Welcome to the Overnight News Digest (OND) for Tuesday, October 01, 2013.
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: Soul Food by Kurt Elling
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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Armed and Attentive: The Face Is the Focus for a Person Wielding a Gun
By (ScienceDaily)
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A person wielding a gun focuses more intently on the face of an opponent with a gun, presumably to try to determine that person's likelihood of pulling the trigger, according to a new study that builds on gun-in-hand research from the University of Notre Dame.
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Building on the team's previous research that shows holding a gun increases a person's inclination to see guns in the hands of others, "Armed and Attentive: Holding a weapon can bias attentional priorities in scene viewing" is forthcoming in Attention, Perception & Psychophysics.
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Past research, referred to as the weapon focus effect, has shown that if a criminal is armed, an unarmed victim focuses more on the weapon.
"What's interesting," Brockmole says, "is that our new 'armed bias to look at faces' findings essentially canceled out the weapon focus effect observed with the unarmed participants. In other words, someone who is armed spent as much time looking at the face of another armed person as two unarmed subjects looking at one another."
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Jellyfish clog pipes of Swedish nuclear reactor forcing plant shutdown
By (AP via theguardian.com)
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A huge cluster of jellyfish forced the Oskarshamn plant, the site of one of the world's largest nuclear reactors, to shut down by clogging the pipes conducting cool water to the turbines.
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All three Oskharshamn reactors are boiling-water types, the same technology used for Japan's Fukushima Daiichi plant, which suffered a catastrophic failure in 2011 after a tsunami breached the facility's walls and flooded equipment.
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"It's one of the species that can bloom in extreme areas that … are over-fished or have bad conditions," said Moller. "The moon jelly likes these types of waters. They don't care if there are algae blooms, they don't care if the oxygen concentration is low. The fish leave … and [the moon jelly] can really take over the ecosystem."
Moller said the biggest problem was that there was no monitoring of jellyfish in the Baltic sea to produce the data scientists needed for decisions on tackling the issue.
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Frackers are chewing up Pennsylvania’s forests
By John Upton
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Frackers don’t just foul the air and the water — they trample nature and carve up ecosystems into inadequate little pieces.
That’s the message coming out of the U.S. Geological Survey, which studied aerial photographs of a handful of Pennsylvania counties where gas companies are using hydraulic fracturing to tap deposits in the Marcellus Shale. The survey’s analysis revealed sweeping damage and forests fragmented by new well pads, roads, and pipelines.
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In Butler County alone, the study found that fracking and conventional drilling — and the road-building required to service 109 drilling sites — had disturbed 325 acres of forest by 2010. Compared to a decade earlier, there were 36 more patches of forest in the county, and the average size of each patch was smaller — a change that the researchers said was mostly due to the drilling boom.
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It’s not just the acreage of disturbance that causes concern. It’s what all that drilling and road building do to the forests in between. Whenever habitat is broken up into smaller pieces, the theory of island biogeography tells us that the area’s biodiversity plummets. That’s because some wildlife can only survive deep in the woods — far away from its edges.
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International |
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War on illegal drugs failing, medical researchers warn
By (BBC)
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Illegal drugs are now cheaper and purer globally than at any time over the last 20 years, a report has warned.
The International Centre for Science in Drug Policy said its report suggested the war on drugs had failed.
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Its researchers said it was time to consider drug use a public health issue rather than a criminal justice issue.
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The report also found there had been a substantial increase in most parts of the world in the amount of cocaine, heroin and cannabis seized by law enforcement agencies since 1990.
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Torture 'widespread' in Libyan jails - UN report
By (BBC)
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Torture and ill-treatment, sometimes resulting in death, is "widespread" in Libyan jails, a new UN report says.
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The UN estimates about 8,000 people are still being held in relation to the 2011 conflict which ended in the overthrow of Col Gaddafi.
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It notes that a "major factor" in ill-treatment and torture of detainees is the "current situation of prolonged detention and interrogation at the hands of armed brigades".
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Libya's central government has struggled to tackle the presence of armed militias since Col Gaddafi's death in 2011.
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USA Politics, Economy, Major Events |
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Federal shutdown trickles down to states
By (UPI)
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Governors across the United States called on Congress to solve the budget crises, saying the shutdown jeopardizes states' delicate recovery from the recession.
