Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/297830912?client_source=feed&format=rss
Wednesday, April 10, 2013
The Oak Leaf : Consoles Upgraded
Ken Kutska, A&E Editor
April 8, 2013
Technology is an ever- changing indicator of what our society has become. It is a necessity for the future as society evolves into a new, innovative world. The time has come for developing the next generation of gaming platforms.
It?s apparent in today?s tech world that the current gaming platforms, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, are becoming outdated and must improve to keep pace with the PC behemoths.
Console systems will never be big graphic computing and memory storage powerhouses like their PC big brothers, but some people prefer console gaming because they don?t want to go out and buy, build and modify their own PC.
Consoles also have uses beyond gaming. Online applications like Xbox Live and PlayStation Store are essential for modern console use.
These systems are more than gaming platforms. They also let you watch movies, connect with friends and search the web.
Microsoft and Sony scheduled their next-gen console release dates for later this winter and early 2014. Sony announced their new system PlayStation 4, codenamed Orbis, in early March and debuted some of the new tech.
Microsoft remains quiet about their Xbox 720, codenamed Durango, and might wait for the Electronic Entertainment Expo to debut their system.
Some of the specifications for these systems have been announced. Both systems will be powered by a new graphics and architecture systems created by AMD.? Storage space on the new systems will run differently, but details are still sketchy.
They are expected to have multiple storage units for personal storage, bandwidth and RAM.
Both systems are expected to have Blu-ray drives; nothing new for PlayStation, but needed for Xbox. Xbox never developed Blu-ray technology for their current console, having invested in the now-defunct HD DVD brand.
The new Blu-ray drive will help the new Xbox secure its place as the dominant gaming brand. It will allow Microsoft to be more competitive in the market and to stream high-definition material on Xbox Live and on applications like Netflix and Amazon Prime Instant Video.
I am looking forward to when both developers completely announce their systems. I also look forward to the day the next generation of gaming hits the ground running with new interesting games on the horizon.
Kerry makes new, ambitious Mideast peace push
JERUSALEM (AP) ? Secretary of State John Kerry worked Monday to corral Israeli and Palestinian leaders into a new and ambitious peace process that includes reviving parts of a long-dormant plan embraced by the Arab world a decade ago, officials said.
The 2002 initiative that Kerry wants to revive parts of would have provided Israel recognition throughout the Arab world in exchange for a pullout from territory conquered in 1967.
On his third trip to Jerusalem in the last two weeks, Kerry committed himself to a multi-month peace push that could mean numerous follow-up trips to the region. He met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other senior Israeli and Palestinian officials Monday, a day after sitting down for private one-on-one talks with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah.
"I am intensely focused on this issue and the region because it is vital really to American interests and regional interests to try and advance the peace process and because this festering absence of peace is used by groups everywhere to recruit and encourage extremism," Kerry told reporters.
"Both sides mistrust each other deeply and there are reasons that mistrust has built up," he added. "I am convinced that we can break that down."
Kerry's foremost goal is to restart direct Israeli-Palestinian peace talks that have hardly taken place at all over the last 4? years. And, in a break from previous American-led efforts, he also wants to focus on a modified version of the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative.
The initiative was revolutionary when Saudi Arabia introduced it and the 22-member Arab League endorsed it. It offered Israel comprehensive recognition in exchange for withdrawal from the lands it conquered in the 1967 Mideast war.
Although Israel never embraced the plan and the Palestinians oppose any changes to it, the basic parameters seem to be gaining traction as a framework for future talks between the Israelis and Palestinians. Arab League chief Nabil El-Araby and Qatar's prime minister will lead a delegation to Washington this month to discuss the initiative with Kerry, Arab officials said.
Kerry, however, is seeking new conditions to sweeten the deal for Israel, officials said. Arab and Palestinian officials say he has talked about upgraded guarantees for Israel's security and allowances for border adjustments based on mutual agreement.
A senior State Department official would only say Kerry wanted the plan "enhanced." The American official spoke on condition of anonymity because of Kerry's orders not to brief reporters.
Earlier Monday, Kerry told U.S. consulate staff in Jerusalem that he was coming so regularly to the Mideast because he believed peace could be reached. "If we can get on a track where people are working in good faith to address the bottom-line concerns, it is possible to be able to make progress and make peace," he said.
Among the countless peace plans and confidence-building strategies devised for Israel and the Palestinians over the years, the Arab League's initiative was one of the quickest to be dismissed. It was overshadowed by fierce Israeli-Palestinian fighting at the time and Israel has never softened its objections to the 1967 lines, which it sees as indefensible.
There is also a spiritual component. For Israel, returning to its old borders would mean a withdrawal from east Jerusalem, home to the city's holiest Jewish, Muslim and Christian religious sites
Winning Netanyahu's support will be difficult. He sharply clashed with President Barack Obama two years ago when the American president publicly endorsed the 1967 borders as the basis of a two-state solution. While Netanyahu has described the Arab peace initiative as a welcome sign of acceptance, he has refused to accept its take-it-or-leave it conditions.
The Palestinians, too, don't want to make new concessions. They've won a score of diplomatic victories over the last year, including recognition as a non-voting member state of the United Nations and as full members of other multilateral institutions, and feel international support of their cause is growing.
The chief Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat, said Kerry has been floating the Arab initiative as a possible way out of the deadlock but that it could not be changed. "Kerry asked us to change a few words in the Arab Peace Initiative but we refused," he told the Voice of Palestine radio station on Sunday.
Abbas left Monday for talks on the plan at an Arab League meeting in Qatar. There, a special committee was holding an "urgent meeting" on the subject, said Mohammed Subeih, the Arab League's undersecretary for Palestinian affairs. Qatar's prime minister chaired it and the foreign ministers of key countries such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the Palestinians participated.
Israel, whose officials refused to comment on the matter, took control of the West Bank, east Jerusalem, Gaza Strip, Sinai and Golan Heights in the 1967 war. It returned the Sinai to Egypt in 1982 as part of a peace treaty and pulled out of Gaza unilaterally in 2005. Israel annexed the Golan Heights in 1981 and peace talks with Syria over the territory have repeatedly failed.
