Welcome to the Overnight News Digest (OND) for Tuesday, January 17, 2012.
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: Come On Let's Go by Broadcast
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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Study tracks negative effects of nitrogen
By (UPI)
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The global nitrogen cycle has been profoundly altered by human activities which, in turn, affects human health, air and water quality, U.S. researchers say.
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Nitrogen is both an essential nutrient and a pollutant. As a fertilizer it helps feed billions of people, but then, as an agricultural runoff into rivers and oceans, it becomes a pollutant. It also pollutes as a byproduct of fossil fuel combustion, researchers said.
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The report urges a systematic, rather than piecemeal, approach to managing nitrogen and its consequences.
. . .
"Yes, we have to feed people, but we also need clean drinking water, clean air, and fisheries in the Gulf of Mexico," Davidson said "The science helps to show those tradeoffs, and where we most stand to gain from improved nutrient management in agriculture."
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World's Timekeepers Will Decide The Fate Of The Leap Second
By Eyder Peralta
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The International Telecommunication Union's Radiocommunication Assembly, otherwise known as the international authority that keeps close tabs on time, will debate a philosophical question this week: They will decide whether to eliminate the leap second and in doing so break its tie to astronomical time.
A leap second is a lot like a leap year, reports the Financial Times, except that it's unpredictable. Since it was introduced in 1972, the ITU has added 24 leap seconds to recalibrate the world's atomic clocks to keep time with Earth's imprecise orbit.
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The AP reports the leap second is causing a showdown at the international convention. The U.S. and France are advocating for getting rid of the leap second and countries like England, Canada and China are arguing in favor of the leap second saying this is more than a technical question.
. . .
"But their main point, says Mr Whibberley, is 'not technical but more of a social or civil question. Do we want to keep the traditional link with astronomical time? I think we do'."
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There's No Shortcut to Getting Great Teachers
By Kevin Drum
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Dana Goldstein grabs my attention with this sentence about a new study showing that teachers with high "value-added" ratings have a genuine impact on the life outcomes of their students:
In a rare instance of edu-wonk consensus, both friends and skeptics of standardized tests are praising the study as reliable and groundbreaking.
. . .
I'd offer a broader reason to be cautious, though. The usual policy response to this kind of study is to support pay-for-performance, where high-ranking teachers get paid more. But does that really improve the quality of teaching in public schools? . . .
If we really believe that good teachers make a substantial difference, then our policy response needs to be something that either (a) attracts better students into the teaching profession on a mass scale or (b) improves the performance of the existing teaching force on a mass scale. (Or both.) Unfortunately, I'm not sure there's any way to accomplish (a) except to increase starting salaries significantly and then wait 40 years for the teaching force to turn over, and I'm not sure there's any definitive way to accomplish (b) at all. . .
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'Recharged' Occupy movement greets lawmakers back from recess
By Emily Seagrave Kennedy and Kelsi Loos
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Protesters from across the nation rallied Tuesday on Capitol Hill under the banner of the grassroots Occupy movement, saying they came to Washington to greet Congress as members return to work after a holiday recess.
. . .
Protesters filled the Capitol lawn wearing costumes, holding signs and playing music. While the Occupy movement remains leaderless, without any official spokespeople or party lines, a central goal of the day was to bring together people from across the country to create concrete plans for the group.
"We're gaining support because our message is true," said Shamar Thomas, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran who gained notoriety for his diatribe against police brutality at Occupy Wall Street in October.
"Thank you for coming to view your oppressed citizens," yelled a protester to a number of congressional officials gazing out from the steps of the U.S. Capitol. "This is what happens when you don't do your jobs."
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It’s Not Just the Economy, Stupid
By Ross White
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Despite the persistent focus on economic growth, jobs, and global competition in the Republican presidential primaries, many social issues with significant bioethics implications are also at stake in November’s election. Given the importance of science and health policy, it is worth exploring the positions of the four Republican candidates (Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, and Ron Paul) most likely to challenge President Barack Obama.
All four candidates have vowed to repeal the Affordable Care Act.
. . .
All four candidates want to overturn Roe v. Wade and oppose federal funding of abortions.
. . .
Although most of the candidates oppose human embryonic stem cell experimentation, some of them support research on existing stem cell lines, embryos left over from fertility treatments, or adult stem cell research. Most also oppose human cloning.
