Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/302558768?client_source=feed&format=rss
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মঙ্গলবার, ৩০ এপ্রিল, ২০১৩
Per-student pre-K spending lowest in decade
WASHINGTON (AP) ? State funding for pre-kindergarten programs had its largest drop ever last year and states are now spending less per child than they did a decade ago, according to a report released Monday.
The report also found that more than a half million of those preschool students are in programs that don't even meet standards suggested by industry experts that would qualify for federal dollars.
Those findings ? combined with Congress' reluctance to spend new dollars ? complicate President Barack Obama's effort to expand pre-K programs across the country. While Education Secretary Arne Duncan and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius continue to promote the president's proposal, researchers say existing programs are inadequate, and until their shortcomings are fixed there is little desire by lawmakers to get behind Obama's call for more preschool.
"The state of preschool was a state of emergency," said Steven Barnett, director of the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University, which produced the report.
During his State of the Union speech, Obama proposed a federal-state partnership that would dramatically expand options for families with young children. Obama's plan would fund public preschool for any 4-year-old whose family income was below twice the federal poverty rate.
If it were in place this year, the plan would allow a family of four with two children to enroll students in a pre-K program if the family earned less than $46,566.
Students from families who earn more could participate in the program, but their parents would have to pay tuition based on their income. Eventually, 3-year-old students would be part of the program, too.
As part of his budget request, Obama proposed spending $75 billion over 10 years to help states get these new programs up and running. During the first years, Washington would pick up the majority of the cost before shifting costs to states.
"It's the most significant opportunity to expand access to pre-K that this nation has ever seen," Barnett said of the president's proposal.
Obama proposed paying for this expansion by almost doubling the federal tax on cigarettes, to $1.95 per pack.
Obama's pre-K plan faces a tough uphill climb, though, with the tobacco industry opposing the tax that would pay for it and lawmakers from tobacco-producing states also skeptical. Conservative lawmakers have balked at starting another government program, as well. Obama's Democratic allies are clamoring to make it a priority.
To help it along, Duncan and Sebelius planned to join the report's researchers on Monday at a news conference to introduce the report, along with administration allies. They planned events later in the week to reiterate their support.
Yet those public events were unlikely to sway lawmakers who are already fighting among themselves over spending cuts that are forcing students to be dropped from existing preschool programs, the levying of higher fees for student loans and deep cuts for aid to military schools.
States spent about $5.1 billion on pre-K programs in 2011-12, the most recent school year, researchers wrote in the report.
Per-student funding for existing programs during that year dropped to an average of $3,841 for each student. It was the first time average spending per student dropped below $4,000 in today's dollars since researchers started tracking it during the 2001-02 academic year.
Adjusted for inflation, per-student funding has been cut by more than $1,000 during the last decade.
Yet nationwide, the amounts were widely varied. The District of Columbia spent almost $14,000 on every child in its program while the states of Colorado, South Carolina and Nebraska spent less than $2,000 per child.
"Whether you get a quality preschool program does depend on what ZIP code you are in," Barnett said.
Among the 40 states that offer state-funded pre-K programs, 27 cut per-student spending last year. In total, that meant $548 million in cuts.
Money, of course, is not a guarantee for students' success. But students from poor schools generally lag students from better-funded counterparts and those students from impoverished families arrive in kindergarten less prepared than others.
In all, only 15 states and the District of Columbia spent enough money to provide quality programs, the researchers concluded. Those programs serve about 20 percent of the 1.3 million enrolled in state-funded prekindergarten programs.
"In far too many states, funding levels have fallen so low as to bring into question the effectiveness of their programs by any reasonable standard," researchers wrote.
Part of the reason for the decreased spending are the lingering effects of the economic downturn in 2008, coupled with the end of federal stimulus dollars to plug state budgets.
"Although the recession is technically over, the recovery in state revenues has lagged the recovery of the general economy and has been slower and weaker than following prior recessions. This does not bode well for digging back out of the hole created by years of cuts," the researchers wrote in their report.
Nationally, 42 percent of students ? or more than a half million students ? were in programs that met fewer than half of the benchmarks researchers identified as important to gauging a program's effectiveness, such as classrooms with fewer than 20 students and teachers with bachelor's degrees.
That, too, suggests problems for Obama's plan to expand pre-K programs, especially if Washington insists its partners meet quality benchmarks to win federal dollars.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/per-student-pre-k-spending-lowest-decade-042832006.html
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Report Israeli Bombed Syrian Chemical Weapons - Business Insider
The Free Syrian Army (FSA) reports that Israeli fighter jets slipped into Damascus over the weekend and bombed a chemical weapons depot outside the city.
Neither Damascus nor Jerusalem have yet confirmed the attack, according to UPI.
According to The Jewish Press?(JP)?"many" reports came in over the weekend confirming the mission. Sources told the JP Israeli jets arrived over Damascus early Saturday morning and circled Assad's presidential compound before moving on to target the weapons site.
The Israeli jets reportedly received fire but returned to base unscathed.
The Lebanese Daily Star confirms heavy FSA fighting occurred near the plant, the Scientific Studies and Research Center, but troops lacked the resources to breach the heavily fortified site.
Back in January, Israel?bombed a Syrian convoy?that?may have departed from this center.
Regardless of the details, it appears to have been another deadly weekend in Syria.
The country's Network for Human Rights reports 88 deaths on Sunday alone including 12 children, eight women, five torture victims and 35 armed rebels.?The organization said 23 of the deaths occurred in Aleppo, 16 in and around Damascus, 13 in Idlib, 12 in Hama, 10 in Homs, and nine in Daraa.
Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/report-israeli-bombed-syrian-chemical-weapons-plant-2013-4
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How a Quaker missionary from Philly became India's Johnny Appleseed
Samuel Evans Stokes?spent years trying to persuade his neighbors in the Himalayas to grow apples, giving away plants freely until?locals took to apple farming and Indians took to Red Delicious.
A community hall in rural India is not the place you would expect to find a garlanded portrait or statue of a Quaker missionary from Philadelphia. But both those things can be found at the farmers? hall in Thanedar, the ?apple bowl? of the Himalayan state of Himachal Pradesh in India.
Skip to next paragraph Vaishnavi ChandrashekharIndia Correspondent
Vaishnavi Chandrashekhar is a freelance journalist based in Mumbai, India. She previously worked with?The Christian Science Monitor?as a staff editor on the national news desk in Boston from 2008-2010. She has also worked for?The Times of India?in Mumbai and?Time Out Mumbai.?She has a master's in journalism from Columbia University.?
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Every farmer here can ? and will ? tell you about Samuel Evans Stokes, or Satyanand Stokes as he came to be known. He was an American missionary who settled in this area in the early 20th century, participated in India?s struggle for independence as a co-traveller of Mahatma Gandhi, and became the Johnny Appleseed of the northwestern Himalayas.
Stokes seeded a horticultural revolution when he planted five saplings of Red Delicious ? bought from the Starks Brothers nursery in Louisiana ? on his farm here in 1916, and helped convert locals to apple farming.