___
Associated Press writer Josef Federman contributed to this report.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/kerry-makes-ambitious-mideast-peace-push-185648389--politics.html
Tuesday, April 9, 2013
Economical Systems In Mortgage Brokers Info Considered
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Monday, April 8, 2013
NASA taps the power of zombie stars in two-in-one instrument
Apr. 8, 2013 ? Neutron stars have been called the zombies of the cosmos. They shine even though they're technically dead, occasionally feeding on neighboring stars if they venture too close. Interestingly, these unusual objects, born when a massive star extinguishes its fuel and collapses under its own gravity, also may help future space travelers navigate to Mars and other distant destinations.
NASA recently selected a new mission called the Neutron-star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) to not only reveal the physics that make neutron stars the densest objects in nature, but also to demonstrate a groundbreaking navigation technology that could revolutionize the agency's ability to travel to the far reaches of the solar system and beyond.
The multi-purpose mission, also known as NICER/SEXTANT (Station Explorer for X-ray Timing and Navigation Technology), consists of 56 X-ray telescopes in a compact bundle, their associated silicon detectors, and a number of other advanced technologies. Both NASA's Science Mission Directorate's Explorers Program and the Space Technology Mission Directorate's Game Changing Program are contributing to the mission's development.
"It's rare that you have an opportunity to fly a cross-cutting experiment," said Principal Investigator Keith Gendreau, a scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., who is leading NICER/SEXTANT's development. "The time is right for this experiment. This is one that we can do now."
In addition to NASA Goddard scientists and engineers, the mission team includes the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and commercial partners, who are providing spaceflight hardware. The Naval Research Laboratory and universities across the United States, as well as in Canada and Mexico, are providing science expertise.
Space Station Bound
Slightly larger than a typical college dormitory refrigerator, NICER/SEXTANT will be deployed on the International Space Station (ISS) in 2017. It will fly as an external attached payload on one of the ISS ExPRESS Logistics Carriers, unpressurized platforms used for experiments and storage.
The X-ray instrument's primary objective is to learn more about the interior composition of neutron stars, the remnants of massive stars that, after exhausting their nuclear fuel, exploded and collapsed into super-dense spheres about the size of New York City. Their intense gravity crushes an astonishing amount of matter -- often more than 1.4 times the content of the sun or at least 460,000 Earths -- into these city-sized balls, creating the densest objects known in the universe. Just one teaspoonful of neutron star matter would weigh a billion tons on Earth.
"A neutron star is right at the threshold of matter as it can exist -- if it were compressed any further, it would collapse completely in on itself and become a black hole," said Zaven Arzoumanian, a NASA Goddard scientist serving as the deputy principal investigator on the mission. "We have no way of creating or studying this matter in any laboratory. There are many theories about what it is and how it behaves, but the only way to test our models and understand what happens to matter under such incredible pressures is to study neutron stars," he added. "The closest we come to simulating these conditions is in particle accelerators that smash atoms together at almost the speed of light. However, these collisions are not an exact substitute -- they only last a split second, and they generate temperatures that are much higher than what's inside neutron stars."
Although the nuclear-fusion fires that sustained their parent stars are extinguished, neutron stars still shine with heat left over from their explosive formation, and from radiation generated by their magnetic fields that became intensely concentrated as the core collapsed.
Although neutron stars emit radiation across the spectrum, observing in the X-ray band offers the greatest insights into their structure, the ultimate stability of their pulses as precise clock "ticks," and the high-energy, dynamic phenomena that they host, including starquakes, thermonuclear explosions, and the most powerful magnetic fields known in the universe.
NICER's 56 telescopes will collect X-rays generated from its tremendously strong magnetic field and from hotspots located at the stars' two magnetic poles. At these locations, the intense magnetic field emerges from the surface. Particles trapped in the magnetic field rain down and generate X-rays when they strike the surface. As the hotspots rotate into and out of our line of sight, we perceive a rise and fall in X-ray brightness.
This subgroup of pulsating neutron stars, called pulsars, rotate rapidly, emitting from their magnetic poles powerful beams of light that sweep around as the star spins, much like a lighthouse. At Earth, these beams are seen as flashes of light, blinking on and off at intervals from seconds down to milliseconds.
Because of their predictable pulsations -- especially millisecond pulsars, which are the target of the navigation demonstration -- "they are extremely reliable celestial clocks" and can provide high-precision timing just like the atomic clock signals supplied through the 26-satellite, military-operated Global Positioning System (GPS), an Earth-centric system that weakens the farther one travels out beyond Earth orbit and into the solar system, Arzoumanian said. "Pulsars, on the other hand, are accessible in virtually every conceivable flight regime, from low-Earth orbit to interplanetary to deepest space," Gendreau added.
As a result, NICER/SEXTANT also will demonstrate the viability of pulsar-based navigation. "The hardware needed for neutron star science is identical to that needed for pulsar-based navigation," Gendreau said. "In fact, the mission's two goals share many of the same targets and the same operational concept. The differences are on the back end in terms of how the data will be used."
To demonstrate the navigation technology's viability, the NICER/SEXTANT payload will use its telescopes to detect X-ray photons within these powerful beams of light to estimate the arrival times of the pulses. With these measurements, the system will use specially developed algorithms to stitch together an on-board navigation solution.
If an interplanetary mission were equipped with such a navigational device, it would be able to calculate its location autonomously, independent of NASA's Deep Space Network (DSN), Gendreau said. DSN, considered the most sensitive telecommunications system in the world, allows NASA to continuously observe and communicate with interplanetary spacecraft. However, like GPS, the system is Earth-centric. DSN-supplied navigational solutions also degrade the farther one travels out into the solar system. Furthermore, missions must share time on the network, Gendreau said.
"We're excited about NICER/SEXTANT's possibilities," Gendreau added. "The experiment meets critical science objectives and is a stepping-stone for technology applications that meet a variety of NASA needs. It's rare that you get an opportunity to do a cross-cutting experiment like this."
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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/most_popular/~3/SL-GcAeiWQ8/130408035333.htm
Taiwan, Hong Kong on Alert as Bird Flu Spreads in China
Taiwan, Hong Kong on Alert as Bird Flu Spreads in China
Taiwan, Hong Kong on Alert as Bird Flu Spreads in China
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98% 56 Up
All Critics (55) | Top Critics (22) | Fresh (54) | Rotten (1)
Yes, on some level it's just a seven-year check-in with people maybe half-remembered, if that. Yet the films also serve as a kind of check-in with us, too.
What ultimately is so compelling about 56 Up is the universality of the experiences. We were all once children. And we all will die. And in between, there is everything else.
We feel good, refreshed and depressed in watching these people get older, also embarrassed in moments and cautioned about the passage of time.
