Mayhem marks start of 100th Tour de France

BASTIA, Corsica (AP) ? Riders at the Tour de France know to expect the unexpected. But nothing could have prepared them for the mayhem that turned Saturday's first stage of the 100th Tour into a demolition derby on two wheels.

Seemingly for the first time at the 110-year-old race, one of the big buses that carry the teams around France when they're not on their bikes got stuck at the finish line, literally wedged under scaffolding, unable to move. The timing couldn't have been worse: The blockage happened as the speeding peloton was racing for home, less than 12 miles out.

Fearing the worst ? a possible collision between 198 riders and the bus ? race organizers took the split-second decision to shorten the race. Word went out to riders over their radios and they adapted tactics accordingly, cranking up their speed another notch to be first to the new line, now 1.8 miles closer than originally planned.

Then, somewhat miraculously, the bus for the Orica Greenedge team wriggled free. So organizers reverted to Plan A. Again over the radios, word went out to by-now confused riders and teams that the race would finish as first intended ? on a long straightaway alongside the shimmering turquoise Mediterranean, where an expectant crowd waited to cheer the first stage winner of the 100th Tour.

Then, bam! Two riders collided and one of them went down, setting off a chain of spills that scythed through the pack like a bowling ball.

And this was just Day One. The bad news for riders: They've still got another 20 stages and1,982 more miles to survive to the finish in Paris.

Keeping his head and riding his luck amid the chaos, Marcel Kittel sprinted for the win, claiming the first yellow jersey.

"It feels like I have gold on my shoulders," said the German rider for the Argos-Shimano team.

The 22 teams know from experience that the first days of any Tour are always tough. Everyone is nervous, full of energy and jostling for position. Adding to the stress this year is the race start in Corsica. The island's winding and often narrow roads that snake along idyllic coastlines and over jagged mountains are superbly telegenic but a worry for race favorites ? the likes of Team Sky's Chris Froome and two-time former champion Alberto Contador ? because a fall or big loss of time here could ruin their Tour before it really begins.

Froome survived Day One more or less unscathed. Contador didn't. The Spaniard, back at the Tour after a doping ban which also cost him his 2010 victory, crossed the line grimacing in pain, his left shoulder cut and bruised. He was tangled in the crash that threw about 20 riders to the tarmac. Contador said he'll be sore for a few days, "but I still have enough time to recover."

Even for the Tour, which has seen more than its fair share of dramas in 99 previous editions, Saturday's calamitous chain of events was exceptional.

"We've never had to change the finish line before," said Jean-Francois Pescheux, the event director who helps pick the route each year. "There's never been a bus stuck before."

The blockage at the line presented organizers with two solutions: cancel the stage entirely or shorten it, he said. They took the second option.

"We announced that in French, English, and Spanish on the Tour radio so that everybody was up-to-date," he said. Then, "in the following three minutes, we were told that the finish line was cleared. At that point, we announced that the finish was back to the real, original finish line."

Because of what Pescheux called "the little bout of panic and crashes" caused by this confusion, organizers subsequently decided to give everyone the same time as Kittel ? 4 hours, 56 minutes, 52 seconds over the 132-mile trek from the port town of Porto Vecchio to Bastia in the north of the island.

That means no one was penalized by Saturday's events.

"It's clear there was a moment of panic, and that's why we put everybody on equal footing," said Pescheux.

"The lesson learned is that buses, that heavy vehicles, they should avoid going through the finish line," he added.

"Everybody helped out, we deflated the tires of the bus so we could move it away as the peloton was fast approaching," said Jean-Louis Pages, who manages the finish-line area.

Organizers fined the Orica Greenedge team the equivalent of $2,100. The team's sporting director, Matt White, called the incident "really unfortunate."

"We took for granted that there was enough clearance. We've had this bus since we started the team, and it's the same bus we took to the Tour last year," he said. "Our bus driver was told to move forward and became lodged under the finish gantry."

Managers at other teams couldn't agree who to blame or be angry with most.

Marc Madiot of French team FDJ.FR was forgiving of the bus driver but furious with race organizers for changing their mind about where to finish the stage.

But the sporting director for Contador's Saxo-Tinkoff team, Philippe Mauduit, sided with the organizers.

"It's not the Tour's fault if there's a guy who doesn't know the height of his bus," he said.

"What caused the problems was changing the finish," said Mark Cavendish, the British sprinter who was counting on his great speed to win the stage but who instead was slowed by the crash. "It's just carnage."

His Omega Pharma-Quick Step teammate Tony Martin suffered concussion in the crash. Peter Sagan of Cannondale, another rider who was expecting to challenge for the win, finished with sticking plasters covering cuts on both legs and his left elbow. Other riders also suffered cuts and bruises. Froome's teammate Geraint Thomas flipped over his handlebars and "really whacked the back of his pelvis," said Dave Brailsford, the Team Sky manager.

"The goal for us is to get off this island in one piece, having lost no time," he said. "It's a much tougher ask than it may seem."

"You don't know what's going to happen. But you know something is going to happen," he added.

Perhaps as soon again as Sunday. The tricky second stage features four climbs along the 97-mile ride from Bastia to Ajaccio, crossing the island's mountainous spine.

Before Saturday's stage, French Sports Minister Valerie Fourneyron met with a delegation of riders unhappy that pre-race media coverage of the race dwelt heavily on doping in cycling.

That was partly the fault of Lance Armstrong. The disgraced former champion now stripped of his seven Tour wins caused a stir by telling Le Monde that he couldn't have won the race without doping.

___

AP Sports Writer Jerome Pugmire and Associated Press writer Jamey Keaten contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/mayhem-marks-start-100th-tour-france-210626611.html

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Cuba: 100 produce markets to become private coops

cuba

Marc Frank Reuters

17 hours ago

STR / AFP/Getty Images

An elderly man sells fruit and vegetables in a market of Havana, on April 20, 2012. One hundred Cuban produce markets are shifting to member-owned cooperatives.

HAVANA - One hundred state-run produce markets and 26 other establishments were scheduled to become private cooperatives on Monday as Communist-run Cuba continues to shed secondary economic activity in favor of individual initiative and markets.

The cooperatives will be the first outside of agriculture since all businesses were nationalized in 1968.

The government says many more establishments will follow, beginning in 2014, as an alternative to small and medium-sized state businesses in retail and food services, transportation, light manufacturing and construction, among other sectors.

The produce markets were supplied exclusively by the state, which also set prices and wages.

