Welcome to the Overnight News Digest (OND) for Tuesday, February 17, 2015.
OND is a regular
community feature on Daily Kos, consisting of news stories from around the world, sometimes coupled with a daily theme, original research or commentary. Editors of OND impart their own presentation styles and content choices, typically publishing near 12:00AM Eastern Time.
Creation and early water-bearing of the OND concept came from our very own Magnifico - proper respect is due.
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This diary is named for its "Hump Point" video: From Eden by Hozier
News below Aunt Flossie's hairdo . . .
Please feel free to browse and add your own links, content or thoughts in the Comments section.
Any timestamps shown are relative to each publication.
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Top News |
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8 ways Obama sucks on climate
By Ben Adler
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The new conventional wisdom among the political class is that President Obama is doing everything he can without the cooperation of Congress to fight climate change. His administration set higher fuel-economy standards for cars and trucks. It has proposed the first-ever regulations on carbon emissions from power plants, and on methane leakage from oil and gas wells and pipelines. He got China on board with a plan to limit emissions, potentially paving the way for an international climate agreement later this year in Paris. Obama feeds this perception with his public statements, such as emphasizing the importance of climate change in his State of the Union address and musing to Vox.com about how the media fails to cover climate change with the urgency of other national security threats.
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1. Opening more federal land and water to offshore oil and gas drilling
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2. Selling off public coal deposits at a loss
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3. Promoting fracking
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4. Allowing more gas and oil exports
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5. Proposing weak rules on methane leaks
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6. Regulating coal ash like banana peels
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7. Going soft on ozone pollution
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8. Counting chopped-down trees as “clean energy”
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Since these are matters of presidential discretion, Obama has no obligation to compromise with congressional Republicans. If he took the strongest, most climate-protective stance at every opportunity, he might then have something to trade with congressional Republicans — like drilling offshore or coal mining on public lands — in exchange for a carbon price. More realistically, Republicans will continue to reject a carbon price and refuse to make any compromises. But why does Obama compromise with himself? Six years into his presidency, he still shies away from using the levers of power that are readily available to him. Perhaps he just doesn’t care about climate change as much as he claims to.
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"Natural" Flavorings Are Bullshit
By Sarah Zhang
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In one of those naked PR moves, Nestlé announced today it would only use natural flavorings and colors in its candy. Which means it's a good time to remember that is "natural" does not mean better. The natural stuff is just as processed, and comes from places like beaver butts and insects.
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In the U.S., the Food and Drug Administration has strict definitions for natural and artificial flavors. The short explanation is that natural flavors are derived from plant or animal material, while artificial flavors are synthesized by chemists in a lab.
"Natural" may evoke those idyllic images of leisurely roasted coffee beans or hand-chopped strawberries, but nope, full stop. It's all chemists in a lab. Extracting pure flavor molecules from food requires solvents and preservatives. Natural and artificial flavorings alike can contain dozens of ingredients that aren't listed in final packaging. Those ingredients do have to come from the FDA's Generally Recognized As Safe list, which is exactly as the name implies.
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We can all do with less processed food. But let's not pretend that swapping in natural flavors in a chocolate bar makes it any better.
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The US war on vagueness
By (Al Jazeera)
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On Tuesday, the White House welcomed law enforcement, city mayors, community leaders and policymakers for the opening of a three-day summit titled, "Countering Violent Extremism".
After months of delays, the summit was announced just days after the Charlie Hebdo and kosher supermarket attacks in Paris where 17 people were shot dead by radicals with connections to groups fighting in the Middle East.
The White House is steering away from specifics when it comes to who and what constitutes an extremist.
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Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, says the language of the summit isn't uniquely problematic but reflective of a broader discomfort policymakers have in discussing the power of religious ideas. He says the Obama administration simply, "doesn’t take ISIL's ideas very seriously" and adds that downplaying religion when discussing terrorism avoids a central issue.
"To say that what we like is true and that what we don't like is a distortion," he argues, "is to rob it [religion] of its power."
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International |
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MPs’ pension fund at risk from fossil fuel investments, Caroline Lucas warns
By Adam Vaughan
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The £487m MPs’ pension pot is in danger of taking a financial hit due to the failure of its trustees to acknowledge the economic risk posed by fossil fuel investments, a group of 11 MPs and two Lords have warned.
