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There's enough real evidence supporting the theory that Kubrick was a genius, and that's pretty entertaining all by itself.
It's about the human need for stuff to make sense - especially overpowering emotional experiences - and the tendency for some people to take that sense-making to extremes.
The results can range from enlightening - Kubrick did like to mess with things - to embarrassing. But it's never dull. "Room 237" shines.
You don't have to buy any of the nutty theories in Room 237 to appreciate what director Rodney Ascher has accomplished.
It's nuts, in the best possible way.
Their imaginings are not far removed from the deconstuctionist gobbledygook that has hammerlocked academic film and literary scholarship. But here at least the gobbledygook is entertaining.
You know when "Room 237? starts getting really scary? When the people in the film start making sense.
Kubrick fans and movie geeks will want to check this film out as soon as possible
Kubrick fans will take 'Shining' to 'Room 237.'
The credibility of these theories ranges from faintly plausible to frankly ridiculous, but Ascher isn't interested in judging them; his movie is more about the joys of deconstruction and the special kind of obsession that movies can inspire.
Some of the interpretations seem more of a stretch than others but all are entertainingly presented by director Rodney Ascher. (The movie) serves as a testament to Stanley Kubrick's cinematic mastery.
As fascinating as it is frustrating
It is nice to see a doc that makes you smile instead of making you angry. Anyone who is a fan of Stanley Kubrick will eat this up.
Powered by a deep and abiding affection for both The Shining and Kubrick in general, Room 237 is an amuse-bouche of remix culture.
Room 237 is an extended riff of the "Paul is dead" variety. But, you know what? Sometimes a guy moving a table in the background is just a guy moving a table in the background.
A diverting excursion for lovers of Kubrick's films...even if, at over a hundred minutes, it does go on a bit long.
A fascinating doc that will get both film geeks and conspiracy theorists alike drooling, it all but guarantees you'll never watch The Shining quite the same way again.
Confounding, eye-opening, and often hilarious.
I suspect that Ascher's intention was to dynamize an academic exercise, but these constant, sundry inserts render the tone as corny and glib as a VH1 special.
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SAN FRANCISCO (AP) ? Racing to stanch a flow of criticism, the president of San Francisco's annual gay pride celebration said Friday that the U.S. Army private charged in a massive leak of U.S. secrets to the WikiLeaks website will not be an honorary grand marshal after all.
SF Pride Board President Lisa Williams said in a statement that an employee of the organization had prematurely notified imprisoned intelligence specialist Bradley Manning this week that he had been selected for the distinction, which recognizes about a dozen celebrities, politicians and community organizations each year for their contributions to the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender communities.
"That was an error, and that person has been disciplined. He does not now, nor did he at that time, speak for SF Pride," Williams said.
A committee of former San Francisco Pride grand marshals did select the 25-year-old Manning, who is openly gay, for the honor, but the Pride Board decided his nomination would be a mistake, Williams said.
Manning's lawyers have argued that his experience as a soldier before the repeal of the U.S. military's ban on gay service played an important role in his decision to pass hundreds of thousands of sensitive items to the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks.
"In point of fact, less than 15 people actually cast votes for Bradley Manning," Williams said. "However, as an organization with a responsibility to serve the broader community, SF Pride repudiates this vote."
While the event's grand marshals are typically celebrated as they wave from convertibles during a downtown San Francisco parade, naming Manning as one was destined to be a symbolic gesture. He is in custody at a military prison in Kansas while he awaits court-martial and would have been unable to attend the June 30 parade.
Earlier Friday, Daniel Ellsberg, the former military analyst who in 1971 leaked the classified information about the Vietnam War that became known as the Pentagon Papers, had agreed to participate in the San Francisco parade on Manning's behalf, said Rainey Reitman, a member of the Bradley Manning Support Network who had cheered the short-lived recognition.
"I and many other LGBT Manning supporters are deeply disappointed by this sudden change in position on the part of the committee," Reitman said. "Bradley is a gay American hero who sacrificed a great deal so we could learn the truth about our government, and he was fairly elected to serve as grand marshal in the parade."
Contingents of Manning supporters have marched in past pride parades, and will do so again this year in San Francisco, Chicago, San Diego and other cities, she said.
But other gay rights activists were less enthusiastic about celebrating Manning, arguing that he should not be honored either as an individual or as a representative of the gay rights movement.
"Manning's blatant disregard for the safety of our service members and the security of our nation should not be praised," said Stephen Peters, president of American Military Partners Association. The group, which advocates for same-sex military families, had called on the Pride Committee to rescind the invitation.
"No community of such a strong and resilient people should be represented by the treacherous acts that define Bradley Manning," Peters said.
The grand Mycenaens, the first Greeks, inspired the legends of the Trojan Wars, "The Iliad" and "The Odyssey." Their culture abruptly declined around 1200 B.C., marking the start of a Dark Ages in Greece.
The disappearance of the Mycenaens is a Mediterranean mystery. Leading explanations include warfare with invaders or uprising by lower classes. Some scientists also think one of the country's frequent earthquakes could have contributed to the culture's collapse. At the ruins of Tiryns, a fortified palace, geologists hope to find evidence to confirm whether an earthquake was a likely culprit.
Tiryns was one of the great Mycenaean cities. Atop a limestone hill, the city-state's king built a palace with walls so thick they were called Cyclopean, because only the one-eyed monster could have carried the massive limestone blocks. The walls were about 30 feet (10 meters) high and 26 feet (8 m) wide, with blocks weighing 13 tons, said Klaus-G. Hinzen, a seismologist at the University of Cologne in Germany and project leader. He presented his team's preliminary results April 19 at the Seismological Society of America's annual meeting in Salt Lake City. [History's Most Overlooked Mysteries]
Hinzen and his colleagues have created a 3D model of Tiryns based on laser scans of the remaining structures. Their goal is to determine if the walls' collapse could only have been caused by an earthquake. Geophysical scanning of the sediment and rock layers beneath the surface will provide information for engineering studies on how the ground would shake in a temblor.