Apted, himself now in his early 70s, says he hopes to continue the series further. Long may it live.
Watching "56 Up" gives you the wonderful feeling of seeing a sociological experiment blossom into something novelistically rich and humane.
Time has been neither kind nor cruel to the 13 men and women profiled in "56 UP." It has just been time, which is what this groundbreaking series is about.
Chances are that you'll come away from this long film feeling a sense of knowing its characters.
We might say that '56 Up' serves much the same function as 'Amour,' but it responds to the inevitability of decline with compassion, not dread.
What started as a crafty way of looking at the U.K.'s rigid class structure has grown into a portrait of melancholy middle age, with its heartbreaks and minor-key triumphs.
Those British kids are now 56
Watching the eighth film is intriguing but, in a way, disappointing. At this point in the game, it feels as if all the characters have determined their lots in life and are simply plodding through their interviews.
Quite simply one of the great documentary projects in the history of cinema, an engrossing sociological experiment on film; and though this mostly mellow installment isn't as revelatory as some earlier ones, it's still a remarkable document.
... feels like a retrospective and summation of the whole series, with ample quotation from the previous films, an approach that makes it interesting even for viewers who haven't seen the previous installments.
A completely unique and remarkable documentary project.
Apted skillfully weaves old footage with the new, and we become poignantly aware of another factor shaping their lives (and our own): biology, as the we watch the once-cute kids grow gray and heavy.
Perhaps the boldest and probably longest running sociological experiment on film.
I think the best thing about this movie (and the entire series) is that it forces the viewer to think about their own lives. It's kind of an awakening experience.
Once again, Apted assembles a captivating documentary that's profoundly educational, essential viewing to aid the understanding of the human experience.
"56 Up" is well worth seeing.
56 Up is still moving and philosophic, though not as exciting as earlier episodes, which had more drama.
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Sunday, April 7, 2013
Family Home and Life: Be Patient and Pray
Yes please Pin anything you want, I love that! Also I am thrilled to have you link to me and yes, you may use a picture to link also...but please!!! Do not use photos of the kids! It is copying my post and/or my pics to use on your blog or anywhere else that I consider theft.
Source: http://www.familyhomeandlife.com/2013/04/be-patient-and-pray.html
Berlin's airport project delays shame Germans
BERLIN (AP) ? Rabbits scamper over quiet runways. Only the call of a crow disturbs the silence around a gleaming, empty terminal that should be humming with the din of thousands of passengers.
Willy Brandt International Airport, named for Germany's famed Cold War leader, was supposed to have been up and running in late 2011, a sign of Berlin's transformation from Cold War confrontation line to world class capital of Europe's economic powerhouse. Instead it has become a symbol of how, even for this technological titan, things can go horribly wrong.
After four publicly announced delays, officials acknowledged the airport won't be ready by the latest target: October 2013. To spare themselves further embarrassment, officials have refused to set a new opening date.
The saga of Berlin's new airport has turned into a national joke and a source of humiliation for a people renowned for being on time. Yet it is just the highest profile in a string of big-ticket projects ? including a concert hall in Hamburg, railway tunnels in Munich and Leipzig, a subway line in Cologne and a Stuttgart underground train station ? that have been plagued by huge cost overruns and delays.
The airport fiasco presents a staggering picture of incompetence.
German media have tracked down a list of tens of thousands of technical problems. Among them: Officials can't even figure out how to turn the lights off. Thousands of light bulbs illuminate the gigantic main terminal and unused parking lots around the clock, a massive energy and cost drain that appears to be the result of a computer system that's so sophisticated it's almost impossible to operate.
Every day, an empty commuter train rolls to the unfinished airport over an eight-kilometer-long (five-mile) stretch to keep the newly-laid tracks from getting rusty, another example of gross inefficiency. Meanwhile, hundreds of freshly planted trees had to be chopped down because a company delivered the wrong type of linden trees; several escalators need to be rebuilt because they were too short; and dozen of tiles were already broken before a single airport passenger ever stepped on them.
The airport itself points to problems with the fire safety system as the immediate cause of the delays: The fire safety system incorporates some 75,000 sprinklers, but computer programming glitches mean it's not clear whether all of these sprinklers would spray enough water during a fire. And the system's underground vent system, designed to suck away smoke, isn't working. Here, again, technology's getting in the way: It's so advanced that technicians can't figure out what's wrong with it.
Critics say that the difficulties with handling today's complex technology have been compounded by hasty, negligent work due to the intense time pressures.
Underlying these problems appears to be a culture of political dishonesty.
"Many politicians want prestigious large-scale projects to be inseparably connected with their names," said Sebastian Panknin, a financial expert with the Taxpayer's Association Germany. "To get these expensive projects started, they artificially calculate down the real costs to get permission from parliament or other committees in charge."
In addition to that, politicians at the city, state and federal levels then often come with extra demands once construction is underway, which leads to expensive modifications. In the case of the Berlin airport, said Pankin, there were about 300 ad hoc change requests by politicians which created an explosion of costs and several delays ? among them a last-minute wish to expand the terminal to include a shopping mall.
"The airport is a classic example of the incompetence of our politicians," said Sven Fandrich, a 28-year-old Berliner who works for an insurance company. "We've seen this happen with many big infrastructure projects in Germany. Nobody feels responsible. The politicians are more concerned about winning the next elections than devoting their service to the people."
Hamburg's concert hall was to have opened by 2010. Instead it's nowhere near complete and costs have more than doubled to 575 million euros. It's now due to open in 2016.
Construction on Cologne's North-South subway line began in 2004. After cost overruns and a collapse that killed two people in 2009, officials say the entire line may not be open until 2019. Costs have soared from 780 million to 1.08 billion euros.
In Leipzig, the city tunnel for commuter trains was expected to open in 2009. Construction is still not finished, and costs have jumped from 572 million to 960 million euros.
Of all the bungled projects, the Berlin airport is the biggest embarrassment.
The initial plan foresaw building a stately airport that would be financed by private investors and replace the city's two Cold War airports ? Tegel in former West Berlin and Schoenefeld in what was the communist east.
After a series of disputes with private investors, the city, state and federal governments eventually took over the airport project. In 2006, costs were estimated at 2 billion euros, but after four delays, the figure spiked to 4.4 billion euros.
