PFT: Bucs saw Revis injury as opportunity

AP

Lost in the question of whether the Seahawks face fines for future player suspensions is the reality that, based on the policy created by the NFL in 2008, they likely paid more than $60,000 for suspensions that happened in 2012.

The NFL has declined comment on the question of whether and to what extent the Seahawks have been fined for past suspensions, explaining that this information isn?t disclosed for any team.? But the league office has confirmed that the formula developed in 2008 still applies, and it?s public knowledge that three Seahawks were suspended during the 2012 season:? offensive lineman Allen Barbre, safety Winston Guy, and cornerback Brandon Browner.

Barbre came first, suspended the first four games of the season under the performance-enhancing drugs policy.? He was cut after the suspension ended in October.

Under the league?s policy, the Seahawks faced fines for the second suspension (Guy) and the third (Browner).? Based on their salaries for 2012, Guy lost $97,500 in salary during his four-week suspension.? The policy converts 25 percent of that into a fine, which equates to $24,375.

Next up was Browner, who served a four-game suspension and forfeited $109,411 in base salary.? Since Browner?s suspension was the third of the year, one third of his lost salary became a fine.? That?s $36,470.

The total of the two fines is $60,845.

This year, the Seahawks will be fined if there?s another suspension under the substance-abuse policy, the policy regarding steroids and related substances, or the personal-conduct policy, given that defensive end Bruce Irvin already will miss the first four games of the year after testing positive for performance-enhancing drugs.

It?s unclear whether fines will make teams more careful about acquiring players who carry the red flag of a possible violations.? Former Chiefs G.M. Scott Pioli said on Tuesday?s PFT Live that the league has discussed the possibility of stripping draft picks as an alternative to fines.

That could be the best way to handle the situation.? Team?s view fines as a cost of doing business; losing draft picks impacts competitive interests, and thus are more likely to get the franchise?s attention.

Source: http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2013/05/21/bucs-saw-darrelle-revis-knee-injury-as-an-opportunity/related/

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Coffee Lowers Risk of Autoimmune Liver Disease - Food Product ...

ROCHESTER, Minn.?Individuals who drink coffee have a 20% lower risk for a particular autoimmune liver disease, according to new research presented at Digestive Disease Week (DDW).

Researchers at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., linked coffee consumption with reduced risk of primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC), a disease of the bile ducts that causes inflammation and subsequent duct obstruction that ultimately can lead to cirrhosis of the liver, liver failure and biliary cancer.

"While rare, PSC has extremely detrimental effects," said Craig Lammert, M.D., instructor of medicine at Mayo Clinic. "We are always looking for ways to mitigate risk, and our first-time finding points to a novel environmental effect that might also help us to determine the cause of this and other devastating autoimmune diseases."

The study examined the largest cohort of patients with PSC and primary biliary cirrhosis (PBC) in the U.S. as well as a healthy control group. Data showed that coffee consumption was associated with reduced risk of PSC, but not PBC. PSC patients were much more likely to never consume coffee compared with the control group. The control group also spent nearly 20% more of their life regularly drinking coffee.

In 2010, a study published in the journal Hepatology found patients with chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) who consume more than 2.25 cups of regular coffee daily have milder liver fibrosis.

?

Source: http://www.foodproductdesign.com/news/2013/05/coffee-lowers-risk-of-autoimmune-liver-disease.aspx

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Huge search underway for missing Iowa teen

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) ? A massive search was underway Tuesday for a 15-year-old girl abducted near an Iowa bus stop, after authorities said a man who is suspected of taking her and another girl was found dead.

Dozens of federal, state and local law enforcement are searching by air, land and water for Kathlynn Shepard. She and a 12-year-old girl were taken near a Dayton bus stop Monday afternoon after accepting a ride from a stranger. The younger girl was able to escape.

The Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation said at a Tuesday news conference that the body of 42-year-old Michael Klunder was found Monday night with a red Toyota Tundra pickup at a rural property northeast of Dayton, about 60 miles north of Des Moines. His cause of death is under investigation.

Klunder is listed on the state's sex offender registry, and he spent several years in prison on kidnapping charges, prison records show. He was released from a work release program in February 2011.

Kathlynn's name and photo are being released in an effort to find the teenager alive, said Jessica Lown with the Iowa Department of Public Safety.

"They're continuing to search for the girl under the assumption that she is still alive because right at this point in time we don't have information indicating otherwise," Lown said. "That's the way these things work for all missing children and missing person cases. We search until we find them."

Klunder was suspected of abducting the girls on Monday. The 12-year-old girl, who has not been identified, told investigators she and Kathlynn had accepted a ride from a stranger who took them to an agricultural facility. She was able to escape and run to a nearby rural residence for help, DCI Director Chari Paulson said during the news conference.

The girl was taken to a Fort Dodge hospital and released. Authorities haven't said what relationship the girls have to one another.

Authorities said the abduction spanned several hours, with Klunder's body being discovered nearly four hours after the girls were taken.

Poor weather and darkness delayed an extensive search Monday night for Kathlynn that covers up to 100 square miles of mostly rural lands, according to Lown.

With the onset of daylight, authorities scoured fields and wooded areas with the help of K-9s and volunteers. Airplanes equipped with heat-activation technology have been deployed.

"The response by volunteers has been outstanding," Paulson said.

The abduction comes less than a year after the high-profile disappearance of two cousins in Evansdale, about 90 miles east of Dayton. Lyric Cook, 10, and 9-year-old Elizabeth Collins disappeared while riding their bikes last July. Hunters found their bodies in a remote, wooded area in December.

Kathlynn is described as being 5-feet-6-inches and 160 pounds. She has blond hair, blue eyes and braces. She was last seen wearing jeans, a gray hooded sweatshirt and a Minnesota Vikings baseball cap.

Klunder's convictions on kidnapping and assault charges include the 1991 abduction and assault of a Rudd woman and the kidnapping of two toddlers from an apartment complex in Charles City, according to the Mason City Globe Gazette. The girls, both 3, were found alive inside a dumpster.

Authorities are asking the public for information about any interactions with Klunder, as well of any sighting of his pickup between 3 p.m. and 8 p.m. Monday.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/massive-search-underway-abducted-teen-iowa-210027444.html

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Huge tornado touches down near Oklahoma City

Tornado damage seen in Moore, Okla., May 20, 2013. (KFOR-TV)

A devastating, mile-wide tornado touched down near Oklahoma City on Monday, leveling homes, businesses and schools in the suburb of Moore. There were no immediate reports of fatalities or injuries.

The funnel cloud could be seen for miles, creating a debris field several miles wide. Weather officials estimated the strength of the tornado to be an F4 or F5.

