, the comet will approach close to the sun's surface ? called the photosphere ? while also plunging through its intensely hot corona whose temperature exceeds 1 million degrees Fahrenheit (555,000 degrees Celsius).? ?
A comet that performs well en route toward the sun ? that is, steadily brightens as it comes closer ? would seem more likely to survive as opposed to an object that brightens more slowly, or fails to brighten much at all. In the latter case, perhaps the volatile material which boiled off the comet?s core (called the nucleus) and initially made the comet look unusually bright becomes exhausted while the comet is still far out in space.??
The result is a comet that is nothing more than a small and dark solid lump that fails to get very bright at all or perhaps even fragments or disintegrates as it comes to within a hairbreadth of the sun. [Photos of Comet ISON]
NASA / JPL-Caltech
This is the orbital trajectory of comet C/2012 S1 (ISON). The comet was just inside the orbit of Jupiter. In November, ISON will pass less than 1.1 million miles (1.8 million kilometers) from the sun's surface. The fierce heating it experiences during this close approach to the sun could turn the comet into a bright naked-eye object.
Has ISON's brightness has slowed? This pessimistic scenario might be one that may be ruminating through the minds of some comet observers now concerning Comet ISON.
Astronomers measure the brightness of objects in the night sky on a scale of magnitude on which smaller numbers represent brighter objects, with negative numbers denoting exceptionally bright objects. Since Comet ISON's discovery in September 2012, the comet has brightened only a little, from magnitude +17.3 on Oct. 15 to magnitude +15.5 as of a couple of weeks ago.?
To get an idea of just how faint this is, the comet is currently visible to the eye?only under dark, pristine skies and by using telescopes with very large apertures of around 30 inches. Most of the observations of the comet so far have been made through the use of long exposure photographs or image sensors such as a charge-coupled device (CCD).
Still too early to tell Comet ISON is still very far from the Earth (386 million miles or 621 million kilometers), as well as the sun (403 million miles or 648 million km). The comet was discovered in September 2012 by Russian amateur astronomers Vitali Nevski and Artyom Novichonok using the International Scientific Optical Network. Comet ISON's official designation is C/2012 S1 (ISON).
On March 6, John Bortle, a highly regarded amateur observer who has viewed hundreds of comets spanning over five decades, wrote this assessment of Comet ISON:?
"The much hyped Comet ISON is not evolving in the fashion?we had earlier anticipated. Rather than slowly?but steadily gaining in brightness it has stagnated at basically near 16th magnitude for a couple of months now. After experiencing an interval where the coma's degree of condensation grew quite strong, the object threw out an unexpected strong but short tail that has persists right down to?today.?However, following this episode the coma subsequently?faded, became less condensed and smaller, all bad signs regarding the 'health' of the comet's nucleus. Whether ISON becomes a Great Comet next fall, or just another in a long string of Great Flops, is now much more a question than ever before."
Space.com will continue to monitor the progress of Comet ISON in the weeks and months to come.? We plan to post another update in late April.? ?
Meanwhile, another comet is currently wowing stargazers with an unexpectedly long-lived display.
The Comet Pan-STARRS has dominated the attention of comet observers in the Northern Hemisphere throughout March and still remains an exciting target for stargazers. The comet made its closest approach to the sun on March 10, and became visible to the unaided eye for some stargazers soon afterward. It was appearing low on the western horizon just after sunset, which made the comet hard to spot for some due to the bright twilight.
You find out how to see Comet Pan-STARRS here.
Editor's note:?If you have an amazing picture of Comet ISON, Pan-STARRS or any other night sky view that you'd like to share for a possible story or image gallery, send photos, comments and your name and location to Managing Editor Tariq Malik at spacephotos@space.com.
Joe Rao serves as an instructor and guest lecturer at New York's Hayden Planetarium. He writes about astronomy for The New York Times and other publications, and he is also an on-camera meteorologist for News 12 Westchester, N.Y. Follow us?@Spacedotcom,?Facebook?or?Google+. Originally published on?SPACE.com.
Mar 26 (Reuters) - Leading money winners on the 2013 PGATour on Monday (U.S. unless stated): 1. Tiger Woods $3,787,600 2. Brandt Snedeker $2,859,920 3. Matt Kuchar $2,154,500 4. Steve Stricker $1,820,000 5. Phil Mickelson $1,650,260 6. Hunter Mahan $1,553,965 7. John Merrick $1,343,514 8. Dustin Johnson $1,330,507 9. Russell Henley $1,313,280 10. Kevin Streelman $1,310,343 11. Keegan Bradley $1,274,593 12. Charles Howell III $1,256,373 13. Michael Thompson $1,254,669 14. Brian Gay $1,171,721 15. Justin Rose $1,155,550 16. Jason Day $1,115,565 17. Chris Kirk $1,097,053 18. ...
