Apple names European exec to head retail ops (AP)

NEW YORK ? In its quest to spread its stores around the world, Apple is reaching over the Atlantic to snatch the CEO of a British electronics chain to head its retail operations.

Apple Inc. said Tuesday that Dixons Retail PLC's John Browett will become its top retail executive on April 20. He will report directly to CEO Tim Cook.

Browett, 48, fills a job that opened when Ron Johnson left to become the CEO of J.C. Penney Co. in November. Johnson pioneered Apple's highly successful retail stores, known for their stark design and their Genius Bar, where Apple customers get technology advice and support.

About two-thirds of Apple's 361 stores are in the U.S. However, of the 40 stores Apple expects to open this fiscal year, three-quarters will be outside the U.S., with China being a major focus. Apple currently has stores in only 12 countries, including the U.S.

Browett has served as CEO of Dixons since 2007. During his tenure, the company continued an aggressive expansion in Europe. It has about 1,200 stores and is Europe's second-largest electronics retailer, after Germany's Media Markt.

Dixons' brands include Currys in the U.K., Elkjop in Norway, Kotsovolos in Greece, Unieuro in Italy and Electro World in Turkey and the Czech Republic.

Analysts give Browett credit for improving customer service at Dixons.

"Our retail stores are all about customer service, and John shares that commitment like no one else we've met," Cook said in a statement Tuesday.

The chain hasn't seen much financial success during his tenure, however, as it has been undercut by the recession and subsequent belt-tightening in Europe.

Dixons' sales have risen only 8 percent in the past five years, and profits are down sharply. Its stock has lost more than 90 percent of its value in that time. It fell 7.6 percent further in London trading Tuesday after news of Browett's departure.

Before Dixons, Browett held several positions at the British retailer Tesco PLC and headed its online operations.

Dixons named Sebastian James as Group CEO and Katie Bickerstaffe to the newly created role of CEO-U.K. and Ireland.

Apple's stock rose 46 cents to $453.47 in midday trading Tuesday. The day's high of $458.24 was yet another all-time high.

Apple's stores accounted for about 13 percent of the Cupertino, Calif.-based company's revenue in the fiscal year that ended in September, but employed about 60 percent of the total number of Apple workers.

Dixons has a very similar number of employees ? about 39,000 ? but has far more stores: 1,200.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/tech/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120131/ap_on_hi_te/us_apple_retail_chief

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Volcanoes May Have Sparked Little Ice Age (LiveScience.com)

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A mysterious, centuries-long cool spell, dubbed the Little Ice Age, appears to have been caused by a series of volcanic eruptions and sustained by sea ice, a new study indicates.

The research, which looked at chemical clues preserved in Arctic vegetation as well as other data, also pinpointed the start of the Little Ice Age to the end of the 13th century.

During the cool spell, which lasted into the late 19th century, advancing glaciers destroyed northern European towns and froze the Thames River in London and canals in the Netherlands, places that are now ice-free. There is also evidence it affected other continents.

"This is the first time anyone has clearly identified the specific onset of the cold times marking the start of the Little Ice Age," said Gifford Miller, a geological sciences professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and the lead study researcher. "We also have provided an understandable climate feedback system that explains how this cold period could be sustained for a long period of time."

The cause appears to have been massive tropical volcanic eruptions, which spewed tiny particles called aerosols into the atmosphere. While suspended in the air, the aerosols reflect solar radiation back into space, cooling the planet below. ?

The cooling was sustained after the aerosols had left the atmosphere by a sea-ice feedback in the North Atlantic Ocean, the researchers believe. Expanding sea ice would have melted into the North Atlantic Ocean, interfering with the normal mixing between surface and deeper waters. This meant the water flowing back to the Arctic was colder, helping to sustain large areas of sea ice, which, in turn, reflect sunlight back into the atmosphere. The result was a self-sustaining feedback loop.

Miller and colleagues came to these conclusions by looking at radiocarbon dates ? based on how much of the radioactive form of carbon they contain?? from dead plants revealed by melting ice on Baffin Island, in the Canadian Arctic. Their analysis found that many plants at both high and low altitudes died between A.D. 1275 and A.D. 1300 ? evidence that Baffin Island froze over suddenly. Many plants also appeared to have died at around A.D. 1450, an indication of a second major cooling.

These periods coincide with two of the most volcanically active half centuries in the past millennium, according to the researchers. [History's Biggest Volcanic Eruptions]

They also found that the annual layers in sediment cores from a glacial lake linked with an ice cap in Iceland suddenly became thicker, indicating increased erosion caused by the expansion of the ice cap in the late 13th century and in the 15th century?.

"This gave us a great deal more confidence that there was a major perturbation to the Northern Hemisphere climate near the end of the 13th century," Miller said.?

Simulations using a climate model showed that several large, closely spaced eruptions could have cooled the Northern Hemisphere enough to spark sea-ice growth and the subsequent feedback loop.

It's unlikely decreased solar radiation, a separate theory to explain the Little Ice Age, played a role, according to the researchers.

The research will appear Tuesday (Jan. 31) in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

You can follow LiveScience senior writer Wynne Parry on Twitter @Wynne_Parry.?Follow LiveScience for the latest in science news and discoveries on Twitter @livescience?and on Facebook.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/science/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20120130/sc_livescience/volcanoesmayhavesparkedlittleiceage

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U.S. refinery strike rift grows ahead of deadline (Reuters)

(Reuters) ? Union and oil company negotiators resumed talks on Monday after union leaders told workers to prepare for a strike within 48 hours that could shut down 6 percent of U.S. refinery capacity and cause gasoline prices to rise at a time when the country is struggling to sustain a fragile economic recovery.

