Welcome to the Overnight News Digest (OND) for Tuesday, October 30, 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: Reach Out (I'll Be There) by The Four Tops
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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U.S. judge OK's warrantless camera use
By (UPI)
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A U.S. court OKd warrantless use of hidden surveillance cameras, saying police can install such cameras on private property without obtaining a warrant.
U.S. District Judge William Griesbach ruled it reasonable for Drug Enforcement Administration agents to enter rural property without permission, and without a warrant, to install multiple "covert digital surveillance cameras" in hopes of uncovering evidence of marijuana being grown, CNET reported Tuesday.
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Callahan based his reasoning on a 1984 U.S. Supreme Court case in which a majority of the justices said that "open fields" could be searched without warrants because the Fourth Amendment does not cover them.
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FEMA: A Case Study in the Difference Between Democrats and Republicans
By Kevin Drum
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George H.W. Bush: . . . "Because FEMA had 10 times the proportion of political appointees of most other government agencies, the poorly chosen Bush appointees had a profound effect on the performance of the agency."
Bill Clinton: . . . "As amazing as it sounds, Witt was the first FEMA head who came to the position with direct experience in emergency management....On Witt's recommendation, Clinton filled most of the FEMA jobs reserved for political appointees with persons who had previous experience in natural disasters and intergovernmental relations."
George W. Bush: . . . "[Allbaugh] showed little interest in its work or in the missions pursued by the departed Witt....Those of us in the business of dealing with emergencies find ourselves with no national leadership and no mentors. We are being forced to fend for ourselves."
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Barack Obama: . . . "Under Fugate's leadership, an unimaginable natural disaster literally has paved the way for a textbook lesson in FEMA crisis management.... FEMA under Fugate prepares for the worst and hopes for the best rather than the other way around."
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Outside groups have spent $840 million on 2012 election
By Michael Beckel and Russ Choma
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“Super” political action committees and nonprofits unleashed by the Citizens United 2010 Supreme Court decision have spent more than $840 million so far on the 2012 elections, with the overwhelming majority of it favoring Republicans, particularly presidential nominee Mitt Romney.
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Before the Citizens United decision, groups that wanted to advocate expressly for or against a candidate were limited to receiving no more than $5,000 per donor per calendar year. Super PACs now are allowed to raise unlimited amounts from corporations, unions and individuals.
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Of the total spending amount, an estimated $577 million, or roughly 69 percent, was spent by conservative groups, compared with $237 million spent by liberal groups, or about 28 percent, with the remainder expended by other organizations.
&xC5;
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Digital revolution lights up Africa with maps, mobiles, money and markets
By David Smith and Toby Shapshak
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As a teenager Noé Diakubama made a sketch map of Mbandaka, on the Congo river, so as not to get lost in the forest while picking a vegetable called fumbwa. "I remember never having seen a map of the city," he says.
Thirty years later, maps of the city in the Democratic Republic of the Congo are still in short supply. So Diakubama decided to create the first one of his home city. He spent hours at his computer in Brussels, where he now lives, using Google Map Maker software and entering the streets he could recall. He hired an assistant to tour Mbandaka by bike and name the streets on a map scanned in pdf format and printed out.
Diakubama's efforts have been replicated across Africa by scores of amateur mapmakers who have collectively pinpointed hundreds of thousands of roads, cities and buildings in remote areas ignored by colonial cartographers. This is just one example of how the digital revolution has not only caught up in Africa, but is in some respects moving faster and differently from the west.
"New technologies are in the process of transforming the lives of people," Diakubama said. "Mobile telephony has equipped our lives by allowing communication between cities and villages without having to move; to announce a death in the family, for example.
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Bananas could replace potatoes in warming world
By Matt McGrath
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Climate change could lead to bananas becoming a critical food source for millions of people, a new report says.
Researchers from the CGIAR agricultural partnership say the fruit might replace potatoes in some developing countries.
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Responding to a request from the United Nations' committee on world food security, a group of experts in the field looked at the projected effects of climate change on 22 of the world's most important agricultural commodities.
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They predict that the world's three biggest crops in terms of calories provided - maize, rice and wheat - will decrease in many developing countries.