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All four candidates oppose giving federal tax dollars to Planned Parenthood, but they have different views on contraception and other family planning issues.
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The MPAA Says Blackout Protests Are an Abuse of Power
By Mario Aguilar
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Tomorrow huge sites like Wikipedia and Reddit will "blackout" in protest of SOPA, and the MPAA doesn't like the behavior of these "technology business interests"one bit.
The statement comes down from none other than MPAA Chairman and former Senator from Connecticut Chris Dodd:
. . . It's a dangerous and troubling development when the platforms that serve as gateways to information intentionally skew the facts to incite their users in order to further their corporate interests.
Even if this is really only an obligatory posturing statement from the monolithic organization . . . it's awfully brazen of the MPAA to accuse the sites of inhibiting access to information when SOPA is essentially a pro-censorship bill.
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International |
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All This Over $3?
By Kate Sheppard
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Is the US going to start a trade war with the European Union over its efforts to cut planet-warming emissions from air travel? The US government has been threatening as much ever since the EU's plan to charge airlines for emissions was upheld in the European Court of Justice in December.
The fee has caused a flurry of outrage in Congress, and shortly before Christmas Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wrote a letter to the EU warning that unless the plan was abandoned, the US would be "compelled to take appropriate action." On Tuesday, the EU responded to Clinton's letter, declaring that it has no intention of dropping its plan because of the objections from the US, China, Russia, and other countries.
. . .
But what often seems to go unmentioned is that the EU is actually only making international carriers pay for 15 percent of their emissions. They're giving away 85 percent of the permits. And a bunch of US-based airlines—American Airlines, US Airways, Delta, and United—have already announced that they plan to pass the costs onto customers. All whopping $3 per ticket of it.
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State refuses citizenship to Israeli man's husband
By Dana Weiler-Polak
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An Interior Ministry regulation prevents the same-sex partners of Israeli citizens from receiving Israeli citizenship. The ministry's Population Registry tells the couples they will have to settle for permanent residency status only.
. . .
In July 2009 Zafrir and Javier Episcopo applied for full recognition as a married couple, rather than as a common-law couple. A Population Registry said they would have to wait a year before their request was approved - an odd statement, considering that on the one hand that for citizenship purposes Israeli law defines a married couple as a man and a women, while on the other hand there is no such waiting period for couples consisting of a man and a woman.
. . .
"It's difficult to comprehend the states' reasons for it's humiliating and discriminatory actions, since it already recognized the couple, who are raising two children together," Rosenblum said. "There are 18,000 same-sex families in Israel, and it's about time the state treated them equally and respectfully, not only when it is obliged to do so by a legal order. If the Population Registry does not change its position, we will have to no choice but to petition the High Court of Justice," she added.
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Mariela Castro says Cuba to consider civil unions for gays
By (globalpost.com)
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Mariela Castro, the daughter of President Raúl Castro and niece of the revolutionary leader Fidel Castro, has announced that Cuba this year will consider creating civil unions for gay couples, according to the Agence France-Presse news agency.
. . .
The Cuban state will consider civil unions but not gay marriage, according to AFP. Castro, head of Cuba's National Sex Education Center, was also quoted as saying she believed the Communist Party of Cuba would adopt a "non-discrimination policy" at a conference scheduled for Jan 28.
According to The Associated Press, many gays and transsexuals were persecuted in the years following Cuba's revolution of 1959 but the news agency says attitudes on the island are changing: gay pride events now occur annually while the state sponsors anti-homophobia campaigns and even pays for sex change operations.
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The war is with China, the battleground Africa
By Dieter Neumann
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When United States President Barack Obama and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta appeared together at the press conference at the Pentagon recently to reiterate America’s commitment to the Asia-Pacific region, the subject of Africa did not come up. Sometimes what is avoided can be a clue to what is most important on the agenda.
The obvious intent of the stated focus on the Asia-Pacific region is to remind the rising China that America is still the big dog. Recent arms sales to Taiwan and the agreement with Australia to station American troops there are but two symbolic gestures to that effect. But the real focus of the "focus on Asia-Pacific" is not the Asia-Pacific region at all. It is Africa.