The trustees of the Parliamentary Contributory Pension Fund were challenged last year by the group, which include Green party MP Caroline Lucas, to shift its investments from oil and coal companies because of widespread fears that they are overvalued.
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A growing number of institutions – including the Rockefeller Brothers fund, Stanford University and Glasgow University – have signed up to a global divestment campaign urging investors to pull their money out of the fossil fuel industry.
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Energy and climate secretary Ed Davey added his voice at UN climate talks in Lima last year, saying that pensions faced future risks from fossil fuel investments. He warned that financial authorities must examine the risks posed by what he called “the sub-prime assets of the future.”
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'Energy firms charge long-term customers more', says inquiry
By John Moylan
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Energy suppliers are routinely charging their long-term customers higher prices, an update on early evidence from a competition probe suggests.
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It's expected to highlight the plight of millions of "sticky" customers who were inherited by the big suppliers following the liberalisation of the energy market.
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But the report will warn that elements in the market seem to be consistent with the hypothesis that the six large energy firms have "unilateral market power" over these standard variable tariff customers.
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The industry regulator Ofgem is expected to face tough questions too. The CMA is to probe a new "theory of harm" that looks at the impact of regulation on competition in energy markets.
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USA Politics, Economy, Major Events |
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Since 9/11, We've Had 4 Wars in the Middle East. They've All Been Disasters.
By Kevin Drum
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Afghanistan: A disaster. . .
Iraq: An even bigger disaster. . .
Libya: Another disaster. . .
Yemen: Yet another disaster. . .
Blame all this on whoever you want. George Bush for starting two wars with no real plan to prosecute either one properly. Or Barack Obama for withdrawing from Iraq too soon and failing to have any kind of postwar plan for Libya. Whatever. The question for hawks at this point is: what makes you think American military force has even the slightest chance of improving things in the Middle East? It's been nothing but disasters since 9/11, and there's no reason at all to think we've learned how to do things better in the intervening years. Bush started big wars, and Obama has started small ones, but the result has been the same.
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USDA goes FBI on crooks who sell gross meat and run cons on food stamps
By Nathanael Johnson
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On Friday, U.S. Agriculture Department Inspector General Phyllis Fong spoke to members of the House about all the crazy things her auditors had found when they started poking around the USDA’s dusty attics and basements.
Her testimony, intended to demonstrate her office’s effectiveness in a bid for funding, offers a glimpse into a world of swindles and waste. All this can be red meat for those convinced that government spending is always irresponsible. But it’s also a perfect rebuttal: the auditors not only dug up these problems, but in many cases, they also got the money back. The Office of the Inspector General estimates that its audits will claw back $325.4 million to the USDA in 2014. In addition, its investigations led to 609 victories in court, which should lead to an additional $374.6 million.
Some of the examples had just as much to do with protecting the environment as with preventing wasteful spending. For instance, auditors found that the government doled out money for conservation efforts without follow-up visits to see if landowners were actually continuing those conservation measures.
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A criminal ring opened multiple stores in Georgia to defraud the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), depositing over $18 million in WIC vouchers into their bank accounts. This ring canvassed neighborhoods for WIC recipients, and then bought their benefits for pennies on the dollar … In total, approximately $31 million in restitution has been ordered.
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Welcome to the "Hump Point" of this OND.
News can be sobering and engrossing - at this point in the diary, an offering of brief escapism:
Random notes related to this video:
Eight masked men drag a resisting victim to a fireside, then proceed to kick him mercilessly, as his boyfriend, who’s rushed to find and save him, watches on silently and helplessly in the shadows.
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“The song was written long before the video was planned, but the themes are similar,” the soft-spoken Irishman, full name Andrew Hozier-Byrne, explains. “The themes are about organisations – whether it’s the church or the state or a political organisation of any kind – and the damage they can do in undermining humanity systematically, and using the justification of the greater good or God or whatever. The video also reflects that too, but just in a different way.”
