Take a time machine back to 1943 to make bombing runs in the Pacific
A popular iOS game for years (yes, years) has finally made its way over to Android, and is packing many gameplay features that took two full game releases to hit the other platform. iBomber is a top-down plane bombing game set in the WWII era, with quality graphics and gameplay that won't blow you away but will certainly leave you satisfied. The game mechanics itself are simple to pick up, but are deceptively hard to master.
iBomber is a great game to spend some time on, so stick around after the break and learn a little more about the title before you give it a shot for yourself.
April 25, 2013 // Franchising.com // Needham, Mass. - Although the economy is slowly picking up, bank lending is still hard to come by, especially for business owners. As a result, franchised companies are looking for creative new financing options to meet their needs.
To provide increased financial support for its current and potential franchisees, fitness chain Get In Shape For Women recently announced a strategic relationship with Nexus Retail, a company that works with franchises to finance, design and develop new stores. Under the terms of the agreement, Nexus will finance up to $7.5 million in new store development, resales, and refinancing for qualified franchisee candidates.
?This new relationship is going to be highly beneficial for our existing franchisees as well as new franchise owners as we launch a national expansion campaign,? said Lou DeFrancisco, president and COO of Get In Shape For Women. ?We plan to add 20-25 new locations this year, with a particular focus on the Northeast, and Nexus Retail will be instrumental in supporting new locations.?
About Get In Shape For Women
Founded in 2006 by Brian Cook, Get In Shape For Women offers small group, personal training for women in a private, upscale studio. Clients experience weight training, cardio, nutrition support and accountability for a complete fitness program for women. The company currently operates 101 studios in 18 states across the country and expects to add 20-25 additional locations by the end of 2013. Get In Shape For Women plans to grow 25 percent each year toward its eventual goal of 5,000 locations worldwide. The Northeast, particularly New Jersey, is the primary target for growth in 2013. For more information, please visit www.getinshapeforwomen.com.
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Apr. 24, 2013 ? The stem cell transplant regimen that was commonly used in the United States to treat advanced neuroblastoma in children appears to be more toxic than the equally effective regimen employed in Europe and Egypt, according to a new study to be presented at the 26th annual meeting of the American Society of Pediatric Hematology Oncology in Miami April 24-27. The U.S. regimen was associated with more acute toxicity to the kidneys and liver.
This and other research informed the recent decision of the Children's Oncology Group (COG) to switch to the busulfan-based regimen used for years in Europe and Egypt, said senior author Leslie E. Lehmann, MD, clinical director of pediatric stem cell transplantation at Dana-Farber/Children's Hospital Cancer Center (DF/CHCC) in Boston.
Both approaches to high-risk neuroblastoma employ high doses of chemotherapy to eradicate cancer cells followed by infusion of the patient's previously collected stem cells to allow the patient to recover more quickly and safely. Since 2007, physicians at DF/CHCC and others in the Children's Oncology Group had been using a combination of high-dose carboplatin, etoposide, and melphalan to prepare patients for transplant, said Lehmann. European centers have preferred busulfan and melphalan over the platinum-based regimen.
"We have had a long-standing collaboration with Children's Cancer Hospital Egypt in Cairo, which is under the leadership of senior author Dr. Alaa Elhaddad," Lehmann said. "We decided to compare the toxicities in patients who received care that was very similar except for the drugs used in the preparative regimen.
"We found there was no difference in survival, but our regimen was associated with more liver and kidney toxicity and more bloodstream infections," she noted. "This was very useful information as COG contemplated switching to the European approach."
In addition to the idea of using toxicity data to choose between approaches of similar efficacy, Lehmann noted, "This study demonstrates you can have true collaboration between transplant centers located in very different parts of the world."
First author of the study is Yasser Elborai, MD, of the Children's Cancer Hospital Egypt.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, via Newswise. The original article was written by Richard Saltus.
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All Critics (96) | Top Critics (31) | Fresh (89) | Rotten (7)
"No" is a picture that perches precariously on the cusp of a paradox.