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Chinese economic involvement took many forms. Obviously resource development is a priority for the Chinese, as Africa is acknowledged to be the world’s greatest storehouse of precious and rare metals and has vast unexploited oil reserves. While Chinese companies, all proxies for the government of China, compete with western companies for those resources, they also enter into agreements to provide critical infrastructure in the transportation, education and medical fields, all of which provide an advantage when it comes to winning hearts and minds.
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Dozens killed in South Sudan tribal violence
By (Al Jazeera)
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Around 47 people have been killed in tribal violence in South Sudan, the latest in a cycle of attacks that have displaced some 60,000 people in the new African nation, officials said.
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Ravaged by decades of civil war that killed two million people, South Sudan is one of the least developed countries in the world.
"We have not fought the war for our people to suffer and be traumatised at the time that we have independence, so we call for an immediate end to hostilities," said Deng Dan Den, another member of parliament.
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USA Politics, Economy, Major Events |
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This US election is all about money and class
By Hadley Freeman
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Clearly, race and class are deeply knotted together in America, as Rick Santorum accidentally reminded people in the first week of this year when it sounded very much like the sweater-vested former senator said that he didn't want "to make black people's lives better by giving them someone else's money". As it happens, nationally, 39% of welfare recipients are white and 37% are black (the rest are, in decreasing order, Hispanic, Asian and other) and, in any case, Santorum eventually insisted that he said "blah people", not "black". Because "blah people" are totally a thing, right? Although I don't have the figures for how many of them are on welfare.
. . .
According to a study by the Pew Research Centre, two thirds of Americans feel there is a strong conflict between the rich and the poor, and who can blame them? At least five recent studies prove that Americans now have less economic and social mobility than those in other English-speaking and western European countries and, yes, that includes Britain, which, the New York Times keenly emphasised, "is a country famous for its class constraints". There are many reasons for this: the prohibitive cost of higher education and healthcare are two of the most obvious.
After the OWS protests, it would be impossible for any politician not to notice the frustration in this country and while the other GOP candidates – Romney and Santorum, mainly – are trying to spin this as being more about social mobility than the income inequality between the 1% and the 99%, the two are obviously as intermeshed as class and race. According to the Pew Report, 62% of Americans raised in the top fifth of incomes stay in the top two-fifths; 65% born in the bottom fifth stay in the bottom two-fifths. That sound you hear is the death of the American dream. As race used to and arguably still does, tThe class you are born into in America largely defines your life, and it is next to impossible to break out of it. The few exceptions to this – such as the man in the Oval Office – serve as reminders that only the exceptional can do so. "God never intended one group of people to live in superfluous inordinate wealth, while others live in abject poverty," wrote Martin Luther King Jr. We might have an African-American president, but Dr King's dream is not realised at all.
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Homeless teen asked to State of the Union
By (UPI)
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Samantha Garvey has garnered national attention by becoming one of 300 semifinalists for the Intel Science Talent Search for her research on predators' effects on mussels, despite living in a homeless shelter with her family, WCBS-TV, New York, reported Tuesday. The prize for winning the contest is $100,000.
Rep. Steve Israel, D-N.Y., invited the teen to watch the Jan. 24 State of the Union address and asked her parents to watch from his office.
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Garvey's family, including a twin brother and sister, became homeless New Year's Day when their home was foreclosed on. Her parents had been out of work after a car accident.
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High Court Lets Stand Trio Of First Amendment Cases
By Nina Totenberg
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The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to hear a trio of cases involving free speech and religion.
In the first set of cases, the court declined to address the burgeoning legal debate over what powers school officials have to censor students who are at home, working on their personal computers, when they create parodies or personal attacks involving school officials or fellow students.
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The cases presented the Supreme Court with an opportunity to update its student-speech rulings in the age of social networking. The court held in 1969 that schools cannot punish nondisruptive political speech, but the justices narrowed that ruling in 1986, allowing school administrators to punish lewd or vulgar student speech.
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Guantánamo commander: Contractors read inmate lawyers' mail
By Carol Rosenberg
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In unprecedented war court testimony, the prison camps’ commander on Tuesday defended a three-tier system of classifying lawyers’ mail to alleged terrorists that sparked a defense lawyer’s boycott and is threatening to stall future war crimes trials.