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It’s been a gradual yet dedicated journey for Hozier. Born in County Wicklow, his earliest inspiration came from the blues and soul records his drummer dad played at home. Teaching himself to play guitar in his teens, the prospect of a life in music led him to study it at Dublin’s Trinity College – though he didn’t last long there.
“I wasn’t interested in theory or history. I wanted to write songs that people could listen to, and people could sing. While I was in college I got an opportunity to do some demos for a label out in Ireland, at the cost of missing exams, and I was okay with that. I thought four years of [college] wouldn’t get me closer to what it is I want to do. I’d be finishing college around this time now. But I want to do this.”
Back to what's happening:
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Environment and Greening |
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Biofuel from trash could create green jobs bonanza, says report
By Arthur Neslen
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Creating biofuels from waste produced by industry, farms, and households could generate 36,000 jobs in the UK and save around 37m tonnes of oil use annually by 2030, according to a new report.
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This advanced fuel could come from woody crops, agricultural residues, algae or household and industrial waste. It is seen as less environmentally damaging than first generation biofuels produced by growing crops such as rapeseed, which have been criticised for displacing food crops and raising commodity prices.
Malins said that a mandatory advanced biofuels goal was “absolutely crucial” to realising the sector’s potential, as it would bring market certainty and long-term signals for investors.
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The European ethanol industry association (ePURE) has thrown its weight behind the biofuels bill. Its secretary-general, Robert Wright, told the Guardian that “only a binding target will send a clear signal to investors that there will be a future market for advanced biofuels.”
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Humans altering Adriatic ecosystems more than nature, study shows
By (ScienceDaily)
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The ecosystems of the Adriatic Sea have weathered natural climate shifts for 125,000 years, but humans could be rapidly altering this historically stable biodiversity hot spot, a University of Florida study says.
The study details a major shift in bottom-dwelling species in Italy's Po Basin, a region south of Venice known for its ecologically and commercially important shellfish as well as its tourism industry.
"The fossil record suggests that human activities can alter even those ecosystems that have been immune to major changes naturally occurring on our planet," said the study's lead author, Michal Kowalewski, the Thompson Chair of Invertebrate Paleontology at the Florida Museum of Natural History on the UF campus.
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"The changes found by the study researchers are alarming, but there's reason to believe that other areas have been even more profoundly affected by the effects of pollution, habitat disturbance, lack of oxygen and climate change," said Steven Holland, a University of Georgia paleontologist not involved in the study. "This is a clear fingerprint of the effects of humans."
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World's biggest offshore windfarm approved for Yorkshire coast
By Fiona Harvey
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Plans for the world’s biggest offshore windfarm have been given the green light by the energy secretary, with planning permission for an array of up to 400 turbines 80 miles off the Yorkshire coast on the Dogger Bank.
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Covering about 430 sq miles, the Dogger Bank Creyke Beck project will - if fully constructed - generate enough electricity to power nearly 2m homes, and could support an estimated 900 jobs in Yorkshire and Humberside, according to the government.
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The consortium said the Creyke Beck project could create up to 4,750 new direct and indirect full-time equivalent jobs and generate more than £1.5bn for the UK economy, especially in Yorkshire and Humberside owing to their “historic strengths, existing skills in large-scale production activities and a marine support legacy”.
The UK’s last biggest offshore wind site, the London Array, ran into difficulties soon after gaining the government’s green light in a long drawn-out process from 2005 to 2007. Costs spiralled, investors withdrew backing and the future of the project for long periods hung in the balance. However, the windfarm, with 175 turbines, was inaugurated in 2013.
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US pays Philippines over USS Guardian reef damage
By (BBC)
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The US has paid 87m pesos ($1.97m: £1.28m) to the Philippines in compensation for damage caused to a protected reef.
The Philippine foreign ministry said the money, the full amount requested, was paid in January and would be used to restore and protect the reef.
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In May 2013 a US Navy investigation said the mishap was "wholly preventable" and a result of poor planning and "numerous" errors.
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Science and Health |
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How Coal Kills
By EarthTalk
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Coal combustion plants account for more than half of Americans’ electric power generation. According to Coal's Assault on Human Health, a report by the non-profit Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR), coal combustion releases mercury, nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide and other substances known to be hazardous to human health. The report evaluates the impacts of coal pollution on our respiratory, cardiovascular and nervous systems and concludes that air pollutants produced by coal combustion contribute to asthma, lung cancer, congestive heart failure and strokes.