As cooperatives they will now purchase produce from any source and set their own prices, with the exception of a few state supplied staples, for example rice, chick peas and potatoes in Havana.

At one of the dozens of Havana markets set to become cooperatives this week, the mood was festive on Saturday as workers painted the dark and dingy premises, fixed broken bins and in general spruced up the place on their last day as state employees.

"We were given the choice of working as a cooperative member or being laid off," Antonio Rivera, a worker turned member, said.

"I think we will be better off so I joined," he said.

On Sunday the 100 markets took inventory and made other preparations, before their adventure into the country's growing "non-state" sector began.

President Raul Castro, who took over from his brother Fidel in 2008, has already taken steps to deregulate small private businesses in the retail sector, lease small state shops and taxis to individual employees and fallow state lands to would-be small farmers in search of improved production and efficiency.

According to the government, more than 430,000 people now work in the non-state sector which consists of private entrepreneurs, their employees and individuals who own or lease taxis and the like.

The figure does not include some 2,000 agricultural cooperatives and 400,000 small farmers.

Market economics hailed

The new cooperative markets average 15 or fewer members and will lease their premises from the state.

They will function independently of state entities and businesses, set prices in cases where they are not fixed by the state, operate on a democratic basis, divide profit as they see fit and receive better tax treatment than individually owned businesses, according to a decree law published in December.

The law allows for an unlimited number of members and use of contracted employees on a three-month basis.

The newly elected administrator of one market said that for weeks they had been making contact with farm cooperatives in preparation for Monday, and could also buy from individual farmers and state farms and wholesale markets.

"I'm sure the public will benefit. The produce will be of better quality, there will be better service and people will go where the prices are the lowest," he said, asking his name not be used because he feared he would get into trouble for talking to a foreign journalist.

"There will be more competition and the winners will be those who do the best job," he said, adding, "everything will depend on us and we will have to look for merchandise wherever because if we don't we will not make anything."

Consumers appeared to support the measure, though some fretted over a possible increase in prices.

"They should have done this long ago," Soledad Martinez said as she shopped at the market on Saturday.

"Now there will be a greater variety and we will be treated better. I just hope prices decrease a bit and do not go up," she said.

Cuban authorities began discussing three years ago how to transform bankrupt small and medium-sized state businesses - plagued by pilfering, embezzlement and general inefficiency - into cooperatives.

The Communist Party adopted a sweeping five-year plan to "update" the economy in 2011, which included moving more than 20 percent of the state labor force of 5 million people into a new "non-state" sector of private and cooperative businesses.

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Source: http://feeds.nbcnews.com/c/35002/f/663286/s/2e017b50/l/0L0Snbcnews0N0Cbusiness0Ccuba0E10A0A0Eproduce0Emarkets0Ebecome0Eprivate0Ecoops0E6C10A488676/story01.htm

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Diamond catalyst shows promise in breaching age-old barrier

Public release date: 30-Jun-2013
[ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Robert J. Hamers
rjhamers@wisc.edu
608-262-6371
University of Wisconsin-Madison

MADISON -- In the world, there are a lot of small molecules people would like to get rid of, or at least convert to something useful, according to University of Wisconsin-Madison chemist Robert J. Hamers.

Think carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas most responsible for far-reaching effects on global climate. Nitrogen is another ubiquitous small-molecule gas that can be transformed into the valuable agricultural fertilizer ammonia. Plants perform the chemical reduction of atmospheric nitrogen to ammonia as a matter of course, but for humans to do that in an industrial setting, a necessity for modern agriculture, requires subjecting nitrogen to massive amounts of energy under high pressure.

"The current process for reducing nitrogen to ammonia is done under extreme conditions," explains Hamers, a UW-Madison professor of chemistry. "There is an enormous barrier you have to overcome to get your final product."

Breaching that barrier more efficiently and reducing the huge amounts of energy used to convert nitrogen to ammonia by some estimates 2 percent of the world's electrical output has been a grail for the agricultural chemical industry. Now, that goal may be on the horizon, thanks to a technique devised by Hamers and his colleagues and published today (June 30, 2013) in the journal Nature Methods.

Like many chemical reactions, reducing nitrogen to ammonia is a product of catalysis, where the catalytic agent used in the traditional energy-intensive reduction process is iron. The iron, combined with high temperature and high pressure, accelerates the reaction rate for converting nitrogen to ammonia by lowering the activation barrier that otherwise keeps nitrogen, one of the most ubiquitous gases on the planet, intact.

"The nitrogen molecule is one of the happiest molecules around," notes Hamers. "It is incredibly stable. It doesn't do anything."

One of the big obstacles, according to Hamers, is that nitrogen binds poorly to catalytic materials like iron.

Hamers and his team, including Di Zhu, Linghong Zhang and Rose E. Ruther, all of UW-Madison, turned to synthetic industrial diamond a cheap, gritty, versatile material as a potential new catalyst for the reduction process. Diamond, the Wisconsin team found, can facilitate the reduction of nitrogen to ammonia under ambient temperatures and pressures.

Like all chemical reactions, the reduction of nitrogen to ammonia involves moving electrons from one molecule to another. Using hydrogen-coated diamond illuminated by deep ultraviolet light, the Wisconsin team was able to induce a ready stream of electrons into water, which served as a reactant liquid that reduced nitrogen to ammonia under temperature and pressure conditions far more efficient than those required by traditional industrial methods.

"From a chemist's standpoint, nothing is more efficient than electrons in water," says Hamers, whose work is funded by the National Science Foundation. With the diamond catalyst, "the electrons are unconfined. They flow like lemmings to the sea."

While the method was demonstrated in the context of reducing nitrogen to a valuable agricultural product, the new diamond-centric approach is exciting, Hamers argues, because it can potentially fit a wide range of processes that require catalysis. "This is truly a different way of thinking about inducing reactions that may have more efficiency and applicability. We're doing this with diamond grit. It is infinitely reusable."

The technique devised by Hamers and his colleagues, he notes, still has kinks that need to be worked out to make it a viable alternative to traditional methods. The use of deep ultraviolet light, for example, is a limiting factor. Inducing reactions with visible light is a goal that would enhance the promise of the new technique for applications such as antipollution technology.

###

Contact:

Terry Devitt
608-262-8282
trdevitt@wisc.edu

---

[ | E-mail | Share ]

?

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.