Companies like Air Berlin, Germany's second biggest carrier, have been severely affected by the delays and are suing for lost revenues. Small businesses like coffee shops, restaurants, retail stores or bus operators ? who had already hired staff and invested in new stores at the airport ? are facing bankruptcy.
Twitter users asked the mayor to "please open this gate," playing off President Ronald Reagan's famous 1987 appeal to Moscow to "tear down" the Berlin Wall.
And by the time the airport finally opens, it may face a new headache.
Some aviation experts are warning that by its inauguration date, the airport will already be too small to handle the rising number of passengers. The nearly 3.9 million square foot (360,000 square meter) airport complex was designed to handle 27 million passengers. But the existing two city airports handled 25 million passengers last year ? and the city keeps attracting more visitors every year.
"The airport is too expensive, too small and too much behind time," said aviation expert Dieter Faulenbach da Costa, who recently caused a stir when he proposed that the airport ought to be torn down.
In an effort to salvage the mess, Hartmut Mehdorn, the hardnosed former boss of the German railway system with a reputation for turning around failing corporations, was named chief executive of the airport in early March.
"The whole world says: it's not possible at all," Mehdorn said when he took over. "I say: It should be possible.
"I just don't know how yet."
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/berlins-airport-project-delays-shame-germans-093036692--finance.html
PFT: Revis not optimistic about trade possibilities
Getty ImagesThere?s a common belief that the pending concussion litigation against the NFL ultimately will result only in the lawyers making money.
The so-called expert witnesses likely will, too.
Often overlooked in complex litigation involving esoteric medical knowledge and jargon is the fact that the men and women who have the education and experience to share that knowledge and jargon with a judge and a jury get paid a lot of money.
That reality routinely results in a blurring of ethical lines.? According to Steve Fainaru and Mark Fainaru-Wada of ESPN.com, Dr. Robert Cantu previously served as a senior adviser to the NFL?s Head, Neck and Spine committee ? but he also has consulted with the lawyers who are suing the NFL on behalf of thousands of former players.
?It was an informational session, just like I get paid to give a talk someplace else,? Cantu said of a February 2012 presentation to the lawyers representing the players.? He also justified working for the players suing the league by explaining that the NFL could hire him to serve as an expert witness, which would block from him talking to those suing the league.
?If [the NFL] wanted to put me on their payroll, to defend their case, then I?m not gonna say boo about those issues [to the plaintiffs],? said Cantu, who gets $800 per hour for legal services, $5,000 for depositions, and $8,000 per day for trial testimony.
Cantu?s attitude underscores one of the biggest problems with the litigation industry.? Many experts aren?t necessarily motivated by the pursuit of justice but by the supplementation of their total income with the exorbitant fees they charge.? And since there?s plenty of discretion to be exercised when telling the truth, their testimony often can be molded to help whichever side of a case hires them first.
Here?s a concrete example, for those of you who are still awake.
Eleven years ago, I represented a former employee of a major U.S. low-cost big-box retailer who had been forced to take an alcohol test under circumstances that, as the jury concluded, didn?t justify an invasion of the employee?s privacy rights via the drawing of a blood sample.? The case included testimony from an expert witness who had been hired by the employer to justify the conclusion, based on the blood-alcohol concentration measured by the test, that the employee had indeed been intoxicated at work.
On cross-examination, I confronted the expert witness with a passage from a written report on the issue of blood-alcohol testing.? In the report, the author expressed concern about the reliability of efforts to use blood-alcohol measurements to determine a person?s BAC at an earlier point in time.
I read the sentence to the expert witness, and I asked the expert witness if he agreed with the statement.
He said, ?No.?
So I read it to him again, slowly.? I asked him if he agreed with that statement.
Again, he said, ?No.?
So I handed him the report, showed him the first page of it, and asked him to tell the judge and the jury who had written the report.
The expert witness, after taking a gulp, said his own name.
And that?s pretty much all I ever needed to know about the world of expert witnesses.
Source: http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2013/04/05/revis-not-optimistic-trade-gets-done/related/
Corruption a threat to Indian democracy: President Pranab
New Delhi: Corruption is a threat to the democratic fabric of the country and frustrates efforts to bring equity, President Pranab Mukherjee said here on Saturday, delivering the 14th DP Kohli Memorial Lecture organised by the CBI.
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) was founded by DP Kohli, who served as its director from 1963-68. The agency enters its golden jubilee year this year.
The President said the government should work to make healthcare more affordable. The title of the president's address was "Good governance: Empowering Institutions, Society and Public".
The President said the country was at a crossroads, and could not lose the momentum of change. He said basic principles of good governance had already been incorporated into the constitution by the nation's founding fathers.
Noting that the root of poor governance was lethargy (in response) to change, he said "good governance should be our unwavering goal."
The President said that though India had made development strides, it ranked lower than major developed economies in parameters such as government effectiveness.
"There is scope to improve participatory decision-making," the president said, noting that poverty still hovered around 30 percent.
The president said affordable healthcare should be the priority, as many people were forced into poverty by the high cost of medicines and medical services.
The president noted how there was emphasis now on empowerment with entitlement, and cited rights-based legislations, including the right to education and the right to information enacted by the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government as examples.
He said the direct benefit scheme would help bring greater transparency.
"Corruption is a threat to the democratic fabric? It frustrates efforts to bring equity," the President said.
Complimenting the CBI on its work, he said it was the "most sought after agency for investigation" by every section of society.
He also released the golden jubilee logo of the CBI and the gave President's Police Medal for Distinguished Service to six CBI officers.
Bharat Bhushan Sharma, a constable posted in Jammu, was given the DP Kohli Best Detective Constable Award.
CBI director Ranjit Sinha said the golden jubilee was also an occasion for introspection and the people expected the agency to act with greater effectiveness and speed.
He said the agency would frame a plan to bring it on par with the finest law enforcing institutions in the world.
IANS
Martini Madness
Don't shake that martini. Agitate it.
Photo by Scott Gries/Getty Images
The Grey Lady (1) vs. M.F.K. Fisher?s Gibson (9)
Rosie Schaap was standing in her kitchen, mixing our first round of martinis exactly as indicated in her New York Times recipe, stirring with a ladylike lacquered chopstick, saying, ?I?m not averse to a few shards of ice in my martini.? I gestured toward the opposite view, the idea that a martini should be, as in Anne Sexton?s ?Oysters,? ?clear as tears.? She replied, ?I think they look kind of pretty.?