The Oklahoma House of Representatives canceled its afternoon sessions so lawmakers and staffers could take shelter, the Associated Press said.

The tornado comes a day after powerful storms ripped through the center of the country, spawning at least a dozen tornadoes, killing two people and causing extensive damage from Georgia to Minnesota.

According to the Oklahoma state medical examiner, the two victims in Sunday's storms?Glen Irish, 79, and Billy Hutchinson, 76?were from hard-hit Shawnee. At least 39 other people were injured on Sunday, Oklahoma emergency management director Albert Ashwood said.

Watch live coverage of Monday's tornado via Oklahoma City's News 9:

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/tornado-oklahoma-city-moore-205548879.html

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Galaxy S4 'Google Edition' to be U.S.-only at launch

The Nexus experience device won't be available outside the US at launch, sources tell CNET

It appears that folks around the world are going to have to wait to not order their very own Google Edition Samsung Galaxy S4, as CNET says Google has confirmed the launch to be US-only. The device, which was unveiled during the Google I/O 2013 keynote presentation, is the same Galaxy S4 you all know and love, but without Samsung's Touchwiz software -- or it's features. Instead the device has the same "Nexus user experience" that Google's own Nexus 4 delivers. The version shown at the I/O keynote will be penta-band HSPA+ and LTE, and will be completely compatible with both AT&T and T-Mobile in the US.

It was a bold, if strange, move by the two companies, and nobody is quite sure why either side wanted it to happen. Around these parts, we still think you're better served buying the "non-Google" version and doing a little software hackery if you just have to have Google Android instead of Samsung Android, allowing for an easy path back should you want or need all the features the hardware can deliver.

There was no word on when to expect the device to be sold in other countries, but we imagine Samsung and Google wants to make it available and will work out the logistics and details as fast as they can.

Source: CNET UK

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/Zch0u-L5rBg/story01.htm

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Yahoo takes big leap with $1.1B deal for Tumblr

FILE - In this April 18, 2011 file photo, the Yahoo logo is displayed outside of the offices in Santa Clara, Calif. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma, File)

FILE - In this April 18, 2011 file photo, the Yahoo logo is displayed outside of the offices in Santa Clara, Calif. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma, File)

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) ? Yahoo is buying online blogging forum Tumblr for $1.1 billion as CEO Marissa Mayer tries to rejuvenate an Internet icon that had fallen behind the times.

The deal announced Monday is Mayer's boldest move since she left Google 10 months ago to lead Yahoo's latest comeback attempt. It marks Yahoo's most expensive acquisition since the Sunnyvale, Calif., company bought online search engine Overture a decade ago for $1.3 billion in cash and stock.

Yahoo is paying mostly cash for Tumblr, dipping into what remains of a $7.6 billion windfall reaped last year from selling about half of its stake in Chinese Internet company Alibaba Holdings Group. Taking over Tumblr will devour about one-fifth of the $5.4 billion in cash that Yahoo had in its accounts at the end of March.

While hailing Tumblr as a fount of creativity that attracts 300 million visitors each month, Mayer told analysts Monday that she is "making a sincere promise to not screw it up." David Karp, a high school dropout who started Tumblr six years ago, will remain in control of the service in an effort to retain the same "irreverence, wit and commitment to empower creators," Yahoo said.

Karp, 26, may now have a managerial mentor in Mayer, 37. Tumblr, which will remain based in New York, has about 175 employees while Yahoo has 11,300 workers.

Mayer, who worked closely with Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin during her time at the company, had high praise for Karp during Monday's conference call. "David Karp is one of the most inspiring, insightful entrepreneurs that I have ever met," she said.

In his statement, Karp predicted Yahoo would help Tumblr grow even faster as he strives "to make the Internet the ultimate creative canvas. "

The deal is expected to close during the second half of this year.

Tumblr will now play a pivotal role in Mayer's attempt to reshape Yahoo. To take on the challenge, Mayer ended a highly successful 13-year career at Google, which she helped surpass Yahoo as the Internet's most influential company. Since coming to Yahoo, Mayer has concentrated on improving employee morale, redesigning services and bringing in more engineering talent through a series of small acquisitions that have collectively cost less than $50 million.

Yahoo will still focus on mostly small deals, Mayer said. She seized the opportunity to buy Tumblr because she believes the service can accelerate her efforts to turn around Yahoo.

"Tumblr is a game changer," Mayer assured analysts.

As popular as Tumblr has become, the service remains unprofitable. That is likely to raise questions about whether Yahoo paid too much in Mayer's zeal to gain control over a hot service. Facebook Inc. faced similar doubts last year when it bought Instagram, a rapidly growing photo sharing site, that also hadn't been trying to make money. Facebook initially agreed to pay $1 billion in stock for Instagram, but the value had fallen to $715 million by the time that deal closed. Facebook still hasn't proven it will be able to make money off of Instagram.

Mayer's efforts at Yahoo have been well-received on Wall Street so far, although most of the 69 percent surge in Yahoo's stock price under Mayer's leadership has been driven by the rising value of Yahoo's remaining 24 percent in Alibaba. When Alibaba goes public within the next few years, analysts have estimated Yahoo could collect another $10 billion to $20 billion by selling the rest of its Alibaba stock.

If this deal pays off the way Mayer envisions, Tumblr could help Yahoo finally get its stock price to $33. That would be a major coup because many investors soured on Yahoo after a previous regime led by co-founder Jerry Yang squandered an opportunity five years ago to sell the entire company to Microsoft for $33 per share. The stock spent more than four years trading below $20 before the recent surge. The shares gained 22 cents to $26.74 in Monday's morning trading.

The deal could backfire though if Yahoo's effort to make more money alienate a Tumblr user base that so far has been subjected to hardly any advertising during the service's six-year history.

"Yahoo has to manage this acquisition in a way that keeps Tumblr's user base while trying to add advertising, which historically tends to turn off a lot of people," said Forrester Research analyst Zachary Reiss-Davis.

Mayer said Yahoo will work with Tumblr to create ads that "are tasteful and seamless." The company expects Tumblr to start increasing Yahoo's revenue next year.

Mayer is betting that Tumblr will provide Yahoo with a captivating hook to reel in more traffic and advertisers on smartphones and tablet computers. That rapidly growing market is expected to become even more important during the next decade as people increasingly consume digital content on mobile devices instead of laptop and desktop machines.

More than half of Tumblr's users connect to the service through the mobile app, and engage in an average of seven sessions per day.

"I would characterize Tumblr as being ahead of Yahoo in terms of its work on mobile," Mayer said.