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Disney buys Star Wars maker Lucasfilm from George Lucas
By (BBC)
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Disney is buying Lucasfilm, the company behind the Star Wars films, from its chairman and founder George Lucas for $4.05bn (£2.5bn).
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In a statement announcing the purchase, Disney said it planned to release a new Star Wars film, episode seven, in 2015.
That will be followed by episodes eight and nine and then one new movie every two or three years, the company said.
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Lucasfilm is also the production company behind the Indiana Jones franchise, and fantasy films Willow and Labyrinth.
Michael Corty, analyst at Morning Star, said Disney's deal was clearly part of a pattern in buying new franchises.
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International |
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New Scotland Yard faces sell-off as Met floats cost-cutting plans
By Vikram Dodd
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The Metropolitan police is considering selling off New Scotland Yard, its central London home famous for its revolving sign, as it battles a cash crisis.
The tower has been the home of Britain's biggest police force since the 1960s but police chiefs are planning to sell the building and move to a smaller headquarters as they try to save £500m from a £3.6bn annual budget, following government cuts.
The plan to sell the building in Victoria, central London, is one of a raft of proposals from the capital's force. Others include closing public counters during off-peak hours, reducing the numbers of supervising officers and selling off numerous assets, including other property.
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London warms to an independent Palestine
By (UPI)
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The British government is committed to helping Palestinian leaders create a sovereign state that can exist alongside a secure Israel, a minister said.
British Foreign Office Minister Alistair Burt met in London with chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat to discuss prospects for a two-state solution to the Middle East peace process.
Burt said his government is committed to Palestinian state-building efforts with the designation of up to $195 million through 2015 "to assist them in creating a sovereign and prosperous Palestinian state living in peace alongside a safe and secure Israel."
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BP dividend increase cheered by investors
By Dan Milmo
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BP has rewarded "very patient" shareholders and pension funds buffeted by the group's travails in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon disaster with a double-digit increase in its dividend.
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BP's chief executive, Bob Dudley, said the dividend move was a reaction to the Rosneft deal, the development of new oil and gas prospects, and a post-Deepwater disposal programme that has nearly reached its $38bn target.
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BP said its results were boosted by a strong performance in its downstream business, driven by improved profitability at its refining units, while its upstream business – oil and gas production – produced a similar performance to the previous quarter. BP's US refineries have struggled for profitability in recent years but problems at rival refiners, including Exxon's Beaumont facility, helped boost profits over the past three months. In the wake of the Gulf of Mexico spill, which has cost BP $38.1bn so far, the group has outlined a 10-point strategy that includes developing more profitable oil and gas fields. With that target in mind, the majority of BP's significant new projects that are due to come into production by 2014 are in four areas: the Gulf of Mexico, Angola, Azerbaijan and the North Sea. "All of these projects are on track," said BP.
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South African census shows continuing racial inequality
By Erin Conway-Smith
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While the income of black South African households has increased by 169 percent in the last decade, whites still earn on average six times more, a national census has found.
President Jacob Zuma said the 2011 census, released Tuesday, showed that much more needs to be done to bring equality to the country, 18 years after after the end of racist white minority rule, SAPA reported.
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Zuma said access to basic services such as water, electricity and garbage removal had more than doubled since his party, the African National Congress, took power in 1994.
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Stonewall's bigot award prompts banks' threat to withdraw sponsorship
By Hugh Muir
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Stonewall has promised to press ahead with its annual bigot of the year award, despite pressure from two leading banks which have threatened to withdraw sponsorship.
Barclays and Coutts both say they will rethink their support for the British gay charity's annual awards following complaints from Christian campaigners about the singling out of individuals for the bigot category.
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Mark McLane, the managing director and head of global diversity and inclusion at Barclays, said his company did not support the bigot category "either financially or in principle and have informed Stonewall that should they decide to continue with this category we will not support this event in the future. To label any individual so subjectively and pejoratively runs contrary to our view on fair treatment, and detracts from what should be a wholly positively focused event."
Ben Summerskill, Stonewall's chief executive, said the charity had no intention of amending or dropping the category. "We have never called anyone a bigot just because they disagreed with us," he said. "All the nominees have gone well beyond what anyone normal would call a decent level of public discourse. We welcome sponsorship from anyone who shares our core values, but we have an obligation to the 3.6 million gay people to do what is right, and highlighting extreme examples of bigotry when we know how harmful this unpleasantness is to the self-esteem of young people is right."