Physicist Neal Lane receives 2013 Vannevar Bush AwardPublic release date: 26-Mar-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Dana Topousis dtopousi@nsf.gov 703-292-7750 National Science Foundation
Rice University professor served as presidential science advisor in the Clinton Administration
The National Science Board (NSB) announced today that physicist Neal Lane, a former Presidential Science Adviser and former National Science Foundation (NSF) director, is the 2013 recipient of its Vannevar Bush Award.
Lane is the Malcolm Gillis University Professor at Rice University and holds appointments as Senior Fellow of the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy and in the university's department of physics and astronomy.
He served as assistant to President Clinton for Science and Technology and director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy from August 1998 to January 2001.
He was the NSF director from October 1993 to August 1998.
"Among the hallmarks of Neal's NSF directorship was the recognition that scientists must be an integral part of, rather than standing apart from, the civic life of our nation and have the willingness to be a vocal advocate for their position," said Dan E. Arvizu, NSB chairman. "He spoke publicly and wrote widely about the need for researchers to engage in a dialogue with the broader public, the majority of whom seldom have any interaction with scientists, about the centrality of science--and engineering and mathematics--to the functioning of modern society.
"As Neal once wrote in the American Association for the Advancement of Science Yearbook, citing Einstein as a prior advocate of the position he was espousing, 'While there is great need for the public to have a better understanding of science, and we should promote this in every way possible, there is as great a need for scientists to have a better understanding of the public.'"
Neal concluded the piece to which Arvizu referred by saying, "In the final analysis, this larger engagement does not mean a focused or fixed research agenda. It does mean openness to new research challenges and unprecedented partnerships among diverse fields and interests. It does mean a commitment to effective communication of knowledge, and connections between discovery and the use of new knowledge in service to society. And it especially means placing a high priority on education and learning for all youngsters wherever they begin their lives."
Prior to becoming the NSF director, Lane was a professor of physics at Rice University and Provost, a position he had held since 1986.
In 1966, he joined Rice's physics department as an assistant professor. In 1972, he became a professor of physics and space physics and astronomy. He left Rice in mid-1984 to serve as chancellor of the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs until 1986.
From 1979 to 1980, while on leave from Rice, he worked at NSF as Director of the Division of Physics. Lane received his bachelor's and master's degrees in physics at the University of Oklahoma. He was awarded a doctorate in physics from that institution in 1964.
Lane is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Physical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Association for Women in Science. He has been awarded more than a dozen honorary degrees and received several other honors, including, in 2009, the National Academy of Sciences Public Welfare Medal, the American Institute of Physics K.T. Compton Medal for Leadership in Physics, and the Association of Rice Alumni Gold Medal for service to Rice University. In 2011, he received the Distinguished Friend of Science Award from the Southeastern Universities Research Association.
Each year, the National Science Board presents the Vannevar Bush Award to exceptional, lifelong leaders in science and technology who have made substantial contributions to the welfare of the nation through public service activities in science, technology and public policy.
The award was established in 1980 in memory of Vannevar Bush, who served as science advisor to President Franklin Roosevelt during World War II, helped to establish federal funding for science and engineering as a national priority during peacetime and was behind the creation of the NSF.
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About the National Science Board
The National Science Board is the 25-member policymaking body for the National Science Foundation and advisory body to the president and Congress on science and engineering issues. Drawn primarily from universities and industry, and representing a variety of science and engineering disciplines and geographic areas, NSB members are selected for their eminence in research, education or public service and records of distinguished service. The NSB has 24 members that serve six-year terms. The 25th member is the NSF director, an ex officio member of the NSB. Visit the National Science Board's website for more information.
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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.
Physicist Neal Lane receives 2013 Vannevar Bush AwardPublic release date: 26-Mar-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Dana Topousis dtopousi@nsf.gov 703-292-7750 National Science Foundation
Rice University professor served as presidential science advisor in the Clinton Administration
The National Science Board (NSB) announced today that physicist Neal Lane, a former Presidential Science Adviser and former National Science Foundation (NSF) director, is the 2013 recipient of its Vannevar Bush Award.
Lane is the Malcolm Gillis University Professor at Rice University and holds appointments as Senior Fellow of the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy and in the university's department of physics and astronomy.
He served as assistant to President Clinton for Science and Technology and director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy from August 1998 to January 2001.
He was the NSF director from October 1993 to August 1998.