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At issue is whether the prison camps staff is complying with the chief military commissions judge’s November order to look at, but not read, defense lawyers documents for alleged USS Cole bomber Abd al Rahim al Nashiri that are marked “privileged.”
Woods testified that the contractors are assigned to discern whether lawyers mail is indeed privileged or more generic legal mail. The contractors include former government lawyers, law enforcement officials, linguists and Woods wants them looking at documents for things like diagrams that might threaten security inside the prison camps that hold some 171 foreign captives.
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New rules force drug companies to disclose cash payments, gifts to doctors
By Freya Petersen
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Drug companies will be required to reveal the payments they make to doctors for research, consulting, speaking, travel, and entertainment as part of the Obama administration's new health-care law.
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Any payment over $10 must be reported, even if the company delivers a batch of bagels for a morning staff meeting worth $25, according to the paper.
The disclosures meant doctors would more likely make decisions in the best interests of patients, without regard to their own financial interests, the Economic Times cited officials as saying.
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Who backs the anti-piracy laws?
By Daniel Nasaw
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The two anti-piracy bills being debated in the US Congress have the backing of some of the largest film, television, music recording and book publishing companies and trade associations in the US.
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"Think about a firm that says we can make better widgets and that will make us money, or we can lobby to protect the widgets that we produce from competition, and that will make us money."
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Television, film and recording industry companies and trade associations spent $92m (£60m) on lobbying expenses in 2011, including on the online piracy and copyright protection issues, according to an analysis of lobbying disclosure forms by the Center for Responsive Politics.
The companies and associations employed 596 lobbyists last year.
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Los Angeles to porn industry: wear a condom
By Matt Williams
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Actors in the pornographic film industry could be forced to cover up on set, after Los Angeles city councillors approved an ordinance that makes the use of condoms mandatory.
The measure – which was nodded through on a 9-1 vote – will require the producers of adult films to sign up to stringent rules regarding prophylactic use, and pay a fee to offset the cost of spot checks.
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It has been suggested that about 90% of legally distributed pornographic movies are produced in studios based in LA's San Fernando Valley.
The fear in the porn community, which has already been hit hard by piracy and the economy, is that the insistence on condom use will drive many jobs out of the region.
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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:
. . . The truth is that while Broadcast were shamefully underrated they were also quietly, beguilingly influential. They encouraged people to seek out esoteric or long-forgotten music – from electronica to folk.
. . .
Trish fell ill after returning home from Broadcast's first ever Australian dates in December. The last show of the tour, in Melbourne, was particularly special, says Pike. "The band went off but the audience kept on screaming," he recalls. "They wanted more but, because of the way the gig was structured, there were no more songs. So Trish just walked back on, on her own, and sang to them a cappella. That was Trish."
. . .
Perhaps even more poignant is a short film on YouTube. It was recorded by Keenan on a Super 8 camera in 2007 at the Moseley Folk festival, held in the same Birmingham suburb where Broadcast were formed. It crystallises the kind of person she was. Rather than concentrating on who was performing, Trish focuses on festivalgoers. It cuts between a cast of grinning faces, kids with ice-cream, beer-carrying men pushing prams and assorted family pets. Trish is clearly revelling in their happiness. As legacies go, it doesn't get much better than that.
Back to what's happening:
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Environment and Greening |
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Warm and Fuzzy on Geothermal?
By Tom Murphy
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. . .
Two sources contribute to the Earth’s heat. The first, contributing 20% of the total, derives from gravity. As proto-planetary chunks fell together under the influence of gravity, the kinetic energy they carried (converted gravitational potential energy) ended up heating the clumps that stuck together. If this were the only contributor, Earth’s center would have cooled significantly below its present levels by today. The other 80% of heating is the gift that keeps on giving: long-lived radioactive nuclei given to us by ancient supernovae (as with most of the other elements comprising Earth and ourselves). . .
Using the Wikipedia value of 0.065 W/m² over land, multiplying by land area yields 9 TW. Humans use 13 TW currently. So if we managed to catch every scrap of land-based geothermal flow (and could use it efficiently), we would not fully cover our present demand. Needless to say, we’re not remotely capable of doing this.
Diffuse Use vs. Hotspots
. . .