A strike by the United Steelworkers union could start as early as 12:01 a.m. EST (0501 GMT) on Wednesday on the East Coast and then spread throughout the country.

USW members are hourly employees at about two-thirds of U.S. refining capacity, but only about half of those workers would go on strike on Wednesday, when their contracts expire.

More workers would walk off their jobs when contracts at their refineries expire.

Most refiners have made plans to use temporary replacement workers to keep their refineries operating during a strike.

Oil companies used temporary workers, mostly salaried supervisors and engineers, to keep their refineries operating in the last nationwide strike by refinery workers in 1980.

A strike would likely bolster gasoline crack spreads for refiners, J.P. Morgan said in a research note issued Monday.

"The spate of refinery outages seen on the U.S. East Coast has bolstered gasoline and distillate cracks in the past week," the J.P. Morgan note read. "Further disruptions to refinery throughputs would offer additional support to cracks."

A crack spread is the difference between the cost of oil and the price refiners charge for motor fuel.

Over the weekend, USW negotiators sounded a pessimistic note, warning members that without a "more substantive response from the industry" a strike may be necessary.

The USW also notified members to begin preparations to offer a safe, orderly shutdown of refineries in the event of a strike.

Most refiners are expected to reject such a shutdown offer and begin assigning replacement workers to run refinery production units.

In the Monday note, J.P. Morgan said "the notification of members may be seen by some as a bargaining tactic."

For its part, lead oil company negotiator Shell Oil Co said on Sunday it was "optimistic that a mutually satisfactory agreement can be negotiated with the USW."

Talks for a new contract began January 17 and continued into Sunday night.

While the strike deadline is Wednesday, the Steelworkers negotiators can extend it if they think progress is being made. In 2009, talks were extended three days to reach an agreement.

Shell Oil Co is the U.S. unit of Royal Dutch Shell Plc.

(Corrects in paragraph 3 that USW represents workers at two-thirds of U.S. refining capacity, but only workers at one-third of U.S. capacity would strike as early as Wednesday)

(Reporting by Erwin Seba in Houston; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/economy/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120130/us_nm/us_usa_refinery_strike

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Sanctions to hit EU buyback firms: Iran oil chief (Reuters)

TEHRAN (Reuters) ? European companies owed oil by Iran could lose out if Tehran imposes a ban on crude exports to the European Union next week, the head of Iran's state oil company said on Saturday.

Iran's parliament is due to debate a bill on Sunday that would cut off oil supplies to the EU in a matter of days, in revenge for a decision last Monday by the 27 EU member states to stop importing crude from Iran as of July 1.

"Generally, the parties to incur damage from the EU's recent decision will be European companies with pending contracts with Iran," Ahmad Qalebani, head of the National Iranian Oil Co. told the ISNA news agency.

"The European companies will have to abide by the provisions of the buyback contracts," he said. "If they act otherwise, they will be the parties to incur the relevant losses and will subject the repatriation of their capital to problems."

By turning the sanctions back on the EU, Iranian lawmakers hope to deny Europe the six-month window it had planned to give those countries most dependent on Iranian oil - including some of the most economically fragile - time to adapt.

The EU banned imports of oil from Iran on Monday and imposed a number of other economic sanctions, joining the United States in a new round of measures aimed at deflecting Tehran's nuclear development programme.

Under buyback contracts, a common feature of the Iranian oil industry, investments in oil field projects are paid back in oil, often over many years.

Italy's Eni says it is owed $1.4-1.5 billion in oil for contracts in Iran dating from 2000 and 2001 and has been assured by EU policymakers its buyback contracts will not be part of the European embargo but the prospect of Iran acting first may put that into doubt.

The EU accounted for 25 percent of Iranian crude oil sales in the third quarter of 2011.

(Writing by Robin Pomeroy; Editing by David Stamp)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/energy/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120128/bs_nm/us_iran_oil_sanctions

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The problem with democracy is all the debating (Unqualified Offerings)

Share With Friends: | | Politics - Top Stories Stories, RSS and RSS Feed via Feedzilla.

Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/192684581?client_source=feed&format=rss

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Occupy Oakland: Police Teargas Protestors, Use Flash Grenades

OAKLAND, Calif. ? Police were in the process of arresting about 100 Occupy protesters for failing to disperse Saturday night, hours after officers used tear gas on a rowdy group of demonstrators who threw rocks and flares at them and tore down fences.

Police Sgt. Christopher Bolton said the arrests came after protesters marched through downtown Oakland a little before 8 p.m. Saturday, with some of them entering a YMCA building.

Meanwhile, about 100 police officers surrounded City Hall while others were swept the inside of the building to see if any protesters broke in.

More help from other police agencies was also on the way, with busloads of Alameda County sheriff's deputies arriving in the downtown area late Saturday.

The nighttime arrests came after 19 people were taken into custody in Occupy Oakland protests hours earlier.

Police used tear gas and "flash" grenades on the group Saturday afternoon after some demonstrators threw rocks and other objects at them. Police said three officers were hurt, but they released no details.

Police said the group assembled at a downtown plaza Saturday morning, with demonstrators threatening to take over the vacant Henry Kaiser Convention Center. The group then marched through the streets, disrupting traffic.

The crowd grew as the day wore on, with afternoon estimates ranging from about 1,000 to 2,000 people.