Stokes?s extraordinary journey began in turn-of-the-19th -century Philadelphia where, at a church meeting, he heard an American doctor talk about working with lepers in India. Inspired, this son of a wealthy Quaker family (the founders of the elevator manufacturers, Stokes and Parish Machine Company) gave up his post-graduate studies at Cornell University and joined the doctor on a steamship to Bombay in 1904.
For a time, according to family accounts, Stokes worked at the doctor?s home for lepers in the plains. He fell ill and was sent to recuperate in the hills near Shimla, then the summer capital of the British Raj, at a cantonment village called Kotgarh.
Smitten by Kotgarh ? which Rudyard Kipling called ?mistress of the hills? ? Stokes stayed on. He experimented with renunciation, living in a cave like an Indian sadhu, and founded the Brotherhood of Imitation of Jesus, traveling from village to village preaching. A few years later, he married an Indian woman, bought a former tea estate in Thanedar, and focused on farming. ?In 1914, he took local soil samples to America, returning with Red Delicious stocks.
Stokes spent years trying to persuade his neighbors to grow apples, giving away plants freely, says Vidya Stokes, who married Samuel Stokes?s son, Lal Chand, and is the current horticulture minister of Himachal Pradesh.
Initially, few farmers listened, she said. They knew only the cooking apples the British had brought ? Granny Smith and Pippin varieties that were too sour for Indian tastes.?
Stokes taught the boys in the school he established how to graft the plants, says Vidya Stokes. ?Their parents were skeptical, so the boys planted the saplings on the borders of their family farms,? she says.
When the first crops of Red Delicious came, however, ?everyone came to see,? she says. ?The apples were sweet. People realized they could make money from this.?
And they did ? Himachal?s apple orchards are valued today at around $550 million and provide a livelihood to more than 100,000 farmers.
Farming wasn?t the only way in which Samuel Stokes sought to help society, however. A believer in racial equality and social justice, he campaigned successfully to end a colonial system of forced labor in the hills and joined the Indian freedom struggle: signing petitions, engaging in debates on strategy with Gandhi and other nationalists, and adopting Indian clothes.
In 1921, he was the only non-Indian to be invited by Gandhi to sign a nationalist manifesto calling on Indians to quit government service ? he signed ? and was imprisoned for six months on charges of sedition.
In his later years, Samuel Stokes became more contemplative. In 1932, he and his family converted to Hindusim and changed his name to Satyanand. The temple he built ? without idols ? as well as Stokes?s home can still be seen today on his 200-acre estate in Thanedar. Most of Stokes descendants now live in America. ?
Stokes?s portrait also hangs in the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library in New Delhi, alongside pictures of Mahatma Gandhi and other leaders of the Indian independence movement.
But it?s the farmers of Himachal Pradesh who remember him ? as the man who transformed the region and their lives ? with apples from America.
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সোমবার, ২৯ এপ্রিল, ২০১৩
Pat Healy submits Jim Miller at UFC 159, but Bruce Buffer almost announces wrong winner
Jim Miller is 5-foot-8, fights at 155 lbs., and has a bushy red beard. Pat Healy is 5-foot-9, fights at 155 lbs., and sported a trimmed red beard at UFC 159. Can you blame UFC announcer Bruce Buffer for mixing them up?
Healy, who returned to the UFC after spending much of his career in Strikeforce, put Miller to sleep with a rear naked choke in the third round of their thrilling bout. As the two stood on either side of referee Herb Dean to have the fight result announced, Buffer announced the winner by submission was Jim Mill-Pat Healy!
Healy smiled and corrected Buffer, who rarely makes such errors. It was a lighthearted moment that Healy laughed about after a thrilling bout.
Miller started out landing leg kicks and used ground and pound to beat up Healy in the first round. Near the end of the round, Healy was saved by the bell as Miller's ground and pound was close to ending the bout before the horn sounded.
[Also: Two bizarre endings mar UFC 159 prelims]
It was in the third that Healy turned the bout around. Healy weakened Miller with striking, then took him down and took his back. He sunk in the rear naked choke, and Miller's arms went limp. The fight was stopped at 4:02 in the third because Miller was out.
Miller wanted to use the bout to convince UFC president Dana White that he was ready for a title shot. Instead, it was Healy who stood out. In his post-fight interview with UFC commentator, he warned other UFC lightweights to watch out because he was "putting them on blast."
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? New Cardinals DB Tyrann Mathieu continues to raise red flags
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Four arrested as Bangladesh building toll rises to 352
By Serajul Quadir and Ruma Paul
DHAKA (Reuters) - Two factory bosses and two engineers were detained in Bangladesh on Saturday, three days after the collapse of a building where low-cost garments were made for Western brands killed at least 352 people.
More were being pulled alive from the rubble at the building, where police said as many as 900 people were still missing in Bangladesh's worst ever industrial accident.
The owner of the eight-storey building that fell like a pack of cards around more than 3,000 mainly young women workers was still on the run.
Police said several of his relatives were detained to compel him to hand himself in, and an alert had gone out to airport and border authorities to prevent him from fleeing the country.
Officials said Rana Plaza, on the outskirts of the capital, Dhaka, had been built on spongy ground without the correct permits, and the workers were sent in on Wednesday despite warnings the previous day that it was structurally unsafe.
Anger at the negligence has sparked days of protests and clashes, with police on Saturday using tear gas, water cannons and rubber bullets to quell demonstrators who burned cars.
Two engineers involved in building the complex were picked up at their homes early on Saturday, Dhaka district police chief Habibur Rahman said. He said they were arrested for dismissing a warning not to open the building after a jolt was felt and cracks were noticed on some pillars the previous day.
The owner and managing director of the largest of the five factories in the complex, New Wave Style, surrendered to the country's garment industry association during the night and they were handed over to police. They will be kept in remand for an initial 12 days.
The factory, which listed many European and North American retailers as its customers, occupied upper floors of the building that officials said had been added illegally.
"PEOPLE ARE ASKING FOR HIS HEAD"
"Everyone involved - including the designer, engineer, and builders - will be arrested for putting up this defective building," said junior internal affairs minister Shamsul Huq.
Anger over the working conditions of Bangladesh's 3.6 million garment workers - most of whom are women earning as little as $38 a month - has grown since the disaster.
Hundreds were on the streets again on Saturday, smashing and burning cars and sparking more battles with police, who responded with tear gas, rubber bullets and a water cannon. Eyewitnesses said dozens of people were injured in the clashes.
An alliance of leftist parties which is part of the ruling coalition said it would call a national strike on May 2 if all those responsible for the disaster were not arrested by Sunday.
Rahman identified the owner of the building as Mohammed Sohel Rana, a leader of the ruling Awami League's youth front.
"People are asking for his head, which is quite natural," said H.T. Imam, an adviser to the prime minister.
Wednesday's collapse was the third major industrial incident in five months in Bangladesh, the second-largest exporter of garments in the world. In November, a fire at the Tazreen Fashion factory nearby the latest disaster killed 112 people.
Such incidents have raised serious questions about worker safety and low wages, and could taint the reputation of the poor South Asian country, which relies on garments for 80 percent of its exports.
The Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA) on Saturday asked garment factory owners to produce building designs by July in a bid to improve safety.