Even so, we’re talking thermal gradients that are at most in the neighborhood of 35°C/km. In order to produce electricity in a heat engine, we are stuck with a maximum thermodynamic efficiency of (Th − Tc)/Th, where “h” and “c” subscripts refer to absolute temperatures of the hot and cold reservoirs, respectively. At 1 km depth, this amounts to only 10% (and in practice we tend to only get about half of the theoretical maximum efficiency). One needs to drill at least 3 km down before being able to take advantage of steam (at 27% max efficiency). A depth of 5 km reaches 38% maximum theoretical efficiency—so perhaps 20% practical efficiency. Making a 1 GW electricity plant operating on the steady-state geothermal flow would require canvassing an area 200 km on a side buried 5 km deep even in the better regions having 0.1 W/m². Realizing that we’re stuck with thermodynamic inefficiency, a geothermal network covering every scrap of land area on the globe would get less than 2 TW of power at 20% end-to-end efficiency.
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Ice Age Findings Forecast Problems: Data from End of Last Ice Age Confirm Effects of Climate Change On Oceans
By (ScienceDaily)
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The first comprehensive study of changes in the oxygenation of oceans at the end of the last Ice Age (between about 10 to 20,000 years ago) has implications for the future of our oceans under global warming. The study, which was co-authored by Eric Galbraith, of McGill's Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences, looked at marine sediment and found that that the dissolved oxygen concentrations in large parts of the oceans changed dramatically during the relatively slow natural climate changes at the end of the last Ice Age.
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This was at a time when the temperature of surface water around the globe increased by approximately 2 °C over a period of 10,000 years. A similar rise in temperature will result from human emissions of heat-trapping gases within the next 100 years, if emissions are not curbed, giving cause for concern.
. . . Currently, in about 15 per cent of the oceans -- in areas referred to as dead zones -- dissolved oxygen concentrations are so low that fish have a hard time breathing at all. The findings from the study show that these dead zones increased significantly at the end of the last Ice Age.
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The dog is the weather
By rasmus
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A TV series that ran on Norwegian TV (NRK) last year included a simple and fun cartoon that demonstrates some important concepts relative to weather and climate:
In the animation, the man’s path can be considered as analogous to a directional climatic change, while the path traced by his dog’s whimsical movements represent weather fluctuations, as constrained by the man’s path, the leash, and the dog’s moment-by-moment decisions of what seems important to investigate in his small world. What might the leash length represent? The man’s momentary pause? The dog’s exact route relative to concepts of random variation? . . .
. . .
Success in understanding our universe often depends on how the ‘story’ about it is told, and a big part of that often involves how mental images are presented. Mathematics and statistics can describe nature in great detail and “elegance”, but they are often difficult and inaccessible to the average person. Conversely, the man-and-dog animation is intuitive and easy to comprehend. . .
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Somalia oil exploration: Drilling begins in Puntland
By (BBC)
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Oil exploration has begun in the arid north-east of Somalia, which has been wracked by civil war for two decades.
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The semi-autonomous Puntland region where the drilling is taking place says it is an opportunity for peace.
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Mr Farah said that Puntland would not allow this "historic project" - involving three oil firms - to be a curse, as oil has proved in some other African countries.
"Before any barrel of oil comes out will have a policy that will benefit our own people and will not be detrimental to us," he said.
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Science and Health |
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Metamaterials Generate Gecko-Like Adhesive Force
By The Physics arXiv Blog
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Back in 1871, James Clerk Maxwell predicted that light exerts a force on any surface it hits. This radiation pressure was experimentally discovered some 30 years later and has since emerged as a hugely important force that is now exploited in systems such as solar sails and laser cooling.
. . .
Like other oscillations, plasmons have a resonant frequency. So when zapped with light of just the right frequency, this attractive force can be particularly strong. In fact, the strength depends on the frequency and intensity of incident light.
They calculate that not only is this near field force stronger than other short range effects such as the Casimir force, it ought to be more powerful than gravity too. "This near-field force can exceed radiation pressure and Casimir forces to provide an optically controlled adhesion mechanism mimicking the gecko toe: at illumination intensities of just a few tens of nW/µm^2 it is sufficient to overcome the Earth's gravitational pull," they say.