The work is complex, because many blocks were moved by amateur archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann in 1884 and later 20th-century restorations, Hinzen said. By combing through historic photos, the team found unaltered wall sections to test. They also hope to use a technique called optical luminescence dating on soil under the blocks, which could reveal whether the walls toppled all at the same time, as during an earthquake.
"This is really a challenge because of the alterations. We want to take a careful look at the original conditions," Hinzen told OurAmazingPlanet.
Another hurdle: finding the killer quake. There are no written records from the Mycenaean decline that describe a major earthquake, nor oral folklore. Hinzen also said compared with other areas of Greece, the region has relatively few active faults nearby. "There is no evidence for an earthquake at this time, but there was strong activity at the subduction zone nearby," he said.
The Mycenaean preference to place their fortresses atop limestone hills surrounded by sediment would concentrate shaking, even from distant earthquakes, Hinzen said. "The [seismic] waves get trapped in the outcrop and this can do a lot of damage. They are on very vulnerable sites," he said.
The researchers also plan to study the ancient Mycenaean city of Midea. The group has done similar work investigating ancient earthquakes in Turkey, Germany and Rome.
Email Becky Oskin or follow her @beckyoskin. Follow us?@OAPlanet, Facebook?& Google+. Original article on LiveScience's OurAmazingPlanet.
Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
PICT, a San Francisco-based startup that has built a "shoppable photo" technology platform for brands and retailers that embeds smart watermarks into images, is emerging a bit out of stealth mode today with the beta launch of the newest version of its mobile and web app. The company, which we first met as "Dropt" when it graduated out of the AngelPad accelerator last year, is also announcing today that it has raised $1.4 million in seed funding. PICT's investors include some big names in the tech and retail worlds: Christ Sacca's Lowercase Capital, Kirsten Green's Forerunner Ventures, New York fashion designer and businessman Steven Alan, Opus Capital, Angelpad, 500 Startups, Gary Vaynerchuk, Scott Belsky, and Seth Berman, among others.
(Reuters) - Charges that Syria has used the chemical weapon sarin have raised questions about the nerve agent, how it kills and what level of evidence it will take to prove it was used on the Syrian people.
WHAT IS SARIN?
Sarin is a man-made nerve gas that was originally developed as a pesticide in Germany in 1938. It is chemically similar to a class of pesticides known as organophosphates.
Sarin, also known as GB, is part of a class of chemical weapons called G-series nerve agents that were developed during World War Two and were named for the German scientists who synthesized them. Other agents in the class include tabun, soman and cyclosarin.
At room temperature, G-series nerve agents are volatile liquids, with sarin being the most volatile.
Sarin is a clear, colorless and tasteless liquid that has no odor in its pure form. It is made up of four common chemical compounds: dimethyl methylphosphonate, phosphorus trichloride, sodium fluoride and alcohol.
Exposure usually occurs when the liquid form comes in contact with the skin or the agent is released as a vapor.
WHEN HAS IT BEEN USED?
Sarin and other nerve agents may have been used in chemical warfare during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s.
The Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo used sarin in two attacks in Japan. In 1994, the group released sarin gas in Matsumoto in central Japan, in a failed attempt to kill three judges. In that attack, the group used a refrigerator truck to release the nerve agent and a wind dispersed the gas in a residential neighborhood. Eight people were killed and hundreds were hospitalized. The next year, the same group carried six newspaper-wrapped packages on to five subway trains, poked them with umbrella tips, releasing sarin. In that attack, 12 commuters were killed and more than 5,000 were injured.
HOW DOES IT KILL?
Sarin acts primarily by interfering with the neurotransmitter acetylcholine, which acts as an off switch for glands and muscles. Blocking that switch results in over-stimulation of muscles.
The extent of poisoning depends on how much chemical a person was exposed to and for how long. Exposure to sarin vapors can trigger symptoms within a few seconds; exposure to liquid sarin can take a few minutes to as much as 18 hours to cause symptoms.
Large doses of sarin can cause loss of consciousness, convulsions, paralysis and respiratory failure and death. Low doses can cause a range of symptoms, from a runny nose and watery eyes, to drooling, excessive sweating, nausea and vomiting.
Because sarin evaporates quickly, it presents an immediate but short-lived threat. According to biosecurity expert Sean Kaufman of Emory University's Center for Public Health Preparedness and Research, its ability to disperse quickly makes it hard to trace, but sarin does leave remnants in the area where it was used.
HIGH BAR FOR CONFIRMING SARIN USE
The use of sarin is extremely difficult to prove, said Charles Blair, a terrorism expert at the Federation of American Scientists and a columnist for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. To get good evidence that sarin was used, investigators need soil, blood or hair samples directly from the area of attack or its victims, he said.
Weapons inspectors reinforce that view. According to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which works on inspections with the United Nations, inspectors will only determine whether banned chemical agents were used if they can gain access to sites and take soil, blood, urine or tissue samples and examine them in certified laboratories.
SYRIA'S TRACK RECORD WITH CHEMICAL WEAPONS
Syria in July acknowledged for the first time that it had chemical and biological weapons, saying they could be used if the country faced foreign intervention. It said this week it would not use chemical arms against its own citizens, or even against Israel.
Since the early 1980s, Syria has made efforts to acquire and maintain an arsenal of chemical weapons following defeats in wars against Israel in 1967, 1973 and 1982 and the Jewish state's development of nuclear weapons.
According to Global Security, which collects published intelligence reports and other data, there are four suspected chemical weapons sites in Syria - one just north of Damascus; the second near the industrial city of Homs; the third in Hama, believed to be producing VX agents in addition to sarin and tabun; and a fourth near the Mediterranean port of Latakia.
SOURCES: The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Center for Biosecurity at UPMC; www.medscape.com; Www.globalsecurity.org
(Reporting by Julie Steenhuysen; Editing by Mary Milliken and Peter Cooney)
For months, it was assumed the Chiefs would take tackle Luke Joeckel with the first pick in the draft.? Last night, the reality become otherwise.
The Chiefs bypassed Joeckel for Eric Fisher, and Joeckel won?t forget it.