Remarkably, rescuers armed with rod cutters and drills were still pulling people alive from the precarious mound of rubble - 29 in all since dawn on Saturday.
Marina Begum, 22, spoke from a hospital bed of her ordeal inside the broken building for three days.
"It felt like I was in hell," she told reporters. "It was so hot, I could hardly breathe, there was no food and water. When I regained my senses I found myself in this hospital bed."
Frantic efforts were under way to save 15 people trapped under the concrete who were being supplied with dried food, bottled water and oxygen.
Heavy machinery will not be used to remove the remaining bodies and debris until all the survivors are rescued, junior minister for local government Jahangir Kabir Nanak said.
About 2,500 people have been rescued from the remains of the building in the commercial suburb of Savar, about 30 km (20 miles) from Dhaka.
WRONG PERMIT, ILLEGAL FLOORS
Emdadul Islam, chief engineer of the state-run Capital Development Authority (CDA), said the owner of the building had not received the proper building consent, obtaining a permit for a five-storey building from the local municipality which did not have the authority to grant it.
"Only CDA can give such approval," he said. "We are trying to get the original design from the municipality, but since the concerned official is in hiding we cannot get it readily."
Furthermore, another three storeys had been added illegally, he said. "Savar is not an industrial zone, and for that reason no factory can be housed in Rana Plaza," Islam told Reuters.
Islam said the building had been erected on the site of a pond filled in with sand and earth, weakening the foundations.
Duty free access offered by Western countries and low wages helped turn Bangladesh's garment exports into a $19 billion a year industry. Sixty percent of the clothes go to Europe. The United States takes 23 percent and Canada takes 5 percent.
North American and European chains, including British retailer Primark and Canada's Loblaw, a unit of George Weston Ltd, said they were supplied by factories in the Rana Plaza building.
Loblaw, which had a small number of "Joe Fresh" apparel items made at one of the factories, said on Saturday that it was working with other retailers to provide aid and support.
It said it was sending representatives to Bangladesh and was also joining what it described as an urgent meeting with other retailers and the Retail Council of Canada.
(Writing by John Chalmers and Frank Jack Daniel; Editing by Paul Tait and Jeremy Laurence)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/two-arrested-bangladesh-building-toll-rises-325-043614507.html
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শুক্রবার, ২৬ এপ্রিল, ২০১৩
How trees play role in smog production
Apr. 25, 2013 ? After years of scientific uncertainty and speculation, researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill show exactly how trees help create one of society's predominant environmental and health concerns: air pollution.
It has long been known that trees produce and emit isoprene, an abundant molecule in the air known to protect leaves from oxygen damage and temperature fluctuations. However, in 2004, researchers, contrary to popular assumptions, revealed that isoprene was likely involved in the production of particulate matter, tiny particles that can get lodged in lungs, lead to lung cancer and asthma, and damage other tissues, not to mention the environment.
But exactly how was anybody's guess.
Jason Surratt, assistant professor of environmental sciences and engineering at the Gillings School of Global Public Health, now reveals one mechanism by which isoprene contributes to the production of these tiny, potentially health-damaging particles.
The study found that isoprene, once it is chemically altered via exposure to the sun, reacts with human-made nitrogen oxides to create particulate matter. Nitrogen oxides are pollutants created by cars, trucks, aircrafts, coal plants and other large scale sources.
"The work presents a dramatic new wrinkle in the arguments for reducing man-made pollutants worldwide," said Surratt, whose work was published this month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "Isoprene evolved to protect trees and plants, but because of the presence of nitrogen oxides, it is involved in producing this negative effect on health and the environment."
"We certainly can't cut down all the trees," Surratt adds, "but we can work on reducing these man-made emissions to cut down the production of fine particulate matter."
With the precise mechanism now revealed, researchers can plug it into air quality models for better predicting episodes of air pollution and potential effects on earth's climate. The advance would allow researchers and environmental agencies to evaluate and make regulatory decisions that impact public health and climate change.
"We observe nature's quirks, but we must always consider that our actions do have repercussions," said Surratt. "It's the interaction between these natural and man-made emissions that produces this air pollution, smog and fine particulate matter -- and now we know one reason for how it happens."
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Story Source:
The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
- Y.-H. Lin, H. Zhang, H. O. T. Pye, Z. Zhang, W. J. Marth, S. Park, M. Arashiro, T. Cui, S. H. Budisulistiorini, K. G. Sexton, W. Vizuete, Y. Xie, D. J. Luecken, I. R. Piletic, E. O. Edney, L. J. Bartolotti, A. Gold, J. D. Surratt. Epoxide as a precursor to secondary organic aerosol formation from isoprene photooxidation in the presence of nitrogen oxides. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2013; 110 (17): 6718 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1221150110
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/strange_science/~3/nG-hIyb58dw/130425132812.htm
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Nokia hosting Lumia event on May 14th, invites us to 'see what's next'
The next couple months are gearing up to be pretty busy, and Nokia's joining the fun with a press event on May 14th. The Finnish company is putting out a rather hefty teaser to get us intrigued, stating that the Nokia Lumia story continues, and we'll get to "see what's next." The timing of this new device is rather curious, given the fact that the flagship Lumia phones typically get shown off later in the fall. Is this the rumored 41MP PureView Windows Phone we've been hoping for ever since the 808 came out? Perhaps we'll see the Lumia 928 that we hear is supposed to hit Verizon in May (though London would be an odd and unlikely locale for a US-only handset unveiling). Could it simply be a lower-end device along the lines of the 520 or 620? We doubt that as well, but either way, we'll be there to get the scoop as Mr. Elop (we'd expect) shows off the latest Windows Phone coming out of Espoo.
Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless, Mobile, Nokia
Via: TechnoBuffalo
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T-Mobile quickly gives in to WA Attorney General, agrees 'UNcarrier' is misleading to consumers
Device financing terms to be clarified going forward; some customers can leave without penalty
T-Mobile has been making some big steps towards what it calls an "UNcarrier" strategy, which clarifies device pricing, ends phone contracts and gives customers more choice in the wireless industry. In trying to reinvent its strategy, however, T-Mobile has apparently ruffled some feathers at the Washington State Attorney General's office. Attorney General Bob Ferguson claims that T-Mobile's new plan structure is deceptive, leaves unfulfilled promises, and has "duped" consumers.
Ferguson specifically takes issue with the way T-Mobile now finances devices -- with a small down payment and monthly installments -- claiming that although the carrier claims there is no commitment to the service, customers will have to stay for 24 months or "face an unanticipated balloon payment for the phone equipment". Specifically, the AG had this to say:
“My office identified that T-Mobile was failing to disclose a critical component of their new plan to consumers, and we acted quickly to stop this practice and protect consumers across the country from harm.”
Ferguson has filed a court order, which has been signed and agreed upon by T-Mobile, that will force the carrier to clarify its terms of service and stop what Ferguson calls "deceptive advertising". Under the terms of the order, T-Mobile has created a document called the "an Assurance of Discontinuance (AOD)", better laying out the terms of the new Simple Choice plans. Inside, the carrier agrees not to:
- Misrepresent consumers' obligations under its contracts, including those contracts that have not restrictions or limitations; and
- Fail to adequately disclose that customers who terminate their T-Mobile wireless service before their device is paid off will have to pay the balance due on the phone at the time of cancelation.