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USA Politics, Economy, Major Events |
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Supreme Court Might Deliver a Tiny Victory for Common Sense
By Kevin Drum
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The FISA surveillance act had its day in court yesterday, but the subject was solely whether the act would ever have a real day in court. . .
David Savage tells us how things went:
Supreme Court justices were surprisingly skeptical Monday about arguments by a top Justice Department lawyer who in a hearing sought to squelch an anti-wiretapping lawsuit brought by lawyers, journalists and activists.
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This is obviously a tiny victory, but it's a victory nonetheless. The government has been playing this card for over a decade, claiming that literally no one has standing to sue over its secret surveillance programs because no one can prove they've been surveilled. It's an absurd Catch-22, and the court is right to be skeptical of it. One way or another, there should always be somebody who has standing to challenge a law in court. Even if the Supreme Court eventually rules that FISA and its amendments are all constitutional, it would be nice to at least get a ruling that no law is entirely unassailable merely due to technicalities of standing. |
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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:
With the unprecedented success in the Sixties of Motown Records, label president Berry Gordy had formed an independently-owned black record company that was, for the first tine, creating long-term careers for young black performers who would go on to become household names the world over. One of the premier acts to pioneer the 'Motown Sound' internationally being The Four Tops - four young men from the north end of Detroit, Michigan who joined the company in 1963.
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However, it was not until late 1966 that The Four Tops really established themselves as a consistently-successful international chart act. The powerful 'Reach Out, I'll Be There' was released in the UK on October 7 of that year and quickly rose to Number One in both British and American charts. The second Motown single to hit Number One in the UK (the first being The Supremes' 'Baby Love' in 1964), 'Reach Out...' was Holland-Dozier-Holland's most innovative moment to date. Levi's pleading, strained vocal entered forcefully over a pounding beat, following a distinctive intro of woodwind, percussion and bass that immediately set this Sixties anthem apart from all previous Motown records. Its world-famous title-hook has since provided this landmark single with classic status, and it remains as much the highlight of the foursome's explosive live shows today as it did during their first UK visit, organised at the time of their chart-topper by Beatles' manager Brian Epstein.
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In reality, despite years of subsequent hits with other labels, The Tops are - and always will be - primarily recognised as a one-time Motown supergroup. Yet that in itself is most certainly not a tag that these four music biz veterans will dismiss lightly. Detroiters through-and-through, they have refused to be lured to the glamour and safety of Hollywood mansions and remain close to their roots in the Motor City, where they are leaders in their community, active in local projects, and involved in their hometown’s renaissance. In 1987, July 29 was declared an annual State-wide Four Tops Day by a citation from Michigan State governor, James Blanchard, who honoured the group for their contribution to American music and their civic activities in Detroit. Fitting recognition indeed for a foursome whose musical and personal integrity is seemingly ‘Indestructible’.
Back to what's happening:
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Environment and Greening |
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GOP gets provision to curb ban on energy-sucking light bulbs
By Renee Schoof
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The Department of Energy won't be able to enforce rules that ban energy-wasting light bulbs when new standards take effect in January, thanks to a requirement slipped into the federal spending bill.
House Republicans added the provision in response to the concerns of people who mistakenly thought that the 100-watt incandescent light bulb would be banned when new standards go into effect on Jan. 1.
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Kyle Pitsor, vice president for government affairs with the National Electrical Manufacturers Association, said that U.S. lighting companies, which are following the law, are concerned that they'll face unfair competition from companies that make inefficient bulbs, once the Department of Energy isn't checking.
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Is a major science group stumping for Monsanto?
By Michelle Simon
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With a week to go before California voters head to the polls to decide the fate of Proposition 37, which would require GMO foods to be labeled, I’ve been expecting an ugly campaign fueled by $41 million in corporate ad dollars to get even uglier.
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While Prop 37 is never mentioned, what purpose could the timing serve other than to persuade Californians to vote no on the measure? This paragraph of the AAAS press release sounds especially familiar:
Several current efforts to require labeling of GM foods are not being driven by any credible scientific evidence that these foods are dangerous … Rather, GM labeling initiatives are being advanced by “the persistent perception that such foods are somehow ‘unnatural,’” as well as efforts to gain competitive advantages within the marketplace, and the false belief that GM crops are untested.