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The Illusion of Courage: Why People Mispredict Their Behavior in Embarrassing Situations
By (ScienceDaily)
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Whether it's investing in stocks, bungee jumping or public speaking, why do we often plan to take risks but then "chicken out" when the moment of truth arrives?
In a new paper in the Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, scientists from the University of Colorado Boulder and Carnegie Mellon University argue that this "illusion of courage" is one example of an "empathy gap" -- that is, our inability to imagine how we will behave in future emotional situations. According to the empathy gap theory, when the moment of truth is far off you aren't feeling, and therefore are out of touch with, the fear you are likely to experience when push comes to shove. . . .
. . .
"Because social anxiety associated with the prospect of facing an embarrassing situation is such a common and powerful emotion in everyday life, we might think that we know ourselves well enough to predict our own behavior in such situations," said Leaf Van Boven, associate professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of Colorado Boulder. "But the ample experience most of us should have gained with predicting our own future behavior isn't sufficient to overcome the empathy gap -- our inability to anticipate the impact of emotional states we aren't currently experiencing."
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Meteor confirmed as piece of Mars
By (UPI)
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A meteor that broke into fragments before falling to Earth in Morocco was a rare chunk of the planet Mars, scientist say.
. . .
Tests by international experts have confirmed the fireball's fall was just the fifth time in history a meteor witnessed by people in the act of falling did, in fact, come from Mars.
. . .
Even before tests confirmed their martian origin, vast sums were being offered for samples of what must be some of the rarest items on the planet. One dealer who acquired some fragments from people who collected them said he charges between $11,000 and $22,500 per ounce and has already sold most of his stock.
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Lip-reading helps babies learn to speak
By (UPI)
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. . .
"Our research found that infants shift their focus of attention to the mouth of the person who is talking when they enter the babbling stage and that they continue to focus on the mouth for several months thereafter until they master the basic speech forms of their native language," Lewkowicz said in a statement. "In other words, infants become lip readers when they first begin producing their first speech-like sounds."
The findings suggest a potential new way for diagnosing autism spectrum disorder earlier than the current 18 months of age, because by age 2, autistic children focus their attention on the mouth of a talker.
"Contrary to typically developing children, infants who are as yet undiagnosed but who are at risk for autism may continue to focus on the mouth of a native-language talker at 12 months of age and beyond," Lewkowicz said. "If so, this would provide the earliest behavioral confirmation of impending developmental disability."
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US obesity rates unchanged from a decade ago, CDC says
By Freya Petersen
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High US obesity rates have remained that way in recent years, according to new data released Tuesday.
. . .
"There's been no change in the prevalence of obesity in recent years in children or adults," CNN quoted Cynthia L Ogden, Ph.D, an epidemiologist with the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics and the leading author of the report, as saying. "But I think looking over the last decade, it's interesting to see how the prevalence of obesity in men has caught up with the prevalence of obesity in women."
. . .
Slight increases were also seen among white, black and Hispanic men, CBS News reported.
Obesity was also more common among teens than preschool aged children and among boys than girls, CNN reported..
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The pill 'does ease period pain'
By (BBC)
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Oral contraceptives may alleviate painful periods for some women, suggests a 30-year study.
Estimates suggest more than half of women have suffered from the condition, called dysmenorrhoea, at some point.
. . .
While it was hard to quantify precisely this difference in pain levels, on average it represented a change from "severe" to "moderate" pain in every third woman in the group taking oral contraceptives.
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Technology |
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Jerry Yang resigns from Yahoo
By Charles Arthur
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The end of an internet era has come with the resignation of Jerry Yang, the 43-year-old co-founder of Yahoo, from his position on the company's board after 16 years.
. . .
Announcing Yang's resignation — which had been expected after the appointment of ex-PayPal president Scott Thompson to the chief executive's chair on 4 January — Roy Bostock, the chairman of Yahoo's board, said: "It has been a pleasure to work with Jerry. His unique strategic insights have been invaluable. He has always remained focused on the best interests of Yahoo!'s stakeholders, including shareholders, employees and more than 700 million users. And while I and the entire Board respect his decision, we will miss his remarkable perspective, vision and wise counsel."
. . .