As part of the settlement, anyone who purchased service from T-mobile from March 26 to April 25 will be given an opportunity to leave the service agreement, with no penalty, and receive a full refund for the device and service provided they cite the terms of the new AOD.
Source: TmoNews; WA Attorney General
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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/jMG4ERw2j1c/story01.htm
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TokBox Brings WebRTC To The Cloud, Enables Multi-Party Video Chats & SIP Interop
Telefonica’s TokBox announced a huge upgrade to its OpenTok on WebRTC service today. TokBox’s new cloud-based Mantis media distribution framework is designed to overcome some of WebRTC’s limits with regard to video distribution. By default, WebRTC is a peer-to-peer platform, but that makes it hard to scale video chats beyond two participants. With Mantis, TokBox essentially puts its own cloud infrastructure in the middle of these calls and is then able to route and manage calls that include multiple participants without using a prohibitive amount of bandwidth and using a complicated mesh-based architecture. In the future, as TokBox CEO Ian Small told me earlier this week, this will also enable TokBox shape video streams according to the different users’ bandwidth conditions and the developers’ needs. “With Mantis, what we’re doing putting smarts into the WebRTC infrastructure,” Small said. “Today, we’re routing traffic. Tomorrow, we’ll shape traffic.” On cool feature Mantis already enables today is SIP interop, so developers will actually be able to write WebRTC-based apps that allow users to call in from their standard phone lines. This, for example, is useful for video conferencing services where you can now have a number of WebRTC-based video streams and a few participants on regular phone lines simultaneously. Currently, Small told me, the system scales well for chats with up to ten users. In a webinar setting where just one user is broadcasting, it can easily scale up to more than a hundred users. The company beta tested Mantis with the help of LiveNinja and Roll20. Current OpenTok developers won’t have to do anything to take advantage of the new system, given that TokBox already abstracts most of the WebRTC calls anyway. They will just have to create the topology they need for their apps (P2P, multi-party chat, etc.) and get started. It just “happens in the cloud automatically,” as Small noted, and now that it’s in the cloud, the company will be able to add many new features to its implementation in the near future. WebRTC, of course, is still in its early phases, something Small also acknowledged in our interview. In his view, we are not even in the early adopter phase right now. Instead, he believes, WebRTC is still in its experimentation and early mover phase. Once WebRTC arrives in the stable release channel of Firefox (it’s about to hit the developer channels soon and should be in theSource: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/wTQ9fSe290c/
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GigaWatch
Let's face it, any parental monitoring program that you could use to secretly track what your children are doing online could potentially be misused to snoop on your spouse, your boss, a business rival, or just about anyone. There's a bit less potential for abuse with GigaWatch, because you can only manage the monitored computer from another computer within the same local network. And, as the FAQ points out, spying on people without their knowledge is almost certainly illegal in your state.
At $44, GigaWatch is the least expensive tool of its sort that I've reviewed. Note, too, that this is a one-time fee, not a subscription. The company promises that "Over years we plan to implement new monitoring features into GigaWatch and you'll be able to receive all future updates free of charge." Getting free updates is especially good given the fact that this product needs a few tweaks.
Another similar product that sells for a one-time payment is Shield Genie, but at $149.95 it costs quite a bit more. If you want Spector Pro 2011, you'll pay $99.95 each year. The initial one-time purchase price for WebWatcher or PC Pandora 7.0 is higher than GigaWatch's price, and to get maximum performance from these two you'll pay for an ongoing subscription. GigaWatch is definitely a bargain compared with the competition.
Setting up GigaWatch
GigaWatch consists of a monitoring module and a separate administrative console. During installation you'll choose which of these to install. You can also install both on the same PC, in which case you'll want to choose stealth mode, so the administrative console doesn't give itself away. (The monitoring module is always in stealth mode.)
It's probably stealthier to install the administrative console on a different computer than the one being monitored. Note that both have to be within the same local network. After installing the administrative console, you simply probe the network to find PCs running the monitor. Yes, you can monitor multiple PCs, but you'll need a license for each.
Spector Pro also requires that the administrative console reside within the same network as the monitored computer. Shield Genie goes even further, requiring that you do all your configuration and management at the computer that's being watched. By contrast, WebWatcher lets you connect from anywhere at all; PC Pandora, too, if you pay $29.97 per month for the "Live" module.
During the installation process you'll create two passwords, one for access to the administrative console and one to let the administrative console access data on the monitored computer. Why two passwords? Well, picture a business using GigaWatch to track employees (with their knowledge, of course). Without that machine-specific password, someone else on your network could install another copy of the administrative console, probe the network with it, and hijack your monitoring sessions.
Communicating With the Monitor
From the main Configuration Manager window, you can enable or disable the nine monitoring modules. By default, all are enabled. You can also dig in and configure the settings for each monitor. When you've finished, clicking "Save & Send" both saves your changes and transmits them to the monitored computer. You can also save your changes and send later, if necessary.
Each time you open the administrative console, you must select which computer you want to view and click a button to sync in the latest data from that computer. Note that you still have to do this even if the administrative console is installed on the same computer.
Successful Stealth
In stealth mode, GigaWatch leaves no trace. There are no visible icons or menu items, and it doesn't show up in Task Manager or in the list of Startup programs. You activate the console by pressing a special key combination and entering your master password when prompted. Spector Pro, PC Pandora, and WebWatcher are likewise stealthy, and they go a bit further. On the chance that the child might accidentally hit on the special key combo, they use an anonymous, unlabeled dialog box to ask for the password. GigaWatch's name is plastered all over its popup password dialog; I'd be happier if it, too, used an anonymous login dialog.
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/Iq2ilTFo6pE/0,2817,2418008,00.asp
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বৃহস্পতিবার, ২৫ এপ্রিল, ২০১৩
3M cuts 2013 outlook on falling electronics demand
By Ernest Scheyder
(Reuters) - Diversified U.S. manufacturer 3M Co cut its 2013 profit forecast on Thursday, citing weakening demand for electronics products as well as foreign currency fluctuations.
The lowered outlook came after first-quarter profit and revenue both missed Wall Street expectations.
3M, which makes a range of products from Post-It notes to films used in television screens, blamed falling sales in its consumer electronics segment.
Executives had expected weak demand for electronic insulation, computer touch screen materials as well as fluids used to make computer chips, but they said actual sales were worse than feared.
"We expected a challenging start to the year, but in fact market conditions were tougher than we had expected," Chief Executive Inge Thulin said on a conference call with investors.
While a 56 percent drop in pension payments boosted first-quarter margins, analysts were wary as margin strength wasn't more reliant on higher sales.
Additionally, the company changed its reporting segments on January 1, making it difficult for analysts to compare performance to prior years and track results, William Blair & Co analyst Nick Heymann said.
"This is a little more complex than normal," Heymann said.