?I wanted that first pick but, you know, it didn?t happen. And that definitely puts a chip on my shoulder,? Joeckel told PFT on Thursday night, after he was picked.? ?I?m ready to go work, I?m ready to go prove myself.? It kind of hurts even more that another offensive tackle was taken before me, so I?m ready to go. . . .
?I?ll probably wake up every single day thinking that and when I?m in the weight room . . . when I?m lifting, when I?m out in the field working, you know, that?s my entire goal.? I grew up in a very competitive family, always wanted to be the best.? And you know, going behind another guy in my same position is definitely going to push me.?
It also puts pressure on Fisher.
?Obviously the first pick gets a lot of expectations, a lot of pressure, but I think I perform very well under pressure,? Fisher told PFT on Thursday night.? ?I am somebody to take advantage of pressure situations and make the most of them.? A lot of people will break under their pressure, I?m not that kind of person.? I think any time in my life I?ve had that kind of expectation that I needed to meet, I think I?ve performed very well.?
There?s a chance both will perform well.? There?s also a chance, in theory, of a Peyton Manning/Ryan Leaf dichotomy.
After spending time last night with each guy, our money?s on the former.
SACRAMENTO, California (AP) ? The California Assembly passed a bill on Thursday that would make the state the first in the nation to allow non-citizens who are in the country legally to serve on jury duty.
Assemblyman Bob Wieckowski, D-Fremont, said his bill, AB1401, would help California widen the pool of prospective jurors and help integrate immigrants into the community.
It does not change other criteria for being eligible to serve on a jury, such as being at least 18, living in the county that is making the summons, and being proficient in English.
The bill passed 45-25 largely on a party-line vote in the Democratic-controlled Assembly and will move on to the Senate. One Democrat ? Assemblyman Adam Gray, of Merced ? voted no, while some other Democrats did not vote.
Democratic lawmakers who voted for the bill said there is no correlation between being a citizen and a juror, and they noted that there is no citizenship requirement to be an attorney or a judge. Republican lawmakers who opposed Wieckowski's bill called it misguided and premature.
Assemblywoman Diane Harkey, R-Dana Point, said there is no shortage of jurors.
"Jury selection is not the problem. The problem is trial court funding," Harkey said before the vote. "I hope we can focus on that. Let's not break something; it's not broken now. Let's not whittle away at what is reserved for U.S. citizens. There's a reason for it."
Wieckowski's office said the bill is the first of its kind in the nation and suggested that courts regularly struggle to find enough prospective jurors because jury duty is often seen as an inconvenience, if not a burden. His office did not cite any statistics but pointed to a 2003 legislative report that said numerous articles have noted high rates of non-participation.
A 2007 survey by the Center for Jury Studies said 20 percent of courts across the country reported a failure to respond or failure to appear rate of 15 percent or higher. The center is run by the National Center for State Courts, a Virginia-based nonprofit dedicated to improving court systems.
It's not clear, however, if that rate translates to a shortage of jurors in California.
Noting that women were once kept off juries, Assembly Speaker John Perez, D-Los Angeles, said the judicial system should be changed to allow a person to be judged by their peers.
"This isn't about affording someone who would come in as a juror something," Perez said. "But rather understanding that the importance of the jury selection process of affording justice to the person in that courtroom."
An estimated 10 million Californians are summoned for jury duty each year and about 4 million are eligible and available to serve, according to the Judicial Council, which administers the state's court system. About 3.2 million complete the service, meaning they waited in a courthouse assembly room or were placed on call.
In 2010-2011, the most recent year available, only about 165,000 people were sworn in as jurors.
The judicial branch has not taken a position on AB 1401.
Apr. 25, 2013 ? The Maya civilization is well-known for its elaborate temples, sophisticated writing system, and mathematical and astronomical developments, yet the civilization's origins remain something of a mystery.
A new University of Arizona study to be published in the journal Science challenges the two prevailing theories on how the ancient civilization began, suggesting its origins are more complex than previously thought.
Anthropologists typically fall into one of two competing camps with regard to the origins of Maya civilization. The first camp believes that it developed almost entirely on its own in the jungles of what is now Guatemala and southern Mexico. The second believes that the Maya civilization developed as the result of direct influences from the older Olmec civilization and its center of La Venta.
It's likely that neither of those theories tells the full story, according to findings by a team of archaeologists led by UA husband-and-wife anthropologists Takeshi Inomata and Daniela Triadan.
"We really focused on the beginning of this civilization and how this remarkable civilization developed," said Inomata, UA professor of anthropology and the study's lead author.
In their excavations at Ceibal, an ancient Maya site in Guatemala, researchers found that Ceibal actually predates the growth of La Venta as a major center by as much as 200 years, suggesting that La Venta could not have been the prevailing influence over early Mayan development.
That does not make the Maya civilization older than the Olmec civilization -- since Olmec had another center prior to La Venta -- nor does it prove that the Maya civilization developed entirely independently, researchers say.
What it does indicate, they say, is that both Ceibal and La Venta probably participated in a broader cultural shift taking place in the period between 1,150-800 B.C.
"We're saying that the scenario of early Maya culture is really more complex than we thought," said UA anthropology graduate student Victor Castillo, who co-authored the paper with Inomata and Triadan.
"We have this idea of the origin of Maya civilization as an indigenous development, and we have this other idea that it was an external influence that triggered the social complexity of Maya civilization. We're now thinking it's not actually black and white," Castillo said.
There is no denying the striking similarities between Ceibal and La Venta, such as evidence of similar ritual practices and the presence of similar architecture -- namely the pyramids that would come to be the hallmark of Mesoamerican civilization but did not exist at the earlier Olmec center of San Lorenzo.
However, researchers don't think this is the case of simply one site mimicking the other. Rather, they suspect that both the Maya site of Ceibal and the Olmec site of La Venta were parts of a more geographically far-reaching cultural shift that occurred around 1,000 B.C., about the time when the Olmec center was transitioning from San Lorenzo to La Venta.
"Basically, there was a major social change happening from the southern Maya lowlands to possibly the coast of Chiapas and the southern Gulf Coast, and this site of Ceibal was a part of that broader social change," Inomata said. "The emergence of a new form of society -- with new architecture, with new rituals -- became really the important basis for all later Mesoamerican civilizations."
