Is this really happening, again? Why, yes, it is. Following up on its massive MDR-X10 bass-pumping headphones from last year, Sony and Simon Cowell have introduced the MDR-X05. As you might take from the name, the cans are basically a smaller addition to the series, packing 40MM drivers (down from 50) and a few more color options (red/black, red/red, white/silver, red/silver and black/silver) -- some of which do the headphones more justice than the silver/red colorway we got our mitts on previously. As far as we can tell, by the way, these are very likely a re-badge of the MDR-X400 headphones for the American market. As you'd expect, the cans fold flat for storage and feature an iDevice-compatible inline remote and mic.
Unlike the X10, the tangle-proof flat cabling isn't removeable and connects using both earcups, but the connections seem robust enough to handle a good bit of torture. Because the same materials and finish are used on the X05 as the X10, the headphones feel virtually the same in-hand -- a bit plasticky, but solid overall. The headphones may be smaller, but they still manage to feel nearly as cosy and isolate a fair amount amount of external noise as their bigger brother, mostly because they're packing the same style of plush memory foam earpads wrapped in synthetic leather. As far as sound quality goes, the bass push on these is just as smooth and open-sounding as the X10, but the high-end is noticeably harsher -- we definitely felt the need to turn on "treble reducer" in our iPhone's EQ settings. If you're bass-hungry ears are interested, the X05 headphones are up for pre-sale at Sony's online store for $200 (100 less than the X10), but the smaller discount won't make them look any less loud on your ears while you're out and about. You can expect 'em to hit shelves March 22nd. For now, find more details in the press release after the break.
A man looks at his watch while walking in front of an electronic stock indicator in Tokyo, Thursday, Feb. 28, 2013. Asian stock markets rose Thursday as positive economic indicators and the nomination of a pro-stimulus Bank of Japan chief bolstered hopes for faster growth. The Nikkei 225 stock average closed at 11,559.36, up 2.7 percent. (AP Photo/Shizuo Kambayashi)
A man looks at his watch while walking in front of an electronic stock indicator in Tokyo, Thursday, Feb. 28, 2013. Asian stock markets rose Thursday as positive economic indicators and the nomination of a pro-stimulus Bank of Japan chief bolstered hopes for faster growth. The Nikkei 225 stock average closed at 11,559.36, up 2.7 percent. (AP Photo/Shizuo Kambayashi)
A man walks past an electronic stock indicator in Tokyo, Thursday, Feb. 28, 2013. Asian stock markets rose Thursday as positive economic indicators and the nomination of a pro-stimulus Bank of Japan chief bolstered hopes for faster growth. The Nikkei 225 stock average closed at 11,559.36, up 2.7 percent. (AP Photo/Shizuo Kambayashi)
LONDON (AP) ? Markets are ending the month in upbeat fashion Thursday amid rising hopes over the global economic recovery despite ongoing concerns over the outcome of Italian elections and the prospect of spending cuts in the U.S.
Many stock indexes are back where they were at the start of the week before the messy Italian election results, which reignited concerns over the country's appetite for further austerity and Europe's debt crisis as a whole.
In fact, the main U.S. equity markets closed at 5-year highs Wednesday and there are indications that the Dow Jones industrial average will make another attempt Thursday towards its all-time record.
Positive economic data, particularly out of the U.S., combined with indications from the Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke that the central bank isn't going to change its super-easy monetary policy any time soon to shore up markets following the Italian election rout.
"Although February isn't going to stand out in traders' minds the same way that January did, it's certainly shaping up to be a robust end to the month," said Fawad Razaqzada, market strategist at GFT Markets. "Bernanke's two-day testimony has been well-timed and the continued commitment to stimulus measures ? specifically to support housing, autos and other parts of the economy ? has given the bulls a new lease of life."
In Europe, the FTSE 100 index of leading British shares was up 0.2 percent at 6,340 while Germany's DAX rose 0.5 percent to 7,711. The CAC-40 in France was 0.3 percent higher at 3,701.
Italian shares underperformed as investors remained concerned about the ability of political leaders to cobble together a government that will enact further economic reforms and tight budgetary controls. The FTSE MIB index in Milan was down 0.3 percent at 15,784.
Wall Street was poised for a solid opening, with both Dow futures and the broader S&P 500 futures up 0.1 percent.
How the U.S. session actually maps out could well hinge on whether the unexpected 0.1 percent annualized fourth-quarter contraction in the U.S. economy is revised.
Unlike the end of 2012, when investors were concerned about the upcoming fiscal cliff, investors appear sanguine over the risks associated with planned spending cuts that are due to take effect at the start of March as part of a previous budget agreement between the White House and Congress. The planned "sequester" could hit U.S. growth if no deal is reached to avoid it. Previous experience, however, suggests a last-minute deal will be cobbled together.
"Given the late deals we've seen in the past, this could be due to high expectations of a late deal, or alternatively, it may just be that compared to the fiscal cliff at the end of last year, the impact will be minor," said Craig Erlam, market analyst at Alpari.
The dollar has not been affected by the planned cuts and has rallied hard this week amid strong U.S. economic news and rising tensions over Italy. The euro was down 0.2 percent at $1.3122 while the dollar was flat at 92.20 yen.
Earlier in Asia, Tokyo's benchmark led gains after the government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe nominated Haruhiko Kuroda, currently president of the Asian Development Bank, to head Japan's central bank. The Nikkei 225 stock average closed at 11,559.36, up 2.7 percent.