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In a statement he made earlier this year, Michael Hansen, senior staff scientist with Consumers Union, noted [PDF] that, unlike in other countries, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration does not require safety testing for genetically engineered plants or foods. In a recent email to the Yes on 37 campaign, Hansen described the AAAS statement as, “filled with distortion and misleading statements. If mandatory labeling of GM foods would ‘mislead and alarm consumers,’ does the AAAS really believe that 60 other countries are misleading and alarming their consumers?”
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NASA warned New York about hurricane danger six years ago
By Chris Mooney
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In 2007, I published a book called . . . inspired by what my family had been through in Hurricane Katrina (I’m from New Orleans), but at the end, I looked forward to what other families and other cities might have to experience — if we don’t start to think in a much broader way about our society’s stunning vulnerability to hurricane disasters.
As I wrote:
Even as we act immediately to curtail short term vulnerability, every exposed coastal city needs a risk assessment that takes global warming scenarios into account … Scientists at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York have been studying that city’s vulnerability to hurricane impacts in a changing world, and calculated that with 1.5 feet of sea level rise, a worst-case-scenario Category 3 hurricane could submerge “the Rockaways, Coney Island, much of southern Brooklyn and Queens, portions of Long Island City, Astoria, Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, Queens, lower Manhattan, and eastern Staten Island from Great Kills Harbor north to the Verrazano Bridge.” (Pause and think about that for a second.)
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So, yes, we knew. We knew well ahead of time that this could happen, and we knew global warming was already making it worse. We knew, but we did virtually nothing. (Well, New York did empanel a sea-level-rise task force, which put out a report — and you can see how that turned out.)
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Science and Health |
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Couple of Weekly Portions of Oily Fish Can Help Ward Off Stroke: But Fish Oil Supplements Don't Have the Same Effect
By (ScienceDaily)
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Eating at least two servings of oily fish a week is moderately but significantly associated with a reduced risk of stroke, finds a study published on the British Medical Journal website.
But taking fish oil supplements doesn't seem to have the same effect, say the researchers.
Regular consumption of fish and long chain omega 3 fatty acids has been linked with a reduced risk of coronary heart disease and current guidelines recommend eating at least two portions of fish a week, preferably oily fish like mackerel and sardines. But evidence supporting a similar benefit for stroke remains unclear.
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In addition, they say their findings are in line with current dietary guidelines that encourage fish consumption for all; and intake of fish oils to people with pre-existing or at high risk of heart disease. They also support the view that future nutritional guidelines should be principally "food based."
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Flavor and Texture Alter How Full We Expect a Food to Makes Us Feel
By (ScienceDaily)
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Low calorie foods may help people lose weight but there is often a problem that people using them do not feel full. New research published in BioMed Central's open access journal Flavour shows that subtle manipulations of texture and creamy flavour can increase the expectation that a fruit yoghurt drink will be filling and suppress hunger regardless of actual calorific content.
There is a currently a debate about satiety, how full low calorie foods and drinks make people feel and for how long, and whether or not they actually make people eat or drink more because the body is expecting more calories than are actually provided. Researchers from the University of Sussex designed an experiment to first see whether or not adding a thickening agent (tara gum) increased the sensation of thickness, stickiness and creaminess of a yoghurt drink, and then looked at how these affected expected fullness and expected satiety.
The results showed that even people who are not trained in food tasting were able to accurately pick up subtle differences in drink texture even though the taste remained the same.
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Genetics suggest global human expansion
By (UPI)
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Scientists using DNA sequencing say they've uncovered a previously unknown period when the human population expanded rapidly in prehistory.
The sequencing of 36 complete Y chromosomes revealed this population explosion occurred 40,000 to 50,000 years ago, between the first expansion of modern humans out of Africa 60,000 to 70,000 ago and the Neolithic expansions of people in several parts of the world starting 10,000 years ago, Britain's Wellcome Trust Sangster Institute reported.
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One possible theory is that during the original out-of-Africa expansion, humans moved along the coastlines of the world, settling as they went.