The Science paper, titled "Early Ceremonial Constructions at Ceibal, Guatemala, and the Origins of Lowland Maya Civilization," is based on seven years of excavations at Ceibal.
Additional authors of the paper include Japanese researchers Kazuo Aoyama of the University of Ibaraki, Mito and Hitoshi Yonenobu of the Naruto University of Education, Tokushima.
"We were looking at the emergence of specific cultural traits that were shared by many of those Mesoamerican centers, particularly the form of rituals and the construction of the pyramids," Inomata said. "This gives us a new idea about the beginning of Maya civilization, and it also tells us about how common traits shared by many different Mesoamerican civilizations emerged during that time."
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Arizona. The original article was written by Alexis Blue.
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Journal Reference:
T. Inomata, D. Triadan, K. Aoyama, V. Castillo, H. Yonenobu. Early Ceremonial Constructions at Ceibal, Guatemala, and the Origins of Lowland Maya Civilization. Science, 2013; 340 (6131): 467 DOI: 10.1126/science.1234493
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Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) ? Authorities in Central California said Thursday that a volunteer worker killed in a lion attack at an animal park accidentally caused her own death by leaving the animal's door open.
Fresno County Sheriff's Capt. Steve Wilkins said that his office has closed its investigation of Dianna Hanson's death by determining it was an "unfortunate accident."
"We've determined that it was an accident and there was no criminal liability toward the park's owner," Wilkins said. "Based on the results of the investigation, it was an accident."
Wilkins said Hanson, a 24-year-old intern at Cat Haven, failed to secure the door to a feeding cage where the lion was sitting while she cleaned an adjacent closure.
Hanson's family had been kept in the loop as the sheriff's office probe was taking place, Wilkins said. They were notified quickly when the investigation was completed, the sheriff's captain said.
"She accidentally left the door open. It was an unfortunate accident," Wilkins added. "The case is closed."
A 550-pound Barbary lion named Cous Cous escaped from the partially closed feeding cage on March 6 and struck Hanson, who died immediately from a broken neck, according to the coroner's autopsy report.
Sheriff's deputies shot the lion after it couldn't be coaxed away from Hanson's body.
The sheriff's office investigation comes after the U.S. Department of Agriculture recently found that Cat Haven, a 100-acre private zoo run by the nonprofit group Project Survival, had proper safety procedures in place for feeding the animals and cleaning the enclosures.
Hanson's family told The Associated Press last month that they believe no rules were broken at the wild animal park in Dunlap, Calif., and that her death was not a mauling, but rather a tragic accident.
"We're thankful to know she didn't suffer," Hanson's brother, Paul R. Hanson, said. "It wasn't a vicious attack ... because you would expect severe lacerations and biting on the neck and that was not the case."
Hanson had been working for two months as an intern at Cat Haven. Her father, Paul Hanson, described his daughter last month as a "fearless" lover of big cats and said her goal was to work with the animals at an accredited zoo.
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) ? A judge ruled Tuesday that investigation materials pertaining to the 1959 "In Cold Blood" murders that a Kansas Bureau of Investigation agent kept at home may not be auctioned off or publicly revealed until he's had a chance to review them.
Shawnee County District Judge Larry Hendricks said the state could face "irreparable harm" if the materials found in Harold Nye's home became public. The materials include Nye's personal journals, copies of records and other materials about the investigation that inspired the Truman Capote classic. Crime scene photos in his possession were returned to the state last year by his son, according to lawyers.
Ronald Nye, of Oklahoma City, kept the materials after his father's 2003 death and gave them to Seattle memorabilia dealer Gary McAvoy to auction off. But the Kansas attorney general's office contends the materials belong to the state, and it is suing to get them back. The case is scheduled to go to trial in November.
Hendricks said his order will remain in place until the case is settled, but he left open the possibility that he could rescind it after reviewing the documents to determine how much private material they contain.
"Folks, I think I need to see them," he said from the bench. "I need to look at them."
McAvoy and Ronald Nye now say they don't plan to auction off the materials, and that instead they plan to write their own book about the killing of Herb and Bonnie Clutter and two of their children at their remote farmhouse in Holcomb. Hendricks' order bars them from even speaking about the files' contents publicly.
The hunt for the killers mesmerized the nation and drew journalists from across the U.S. to the small western Kansas town. The state executed two parolees, Richard Hickock and Perry Smith, for the killings in 1965. Four years later, Harold Nye began a two-year stint as the KBI's director.
Capote's book about the murders, Hickock and Smith's trial and their executions is celebrated because it reads like a novel. However, scholars have debated its accuracy since it was published.
___
Follow John Hanna on Twitter at http://twitter.com/apjdhanna
Today, in NASA Is the Best: The space agency this week took a handful of cheap but powerful smartphones, slapped them to a gigantic rocket and blasted them into low-earth orbit to see how they'd fare. The project, called PhoneSat, is one of those wacky experiments that seems at first to have nothing to do with science. But it's not a stunt.
The phones ? ordinary Nexus Ones, the kind made by HTC and once sold by Google ? are being tested as a kind of prototype satellite, and they provide a glimpse of a possible future where ordinary commercial technology that we take for granted winds up powering and controlling larger sensing devices (or even becoming full-fledged research platforms themselves). Smartphones are already remarkably well-equipped for space: They're small. They've got powerful batteries and processors. They have gyroscopes and accelerometers, and high-quality cameras. For a budget-conscious organization like NASA that's increasingly turning away from manned space missions, PhoneSat makes a lot of sense. The three devices orbiting earth right now are cutely named Alexander, Graham and Bell, respectively, in a nod to the man commonly credited with inventing the telephone. After about 10 days from Sunday's launch, the phones will re-enter the atmosphere, burning up in the process (ouch).
Even more interesting than the hardware NASA's using is the software -- and how it was developed.
"The satellites almost came out of the box ready-made," said Bruce Yost, one of the project's lead scientists at NASA's Ames Research Center in California. "But all the things that made it interesting are software. The intent is to be like the software community: Build, test, break, rebuild, and keep the cycle going and see if you can spiral your way to success."