Kuroda is seen as a supporter of Abe's efforts to overcome Japan's 20 years of economic stagnation with bolder monetary easing, a weaker yen and bigger government spending.
Elsewhere, South Korea's Kospi ended 1.1 percent higher at 2,026.49, the highest close since Jan. 2, while Hong Kong's Hang Seng added 2 percent to 23,020.27.
Oil markets remain fairly flat with benchmark crude for April delivery down 18 cents to $92.58 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
____
Youkyung Lee in Seoul, South Korea contributed to this report.
BERLIN (AP) ? Airbus parent company EADS NV says its net profit declined by nearly half in the fourth quarter as the company took charges at its helicopter and defense electronics divisions.
Full-year earnings, however, were up 19 percent.
EADS said Wednesday that it earned ?325 million ($425 million) in the October-December period, down 47 percent from the previous year's ?612 million.
The company said it took charges of ?198 million at its defense electronics contractor Cassidian, in part reflecting restructuring costs.
Renegotiating contracts with government customers resulted in a ?100 million charge at helicopter maker Eurocopter.
However, fourth-quarter revenues rose 17 percent to ?19.22 billion, with the core Airbus division posting a 36 percent increase.
Full-year net profit increased to ?1.23 billion from ?1.03 billion in 2011.
Though it's most often associated with disorders like diabetes, Harvard researchers have shown how the signaling pathway of insulin and insulin-like peptides plays another critical role in the body ? helping to regulate learning and memory.
In addition to showing that the insulin-like peptides play a critical role in regulating the activity of neurons involved in learning and memory, a team of researchers led by Yun Zhang, Associate Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, show that the interaction between the molecules can fine-tune how, or even if, learning takes place. Their work is described in a February 6 paper in Neuron.
"People think of insulin and diabetes, but many metabolic syndromes are associated with some types of cognitive defects and behavioral disorders, like depression or dementia," Zhang said. "That suggests that insulin and insulin-like peptides may play an important role in neural function, but it's been very difficult to nail down the underlying mechanism, because these peptides do not have to function through synapses that connect different neurons in the brain"
To get at that mechanism, Zhang and colleagues turned to an organism whose genome and nervous system are well described and highly accessible by genetics ? C. elegans.
Using genetic tools, researchers altered the small, transparent worms by removing their ability to create individual insulin-like compounds. These new "mutant" worms were then tested to see whether they would learn to avoid eating a particular type of bacteria that is known to infect the worms. Tests showed that while some worms did learn to steer clear of the bacteria, others didn't ? suggesting that removing a specific insulin-like compound halted the worms' ability to learn.
Researchers were surprised to find, however, that it wasn't just removing the molecules that could make the animals lose the ability to learn ? some peptide was found to inhibit learning.
"We hadn't predicted that we would find both positive and negative regulators from these peptides," Zhang said. "Why does the animal need this bidirectional regulation of learning? One possibility is that learning depends on context. There are certain things you want to learn ? for example, the worms in these experiments wanted to learn that they shouldn't eat this type of infectious bacteria. That's a positive regulation of the learning. But if they needed to eat, even if it is a bad food, to survive, they would need a way to suppress this type of learning."
Even more surprising for Zhang and her colleagues was evidence that the various insulin-like molecules could regulate each other.
"Many animals, including the humans, have multiple insulin-like molecules and it appears that these molecules can act like a network," she said. "Each of them may play a slightly different role in the nervous system, and they function together to coordinate the signaling related to learning and memory. By changing the way the molecules interact, the brain can fine tune learning in a host of different ways."
Going forward, Zhang said she hopes to characterize more of the insulin-like peptides as a way of better understanding how the various molecules interact, and how they act on the neural circuits for learning and memory.
Understanding how such pathways work could one day help in the development of treatment for a host of cognitive disorders, including dementia.
"The signaling pathways for insulin and insulin-like peptides are highly conserved in mammals, including the humans," Zhang said. "There is even some preliminary evidence that insulin treatment, in some cases, can improve cognitive function. That's one reason we believe that if we understand this mechanism, it will help us better understand how insulin pathways are working in the human brain."
###
Harvard University: http://www.harvard.edu
Thanks to Harvard University for this article.
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CHICAGO (Reuters) - A powerful winter storm that buried the U.S. Plains moved on Tuesday into the southern Great Lakes region, where it snarled the evening commute in Chicago and Milwaukee, created near-whiteout conditions and forced hundreds of flight cancellations.
Wind gusts of up to 35 miles per hour (56 km per hour) hurled a potent blend of wet snow and sleet on north-central Illinois, southern Wisconsin and northern Indiana and Ohio, according to the National Weather Service.
More than 500 flights were canceled at Chicago's O'Hare International and Midway airports, according to the Chicago Department of Aviation. Those flights that managed to take off or land faced delays of up to an hour.
The Illinois Tollway agency, which maintains nearly 300 miles of highway around Chicago, deployed its fleet of more than 180 snowplows to keep the roads clear.
As the afternoon rush hour began in Chicago, blowing snow reduced visibility and created treacherous driving conditions, doubling average travel times in and out of the city on major expressways, according to Traffic.com.
The Wisconsin Department of Transportation warned that much of Interstate 94 between the Illinois state line and Milwaukee was ice covered.