"Unfortunately, the possible consequences to state economies of a federal shutdown or not increasing the national debt limit are severe," the National Governors Association wrote to congressional leaders Monday.
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In terms of a shutdown, not all states are affected equally, Stateline.org reported Monday. The heaviest concentration of federal civilian workers lives in Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia, with California and Texas also having significant numbers of federal employees.
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Obama Official May Run Against Florida's Anti-Obamacare AG
By Stephanie Mencimer
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Florida attorney general Pam Bondi has been a lightning rod in a state that's got quite a few of them. A tea party favorite and occasional Fox News commentator, Bondi played the lead role in Florida's attack on the Affordable Care Act. Bondi's office filed suit, later joined by other states, to challenge the law's constitutionality. While the suit failed to derail the entire law, Bondi was wildly successful in helping prevent millions of poor people from getting health insurance through an expansion of Medicaid provided in the law. (The Supreme Court ruled that the Medicaid expansion could not be forced on the states and only expanded voluntarily. Florida and 12 other states then rejected it.)
On that stellar record, Bondi has been campaigning hard for reelection, even going so far as to postpone an execution so she could attend a fundraiser last month. . . But one person thought to be lining up against Bondi is George Sheldon, currently the Acting Assistant Secretary for Children and Families at the US Department of Health and Human Services.
HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced last week that Sheldon would be stepping down and returning to Florida this month, and he has reportedly been feeling out donors and state politicos about the prospect of a Bondi challenge. TMZ is not likely to feature Sheldon in any "who's hotter" polls, but he knows Florida politics. Sheldon began his career in the state legislature and later served as deputy attorney general and head of the state's department of children and families. At HHS, he's been involved in campaigns to combat human trafficking and pushed to limit the use of psychotropic drugs on juveniles in foster care. Unfortunately, none of this is particularly sexy, and Sheldon himself would make a very mild-mannered foil to Bondi's firebrand.
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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:
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Elling, who is about to release a new album and embark on a British tour, is a serious student of jazz. His erudition is unsurprising given that he was heading towards an academic career when he really discovered music.
‘I was reading philosophy and thought I might be a professor or some such thing,’ he says.
When a demo tape then earned him a contract with Blue Note in the mid-1990s, there was no going back.
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Indeed, Elling’s main musical antecedents are mid-century vocalese mavericks such as Jon Hendricks (aka the ‘ James Joyce of Jive’) and Mark Murphy.
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Like his musical heroes, Elling is a master of vocalese – ‘a speciality subset of lyric writing in which the lyricist transcribes a recording of an instrumental solo and proceeds to write a lyric over the contours of that solo,’ as Elling describes it.
. . .
Elling’s apartment in Chicago used to belong to Barack and Michelle Obama – ‘before they moved to their current house’, he offers wryly.
Though he has a family, Elling doesn’t get to sleep there very often. ‘I spend upwards of 200 nights a year on the road,’ he says.
Back to what's happening:
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Environment and Greening |
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Florida citrus growers binge on pesticides, endangering bees
By John Upton
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Floridian citrus growers are upping the chemical ante as they struggle to save their groves from citrus greening — a devastating bacterial infection spread by tiny invasive insects known as Asian citrus psyllids.
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But beekeepers also contract with other growers to release bees in their fields for pollination, which also puts them at risk from pesticides in citrus groves.
The conundrum has Florida Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam, who is also a citrus grower, desperate to find a solution that can protect both the state’s fruit and honey industries.
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TEPCO Just Spilled Tons of Radioactive Water into Fukushima's Soil
By Adam Clark Estes
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The operator of Japan's infamously crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant recently attempted to move some radioactive water from one tank to another. In the process, it spilled four tons of deadly sludge.
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It's also worth remembering that this little leak pales in comparison to Fukushima's bigger problems. Its primary leak is getting worse, and if something's not done about it soon, it will continue to spread and contaminate the surrounding area. Recently, Japan's government agreed to bankroll a massive project to build an underground ice wall to contain the leaked groundwater. Experts seem to agree that the plan is feasible. All TEPCO has to do is stop spilling radioactive water into the ground.