Besides offering one of the top mobile apps, Tumblr also runs one of the world's busiest websites, featuring 75 million daily posts about everything from politics to pets. Advertising has been a missing ingredient so far as Tumblr, like many online services in their early stages, focused on building a loyal audience before turning its attention to making money.

The deal also has some symbolic significance for Yahoo, an 18-year-old company that had spent much of the past decade aimlessly drifting under different management teams while Google Inc. overtook it in terms of size and influence. At the same time, newcomers such as Facebook Inc. and Twitter began to command the attention of people who found themselves spending less and less time on Yahoo.

Part of Yahoo's problems stemmed from missed chances to improve its service and technology.

Yahoo flirted with potential acquisitions of Google and Facebook in those two companies' early days, only to have the talks unravel because Yahoo wasn't prepared to pay asking prices that were far below the current market values of Google ($300 billion) and Facebook ($63 billion). Yahoo also considered buying YouTube in 2006, only to be outbid by Google, which snapped up the world's leading online service for $1.76 billion ? a price that now looks like a bargain.

Even when Yahoo did pull off deals, the company has been criticized for mismanaging a list of acquired services that includes photo-sharing Flickr, online help-wanted service HotJobs and content-sharing service Del.icio.us. Yahoo ended up selling HotJobs and Del.icio.us, but Mayer has been looking at ways to spruce up Flickr and blend its photos into more of Yahoo's other services. Mayer is expected to discuss more changes for Flickr at an event in New York Monday evening.

Tumblr could help Yahoo recapture some of its cachet with teens and adults in their early 20s, a demographic that has become tougher for Yahoo to reach in recent years as it fell behind the technological curve and struggled to develop compelling services.

While Facebook has turned into a mainstream social network where even grandparents now connect family and friends, Tumblr has become one of the places where the cool kids hang out.

"Tumblr is redefining creative expression online," Mayer said. "On many levels, Tumblr and Yahoo couldn't be more different, but, at the same time, they couldn't be more complementary."

Tumblr emerged as a trendy online hangout by providing a service that makes it easy to share blog posts, photos, video and other content in an enthralling mosaic. The service says it has amassed more than 50 billion posts from 108 million blogs. Tumblr users rely on a dashboard to pinpoint the kinds of blogs that they want to track and also have tools to pass along the posts that interest them.

That wealth of content could be interwoven into Yahoo's other services that provide coverage of general news, sports, finance and entertainment. Tumblr also will fill Yahoo's gaping void in the realm of social media. Yahoo so far has had to connect its services to Facebook and Twitter to give its users a social networking outlet.

Having its own social networking service will also give Yahoo more insights into the things that people like ? a key to distributing ads to consumers most likely to be interested in a specific products. That data, in turn, should help Yahoo sell more ads and accelerate its revenue growth. After three successive years of declines, Yahoo's revenue rose slightly last year, but lagged far behind the growth at Google and Facebook. Mayer has vowed to bring Yahoo's revenue growth back to at least the level of the overall Internet ad market.

Yahoo's acquisition will deliver a jackpot to Karp, who dropped out of high school to concentrate on computer programming. He ended up being home schooled while taking classes in Japanese and working on gambling software. Later, he became a product executive at a parenting website called UrbanBaby. After CNet bought the site in 2006, Karp set up his own a development service called "Davidville" before deciding to create an outlet for personal expression ? an endeavor that hatched Tumblr.

Karp's cut from the Yahoo deal is about $275 million. Most of the rest of the money will be paid to the venture capitalists that invested about $125 million into Tumblr. That list includes Spark Capital, Sequoia Capital, Greylock Partners, Union Square Ventures and Insight Venture Partners.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/495d344a0d10421e9baa8ee77029cfbd/Article_2013-05-20-Yahoo-Tumblr%20Acquisition/id-3ef5e097330a4653ba0936acb0026e28

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Nintendo partners with Best Buy so you can play unreleased Wii U games in store during E3 (video)

There's nothing more frustrating than watching a product or service get announced, then having to wait an age to try it out. Nintendo hears that, and has announced via Nintendo Direct, that during E3 week, Best Buy will have playable demos of as-yet released Wii U games in 100 stores across the US and Canada. Given that no one was likely expecting any new hardware from the firm, it's clear the gaming stalwart is looking for other ways to stir-up some interest. There's no mention of titles, so we're left to assume they'd be the games announced at the show. Either way, scratch out that week in June to make sure you find out first hand. Scrub right to the end of the video past the break to see the announcement for yourself.

Filed under: Gaming, Nintendo

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Via: Joystiq

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/19/nintendo-partners-best-buy-demo-games/?utm_medium=feed&utm_source=Feed_Classic&utm_campaign=Engadget

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Obama denies role in government (Powerlineblog)

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

Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/306880216?client_source=feed&format=rss

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Chesapeake names Anadarko executive as new CEO

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) ? Chesapeake Energy has named Anadarko Petroleum executive Robert Douglas Lawler as its new CEO.

The appointment of the 46-year-old Lawler comes after a tough year for Chesapeake. Its former CEO Aubrey McClendon was ousted last year amid a scandal over his personal investments in the company's oil and gas wells.

Chesapeake shares rose 1.6 percent to $20.60 in premarket trading Monday.

Lawler is senior vice president for international and deepwater operations at Anadarko Petroleum. He also will join the Oklahoma City-based natural gas producer's board. The appointments are effective June 17.

Lawler is a petroleum engineer with 25 years of experience in the exploration and production industry.

McClendon, who founded Chesapeake Energy Corp. in 1989, was stripped of his role as chairman last year and left the company earlier this year.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/f70471f764144b2fab526d39972d37b3/Article_2013-05-20-US-Chesapeake-CEO/id-e163d9a4ffd14069909fe73e447f0f1a

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Earth's iron core is surprisingly weak

May 20, 2013 ? Researchers have used a diamond anvil cell to squeeze iron at pressures as high as 3 million times that felt at sea level to recreate conditions at the center of Earth. The findings could refine theories of how the planet and its core evolved.

Through laboratory experiments, postdoctoral researcher Arianna Gleason, left, and Wendy Mao, an assistant professor of geological and environmental sciences and of photon science, determined that the iron in Earth's inner core is about 40 percent as strong as previously believed.

The massive ball of iron sitting at the center of Earth is not quite as "rock-solid" as has been thought, say two Stanford mineral physicists. By conducting experiments that simulate the immense pressures deep in the planet's interior, the researchers determined that iron in Earth's inner core is only about 40 percent as strong as previous studies estimated.