Feeling mildly adventurous, I asked for the garnish of a sage leaf. She served and sat and toasted. My cold drink had a warm homey aroma. I explained the cockamamie conceit of this tournament, and the fact that the Round of 32 had found her martini iteration going up against M.F.K. Fisher?s Gibson. She deferred to her eminent opponent: ?There?s no way I should ever beat her at anything.? I told her about the martini drills I?d designed for Slate?s interns, and she reflected on her need to find good help: ?I?m not a very organized person. I?m organized when I?m making drinks. I think that?s why I like making drinks.?
We got to talking about martinis, and poems, and poems about martinis. I said it continued to blow my mind to have learned that when Sexton and Sylvia Plath were students in Robert Lowell?s seminar, they ritually met for after-class martinis at the Boston Ritz-Carlton. It conjured for me a vision of businessmen and Brahmins and bros swaggering up to chat up a coupla dames and encountering?a dark, absurd reversal?two Pulitzer Prize winners for drama.
?I don?t understand a lot about men,? Rosie said. ?This is, you know, after a marriage, at 42.? (After, as well, it should be noted, a memoir called Drinking With Men.) ??I don?t understand a lot, but I get why kooky boho girls are popular in bars.?
M.F.K. Fisher?s Gibson advances to the Sweet 16 in the West Regional.
It?s The Vermouth, Stupid (1) vs. The Los Alamos (8)
The Bradford (3) vs. The BFG (6)
Hemingway?s Gibson (4) vs. The Critic?s Choice (12)
The Nick & Nora (1) vs. The All-American (9)
Let?s shake things up a bit! Let?s stir up some controversy! Let?s postulate that shaken not stirred?a phrase destined to be recited every night until the end of the world?is not enough to capture all the possibilities for martini mixing. Let me propose that the very question ?shaken or stirred?? presents a false dichotomy.
1. Stirring a martini with ice is standard practice. (Certain mystics insist on clockwise rotations or figure-eight formations, but who cares? There is little room for error when you?re twirling a barspoon around a mixing glass.)
2. Shaking a martini with ice is a controversial act. Some people use the phrase bruising the gin to describe the splintering that occurs when you vigorously rattle ice cubes. This expression is not only manifestly douchey-dorky but also dangerously misleading in its implication of violence: There?s nothing you can do to gin that?s worse than what it can do to you. But it is true that shaking introduces a cloudiness and astringency that I find yucky, which is why I?m bouncing The Bradford and preferring to believe that the admirable Gilbert Seldes, calling for a shaken martini in the advancing Critic?s Choice was anticipating the technique of ?
Agitating the mix. A couple months ago, back when beginning to develop the delusion that a martini tournament was a good idea, I ran into a brilliantly intuitive bartender. He led me to taste this tournament?s most surprising martini. (And in a whiskey bar, of all places!)
My new friend was Jeff. A couple months ago, he introduced me to the notion of agitating the mix. He first pantomimed the technique for me: There was a glowing pride on his face and a gentle rocking in his arm movement. He spoke of caressing the shaker, and of keeping two fingers near its base until the metal gets too cold to touch: ?It lets you know when it?s ready.? He resembled nothing so much as a new father.
A couple weeks ago, I swung into his place to witness the real thing. He poured easygoing Bombay Sapphire and much less vermouth than I usually like over ice, and then he let it sit for a bit, and then he tenderly rolled into existence a potion softer and sweeter than I?d thought to expect.
Last weekend, I presented to the wife a blind taste test: A pair of It?s the Vermouth, Stupids, one stirred, one agitated. She declared the latter the winner, though she couldn?t put her finger on the difference, and part of the charm of the thing, I think, is the mystery. Must I investigate the chemical reactions at play? I?d rather believe that there?s some magic in a low-key shake done to the waltz-time specified by Nick Charles?as in The Nick & Nora, which coasts ahead of the worthy All-American by sheer iconicity.
It?s the Vermouth, Stupid advances to the Sweet 16 in the Midwest Regional.
The BFG advances to the Sweet 16 in the South Regional.
The Critic?s Choice and The Nick & Nora advance to the Sweet 16 in the East Regional.
The 1951 Martini (9) vs. The Charlie Lindbergh Cocktail (16)
The Vesper (2) vs. The Tillicum (7)
Alas, the poor Tillicum: I?d been excited to garnish a drink with lox. Then I got hungry and anxious and stress-ate all the lox. Then I made the drink anyway, reasoning that a martini tournament as rigorous as this one cannot depend entirely on its garnish for its merit. But without the distraction of that fishy ornament, the Peychaud?s bitters drowned the charm of the gin.
That drink met the sink a few days after I?d run into my pal Denise on the street and commandeered her palate. ?Sure, I?ll drink a martini for you!? she said, her laugh like a hot-air balloon floating us right back to college. ?But I don?t like gin.?
Having pledged not to let the pedantry of my authorial persona seep into my real life, such as it is, I did not to hop to correct her usage of ?vodka martini? to ?Kangaroo? or ?Kangaroo Kicker.? Then I pulled a trick familiar to many cocktail-slingers who think vodka common: I asked if she had any food allergies, received an all-clear, and ordered her a Vesper, which is the gin drink to get people who think they don?t like gin.
She took a sip and said, ?What I?m tasting in this cocktail right now is a feeling that I call ?my twenties??that feeling of waking up and knowing that you?re drunk, and you have to go to work anyway.? She took few more sips and said, ?It just tastes like a lot of short-sighted poorly-planned swill. What I?m feeling on my palate is not love, it?s lust.?
Finishing the drink, she said, ?It?s like a bad boyfriend.?
Thus does the Vesper advance to the next round.
The Charlie Lindbergh Cocktail will inspire similar flights of the imagination. Try one this summer, substituting Cocchi Americano?readily available at a precious vacation-town general store near you?for the discontinued Kina Lillet. That said, the flyboy of 1927 is no match for his opponent, The 1951 Martini, a model I?ve already test-piloted.
The 1951 Martini advances to the Sweet 16 in the South Regional.
The Vesper advances to the Sweet 16 in the East Regional.
The Dutch Martini (4) vs. Two at the Most (5)
The Turf Cocktail No. 2 (12) vs. Martinez Redux (13)
Here we have two losers made with Holland gin, the full, whiskey-ish grandpa of familiar London dry. Call me provincial, but I do not like a dry martini made with Holland gin, and my second Turf Club No. 2 found no way to win over my immoderate affection for the sleek Martinez Redux. However, I do not count these contests total failures for the Dutch. I?d advise you to dribble Genever in your onion brine if able. Also bear in mind that their idiom onder tafel gives English its under the table.