Public release date: 30-Jun-2013
[ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Robert J. Hamers
rjhamers@wisc.edu
608-262-6371
University of Wisconsin-Madison

MADISON -- In the world, there are a lot of small molecules people would like to get rid of, or at least convert to something useful, according to University of Wisconsin-Madison chemist Robert J. Hamers.

Think carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas most responsible for far-reaching effects on global climate. Nitrogen is another ubiquitous small-molecule gas that can be transformed into the valuable agricultural fertilizer ammonia. Plants perform the chemical reduction of atmospheric nitrogen to ammonia as a matter of course, but for humans to do that in an industrial setting, a necessity for modern agriculture, requires subjecting nitrogen to massive amounts of energy under high pressure.

"The current process for reducing nitrogen to ammonia is done under extreme conditions," explains Hamers, a UW-Madison professor of chemistry. "There is an enormous barrier you have to overcome to get your final product."

Breaching that barrier more efficiently and reducing the huge amounts of energy used to convert nitrogen to ammonia by some estimates 2 percent of the world's electrical output has been a grail for the agricultural chemical industry. Now, that goal may be on the horizon, thanks to a technique devised by Hamers and his colleagues and published today (June 30, 2013) in the journal Nature Methods.

Like many chemical reactions, reducing nitrogen to ammonia is a product of catalysis, where the catalytic agent used in the traditional energy-intensive reduction process is iron. The iron, combined with high temperature and high pressure, accelerates the reaction rate for converting nitrogen to ammonia by lowering the activation barrier that otherwise keeps nitrogen, one of the most ubiquitous gases on the planet, intact.

"The nitrogen molecule is one of the happiest molecules around," notes Hamers. "It is incredibly stable. It doesn't do anything."

One of the big obstacles, according to Hamers, is that nitrogen binds poorly to catalytic materials like iron.

Hamers and his team, including Di Zhu, Linghong Zhang and Rose E. Ruther, all of UW-Madison, turned to synthetic industrial diamond a cheap, gritty, versatile material as a potential new catalyst for the reduction process. Diamond, the Wisconsin team found, can facilitate the reduction of nitrogen to ammonia under ambient temperatures and pressures.

Like all chemical reactions, the reduction of nitrogen to ammonia involves moving electrons from one molecule to another. Using hydrogen-coated diamond illuminated by deep ultraviolet light, the Wisconsin team was able to induce a ready stream of electrons into water, which served as a reactant liquid that reduced nitrogen to ammonia under temperature and pressure conditions far more efficient than those required by traditional industrial methods.

"From a chemist's standpoint, nothing is more efficient than electrons in water," says Hamers, whose work is funded by the National Science Foundation. With the diamond catalyst, "the electrons are unconfined. They flow like lemmings to the sea."

While the method was demonstrated in the context of reducing nitrogen to a valuable agricultural product, the new diamond-centric approach is exciting, Hamers argues, because it can potentially fit a wide range of processes that require catalysis. "This is truly a different way of thinking about inducing reactions that may have more efficiency and applicability. We're doing this with diamond grit. It is infinitely reusable."

The technique devised by Hamers and his colleagues, he notes, still has kinks that need to be worked out to make it a viable alternative to traditional methods. The use of deep ultraviolet light, for example, is a limiting factor. Inducing reactions with visible light is a goal that would enhance the promise of the new technique for applications such as antipollution technology.

###

Contact:

Terry Devitt
608-262-8282
trdevitt@wisc.edu

---

[ | E-mail | Share ]

?

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.

Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-06/uow-dcs062713.php

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5.0-magnitude quake hits China-Tajikistan border: CENC

BEIJING, June 30 (Xinhua) -- A 5.0-magnitude earthquake jolted the border region between China and Tajikistan at 12:59 p.m. Sunday (Beijing Time), according to the China Earthquake Networks Center.

The epicenter, with a depth of 10 km, was at 39.2 degrees north latitude and 73.4 degrees east longitude, the center said in a statement.

Source: http://english.sina.com/world/2013/0629/603904.html

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iPhone 5s Rumors Continue: Sept. 20 Release Date?

Ready? Here we go! More predictions are flying around the Web regarding the rumored next moves by Apple, specifically surrounding the "iPhone 5s" smartphone that numerous pundits and Apple fans are expecting to see come down Apple's pipeline sooner than later.

The International Business Times' Dave Smith is joining the fray with a prediction that the iPhone 5s ? Apple's sixth-generation device ? will hit retail channels this year, accompanied by Apple's rumored low-cost, color-cased iPhone that's designed to appeal to emerging markets and/or those who can't otherwise break the bank for an Apple smartphone.

So, without further ado, the predictions: According to Smith, Apple's going to launch the iPhone 5s on September 20. It'll likely announce said speedier device at an event right around September 10. The low-cost iPhone ? be it the iPhone 6, the iPhone Light, or the iPhone Lil' (our suggestion) ? would have to wait a week or two before its official launch, likely on September 27 or October 4.

Got it? Now, the reasoning: Smith's not just pulling out a crystal ball and picking days at random. Rather, he opines that Apple is likely to use the same timeframe for the official release of iOS 7 as it did for iOS 6 ? 100 days after the operating system was officially unveiled. Since CEO Tim Cook showed off iOS 7 at this year's Worldwide Developers Conference on June 10, flashing forward 100 days puts the (alleged) consumer release date of the operating system on September 18.

"That said, Apple would never release its newest iOS without some new hardware to go with it. This is why we fully expect Apple to release the iPhone 5S just two days after the release date for iOS 7, on Sept. 20," Smith writes.

As for the launch of the to-be-named low-cost iPhone, Smith speculates that Apple would want to delay the release a bit as to not make its retail stores too crowded with simultaneous launches of two big devices.

How well do Smith's predictions track against the rest of the Apple punditry as of late? Pretty well, in fact: AppleInsider recently reported that Avago Technologies, which makes wireless chips found in Apple's iPhones, has teased that one of its larger customers is gearing up for a new product launch. Some analysts see that "larger customer" as Apple, and that "new product launch" as a sign that Apple's gearing up for an iPhone 5s September launch.

However, Citigroup's Glen Yeung has recently taken to the airwaves to comment that iPhone 5s production has likely been delayed anywhere from two to four weeks, based on comments he's heard from manufacturers and suppliers within Apple's supply chain.

"And while this does not preclude a September iPhone 5S launch date, we suspect volumes in September may consequently be challenged," Yeung said.

As for the low-cost iPhone Apple allegedly has in the works, a recent report from the China Times suggests that supplies have already started shipping parts for the device. That bodes well for a fall release date? but when, specifically, is anybody's guess. And expect to see a lot more guessing as we head through the summer months.