The protesters walked to the vacant convention center, where some started tearing down perimeter fencing and "destroying construction equipment" shortly before 3 p.m., police said.

Police said they issued a dispersal order and used smoke and tear gas after some protesters pelted them with bottles, rocks, burning flares and other objects.

Most of the arrests were made when protesters ignored orders to leave and assaulted officers, police said. By 4 p.m., the bulk of the crowd had left the convention center and headed back downtown.

The demonstration comes after Occupy protesters said earlier this week that they planned to move into a vacant building and turn it into a social center and political hub. They also threatened to try to shut down the port, occupy the airport and take over City Hall.

In a statement Friday, Oakland City Administrator Deanna Santana said the city would not be "bullied by threats of violence or illegal activity."

Interim police Chief Howard Jordan also warned that officers would arrest those carrying out illegal actions.

Oakland officials said Friday that since the Occupy Oakland encampment was first established in late October, police have arrested about 300 people.

The national Occupy Wall Street movement, which denounces corporate excess and economic inequality, began in New York City in the fall but has been largely dormant lately.

Oakland, New York and Los Angeles were among the cities with the largest and most vocal Occupy protests early on. The demonstrations ebbed after those cities used force to move out hundreds of demonstrators who had set up tent cities.

In Oakland, the police department received heavy criticism for using force to break up earlier protests. Among the critics was Mayor Jean Quan, who said she wasn't briefed on the department's plans. Earlier this month, a court-appointed monitor submitted a report to a federal judge that included "serious concerns" about the department's handling of the Occupy protests.

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/28/occupy-oakland-police-tea_n_1239232.html

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OilersJambalaya: CBS SPORTS OILERS: Down the Stretch They Come...NHL 2012: Down the Stretch They Come...NHL 2012 http://t.co/wsUf1XMT #Oilers #OKCBarons

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CBS SPORTS OILERS: Down the Stretch They Come...NHL 2012: Down the Stretch They Come...NHL 2012 bit.ly/z6sjim #Oilers #OKCBarons Il y a environ 5 heures via twitterfeed

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[OOC] Saving Quakos

Forum rules
This forum is for OOC discussion about existing roleplays.

Please post all "Players Wanted" threads in the Roleplayers Wanted forum!

This topic is an Out Of Character part of the roleplay, ?Saving Quakos?. Anything posted here will also show up there.

Topic Tags:

Forum for completely Out of Character (OOC) discussion, based around whatever is happening In Character (IC). Discuss plans, storylines, and events; Recruit for your roleplaying game, or find a GM for your playergroup.
This is the auto-generated OOC topic for the roleplay "Saving Quakos"

You may edit this first post as you see fit.

LH_

Member for 0 years

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This looks interesting...I wish to join this rp...may I reserve a place? I'm writing my char as 'descriptive' as possible...I'll submit my char soon

EDIT: err...I have a question...well, several questions:

Can our chars have special abilities? Like controlling the elements? Flying or stuffs like that?

and when you say races? What kinds of races?

blackwolf

Member for 1 years

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Post a reply

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Former Miami Dolphins Receiver Battling Cancer - Sports News ...

POSTED: 11:18 am EST January 25, 2012

MIAMI -- Former Miami Dolphins wide receiver Mark Duper says he's trying to stay positive after battling cancer.Duper had surgery in Miami earlier this month to remove a cancerous tumor in his kidney.He was riding in a cycling challenge to raise money for a cancer center when he felt ill. An ultrasound later revealed a growth that was diagnosed as renal cancer."I don't want to go through it again," Duper says. "I mean, I got through it and I'm thinking positive about it. I'm going to try to do something to change some of the things that I do in my life. It's just a principle that I've got to think positive and move on."Doctors say there's a 95 percent chance Duper's cancer has been removed.Duper played 11 seasons with the Dolphins from 1982 to 1992.

Copyright 2012 by WPBF.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Source: http://www.wpbf.com/sports/30295748/detail.html

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Lohan Sued for Allegedly Hitting a Nanny with Her Car

Lindsay Lohan has managed to stay out of legal trouble since her November jail stint -- but now she may be headed to court for a car accident that happened 17 months ago. The victim? Reportedly, a nanny who was pushing a stroller when Lohan hit her with a sports car.

Source: http://www.ivillage.com/lindsay-lohan-sued-allegedly-hitting-nanny-her-car/1-a-422407?dst=iv%3AiVillage%3Alindsay-lohan-sued-allegedly-hitting-nanny-her-car-422407

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Samsung Galaxy S III rumor-mill going strong, will we see it at MWC?

The Samsung Galaxy S III (or lack of it) has the Internet ablaze once again, and this time it's based on some information industry insider Eldar Murtazin claims to know, and has hinted at in his Twitter account.  According to Eldar (and nestled in with words like "flagship" and "so much better"), the next-generation Galaxy S device will feature updated hardware with a 1.5GHz or 1.6GHz quad-core processor, a 12MP camera, HD screen (we're assuming it will be part of the AMOLED family), Ice Cream Sandwich with Samsung's TouchWiz tweaks, and it gets great battery life -- yes, he says he has used it.

Eldar says we'll get a to see the Galaxy S III in February at Mobile World Congress, which would make sense. (The Galaxy S II was announced in Barcelona last year.)  We'll see manufacturers' new products at a show designed for manufacturers to show us their new products.  The Galaxy S III will most likely be released in the Far East and Europe before the United States, so Barcelona would be the place to see it.  The specifications sound about right for the next generation of hardware, so Eldar's news seems feasable, and a natural progression that we've seen before.  We'll know more soon when we head to Barcelona for Mobile World Congress.