This is the first time scientists have been able to experimentally measure the effect of such intense pressure -- as high as 3 million times the pressure Earth's atmosphere exerts at sea level -- in a laboratory. A paper presenting the results of their study is available online in Nature Geoscience.

"The strength of iron under these extreme pressures is startlingly weak," said Arianna Gleason, a postdoctoral researcher in the department of Geological and Environmental Sciences, and lead author of the paper. Wendy Mao, an assistant professor in the department, is the co-author.

"This strength measurement can help us understand how the core deforms over long time scales, which influences how we think about Earth's evolution and planetary evolution in general," Gleason said.

Until now, almost all of what is known about Earth's inner core came from studies tracking seismic waves as they travel from the surface of the planet through the interior. Those studies have shown that the travel time through the inner core isn't the same in every direction, indicating that the inner core itself is not uniform. Over time and subjected to great pressure, the core has developed a sort of fabric as grains of iron elongate and align lengthwise in parallel formations.

The ease and speed with which iron grains in the inner core can deform and align would have influenced the evolution of the early Earth and development of the geomagnetic field. The field is generated by the circulation of liquid iron in the outer core around the solid inner core and shields Earth from the full intensity of solar radiation. Without the geomagnetic field, life -- at least as we know it -- would not be possible on Earth.

"The development of the inner core would certainly have some effect on the geomagnetic field, but just what effect and the magnitude of the effect, we can't say," said Mao. "That is very speculative."

Gleason and Mao conducted their experiments using a diamond anvil cell -- a device that can exert immense pressure on tiny samples clenched between two diamonds. They subjected minute amounts of pure iron to pressures between 200 and 300 gigapascals (equivalent to the pressure of 2 million to 3 million Earth atmospheres). Previous experimental studies were conducted in the range of only 10 gigapascals.

"We really pushed the limit here in terms of experimental conditions," Gleason said. "Pioneering advancements in pressure-generation techniques and improvements in detector sensitivity, for example, used at large X-ray synchrotron facilities, such as Argonne National Lab, have allowed us to make these new measurements."

In addition to intense pressures, the inner core also has extreme temperatures. The boundary between the inner and outer core has temperatures comparable to the surface of the sun. Simultaneously simulating both the pressure and temperature at the inner core isn't yet possible in the laboratory, though Gleason and Mao are working on that for future studies. (For this study, Gleason mathematically extrapolated from their pressure data to factor in the effect of temperature.)

Gleason and Mao expect their findings will help other researchers set more realistic variables for conducting their own experiments.

"People modeling the inner core haven't had many experimental constraints, because it's so difficult to make measurements under those conditions," Mao said. "There really weren't constraints on how strong the core was, so this is really a fundamental new constraint."

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/uYHvEXbKtnY/130520095404.htm

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Iconia W3 tablet live on Acer's Finnish website, confirms 8.1 inches of Windows 8 Pro

Info about the Iconia W3 Windows 8 tablet has already slipped out a few times, and now this 8.1-incher is live on Acer's Finnish website. While there's no mention of price or availability, the specifications list matches what's already been leaked. You're looking at Windows 8 Pro running atop an Intel Atom Z2760 CPU, aided by 2GB of RAM. Other features include a 1,280 x 768 touchscreen, an eight-hour battery, up to 64GB of storage, 802.11 b/g/n WiFi and Bluetooth 4.0. Port lovers will be pleased to find micro-HDMI and micro-USB hookups onboard, as well as a microSD slot. Microsoft Word comes pre-installed, but there's no concrete info about the optional full-size keyboard dock -- other than that it exists, anyway. It'll likely be closer to June when we'll be staring at it in the flesh, so you'll have to settle for the info at the source link for now.

Filed under: Laptops, Tablets, Acer

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Via: Phone Arena, SlashGear

Source: Acer

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/xNXsXdk8NPI/

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The 'spiritual' dimension of Science Education | Dialogic Education ...

An edited book on Science Education by Nasser Mansour and me is almost out and available on Amazon[i]. This includes a chapter on ?Dialogic Science Education?[ii] which was led by me but with ideas that emerged from discussions within the whole team of the recent ?Science Education for Diversity? project[iii]. This project team included researchers in Malaysia, India, Lebanon, Turkey and the Netherlands as well as in the UK. It was a great pleasure for me that we found we could converge on a dialogic framework for developing science education in order to respond to the challenge of diversity. Although I was the main author of this chapter and I am very happy with it there was one dialogic aspect of science education that I did not manage to include partly because I was not sure if it represented the views of the team or just my views. This is about the essentially spiritual nature of science and the need to engage students in science through engaging them in the open-ended mystery of things.

So what would it mean to say that science is spiritual?

?Spiritual development? is something that schools in England have a legal obligation to ?promote and encourage?. Success in developing spirituality is measured by the official body for inspecting schools: Ofsted. Unfortunately Ofsted find spirituality hard to define. The key document that is meant to guide inspectors quotes a range of definitions with apparent approval[iv]. Each one of these definitions, if taken individually, could be read as inspiring. The problem is that, when they are all presented together, the overall impression given is one of mushiness. We learn, for example, that the spiritual is about developing an ?inner life? with ?intimations of enduring reality?, it is also about ?expressing emotions through art?, it is ?experiencing transcendence? with feelings of ?awe and wonder?, but at the same time it is about developing ?a set of values? which includes ?challenging unfairness?. It is not obvious what inner essence, if any, unites these different things. Helpfully, an expert is quoted to confirm what any reader of this document must have already have begun to suspect:

?? of all experiences, it is the spiritual which, it seems, is most resistant to operational definition. At its worst, attempts to pin it down lead only to a greater awareness of its intangibility and pervasiveness?[v].

?

It seems plausible to assert that the spiritual exceeds our ability to grasp it through rational thought but unfortunately there are lots of other things that exceed reason and not all of them are nice so we need to find some way of distinguishing what is spiritual from what is not. Is it the nature of the spiritual that makes it so unclear or is it just the limitations of the ways of thinking that we apply?

The widespread but mushy view of the spiritual as something you can feel but cannot understand indicates an intuition that there is something very important here that does not fit with our normal ways of thinking. But this might just indicate that our normal ways of thinking about education are inadequate and need to be reformed.? I am not sure but I think it possible that the dialogic theory of education that I have outlined in ?Dialogic: Education for the Internet Age?[vi] and elsewhere, has the potential to make the spiritual dimension of education and of development much clearer and even ?operationalisable?.

My version of a dialogic theory of education is a re-thinking of education in terms of relationship and the voices that emerge within relationships, rather than, for example, in terms of knowledge and its movement (transmission theories) or in terms of cognitive structures and their ?growth? (constructivism). It follows from this dialogic way of thinking that the word spirit can be given a clear and useful reference.