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Science and Health |
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Bad Luck? Knocking On Wood Can Undo Perceived Jinx, Study Suggests
By (ScienceDaily)
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Knocking on wood is the most common superstition in Western culture used to reverse bad fortune or undo a "jinx." Other cultures maintain similar practices, like spitting or throwing salt, after someone has tempted fate. Even people who aren't particularly superstitious often participate in these practices.
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Noting that many of the most common rituals for undoing bad luck -- knocking on wood, spitting, and throwing salt -- all seem to involve movements that exert force away from a person, researchers set out to test whether the avoidant nature of the action is key for reducing the negative expectations and heightened concern generated by tempting fate.
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They found that those who knocked down (away from themselves) or threw a ball believed that a jinxed negative outcome was less likely than participants who knocked up (toward themselves) or held a ball. In addition, the researchers found that engaging in an avoidant action had its effect by leading people to have a less vivid mental image of the negative event.
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Astronomers create first cloud map of distant planet
By (UPI)
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U.S. astronomers say data from NASA space telescopes have allowed them to create the first cloud map of a planet beyond our solar system.
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"By observing this planet with Spitzer and Kepler for more than three years, we were able to produce a very low-resolution 'map' of this giant, gaseous planet," study lead author Brice-Olivier Demory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said. "We wouldn't expect to see oceans or continents on this type of world, but we detected a clear, reflective signature that we interpreted as clouds."
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"We're at a point now in exoplanet science where we are moving beyond just detecting exoplanets, and into the exciting science of understanding them," Paul Hertz, director of NASA's Astrophysics Division in Washington, said.
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Hey, Wait a Minute! Waiting Actually Makes People More Patient
By (ScienceDaily)
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According to a recent study by Ayelet Fishbach, Jeffrey Breakenridge Keller Professor of Behavioral Science and Marketing at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, waiting actually does make people more patient, which can provide a payoff for consumers by helping them make better decisions.
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"People tend to value things more in the present and discount their worth in the future," Fishbach says. "But my research suggests that making people wait to make a decision can improve their patience because the process of waiting makes the reward for waiting seem more valuable."
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"When people wait, it makes them place a higher value on what they're waiting for, and that higher value makes them more patient," Fishbach says. "They see more value in what they are waiting for because of a process psychologists call self-perception -- we learn what we want and prefer by assessing our own behavior, much the same way we learn about others by observing how they behave."
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Behavioural insights are vital to policy-making
By Olivier Oullier
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Policy-making by governments affects the behaviour of large numbers of people, sometimes millions. So why is such a key task often left to economists and lawyers, who may have little in-depth understanding of how people really behave? And why are the behavioural psychologists and neuroscientists who have valuable expertise usually consulted last, if at all?
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At the heart of this approach are the randomized controlled trials that are already common in medical research. Similar trials of public policy are crucial because they use a control group — a fraction of the population to which the new policy is not applied. This might sound strange, but monitoring such a non-intervention group is the only way to know whether a change in behaviour is down to the policy being trialled.
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One successful example of a cost-effective use of behavioural insights in policy is a UK study on tax collection. In a 2011 randomized controlled trial of more than 100,000 people, some people received payment-request letters that had been tweaked to say that most UK citizens pay their taxes on time. Compared with control letters, the trialled policy produced a 15% increase in repayment rate. The British government estimates that a national roll-out of the policy would provide around £30 million (US$48 million) of extra revenue each year. Not bad for a smart use of social psychology.
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Can Intelligence Really Be Measured?
By Emily Sohn
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Despite decades of research into how different brains work, experts said, there are no easy answers. Scientists now know that there are multiple types of intelligence. There's a strong genetic component to certain aspects of intelligence. And scores on intelligence tests are tightly linked to school performance, future income level, health and more.
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But IQ scores are far from the only factor that determines how well people do in life. Also, conversations about innate differences in intelligence continue to make people uneasy, probably because there is a long history of racism, classism, sexism and even religious discrimination tied up in discussions about who is smarter than whom.
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In the early 1900s, French psychologist Alfred Binet developed a test to identify children who might need extra help in school, and his work was incorporated into the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scales, which originally focused on verbal skills. That and other modern IQ tests have changed over the years as new research changes our understanding of what intelligence is.
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But scoring well on an IQ test doesn’t predict success, nor does a relatively average or lower score predict a life of misery.