Source: http://feeds.ziffdavis.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/breakingnews/~3/eARbWss8t9E/0,2817,2421221,00.asp

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Final Texas visit wows Arrion Springs

June, 29, 2013

Jun 29

7:27

PM ET

A seemingly easy decision has suddenly become far more difficult for Arrion Springs

Before departing for The Opening, the ESPN 300 cornerback from San Antonio Roosevelt gave Texas one final chance to woo him and his mother with an unofficial visit on Friday.

To continue reading this article you must be an Insider

Source: http://insider.espn.go.com/blog/ncfrecruiting/midlands/post?id=12915

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Ian Somerhalder Calls Out Justin Bieber: Be a Role Model!

Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2013/05/ian-somerhalder-calls-out-justin-bieber-be-a-role-model/

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S.Africa's Netcare H1 profit up 25 pct, local unit robust

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Netcare Ltd, Africa's third-biggest private hospital group, posted a 25 percent rise in half-year profit on Monday, helped by a strong performance in South Africa and favourable currency swings.

Netcare, which also runs hospitals in Britain, said diluted headline earnings per share totalled 65.8 cents in the six months to end-March compared with 52.7 cents a year earlier.

While demand for private healthcare has increased in South Africa thanks to a fast-growing middle class, stalling economic growth in Britain has led to a drop in the number of people with private medical insurance.

Netcare said revenue grew 8.5 percent to 13.3 billion rand with currency swings adding another 631 million rand.

Shares in the company are up about 16 percent so far this year, outpacing a 6 percent rise in the JSE All-share index.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/africas-netcare-h1-profit-25-pct-local-unit-065235512.html

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UK astro Peake given station date

20 May 2013 Last updated at 04:26 ET By Jonathan Amos Science correspondent, BBC News

The BBC's Pallab Ghosh looks back at Tim Peake's career so far

Tim Peake says he is thrilled to have been given the opportunity to go to the International Space Station (ISS).

The UK astronaut told BBC News it was a "huge privilege" and the culmination of everything he had worked for during his aviation career.

A former major and helicopter pilot in the British Army Air Corps, Tim Peake will join Expedition 46 to the ISS, launching in November or December 2015.

His stay at the 415km-high outpost is expected to last just over five months.

Tasks once in orbit will include helping to maintain the 27,000km/h platform and carrying out science experiments in Esa's Columbus laboratory module, which is attached to the front of the 400-tonne complex.

It is understood there is a strong chance he will also get to perform a spacewalk.

"I am delighted to have been assigned to a long-duration mission to the International Space Station," he told me.

"On a personal level, this feels like the high point of an incredibly rewarding career in aviation.

"It is a huge privilege to be able to fly to space. I look forward to the challenges ahead and I shall be doing my utmost to maximise this opportunity for European science, industry and education to benefit from this mission."

Forty-one-year-old Peake hails from Chichester, and is so far the only Briton ever to be accepted into the European Astronaut Corps.

In some senses, he will become the "first official British astronaut", because all previous UK-born individuals who have gone into orbit have done so either through the US space agency (Nasa) as American citizens or on independent ventures organised with the assistance of the Russian space agency.

As an Esa, astronaut, "Major Tim" will be flying under the Union Flag on a UK-government-sponsored programme.

Major Tim's assignment is made as British space activity is experiencing a big renaissance.

The space industry in the UK is growing fast, employing tens of thousands of workers and contributing some ?9bn in value to the national economy.

The government has also raised substantially its subscription to Esa, and the agency has responded by opening its first technical base in the country.

Ecsat (European Centre for Space Applications and Telecoms) is sited on the Harwell science campus in Oxfordshire.

Traditionally, British governments have steadfastly refused to get involved in human spaceflight, and even the current administration puts only a minimal amount of money into the Esa programme.

Continue reading the main story

Science Minister David Willetts regards the ?16m to secure Tim Peake's ticket as money well spent.

While Nasa wraps its astronauts in the rhetoric of fabled explorers - lots of "celestial destiny" and "bold endeavour" - the British take is far more mundane: the press release announcing Tim Peake's mission is mainly about British industry and jobs.

So when he dons his spacesuit, and checks the Union Flag's in place, there'll be a lot riding on his multi-layered shoulders.

But the British Interplanetary Society's Nick Spall, who has long campaigned for greater UK engagement, says the benefits of human spaceflight are now being recognised in Whitehall.

"With exciting mission opportunities coming up for flights across the inner Solar System to asteroids, the Moon, Mars and beyond for the future, many young people will be inspired by Tim and his achievement , taking up STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) subjects at schools and universities. This will really help boost the UK's technical employment potential for jobs and industry. Human spaceflight is a 'win-win' initiative for the UK," he said.

There is sure to be huge interest in Major Tim's adventure.

The recently returned ISS commander, Canadian Chris Hadfield, attracted a big following for his tweets, videos and songs from the platform. His rendition of David Bowie's A Space Oddity has become a YouTube hit.

It would be hoped that Major Tim could achieve something of the same impact.

"I do strum the guitar badly," he admits, but as for singing, he says he is not in the same class as Cmdr Hadfield. "Under Pressure", a duet with Freddie Mercury and Queen, is Major Tim's favourite Bowie number. "Quite apt, I suppose!"

Helen Sharman was the first Briton to go into space in 1991 on Project Juno, a cooperative project between a number of UK companies and the Soviet government. She spent a week at the Mir space station.