What does concern us is once again seeing new and better handsets from Samsung, while their current models sit and wait for updates.  The original Galaxy S line is (and we hate it as much as you do) a write-off by now, but there's more than a few Galaxy S II devices which are more than capable, waiting for an Ice Cream Sandwich update.  Samsung's gorgeus screens and state-of-the art hardware has made many of us give them a second chance with the Galaxy S II, but another year-long saga of waiting for device updates just isn't going to fly.  Hopefully, the right people at Samsung and the carriers realizes this as well.

Source: @eldarmurtazin; More: Samsung Galaxy S III forums

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/OpdZ_k-GeLg/story01.htm

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Online Gamers Achieve First Crowdsourced Redesign of Protein

An enzyme designed by players of the protein-folding game Foldit was better than anything scientists could come up with. Image: Foldit

Obsessive gamers' hours at the computer have now topped scientists' efforts to improve a model enzyme, in what researchers say is the first crowdsourced redesign of a protein.

The online game Foldit, developed by teams led by Zoran Popovic, director of the Center for Game Science, and?biochemist David Baker, both?at the University of Washington in Seattle, allows players to fiddle at folding proteins on their home computers in search of the best-scoring (lowest-energy) configurations.

The researchers have previously reported successes by Foldit players in folding proteins, but the latest work moves into the realm of protein design, a more open-ended problem. By posing a series of puzzles to Foldit players and then testing variations on the players' best designs in the lab, researchers have created an enzyme with more than?18-fold higher activity than the original. The work was published January 22 in?Nature Biotechnology.

"I worked for two years to make these enzymes better and I couldn't do it," says Justin Siegel, a post-doctoral researcher working in biophysics?in Baker's group. "Foldit players were able to make a large jump in structural space and I still don't fully understand how they did it."

The project has progressed from volunteers donating their computers' spare processing power for protein-structure research, to actively predicting protein structures, and now to designing new proteins. The game has 240,000 registered players, 2,200 of whom were active last week.

The latest effort involved an enzyme that catalyses one of a family of workhorse reactions in synthetic chemistry called Diels-Alder reactions. Members of this huge family of reactions are used throughout industry to synthesize everything from drugs to pesticides, but enzymes that catalyze Diels-Alder reactions have been elusive. In 2010, Baker and his team?reported that they had designed a functional Diels?Alderase computationally from scratch³, but, says Baker, "it wasn't such a good enzyme".?The binding pocket for the pair of reactants was too open and activity was low. After their attempts to improve the enzyme plateaued, the team turned to Foldit.

In one puzzle, the researchers asked users to remodel one of four amino-acid loops on the enzyme to increase contact with the reactants.?In another puzzle, players were asked for a design that would stabilize the new loop. The researchers got back nearly 70,000 designs for the first puzzle and 110,000 for the second, then synthesized a number of test enzymes based on the best designs, ultimately resulting in the final, 18-fold-more-active enzyme.

Science by intuition

"It's a refreshing twist on enzyme engineering," says Stefan Lutz, a chemist?at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, who was not involved in the research. "Using the Foldit players allows the researchers to use human intuition at a scale that is unprecedented."

Foldit allows people to explore more drastic changes to the protein than are possible using standard methods such as directed evolution ? in which a large pool of randomly mutated enzymes is screened for mutants that improve the original. These mutations are typically just amino-acid substitutions, not the 13-amino-acid addition the players came up with. Systematically testing a change of that size?would require testing astronomical numbers of proteins.

Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=651bc0d21025400c78f810094745257f

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Daily App Deals: Get KeepTrack Pro for Android for Free in Today's App Deals [Deals]

The Daily App Deals post is a round-up of the best app discounts of the day, as well as some notable mentions for ones that are on sale.

The Best

KeepTrack Pro (Amazon Appstore) Previously $1.99, now Free. KeepTrack Pro for Android offers a simple user interface to help you track just about anything, from tracking workouts to tracking medications. The app collects your information and then will give you data breakdowns with charts, stats, and calendars. It also offers alarms to remind you of tasks. Get it for Free. (via Apps-aholic)

Free

iOS

Windows

The Rest

iOS

Android

Windows

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Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/_GLhPgqKxXg/daily-app-deals-get-keeptrack-pro-for-android-for-free-in-todays-app-deals

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Trick Windows Into Shutting Down Without Installing Updates [Annoyances]

We've all been there: You go to shut down your machine, but you see that dreaded Windows Update icon that means your computer might stay powered on, installing updates for the next 20 minutes. If you want to shut it down immediately, you can trick it by going to the lock screen first.

To avoid installing updates when you shut down, all you need to do is lock your computer (which you can do by pressing Win+L). Then, from that screen, head down to the shut down button, where you'll see an option to "Install Updates and Shut Down" or just "Shut Down"?an option you don't get from the regular ol' Start menu. Choose "Shut Down" and you can wait to install those updates when you aren't in a rush. For a more permanent solution, of course, you can hack the registry, but this will do in a pinch.