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Exercise 'can be as good as pills'
By Michelle Roberts
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Physical activity rivalled some heart drugs and outperformed stroke medicine.
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Drugs called diuretics were the clear winner for heart failure patients, while exercise was best for stroke patients in terms of life expectancy.
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"By taking important steps, such as regular exercise, eating a balanced diet and stopping smoking, people can significantly reduce their risk of stroke."
"Moderate physical activity, for example, can reduce the risk of stroke by up to 27%."
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Technology |
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How to make a Jedi lightsaber
By Ian Sample
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When they fired photons into the vacuum chamber, something odd happened when the particles hit the cloud of rubidium atoms. When one photon goes in, it dumps energy into the first rubidium atom it meets, kicking one of its electrons up to a higher energy level. This high-energy electron acts like an antenna. "It's so high that the atom becomes about a thousand times larger than a regular atom," says Firstenberg.
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The strange goings-on happen when more than one photon goes into the cloud. The first photon slams into a rubidium atom and creates an antenna as before. But the presence of the first antenna affects the second: it can't take its turn to create an antenna until the first photon has moved on. The result is a couple of photons that cosy up into what the scientists call a photonic molecule.
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So is a lightsaber around the corner? The photonic molecules existed for a fleeting moment in a cloud of atoms that is a fraction of a millimetre long, colder than outer space, enclosed in a metal tank, and surrounded by tables bearing a ton of equipment. "I don't know what to say. The lightsaber is fictitious," says Firstenberg. "We don't know what the physics is behind a lightsaber. I don't know how George Lucas did it."
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Can computer corrections make simple lenses look good?
By (dpreview.com)
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Modern lenses tend to be large and expensive, with multiple glass elements combining to minimise optical aberrations. But what if we could just use a cheap single-element lens, and remove those aberrations computationally instead? This is the question scientists at the University of British Columbia and University of Siegen are asking, and they've come up with a way of improving images from a simple single element lens that gives pretty impressive results.
The method is described in detail in the researchers' paper. It works by understanding the lens's 'point spread function' - the way point light sources are blurred by the optics - and how this changes across the frame. Knowing this, in principle it's possible to analyse an image from a simple lens and reconstruct how it should look, through a computational process known as 'deconvolution'.
The Point Spread Function diagram for a simple f/4.5 lens of the plano-convex type (i.e. one side curved, the other flat). The centre shows broad discs due to chromatic aberration, while the cross-shapes towards the corners are due to coma and astigmatism.
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So will this be coming to a camera near you anytime soon? In this precise form, probably not - the system still has problems understanding areas of the image which are slightly out-of-focus, and won't work with large aperture lenses. And while the images are certainly improved, they're unlikely to satisfy committed pixel peepers. In fact we'd guess it's most likely to be useful in smartphones, where the mechanical simplicity and robustness of simple lenses should be appealing. However, it certainly offers an interesting glimpse of the way results could be improved when shooting with a 'soft' lens.
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Google's new concessions on European search will put rivals' logos into results
By Ian Traynor in Brussels and Charles Arthur
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Europe's antitrust commissioner signalled on Tuesday that he will seek a settlement with Google over the search engine's business practices rather than pursuing it through the courts over alleged abuse of its dominant market position.
Under commitments offered by Google, specialist search sites that offer rival services - such as Streetmap for mapping or Foundem for shopping - will appear in Google search results pages with their logo and explanatory text. Their position on an internet user's results page will be chosen by an auction system.
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He outlined four sets of objections to Google's business conduct, declaring that if left unaddressed, they would force the EU regulator to issue a statement of objections and levy huge fines. His group is holding separate investigations – which are still under way – into whether Google's phone subsidiary Motorola abused the patent system, and whether the free pricing on its Android smartphone operating system counts as predatory pricing. The patent inquiry is "well underway", Almunia said.
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Kent Walker, Google senior vice-president and general counsel, said: "This has been a very long and very thorough investigation. Given the feedback the European commission received on our first proposal, they have insisted on further, significant changes to the way we display search results. While competition online is thriving, we've made the difficult decision to agree to their requirements in the interests of reaching a settlement."