Brett Harriss, an analyst at Gabelli & Co, said: "This is clearly a positive. Yang has been viewed as a roadblock to a deal or even a restructuring. Hopefully it leads to new blood on the board. It provides a more objective and unemotional approach to strategic alternatives.
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Apple Dusts Itself Off and Tries Again, Targets 10 Samsung Smartphones in Germany
By Brandon Hill
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Apple has been handed a number of losses recently in its lawsuits against Samsung in courts around the world. In late November, Samsung won an appeal overturning a ban on its Galaxy Tab 10.1. A German judge in late November then ruled against Apple after Samsung made changes to its Galaxy Tab 10.1 (the new revision was called the 10.1N) to skirt Apple's design infringement claims.
Naturally, those legal setbacks weren’t enough to dissuade Apple from following up with more lawsuits. Bloomberg is reporting that Apple has started up a fresh round of lawsuits against Samsung in Germany's Dusseldorf Regional Court. The first lawsuit takes aim at 10 Samsung smartphone designs. The second lawsuit targets five of Samsung's tablet computers.
Google's Android mobile operating system has increasingly become a thorn in Apple's side as it has grown to dominate the global smartphone market. Samsung in particular is seen as a threat, as analysts expect Samsung to report the sale of 35 million smartphones during Q4 2011 compared to roughly 30 million iPhones for Apple.
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Major Racing Bodies Back Electric Vehicle Series
By Shane McGlaun
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There is a big push to go green with everyday passenger cars and trucks that cruise the nation's highways. Much of the green focus has been on EVs and hybrid cars that use electricity.
One place that we have seen some hybrid technology come into play where you might not expect it has been at the racetrack. Some of the biggest names in the sports car and racing world, such as Porsche, are toying with battery power. Porsche has used a KERS system on one of its cars for a power boost.
Green racing is set to become much more popular in the future thanks to the American Le Mans Series and IMSA partnering with Quimera of Barcelona, Spain. The three firms are pushing for electric vehicle racing as the next logical step in sustainable motorsports. The goal is to create a global championship based on cars that don’t use fossil fuel of any sort.
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The NYPD Wants Mobile Weapon Scanners for Drive-By Patdowns
By Andrew Tarantola
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The NYPD is in hot water with civil rights groups over its controversial Stop-and-Frisk policy. But, NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly has a solution—handheld weapons scanners that see guns under clothing! Fourth Amendment? What's that?
As Kelly told a State of the NYPD breakfast Tuesday, the department is developing a mobile, infrared scanner mechanism that would allow officers to detect concealed weapons similar to the way that full-body scanners at airports work. The Department of Defense is also working with the NYPD to develop the technology, though details are still rather scarce.
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Why Canadians Should Participate in the SOPA/PIPA Protest
By Michael Geist
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Some of the Internet's leading websites, including Wikipedia, Reddit, Mozilla, WordPress, and BoingBoing, will go dark tomorrow to protest against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA). The U.S. bills have generated massive public protest over proposed provisions that could cause enormous harm to the Internet and freedom of speech. My blog will join the protest by going dark tomorrow. While there is little that Canadians can do to influence U.S. legislation, there are many reasons why I think it is important for Canadians to participate.
. . . the U.S. intellectual property strategy has long been premised on exporting its rules to other countries, including Canada. Spain's recent anti-piracy legislation that bears similarities to SOPA is the direct result of U.S. threats of retaliation if it did not pass U.S.-backed laws. Canada has a history of similar experiences. The same forces that have lobbied for SOPA and PIPA in the United States are the primary lobbyists behind the digital lock provisions in Bill C-11 and the recent submission to the U.S. government arguing that Canada should not be admitted to the Trans Pacific Partnership negotiations until it complies with U.S. copyright demands. Moreover, the Wikileaks cables documented relentless U.S. pressure in Canada including revelations that former Industry Minister Maxime Bernier raised the possibility of leaking the copyright bill to U.S. officials before it was to be tabled it in the House of Commons, former Industry Minister Tony Clement’s director of policy Zoe Addington encouraged the U.S. to pressure Canada by elevating it on a piracy watch list, Privy Council Office official Ailish Johnson disclosed the content of ministerial mandate letters, and former RCMP national coordinator for intellectual property crime Andris Zarins advised the U.S. that the government was working on a separate intellectual property enforcement bill.