“The findings of this report are clear: While the U.S. relies heavily on coal for its energy needs, the consequences of that reliance for our health are grave,” says Alan Lockwood, a principal author of the report and a professor of neurology at the University at Buffalo.
The PSR report further illustrates the adverse effects of the mining of coal on the environment, water and human health. Coal mining leads U.S. industries in fatal injuries, and miners have suffered prolonged health issues, such as black lung disease, which causes permanent scarring of the lung tissues. Surface mining destroys forests and groundcover, leading to flooding and soil erosion. Mountaintop removal mining—used widely across southern Appalachia—can bury streams with rubble and, in turn, harm aquatic ecosystems. Waterways may also become contaminated due to the storage of post-combustion wastes from coal plants, also known as “coal ash.” There are 584 coal ash storage sites in the United States, and toxic residues have migrated into water supplies at dozens of them.
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Retrofitting coal-fired power plants to burn biomass makes sense for utilities trying to be greener while keeping their existing facilities productive, but environmental leaders stress that the federal government should provide more incentives for switching over to even greener energy sources like solar or wind.
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New insight into how our brain performs 'mental time travel'
By (ScienceDaily)
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In a paper published Feb. 18 in the Journal of Neuroscience, a team of Vanderbilt scientists shed new light on how the brain processes these elaborate memories by analyzing the brain activity of individuals performing a simple memory recollection task. The researchers found that they can use the activity patterns in a specific region of the brain to substantially improve their ability to predict the order in which the participants recall information that they have recently studied.
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Polyn, working with doctoral students James Kragel and Neal Morton (who is now at the University of Texas, Austin), has developed a model that accounts for how the structures in the MTL support memory retrieval. They have found that the anterior region of the MTL signals that a memory is being retrieved, but doesn't indicate how detailed it is. However, when the posterior region of the MTL becomes active it indicates that the person is experiencing a "time travel" memory accompanied by considerable detail.
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The temporal code acts something like the time stamp that computers put on files. When you search for files stamped with a specific date and time, you retrieve all the files saved at the time you specify. Time-travel memory acts in much the same way, through a process psychologists call "reinstatement." This process is even more flexible than a computer, in that the temporal code can help you retrieve not just memories from the exact same time, but memories nearby in time, as well.
When a strong memory is formed, it may include information about the sights, sounds, smells, emotions, and other information that was present at the time of the experience. All of this information becomes temporally linked, and time-travel memory allows a person to bring it back to mind, as when Proust smelled his famous madeleine cake.
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Why the Speech Center of Your Brain Shuts Down When You Talk
By Annalee Newitz
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On the left side of your brain there's a special region called Broca's Area, also known as the speech center of the brain. Now a group of neuroscientists have discovered something strange about it. Even though this brain region supposedly controls speech, it shuts down when you are speaking.
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A paper out today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences tells an interesting story about this widely-studied part of the brain. New York University neuroscience researcher Adeen Flinker and his colleagues wanted to find out more about the region, so they used a special device to record people's brain activity while they were speaking. What they found was very surprising. They expected to see Broca's Area crackling with electrical activity from neurons while the test subjects talked. But instead, the region seemed to shut down.
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So when we produce a single word, Broca's area comes online before we actually speak and shuts off during articulation which is carried out by motor cortex. When we produce fluent sentences it is likely engaged through out conversation but it is not supporting the actual movements of our mouth but rather is always a step ahead (earlier) integrating information across cortex and preparing the complex sequences we need for speech.
What that means is that your brain is a network. There is no speech "center." There are only nodes in a speech network. And when one part of that network is done passing data along, it shuts down — waiting for another part to take up the task and actually make your mouth start moving.
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Limpet teeth set new strength record
By Jonathan Webb
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Engineers in the UK have found that limpets' teeth consist of the strongest biological material ever tested.
Limpets use a tongue bristling with tiny teeth to scrape food from rocks and also to carve out scars, which they nestle in when the tide goes out.