Thanks to Google's open-source Android OS, each PhoneSat includes a specially developed app that helps the phones transmit information back to earth from orbit. At regular intervals, the devices beam down data about their health and status, and take up to 100 photos of their surroundings at a time, Yost said. The app then automatically selects the best shots (ones with the earth's horizon in them) and broadcasts them wirelessly to the ground, where any amateur radio operator can pick up the signal.?
Because each hobbyist receives a different piece of the same photo, it takes a group effort to recompile the whole thing -- a bit like building a jigsaw puzzle. The hobbyists upload what they've got back to NASA, where all the data that's coming in is built into a composite. So far, some 200 packets of data have been recorded, said Jim Cockrell, another project lead.
Researchers are still a long way from totally replacing big pieces of orbital machinery with tiny iPhones or Android handsets, although one of the three phones that went up Sunday is equipped with a working solar panel array, just like their bigger cousins. It's a promising sign of how much we can accomplish just by taking advantage of the tools we've already got to hand. Watch the phones' positions change in real-time here.
New material approach should increase solar cell efficiencyPublic release date: 23-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Lane Martin lwmartin@illinois.edu 217-244-9162 University of Illinois College of Engineering
"When designing next generation solar energy conversion systems, we must first develop ways to more efficiently utilize the solar spectrum," explained Lane Martin, whose research group at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has done just that.
"This is a fundamentally new way of approaching these matters," said Martin, who is an assistant professor of materials science and engineering (MatSE) at Illinois. "From these materials we can imagine carbon-neutral energy production of clean-burning fuels, waste water purification and remediation, and much more."
Martin's research group brought together aspects of condensed matter physics, semiconductor device engineering, and photochemistry to develop a new form of high-performance solar photocatalyst based on the combination of the TiO2 (titanium dioxide) and other "metallic" oxides that greatly enhance the visible light absorption and promote more efficient utilization of the solar spectrum for energy applications. Their paper, "Strong Visible-Light Absorption and Hot-Carrier Injection in TiO2/SrRuO3 Heterostructures," appears in the journal Advanced Energy Materials.
According to Martin, the primary feature limiting the performance of oxide-based photovoltaic and/or photocatalytic systems has traditionally been the poor absorption of visible light in these often wide band gap materials. One candidate oxide material for such applications is anatase TiO2, which is arguably the most widely-studied photocatalyst due to its chemical stability, non-toxicity, low-cost, and excellent band alignment to several oxidation-reduction reactions. As the backbone of dye-sensitized solar cells, however, the presence of a light-absorbing dye accounts for a large band gap which limits efficient usage of all but the UV portion of sunlight.
"We observed that the unusual electronic structure of SrRuO3 is also responsible for unexpected optical properties including high absorption across the visible spectrum and low reflection compared to traditional metals," stated Sungki Lee, the paper's first author. "By coupling this material to TiO2 we demonstrate enhanced visible light absorption and large photocatalytic activities."
"SrRuO3 is a correlated electron oxide which is known to possess metallic-like temperature dependence of its resistivity and itinerant ferromagnetism and for its widespread utility as a conducting electrode in oxide heterostructures," Lee added.
Referring to this material as a "metal," however, is likely inappropriate as the electronic structure and properties are derived from a combination of complex electronic density of states, electron correlations, and more.
Using a process called photo-excited hot-carrier injection from the SrRuO3 to the TiO2, the researchers created new heterostructures whose novel optical properties and the resulting high photoelectrochemical performance provide an interesting new approach that could advance the field of photocatalysis and further broaden the potential applications of other metallic oxides.
This work provides an exciting new approach to the challenge of designing visible-light photosensitive materials and has resulted in a provisional patent application. The work was primarily supported by the ongoing the International Institute for Carbon Neutral Energy Research (I2CNER) program, a partnership between Kyushu University in Japan and the University of Illinois.
"The I2CNER project brings together some of the leading energy researchers from around the globe," explained I2CNER Director Petros Sofronis, who is also a professor in the Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering at Illinois. "Results from Dr. Martin's research group and others demonstrate that I2CNER is not only an experiment on international collaboration. It is a concerted institutionalized effort to pursue green innovation and reduced CO2 emissions, as well as to advance fundamental science and develop science-based technological solutions for the reorganization of sustainable and environmentally friendly society."
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Contact: Lane Martin, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, 217/244-9162, lwmartin@illinois.edu
Petros Sofronis, director, International Institute for Carbon Neutral Energy Research, 217/333-2636, sofronis@illinois.edu
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New material approach should increase solar cell efficiencyPublic release date: 23-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Lane Martin lwmartin@illinois.edu 217-244-9162 University of Illinois College of Engineering
"When designing next generation solar energy conversion systems, we must first develop ways to more efficiently utilize the solar spectrum," explained Lane Martin, whose research group at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has done just that.
"This is a fundamentally new way of approaching these matters," said Martin, who is an assistant professor of materials science and engineering (MatSE) at Illinois. "From these materials we can imagine carbon-neutral energy production of clean-burning fuels, waste water purification and remediation, and much more."
Martin's research group brought together aspects of condensed matter physics, semiconductor device engineering, and photochemistry to develop a new form of high-performance solar photocatalyst based on the combination of the TiO2 (titanium dioxide) and other "metallic" oxides that greatly enhance the visible light absorption and promote more efficient utilization of the solar spectrum for energy applications. Their paper, "Strong Visible-Light Absorption and Hot-Carrier Injection in TiO2/SrRuO3 Heterostructures," appears in the journal Advanced Energy Materials.
According to Martin, the primary feature limiting the performance of oxide-based photovoltaic and/or photocatalytic systems has traditionally been the poor absorption of visible light in these often wide band gap materials. One candidate oxide material for such applications is anatase TiO2, which is arguably the most widely-studied photocatalyst due to its chemical stability, non-toxicity, low-cost, and excellent band alignment to several oxidation-reduction reactions. As the backbone of dye-sensitized solar cells, however, the presence of a light-absorbing dye accounts for a large band gap which limits efficient usage of all but the UV portion of sunlight.