In Chicago, the city's public school system, the third-largest school district in the country, canceled all after-school sporting events, including six state regional basketball games.
The snowstorm may have discouraged some voters in Chicago and its suburbs from voting in a special election primary to replace indicted Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr., who resigned the seat in November citing health concerns.
Forecasters with the National Weather Service said the storm would continue to move eastward, dumping 3 to 5 inches of wet snow on Detroit overnight and into Wednesday morning.
It is then expected to move slowly into the Northeast, largely avoiding the cities of New York, Boston and Washington, D.C., but bringing snow to parts of New York state, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine, said Brian Korty, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.
"It's going to linger for a long time over portions of the Northeast," Korty said.
'POTPOURRI OF WINTRY WEATHER'
Parts of New York and Pennsylvania could get a "sloppy mix" of snow, ice and rain. Already, ice accumulations were causing sporadic power outages across higher terrains of western Maryland, eastern West Virginia and far western Virginia, said Erik Pindrock, a meteorologist with AccuWeather.
"It's a very multi-faceted storm," Pindrock said. "It's a whole potpourri of wintry weather."
In Oklahoma, Texas and Kansas, where the storm hit earlier, residents were digging out.
Highways in the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles and parts of Kansas remained closed because of heavy and drifting snow.
Amarillo, Texas, saw 19 inches of snow Sunday night into Monday, the third-largest snowfall ever in that city, Pindrock said.
In Kansas, a woman died and three passengers were injured Monday night on Interstate 70 when their pickup truck rolled off the icy roadway in Ellis County, Kansas Governor Sam Brownback said. Earlier Monday, a man was killed when his car veered off the interstate in Sherman County near the Colorado border, he said.
"We urge everyone to avoid travel and be extremely cautious if you must be on the roads," said Ernest Garcia, superintendent of the Kansas Highway Patrol.
A 58-year-old man and his 69-year-old sister died from carbon monoxide poisoning in Kansas City, Kansas, from a gas generator being used in their home because they lost power Tuesday in the snowstorm, said Deputy Fire Chief Craig Duke.
In northern Oklahoma, one person died when the roof of a home partially collapsed in the city of Woodward, said Matt Lehenbauer, the city's emergency management director.
"We have roofs collapsing all over town," said Woodward Mayor Roscoe Hill Jr. "We really have a mess on our hands."
Kansas City, Missouri, was also hard hit by the storm, which left snowfalls of 7 to 13 inches in the metro region on Tuesday, said Chris Bowman, meteorologist for the National Weather Service. Another 1 to 3 inches is forecast for Tuesday evening and nearly two-thirds of the flights at Kansas City International Airport Tuesday afternoon were canceled.
In addition to the winter storm, National Weather Service forecasters on Tuesday issued tornado watches across central Florida and up the eastern coast to South Carolina.
(Reporting by Kevin Murphy in Missouri, David Bailey in Minneapolis, James B. Kelleher in Chicago and Corrie MacLaggan in Texas; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn, Barbara Goldberg, Nick Zieminski, Dan Grebler, Phil Berlowitz, Eric Walsh and Lisa Shumaker)
REPORT FROM THE OFFICE OF THE MAYOR - Maui Mayor Alan Arakawa, in conjunction with the Maui Chamber of Commerce, is pleased to announce the winners of the 2013 Mayor?s Small Business Awards, which was held February 21 at the King Kamehameha Golf Club Waikapu Ballroom.
"Small business is?Maui?County's most important economic engine, and we should never forget the sacrifices that business owners make every day to keep their businesses operating,? said Mayor Arakawa. ?They take on risk, work long hours, and put their personal assets on the line while providing jobs, services and goods to our community.??We are fortunate to have such a strong small business community in?Maui?County?and are privileged to honor them.?
This year?s nominees are an exceptional group of small businesses who are all deserving of awards.??The winners in each category are as follows:
?
Young Small Business Person of the Year
David ?Boze? Kapoi (Pride Ink)
?
Exceptional Small Business (10 or fewer employees)
Paris?Nabayi (Cilantro Mexican Grill)
?
Exceptional Small Business (11-25 employees)
David & Ululani Yamashiro (Ululani?s Hawaiian Shave Ice LLC)
?
Exceptional Small Business (26-50 employees)
Daniel Boren (Skyline Eco-Adventures, LLC)
?
Outstanding Non-Profit Business
Habitat for Humanity?Maui
?
Lifetime Achievement Award
The Late Douglas Wayne ?Butch? Akina & Sandra Akina (Akina Aloha Tours)
?
Mahalo to event co-sponsors Bank of Hawaii, First Hawaiian Bank, Central Pacific Bank and Muneyiko & Hiraga, INC., as well as to event supporters SCORE and VIP Food Service.
Many thanks to the Maui Chamber of Commerce for helping to co-produce the event along with the Mayor?s Office of Economic Development.
Congratulations to all 2013 Mayor?s Small Business Award Nominees and Winners.
?
Short URL: http://www.hawaiireporter.com/?p=296002
Author: Hawaii Reporter
Hawaii Reporter is an award-winning, independent Hawaii-based news and opinion journal founded in 2001 and launched in February 2002. The journal's staff have won a number of top awards from the Society of Professional Journalists, including the top investigative news reporting awards, business reporting awards, government reporting awards, and online news reporting awards. Hawaii Reporter has a weekly television news show, News Behind the News, which airs on Mondays at 1:30 p.m. and Wednesdays at 6:30 p.m.