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"These teeth are made up of very small fibres, put together in a particular way - and we should be thinking about making our own structures following the same design principles."
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In terms of man-made materials, the limpet tooth is stronger than Kevlar fibres and almost as good as the best high-performance carbon fibre materials.
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Technology |
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Dynamic Duo of Compounds Help LEDs Transmit Wireless Data At High Speed
By Mark Peplow and Chemical & Engineering News
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Today nearly all computers, tablets, and cell phones have Wi-Fi capabilities, receiving and transmitting data over a range of radio frequencies. But a burgeoning technology known as visible light communication could someday carry those data in the same light that illuminates a room using “smart lighting.” Now a tag team of semiconducting organic polymers is bringing that dream one step closer. When excited with a light-emitting diode (LED), the polymer pair helps to create white light that can be rapidly switched on and off to encode information (ACS Photonics 2015, DOI:10.1021/ph500451y).
Streaming high-definition movies and online gaming are straining the capacity of many Wi-Fi networks, and precious little space is left for additional transmission channels in the radio and microwave spectrum. By coating blue LEDs with phosphors to create white lights, researchers hope to provide an alternative data highway that combines illumination and communication. Pulsing too quickly to see with the naked eye, the lights could relay large volumes of data through a sequence of flashes. The dual-purpose LEDs could also lower costs and save energy compared with separate lighting and data systems, says Graham A. Turnbull, a physicist at the University of St. Andrews, in Scotland.
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Together, the polymers produce a higher quality white light than previous efforts at smart lighting. “It’s in the right ballpark, comparable to conventional LED lighting,” Turnbull says. Crucially, the polymers also have a photoluminescent lifetime of less than 1 nanosecond, enabling rapid switching. The team’s proof-of-principle device sent data at 350 megabits per second over a distance of 5 cm with minimal errors, a rate 35 times faster than a commercially available inorganic phosphor.
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Carnegie Mellon erroneously sends computer science admission letters to 800, because computers
By Xeni Jardin
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More than 800 computer science applicants to Carnegie Mellon were told on Monday they'd been selected for admission--and later, those same applicants received a second email explaining the acceptances had been sent in error, and that they had in fact been rejected.
“You are one of the select few, less than 9 percent of the more than 1,200 applicants, that we are inviting," read the first email. “Welcome to Carnegie Mellon!” Oops.
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The university sent a follow-up email to the rejected students today explaining its system had "incorrectly flagged" applicants as having been admitted.
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Cultural |
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Here's why Turkish men are wearing skirts to Taksim Square
By Allison Jackson
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Ozgecan Aslan, a 20-year-old university student in the southern province of Mersin disappeared on Wednesday. Her burned and battered body was discovered in a riverbed two days later.
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The particularly shocking details of Aslan’s death have ignited outrage across the country and fueled demands for an end to violence against women.
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Turkish leaders have also acknowledged the gravity of the problem, with President Recep Tayyip Erodgan saying Monday that "violence against women is the bleeding wound of our country."
In 2012 the government introduced new laws to protect women against violence and activists are now calling for even tougher legislation. But clearly it is going to take a lot more than a few laws to alter the attitudes of many men in Turkey.
To that end, some men are posting photos of themselves wearing skirts on Twitter in a show of solidarity with women ahead of a "skirt-wearing men" protest in Istanbul's iconic Taksim Square on Saturday.
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Thousands protest against Boko Haram in Niger capital
By (BBC)
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Thousands of people have marched in Niger's capital to protest against Boko Haram, which has launched deadly raids into the country from Nigeria.
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Boko Haram has intensified attacks in Niger's border areas in recent weeks.
The march ended outside the parliament building in Niamey, where President Mamahadou Issoufou told the crowds that "Niger will be the tomb" of the Islamists, according to the AFP news agency.
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"What worries us most is that they are killing our brothers, our sisters, our parents and friends," said one. "That's why we support our military 100% to fight them, to kill them."
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Boko Haram continued to attack targets within Nigeria over the weekend, overrunning the town of Askira in the country's north-eastern Borno state.
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Meteor Blades is known to offer an enlightening Evening Open Diary - you might consider checking that out tonight if you haven't already. |