Trick To Shutdown Windows By Skipping Windows Update Installation | Into Windows

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/i1N5_WWECMA/trick-windows-into-shutting-down-without-installing-updates

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HTC Velocity runs impressive speed test on Australia's new 4G network

How fast is Telstra's new 4G network? Pretty darned fast, according to a recent speed test that Ausdroid ran on an HTC Velocity -- Australia's first 4G handset. As the above image clearly demonstrates, the device impressively managed to reach download speeds of 32.82Mbps, with upload rates of 11.26Mbps. Ausdroid was quick to point out that speeds will likely vary across Telstra's network, though it wasn't the only one to report astronomic numbers. Trevor Long, in fact, actually managed to top Ausdroid's results, with a whopping 39.85Mbps downstream, and 11.88Mbps upstream. He also posted an image to his Twitter account, just to rub it in.

[Thanks, Jason]

HTC Velocity runs impressive speed test on Australia's new 4G network originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 23 Jan 2012 19:14:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Tech AU  |  Ausdroid, @trevorlong (Twitter)  | Email this | Comments

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/KtTLOwLPo64/

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Video: Suspected twisters cause damage in South

>> iing news. strong storms in the south. al roker ?

>> we have an area of severe weather from central alabama into parts of georgia. this was last night in fordice, arkansas, where they had a massive amount of damage reported. of course the storms have made their way into alabama and are on their way into georgia. let's show you what's happening right now. there's the risk of severe weather . as far as our radar is concerned, as you look you can see a tornado watch in effect for central alabama until 10:00 a.m . tuscaloosa, montgomery, birmingham reported. as matt mentioned, paradise valley , alabama, in between birmingham and tuscaloosa, we had ham radio reports of the town being wiped off the map. we are going to have to update this. but, again, it is really bad there. we're looking at the storms continuing. we are looking not at heavy rainfall amounts but the big problem going to be the winds out of the tornadoes. hail, damaging winds and we'll continue to update this for you. matt?

>> al, thank you very much.

Source: http://video.today.msnbc.msn.com/today/46098261/

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A big leap toward lowering the power consumption of microprocessors

Friday, January 20, 2012

The first systematic power profiles of microprocessors could help lower the energy consumption of both small cell phones and giant data centers, report computer science professors from The University of Texas at Austin and the Australian National University.

Their results may point the way to how companies like Google, Apple, Intel and Microsoft can make software and hardware that will lower the energy costs of very small and very large devices.

"The less power cell phones draw, the longer the battery will last," says Kathryn McKinley, professor of computer science at The University of Texas at Austin. "For companies like Google and Microsoft, which run these enormous data centers, there is a big incentive to find ways to be more power efficient. More and more of the money they're spending isn't going toward buying the hardware, but toward the power the datacenters draw."

McKinley says that without detailed power profiles of how microprocessors function with different software and different chip architectures, companies are limited in terms of how well they can optimize for energy usage.

The study she conducted with Stephen M. Blackburn of The Australian National University and their graduate students is the first to systematically measure and analyze application power, performance, and energy on a wide variety of hardware.

This work was recently invited to appear as a Research Highlight in the Communications of the Association for Computer Machinery (CACM). It's also been selected as one of this year's "most significant research papers in computer architecture based on novelty and long-term impact" by the journal IEEE Micro.

"We did some measurements that no one else had done before," says McKinley. "We showed that different software, and different classes of software, have really different power usage."

McKinley says that such an analysis has become necessary as both the culture and the technologies of computing have shifted over the past decade.

Energy efficiency has become a greater priority for consumers, manufacturers and governments because the shrinking of processor technology has stopped yielding exponential gains in power and performance. The result of these shifts is that hardware and software designers have to take into account tradeoffs between performance and power in a way they did not ten years ago.

"Say you want to get an application on your phone that's GPS-based," says McKinley, "In terms of energy, the GPS is one of the most expensive functions on your phone. A bad algorithm might ping your GPS far more than is necessary for the application to function well. If the application writer could analyze the power profile, they would be motivated to write an algorithm that pings it half as often to save energy without compromising functionality."

McKinley believes that the future of software and hardware design is one in which power profiles become a consideration at every stage of the process.

Intel, for instance, has just released a chip with an exposed power meter, so that software developers can access some information about the power profiles of their products when run on that chip. McKinley expects that future generations of chips will expose even more fine-grained information about power usage.

Software developers like Microsoft (where McKinley is spending the next year, while taking a leave from the university) are already using what information they have to inform their designs. And device manufacturers are testing out different architectures for their phones or tablets that optimize for power usage.

McKinley says that even consumers may get information about how much power a given app on their smart phone is going to draw before deciding whether to install it or not.

"In the past, we optimized only for performance," she says. "If you were picking between two software algorithms, or chips, or devices, you picked the faster one. You didn't worry about how much power it was drawing from the wall socket. There are still many situations today?for example, if you are making software for stock market traders?where speed is going to be the only consideration. But there are a lot of other areas where you really want to consider the power usage."

###

University of Texas at Austin: http://www.utexas.edu

Thanks to University of Texas at Austin for this article.

This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/116910/A_big_leap_toward_lowering_the_power_consumption_of_microprocessors

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Mystery Surrounds Air Force's Secretive X-37B Space Plane Landing Plan (SPACE.com)

The United States Air Force's secretive X-37B space plane has been circling Earth for more than 10 months, and there's no telling when it might come down.

As of Friday (Jan. 20), the mysterious robotic X-37B spacecraft has been aloft for 321 days, significantly outlasting its stated mission design lifetime of 270 days. But it may stay up for even longer yet, experts say, particularly if the military views this space mission ? the second ever for the hush-hush vehicle ? as something of an endurance test.