A cunning and richly enjoyable combination of high-stakes drama and media satire from Chilean director Pablo Larrain.
A mesmerizing, realistic and often hilarious look at the politics of power and the power of ideas ...
A political drama, a personal drama, a sharp-eyed study of how the media manipulate us from all sides, No reels and ricochets with emotional force.
It's a funny look at the way the media warp public opinion, and a curiously hopeful one.
On every level, "No" leaves one with bittersweet feelings about democracy, love and the cost of compromise.
No is a great historical document as to how one very important revolution started with a commercial.
The understated performance by Bernal was inspiring, as was the pic.
It's not easy material but it's truly fascinating, and expertly done.
An extremely perceptive and intriguing examination of the effect that media hype and spin have on the political process.
...a bitter and knowing meditation on media manipulation and political subversion.
Larrain deftly mixes social satire and historical drama.
All historical and little drama.
Larrain does a fine job of making No look and sound authentic to its time period, although the VHS-quality photography, all washed-out with colors bleeding together as camcorders did in the '80s, is an occasional irritant.
Silliness is on the side of the angels in a brilliant and highly entertaining film that's part political thriller, part media satire.
It's clear that the language of advertising has become universal, and that political commodities can be sold like soap. But toppling a dictatorship? Now there's a story.
A reflection of a moment in time, made in the image of that moment.
Bernal deftly explores the layers of the character's complexity, including his political apathy.
"No" is filmmaking of the first order.
Old technology plus the packaging of a revolution add up to a Yes
Freshens up a decades-old story with vibrant humor and a good sense of storytelling.
No continually impresses for its slyness and savvy -- rarely has such an eyesore been so worth watching.
Larrain fashions an unlikely crowd-pleaser from a historical episode that has its share of tragedy as well as triumph.
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NEW YORK (Reuters) - Billionaire trader Marc Lasry told investors in his $12 billion Avenue Capital that he will remain at the hedge fund and not become the next U.S. ambassador to France, according to a person familiar with the situation.
Lasry, who had been expected to get the nomination, told clients in a note on Tuesday he would remain at the New York-based firm, according to the source, who did not want to be identified.
Lasry, who would have been the first hedge fund manager tapped to be a U.S. ambassador, declined to comment.
A longtime Democratic donor with close ties to former President Bill Clinton, Lasry was considered the front-runner to be nominated by President Barack Obama as the next ambassador to France. Chelsea Clinton, the former president's daughter, once worked as an analyst for Avenue, which specializes in distressed debt investments.
Lasry is one of the few hedge fund managers who was a strong supporter and fundraiser for Obama during his re-election campaign in 2012, hosting a $40,000 per plate fundraiser for him at his townhouse in Manhattan.
The source familiar with the hedge fund said Lasry withdrew from consideration when it was determined Avenue would need investor approval to modify some management documents, as Lasry is deemed integral to overseeing several of the firm's funds.
But two people close to the hedge fund said there had always been concern about how Lasry would separate himself from the fund without being forced to sell his financial stake. If nominated, Lasry had intended to return to the fund at some point in the future.
At an event in March, former President Clinton said Lasry had been notified by the White House he would be nominated for the post. Neither the White House nor Lasry returned requests for comment on the nomination at the time, but a person familiar with the situation confirmed Clinton's remarks.
As speculation mounted earlier in the year that Lasry might move to Paris, the firm announced it had appointed a chief investment officer for the first time.
Investors said in March that, even if Lasry was to move to France, they would remain with Avenue, which Lasry founded with his sister Sonia Gardner in 1995. Over the years Lasry has increasingly handed over day-to-day management of the firm to Gardner and Lasry's role had become more like a "chairman," they said.
(Reporting by Katya Wachtel; Edited by Matthew Goldstein, Dan Grebler and Andre Grenon)
Apr. 23, 2013 ? Astronomers have spotted the "greenest" of galaxies, one that converts fuel into stars with almost 100-percent efficiency.