Two at the Most advances to the Sweet 16 in the Midwest Regional.
Martinez Redux advances to the Sweet 16 in the West Regional.
Source: http://feeds.slate.com/click.phdo?i=fd12f879fd7cb2d5c96dae195bb6b040
Kim Siegal: 8 Things to Get You Through the Long Days of Parenting
"The days are long but the years are short" has got to be one of the truest parenting clich?s ever spoken. But sometimes, those days -- especially for parents of young children -- are truly too long, and it can be all too easy to forget how fleeting the years are.
The frequent night wakings are turning you into someone you don't entirely recognize. You've stepped on one too many Legos. You've exhausted yourself trying to convince an illogical toddler to do something life sustaining, like eating. You've tried repeatedly and then failed to soothe a crying baby, a tantruming toddler or a neglected partner. You wallow in a resentful funk that you took your few moments of alone time to clean the dishes. Too often, all these things happen on the same day. Those long days of parenthood.
It's at those times that I like to think of the short but precious years and of the fleeting moments that I'd like to grab on to with both hands, freeze in time and stick in my pocket to pull out and savor forever. During the long days, I comfort myself thinking of those moments. If you're stuck in a long day, think of this:
- Soon enough, your child will tell you unsolicited how much they love you. They will do it in heart-breakingly earnest and grammatically adorable way. Something like, "You are my best mommy."
- Soon enough, upon pick-up from school or day care your child will run to you as if you've long been separated by some natural disaster. Their face will beam and they will be love --screaming "MOOOOMMMM!!!" That run will be the highlight of your day.
- Soon enough, you'll wake refreshed after a long night of sleep and walk into your child's room to watch them sleep.
- Soon enough, your child will defend you: "Don't yell at my mommy!" And you'll feel oddly protective and protected at the same time.
- Soon enough, you will teach your child something -- how to draw a circle, how to catch a ball -- and they'll get it. And you'll be there to witness that magical, epiphinal moment where they are surprised and delighted by their own ability.
- Soon enough, your child will say something piss-in-your-pants hilarious like, "Mommy, the baby and I were talking about it, and we think you are a really good driver." Your laughter will lift you up at least as much as a half a Zolaft and a bar of chocolate.
- Soon enough, your child will finally do something you've been nagging/teaching him to do for what seemed like ages. He'll say "thank you" without prompting. He'll notice his shoes are dirty and take them off. He'll (HOLY GRAIL) use the toilet. You'll instantly brim with a sense of parental competence.
- Soon enough, you'll watch your child perform. Maybe it'll be a school play or sports event. They may fail and handle it well. They may succeed and swell with pride. They may overcome a bought of nerves. Whatever they do, you'll swallow a lump in your throat the size of a baseball for the bittersweet independence of your once baby. The years will feel too short.
Those are the moments I cherish and cling to when they days are feeling impossibly long. What are your moments?
?
Follow Kim Siegal on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@MaMzungu
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A Bankruptcy Proceeding And Tax Refunds: Can I Keep Hold Of It
Legal assistants charge high expenditures for giving advice, sometimes nearly as much as bankruptcy lawyers, while doing portion of of the the job. In the long run, it can be a better assumed to hire the Bankruptcy Lawyer than to slice corners by employing a paralegal.
That there are circumstances appearing in which modify factors to be constructed soon after the personal bankruptcy application has been recorded. For illustration, if you ended up unable on fulfill the unique Chapter 13 strategy, your situation might become handled 1 regarding four approaches.
The person probably realize this intellectually, but customers may still contemplate a bankruptcy regulation firm does little a lot of than move through a prescribed series for each case, filling out forms, and then selling on to some sort of next moneymaker. This is far from the accusation in court. If this one were true, typically would be just about no reason to assist you hire an personal injury lawyer in the extremely first place and virtually of those experienced persons saying you will need would be being. They aren't. The rationale you hire professional counsel is because the path is normally fraught with complication and ample career for mistakes on be made. If you're becoming through this process, you want the problem done right.
Today, more than ever, people are experiencing with debt and additionally financial difficulty. High unemployment, drifting down property values, a new turbulent stock market, and a host of other finances issues have distributed many people which will fall deep into debt and to be able to fear they should certainly never get outside. If you are probably experiencing phone minutes from debt collectors, can't pay your incredible bills, or happen to be stressed because you may have too most debt, a Amazing Jersey bankruptcy expert may be have the ability to help.
A nice 5 Bankruptcy Attorneys and Their Firms Sanctioned By India lawyer can review your financial situation and assist you in determining in the bankruptcy is best for you. Bankruptcy does damage your credit to all cases, although this is not necessarily true if you find yourself already experiencing regular hits to your own as a result of your late settlements. Bankruptcy also stays on your favorite record for a number of to ten years. However, while these things have been true and bankruptcy does have some downsides, bankruptcy could be the right choice for many people.
That it is continually suggested that you're method prior on things and you retain a bankruptcy legal practitioner prepared for possess may want the. Trying for one at covered minute may be of use too as a direct result of you might anticipate to find bankruptcy agency who is nice and experienced. If however you prepare previously time, you are prepared to analysis on the and see features for yourself. Trying for legal assistance first at the last minute is hectic and you will definitely most likely simply take what you get, that is terribly risky. And so perpetually be capable and realize bankruptcy attorney beforehand so you will be ready to avail the services they provide when you be needing them, without needing to look at the last moment.
Regarding credit card debt, lawsuits, repossession, foreclosure, student loan and furthermore IRS collection problems, you need seasoned and experienced legal help and strategies. Contact Mr. Black's office to rearrange your free consulting with him.
That there are circumstances appearing in which modify factors to be constructed soon after the personal bankruptcy application has been recorded. For illustration, if you ended up unable on fulfill the unique Chapter 13 strategy, your situation might become handled 1 regarding four approaches.
The person probably realize this intellectually, but customers may still contemplate a bankruptcy regulation firm does little a lot of than move through a prescribed series for each case, filling out forms, and then selling on to some sort of next moneymaker. This is far from the accusation in court. If this one were true, typically would be just about no reason to assist you hire an personal injury lawyer in the extremely first place and virtually of those experienced persons saying you will need would be being. They aren't. The rationale you hire professional counsel is because the path is normally fraught with complication and ample career for mistakes on be made. If you're becoming through this process, you want the problem done right.