"Because it is an experimental vehicle, they kind of want to see what its limits are," said Brian Weeden, a technical adviser with the Secure World Foundation and a former orbital analyst with the Air Force.

A long mystery mission

The Air Force launched the X-37B in March 2011, sending the reusable space plane design on its second space mission. The X-37B now zipping around our planet is known as Orbital Test Vehicle-2, or OTV-2.

Another X-37B vehicle, the OTV-1, launched in April 2010 and landed in December of that year, staying on orbit for 225 days ? well under the unmanned spacecraft's supposed 270-day limit. But OTV-2 has already exceeded that limit by more than seven weeks, and the calendar keeps turning over. [Photos of the 2nd Secret X-37B Mission]

Racking up a lot of time in space might be a key part of the current mission, according to Weeden.

"I think they didn't want to push it, just because it was the first of its kind," he told SPACE.com, referring to OTV-1's flight. "But I think that they are looking to push the second one."

Statements from Air Force officials appear to support Weeden's supposition.

"This successful flight is important in the progression of the X-37B program, moving us forward in our effort to prove the utility and cost-effectiveness of an unmanned, long-duration, reusable spacecraft," Air Force Lt. Col. Tom McIntyre, the X-37 systems program director, told SPACE.com in late November, when OTV-2 hit the 270-day milestone.

"We look forward to trying to expand the platform's envelope by extending the mission further," McIntyre added.

Testing new technologies?

The X-37B looks a lot like NASA's now-retired space shuttle, only much smaller. The unmanned vehicle is about 29 feet long by 15 feet wide (8.8 by 4.5 meters), with a payload bay the size of a pickup truck bed. For comparison, two entire X-37Bs could fit inside the payload bay of a space shuttle.

Just what the X-37B does for so long while circling our planet remains a mystery, because the space plane's payloads and missions are classified.

Partly as a result of the secrecy, some concern has been raised ? particularly by Russia and China ? that the X-37B might be a space weapon of some sort. But the Air Force has repeatedly denied that charge, claiming that the vehicle's chief task is testing out new technologies for future satellites.

That's likely to be the case, said Weeden, who published a report in 2010 that investigated the X-37B and its likely missions.

The Air Force doesn?t disclose the X-37B's orbital parameters, but amateur observers have tracked the movements of both OTV-1 and OTV-2. They've found that OTV-2 is not looping around Earth in a polar orbit, which enables a good look at every spot on the globe.

Rather, the spacecraft is flying repeatedly over the stretch of Earth from 43 degrees north latitude to 43 degrees south latitude. Weeden thinks the space plane may be observing the Middle East and Afghanistan with some brand-new spy gear, perhaps instruments optimized to observe in wavelengths beyond the visible-light spectrum.

Earlier this month, an article in Spaceflight Magazine, a British publication, speculated that OTV-2 might be spying on Tiangong 1, China's recently launched prototype space module. But the orbits of the two robotic vehicles are quite different, making this scenario highly unlikely, Weeden and other experts have stressed.

You can follow SPACE.com senior writer Mike Wall on Twitter: @michaeldwall. Follow SPACE.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/space/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/space/20120121/sc_space/mysterysurroundsairforcessecretivex37bspaceplanelandingplan

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Video: Captain's version of the Costa Condordia story

>>> now, the latest on the cruise ship disaster in italy where tonight the death toll has gone up to 12. there's also new information about the captain under house arrest and under fire. tonight he's defending himself, fighting back and we get our report from nbc's michelle kosinski who remains on giglio island .

>> reporter: conditions finally giving divers a window of safety, they resume their search. then, late afternoon, a discovery. the body of a woman among the 21 missing. their families nearby, including the daughter of missing american barbara and jerry heil from minnesota up. comforted by another on board. divers focus on this area they have been trying to access for days. called deck 4, and it would have been the meeting place where passengers would come with life jackets on to wait to be rescued. but it's on the side of the ship that's submerged. pictures from today's search show what it's like down there. and everything left behind. here someone's luggage. and today, an italian newspaper reports what it says are captain schettino's statements in court. he says that night he was having dinner with officers and the ship's hostess and told the crew to let them know when they reach six miles from the giglio island . helped to steer closer, a salute to a retired commander. radar showed a rock. he turned the ship, desperate and too late. he states he called the company, told them i messed up and explained what happened. then arranged the evacuation. he says he didn't sound the alarm immediately to avoid panic. but panic came. and he claims he tripped, fell into the sea, was rescued by a boat, insisted they bring him back, but says they refused. in a phone call with the coast guard after the accident, he told them he'd be the last man on board. i will stay here, i think it will be just me. he's accused of manslaughter and abandoning the concordia. the families gathered here from around the world. their desire to lay their loved ones to rest starting to surpass hope of finding that miracle of survivals now. michelle kosinski , nbc news, giglio, italy.

Source: http://video.msnbc.msn.com/nightly-news/46083886/

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Report: Swede blames Mossad for Bangkok arrest (AP)

STOCKHOLM ? A Lebanese-Swedish man detained in a terror probe in Thailand has told a Swedish newspaper that he's innocent and blamed Israel's Mossad spy agency for his arrest.

The tabloid Aftonbladet on Friday said it spoke to 47-year-old Atris Hussein in a Bangkok prison where he's being held on allegations of illegally possessing explosive materials.

Hussein was quoted as saying he is "100 percent innocent" and that "much of the material the police found in my warehouse had been placed there, probably by the Israeli security service Mossad."