The findings come from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and the IRAM Plateau de Bure interferometer in the French Alps.
"This galaxy is remarkably efficient," said Jim Geach of McGill University in Canada, lead author of a new study appearing in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. "It's converting its gas supply into new stars at the maximum rate thought possible."
Stars are formed out of collapsing clouds of gas in galaxies. In a typical galaxy, like the Milky Way, only a fraction of the total gas supply is actively forming stars, with the bulk of the fuel lying dormant. The gas is distributed widely throughout the galaxy, with most of the new stars being formed within discrete, dense 'knots' in the spiral arms.
In the galaxy, called SDSSJ1506+54, nearly all of the gas has been driven to the central core of the galaxy, where it has ignited in a powerful burst of star formation.
"We are seeing a rare phase of evolution that is the most extreme -- and most efficient -- yet observed," said Geach.
The results will provide a better understanding of how the central star-forming regions of galaxies take shape.
SDSSJ1506+54 jumped out at the researchers when they looked at it using data from WISE's all-sky infrared survey. Infrared light is pouring out of the galaxy, equivalent to more than a thousand billion times the energy of our sun. The galaxy is so distant it has taken the light nearly six billion years to reach us.
"Because WISE scanned the entire sky, it detected rare galaxies like this one that stand out from the rest," said Ned Wright of UCLA, the WISE principal investigator.
Hubble's visible-light observations revealed that the galaxy is extremely compact, with most of its light emanating from a region just a few hundred light-years across. That's a big star-making punch for such a little size.
"While this galaxy is forming stars at a rate hundreds of times faster than our Milky Way galaxy, the sharp vision of Hubble revealed that the majority of the galaxy's starlight is being emitted by a region with a diameter just a few percent that of the Milky Way," said Geach.
The team then used the IRAM Plateau de Bure Interferometer to measure the amount of gas in the galaxy. The ground-based telescope detected millimeter-wave light coming from carbon monoxide, an indicator of the presence of hydrogen gas, which is fuel for stars. Combining the rate of star formation derived with WISE, and the gas mass measured by IRAM, the scientists get a measure of the star-formation efficiency.
In regions of galaxies where new stars are forming, parts of gas clouds are collapsing due to gravity. When the gas is dense enough to squeeze atoms together and ignite nuclear fusion, a star is born. But this process can be halted by other newborn stars, as their winds and radiation blow the gas outward. The point at which this occurs sets the theoretical maximum for star formation. The galaxy SDSSJ1506+54 was found to be making stars right at this point, just before the gas clouds would otherwise be blown apart.
"We see some gas outflowing from this galaxy at millions of miles per hour, and this gas may have been blown away by the powerful radiation from the newly formed stars," said Ryan Hickox, an astrophysicist at Dartmouth College, Hanover, N.H., and a co-author on the study.
Why is SDSSJ1506+54 so unusual? Astronomers say they're catching the galaxy in a short-lived phase of evolution, possibly triggered by the merging of two galaxies into one. The star formation is so prolific that in a few tens of millions of years, the blink of an eye in a galaxy's life, the gas will be used up, and SDSSJ1506+54 will mature into a massive elliptical galaxy.
The scientists also used data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, the W.M. Keck Observatory on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, and the MMT Observatory on Mount Hopkins, Arizona.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
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Journal Reference:
J. E. Geach, R. C. Hickox, A. M. Diamond-Stanic, M. Krips, J. Moustakas, C. A. Tremonti, A. L. Coil, P. H. Sell, G. H. Rudnick. A REDLINE STARBURST: CO(2-1) OBSERVATIONS OF AN EDDINGTON-LIMITED GALAXY REVEAL STAR FORMATION AT ITS MOST EXTREME. The Astrophysical Journal, 2013; 767 (1): L17 DOI: 10.1088/2041-8205/767/1/L17
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Apr. 24, 2013 ? New research from the University of Southampton has found that working or travelling on an underground railway for a sustained period of time could have health implications.