"Among the hallmarks of Neal's NSF directorship was the recognition that scientists must be an integral part of, rather than standing apart from, the civic life of our nation and have the willingness to be a vocal advocate for their position," said Dan E. Arvizu, NSB chairman. "He spoke publicly and wrote widely about the need for researchers to engage in a dialogue with the broader public, the majority of whom seldom have any interaction with scientists, about the centrality of science--and engineering and mathematics--to the functioning of modern society.
"As Neal once wrote in the American Association for the Advancement of Science Yearbook, citing Einstein as a prior advocate of the position he was espousing, 'While there is great need for the public to have a better understanding of science, and we should promote this in every way possible, there is as great a need for scientists to have a better understanding of the public.'"
Neal concluded the piece to which Arvizu referred by saying, "In the final analysis, this larger engagement does not mean a focused or fixed research agenda. It does mean openness to new research challenges and unprecedented partnerships among diverse fields and interests. It does mean a commitment to effective communication of knowledge, and connections between discovery and the use of new knowledge in service to society. And it especially means placing a high priority on education and learning for all youngsters wherever they begin their lives."
Prior to becoming the NSF director, Lane was a professor of physics at Rice University and Provost, a position he had held since 1986.
In 1966, he joined Rice's physics department as an assistant professor. In 1972, he became a professor of physics and space physics and astronomy. He left Rice in mid-1984 to serve as chancellor of the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs until 1986.
From 1979 to 1980, while on leave from Rice, he worked at NSF as Director of the Division of Physics. Lane received his bachelor's and master's degrees in physics at the University of Oklahoma. He was awarded a doctorate in physics from that institution in 1964.
Lane is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Physical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Association for Women in Science. He has been awarded more than a dozen honorary degrees and received several other honors, including, in 2009, the National Academy of Sciences Public Welfare Medal, the American Institute of Physics K.T. Compton Medal for Leadership in Physics, and the Association of Rice Alumni Gold Medal for service to Rice University. In 2011, he received the Distinguished Friend of Science Award from the Southeastern Universities Research Association.
Each year, the National Science Board presents the Vannevar Bush Award to exceptional, lifelong leaders in science and technology who have made substantial contributions to the welfare of the nation through public service activities in science, technology and public policy.
The award was established in 1980 in memory of Vannevar Bush, who served as science advisor to President Franklin Roosevelt during World War II, helped to establish federal funding for science and engineering as a national priority during peacetime and was behind the creation of the NSF.
###
About the National Science Board
The National Science Board is the 25-member policymaking body for the National Science Foundation and advisory body to the president and Congress on science and engineering issues. Drawn primarily from universities and industry, and representing a variety of science and engineering disciplines and geographic areas, NSB members are selected for their eminence in research, education or public service and records of distinguished service. The NSB has 24 members that serve six-year terms. The 25th member is the NSF director, an ex officio member of the NSB. Visit the National Science Board's website for more information.
[ | 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.
I?ll be the first to admit it: I am sort of a sucker for consumer-friendly psychology magazines. Publications like Psychology Today are full of articles I either enjoy reading or using as fire kindling. Or, when I am really irritated by the content, writing articles on the topic. Like this one.
The article, published in Psychology Today, is titled ?Ahead of the Curves? and the brilliant tagline? ?Men know something vital about women?s body shapes that women don?t. Plus: How big hips make wise women.?
It is six pages long and features illustrations of women who look more like playmates than the women who have the aforementioned ?big hips? and are ?wise? because of it. One of the illustrations boasts a sexy blonde wearing a pastel-pretty bra and tight briefs. She is pursing her red lips ? ready to kiss! She is rather revolting and her hips, well, they certainly are not wise.
That alone is irritating but this is the part that really makes me question my taste in literature: This lengthy article is written by two men.
Their respective names and impressive education are listed in very small font. I wondered: How can these two men possibly educate and enlighten women on their sex appeal and bodies? Well, they certainly gave it a good shot. But not good enough.
The first paragraph states that ?American males, it has been calculated, spend some $3 billion a year to gaze at women with hourglass figures, those whose small waists blossom into sinuously curvy hips.?
My first thought? Where does this ?calculation? come from? Furthermore, how does gazing at women connect to ?$3 billion a year?? They don?t explain this. Maybe men take time off work to gawk at women? Unlikely.
I have to give credit where credit is due: They do include research done by the late Deborah Sing ? 20 years ago. This is the only mention of a female contribution to the piece and does not extend past one measly paragraph which tells the eager reader: ?. . .Men all around the world. . .Prefer a similar shape.?
We are then told that when men view a curvy woman their brains respond in a similar fashion to cocaine and heroin. Hmm. That?s a strange statement with no research provided to the reader.