"Try the red pill," an image posted by Google+ director Matt Waddell urges. "Simple and secure, minus the social spam." Google's geeky reference to "The Matrix" is a thinly disguised attack on Facebook's universal log-in feature. The search engine giant launched its own competing sign-in feature for third-party websites and apps Tuesday, and though it is powered by Google+, the promise is that it won't litter your feeds with pointless oversharing.
Google+ Sign-In takes on Facebook Connect, a universal login system familiar to most. You know the drill. You go to a new site or open a new app and you're prompted to go through the tedious process of creating an account. But then there's that little blue button, suggesting that you login via Facebook. So convenient.
Now there'll be a little red button, too. (Hence the "red pill" reference from "The Matrix.") And Google's really pushing the argument that it's the better choice.
"It?s secure, and it prohibits social spam," emphasizes Seth Sternberg, Google's director of product management for Google+, in a post on the official Google+ developers blog. "And we?re just getting started."
When you use Google+ Sign-In, you'll enter your Google credentials and view a summary of what's about to happen. Will the owner of the website or the developer behind an app see your name, basic info, and the people you're connected to on Google+? Will he or she see your email address? Will the people you're connected to on Google+ see that you're using that app or website? A prominent "only you" option keeps information limited to ... only you. (Meaning that your pals won't be seeing anything you don't want them to.) The whole setup's quite similar to that of Facebook Connect, so it's doubtful that anyone who has used the latter will be too confused.
There's a key difference though: "Google+ doesn?t let apps spray 'frictionless' updates all over the stream," Sternberg writes, "so app activity will only appear when it?s relevant (like when you?re actually looking for it)."
If you do choose to actively share something from a site or an app, you'll create an "interactive" post on Google+. Whoever is able to see the post will be able to click on it to visit an app or site to buy, listen to, read, or review whatever you shared.
Essentially, Google+ Sign-In is like a polished version of Facebook Connect. It lets you play things closer to the vest and offers solid sharing options when you're in the mood to announce something to the world.
The Guardian, Fitbit, Flixxter, USA Today, Shazam, and OpenTable are among some of the first sites and apps to start using Google+ Sign-In, so you can check out how it works in action. (If you're not seeing the little red button, be patient. The rollout of it is gradual.)
Obviously, one of the questions for Google is whether or not this new tool will drive sign-up and participation in Google+ ? something that's not exactly guaranteed. Odds are on the young social network's side though, as existing Google users are likely to "upgrade" to Google+ in order to take advantage of the universal sign-in.
Want more tech news or interesting links? You'll get plenty of both if you keep up with Rosa Golijan, the writer of this post, by following her on Twitter, subscribing to her Facebook posts, or circling her on Google+.
Research suggests scientists have overestimated capacity of wind farms to generate powerPublic release date: 26-Feb-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Buffie Stephens buffiestephens@uncc.edu 704-687-5830 University of North Carolina at Charlotte
People think of wind as an energy source with few limits, offering an unending power source with distinct capacity advantages over sources that deplete, such as fossil fuel.
Yet, new research in mesoscale atmospheric modeling by UNC Charlotte's Amanda S. Adams and Harvard University's David W. Keith, published Monday in the journal Environmental Research Letters, suggests that the power capacity of large-scale wind farms may have been significantly overestimated.
With large-scale wind farms, as many as hundreds of turbines mounted on tall towers and connected to the electrical grid capture the kinetic energy of the wind. Each wind turbine creates a "wind shadow" behind it, in which the turning blades slow the air. In an effort to reduce the impact of the wind shadows, wind farms space the turbines apart, while still locating as many turbines as they can on the land.
Current estimates of the global wind power resource over land range from 56 to 400 terawatts. Most of these estimates assume implicitly that the turbines extracting the wind energy have little impact on the atmosphere and, therefore, little effect on the energy production.
The new research says that scientists have underestimated the impact that large numbers of wind turbines have on energy production within large farms. Estimates of wind capacity that ignore the effect of wind turbine drag on local winds have assumed that wind power production of 2 and 4 watts per square meter could be sustained over large areas.
The new modeling results suggest that the generating capacity is more likely limited to about 1 watt per square meter at wind farms that are larger than 100 square kilometers.
"It's easy to mistake the term renewable with the term unlimited when discussing energy," Adams said. "Just because you can keep generating new energy from a source does not mean you can generate energy in an unlimited amount."
The research suggests the potential for wind energy could be significantly less than previously thought.
"It's important to take into account all factors impacting the wind energy, so we can assess the capacity of this critical power resource," Adams said. "One of the inherent challenges is how harvesting the resource changes it, making it difficult to accurately calculate how much energy can be produced. The modeling we have done provides information that can help in the understanding of our ability to count on renewable energy sources."
The research also considers the impact of wind energy production on temperatures and by extension possibly climate. Wind farms change the natural wind shear and produce various scales of turbulence. Higher potential temperatures are mixed downward due to this turbulence and result in low level warming, the research indicates.
"Our research suggests that how densely the turbines are placed affects not only energy production but also environmental impacts," Adams said. "We see this impact on average temperatures not only at large-scale farms, but also in small-density wind farms. Some things to consider are the magnitude of temperature changes and also the size of the area affected. We think these findings indicate that additional research is needed in these areas."