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School flu shots reduce absences by half
By (UPI)
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Providing flu shots to students in the Charleston, W.Va., area while they were at school resulted in a drop in absences in 2010-2011, officials say.
Dr. Rahul Gupta, executive director of the Kanawha-Charleston Health Department, said during the 2010-2011 flu season Kanawha County's public and private schools had about 50 percent fewer absences than expected, the Charleston Gazette reported.
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The program began in 2009 when the Health Department vaccinated students against the H1N1 "swine flu" virus with federally funded vaccinations, but since then, the Health Department offered flu vaccines to students each year by billing the insurance plans of the students instead of using grants or government funds, Gupta said.
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Why do electric transformers explode?
By Maggie Koerth-Baker
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Imagine that the water park has a couple different rivers — one for little kids that's really shallow, and another that's deeper. What if you wanted to take your inner tube directly from one to the other? To do that, you might follow a channel that slowly descends to a greater depth. Then, you could flow from the shallow river to the deep one without getting out of the water.
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But when flooded with too much electricity, the sudden surge can cause a transformer explosion. As transformers detect an energy spike, they're programmed to turn off, but it can take up to 60 milliseconds for the shutdown. However fast those milliseconds may seem, they still may be too slow to stop the electrical overload.
A chamber full of several gallons of mineral oil keeps the circuits cool, but given too much electricity, the circuits fry and melt, failing in a shower of sparks and setting the mineral oil aflame. Mineral oil, in turn, combusts explosively and rockets transformer scything into the air.
To go back to the lazy river analogy, if there's a sudden rush of water pouring down the channel, it's likely to overflow. When that happens on the electric grid, what you get is an exploding transformer. |
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Technology |
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Pakistan Uses Smartphone Data to Head Off Dengue Outbreak
By Susan Young
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Last year, the city of Lahore, Pakistan, was hit with the worst outbreak of dengue fever in its history. The mosquito-transmitted disease infected some 16,000 people and took 352 lives. This year was a completely different story. There were only 234 confirmed cases and no deaths. The magnitude of the disease varies year to year, but some of the turnaround could be credited to a new system of tracking and predicting outbreaks in the region.
Researchers working for the Pakistani government developed an early epidemic detection system for their region that looked for telltale signs of a serious outbreak in data gathered by government employees searching for dengue larvae and confirmed cases reported from hospitals. If the system’s algorithms spotted an impending outbreak, government employees would then go to the region to clear mosquito breeding grounds and kill larvae. “Getting early epidemic predictions this year helped us to identify outbreaks early,” says Umar Saif, a computer scientist at the Lahore University of Management Sciences, and a recipient of MIT Technology Review's Innovators Under 35 award in 2011.
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The groundwork for the early detection system was another project headed by Saif: Flubreaks. This system processes data from Google Flu Trends, which estimates the spread of flu based on search terms related to the disease. “That whole idea of being able to scrape digital data has helped us find outbreaks faster,” says Mark Smolinski, director of Global Health Threats at Skoll Global Threats Fund, a nonprofit that recently helped launch a site called Flu Near You, which tracks flu based on a weekly electronic survey that asks people about their health and any flu symptoms.
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Simple Photo Tips: Get creative with white balance
By Amadou Diallo
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Ever take a photo where the colors seem clinically cold, washed out or just plain bland? It's probably because the white balance was inaccurate. White balance simply refers to the overall color cast of a photograph. If the white balance is too "cool", your image will appear blue-ish. Too "warm" and everything will look like it was taken at sunset.
Most smartphones have white balance settings that are entirely automatic, so you're stuck with their interpretation of what is a correct color balance in your pictures. But some (the Nokia 808 PureView and recent Android models such as the Galaxy S3 or HTC One X for example), offer manual control over the color balance. This allows you to get the color cast that you want.
On the HTC One X, you can tap the Settings icon, select White Balance from the scrollable list and choose from one of the presets. The screen updates in real time to preview your chosen setting.
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And you don't have to limit yourself to just producing a more realistic result. Get creative and try out presets that add a wildly different mood or feeling of your photograph.