3M now expects to earn $6.60 to $6.85 per share this year, a range mostly below the $6.82 average analyst estimate, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
3M previously had expected to earn $6.70 to $6.95 per share this year.
Also, the rising value of the U.S. dollar compared to other global currencies harmed results, executives said. Before, the company had not expected foreign currency changes to harm 2013 results, but now it was seen cutting revenue by 1.5 percent.
Its stock dropped 3.5 percent to $104.09 in mid-morning trading. It has gained about 16 percent this year, outpacing the Dow Jones industrial average's roughly 12 percent rise.
REVENUE RISES
St. Paul, Minnesota-based 3M posted first-quarter profit of $1.13 billion, or $1.61 per share, compared with $1.13 billion, or $1.59 per share, in the year-earlier period.
Profit per share missed analysts' estimates of $1.65. The number of outstanding shares fell, boosting the most recent earnings per share.
Revenue rose 2 percent to $7.63 billion, missing the $7.81 billion estimate from analysts.
Thulin, who took the top job last year, began a restructuring in January. He merged 3M's security and traffic-safety units, eliminating about 300 jobs, and identified other units that 3M would need to fix, sell or close.
Thulin has said 3M needs to prune its broad portfolio of products, and likely to focus on fewer but larger takeovers.
(Reporting by Ernest Scheyder; Editing by Gerald E. McCormick, Maureen Bavdek and Jeffrey Benkoe)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/3m-quarterly-profit-slightly-2013-outlook-cut-115703087--sector.html
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RI lawmakers to vote on gay marriage
FILE - In this Jan. 15, 2013 file photo, Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee testifies in support of same-sex marriage before the House Judiciary Committee, at the Statehouse, in Providence, R.I. Following months of review and debate, the Rhode Island state Senate is set to vote on gay marriage legislation Wednesday afternoon, April 24, 2013. The bill easily passed the House in January. (AP Photo/Steven Senne, File)
FILE - In this Jan. 15, 2013 file photo, Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee testifies in support of same-sex marriage before the House Judiciary Committee, at the Statehouse, in Providence, R.I. Following months of review and debate, the Rhode Island state Senate is set to vote on gay marriage legislation Wednesday afternoon, April 24, 2013. The bill easily passed the House in January. (AP Photo/Steven Senne, File)
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) ? State lawmakers in Rhode Island could decide whether the nation's smallest state becomes the 10th to allow gay and lesbian couples to marry.
Following months of review and debate, the state Senate is set to vote on gay marriage legislation Wednesday afternoon. The bill easily passed the House in January and has the support of independent Gov. Lincoln Chafee.
Gay marriage legislation has been introduced in Rhode Island's General Assembly for nearly two decades only to languish on the legislative agenda. Heavily Catholic Rhode Island is now the only state in New England that does not allow same-sex couples to marry. Gay marriage is law in nine states and the District of Columbia.
Wednesday's vote comes after the Senate Judiciary Committee voted 7-4 Tuesday to forward the legislation to the Senate floor. Dozens of supporters cheered and cried following the vote. Ken Fish, a 70-year-old gay man from Warwick, said he watched the committee vote with a mixture of disbelief and elation.
"It's almost unreal to think we're here, after all these years," he said. "I wasn't sure we'd ever get here."
If the bill passes the Senate it must return to the House for a largely procedural vote on small changes made to the bill on the Senate side. House Speaker Gordon Fox, D-Providence, said a final vote could come as early as next week.
Support for the bill has grown since it passed the House in January. On Tuesday, the Senate's five Republicans announced they would all support the legislation, further improving the bill's chances.
"We've got one more step, but I expect it to pass with overwhelming support," said Sen. Dawson Hodgson, R-North Kingstown.
Opponents aren't giving up on efforts to turn back the legislation. Sen. Harold Metts, D-Providence, said he planned to fast and pray ahead of Wednesday's debate.
"Culture may change, but God has an immutable character," he said. "I'll be praying all night."
Chafee encouraged supporters to contact their senators ahead of the vote but signaled that he thinks the bill will pass, saying in a statement that "I believe that when the roll is called, marriage equality will become law in Rhode Island."
The Senate has long been seen as the true test for gay marriage in Rhode Island. Two years ago, gay marriage legislation languished after it became apparent it would be defeated in the Senate. Senate President Teresa Paiva Weed, D-Newport, opposes the bill but has vowed not to obstruct debate.
The Rhode Island legislation states that religious institutions may set their own rules for who is eligible to marry within their faith and specifies that no religious leader is obligated to officiate at any marriage ceremony. While ministers already cannot be forced to marry anyone, the exemption helped assuage concerns from some lawmakers that clergy could face lawsuits for abiding by their religious convictions.
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Stern to 'AGT' judges: 'I'm the star of this show!'
By Ashley Majeski, TODAY contributor
Jason Decrow / AP
?America?s Got Talent? fans can expect to see quite a few changes when the show returns next month. From its new location at Radio City Music Hall in New York, to the addition of judges Mel B and Heidi Klum, it promises to be ?bigger and better than any season" before -- at least that's what judge Howie Mandel said during a panel discussion at the NBC Summer Press Day on Monday.
But while changes are in store, returning judge Howard Stern wanted to make it clear to his new co-stars that one thing is going to stay the same.
?I?m the star of this show,? he said.
Stern was certainly the star of the panel discussion, playfully ribbing Klum for getting the lion?s share of the audience questions.
"(Host) Nick (Cannon) is married to Mariah Carey,? Stern told the audience. ?There are questions to be asked. I have about 50 of them! I'm only answering Heidi questions. Why don't you ask me what it's like to be a mom?"
After Klum explained how she managed to juggle the "AGT," in addition to her ?Project Runway? hosting duties and motherhood, Stern was ready with a few more zingers.
?You're gonna judge, but you're gonna be neglecting your children," he told her.? ?Something?s got to give. You're gonna bring the kids while we're doing the show? All, like, ten of them? That's gonna be fun.?
Klum (who, for the record, only has four kids) seemed unfazed by Stern?s jokes. The former model was eager to let the audience know what she would be bringing to the judging table.
"I feel like I've seen things all over the world,? she said. ?Being married to a musician for eight years, I've seen a lot of things, (and) I want to tell everyone how they're doing. I think it's part of my personality too."
In addition to the new four-judge format, "America's Got Talent" executive producer Sam Donnelly said that viewers will see other modifications this season.
"We're making some changes around the way we do storytelling,? she said. ?They're all subtle changes rather than actual big format ones. Generally it's a freshening up of how we tell stories, some backstage reality. We get to some of these guys (the judges) in more candid moments, which will be interesting. They don't know that yet."
One of the biggest changes will be how the judges' votes will work. With four judges on the panel rather than three, a contestant will now be required to get three ?yes? votes in order to move onto the next round.
?If there are two and two -- two people like the performance and two people don?t like it, that?s a no,? Mandel explained. ?You have to have three ?yes? votes to get through.?
?They?ve also given me complete veto power over the rest of the judges,? Stern teased. ?And I?m going to be topless. Everyone?s thrilled about that.?
While the new season of ?AGT? will be different than any before it, Stern sees no reason to alter the way he presents himself on the show.