Today, more than ever, people are experiencing with debt and additionally financial difficulty. High unemployment, drifting down property values, a new turbulent stock market, and a host of other finances issues have distributed many people which will fall deep into debt and to be able to fear they should certainly never get outside. If you are probably experiencing phone minutes from debt collectors, can't pay your incredible bills, or happen to be stressed because you may have too most debt, a Amazing Jersey bankruptcy expert may be have the ability to help.
A nice 5 Bankruptcy Attorneys and Their Firms Sanctioned By India lawyer can review your financial situation and assist you in determining in the bankruptcy is best for you. Bankruptcy does damage your credit to all cases, although this is not necessarily true if you find yourself already experiencing regular hits to your own as a result of your late settlements. Bankruptcy also stays on your favorite record for a number of to ten years. However, while these things have been true and bankruptcy does have some downsides, bankruptcy could be the right choice for many people.
That it is continually suggested that you're method prior on things and you retain a bankruptcy legal practitioner prepared for possess may want the. Trying for one at covered minute may be of use too as a direct result of you might anticipate to find bankruptcy agency who is nice and experienced. If however you prepare previously time, you are prepared to analysis on the and see features for yourself. Trying for legal assistance first at the last minute is hectic and you will definitely most likely simply take what you get, that is terribly risky. And so perpetually be capable and realize bankruptcy attorney beforehand so you will be ready to avail the services they provide when you be needing them, without needing to look at the last moment.
Regarding credit card debt, lawsuits, repossession, foreclosure, student loan and furthermore IRS collection problems, you need seasoned and experienced legal help and strategies. Contact Mr. Black's office to rearrange your free consulting with him.
Advance could bring Hydrogen to the alternative energy market
Thursday, April 4, 2013
A team of Virginia Tech researchers has discovered a way to extract large quantities of hydrogen from any plant, a finding that has the potential to bring a low-cost, environmentally friendly fuel source to the world.
"Our new process could help end our dependence on fossil fuels," said Y.H. Percival Zhang, an associate professor of biological systems engineering in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and the College of Engineering "Hydrogen is one of the most important biofuels of the future."
Zhang and his team have succeeded in using xylose, the most abundant simple plant sugar, to produce a large quantity of hydrogen that previously was attainable only in theory. Zhang's method can be performed using any source of biomass.
The discovery is a featured editor's choice in an online version of the chemistry journal Angewandte Chemie, International Edition.
This new environmentally friendly method of producing hydrogen utilizes renewable natural resources, releases almost no zero greenhouse gasses, and does not require costly or heavy metals. Previous methods to produce hydrogen are expensive and create greenhouse gases.
The U.S. Department of Energy says that hydrogen fuel has the potential to dramatically reduce reliance of fossil fuels and automobile manufactures are aggressively trying to develop vehicles that run on hydrogen fuel cells. Unlike gas-powered engines that spew out pollutants, the only byproduct of hydrogen fuel is water. Zhang's discovery opens the door to an inexpensive, renewable source of hydrogen.
Jonathan R. Mielenz, group leader of the bioscience and technology biosciences division at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, who is familiar with Zhang's work but not affiliated with this project, said this discovery has the potential to have a major impact on alternative energy production.
"The key to this exciting development is that Zhang is using the second most prevalent sugar in plants to produce this hydrogen," he said. "This amounts to a significant additional benefit to hydrogen production and it reduces the overall cost of producing hydrogen from biomass."
Mielenz said Zhang's process could find its way to the marketplace as quickly as three years if the technology is available. Zhang said when it does become commercially available, it has the possibility of making an enormous impact.
"The potential for profit and environmental benefits are why so many automobile, oil, and energy companies are working on hydrogen fuel cell vehicles as the transportation of the future," Zhang said. "Many people believe we will enter the hydrogen economy soon, with a market capacity of at least $1 trillion in the United States alone."
Obstacles to commercial production of hydrogen gas from biomass previously included the high cost of the processes used and the relatively low quantity of the end product.
But Zhang thinks he has found the answers to those problems.
For seven years, Zhang's team has been focused on finding non-traditional ways to produce high-yield hydrogen at low cost, specifically researching enzyme combinations, discovering novel enzymes, and engineering enzymes with desirable properties.
The team liberates the high-purity hydrogen under mild reaction conditions at 122 degree Fahrenheit and normal atmospheric pressure. The biocatalysts used to release the hydrogen are a group of enzymes artificially isolated from different microorganisms that thrive at extreme temperatures, some of which could grow at around the boiling point of water.
The researchers chose to use xylose, which comprises as much as 30 percent of plant cell walls. Despite its abundance, the use of xylose for releasing hydrogen has been limited. The natural or engineered microorganisms that most scientists use in their experiments cannot produce hydrogen in high yield because these microorganisms grow and reproduce instead of splitting water molecules to yield pure hydrogen.
To liberate the hydrogen, Virginia Tech scientists separated a number of enzymes from their native microorganisms to create a customized enzyme cocktail that does not occur in nature. The enzymes, when combined with xylose and a polyphosphate, liberate the unprecedentedly high volume of hydrogen from xylose, resulting in the production of about three times as much hydrogen as other hydrogen-producing microorganisms.
The energy stored in xylose splits water molecules, yielding high-purity hydrogen that can be directly utilized by proton-exchange membrane fuel cells. Even more appealing, this reaction occurs at low temperatures, generating hydrogen energy that is greater than the chemical energy stored in xylose and the polyphosphate. This results in an energy efficiency of more than 100 percent ? a net energy gain. That means that low-temperature waste heat can be used to produce high-quality chemical energy hydrogen for the first time. Other processes that convert sugar into biofuels such as ethanol and butanol always have energy efficiencies of less than 100 percent, resulting in an energy penalty.
In his previous research, Zhang used enzymes to produce hydrogen from starch, but the reaction required a food source that made the process too costly for mass production.
The commercial market for hydrogen gas is now around $100 billion for hydrogen produced from natural gas, which is expensive to manufacture and generates a large amount of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. Industry most often uses hydrogen to manufacture ammonia for fertilizers and to refine petrochemicals, but an inexpensive, plentiful green hydrogen source can rapidly change that market.
"It really doesn't make sense to use non-renewable natural resources to produce hydrogen," Zhang said. "We think this discovery is a game-changer in the world of alternative energy."