The way of operationalising the word ?spiritual? in education that I propose was first suggested to me by observing Quakers. In Quaker meetings people should only speak if moved to do so by the spirit (?the Holy Spirit? to be more precise). Attention is therefore given to the issue of how to discern what is ?of the spirit? and what is not. Anyone can talk in a meeting but experienced Quakers are able to distinguish those who are good at discerning the spirit, spiritual experts if you like, and these are appointed as the ?elders? of the meeting. I am not suggesting that this system always works well, sometimes the wrong voices will be listened to and the wrong people appointed as elders, but what is interesting is that here is an established cultural practice depending upon an operationalisable idea of spiritual expertise. So what does this spiritual expertise consist of in practice?

If you are sitting in a meeting and you feel yourself being tickled or nudged by a voice that wants to speak then how do you decide whether or not to step aside and allow this voice to speak through your voice? One obvious filter is that of self-interest. Is this just my voice in disguise? Is this just my opinion or one that suits my self-interest? If so it is unlikely to be the spirit. Or, similarly, is it just the self-interest of my community? The easy rule here is, does it exclude or label other people casting them in a negative light?

The simple operationalisation of the term ?spiritual? that Quakers must learn in order to participate well in meetings is therefore something like, and these are my words not theirs, ?a motivation to speak and/or act having an authority that seems to come from a larger perspective than my own?. This idea of the spirit as a voice that comes from beyond my physical, social and cultural horizons fits well with the dialogic theory of education that I have outlined.

Education inevitably involves being taken over by immaterial cultural voices. Being a good student and a good citizen is usually defined in school as all about following the rules and internalizing them so that you follow them even when the teacher is not there. When the good student speaks they speak not simply with their own voice but with the voice of the school and the voice of the community.

But beyond the socialization role of education, or learning how to think ?what everybody thinks?, there can also be an aspect of education that is learning to question your own cultural horizons from the imaginary perspective of an outside point of view. This is where the spiritual comes in. It is about how you respond not just to defined voices of specific others and generalized others but also to the more challenging voice of the ?Infinite Other?. The ?Infinite Other? is the simple idea adapted from Levinas that behind the face of the concrete other person that I encounter in a dialogue there is an otherness that transcends me and calls me to account.

Acknowledging the reality and significance of this voice of the Infinite Other does not require any leap of faith. There is a simple logic to it. We come to consciousness always already within relationship with other voices and with otherness in general. This is just another way of saying that we are always already within a world and it is only through this being in a world that we can know ourselves. The experience of thinking new things is that of responding to the stimulus of others or of otherness. In thinking and learning we experience being part of something bigger than us, being called out to participate in a kind of circuit that flows through us and motivates us from within as well as from without.

Whatever we can pin down and understand is always from a perspective or limited point of view. However, and this where a spiritual disposition comes in, it is possible for us to remain open to the fact that there is a larger context and that seeing things from the point of view of that larger context can challenge us and help us to grow.

For Levinas the appeal of the Infinite Other calling to us through the face of each concrete other was primarily understood as ethical. Being open to the call of the otherness of the other leads to a certain open-ended sense of responsibility. However, the same sort of argument also applies to our response to the whole world around us, not only to the face of the other person in a dialogue for example but also to nature. This spiritual attitude was summed up rather well by Einstein:

?The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious.? It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of all true?art?and science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed.? It was the experience of mystery ? even if mixed with fear ? that engendered religion.? A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which only in their most primitive forms are accessible to our minds ? it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute true religiosity;? in this sense, and, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man.? [vii]

Einstein might have been unique in many ways but his positive evaluation of mystery is widely shared. A friend of mind who is a leading natural scientist recently confessed to me that he had finally understood what spirituality might be about. It was a confession for him, told to me in private, because up to that point he had taken Dawkins? line and dismissed spirituality as childish. Out in the midst of nature one day he suddenly felt overwhelmed by the strange beauty and complexity of the vast eco-system that included him and yet was much bigger than him and which he could not understand. He realized that his life?s work was motivated not simply by his own interests but that it came out of his participation in this larger system. It was the larger system itself that wanted to know itself through him and he was just the medium of its self-reflection. This feeling was so overwhelming that he had to sit down and acknowledge that he had had, despite himself, a ?spiritual? experience.

It interests me that my friend could realize the real spiritual motivation of his scientific quest only late in his career because it had not been taught to him like that. The thousands of responses to our questionnaires on the Science Education for Diversity project indicate that mostly, all over the world, science is taught in schools not as a spiritual quest but as a lot of facts that you need to know in order to pass exams. This is not only misleading but also boring and off-putting when there are other more exciting subjects that students can choose to focus on. The point of science is not the answers but the questions. To teach science as a spiritual discipline would mean to encourage and promote a disposition of openness to the vast mystery of things ? or a responsive dialogue with the Infinite Other.? If we are open to the questions that come to us from beyond the horizon of our imagined self-interest then we may discover in practice the joy of being taken up in a flow of meaning that is much larger than ourselves.

---

[ii] Chapter 1: Dialogic Science Education for Diversity, Rupert Wegerif, Keith Postlethwaite, Nigel Skinner, Nasser Mansour, Alun Morgan, Lindsay Hetherington

[iii] http://science-education-for-diversity.eu/

[iv] http://www.ofsted.gov.uk/resources/promoting-and-evaluating-pupils-spiritual-moral-social-and-cultural-development

[v] Best, R. ?Introduction: Where are we going with SMSC?? in Education for Spiritual, Moral, Social and Cultural Development. London, Continuum, 2000. Page 10.

[vi] http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dialogic-Education-Internet-Rupert-Wegerif/dp/0415536790/ref=la_B001HP4JJA_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1369038243&sr=1-5

[vii] http://www.aip.org/history/einstein/essay.htm

Source: http://www.dialogiceducation.net/?p=175

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Are Beyonce and Jay-Z expecting another baby?

Celebs

Randee Dawn TODAY contributor

17 hours ago

Charles Sykes/Invision/AP

Beyonce at The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute benefit.

It's the hottest not-yet-confirmed story in entertainment at the moment: Are Beyonce and Jay-Z about to announce that baby No. 2 is on the way?

E! Online and other outlets seem positive this is the case, though thus far "sources" are the only place information has come from -- no one's spokesperson has stepped forward to put the official stamp on it.

But perhaps Beyonce herself reportedly did, on a since-deleted post on her Instagram account (see link for screen shot of post). According to several outlets, shortly after the initial rumors began surfacing, the singer apparently posted: "I can?t stop the rumors from starting, and I can?t really change peoples minds who believe them, all I can do is sit back and laugh at these low life people who have nothing better to do than talk about me.?