The most experienced British-born astronaut is Nasa's Michael Foale. He has accumulated 374 days in orbit, completing long-duration missions to both the ISS and Mir.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22579023#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa

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Bruins top Rangers 5-2 with all-out effort

New York Rangers right wing Ryan Callahan (24) celebrates his goal and center Derek Stepan cheers from behind as Boston Bruins defenseman Zdeno Chara (33) reacts during the first period in Game 2 of the NHL Eastern Conference semifinal hockey playoff series in Boston, Sunday, May 19, 2013. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola)

New York Rangers right wing Ryan Callahan (24) celebrates his goal and center Derek Stepan cheers from behind as Boston Bruins defenseman Zdeno Chara (33) reacts during the first period in Game 2 of the NHL Eastern Conference semifinal hockey playoff series in Boston, Sunday, May 19, 2013. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola)

New York Rangers center Brian Boyle (22) goes down to the ice as he chases the puck against Boston Bruins defensemen Adam McQuaid (54) and Torey Krug (47) during the first period in Game 2 of the NHL Eastern Conference semifinal hockey playoff series in Boston, Sunday, May 19, 2013. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola)

Boston Bruins defenseman Matt Bartkowski (43) and New York Rangers right wing Ryan Callahan (24) grapple along the boards during the first period in Game 2 of the NHL Eastern Conference semifinal hockey playoff series in Boston, Sunday, May 19, 2013. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola)

New York Rangers right wing Ryan Callahan, left, scores against Boston Bruins goalie Tuukka Rask, right, during the first period in Game 2 of the NHL Eastern Conference semifinal hockey playoff series in Boston, Sunday, May 19, 2013. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola)

Boston Bruins defenseman Zdeno Chara, front left, goes down against New York Rangers right wing Ryan Callahan (24) as Bruins left wing Daniel Paille (20) looks on during the first period in Game 2 of the NHL Eastern Conference semifinal hockey playoff series in Boston, Sunday, May 19, 2013. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola)

BOSTON (AP) ? The Bruins know a huge deficit can disappear quickly. They overcame one to reach the second round of the playoffs.

So they weren't about to ease up when they had a big lead of their own on Sunday.

Boston went ahead by two goals in the first minute of the third period, added another 12 minutes later and beat the New York Rangers 5-2 to take a 2-0 lead in the best-of-seven Eastern Conference semifinals.

Just six days earlier, the Bruins became the first team to win a Game 7 after trailing by three goals in the third period. They started their comeback with less than 11 minutes left and extended their season with a 5-4 overtime win over the Toronto Maple Leafs.

"Guys are really trying to stay focused on doing their job in the third period," Brad Marchand said. "We know how important they are, especially after what we went through being down by a few goals. We know that it's possible for any team to come back from any score."

Marchand made it 4-2 with just 26 seconds gone in the third period, Milan Lucic scored at 12:39 and the Bruins worked hard the rest of the way.

"We talked about it before we went out there in the third period, and we just had to make sure that we played to win," Boston coach Claude Julien said. "I don't like our team when we play on our heels and we're just trying to protect a one-goal lead. We've got to extend the lead and extend it even more before we even think about protecting it."

Game 3 is Tuesday night in New York.

The Rangers never led Sunday, although they tied the game quickly after each of the Bruins' first two goals.

The second period may have been New York's best of the series even though Johnny Boychuk's tie-breaking goal on a 40-foot shot at 12:08 of the period got past goalie Henrik Lundqvist, who was screened by several players.

"We played a really good second," New York's Dan Girardi said. "The first shift of the third killed us."

That's when Marchand made it 4-2 with a goal similar to the one that gave the Bruins a 3-2 overtime win in the opener.

Patrice Bergeron carried the puck in deep along the right side and passed across the crease to Marchand, who had beaten Girardi and tipped it in.

"I have to be ready to defend that pass there," Girardi said. "They didn't have much room, but, obviously, I have to be either on the strong side blocking that or on Marchand's stick. That really put us behind the eight-ball."

With a two-goal lead, the Bruins remained aggressive but still clogged the middle in front of goalie Tuukka Rask when the Rangers attacked.

"We felt really good going into the third, and to have that type of goal go in ? it's just two-on-two ? it hurts you," Rangers coach John Tortorella said. "We couldn't generate anything, and then they're just going to fill the middle and they're just going to jam you."

Boston never trailed as rookie Torey Krug scored the first goal at 5:28 of the first period before Rangers captain Ryan Callahan tied it less than three minutes later. Gregory Campbell made it 2-1 at 2:24 of the second period, and New York pulled even again 56 seconds later on Rick Nash's goal, his first of the playoffs after he led the Rangers with 21 in the regular season.

"We didn't play our best," Marchand said. "I think, especially in the second period, they took it to us, but we were able to bounce back. It's definitely a very even series."

Not when it comes to goaltending.

Lundqvist allowed more than five goals for the first time in 152 games, including the postseason, and stopped 27 shots.

"I thought I was in position, but (there were) a couple screens and when you give up five goals you can't be satisfied," he said.

There's also the matter of his left shoulder that was hit by Daniel Paille's third-period shot. Lundqvist rubbed it after the game and said, "We'll take a look at it."

Rask saved 35 of 37 shots.

Still, Lundqvist won the Vezina Trophy last year and is a finalist for it this year.

"I know that I can't let in any lead goals most nights because he is who he is," Rask said, "but, then again it's a team game and we're more focused on the Rangers than any individual."

These are the Rangers who also lost the first two games of their opening series on the road, then won the next two at home. They lost Game 5 in Washington but won the last two games behind shutouts by Lundqvist.

"We've done it before," he said, "but I think we are playing a better team now so it's going to be tough to do it."

Ahead or behind, home or away, the Bruins plan to play with the same determination the entire game.

"You can't take anything for granted," Boychuk said. "It's playoffs. Anything can happen, and sometimes a team can play better in front of their hometown."

NOTES: The last time Lundqvist allowed more than four goals was March 9, 2011, in a 5-2 loss to Anaheim. In the next 151 games he allowed four goals just 13 times. ... The Bruins played their second straight game without injured veteran defensemen Andrew Ference, Dennis Seidenberg and Wade Redden ... A defenseman got a goal or an assist on each of Boston's goals. ... The margin of victory was more than two for just the second time in 26 games between the teams. ... In their nine playoff games, the Rangers have scored on two of 35 power plays. They're 0 for 7 against the Bruins.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/347875155d53465d95cec892aeb06419/Article_2013-05-20-HKN-Rangers-Bruins-Folo/id-4de040350e2c46248067c9f15564d307

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Marissa Mayer's Favorite Designer Labels - Business Insider

?

Marissa Mayer is known for her poise as a leader, formerly at Google and now as CEO of Yahoo!

But she's also known for her fashion sense.

She's has made appearances at New York Fashion Week, for instance, and at Glamor magazine's Woman of the Year event.

We gleaned a fair amount of Mayer's fashion preferences from Vogue's 2009 profile on Mayer. We pieced together the rest from posts on Twitter and Instagram.

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/marissa-mayers-favorite-designer-labels-2013-5?op=1

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Reading rock to understand how climate change unfolds

May 18, 2013 ? What happened the last time a vegetated Earth shifted from an extremely cold climate to desert-like conditions? And what does it tell us about climate change today?