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NASA to Send 3-D Printer to the ISS in 2014
By Shane McGlaun
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NASA has announced that it intends to send a 3-D printer to the International Space Station in 2014. NASA says that astronauts living aboard the ISS would use the 3-D printer to make spare parts and tools in zero gravity. Once the printer arrives at the ISS, it will mark the first time a 3-D printer has been used in space.
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NASA and other ISS partner nations hope that using a 3-D printer on the space station could help reduce the costs for future missions. The printer NASA sends to the ISS won't be your typical off-the-shelf 3-D printer. It will be beefed up to withstand the stresses of liftoff and to operate in a weightless environment.
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It's unclear exactly what sort of material NASA will use in the printer; 3-D printers typically use a polymer material, but there are 3-D printers able to use titanium and nickel-chromium powers to build stronger components.
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Cultural |
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6 Risky Gun Storage Products Sold by the NRA
By Eric Wuestewald
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This Sunday, the New York Times published an extensive report on children accidentally killed by guns. Most of the tragic examples cited involved kids (almost always boys) coming across an unsecured firearm. As Mother Jones has previously reported, owning a gun has been found to substantially increase the risk of accidental death. Studies have also found that percent 40 percent of homes with guns and kids have at least one unlocked firearm. And an experiment by the American Academy of Pediatrics found that one third of 8- to 12-year-old boys who find a handgun will pull the trigger.
Nevertheless, the National Rifle Association has fought efforts to require safer gun storage. On its website, it even sells various gun storage products that ensure easy access to loaded weapons—without safeguards to protect curious kids (or anyone else). Here are a few:
The NRA Minuteman Concealment Mantel Clock
The NRA Store claims that, "like our revolutionary heroes," this mahogany-stained working clock "conceals an underlying, defensive capability." Simply pulling back on the clock's magnetic front panel allows "quick access" to a gun up to 8 inches long, offering you a "heightened sense of security in your home."
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NRA Under the Desk Holster
For those who need a firearm handy while checking email or paying bills, the NRA touts this desk holster as an "an easy way to inconspicuously keep your handgun at arm's length." The elastic holster is designed to "safely and securely" fit any size handgun.
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Survey: Africans say continent's macroeconomic growth isn't helping them
By Erin Conway-Smith
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The findings of the latest Afrobarometer survey of 34 countries, released Tuesday, put into sharp relief the continent’s much-vaunted GDP growth rates by looking instead at the daily lives of Africans, who say they are not benefiting from economic growth.
While economic growth rates in Africa are among the highest on the planet, roughly one in five Africans said they often lack food, clean water and medicine to meet even basic needs. Nearly half of survey respondents said they experience occasional shortages.
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“There’s an expectation that maybe things are moving in the right direction, so people are looking forward to a better future. But the benefits have not as of yet trickled down,” Dulani said.
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The survey suggested that investments in social services and basic infrastructure, such as piped water and electrical grids, are strongly linked with lower poverty levels.
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Pope Francis pledges to reform Vatican bureaucracy
By (BBC)
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Pope Francis has held his first meeting with a special group of cardinals to consider ways to reform the Vatican.
. . . he denounced its "Vatican-centric" attitude and conceded that his predecessors had been infatuated with the pomp of the Vatican and its "courtiers".
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"It looks after the interests of the Vatican, which are still, in large part temporal interests. This Vatican-centric vision neglects the world around it and I will do everything to change it."
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"We need to give hope to young people, help the aged and open ourselves toward the future and spread love," he said.
Meanwhile, the Vatican bank, which has been accused of turning a blind eye to allegations of money laundering by a few account holders and is currently the subject of a radical makeover ordered by Francis, has issued its first ever detailed accounts.
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Pakistan grandfather mourns 15 relatives killed by bomb
By Aleem Maqbool
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On Sunday morning, a bomb tore through a marketplace in the heart of the city of Peshawar. More than 40 people were killed and 110 injured.
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"He called me and asked my relation to Sohrab. Then he told me my nephew had been killed in the blast."
With his voice breaking, Sartaj told how he and his son had rushed to Peshawar to pick up the body of Sohrab, only to be greeted by a nightmarish scene at the hospital.
"In the emergency ward, first I saw the body of my youngest son, then my wife, then it seemed like the place was filled only with the bodies of my relatives.
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Sartaj, of course, is as confused as any Pakistani as to why these attacks are happening and why they are targeting civilians like his children and grandchildren.
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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. |