So since Beyonce won't say "yes" or "no," what's fueling this burning question?

• In April, Beyonce told Shape magazine that they would definitely have more children in the future, saying ?I?ll probably start after this tour.? Her first, Blue Ivy, is 16 months old. She hit the road with her "Mrs. Carter Show World Tour" that month, and will be on the road until September -- but maybe she just couldn't wait.
  
• Her appearance at the Met Gala in early May featured her in a "stomach-concealing Givenchy gown," as E! Online described it, and as the site suggested, concealment could only mean one thing.
• On May 13, the New York Post went into full rumor mode, saying that "music insiders are chattering" about her newly-pregnant status, and noted that photos from her tour seem to reveal a baby bump.
• On May 14, the singer postponed a concert in Belgium, saying in a statement she was "advised by her doctors to rest as a result of dehydration and exhaustion." She posted a note to her Tumblr page later in apology, noting "I've never postponed a show in my life."
• Other celebrities like Russell Simmons are already taking the rumors as fact, and tweeting congrats.
• People are just excited to read about Bey's comings and goings, as indicated by her recent controversial trip to Cuba with Jay-Z and the fact that the announcement of her first pregnancy -- on the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards -- set a Guinness World Record for most tweets per second related to a single event.

Meanwhile, Beyonce is unlikely to ease off of work any time soon, regardless of whatever announcement she may make. Other E! sources are saying the tour won't be affected by the rumored pregnancy.

Beyonce will be heard soon, though -- she's the voice of Queen Tara in the animated film "Epic," which opens in theaters on May 24.

Source: http://www.today.com/entertainment/are-beyonce-jay-z-expecting-another-baby-1C9983170

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Hofstra student killed by police during break-in

MINEOLA, N.Y. (AP) ? In what police are describing as a crime of opportunity, a wanted man with a criminal history dating nearly 15 years entered a front door that had been left open at a New York home near Hofstra University.

A short time later, the intruder, Dalton Smith, and a 21-year-old college junior, Andrea Rebello, were both dead. The two were killed early Friday by a Nassau County police officer who fired eight shots at the masked man, hitting him seven times but also accidentally hitting Rebello once in the head, Nassau County homicide squad Lt. John Azzata said Saturday.

Smith was holding Rebello in a headlock and pointing a gun at her head before he turned his gun at the officer, Azzata said, prompting the shooting.

"He kept saying, 'I'm going to kill her,' and then he pointed the gun at the police officer," Azzata said.

A loaded 9 mm handgun with a serial number scratched off was found at the scene, police said.

Nassau County Police Commissioner Thomas Dale said he had traveled to Rebello's Tarrytown, N.Y., home to explain to Rebello's parents what happened.

"I felt obligated as a police commissioner and as a parent to inform them as soon as all the forensic results were completed," Dale said.

The veteran police officer, who was not identified, has about 12 years of experience on the Nassau County police force and previously spent several years as a New York City police officer, Dale said.

The officer is currently out on sick leave. He will be the focus of an internal police investigation once the criminal investigation is completed, which is standard police procedure in any officer-involved shooting, the commissioner said.

The shooting came just days before the school's commencement ceremonies, which are scheduled for Sunday.

A university spokeswoman said students will be handed white ribbons to wear in memory of Rebello. The shooting, which took place just steps from campus, has cast a pall over the university community as it geared up for commencement.

Earlier Saturday, police announced that Smith, 30, had been wanted on a parole violation related to a first-degree robbery conviction. A warrant was issued for Smith on April 25 for absconding from parole, police said.

Smith had what police described as "an extensive criminal history," which included arrests for robbery in the first degree in 1999, promoting prison contraband in the second degree in 2000, robbery in the first degree in 2003, assault in the second degree in 2003 and robbery in the second degree in 2003.

Rebello was in the two-story home in Uniondale, N.Y., with her twin sister Jessica, a third woman and a man when Smith, wearing a ski mask, walked into the house through an open front door, Azzata said.

The door was left open after someone had moved a car that was blocking a driveway, Azzata said.

When Smith entered, he demanded valuables and was told they were upstairs, Azzata said.

Smith, apparently unsatisfied with the valuables upstairs, asked if any of the four had a bank account and could withdraw money, Azzata said. The intruder then allowed the unidentified woman to leave and collect money from an ATM, telling her she had only eight minutes to come back with cash before he killed one of her friends, Azzata said.

The woman left for the bank and called 911, according to Azzata.

Minutes later, two police officers arrived at the home and found Rebello's twin sister Jessica running out of the front door and the male guest hiding behind a couch on the first floor, Azzata said.

One of the officers entered the home and encountered Smith holding onto Rebello in a headlock, coming down the stairs, Azzata said. Smith pulled Rebello closer and started moving backward toward a rear door of the house, pointing the gun at her head before eventually threatening the officer, Azzata said.

The Rev. Osvaldo Franklin, who gave Rebello and her twin their first communions, on Saturday night told The Associated Press their mother, Nella, couldn't even speak to him earlier in the day.

"She was so devastated," said Franklin. "She's just crying. We have to pray for Andrea, to pray for Jessica because she needs help."

Franklin said a funeral is scheduled for Wednesday at Teresa of Avila Church in Sleepy Hollow, N.Y., and will be in Portuguese.

"The family's a very good family, they have very good values," he said. "They are a very good, very devoted family."

___

Associated Press writer Jake Pearson in New York contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/hofstra-student-killed-police-during-break-065118864.html

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Editor's desk: Home... for now!

It's the quiet in between storms. Both BlackBerry Live and Google I/O 2013 are over, yet #TM13 and more importantly, WWDC 2013 are fast approaching. Tomorrow's a public holiday here in Canada, but I'll be working through it. And there's a bunch of reasons for that. Cue the bullet list...