John Isbell is on a quest to coax that information from the geology of the southernmost portions of the Earth. It won't be easy, because the last transition from "icehouse to greenhouse" occurred between 335 and 290 million years ago.

An expert in glaciation from the late Paleozoic Era, Isbell is challenging many assumptions about the way drastic climate change naturally unfolds. The research helps form the all-important baseline needed to predict what the added effects of human activity will bring.

Starting from 'deep freeze'

In the late Paleozoic, the modern continents were fused together into two huge land masses, with what is now the Southern Hemisphere, including Antarctica, called Gondwana. During the span of more than 60 million years, Gondwana shifted from a state of deep freeze into one so hot and dry it supported the appearance of reptiles. The change, however, didn't happen uniformly, Isbell says.

In fact, his research has shaken the common belief that Gondwana was covered by one massive sheet of ice which gradually and steadily melted away as conditions warmed. Isbell has found that at least 22 individual ice sheets were located in various places over the region. And the state of glaciation during the long warming period was marked by dramatic swings in temperature and atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂) levels.

"There appears to be a direct association between low CO₂ levels and glaciation," he says. "A lot of the changes in greenhouse gases and in a shrinking ice volume then are similar to what we're seeing today."

When the ice finally started disappearing, he says, it did so in the polar regions first and lingered in other parts of Gondwana with higher elevations. He attributes that to different conditions across Gondwana, such as mountain-building events, which would have preserved glaciers longer.

All about the carbon

To get an accurate picture of the range of conditions in the late Paleozoic, Isbell has traveled to Antarctica 16 times and has joined colleagues from around the world as part of an interdisciplinary team funded by the National Science Foundation. They have regularly gone to places where no one has ever walked on the rocks before.

One of his colleagues is paleoecologist Erik Gulbranson, who studies plant communities from the tail end of the Paleozoic and how they evolved in concert with the climatic changes. The information contained in fossil soil and plants, he says, can reveal a lot about carbon cycling, which is so central for applying the work to climate change today.

Documenting the particulars of how the carbon cycle behaved so long ago will allow them to answer questions like, 'What was the main force behind glaciation during the late Paleozoic? Was it mountain-building or climate change?'

Another characteristic of the late Paleozoic shift is that once the climate warmed significantly and atmospheric CO₂ levels soared, the Earth's climate remained hot and dry for another 200 million years.

"These natural cycles are very long, and that's an important difference with what we're seeing with the contemporary global climate change," says Gulbranson. "Today, we're seeing change in greenhouse gas concentrations of CO₂ on the order of centuries and decades."

Ancient trees and soil

In order to explain today's accelerated warming, Gulbranson's research illustrates that glaciers alone don't tell the whole story.

Many environmental factors leave an imprint on the carbon contained in tree trunks from this period. One of the things Gulbranson hypothesizes from his research in Antarctica is that an increase in deciduous trees occurred in higher latitudes during the late Paleozoic, driven by higher temperatures.

What he doesn't yet know is what the net effect was on the carbon cycle.

While trees soak in CO₂ and give off oxygen, there are other environmental processes to consider, says Gulbranson. For example, CO₂ emissions also come from soil as microbes speed up their consumption of organic matter with rising temperatures.

"The high latitudes today contain the largest amount of carbon locked up as organic material and permafrost soils on Earth today," he says. "It actually exceeds the amount of carbon you can measure in the rain forests. So what happens to that stockpile of carbon when you warm it and grow a forest over it is completely unknown."

Another unknown is whether the Northern Hemisphere during this time was also glaciated and warming. The pair are about to find out. With UWM backing, they will do field work in northeastern Russia this summer to study glacial deposits from the late Paleozoic.

The two scientists' work is complementary. Dating the rock is essential to pinpointing the rate of change in the carbon cycle, which would be the warning signal we could use today to indicate that nature is becoming dangerously unbalanced.

"If we figure out what happened with the glaciers," says Isbell, "and add it to what we know about other conditions -- we will be able to unlock the answers to climate change."

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/most_popular/~3/lad7DFFJLRs/130518153259.htm

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Winning ticket for $590.5 million Powerball lottery sold in Florida

By Brendan O'Brien

(Reuters) - A single winning ticket for a record Powerball lottery jackpot worth $590.5 million was sold in Florida, organizers said late on Saturday, but there was no immediate word about who won one of the largest jackpots in U.S. history.

The winning numbers from Saturday night's drawing were: 10, 13, 14, 22 and 52, with a Powerball number of 11. The odds of winning were put at 1 in 175 million.

The winning ticket was sold at a Publix supermarket in Zephyrhills, a suburb of Tampa, according to the Florida Lottery.

The winner or winners had not come forward as of Sunday morning, said Connie Barnes, a Florida Lottery spokeswoman. The winning ticket holder's name will become part of the public record because a check will be made out to the winner, but that person or persons need not appear in public to acknowledge the prize, Barnes said.

The grand prize, accumulated after two months of drawings, surpassed the previous record Powerball payoff of $587.5 million set in November 2012.

The largest jackpot in U.S. history stands at $656 million, won in the Mega Millions lottery of March 2012. That prize was split between winners in Maryland, Kansas and Illinois.

The Multi-State Lottery Association, based in Iowa, announced the Powerball results in a brief message on its website, saying, "There was one winner sold by the Florida Lottery for the last drawing's $590,500,000 grand prize."

The extremely long odds of winning did not deter people from buying tickets at staggering rates. California was selling $1 million in tickets every hour on Saturday, said Donna Cordova, a spokeswoman for the California Lottery, which has only been selling Powerball tickets since April 8.

The $2 tickets allow players to pick five numbers from 1 to 59, and a Powerball number from 1 to 35.

(Additional reporting by Karen Brooks in Austin, Texas, and Steve Gorman in Los Angeles.; Editing by Daniel Trotta, Christopher Wilson and Cynthia Osterman)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/winning-ticket-590-5-million-powerball-jackpot-sold-054801103.html

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Lundbeck says drug shows improvement in depression symptoms

By Karen Brooks and Steve Gorman (Reuters) - A single winning ticket for a record U.S. Powerball lottery jackpot worth $590.5 million was sold in Florida, organizers said late on Saturday, but there was no immediate word about who won or where in the state the ticket was bought. The winning numbers from Saturday night's drawing were: 10, 13, 14, 22 and 52, with a Powerball number of 11, and the odds of winning were put at one in 175 million. The winning ticket was sold at a Publix supermarket in Zephyrhills, a suburb of Tampa, according to CNN. ...