The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada funded the research.
Adams' primary research interests focus on mesoscale phenomena, processes, and modeling with an emphasis on phenomena that involve boundary layer processes and/or topographic influences. In recent years, she and her research group at UNC Charlotte have focused on the link between small-scale processes and climate, particularly at the atmosphere and earth surface interface. Her research group concentrates primarily on question at the interface between energy, weather and climate.
Current questions her group is addressing include: How will large scale wind energy development impact the Great Plains low level jet? What are the meteorological conditions that lead to wind turbine icing? How does temperature variability in urban areas impact electricity demand? Can we quantify the risks of off shore wind turbines to hurricanes? The energy-related research that Adams' group is conducting includes collaborations with San Diego Gas & Electric, Xcel Energy, and the Weather Underground.
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Research suggests scientists have overestimated capacity of wind farms to generate powerPublic release date: 26-Feb-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Buffie Stephens buffiestephens@uncc.edu 704-687-5830 University of North Carolina at Charlotte
People think of wind as an energy source with few limits, offering an unending power source with distinct capacity advantages over sources that deplete, such as fossil fuel.
Yet, new research in mesoscale atmospheric modeling by UNC Charlotte's Amanda S. Adams and Harvard University's David W. Keith, published Monday in the journal Environmental Research Letters, suggests that the power capacity of large-scale wind farms may have been significantly overestimated.
With large-scale wind farms, as many as hundreds of turbines mounted on tall towers and connected to the electrical grid capture the kinetic energy of the wind. Each wind turbine creates a "wind shadow" behind it, in which the turning blades slow the air. In an effort to reduce the impact of the wind shadows, wind farms space the turbines apart, while still locating as many turbines as they can on the land.
Current estimates of the global wind power resource over land range from 56 to 400 terawatts. Most of these estimates assume implicitly that the turbines extracting the wind energy have little impact on the atmosphere and, therefore, little effect on the energy production.
The new research says that scientists have underestimated the impact that large numbers of wind turbines have on energy production within large farms. Estimates of wind capacity that ignore the effect of wind turbine drag on local winds have assumed that wind power production of 2 and 4 watts per square meter could be sustained over large areas.
The new modeling results suggest that the generating capacity is more likely limited to about 1 watt per square meter at wind farms that are larger than 100 square kilometers.
"It's easy to mistake the term renewable with the term unlimited when discussing energy," Adams said. "Just because you can keep generating new energy from a source does not mean you can generate energy in an unlimited amount."
The research suggests the potential for wind energy could be significantly less than previously thought.
"It's important to take into account all factors impacting the wind energy, so we can assess the capacity of this critical power resource," Adams said. "One of the inherent challenges is how harvesting the resource changes it, making it difficult to accurately calculate how much energy can be produced. The modeling we have done provides information that can help in the understanding of our ability to count on renewable energy sources."
The research also considers the impact of wind energy production on temperatures and by extension possibly climate. Wind farms change the natural wind shear and produce various scales of turbulence. Higher potential temperatures are mixed downward due to this turbulence and result in low level warming, the research indicates.
"Our research suggests that how densely the turbines are placed affects not only energy production but also environmental impacts," Adams said. "We see this impact on average temperatures not only at large-scale farms, but also in small-density wind farms. Some things to consider are the magnitude of temperature changes and also the size of the area affected. We think these findings indicate that additional research is needed in these areas."
The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada funded the research.
Adams' primary research interests focus on mesoscale phenomena, processes, and modeling with an emphasis on phenomena that involve boundary layer processes and/or topographic influences. In recent years, she and her research group at UNC Charlotte have focused on the link between small-scale processes and climate, particularly at the atmosphere and earth surface interface. Her research group concentrates primarily on question at the interface between energy, weather and climate.
Current questions her group is addressing include: How will large scale wind energy development impact the Great Plains low level jet? What are the meteorological conditions that lead to wind turbine icing? How does temperature variability in urban areas impact electricity demand? Can we quantify the risks of off shore wind turbines to hurricanes? The energy-related research that Adams' group is conducting includes collaborations with San Diego Gas & Electric, Xcel Energy, and the Weather Underground.
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
9-TO-5: Internet experts say the persistence of Chinese hacking attacks point to the employ of professional cyberspies. Hacker teams regularly began work, for the most part, at 8 a.m. Beijing time. And Chinese hackers take the weekend off.
THE BACKGROUND: Accusations of state-sanctioned hacking took center stage this past week following a detailed report by a U.S.-based Internet security firm Mandiant. That fueled growing suspicion that the Chinese military is stealing national defense secrets, harassing dissidents and pilfering information from foreign companies that could be worth millions of dollars
DENIAL: Beijing hotly denies such accusations of official involvement in massive cyberattacks against foreign targets.
LOS ANGELES (AP) ? The Associated Press has learned that federal immigration authorities have released a number of detainees around the country to save money.
Gillian Christensen, spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Washington D.C., said Monday that field offices have been directed to review their numbers of detained immigrants to ensure the jail populations stay within budgeted resources.
Christensen says an unspecified number of immigrants have been released and placed on more cost effective forms of supervision.
She says she did not have further details about those forms of supervision or how many people have been released.
Christensen says the agency will continue to pursue the cases in court and deport people when necessary.
Immigration activists say the agency most likely released detainees in California, Texas, Florida, and New Jersey.