Previously published work suggests that working in environments such as steel mills or welding plants, which are rich in airborne metals, like iron, copper and nickel, can have damaging effects on health. However, little research has been done on the effects of working in an underground railway environment -- a similarly metal-rich environment -- and results of studies that have been conducted are often inconclusive.
New research published in Environmental Science and Technology shows that the small dust particles in the air in an underground railway is quite different to the dust that you breathe in every day and that could have health implications.
Matt Loxham, PhD student at the University of Southampton, explains: "We studied the ultrafine dust (or particulate matter) found in an underground station in Europe. Typically, ultrafine dust is composed of inert matter that does not pose much of a risk in terms of its chemical composition. However, in the underground station we studied, the ultrafine dust was at least as rich in metals as the larger dust particles and therefore, taken together with their increased surface area to volume ratio, it is of potential significance in understanding the risks of working and travelling in the underground. These tiny dust particles have the potential to penetrate the lungs and the body more easily, posing a risk to someone's health."
While coarse dust is generally deposited in the conducting airways of the body, for example nasal passages and bronchi; and the fine dust generally can reach the bronchioles (smaller airways), it is almost exclusively the ultrafine dust which is able to reach the deepest areas of the lungs, into the alveoli, where oxygen enters the blood and waste gases leave, to be exhaled. There is evidence that this ultrafine dust may be able to evade the protective barrier lining the airways (the epithelium), and enter underlying tissue and the circulation, meaning that the toxicity of ultrafine particles may not be limited to the airways but may involve the cardiovascular system, liver, brain, and kidneys.
Mr Loxham adds: "Underground rail travel is used by great numbers of people in large cities all over the world, for example, almost 1.2 billion journeys are made per year on the London Underground. The high level of mechanical activity in underground railways, along with very high temperatures is key in the generation of this metal-rich dust, and the number of people likely to be exposed means that more studies into the effects of particulate matter in the underground railway environment are needed, as well as examining how the levels of dust and duration of exposure might translate to effects on health."
The Southampton team, which included the Geochemistry Group at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton and the Inhalation Toxicology Group at the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) in Bilthoven, initially collected airborne dust from a mainline underground station underneath an airport in Europe. The metal content of the dust was analysed and a detailed elemental profile was established for each dust sample. These profiles were then compared to profiles from other dusts analysed at the same time, for example dust from wood-burning stoves and a heavily-trafficked road tunnel, showing that underground particles were very rich in metals, especially iron and copper. The shapes of individual particles were examined and gave clues as to how the particles were generated. The team then showed that the dust was capable of generating reactive molecules which are fundamental to their toxic effects, and that this was dependent on the metal content of the particles and, importantly, occurred to a greater extent as the size of the individual particles decreased. Further work is now being performed to examine the effects of underground dust on airway cells in more detail and the potential mechanisms by which cells may be able to protect themselves.
The study was funded through the Integrative Toxicology Training Partnership studentship provided by the Medical Research Council UK.
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If you're single, Hamm argues that you can save for retirement, even on the smallest of paychecks.?
By Trent Hamm,?Guest blogger / April 21, 2013
Workers prepare for lunch in the kitchen at the Palio D'Asti restaurant in San Francisco. Hamm argues that saving on minimum wage is possible, if saving is the highest priority.
Eric Risberg/AP/File
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The Simple Dollar is a blog for those of us who need both cents and sense: people fighting debt and bad spending habits while building a financially secure future and still affording a latte or two. Our busy lives are crazy enough without having to compare five hundred mutual funds ? we just want simple ways to manage our finances and save a little money.
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"I don?t see how a person making minimum wage can ever become financially independent. It?s basically impossible."
It?s far from impossible. It?s just a matter of priorities.
Let?s say you?re single and live in Washington state, where minimum wage is $9.19 per hour. You work forty hours a week for fifty weeks a year, earning $18,380. According to?this Washington state tax calculator, you?ll end up bringing home an amount very close to $295.20 every week throughout the year.