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/lundbeck-says-drug-shows-improvement-depression-symptoms-180542044.html

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Nanotechnology could help fight diabetes

Friday, May 17, 2013

Injectable nanoparticles developed at MIT may someday eliminate the need for patients with Type 1 diabetes to constantly monitor their blood-sugar levels and inject themselves with insulin.

The nanoparticles were designed to sense glucose levels in the body and respond by secreting the appropriate amount of insulin, thereby replacing the function of pancreatic islet cells, which are destroyed in patients with Type 1 diabetes. Ultimately, this type of system could ensure that blood-sugar levels remain balanced and improve patients' quality of life, according to the researchers.

"Insulin really works, but the problem is people don't always get the right amount of it. With this system of extended release, the amount of drug secreted is proportional to the needs of the body," says Daniel Anderson, an associate professor of chemical engineering and member of MIT's Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research and Institute for Medical Engineering and Science.

Anderson is the senior author of a paper describing the new system in a recent issue of the journal ACS Nano. Lead author of the paper is Zhen Gu, a former postdoc in Anderson's lab. The research team also includes Robert Langer, the David H. Koch Institute Professor at MIT, and researchers from the Department of Anesthesiology at Boston Children's Hospital.

Mimicking the pancreas

Currently, people with Type 1 diabetes typically prick their fingers several times a day to draw blood for testing their blood-sugar levels. When levels are high, these patients inject themselves with insulin, which breaks down the excess sugar.

In recent years, many researchers have sought to develop insulin-delivery systems that could act as an "artificial pancreas," automatically detecting glucose levels and secreting insulin. One approach uses hydrogels to measure and react to glucose levels, but those gels are slow to respond or lack mechanical strength, allowing insulin to leak out.

The MIT team set out to create a sturdy, biocompatible system that would respond more quickly to changes in glucose levels and would be easy to administer.

Their system consists of an injectable gel-like structure with a texture similar to toothpaste, says Gu, who is now an assistant professor of biomedical engineering and molecular pharmaceutics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University. The gel contains a mixture of oppositely charged nanoparticles that attract each other, keeping the gel intact and preventing the particles from drifting away once inside the body.

Using a modified polysaccharide known as dextran, the researchers designed the gel to be sensitive to acidity. Each nanoparticle contains spheres of dextran loaded with an enzyme that converts glucose into gluconic acid. Glucose can diffuse freely through the gel, so when sugar levels are high, the enzyme produces large quantities of gluconic acid, making the local environment slightly more acidic.

That acidic environment causes the dextran spheres to disintegrate, releasing insulin. Insulin then performs its normal function, converting the glucose in the bloodstream into glycogen, which is absorbed into the liver for storage.

Long-term control

In tests with mice that have Type 1 diabetes, the researchers found that a single injection of the gel maintained normal blood-sugar levels for an average of 10 days. Because the particles are mostly composed of polysaccharides, they are biocompatible and eventually degrade in the body.

The researchers are now trying to modify the particles so they can respond to changes in glucose levels faster, at the speed of pancreas islet cells. "Islet cells are very smart. They can release insulin very quickly once they sense high sugar levels," Gu says.

Before testing the particles in humans, the researchers plan to further develop the system's delivery properties and to work on optimizing the dosage that would be needed for use in humans.

###

Massachusetts Institute of Technology: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice

Thanks to Massachusetts Institute of Technology for this article.

This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/128296/Nanotechnology_could_help_fight_diabetes

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Someone Animated Patton Oswalt's Epic Star Wars/Avengers Mashup Rant

Not too long ago, Patton Oswalt riffed on his idea for a great plot for the upcoming Star Wars: Episode VII film on Parks and Recreation. Now, it's got a whole bunch of..."digital effects" that turn it into the film we all deserve. It's alright JJ, we've got this one on lock. But thanks for throwing your hat in the ring! [iZacLess via Patton Oswalt]

Source: http://gizmodo.com/this-is-everything-star-wars-episode-vii-should-be-508521585

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Ex-Pa. officer once hailed as hero faces charges

PHILADELPHIA (AP) ? A former Philadelphia police officer once hailed as a hero and given a seat next to the first lady at a speech by President Obama has been arrested and charged with rape and other crimes.

Authorities allege that former officer Richard DeCoatsworth left a party with two females early Thursday and took them to another location, where they allege that he produced a handgun and "forced the two females to engage in the use of narcotics and sexual acts."

A police spokeswoman said the two called police after he left, and 27-year-old DeCoatsworth was charged with rape, sexual assault, terroristic threats and related offenses.

DeCoatsworth was hailed as a hero after he was shot in the face during a traffic stop in September 2007 but still managed to chase after his attacker, who was later sentenced to 36 to 72 years in prison.

DeCoatsworth was invited by Vice President Joe Biden to attend the president's televised February 2009 address to Congress and sat with first lady Michelle Obama. He said he didn't know why he had been singled out, but being in the presence of the nation's leaders was an honor "that I will keep with me for the rest of my life."

WCAU-TV, which first reported his arrest, said DeCoatsworth retired from the department on disability in December 2011.

Police said no other information on the alleged attack would be released Saturday to protect the victims and the integrity of the ongoing investigation. Authorities declined to say give even general locations for the party and alleged crime scene and also wouldn't say when DeCoatsworth was arrested.

A listed number for DeCoatsworth has been disconnected and it was unclear whether he had an attorney.

Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey told a Philadelphia Daily News columnist in February of last year that he believed he had made a mistake in granting the former officer's request to go back to work too soon after he was shot.

"God bless him for still wanting to get out there and do police work, but did I act in his best interest? In hindsight, I would say probably not," Ramsey told columnist Sty Bykofsky.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/ex-pa-officer-once-hailed-hero-faces-charges-181200222.html

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Cancer, rape fraud case bowls over Mich. community

LEXINGTON, Mich. (AP) ? A Michigan woman gained the sympathy and admiration of her community as the subject of a newspaper's award-winning series about surviving rape. People and organizations then rallied when her cancer diagnosis became public.

Now 38-year-old Sara Ylen (WHY'-len) is charged with fraud, false pretenses and using a computer to commit a crime after state police found no doctor who diagnosed cancer.

And the charges come as those who helped Ylen reel from the news that the man who spent nearly 10 years in prison for her rape was released last year. A judge said new evidence cast doubt on whether Ylen ever was attacked.