CHICAGO (AP) ? No matter what goalie the Chicago Blackhawks put into their net, they are coming away with win after win.
Corey Crawford completed the task to perfection on Sunday night as he made Andrew Shaw's goal stand up in a 1-0 victory over the Columbus Blue Jackets that stretched the Blackhawks' NHL-record, season-opening point streak to 18 games.
The Blackhawks are 15-0-3 and show no signs of slowing down.
Crawford earned his seventh NHL shutout and second this season in his first start since Feb. 12. He outdueled Columbus' Steve Mason, who stopped 26 shots including some sensational point-blank chances.
"I'm seeing the puck well," said Crawford (8-0-3). "Everyone is doing their job, chipping in. It makes it a lot easier for me."
"Overall I felt good."
Chicago coach Joel Quenneville thought Crawford looked just fine in his return, too.
"He was quick," Quenneville said. "(He was) big, especially on the side-to-side plays on the power play. He tracked the puck well, looked like he wasn't off for any time at all.
"He had a couple extras days there, got ready. A great response."
Crawford had been sidelined after he sustained an upper-body injury in a 3-2 shootout loss to Anaheim on Feb. 12. Ray Emery started and won four games in his absence.
Crawford had returned to the lineup as Emery's backup on Friday when the Blackhawks set the NHL record with at least one point in the first 17 games of a season with a 2-1 win over San Jose. That topped the 2006-07 Anaheim Ducks, who started 12-0-4.
Shaw provided all the offense in the second period on Sunday for the Blackhawks, who have earned 33 of 36 possible points.
The Blackhawks also improved to 9-0-3 in games decided by one goal.
"We're playing the score" Quenneville said. "We're playing to win. Being on the right side of pucks in a game like today was a good test for us.
"They work hard. It's the type of game you make sure you don't try to manufacture things. We took too many penalties, but got better as the game went on."
Chicago has won nine straight against Columbus, dating to Feb. 18, 2011.
The 18-game point streak is also a team record for the Blackhawks, who have only lost in shootouts this season.
The Blue Jackets (5-12-2), who have an NHL-low 12 points, went 0-for-5 on the power play. Mason kept the game close as he started for the first time in over a week.
He had been on the bench the past three games while Sergei Bobrovsky started.
"I felt good," Mason said. "I had about a week's worth of practice to get ready for this game.
"We knew it was going to be a big one with them being the only undefeated team in the NHL. We would have liked to have come in and ended that streak, but that didn't happen."
The Blackhawks dominated territorially and in puck possession through the first two periods, but only managed to get one shot past the Blue Jackets goalie.
Both teams had a handful of scoring chances in the first period. Mason made a point-blank pad save on Marian Hossa with 8:30 left, and Crawford stopped Derick Brassard from the slot two minutes later.
Mason denied Hossa on a breakaway 5:30 into the second after Hossa stole the puck from James Wisniewski at the Columbus blue line.
The Blue Jackets failed to convert several close-in attempts during a power-play late in the second, including when Vinny Prospal's shot hit the crossbar to cap a breakaway.
Shaw finally broke through with 1:27 left in the second from the low edge of the left circle. He took Bryan Bickell's backhanded feed from the back boards and ripped a high one-timed shot that beat Mason high on the stick side.
"He saw me coming," Shaw said. "But I wasn't sure, so I gave him a holler and he put it in a perfect area."
Mason made a point-blank pad save on Patrick Kane midway through the third period after Kane made a spectacular spin move and cut across the crease alone.
NOTES: The Ducks went on to win the Stanley Cup in 2007. ... Blackhawks C Dave Bolland missed the game because of an undisclosed upper-body injury. ... Columbus went 1-5 on its six-game road trip. ..The Blue Jackets placed D Jack Johnson (upper-body), on the injured list on Sunday. C Brandon Dubinsky (lower body) and C Artem Anisimov (upper body) were also out.
Throughout the year, the waters off the U.S. West Coast host a diverse group of whales. But the area is also home to busy shipping lanes and fishing activity, putting whales at risk for ship strikes and entanglement in fishing nets.
A new program is being developed by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Oregon State University and the University of Maryland to help prevent these accidents. Called WhaleWatch, it's being designed to give ship captains a better idea of where whales are most likely to congregate. It could also help NOAA adjust shipping lanes if necessary, and take other measures needed to prevent unnecessary whale deaths, said Daniel Palacios, a researcher with NOAA's Southwest Fisheries Science Center.
WhaleWatch, which is due to be finished in about 1.5 years, is being developed using data from tags placed on as many as 150 whales over the last 20 years, Palacios told OurAmazingPlanet. This information has allowed researchers to determine a set of physical measurements ? such as water depth, temperature and plankton productivity ? where whales are usually found. Much of it depends on how these conditions affect the location and abundance of krill, a small shrimp-like animal that is a favorite food of these great whales, he said.
The program will take these variables, which can be measured by satellites, and issue a periodic online map showing where certain whales are most likely to be found, Palacios said.
The program is based upon TurtleWatch, a product developed by NOAA researchers that's used by longline fishermen in Hawaii, and which has helped reduce the number of entanglements of loggerhead sea turtles there, Palacios said. TurtleWatch similarly produces maps of where the endangered turtles are most likely to be found, namely in warm waters where wind currents converge, said Evan Howell, TurtleWatch developer and a researcher at NOAA's Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center in Honolulu.