Even so, the following paragraph takes the cake:
Even a thin woman carries an astonishing amount of fat in her legs and hips?about a third of her body weight. Men everywhere admire the fat located here. . .Only bears ready to hibernate, penguins facing a sunless winter without food, or whales swimming in the arctic waters have fat percentages that approach those in normal, healthy, trim young women.
Well, that?s lovely! Female readers have now been compared to bears, penguins and whales. Furthermore, the word ?astonishing? used in relation to our apparent ?fat? probably does not make us smile. I am currently grimacing.
For diversity?s sake (or perhaps the editor was concerned about backlash from readers) a few paragraphs are devoted to explaining that American women are in dire need of more omega-3s.
Unfortunately, I believe more women have read this article than men. The pages are laced with bright pink script. I kid you not. Literature like this confuses both genders and, in my humble and currently sarcastic opinion, the size of my hips does not make me ?wise.? And neither did reading this article.
Reference
Lassek, W. & Gaulin, S. (2012, August). Ahead of the curves. Psychology Today, 45(4), 74-77.
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Natalie Jeanne Champagne is the author of The Third Sunrise: A Memoir of Madness. You can learn about Natalie and the book on her website at www.thethirdsunrise.com
Like this author? Catch up on other posts by NatalieJeanne Champagne (or subscribe to their feed).
????Last reviewed: By John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on 25 Mar 2013 ????Published on PsychCentral.com. All rights reserved.
APA Reference Champagne, N. (2013). Curve Appeal: Do Men Know Something About Women?s Bodies That Women Do Not?. Psych Central. Retrieved on March 25, 2013, from http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2013/03/25/curve-appeal-do-men-know-something-about-womens-bodies-that-women-do-not/
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Sunghwan Jung is a fan of the 19th Century born John William Strutt, 3rd, also known as Lord Baron Rayleigh. An English physicist, Rayleigh, along with William Ramsay, discovered the gas argon, an achievement for which he earned the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1904.
But it was Rayleigh's lesser-known discovery of a physical phenomenon in 1878 that was more intriguing to Jung. Some 135 years ago, Rayleigh wrote that two fluid jets or drops do not always merge into one body of liquid, a counter-intuitive topic or phenomena in physics that has since been studied in much detail, cited Jung, Virginia Tech assistant professor of engineering science and mechanics.
The significance today of this fact is that when noncoalescence takes place between two fluids, it might impact a variety of industrial and everyday processes such as fuel efficiency, ink jet printing, and the development of spray coatings.
New information on Rayleigh's verbal description of the collision of fluids now appears in a contemporary paper authored by Jung and Pavlos Vlachos, professor of mechanical engineering at Virginia Tech, and Navish Wadhwa, of Blacksburg, Va., a doctoral candidate in engineering science and mechanics. The paper, accepted in Physical Review Letters, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Physical Society, is called "Noncoalescence in the oblique collision of fluid jets."
"In Rayleigh's original paper, he mentioned two things: drop bouncing on a liquid bath and jets bouncing. No pictures were given. Much work has been done in drop-bath bouncing, but no work has been done in bouncing jets except for a couple of demonstrations in textbooks. We are the first ones to rationalize the physical mechanism of bouncing jets," Jung explained.
In their experiments, the researchers studied two silicone oil jets bouncing off each other upon collision. Silicone oil is used in most experiments in order to avoid any surface contamination, Jung said, and it is often the base for hydraulic fluids or lubricants.
"Intuition tells us that two or more jets of the same fluid impinging into each other will readily coalesce to form a single mass of fluid, and are well-studied phenomena," Jung explained.
Velocity is key to bringing the two silicone oil jets into a single flow of liquid. Since these jets of fluid drag along air, considered to act as a cushion, the two jets will bounce off of each other. But when the speed of the flow is increased beyond a certain threshold, the air is no longer stable due to the high inertia of jets, and the liquid jets will coalescence, Jung added.
To attain fuel efficiency in space rockets, two different fuel fluids need to mix well to maximize the combustion.
"In our experiments, we showed they are able to bounce off each other and inhibit the mixing. However, in rocket fuel tanks, the fluids come out of the nozzles are a very high speed, so no bouncing happens in their cases," Jung said.
Jung's earlier work on fluid flow won him the 2010 international Milton Van Dyke award at the 63rd annual meeting of the American Physical Society.
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Virginia Tech: http://www.vtnews.vt.edu
Thanks to Virginia Tech for this article.
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Public release date: 26-Mar-2013
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I?ll be the first to admit it: I am sort of a sucker for consumer-friendly psychology magazines. Publications like Psychology Today are full of articles I either enjoy reading or using as fire kindling. Or, when I am really irritated by the content, writing articles on the topic. Like this one.