Thai police seized more than 8,800 pounds (4,000 kilograms) of urea fertilizer and several gallons of liquid ammonium nitrate at the warehouse in Samut Sakhon, on the western outskirts of Thai capital Bangkok, according to police and media reports.

Police have said Hussein was storing the explosive materials in Bangkok before shipping them to another destination.

His arrest last week was linked to United States and Israeli warnings of a possible terror threat in Bangkok, coming during heightened tension over U.S. and Israeli responses to the prospect that Iran is moving ahead with its nuclear program.

Thai authorities were caught off-guard by the U.S. announcement, hastily revealing they had detained a Swedish national of Lebanese origin with alleged links to pro-Iranian Hezbollah militants.

Hussein told Aftonbladet that one evening he was taken from the Thai prison to a house where he was interrogated by three men "who obviously were from Mossad." He didn't specify why he thought so.

Asked why the Israeli agency would be going after him, he said: "I am a Shia Muslim but I don't belong to Hezbollah. But I live in an area outside Beirut where they are strong.

"I also have sympathies on the left and voted for the (left-leaning) Social Democrats when I lived in Sweden. Maybe that made me look suspicious in the Mossad's eyes."

Hussein said he moved to Sweden in 1989 and became a Swedish citizen five years later. He said he worked in the country as a hairdresser before moving back to Lebanon in 2005.

He told the newspaper he is involved in a business exporting a variety of goods from Thailand to other countries, including Lebanon. The products include fans, copy machine paper and frozen gel packs used for pain relief, he said.

"There is ammonium in these packs. That's all there is to it. We never traded with fertilizer. It must have been placed there by someone, probably Mossad," Hussein said.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/terrorism/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120120/ap_on_re_eu/eu_sweden_thailand_terror_threat

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businessinsider: Apple's Macs Are Growing, Everyone Else Is Tanking by @hblodget http://t.co/2lux5lF0

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LeBron vs. Kobe: Top 2 scorers on collision course

Miami Heat's LeBron James (6) shoots over San Antonio Spurs' Kawhi Leonard (2) and DeJuan Blair (45) during the first half of an NBA basketball game, Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2012, in Miami. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky)

Miami Heat's LeBron James (6) shoots over San Antonio Spurs' Kawhi Leonard (2) and DeJuan Blair (45) during the first half of an NBA basketball game, Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2012, in Miami. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky)

Los Angeles Lakers' Kobe Bryant smiles as he looks towards the Dallas Mavericks bench after Derek Fisher scored a three pointer with 3.1 seconds to go in the NBA basketball game against the Dallas Mavericks in Los Angeles on Monday, Jan. 16, 2012. The Lakers won 73-70. (AP Photo/Danny Moloshok)

MIAMI (AP) ? Kobe Bryant is 33 years old, has spent nearly half his life in the NBA, is dealing with a significant wrist injury and has taken about 3,000 more shots in his career than any other active player.

Given all that, some may think he's a candidate to start slowing down.

LeBron James is not among those who would even consider that possible.

The NBA's top two scorers this season ? Bryant at 30.8 points per game, James at 29.8 ? go head-to-head Thursday night, when the Los Angeles Lakers visit the Miami Heat. Even with subplots including James facing his former Cleveland coach in the Lakers' Mike Brown, the possibility that Dwyane Wade may sit out again with a sprained right ankle and hints that Miami center Eddy Curry may make his Heat debut, all eyes will be on one thing.

Kobe vs. LeBron.

"We know how great of a player, how competitive he is," James said. "And he's not going to sell himself short, either. ... He's a scorer. He's a flat-out scorer."

Bryant is coming off a stretch where he scored at least 40 points in four straight games, a streak snapped in a 73-70 win over Dallas on Monday night. Bryant entered Wednesday ranking seventh in the NBA in minutes per game (37.7), a stat made even more impressive when considering that only one of the six players ahead of him on that list is older than 27.

"I do want to get it down," Brown said. "He's played a ton of minutes too early right now."

Hey, if Brown wants to start that policy on Thursday, it doesn't sound like the Heat would complain.

"He looks healthier and quicker than he did last year," Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said. "I think everybody knew he wasn't 100 percent last year. He was just grinding through it and the lockout was probably beneficial for him, the extra time but also he was able to get stronger. He looks very lean. He looks in great shape."

The Lakers have played 10 of their first 15 games at home (or 11, technically, since one of their five "road" games was at the Los Angeles Clippers). This trip is a quick but lengthy one, with the Lakers flying cross-country on Wednesday, visiting Miami on Thursday, Orlando on Friday and then heading back home in time for a matchup Sunday against Indiana.

It's the first Eastern Conference trip of the year for the Lakers.

"Just get ready. Just get ready," Bryant said, when asked what the Lakers needed to do to prep for Miami and Orlando. "It's our first really long road trip in terms of distance and travel and with a new coaching staff, kind of getting used to the travel schedule and how they do things. Looking forward to it."

Some would say that scoring wise, Bryant looks as good as ever.

Sure, it's early, but Bryant is on pace to average 30 points for the first time in five seasons. And he's putting up those numbers even though a ligament issue in his right wrist ? his shooting side ? is hampering him at times on long jumpers, noted by his career-low 24 percent success rate from 3-point range so far this year.

He's more than compensating in other areas of his game.

"Not a surprise," Heat forward Shane Battier said. "That's what he's done his entire career. You know when you're getting ready to lace 'em up against Kobe Bryant, you load up for bear. It's going to be a work-filled day."

For James, some of that work will come on the defensive end.