• BlackBerry Live, fun as it was, and awesome as the CrackBerry crew and John P. from GeekBeat.tv was to work with, it kept me away from a lot of what I had to do here on iMore. Both Peter and Richard, our new Mac and gaming, and news editors respectively, more than helped keep things going, but June is one of our busiest times and I'm going to have to haul ass now to catch up. There are still a lot of iOS 7 wants I have to add to my list. And if you have any as well, throw them in the comments!
• We're changing up the iMore show. It's going to move back to Wednesdays, move to earlier in the day, and take on more of a panel, more of an encompassing format. We won't just be talking news, but apps and accessories, and taking your help and how-to questions as well. In other words, it'll be more of a Mobile Nations-type show. And we'll be starting that in just a few days. If you have anything specific you want to see in the all-new iMore show, let me know asap!
• If you're a fan of the current iMore show, where I talk to other Apple and tech-centric people about specific subjects, don't worry. That won't be going away, it'll just be moving over slightly. Stay tuned!
• Georgia's show, ZEN & TECH will be adding something new to the mix. I'm calling them moments of ZEN & TECH, but Georgia hates that name so it'll likely change. Basically, they're going to be short segments on specific topics. Again, stay tuned.
• We just might be getting our media-centric podcast, Ad Hoc, back in gear. If you think this timing suggests Iron Man 3 and Star Trek: Into Darkness episodes, you're either a genius billionaire playboy philanthropist, a Vulcan, or both. The size and diversity of people we have on those shows makes scheduling them tricky, but we're going to get them done.
• Speaking of Vulcans and Avengers, if you hadn't heard already, Derek Kessler has gone full time on Mobile Nations. He'll be working across all our sites, and that means you should be seeing him even more often here on iMore. He's fantastic, we're lucky to have him, and please take a moment to join me in welcoming him into his new role!

And some news bites:

• Sounds like Yahoo! is buying Tumblr for 1.1 billion, at least according to Kara Swisher of AllThingsD. We'll cover it more fully in the near future, but for now I'm curious to know what the Tumblr users among us think? Yahoo! hasn't taken anything approaching good care of its web properties in recent years, but will new management and a hot new property make any difference?
• Apple sold 5 million iPhone 5 devices in one weekend, failed to meet expectations, and got lambasted for it in the media and the market. According to Philip Elmer-Dewitt in Fortune, Samsung has shipped (not sold) 10 million Galaxy S4 devices in 10 weeks. Yet that doesn't seem to have failed to meet any expectations, or gotten them lambasted in any of the same media or markets. Again, we'll cover that more fully in its own article, but in the meantime, does that tell us more about the expectations placed on both companies, the general perceptions, or both?

Photo: Mobile Nations Tango & Cash by Martin Reisch... Though I have no idea which of us is meant to be which of them...?

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheIphoneBlog/~3/qV7fTPIxMR8/story01.htm

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Nintendo 3DS Circle Pad Pro review: just like the original, but bigger

Nintendo seems to have a knack for repeat performances. Nintendo DS? Quickly supplanted by the DS Lite -- and the DSi didn't last too long either before it was succeeded by the DSi XL. Even the 3DS saw a revision, when it was supersized last summer. These redesigns typically don't change more than the device's size, but when the 3DS XL was announced, some gamers were left wanting. Didn't the original 3DS get an accessory specifically to address the lack of a second analog pad? Why didn't Nintendo take the opportunity to add dual-analog controls? Well, if that happened, Nintendo couldn't release an encore Circle Pad Pro accessory, could it? Let's take a look at the 3DS XL Circle Pad Pro and see what's changed.

Filed under: Peripherals, Nintendo

Comments

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/cfzs7dGew2g/

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Alaska volcano shoots ash 15,000 feet into the air

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) ? One of Alaska's most restless volcanoes shot an ash cloud 15,000 feet into the air Friday in an ongoing eruption that is visible for miles when the weather allows.

An air traffic controller in the region said small planes have flown around the plumes from Pavlof Volcano. Ash would have to rise tens of thousands of feet to threaten larger planes.

The eruption began Monday, and a photograph shows lava spraying out from the summit of the volcano, located 625 miles southwest of Anchorage. The Alaska Volcano Observatory said clouds of ash, steam and gas have occasionally reached the 20,000-foot level and have been visible from the nearby communities of Cold Bay and Sand Point.

Onsite seismic instruments have detected an increase in the force of tremors from the 8,262-foot volcano.

"It's definitely kicking right along," John Power, the U.S. Geological Survey scientist in charge at the observatory, said Friday.

A mining camp 50 miles northeast of the volcano reported a light ash fall Tuesday evening, according to the observatory.

Residents of Cold Bay, about 40 miles from Pavlof, are concerned the ash could damage their power generators, air traffic controller John Maxwell said Friday. But so far, the wind has blown the ash away from the area, he said.

"Everybody is thinking about it," Maxwell said. "Not that anybody is afraid they're going to be like Mount Vesuvius and turned into little mummies."

Mike Tickle, manager of the local fuel terminal, said his wife woke him up Wednesday night to tell him she saw a splatter of lava spurting from Pavlof. He hustled to get his camera, but by the time he went to have a look, all that remained was a red glow.

"It's been overcast since then," he said.

Typically, Pavlof eruptions are gas-rich fountains of lava that can shoot up to a few thousand feet. But its ash clouds are usually less dense than the plumes of more explosive volcanoes that pose a greater hazard to aircraft, scientists say.

Pavlof is among the most active volcanoes in the Aleutian arc, with nearly 40 known eruptions, according to the observatory.

The volcano last erupted in 2007. During the 29-day eruption, Pavlof emitted mud flows and erupting lava, as well as ash clouds up to 18,000 feet high, according to Power.

In early May, Cleveland Volcano, on an uninhabited island in the Aleutian Islands, experienced a low-level eruption. Satellite imagery shows the volcano has continued to discharge steam, gas and heat in the past week. New analysis of earlier images showed a small lava flow going over the southeast rim of the summit crater, the observatory said.

There has been no new imagery in recent days because of overcast skies in the area, Power said.

No ash clouds have been detected in more than a week from Cleveland, which is not monitored with seismic instruments.

The volcano is a 5,675-foot peak on a remote island 940 miles southwest of Anchorage. Cleveland's most recent significant eruption began in February 2001 and sent ash clouds up to 39,000 feet above sea level. It also produced a rocky lava flow and hot debris that reached the sea.

___

Follow Rachel D'Oro at https://twitter.com/rdoro .

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/alaska-volcano-shoots-ash-15-000-feet-air-231054431.html

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Friction in the nano-world: Physicists discover a new kind of friction

May 15, 2013 ? Whether in vehicle transmissions, hip replacements, or tiny sensors for triggering airbags: The respective components must slide against each other with minimum friction to prevent loss of energy and material wear. Investigating the friction behavior of nanosystems, scientists from the Technische Universitaet Muenchen (TUM) have discovered a previously unknown type of friction that sheds new light on some previously unexplainable phenomena.

Friction is an omnipresent but often annoying physical phenomenon: It causes wear and energy loss in machines as well as in our joints. In search of low-friction components for ever smaller components, a team of physicists led by the professors Thorsten Hugel and Alexander Holleitner now discovered a previously unknown type of friction that they call "desorption stick."