The data for WhaleWatch comes from tags placed on blue, fin, gray and humpback whales from off the U.S. West Coast, Palacios said. This tagging work was led by Bruce Mate, a researcher at Oregon State University and Palacios' collaborator, Palacios said.
Reach Douglas Main at dmain@techmedianetwork.com. Follow him on Twitter @Douglas_Main. Follow OurAmazingPlanet on Twitter? @OAPlanet. We're also on? Facebook ?and Google+.
Fuel economy EPA highway (mpg): 18 and EPA city (mpg): 14
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Tilt steering wheel
Clock - In-radio display
Interior
Front seat type - Split-bench
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Pickup Bed Type - Regular
Intermittent window wipers
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Digital Sports Group head of operations Matthew Tait believes that the Manchester City stars tweeting against Leeds saw Micah Richards' Facebook page increase dramatically with the total weekly reach increasing by over 20%.
The Facebook page has become a thriving hub for the Manchester City defender since its launch and is becoming more and more popular with each week that passes, with a rapidly growing community of fans keen to hear all the latest news on their favourite player.
The official PFA Facebook page along with Micah Richards player profile on football.co.uk provide the only online location of the official PFA biography, lifetime stats, news and high resolution gallery.
Manchester City cruised through to the last eight of the FA Cup with a classy display as they registered a comfortable 4-0 victory over Leeds United at the Etihad Stadium. With goals from Yaya Toure, Sergio Aguero and Carlos Tevez, City bounced back from dissapointing Premier League displays to book themselves a place in the quarter-finals of the FA Cup.
Head of Operations at DSG, Matthew Tait had this to say ?Micah Richards really has no shortage of fans after his performances for Manchester City this season and we can see that by the success of his PFA Facebook page.?
?All of us here at Digital Sports Group are proud we've had the opportunity to work with The PFA to give the fans a fantastic and unique fan resource for Micah.?
DSG became the official digital partner of the Professional Footballers Association (PFA) earlier this year and have since launched a number of Player profile fan pages on social media site Facebook as well as providing official player pages on their football news site football.co.uk.
If a photo is on Facebook and no one looks at it, was it ever even uploaded?
Poor attempt at a joke aside, there's something with which we need to come to terms: There are a lot of photos on Facebook that just sit around, taking up precious data storage space. The social network can't exactly delete these photos just because no one's looking, but it can store them in a more cost-effective and energy-efficient way.
According to the Oregonian's Mike Rogoway, Facebook's testing moving what he describes as "archival posts that people don?t need every day" into cold storagein the social network's data center inPrineville, Oregon.
As fun as it might be to imagine a gigantic meatlocker full of servers, cold storage refers to a data center in which most of the computers are asleep, with a few keeping watch ? and able to wake the others ? for incoming requests to view older items. Compare that to a hot storage data center in which all the computers are wide-awake and ready to show you the information you request almost instantly. (Of course, the difference in the time it takes to grab something from cold storage versus the time it takes to grab something from hot storage is so slight that a typical user could never even tell the difference. Think second or millisecond delays, rather than anything more dramatic.)
Facebook says, according to Rogoway, that "82 percent of its traffic is focused on just 8 percent of its photos." Given that detail, it's not exactly tough to understand why the company's considering cold storage data centers ? especially since they will cost the social network about a third less than standard data centers, offer eight times more storage, and run five times more energy efficiently.
Want more tech news or interesting links? You'll get plenty of both if you keep up with Rosa Golijan, the writer of this post, by following her on Twitter, subscribing to her Facebook posts, or circling her on Google+.
A newspaper in rural Mississippi is defending its decision to run a cover story on what it called the first same sex marriage in the county it serves.
On Feb. 7, the Laurel Leader-Call published the story--"Historic Wedding: Women wed in Laurel through smiles, tears"--about the wedding of Jessica Powell and Crystal Craven, who has been battling brain cancer. The women exchanged vows earlier this month at a ceremony in Laurel, Miss., attended by family, friends and Craven's doctors.
"If chemo doesn't work, we don't know what happens after that," Craven told the paper.
"This is true love," Powell said. "Love is love, it knows no gender."
She added: "I don't remember voting on straight marriage, so why is gay marriage an issue?"
The story sparked a backlash among readers in a state that does not legally recognize same sex marriage.
"We shouldn't have to defend every decision we make here at the Leader-Call," Jim Cegielski, the paper's owner, wrote in an editorial published on Saturday. "However, the intense reaction to our gay wedding front page story, which led to a deluge of hate calls, letters. e-mails, Facebook posts, soundoffs and random cross stares thrown in my direction, warrants some sort of response. So here it is."
Cegielski continued:
We were well aware that the majority of people in Jones County are not in favor of gay marriage. However, any decent newspaper with a backbone can not base decisions on whether to cover a story based on whether the story will make people angry.
The job of a community newspaper is not pretending something didn't take place or ignoring it because it will upset people. No, our job is to inform reads what is going on in our own and let them make their own judgments. That is exactly what we did with the wedding story. Our reporter heard about the wedding, attended it, interviewed some of the participants and wrote a news story. If there had been protestors at the wedding, we would have covered that the exact same way ? but there weren't any. We never said it was a good thing or a bad thing, we simply did our job by telling people what took place.