?"I'm not bringing anything different,? he said. ?I'm an honest judge; you saw how good I was last season. I'm going to take these six- and seven-year-olds and make them cry!"
?America?s Got Talent? returns to NBC at 9 p.m. on June 4.
Are you looking forward to seeing the new judges in action? Share your thoughts on our Facebook page.
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Giza Secret Revealed: How 10,000 Pyramid Builders Got Fed
The builders of the famous Giza pyramids in Egypt feasted on food from a massive catering-type operation, the remains of which scientists have discovered at a workers' town near the pyramids.
The workers' town is located about 1,300 feet (400 meters) south of the Sphinx, and was used to house workers building the pyramid of pharaoh Menkaure, the third and last pyramid on the Giza plateau. The site is also known by its Arabic name, Heit el-Ghurab, and is sometimes called "the Lost City of the Pyramid Builders."
So far, researchers have discovered a nearby cemetery with bodies of pyramid builders; a corral with possible slaughter areas on the southern edge of workers' town; and piles of animal bones.
Based on animal bone findings, nutritional data, and other discoveries at this workers' town site, the archaeologists estimate that more than 4,000 pounds of meat ? from cattle, sheep and goats ? were slaughtered every day, on average, to feed the pyramid builders. [See Photos of the Unearthed Giza Pyramid Site]
This meat-rich diet, along with the availability of medical care (the skeletons of some workers show healed bones), would have been an additional lure for ancient Egyptians to work on the pyramids.
"People were taken care of, and they were well fed when they were down there working, so there would have been an attractiveness to that," said Richard Redding, chief research officer at Ancient Egypt Research Associates (AERA), a group that has been excavating and studying the workers' town site for about 25 years.
"They probably got a much better diet than they got in their village," Redding told LiveScience.
Feeding the Giza work force
At the workers' town, which was likely occupied for 35 years, researchers have discovered a plethora of animal bones. Although the researchers are still unsure of the exact number of bones, Redding estimates he has identified about 25,000 sheep and goats, 8,000 cattle and 1,000 pig bones, he wrote in a paper published in the book "Proceedings of the 10th Meeting of the ICAZ Working Group 'Archaeozoology of southwest Asia and adjacent Areas'" (Peeters Publishing, 2013).
About 10,000 workers helped build the Menkaure pyramid, with a smaller work force present year-round to cut stones and complete preparation and survey work, the AERA team estimates. This smaller work force would have ramped up for a few months starting around July of each year. "What they would do is, for about four or five months a year, they would bring in a big work force to move blocks, and they would do nothing but move blocks," explained Redding, who is also a research scientist at the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology and a member of the faculty at the University of Michigan. [In Photos: The Beautiful Pyramids of Sudan]
Needless to say, pyramid building is hard work. The workers would need at least 45 to 50 grams of protein a day, Redding said. Half of this protein would likely come from fish, beans, lentils and other non-meat sources, while the other half would come from sheep, goat and cattle, he estimated. Milk and cheese were probably not consumed due to transportation problems and the cattle's low milk yield during that time, Redding said.
Combining these requirements and other protein sources with the ratio of the bones (and the amount of meat and protein one can get from an animal), Redding determined about 11 cattle and 37 sheep or goats were consumed each day.
?This would be in addition to supplying workers with grain, beer and other products.
Vast herds ... and herders
In order to maintain this level of slaughter, the ancient Egyptians would have needed a herd of 21,900 cattle and 54,750 sheep and goats just to keep up regular delivery to the Giza workers, Redding estimates.
The animals alone would need about 155 square miles (401 square kilometers) of territory to graze. Add in fallow land, waste land, settlements and agricultural land for the herders, and this number triples to about 465 square miles (1,205 square km) of land ? an area about the size of modern-day Los Angeles. Even so, this area would take up just about 5 percent of the present-day Nile Delta.
These animals also needed herders ? likely one herder for every six cattle and one herder for every 50 sheep or goats, based on ethnographic observations. This brings the total number of herders to 3,650 overall and, once their families are included, 18,980, just under 2 percent of Egypt's estimated population at the time.
These herds would have been spread out in villages across the Nile Delta, then brought to the workers' town at Giza to be slaughtered and cooked. At the end of their lives, the animals were likely kept in the southern part of the town, in a recently unearthed structure that researchers have dubbed the "OK corral." ("OK" stands for "Old Kingdom," the time period in which the Giza pyramids were built.) The structure, which includes two small enclosures where animals may have been slaughtered and a rounded pen, is partly hidden under a modern-day soccer field. [Image Gallery: Amazing Egyptian Discoveries]
The boss eats the beef
The research revealed interesting details about life in the workers' town. For instance, the overseers ? who lived in a structure the archaeologists call the "north street gatehouse" ? got to eat the most cattle, and those living in an area called the "galleries," where the everyday workers lived, ate mainly sheep and goats.
Redding said it wasn?t surprising that the overseers preferred to dine on beef, considering it was the most valued meat in ancient Egypt. "Cattle is, of course, the highest-status meat," he said, noting that it appears far more frequently then sheep or goat in tomb scenes, and that pigs never appear in tomb scenes.
The settlement located adjacent to the workers' town, dubbed "eastern town," wasn't as rigidly planned as workers' town, and its residents were eating a considerable number of pigs, the researchers found. Evidence also suggested the people in eastern town were trading with people in workers' town for hippo-tusk fragments.
These finds suggest that the residents of the eastern town were not as directly involved in pyramid building and had a special relationship with the pyramid workers.
"They were not provisioned; they were not given their meat and food every day," like those in the workers' town were, Redding said. "It's more of a typical urban farming settlement, and there was a symbiotic relationship between the two ?probably," he said.
Future discoveries at Giza
Research at workers' town suggests that not all the workers lived there and some may have actually camped out near the Giza pyramids.
"What we think now is ? and this is something we're going to be coming out with in the next little while ? is that, more likely, it was a large portion of the work force, the more skilled laborers [living at workers' town], and that there were temporary camps up by the pyramids where the temporary workers who came in would be housed," he said.
"They probably (didn?t) need much in the way of housing; they would need more shade than anything else. They wouldn't need any kind of warmth because it wouldn't be winter."
Future studies will look for the remains of the workers' towns of Khufu and Khafre, the two other pharaohs who built pyramids at Giza. A dump area, investigated in the 1950s, may hold them; seal impressions found at the dump have the rulers' names on them.
"What we think was going on was that Menkaure came along, he establishes his reign, he leveled that whole area and he took all the levelling debris, took it to the top of the hill and threw it over the back in a big dump," Redding said.
"That dump on the back side of the ridge may represent a remnant of Khufu and Khafre's construction's town," Redding said, adding that he hopes new excavations will begin on the dump in the next year or two.?
Follow us @livescience, Facebook& Google+. Original article on?LiveScience.com.
Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Source: http://news.yahoo.com/giza-secret-revealed-10-000-pyramid-builders-got-125146214.html
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Blast zone slowly comes back to life
Jessica Rinaldi/Reuters
People are escorted across Boylston Street on April 23 as residents and business owners are allowed to return to the street for the first time since the Boston Marathon bombings.