"We observed that the unusual electronic structure of SrRuO3 is also responsible for unexpected optical properties including high absorption across the visible spectrum and low reflection compared to traditional metals," stated Sungki Lee, the paper's first author. "By coupling this material to TiO2 we demonstrate enhanced visible light absorption and large photocatalytic activities."
"SrRuO3 is a correlated electron oxide which is known to possess metallic-like temperature dependence of its resistivity and itinerant ferromagnetism and for its widespread utility as a conducting electrode in oxide heterostructures," Lee added.
Referring to this material as a "metal," however, is likely inappropriate as the electronic structure and properties are derived from a combination of complex electronic density of states, electron correlations, and more.
Using a process called photo-excited hot-carrier injection from the SrRuO3 to the TiO2, the researchers created new heterostructures whose novel optical properties and the resulting high photoelectrochemical performance provide an interesting new approach that could advance the field of photocatalysis and further broaden the potential applications of other metallic oxides.
This work provides an exciting new approach to the challenge of designing visible-light photosensitive materials and has resulted in a provisional patent application. The work was primarily supported by the ongoing the International Institute for Carbon Neutral Energy Research (I2CNER) program, a partnership between Kyushu University in Japan and the University of Illinois.
"The I2CNER project brings together some of the leading energy researchers from around the globe," explained I2CNER Director Petros Sofronis, who is also a professor in the Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering at Illinois. "Results from Dr. Martin's research group and others demonstrate that I2CNER is not only an experiment on international collaboration. It is a concerted institutionalized effort to pursue green innovation and reduced CO2 emissions, as well as to advance fundamental science and develop science-based technological solutions for the reorganization of sustainable and environmentally friendly society."
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Contact: Lane Martin, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, 217/244-9162, lwmartin@illinois.edu
Petros Sofronis, director, International Institute for Carbon Neutral Energy Research, 217/333-2636, sofronis@illinois.edu
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The Asian monsoon is getting predictablePublic release date: 23-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Mario Aguilera scrippsnews@ucsd.edu 858-534-3624 University of California - San Diego
Researchers find strong correlation between summer monsoon and the climate pattern that preceded it
For much of Asia, the pace of life is tuned to rhythms of monsoons.
The summer rainy season is especially important for securing the water and food supplies for more than a billion people. Its variations can mean the difference between drought and flood. Now a Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego-led study reports on a crucial connection that could drastically improve the ability of forecasters to reliably predict the monsoon a few months in advance.
Yu Kosaka and Shang-Ping Xie from Scripps and colleagues from NOAA found that a winter appearance of the climate phenomenon called El Nio in the Pacific Ocean can leave its mark on monsoon formation in the Indian Ocean a full six months later. In between is an atmospheric phenomenon called the Pacific-Japan pattern that provides the teleconnection between the two ocean basins and further poleward to East Asia.
"It has long been a mystery that climate anomalies in the region correlate better with El Nio in the preceding winter than with the one developing in the concurrent summer," said Xie, a climate scientist and inaugural holder of the Scripps Roger Revelle Chair in Environmental Science. "The new paper shows that Indian Ocean temperature and atmospheric anomalies in the western Pacific are physically coupled, and their interactions amplify each other. We demonstrated that this new mode of coupled ocean-atmospheric anomalies is predictable a season ahead. Such predictions have tremendous benefits to society."
The National Science Foundation-funded study, "Origin of seasonal predictability for summer climate over the Northwestern Pacific," appears online on April 22 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Ngar-Cheung Lau and Gabriel Vecchi of NOAA are also co-authors.
El Nio is a climate phenomenon coupling the ocean and atmosphere that includes a shift in the distribution of warm water in the equatorial Pacific Ocean. El Nio years are characterized by unusual weather and storm activity globally.
The summer after a major El Nio features above-average sea-surface temperatures in the Indian Ocean. El Nio exerts its influence via the Pacific-Japan pattern, which can bring to East Asia cool, wet weather in the subsequent summer, while La Nia leads to dry, hot weather.
The violent storm activity associated with El Nio takes place in the eastern Pacific Ocean, but the chain of events the researchers describe ultimately ends up being detected in the western Pacific Ocean. Xie likened it to an echo effect, saying that El Nio serves to pull clouds and convection eastward toward the International Date Line, which means those clouds are not available over the western Pacific to keep ocean surface temperatures cool. It also weakens winds in the northern Indian Ocean and the effects of those weakened winds travel back eastward to the Pacific Ocean.
"The last sound El Nio makes is in the western Pacific Ocean," Kosaka said, "because the positive feedback between the Indian Ocean and Pacific-Japan pattern we found amplifies climate anomalies in this region."
The last echoes of El Nio have devastating consequences to the region.
Extremes in the East Asian summer monsoon have been behind some of the largest natural and economic disasters to hit the region in the last 20 years. The authors note that excessive rains and cool temperature in Japan in 1993 caused a widespread failure of that country's rice crop that opened it to imports from other countries. Dry monsoon phases led to widespread heat waves and drought in several East Asian countries in 2004.
Kosaka cautioned, however, that there is much more work to be done to make prediction of the Asian monsoon reliable. El Nio is just one factor; other regional patterns complicate the sequence that ultimately produces monsoon rains, Kosaka said.
But the paper does establish that El Nio influences the monsoon and describes the means by which it does so, she said.
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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.
The Asian monsoon is getting predictablePublic release date: 23-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Mario Aguilera scrippsnews@ucsd.edu 858-534-3624 University of California - San Diego
Researchers find strong correlation between summer monsoon and the climate pattern that preceded it
For much of Asia, the pace of life is tuned to rhythms of monsoons.
The summer rainy season is especially important for securing the water and food supplies for more than a billion people. Its variations can mean the difference between drought and flood. Now a Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego-led study reports on a crucial connection that could drastically improve the ability of forecasters to reliably predict the monsoon a few months in advance.