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New Sensor Allows Naked Eye to See Early Detection Test Results for Diseases
By Tiffany Kaiser
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Researchers from Imperial College London, led by Professor Molly Stevens and Dr. Roberto de la Rica, have created a sensitive sensor that can offer visible test results for early stage diseases like prostate cancer and HIV.
The sensor does this by measuring biomarkers. It analyzes serum from blood in a container and looks for biomarkers like Prostate Specific Antigen (PSA) for prostate cancer or p24 for HIV. If a result is positive, irregular clumps of nanoparticles are formed and create a blue color in the solution within the container. If the result is negative, the nanoparticles separate into balls and give off a red color in the solution. Both colors can be seen by the naked eye.
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But that's not all. The sensor can detect positive results in those with "low viral loads," meaning an earlier diagnosis (hence, earlier treatment) than traditional tests like the Enzyme-linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA) test.
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XKCD's massive map of Congress's political leanings since the start
By Cory Doctorow
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Just in time for election season, XKCD's Randall Munroe has busted out another of his amazing, wall-sized infographics, this one depicting the swings to the left, right and center of the senate and the house, through all of US electoral history.
link
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Cultural |
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Vonnegut 'Letters' Hilarious And Heartbreaking
By Drew Toal
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In his introduction to Kurt Vonnegut: Letters, Dan Wakefield, the book's editor and a longtime Vonnegut karass member, writes of the late author's aspiration to be a "cultivated eccentric." Over the course of six decades of letters to family, friends, admirers, detractors and fellow writers, Vonnegut shows himself to be so much more, both in terms of ambition and accomplishment. In fact, viewed in its totality, the collection — by turns hilarious, heartbreaking and mundane — is striking in just how uneccentric it shows the author to be. Vonnegut himself is a near-perfect example of the same flawed, wonderful humanity that he loved and despaired over his entire life.
Letters should be read as a necessary companion piece to Charles J. Shields' evenhanded 2011 Vonnegut biography, And So It Goes. The Shields book reveals a successful but mostly unhappy man, one with a penchant for professional betrayals (he nixed an agreement with longtime friend and editor Knox Burger); an anti-war, liberal champion who had no problem investing in napalm manufacturer Dow Chemical.
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Vonnegut saved some of his harshest criticisms for censors who would ban and sometimes burn his novels without having read a single page, and there are no shortage of these scathing attacks in the collection. But it's the letters to his children that reveal the private figure. In the early '70s, soon after he took a teaching position at the Iowa Writers' Workshop (where he mentored the likes of John Irving and Gail Godwin), Vonnegut split from his wife, Jane. Though the breakup was mostly amicable, its quiet fallout underlies much of the subsequent correspondence with his daughters Nanette and Edith. In an unintentionally amusing letter dating from 1973, Vonnegut refers to Geraldo Rivera, Edie's then-husband — and current Fox News reporter — as "a fierce Democrat and closet Marxist." So it goes.
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India: Kashmir protests after Facebook 'slur'
By (BBC)
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Muslims in Indian-administered Kashmir have protested against Facebook posts which they say insult Islam.
Police have arrested three people, all Hindus, from the Kishtwar district for allegedly running a "campaign" against Islam on the social networking site.
Two of the men are government teachers. Authorities said they had been dismissed from their jobs.
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On Monday Muslim protestors clashed with relatives of the three men who allegedly put up the Facebook posts in Kishtwar, Doda and Bhaderwah districts.
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Tibetan burnings reach new level
By Parameswaran Ponnudurai
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The wave of Tibetan self-immolation protests against Chinese rule may have entered a new phase following a record number of burnings last week.
The failure to contain the fiery protests, experts say, poses a major challenge to Beijing, which has tried a combination of strategies to douse the Tibetan campaign - from offering cash rewards to Tibetans to tip off potential burnings to tightening security clampdowns on monasteries.
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"This is a very serious development, suggesting that Tibetans believe that this rising number of self-immolations will make a substantive difference to their political situation, and it could lead to more people burning themselves," Robert Barnett, a scholar of Tibet at Columbia University, told RFA.
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The protests spread to neighboring Qinghai and Gansu provinces and to the Tibetan Autonomous Region as Tibetan lay people joined monks and nuns in setting themselves alight and holding street demonstrations to underline their opposition to Chinese rule.
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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. |