By Matthew DeLuca, Staff Writer, NBC News
BOSTON ? A week and a day after the Boston Marathon bombings, business owners and residents began to return Tuesday to the six-block, cordoned-off area of the attack that investigators painstakingly scoured for evidence.
It has been a long wait for Joy Lee and her employees at Samurai Boston, a store near the race?s finish line on Boylston Street. ?Lee said she has been unable to get to tax and payroll documents since the bombings and she missed a deadline to file meal taxes. Even her car has been blocked off behind the police barriers still decorated with flowers and messages of support.
"We have all the employees text messaging me every single day," Lee said as she waited to return to her business in a steady drizzle Tuesday. "They?re all looking for jobs. They have to pay the rent."
Lee said she would take two employees with her back into the restaurant Tuesday to clean up and clear food gone bad from the refrigerators. She was one of many Boylston business owners expected to show up at the Hynes Convention Center to re-enter their shops under a staggered schedule laid out by the city.
Boston Mayor Thomas Menino?s office released a plan Monday night to bring Boylston back to life after investigators handed the site back to the city in a brief ceremony. The plan allowed residents and business owners with essential staff to return to return block-by-block from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Tuesday. The city has not yet announced when the street will be reopened to the public.
At the barricades on Clarendon and Boylston streets, where police allowed pedestrians and vehicles to pass Tuesday, a man and woman in running gear shared a long embrace before jogging away.
Makeshift memorials remain, many of them bearing the names of the victims killed in the attack ? Krystle Campbell, Martin Richard, and Lu Lingzi ? as well as that of Sean Collier, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer believed to have been slain Thursday by the alleged bombers.
The prolonged closure may have untold long-term effects for some businesses in the area, but some Bostonians said Tuesday they?ll dig into their own pockets to ensure the shops and restaurants that line the area around the marathon?s finish line make a strong comeback.
"I already made a reservation at Atlantic Fish Company," said Dan Gross, 30, an account executive at an advertising agency near Boylston. He is booked for 8:15 p.m. on Wednesday, and says if they?re serving, he?ll be there.
The restaurant said that it remained closed "until further notice" in a statement on its website Tuesday.
"I think everyone should just get back there and support the businesses," Gross said. "They lost a lot."
John Berosh, 46, heard the first explosion from his office on the 22nd floor of an office building overlooking the race.
"I knew something wasn?t right," said the software engineer, an 18-year resident of the city. "I went to the window and saw a huge, hideous cloud of smoke coming up from the street." Then he saw the second bomb go off.
Berosh, who said he watches the marathon from his office most years, said he?s ready for Boylston to get back to its usual bustle.
"I am very excited," he said. "I am very proud to tell you that I was here at work last Thursday and Friday, just to hold the door for someone, smile at someone.?
But like Lee, who?s worried about helping her employees make their rents, Berosh said it?s not just the business owners who have been set back by the closure.
"Tip your waiters," Berosh said.
An electronics repair store called iFixYouri on adjacent Newbury Street was shut for several days after the bombings.
"We?re a small, family-run company, and the impact of what happened last week has been significant," said Michelle Zausnig, vice president of marketing for the Florida-based company. ?Being shut down, it impacted us as a small business because we don?t have unlimited resources."
The store saw a return to regular business when it re-opened last Friday.
"We?re expecting to rise again, just like the city," Zausnig said.
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Stream Your Own Internet Radio Station With Grooveshark Broadcast
This player is used on Facebook and anytime it's embedded outside of our sites.
?In the glory days of radio, a DJ could launch a musician?s career with the spin of a record. That same power of individually-curated music discovery is at the root of Broadcast, a new Web application that allows anyone to stream their own online radio show live to a global audience.
Broadcast is part of Grooveshark, a music streaming service founded in 2006. Grooveshark sports a music library of more than 15 million songs, and this sizable library is where users pull tracks to use in their Broadcasts. Unlike streaming giants Rdio and Spotify, Grooveshark allows users to upload their own music files to the service?s library, an ability that has gotten the company into some long-term (and ongoing) legal disputes with record companies. It also makes for a highly diverse music library, featuring rare tracks from international artists and unsigned bands.?
Hands-On with Broadcast
We were excited to give Broadcast a spin. What music fan?doesn?t?relish the chance to share their amazing musical taste with an audience? We fired up the preview version of Grooveshark with Broadcast and hit the Start Broadcasting button to the left of the player controls near the bottom of the screen. We found we were able to get our own station up and running in under a minute.
MORE: 5 Best Headphones with Their Own Apps
We were prompted to title our Broadcast and give it a genre and description so other users could find it. Broadcasts are completely public and can be joined by anyone else using the service.
To get our Broadcast started, we used the Add Song search tool to find a few tracks to kick off our hot new radio show. Searching by title, artist or album triggered a drop-down menu of search results, with the option to add the tracks to our queue. We added a few songs, and just like that our music choices were being broadcast live over the Internet to anyone who cared to listen, which, at first, was no one.
Broadcasting music in an empty room isn?t much fun, so we brought some of our Laptop coworkers in to check out the social experience. The Broadcast interface is designed to encourage interaction between listeners and the person running the show, and a few handy tools make it easy for listeners to chat and search the Grooveshark library to suggest tracks. Once a track is suggested, the DJ can instantly add it to the Broadcast?s queue.
We were impressed by how much flexibility Broadcast?s interface offered. It?s easy to rearrange your queue on the fly so you can curate the mood of your room. Listeners are able to see the songs that have been suggested, and can vote these songs up or down. The songs that have been voted up appear at the top of the suggestion queue, so they?re more likely to be approved by the DJ. We only had eight people in our room and suggestions still came in faster than we could approve them, so the need for a rating system for suggestions quickly became clear. It?s a thoughtful touch and is a great way for listeners to help moderate the feel of a room.
Broadcast holds a lot of potential as a tool for bands and podcasters who want to develop their?audience. Broadcasters can currently record up to 30 seconds of audio from within the Broadcast interface to include in their queues, and we can see how the ability to record longer stretches of audio could lead to meticulously produced Broadcasts complete with station IDs, commentary between songs and even interviews with artists. We can imagine musicians launching their albums on this service so they can share in a social?listening?experience with their fans.
Broadcast launches today at preview.grooveshark.com and is available for anyone with a Grooveshark account (you can sign up for free).
Follow Ana Hurka-Robles on Twitter and Google+. Follow LAPTOPMAG on Twitter, Google+ or Facebook.
Source: http://blog.laptopmag.com/stream-your-own-internet-radio-station-with-grooveshark-broadcast
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Galaxy goes green in burning stellar fuel
Apr. 23, 2013 ? Astronomers have spotted the "greenest" of galaxies, one that converts fuel into stars with almost 100-percent efficiency.
The findings come from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and the IRAM Plateau de Bure interferometer in the French Alps.
"This galaxy is remarkably efficient," said Jim Geach of McGill University in Canada, lead author of a new study appearing in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. "It's converting its gas supply into new stars at the maximum rate thought possible."