Yu Kosaka and Shang-Ping Xie from Scripps and colleagues from NOAA found that a winter appearance of the climate phenomenon called El Nio in the Pacific Ocean can leave its mark on monsoon formation in the Indian Ocean a full six months later. In between is an atmospheric phenomenon called the Pacific-Japan pattern that provides the teleconnection between the two ocean basins and further poleward to East Asia.
"It has long been a mystery that climate anomalies in the region correlate better with El Nio in the preceding winter than with the one developing in the concurrent summer," said Xie, a climate scientist and inaugural holder of the Scripps Roger Revelle Chair in Environmental Science. "The new paper shows that Indian Ocean temperature and atmospheric anomalies in the western Pacific are physically coupled, and their interactions amplify each other. We demonstrated that this new mode of coupled ocean-atmospheric anomalies is predictable a season ahead. Such predictions have tremendous benefits to society."
The National Science Foundation-funded study, "Origin of seasonal predictability for summer climate over the Northwestern Pacific," appears online on April 22 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Ngar-Cheung Lau and Gabriel Vecchi of NOAA are also co-authors.
El Nio is a climate phenomenon coupling the ocean and atmosphere that includes a shift in the distribution of warm water in the equatorial Pacific Ocean. El Nio years are characterized by unusual weather and storm activity globally.
The summer after a major El Nio features above-average sea-surface temperatures in the Indian Ocean. El Nio exerts its influence via the Pacific-Japan pattern, which can bring to East Asia cool, wet weather in the subsequent summer, while La Nia leads to dry, hot weather.
The violent storm activity associated with El Nio takes place in the eastern Pacific Ocean, but the chain of events the researchers describe ultimately ends up being detected in the western Pacific Ocean. Xie likened it to an echo effect, saying that El Nio serves to pull clouds and convection eastward toward the International Date Line, which means those clouds are not available over the western Pacific to keep ocean surface temperatures cool. It also weakens winds in the northern Indian Ocean and the effects of those weakened winds travel back eastward to the Pacific Ocean.
"The last sound El Nio makes is in the western Pacific Ocean," Kosaka said, "because the positive feedback between the Indian Ocean and Pacific-Japan pattern we found amplifies climate anomalies in this region."
The last echoes of El Nio have devastating consequences to the region.
Extremes in the East Asian summer monsoon have been behind some of the largest natural and economic disasters to hit the region in the last 20 years. The authors note that excessive rains and cool temperature in Japan in 1993 caused a widespread failure of that country's rice crop that opened it to imports from other countries. Dry monsoon phases led to widespread heat waves and drought in several East Asian countries in 2004.
Kosaka cautioned, however, that there is much more work to be done to make prediction of the Asian monsoon reliable. El Nio is just one factor; other regional patterns complicate the sequence that ultimately produces monsoon rains, Kosaka said.
But the paper does establish that El Nio influences the monsoon and describes the means by which it does so, she said.
###
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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.
ABUJA (Reuters) - Nigerian authorities said on Monday there had been heavy fighting between security forces and Islamist militants in a remote part of the northeast, but there was no confirmation of reports from a local official that 185 people had been killed.
Fighting erupted on Thursday in Baga, a fishing town on the shores of Lake Chad, adjacent to the Chadian border, spokesmen for the Borno state government that administers the area and its military said.
A delegation from the state government visited the town on Sunday in the aftermath of the fighting, and a community representative put the death toll at 185, Borno spokesman Umar Gusau said by telephone.
"We are investigating," he said. "For now, we don't have a very good basis for the figure. These people say they have died and they have buried them. From my experience, most times residents exaggerate figures."
He added that since the town had already buried the victims, it had been impossible for authorities to count the bodies.
Authorities were questioning residents about family members who had died to try to estimate the death toll, he said.
Sagir Musa, a spokesman for the mixed military and police Joint Task Force (JTF) in Borno state, also expressed skepticism about the reported toll.
"There was a clash between the Boko Haram terrorists and the JTF but I can tell you is that the death toll was terribly inflated," he said by telephone.
The military is sometimes accused by locals of understating civilian casualties in fighting.
The violence comes as the government awaits a report from a panel tasked with formulating an offer of amnesty for the insurgents if they give up their struggle for an Islamic state, which has killed many hundreds in northern Nigeria in the past three years.
President Goodluck Jonathan wants the panel to establish links with the group, which has so far shown no interest in peace talks.
Jonathan, a Christian southerner, has been unsuccessful in quelling the violence through military means and, in recent weeks, traditional leaders in the predominantly Muslim north have put pressure on him to offer Boko Haram a deal.
If 185 people did die in the Baga fighting, it would be the greatest loss of life in the conflict since 186 people were killed in coordinated strikes by Boko Haram fighters in January 2012 in the north's main city of Kano.
Gusau said parts of Baga were badly damaged when he visited it on Sunday, with several houses burned. He said Nigerian soldiers sometimes over-react when attacked by Boko Haram gunmen, killing many in retaliation.
Boko Haram, which is loosely modeled on the Taliban movement in Afghanistan, wants an Islamic caliphate in Nigeria, a country of 170 million split evenly between Christians and Muslims.
(Reporting by Tim Cocks and Isaac Abrak; Editing by Michael Roddy)
HTC really wants you to buy an HTC One, and it's making sure that you have every opportunity to do so. First, it opened up pre-orders for the HTC One Developer Edition, a carrier-unlocked 64GB version of the phone with an unlocked bootloader for custom ROMs. Now, it's also offering a network-unlocked 32GB version of the handset, which doesn't have the unlocked bootloader, but which is less expensive at $574.99.
Marathoners observed a moment of silence for the victims in the Boston attacks before running a landscape scarred by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.?
By Joshua Mitnick,?Correspondent / April 21, 2013
Participants arrive at the finish line during a marathon in the West Bank town of Bethlehem April 21. While half of the participants in Sunday's event, which included a half marathon and a 10-km race on top of the full 42-km distance, were local Palestinians, runners from 11 different countries participated as well.
Ammar Awad/Reuters
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Visitors come to Bethlehem from all over because of its reputation as the birthplace of Jesus, but, on an unseasonably rain-swept morning, Manger Square became the scene of a different kind pilgrimage as runners in spandex and checkered Palestinian keffiyeh scarves embarked on the West Bank?s first ever marathon.