With it sounding like a strong possibility Wade will not play ? Spoelstra said his status Wednesday remains day-to-day ? the Heat will still run a steady stream of defenders at Bryant, with candidates including Battier, James Jones, Mike Miller and James.

"He'll have to take that challenge at some point," Spoelstra said. "Whether he does it at the beginning of the game, I'm not sure. ... He can't afford to get tired right now. He just simply can't."

Head-to-head, James and Bryant have remarkably similar numbers. Over the last 11 meetings between their teams, James is averaging 27.9 points, 7.6 rebounds and 7 assists, while Bryant is putting up 28.0 points, 5.9 rebounds and 5.6 assists.

There is one significant difference in that span: James' team have gone 9-2 against the Lakers.

"It's not about LeBron and Kobe," James said. "It's the Lakers versus Heat thing. ... We just try to do what's best for our team and help our teams win."

___

Follow Tim Reynolds on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/ByTimReynolds

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/347875155d53465d95cec892aeb06419/Article_2012-01-19-BKN-Heat-Preparing-for-Kobe/id-bd8b1b45f213446d8e39caab267b3d6b

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New app lets you track great white sharks

Want to travel the oceans alongside great white sharks, but your busy schedule and fear of death always seem to get in the way? There's an app for that.

Now anyone with an iPhone or an iPad (and $3.99 to spare) can follow along in near-real time with a dozen of the world's most iconic predators with the app Expedition White Shark.

"We're hoping it raises public awareness about white sharks, which helps our conservation efforts," said marine biologist Michael Domeier, the man behind the app and president of the Marine Conservation Science Institute, a small, California-based nonprofit research organization.

Domeier has studied great white sharks for many years, and was one of the first people to ever outfit adult great white sharks with satellite tracking tags ? the key to the new app. His adventures were chronicled on the National Geographic Channel program "Shark Men."

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The tags are affixed to the sharks' dorsal fins. When the fins break the surface of the water, the tags send a signal to a satellite. If the satellite is overhead at the time, it picks up the shark's location and plots the location on a map.

A few of the tracked sharks are already somewhat famous. There's Bruce, who's often seen by cage divers. "For whatever reason he is not shy of cameras," Domeier said. "He's a bit of showoff." And last year an injured great white shark named Junior got a lot of attention, thanks to some gruesome images sent around the blogosphere.

"He is doing well," Domeier told OurAmazingPlanet. Junior last checked in around Point Arena, Calif., fairly close to shore. "If anybody was thinking of surfing at Point Arena that day, that was maybe a little bit of a warning," he said.

Shark, where art thou?
"There are definitely different personality traits with respect to surface behavior," Domeier said. "Some sharks spend more time at the surface than others." Some sharks check in just 10 times a year, others ping the satellite on a weekly basis.?

Gender also appears to play a role in where sharks like to hang out. Although he acknowledged that the sample size is small, and the project has tagged three times as many males as females, Domeier said a pattern has begun to emerge.

"Males are pretty simple," he said. They travel between coastal waters off California and Mexico and an area near Hawaii in a predictable pattern each year. "They go out and come back like clockwork," Domeier said.

"The females have disappeared for two years, and we've finally figured out where they are," he added.

Satellite tags revealed the female sharks, the larger of the two sexes, spend up to 18 months in the deep, open waters in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and swim as deep as 3,300 feet (1,000 meters), a finding that Domeier called exciting.

"The theory we're working on now is they basically come to the coastal areas to mate and to give birth," he said.

Fish funding
Although the Expedition White Shark app is designed to raise awareness, Domeier said it is also designed to raise money. Domeier said he hopes to expand his research to include newer, more advanced satellite tags, and younger sharks.

"The adults are huge, so oftentimes they can break fishermen's lines and crash right through nets, but juveniles are not, and they are undoubtedly the most vulnerable," he said.

Much about great white sharks remains mysterious, including just how many there are. A recent University of California, Davis and Stanford shark study estimated that only about 220 adult great white sharks are living off the North American Pacific coast.

Domeier said he thinks there are more, but that data are sorely needed, as are newer, more accurate models for estimating population numbers.

The species as a whole, which can be found in oceans from 60 degrees north to 60 degrees south, is listed as "vulnerable" by the IUCN, an international body that assesses the state of species around the globe.

Worldwide, shark populations have declined steeply in recent years, many falling victim to overfishing for their valuable fins. Shark fins fetch high prices as a prized ingredient in shark fin soup. The soup was banned in California last year.

Domeier said he hopes the app raises enough money to allow him to move the tagging into the next phase ? using tags with cameras.

"Now we know where (great white sharks) go, but we don't really know what they're doing when they're there," he said. If the giant fish could bring back photographs of their travels, it would push the science further, he said.

Tags can be designed to pop off an animal at an appointed time, and float on the surface of the sea until researchers can come by and retrieve them, allowing scientists to sort through a virtual travelogue, complete with pictures, of the shark's activity.

Domeier said that such work might be possible within two years with the proper funding.

"This may sound like science fiction, but a lot of the things we're doing now would have sounded like science fiction 30 years ago," he said.

Reach Andrea Mustain at amustain@techmedianetwork.com. Follow her on Twitter @AndreaMustain. Follow OurAmazingPlanet for the latest in Earth science and exploration news on Twitter @OAPlanet and on Facebook.

? 2012 OurAmazingPlanet. All rights reserved. More from OurAmazingPlanet.

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46046234/ns/technology_and_science-science/

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