Stars are formed out of collapsing clouds of gas in galaxies. In a typical galaxy, like the Milky Way, only a fraction of the total gas supply is actively forming stars, with the bulk of the fuel lying dormant. The gas is distributed widely throughout the galaxy, with most of the new stars being formed within discrete, dense 'knots' in the spiral arms.
In the galaxy, called SDSSJ1506+54, nearly all of the gas has been driven to the central core of the galaxy, where it has ignited in a powerful burst of star formation.
"We are seeing a rare phase of evolution that is the most extreme -- and most efficient -- yet observed," said Geach.
The results will provide a better understanding of how the central star-forming regions of galaxies take shape.
SDSSJ1506+54 jumped out at the researchers when they looked at it using data from WISE's all-sky infrared survey. Infrared light is pouring out of the galaxy, equivalent to more than a thousand billion times the energy of our sun. The galaxy is so distant it has taken the light nearly six billion years to reach us.
"Because WISE scanned the entire sky, it detected rare galaxies like this one that stand out from the rest," said Ned Wright of UCLA, the WISE principal investigator.
Hubble's visible-light observations revealed that the galaxy is extremely compact, with most of its light emanating from a region just a few hundred light-years across. That's a big star-making punch for such a little size.
"While this galaxy is forming stars at a rate hundreds of times faster than our Milky Way galaxy, the sharp vision of Hubble revealed that the majority of the galaxy's starlight is being emitted by a region with a diameter just a few percent that of the Milky Way," said Geach.
The team then used the IRAM Plateau de Bure Interferometer to measure the amount of gas in the galaxy. The ground-based telescope detected millimeter-wave light coming from carbon monoxide, an indicator of the presence of hydrogen gas, which is fuel for stars. Combining the rate of star formation derived with WISE, and the gas mass measured by IRAM, the scientists get a measure of the star-formation efficiency.
In regions of galaxies where new stars are forming, parts of gas clouds are collapsing due to gravity. When the gas is dense enough to squeeze atoms together and ignite nuclear fusion, a star is born. But this process can be halted by other newborn stars, as their winds and radiation blow the gas outward. The point at which this occurs sets the theoretical maximum for star formation. The galaxy SDSSJ1506+54 was found to be making stars right at this point, just before the gas clouds would otherwise be blown apart.
"We see some gas outflowing from this galaxy at millions of miles per hour, and this gas may have been blown away by the powerful radiation from the newly formed stars," said Ryan Hickox, an astrophysicist at Dartmouth College, Hanover, N.H., and a co-author on the study.
Why is SDSSJ1506+54 so unusual? Astronomers say they're catching the galaxy in a short-lived phase of evolution, possibly triggered by the merging of two galaxies into one. The star formation is so prolific that in a few tens of millions of years, the blink of an eye in a galaxy's life, the gas will be used up, and SDSSJ1506+54 will mature into a massive elliptical galaxy.
The scientists also used data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, the W.M. Keck Observatory on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, and the MMT Observatory on Mount Hopkins, Arizona.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
- J. E. Geach, R. C. Hickox, A. M. Diamond-Stanic, M. Krips, J. Moustakas, C. A. Tremonti, A. L. Coil, P. H. Sell, G. H. Rudnick. A REDLINE STARBURST: CO(2-1) OBSERVATIONS OF AN EDDINGTON-LIMITED GALAXY REVEAL STAR FORMATION AT ITS MOST EXTREME. The Astrophysical Journal, 2013; 767 (1): L17 DOI: 10.1088/2041-8205/767/1/L17
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/space_time/nasa/~3/rDyS8XB5HOM/130423153744.htm
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Stem cell transplant restores memory, learning in mice
Apr. 21, 2013 ? For the first time, human embryonic stem cells have been transformed into nerve cells that helped mice regain the ability to learn and remember.
A study at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is the first to show that human stem cells can successfully implant themselves in the brain and then heal neurological deficits, says senior author Su-Chun Zhang, a professor of neuroscience and neurology.
Once inside the mouse brain, the implanted stem cells formed two common, vital types of neurons, which communicate with the chemicals GABA or acetylcholine. "These two neuron types are involved in many kinds of human behavior, emotions, learning, memory, addiction and many other psychiatric issues," says Zhang.
The human embryonic stem cells were cultured in the lab, using chemicals that are known to promote development into nerve cells -- a field that Zhang has helped pioneer for 15 years. The mice were a special strain that do not reject transplants from other species.
After the transplant, the mice scored significantly better on common tests of learning and memory in mice. For example, they were more adept in the water maze test, which challenged them to remember the location of a hidden platform in a pool.
The study began with deliberate damage to a part of the brain that is involved in learning and memory.
Three measures were critical to success, says Zhang: location, timing and purity. "Developing brain cells get their signals from the tissue that they reside in, and the location in the brain we chose directed these cells to form both GABA and cholinergic neurons."
The initial destruction was in an area called the medial septum, which connects to the hippocampus by GABA and cholinergic neurons. "This circuitry is fundamental to our ability to learn and remember," says Zhang.
The transplanted cells, however, were placed in the hippocampus -- a vital memory center -- at the other end of those memory circuits. After the transferred cells were implanted, in response to chemical directions from the brain, they started to specialize and connect to the appropriate cells in the hippocampus.
The process is akin to removing a section of telephone cable, Zhang says. If you can find the correct route, you could wire the replacement from either end.
For the study, published in the current issue of Nature Biotechnology, Zhang and first author Yan Liu, a postdoctoral associate at the Waisman Center on campus, chemically directed the human embryonic stem cells to begin differentiation into neural cells, and then injected those intermediate cells. Ushering the cells through partial specialization prevented the formation of unwanted cell types in the mice.
Ensuring that nearly all of the transplanted cells became neural cells was critical, Zhang says. "That means you are able to predict what the progeny will be, and for any future use in therapy, you reduce the chance of injecting stem cells that could form tumors. In many other transplant experiments, injecting early progenitor cells resulted in masses of cells -- tumors. This didn't happen in our case because the transplanted cells are pure and committed to a particular fate so that they do not generate anything else. We need to be sure we do not inject the seeds of cancer."
Brain repair through cell replacement is a Holy Grail of stem cell transplant, and the two cell types are both critical to brain function, Zhang says. "Cholinergic neurons are involved in Alzheimer's and Down syndrome, but GABA neurons are involved in many additional disorders, including schizophrenia, epilepsy, depression and addiction."
Though tantalizing, stem-cell therapy is unlikely to be the immediate benefit. Zhang notes that "for many psychiatric disorders, you don't know which part of the brain has gone wrong." The new study, he says, is more likely to see immediate application in creating models for drug screening and discovery.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Wisconsin-Madison. The original article was written by David Tenenbaum.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
- Yan Liu, Jason P Weick, Huisheng Liu, Robert Krencik, Xiaoqing Zhang, Lixiang Ma, Guo-min Zhou, Melvin Ayala, Su-Chun Zhang. Medial ganglionic eminence?like cells derived from human embryonic stem cells correct learning and memory deficits. Nature Biotechnology, 2013; DOI: 10.1038/nbt.2565
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_health/~3/Dn4FJ19YaLw/130421151613.htm
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