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Even as last week?s fatal bombing at the Boston Marathon suddenly robbed the popular events of their innocence in the US, the spirit of the newest marathon seemed little dampened as runners warmed up to drum-driven Middle Eastern folk music. But as the worldwide trend of marathoning spreads to the Holy Land, the Bethlehem Marathon has inevitably been routed through the charged terrain of geopolitical and religious conflict.
Dubbed the "Right to Movement Palestine Marathon," event organizers cast the run as a demonstration against the Israeli security policies that limit Palestinian travel between their cities and towns.
From the start line outside of the Church of the Nativity (the site of a weeks-long standoff in 2002 between Palestinian militants and the Israeli military), the race led runners to the controversial concrete separation wall erected in the wake of the Palestinian uprising of the last decade, and then on past crowded neighborhoods populated by Palestinian refugees. ?
"It sends a message of solidarity with the Palestinian people," says Jibril Rajoub, the head of the Palestinian Olympic Committee and the former head of Palestinian security forces in the West Bank. "It sends a message to the Israelis to recharge their mental batteries and reconsider their policies and start recognizing facts on the ground. It shows the Palestinian people that they are not alone."
That said, the message of the Bethlehem marathon went beyond Israeli-Palestinan conflict to touch on the Palestinians? own internal divisions. Several weeks ago, the United Nations organizers of the Gaza Strip marathon called off what would have been the third annual race there because the Hamas government banned women from participating ? giving the Bethlehem event added significance.
Mixed-gender race
While Palestinian officials preferred to focus criticism on Israel and the military?s refusal to allow Gazan runners to travel to the West Bank for the Bethlehem race, female runners and spectators acknowledged the friction between the Western tradition of mass amateur races and the social sensibilities of conservative Islam.
"There?s no difference between men and women except for the shape of their bodies," says Kharoom Said, a 22-year-old religiously observant runner who insisted that her hijab head covering would not bother her and called Hamas? decision "stupid." "It reflects how conservative and extreme they are. They are trying to suppress women and bring society backward."
Even though they had little praise of Hamas, residents of one refugee camp alongside the race route seemed to concur with the idea that a mixed-gender athletic event and tight-fitted athletic clothes flouted traditional religious mores.????
By Ken Y-N ( April 23, 2013 at 00:14)
? Filed under Mobile, Polls
Mobile Marketing Data Labo recently performed a survey into true feelings about one?s mobile carrier?s network, and found SoftBank?s reputation for being a poor network is ill-deserved.
Demographics
Between the 1st and 4th of April 2013 1,200 smartphone-owning members of the MMD monitor panel completed a private internet-based questionniare. Each of the three major carriers, docomo, au and SoftBank, were represented by 400 people. No further demographics information was given.
Note that one reason for the high degree of satisfaction amongst SoftBank users is that the iPhone is their main smartphone, and we all know that Apple users always rank themselves the most satisfied when it comes to these sorts of stories. I wonder how much this Apple love rubs off on the user?s impression of the ease snd speed of connection questions?
Research results
Q1: How easy do you feel it is for your smartphone to connect to high-speed data transmission (4G, LTE, etc)? (Sample size=high-speed smartphone owners)
?
docomo
au
SoftBank
Easy
39.9%
41.5%
44.7%
Somewhat easy
23.4%
20.3%
18.4%
Can?t say
27.5%
26.0%
28.3%
Somewhat difficult
5.5%
7.3%
4.6%
Difficult
3.7%
4.9%
3.9%
Q2: How fast do you feel your smartphone high-speed data transmission (4G, LTE, etc) is? (Sample size=high-speed smartphone owners)
?
docomo
au
SoftBank
Fast
35.8%
43.1%
44.1%
Somewhat fast
22.5%
23.6%
19.7%
Can?t say
23.4%
18.7%
23.7%
Somewhat slow
10.1%
8.1%
9.9%
Slow
8.3%
6.5%
2.6%
Q3: Compared to six months ago, how much easier do you feel it is for your smartphone to connect to high-speed data transmission (4G, LTE, etc)? (Sample size=high-speed smartphone owners)
?
docomo
au
SoftBank
Easier
28.9%
38.2%
44.1%
Somewhat easier
20.6%
20.3%
14.5%
Can?t say
40.8%
34.1%
32.9%
Not really easier
6.0%
4.1%
5.3%
Not easier
3.7%
3.3%
3.3%
Q4: Compared to six months ago, how much faster do you feel your smartphone high-speed data transmission (4G, LTE, etc) is? (Sample size=high-speed smartphone owners)
?
docomo
au
SoftBank
Faster
30.7%
40.7%
45.4%
Somewhat faster
18.8%
22.8%
15.8%
Can?t say
35.3%
29.3%
30.9%
Not really faster
7.8%
4.1%
6.6%
Not faster
7.3%
3.3%
1.3%
Q5: How satisfied are you with your smartphone? (Sample size=400+400+400)
?
Average
docomo
au
SoftBank
Satisfied
16.4%
8.0%
17.8%
23.5%
Somewhat satisfied
46.0%
44.5%
45.8%
47.8%
Can?t say
26.8%
31.8%
24.0%
24.8%
Somewhat dissatsified
8.6%
12.8%
10.0%
3.0%
Dissatisfied
2.2%
3.0%
2.5%
1.0%
Q6: How satisfied are you with your carrier? (Sample size=400+400+400)
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Public release date: 23-Apr-2013
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HTC really wants you to buy an HTC One, and it's making sure that you have every opportunity to do so. First, it opened up pre-orders for the HTC One Developer Edition, a carrier-unlocked 64GB version of the phone with an unlocked bootloader for custom ROMs. Now, it's also offering a network-unlocked 32GB version of the handset, which doesn't have the unlocked bootloader, but which is less expensive at $574.99.
Mobile Marketing Data Labo recently performed a survey into true feelings about one?s mobile carrier?s network, and found SoftBank?s reputation for being a poor network is ill-deserved.