SOPA virtually guarantees that this will continue. Not only is it likely that the U.S. will begin to incorporate SOPA-like provisions into its IP demands, but SOPA makes it a matter of U.S. law to ensure that intellectual property protection is a significant component of U.S. foreign policy and grants more resources to U.S. embassies around the world to increase their involvement in foreign legal reform.
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Cultural |
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China's Rich Consider Leaving Growing Nation
By Frank Langfitt
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. . .
In China's one-party system, businessmen rely on relationships with the government to prosper. Hua says if things turn sour, there is no protection.
"You get rich working with the government. If you don't work with the government, you may get nothing and you may lose everything," he says. "That probably is the most dangerous situation."
. . .
Many wealthy Chinese are anxious because, despite China's tremendous progress, the country still faces a lot of challenges. Income inequality is staggering, corruption systemic and public protests a daily occurrence.
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Yang says Chinese like U.S. real estate because they can own it in total and can pass homes onto their children. In China, the government controls the land. People can own houses, but they can only lease the land underneath.
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The State Of The Tiara: Whatever Happened To Miss America?
By Linda Holmes
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The most intriguing ratings news about the telecast of Saturday night's Miss America pageant is that the ratings grew significantly as the night progressed — by a whopping 47 percent (2.8 million viewers) from the first half-hour to the last. This has led to suspicions that the pageant benefited from a big drop-off in the audience for the NFL playoff game between the Denver Broncos and the New England Patriots. The game grabbed huge ratings overall, but it lost more than eight million viewers between the 9:00 hour and the 10:00 hour as Tom Brady's Patriots beat Tim Tebow's Denver Broncos in a 45-10 rout.
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It could be that what holds Miss America back these days isn't the fact that it rewards and spotlights young women wearing a predetermined uniform of big hair, big teeth, and lots of makeup. Perhaps it's the fact that it tries to be coy about it. Miss America used to be an opportunity to admire pretty girls that came with a certain veneer of dignity. But if you've been watching American television recently, you know that nobody's making money on dignity. If you want to pick sides in a group of pretty young women who look eerily similar to each other, you can watch The Bachelor. And if you want to watch entertaining television about smart and talented women, then you can watch them do something smart that requires talent — watch the women on Project Runway or Top Chef.
Yes, the women of Miss America may well be highly intelligent and highly talented (and some of their later careers absolutely support that hypothesis), and they tell you so. But they could all be Nobel Prize winners of the future, and that wouldn't mean that was ever why television viewers were tuning in. Now, there are more straightforward ways to see hot women and more straightforward ways to appreciate smart and talented women, so a beauty contest that swears up and down that it also rewards brains — even if that's entirely true — seems to fall into a crack that doesn't need filling.
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Catholic midwives in abortion conscientious objection case
By (BBC)
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Midwifery sisters Mary Doogan, 57, and Concepta Wood, 51, say being forced to supervise staff taking part in abortions violates their human rights.
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NHS GGC, which is contesting their action, said it recognised their right not to participate in terminations under the terms of the Abortion Act.
But it maintains that it decided correctly that requiring them to delegate staff to nurse woman undergoing medical terminations and to supervise and support staff undertaking that duty was lawful.
It maintains that the women's rights to conscientious objection under the legislation does not include the right to refuse such duties.
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Only the elites insult the working adults who pick up after us
By Kay
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I didn’t watch the debate. I did want to point something out, though, because I think it goes to how conservatives devalue the work that certain adults do:
“New York City pays their janitors an absurd amount of money because of the union. You could take one janitor and hire 30-some kids to work in the school for the price of one janitor, and those 30 kids would be a lot less likely to drop out. They would actually have money in their pocket. They’d learn to show up for work. They could do light janitorial duty. They could work in the cafeteria. They could work in the front office. They could work in the library. They’d be getting money, which is a good thing if you’re poor. Only the elites despise earning money.”
While it’s certainly interesting that opposing child labor laws is now a mainstream position on the Right and among conservative news personalities, I hear something else entirely in Gingrich’s statement than the pundits and politicians heard. Newt Gingrich told us all last night that nine year olds can replace the grown men and women who currently do these jobs. Newt Gingrich believes janitors and cafeteria workers and people who work in school libraries and offices can and should be replaced by children.
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