Prosecutors say Ylen fooled everyone, even her then-husband, into believing she was ill. Neither Ylen nor her attorney has returned phone calls seeking comment.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/cancer-rape-fraud-case-bowls-over-mich-community-174226869.html

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Google and NASA team up for D-Wave-powered Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab

Google. NASA. Quantum computers. Seriously, everything about the new Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab at the Ames Research Center is exciting. The joint effort between Mountain View and America's space agency will put a 512 qubit machine from D-Wave at the disposal of researchers from around the globe, with the USRA (Universities Space Research Association) inviting teams of scientists and engineers to share time on the unique super computer. The goal is to study how quantum computing might be leveraged to advance machine learning, a branch of AI that has proven crucial to Google's success. The internet giant has already done some work with quantum computing before, now the goal is to see if its experimentation can translate into real world results. The idea, for Google at least, is to combine the extreme (but highly-specialized) power of the quantum bit with its oceans of traditional data centers to build more accurate models for everything from speech recognition to web search. And maybe, just maybe, with the help of quantum computers your phone will finally realize you didn't mean to say "duck."

Filed under: Misc, Alt, Google

Comments

Via: New York Times

Source: Google Research Blog

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/16/google-nasa-quantum-computing/?utm_medium=feed&utm_source=Feed_Classic&utm_campaign=Engadget

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Climate change may have little impact on tropical lizards: Study contradicts predictions of widespread extinction

May 17, 2013 ? A new Dartmouth College study finds human-caused climate change may have little impact on many species of tropical lizards, contradicting a host of recent studies that predict their widespread extinction in a rapidly warming planet.

The findings appear in the journal Global Change Biology.

Most predictions that tropical cold-blooded animals, especially forest lizards, will be hard hit by climate change are based on global-scale measurements of environmental temperatures, which miss much of the fine-scale variation in temperature that individual animals experience on the ground, said the article's lead author, Michael Logan, a Ph.D. student in ecology and evolutionary biology.

To address this disconnect, the Dartmouth researchers measured environmental temperatures at extremely high resolution and used those measurements to project the effects of climate change on the running abilities of four populations of lizard from the Bay Islands of Honduras. Field tests on the captured lizards, which were released unharmed, were conducted between 2008 and 2012.

Previous studies have suggested that open-habitat tropical lizard species are likely to invade forest habitat and drive forest species to extinction, but the Dartmouth research suggests that the open-habitat populations will not invade forest habitat and may actually benefit from predicted warming for many decades. Conversely, one of the forest species studied should experience reduced activity time as a result of warming, while two others are unlikely to experience a significant decline in performance.

The overall results suggest that global-scale predictions generated using low-resolution temperature data may overestimate the vulnerability of many tropical lizards to climate change.

"Whereas studies conducted to date have made uniformly bleak predictions for the survival of tropical forest lizards around the globe, our data show that four similar species, occurring in the same geographic region, differ markedly in their vulnerabilities to climate warming," the authors wrote. "Moreover, none appear to be on the brink of extinction. Considering that these populations occur over extremely small geographic ranges, it is possible that many tropical forest lizards, which range over much wider areas, may have even greater opportunity to escape warming."

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/eLBrCTEX9VA/130517085821.htm

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New craters abound: Mars camera reveals hundreds of impacts each year

May 15, 2013 ? Taking before and after pictures of Martian terrain, researchers of the UA-led HiRISE imaging experiment have identified almost 250 fresh impact craters on the Red Planet. The results suggest Mars gets pummeled by space rocks less frequently than previously thought, as scientists relied on cratering rates of the moon for their estimates.

Scientists using images from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, or MRO, have estimated that the planet is bombarded by more than 200 small asteroids or bits of comets per year forming craters at least 12.8 feet (3.9 meters) across.

Researchers have identified 248 new impact sites on parts of the Martian surface in the past decade, using images from the spacecraft to determine when the craters appeared. The 200-per-year planetwide estimate is a calculation based on the number found in a systematic survey of a portion of the planet.

The University of Arizona's High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment, or HiRISE camera, took pictures of the fresh craters at sites where before and after images had been taken. This combination provided a new way to make direct measurements of the impact rate on Mars and will lead to better age estimates of recent features on Mars, some of which may have been the result of climate change.

"It's exciting to find these new craters right after they form," said Ingrid Daubar of the UA, lead author of the paper published online this month by the journal Icarus. "It reminds you Mars is an active planet, and we can study processes that are happening today."

These asteroids or comet fragments typically are no more than 3 to 6 feet (1 to 2 meters) in diameter. Space rocks too small to reach the ground on Earth cause craters on Mars because the Red Planet has a much thinner atmosphere.

HiRISE targeted places where dark spots had appeared during the time between images taken by the spacecraft's Context Camera, or CTX, or cameras on other orbiters. The new estimate of cratering rate is based on a portion of the 248 new craters detected. If comes from a systematic check of a dusty fraction of the planet with CTX since late 2006.

The impacts disturb the dust, creating noticeable blast zones. In this part of the research, 44 fresh impact sites were identified.

The meteor over Chelyabinsk, Russia, in February was about 10 times bigger than the objects that dug the fresh Martian craters.

Estimates of the rate at which new craters appear serve as scientists' best yardstick for estimating the ages of exposed landscape surfaces on Mars and other worlds.

Daubar and co-authors calculated a rate for how frequently new craters at least 12.8 feet (3.9 meters) in diameter are excavated. The rate is equivalent to an average of one each year on each area of the Martian surface roughly the size of the U.S. state of Texas. Earlier estimates pegged the cratering rate at three to 10 times more craters per year. They were based on studies of craters on the moon and the ages of lunar rocks collected during NASA's Apollo missions in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

"Mars now has the best-known current rate of cratering in the solar system," said UA's HiRISE Principal Investigator Alfred McEwen, a co-author on the paper.

MRO has been examining Mars with six instruments since 2006. Daubar is an imaging targeting specialist who has been on the HiRISE uplink operation s team from the very beginning. She is also a graduate student in the UA's department of planetary science and plans on graduating with her doctorate in spring 2014.

"There are five of us who help plan the images that HiRISE will take over a two-week cycle," she explained. "We work with science team members across the world to understand their science goals, help select the image targets and compile the commands for the spacecraft and the camera."

"The longevity of this mission is providing wonderful opportunities for investigating changes on Mars," said MRO Deputy Project Scientist Leslie Tamppari of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_technology/~3/mFjMtBuwz-8/130515165025.htm

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Obama: IRS conduct "inexcusable" (Reuters)

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