###
Virginia Tech: http://www.vtnews.vt.edu
Thanks to Virginia Tech 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/127596/Advance_could_bring_Hydrogen_to_the_alternative_energy_market
Microsoft executive to 'always-online' Xbox critics: 'Deal with it'
Following speculation that Microsoft?s hotly rumored next-generation console might feature an "always-online" requirement for its customers, one Microsoft executive has taken to the Internet in an attempt to make his case for this controversial sort of digital rights management (DRM). Or, rather, Microsoft Studios creative director Adam Orth told always-online?s detractors that they should just "deal with it."
"Sorry, I don't get the drama around having an 'always on'console," Orth tweeted early Friday morning. "Every device now is ?always on?. That's the world we live in. #dealwithit"
"I want every device to be 'always on,' Orth went on to say, telling one vocal critic whose friends don?t have regular access to the Internet but own Microsoft?s current generation console, the Xbox 360, that they should "get with the times and get the Internet."
Fellow game industry insider Manveer Heir, who currently works as a designer on ?Mass Effect? at BioWare, also took Orth to task for his response, saying that "deal with it is a sh**ty reason" and asking if Microsoft had not learned anything from the disastrous launches of "SimCity" and "Diablo III."
"Sometimes the electricity goes out. I will not purchase a vacuum cleaner," Orth said in response. "The mobile phone reception in the area I live in is spotty and unreliable. I will not buy a mobile phone."
Heir later qualified his disagreement with Orth, saying that he was a "dear friend" and "one of the good guys."
Orth?s statements on Twitter came shortly after popular gaming site Kotaku ran a story that claimed two Microsoft sources had all but confirmed that the company?s upcoming Xbox 360 successor would feature some kind of always-online requirement. This type of DRM has formed many longstanding feuds between gamers and video game publishers, most recently with the botched launch of "SimCity" and the developer?s own admission that, while the game could be run offline, it wouldn?t let gamers use it that way anyways.
Most prominent cases of unloved DRM in the video game industry have centered on individual titles such as "SimCity" and "Diablo III," or game publishers such as Ubisoft which last year decided to abandon DRM for its PC games entirely after several years of brutal spats with its players. If Microsoft does make the entire Xbox 720 device function with some sort of always-online requirement, the entire conflict over DRM will become a question of hardware, not just software. This may help game publishers like Ubisoft or Electronic Arts save face in the eyes of their most ardent fans, but placing more requirements for the ?proper use? of a device on its users will undoubtedly rankle those same players ? and could even come to disturb fellow game developers as well.
Orth's Twitter account has since been made private, but one enterprising NeoGAF user posted the relevant social media exchange on the forum for posterity.
When we contacted Microsoft for comment a spokesperson replied "We are aware of the comments made by an employee on Twitter. This person is not a spokesperson for Microsoft, and his personal views are not reflective of those of the company. We have not made any announcements about our product roadmap, and have no further comment on this matter."
Yannick LeJacq is a contributing writer for NBC News who has also covered games for Kill Screen, The Wall Street Journal and The Atlantic. You can follow him on Twitter at @YannickLeJacq and reach him by email atylejacq@gmail.com.
AWS Drops Prices For Windows On-Demand EC2 Instances Up To 26% As Competition Intensifies
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is dropping the price ?of a Windows On-Demand EC2 instances up to 26%, another clear sign of the price wars in the cloud computing market. The news follows Google’s announcement earlier today that it is dropping instance prices by 4%. AWS says the drop in price continues its tradition of ?exploring ways to reduce its costs and drop its prices: This reduction applies to the Standard (m1), Second-Generation Standard (m3), High-Memory (m2), and High-CPU (c1) instance families. All prices are effective from April 1, 2013. The size of the reduction varies by instance family and region. You can visit the?AWS Windows page?for more information about Windows pricing on AWS. AWS has extended its support for AWS in the last month with support for?SQL Server AlwaysOn Availability Groups,?a beta of the AWS Diagnostics for Microsoft Windows Server, and?new drivers for our virtual instances that improve performance and increase the supported number of volumes. Earlier today, Google opened Compute Engine to developers who?subscribe to Google?s $400 per month?Gold Support package. The package includes 24/7 phone support. Users can access Compute Engine without the need to talk to sales or an invitation. Google and Microsoft have consistently been dropping prices over the past several months. In November, Google dropped storage prices by 20%. For AWS, the price drops are consistent with its strategy.?AWS believes it can use its scale, purchasing power and deeper efficiencies in the management of its infrastructure to continue dropping prices. The market is diversifying and AWS sees a need to extend its dominance in the market. But with Google and new playeers in the mix, it’s unclear ?how the strategy will pan out as competitors offer a more high-touch type of service.Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/T0g3LpglnX0/
Watch this smart foam chair 'grow' and unpack itself
Sometimes we dream. We dream of a world with no more flat-pack furniture, no more obtuse construction manuals and no more missing screws. Smart foam tech might get us closer to those admittedly small-time dreams. Using cross links within the foam's particle arrangement, regardless of how much the structure is compressed, it'll spring back to the predesigned shape. Designer Carl de Smet adds that the product would expand at a set temperature getting a little doughy in the middle, then more solid at room temperature.
He also demonstrates another smart foam structure which changes when a current is fed through it. Electricity provides the heat that transforms the rolled-up structure into a flat one, with the current experimental version taking around five minutes to completely settle. Commercial products which are apparently only about a year to 18 months away and as de Smet details in the video, could land on store shelves in a compacted rolled-up form for "unpacking" back home. These early examples can even be adjusted, if for some reason you suddenly decide you wanted a coffee table, not a chair. Sit back and see how it literally unfolds after the break.
Filed under: Household, Science, Alt
Source: BBC News
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/04/05/smart-foam-chair-grows-and-unpacks-itself/
Sony Xperia Z flexes its camera muscles in India [VIDEO]
If you?ve yet to see Sony?s Xperia Z ad, you should first watch it here before proceeding. It?s a powerful ad that we wish Sony would push everywhere, as it?s quite effective. In a recent Sony Mobile blog post, the director of the ad, Tarsem Singh, shared his journey in India, equipped with an Xperia Z.
While we?re more than aware that the Xperia Z is capable of taking some beautiful photos and videos, seeing it do its ?thing? in a place like India makes the experience that much better. Some of the photos are truly stunning, so be sure to check the videos out below!
[Sony Mobile Blog via XperiaBlog]
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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/IntoMobile/~3/7fjfjlZ_U3Y/
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