I took the bulk of the irate phone calls from people who called the paper to complain. Most of the complaints seem to revolve around the headline, "Historic Wedding," and the fact that we chose to put the story on the front page. My answer to the "Historic Wedding" headline is pretty simple. You don't have like something to be historic.
"The holocaust, bombing of Pearl Harbor and the Black Sox scandal are all historic. I'm in no way comparing the downtown wedding of two females to any of those events," Cegielski wrote, "even though some of you made it quite clear that you think gay marriage is much worse."
We have stories about child molesters, murders and all kinds of vicious, barbaric acts of evil committed by heinous criminals on our front page and yet we never receive a call from anyone saying 'I don't need my children reading this.' Never. Ever. However, a story about two women exchanging marriage vows and we get swamped with people worried about their children.
I had at least 20 or so readers express to me they think gay marriage is "an abomination against God." We never said it wasn't. We never said it was.
Cegielski's letter to readers (Leader-Call)
"We were simply reporting to the best of our ability," he continued. "However, I can't help but be saddened by the hate-filled viciousness of many of the comments directed toward our staff ? No one here deserves to be berated or yelled at simply because we were doing our job." Fifteen readers cancelled their subscriptions in protest, according to the Cegielski.
"You have every right to cancel your subscription," he added. "But you have no right to berate and belittle anyone on our staff."
The U.S. Air Force's mysterious X-37B space plane is quietly chalking up mileage in space more than two months after its latest launch into orbit.
The robotic?X-37B space plane?soared into orbit atop an Atlas 5 rocket from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on Dec. 11. The mini-shuttle's mission is known as Orbital Test Vehicle-3 (OTV-3), since it is the third classified mission under the Air Force's X-37B program.
How long OTV-3 will remain in Earth orbit is unknown. The hush-hush?space plane?mission is officially on Air Force space tracking books as USA-240.
"The mission is ongoing," Air Force Maj. Eric Badger, a spokesman for the X-37B program, told SPACE.com. "As with previous missions, the actual duration will depend on test objectives, on-orbit vehicle performance and conditions at the landing facility." [Photos: U.S. Military's X-37B Space Plane]
A new reusable space plane
An Atlas 5 rocket blasts off on Dec. 11, 2012, beginning the Air Force's third X-37B classified space plane mission. CREDIT: ULA
The current flight underway has attained one known major milestone ? that of reusability.
This same vehicle was flown on the maiden voyage in the X-37B program back in 2010. That OTV-1 mission lasted nearly 225 days in orbit and then zoomed back to Earth on autopilot over the Pacific Ocean, gliding down onto a specially prepared runway at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
The OTV-2 mission, which used a different X-37B vehicle, also made a Vandenberg touchdown on June 16 of last year after remaining in orbit for 469 days, more than doubling its sister ship?s stay.
There's a possibility that OTV-3 may not land in Vandenberg. There have been discussions about bringing the space plane down at the space shuttle landing strip at NASA's?Kennedy Space Center, next door to Cape Canaveral, as a possible cost-cutting measure.
"The possibility of using the former shuttle infrastructure for future X-37B landing operations is still being investigated," Badger said.
Space test platform
The X-37B looks a bit like a miniature?space shuttle. The vehicle is 29 feet (8.8 meters) long and 15 feet (4.5 m) wide, with a payload bay about the size of a pickup truck bed.
Only two X-37B space planes have been constructed for the Air Force by Boeing Government Space Systems, officials say. Flights of the space plane are conducted under the auspices of the Air Force?s Rapid Capabilities Office.
According to an Air Force fact sheet, the Rapid Capabilities Office is working on the X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle "to demonstrate a reliable, reusable, unmanned space test platform for the United States Air Force."
Mission control is handled by the 3rd Space Experimentation Squadron, 21st Space Wing, of the Air Force Space Command in Colorado Springs, Colo.
Skywatcher insight
While little is known regarding what OTV-3 is toting in its cargo bay, amateur skywatchers offer some insight into the mission.
"All does seem quiet," said Ted Molczan of Toronto, a leader in an ever-vigilant, worldwide satellite sleuthing network.
"OTV-3 remains in its initial orbit, maintaining altitude with periodic engine firings," Molczan told SPACE.com. "Unlike the first two missions, its ground track does not closely repeat at the frequent intervals that would suggest an imaging reconnaissance mission."
Stretching 29 feet in length and weighing 11,000 pounds, the second Boeing-built X-37B became the longest on-orbit space vehicle on June 16, 2012 when it completed a 469-day mission with an autonomous landing at Vandenberg Air Force Station in California. CREDIT: Boeing
Confusion and speculation
While missions of X-37B remain obscure, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), headquartered in Cambridge, Mass., criticizes the program as a less-than-cost-effective way to conduct space activities.
UCS space experts assert that, while the space plane is versatile and capable, there are better, more efficient and more cost-effective ways of carrying out the X-37B's possible missions.
"And because it is an Air Force project and its details are classified, the plane has generated confusion, speculation and, in some cases, concern about its actual purpose" a UCS document issued prior to the OTV-3 mission launch said.
Leonard David has been reporting on the space industry for more than five decades. He is former director of research for the National Commission on Space and a past editor-in-chief of the National Space Society's Ad Astra and Space World magazines. He has written for SPACE.com since 1999.Follow SPACE.com on Twitter?@Spacedotcom. We're also on?Facebook?&?Google+.?
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Public release date: 26-Feb-2013
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