The researchers examined how and why single polymer molecules in various solvents slide over or stick to certain surfaces. Their goal was to understand the basic laws of physics at the molecular scale in order to develop targeted anti-friction surfaces and suitable lubricants.

For their studies the scientists attached the end of a polymer molecule to the nanometer-fine tip of a highly sensitive atomic force microscope (AFM). While they pulled the polymer molecule over test surfaces, the AFM measured the resulting forces, from which the researchers could directly deduce the behavior of the polymer coil.

New friction mechanism discovered

Besides the two expected friction mechanisms such as sticking and sliding the researchers detected a third one for certain combinations of polymer, solvent and surface.

"Although the polymer sticks to the surface, the polymer strand can be pulled from its coiled conformation into the surrounding solution without significant force to be exerted," experimental physicist Thorsten Hugel describes this behavior. "The cause is probably a very low internal friction within the polymer coil."

The key is the solvent

Surprisingly, desorption stick depends neither on the speed of movement nor on the support surface or adhesive strength of the polymer. Instead, the chemical nature of the surface and the quality of the solvent are decisive. For example, hydrophobic polystyrene exhibits pure sliding behavior when dissolved in chloroform. In water, however, it shows desorption stick.

"The understanding gained by our measurement of single-molecule friction opens up new ways to minimize friction," says Alexander Holleitner. "In the future, with targeted preparation of polymers, new surfaces could be developed specifically for the nano- and micrometer range."

The work was supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the Cluster of Excellence Nanosystems Initiative Munich (NIM).

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_science/~3/y9ZMBW72_Ac/130515113831.htm

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House committee grills Holder

Attorney General Eric Holder faces tough questioning from a House committee Wednesday afternoon over twin scandals that have dogged the Obama administration this week: the seizure of phone records of Associated Press reporters and editors and the revelation that IRS employees singled out conservative nonprofits for extra scrutiny.

In his prepared statement at the hearing, Holder mentioned neither topic, instead focusing on the Justice Department's commitment to civil rights, immigration reform, and the reversal of sequester cuts.

On Tuesday, Holder said at a news conference that the national security leak that prompted the department to seize AP phone records was among the most serious he had ever seen.

?I have to say this is ... among the top two or three most serious leaks I have ever seen. It put the American people at risk. That is not hyperbole,? he said. The leak led to an AP story last year about the government foiling a Yemeni-based terror plot to bomb American airliners.

Holder said he recused himself from the investigation, but that he believes the Justice Department acted appropriately.

Meanwhile, Holder told reporters that he has launched an investigation into reports that the IRS singled out conservative groups and subjected them to more review and scrutiny when they applied for tax exempt status. The IRS' inspector general report said that a group of low-level staffers in an Ohio office were responsible.

Holder's appearance at the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee hearing was scheduled before the IRS and AP news broke, but will most likely now be focused on those issues. Rep. Bob Goodlatte, the Republican chair of the committee, said in a statement that he plans to ask "pointed questions" about the Justice Department's decision to subpoena two months' of AP telephone records, as well as question Holder about the IRS and whether there were any intelligence failures in the lead-up to the Boston bombings.

Holder has long faced criticism from Republicans, some of whom called for his resignation in 2011 over the failed gun-walking Fast and Furious operation on the U.S.-Mexico border. The Justice Department's inspector general cleared him of wrongdoing in that scandal last year, blaming the botched operation on Arizona federal prosecutors and ATF agents.

Watch Holder's testimony above, at 1 p.m. ET.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/holder-grilled-house-committee-meeting-163815035.html

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Catching graphene butterflies: Dramatically changing electronic properties of world's thinnest material

May 15, 2013 ? Writing in Nature, a large international team led Dr Roman Gorbachev from The University of Manchester shows that, when graphene placed on top of insulating boron nitride, or 'white graphene', the electronic properties of graphene change dramatically revealing a pattern resembling a butterfly.

The pattern is referred to as the elusive Hofstadter butterfly that has been known in theory for many decades but never before observed in experiments.

Combining graphene with other materials in multiple-layered structures could lead to novel applications not yet explored by science or industry.

Graphene is the world's thinnest, strongest and most conductive material, and promises a vast range of diverse applications; from smartphones and ultrafast broadband to drug delivery and computer chips. It was first demonstrated at The University of Manchester in 2004.

Initial trials of consumer products involving graphene-based touch screens and batteries for mobile phones and composite materials for sports goods are being carried out by major multinational companies.

One of the most remarkable properties of graphene is its high conductivity -- thousands of times higher than copper. This is due to a very special pattern created by electrons that carry electricity in graphene. The carriers are called Dirac fermions and mimic massless relativistic particles called neutrinos, studies of which usually require huge facilities such as at CERN. The possibility to address similar physics in a desk-top experiment is one of the most renowned features of graphene.

Now the Manchester scientists have found a way to create multiple clones of Dirac fermions. Graphene is placed on top of boron nitride so that graphene's electrons can 'feel' individual boron and nitrogen atoms. Moving along this atomic 'washboard', electrons rearrange themselves once again producing multiple copies of the original Dirac fermions.

The researchers can create even more clones by applying a magnetic field. The clones produce an intricate pattern; the Hofstadter butterfly. It was first predicted by mathematician Douglas Hofstadter in 1976 and, despite many dedicated experimental efforts, no more than a blurred glimpse was reported before.

In addition to the described fundamental interest, the Manchester study proves that it is possible to modify properties of atomically-thin materials by placing them on top of each other. This can be useful, for example, for graphene applications such as ultra-fast photodetectors and transistors, providing a way to tweak its incredible properties.

Professor Andre Geim, Nobel Laureate and co-author of the paper, said: "Of course, it is nice to catch the beautiful 'butterfly' which elusiveness tormented physicists for generations.

"More importantly, this work shows that we are now able to build up a principally new kind of materials by stacking individual atomic planes in a desired sequence."

Dr Gorbachev added: "We prepared a set of different atomically-thin materials similar to graphene then stacked them on top of each other, one atomic plane at a time. Such artificial crystals would have been science fiction a few years ago. Now they are reality in our lab. One day you might find these structures in your gadgets."

Professor Geim added: "This is an important step beyond 'simple graphene'. We now build foundations for a new research area that seems richer and even more important than graphene itself."

The Manchester paper is collaboration that involved researchers from the University of Lancaster in the UK, Instituto de Ciencia de Materiales de Madrid in Spain and National High-Field Laboratory in Grenoble, France.

It will appear in Nature back to back with another paper reporting similar butterflies in two layers of graphene, which comes from a group of Dr Philip Kim, Columbia University.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/~3/6YX-JYVGefc/130515131547.htm

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