The first step is to?find an inexpensive place to live.?If you?re willing to work for minimum wage, you can find work in a lot of places.?This site?reports that a single parent and two children can live in Wahkiakum County on $32,997 per year, which means a single adult should be able to pull it off on $18,380 per year.
Once you?ve done that,?you have to pay attention to your expenses, starting with the big ones.?Do youreally?need a car in the area where you live? If you live close to work and have access to groceries and the doctor, you can probably do without it, which saves you a lot of money each month. Do you?really?need extra living space as a single person? Just rent a small space with one bedroom or even an efficiency, or rent an apartment or a small house with some roommates.
You should also?whittle down your monthly bills. Use a pay-as-you-go cell phone. Use the internet at the library and skip it at home. Don?t have a cable bill ? instead, just stick up an antenna and enjoy the dozens of over-the-air channels that are now out there (most stations now have two or three digital channels).
Food can be tricky, but you can live pretty cheap if you stick to generics, eat a lot of whatever produce is on sale, and watch for food sales. A single person can easily eat on $150 to $200 a month if they?re careful.
Afraid you?ll be bored? Cultivate a network of friends that do free stuff. See if the town has a parks and recreation department and get involved. Start an ultimate Frisbee league in the park. Invite people over for movie nights and have everyone bring a beverage to share. Get involved in any local organizations, as they usually have a lot of activities that are free. Go to any and all community dinners as you?ll usually get a good meal at the same price or lower than what it would cost at home and you can meet a lot of interesting people.
Channel the rest of your spare time into earning extra money. Mow lawns for $10 a pop. Deliver groceries. Deliver pizza. You can do these on a part-time basis to supplement your income.
Allot yourself a little money for incidental spending, but?make absolutely sure that you?re socking away at least 10% of your paycheck each week into a savings account.?That?s going to be about $30 a week. Do?nottouch that money. When it starts to build up, invest it. Spend time at the library learning about how to invest properly and start putting that extra money to good use. If you earn extra money from a side business or other jobs, sock some of that away, too.
Let?s say you?re able to save just $30 a week following a plan like this. $30 a week for 52 weeks adds up to $1,560 per year. Let?s say you invest that in stocks that return 7% over the long haul. After nine years, you?ll have more than a year?s worth of your income in the bank. After 20 years, you?ll have over $60,000 in the bank.
Now, let?s say you find a way to stick another $30 per week into the bank. At the thirty year mark, you?ll have $294,000 in the bank. If you continue to live on about $17,000 a year, that money will last you for the rest of your life ? you can live off the interest.
If you start this at age eighteen, you?re done working at age 48.
This is just an example, of course, and I?m not figuring in things like life changes (getting married, having a kid) and I?m not worried about inflation, either (I?m assuming that minimum wage keeps up with it and that you raise your savings to match your raises along the way).
Still, the point is clear:?anyone?can?do this if they choose to make savings a priority in their life.?If you choose not to do that, you pay for it over the long haul. Every frivolous thing you throw your money at pushes financial independence further and further away and, if you have a low income, every little bit matters.
It?s not a matter of ?I can?t do this.? It?s a matter of ?I choose other things instead of doing this.?
The Christian Science Monitor has assembled a diverse group of the best economy-related bloggers out there. Our guest bloggers are not employed or directed by the Monitor and the views expressed are the bloggers' own, as is responsibility for the content of their blogs. To contact us about a blogger, click here. To add or view a comment on a guest blog, please go to the blogger's own site by clicking on www.thesimpledollar.com.
Microsoft has tried more than a few publicity stunts to get us using Office 365, including WiFi hotspots in UK park benches. A magazine with a hotspot, however, is fresh -- and might just get us to notice the ads we normally skip. Americans who've received a special issue of Forbes have flipped past the articles to discover a fully functional (if stripped down) T-Mobile router tucked into a cardboard insert. Once activated, it dishes out 15 days of free WiFi for up to five devices at once, at up to three hours per charge. Microsoft is naturally hoping that we'll see the value of always being in the cloud and pony up for an Office 365 subscription, but we're sure that many will just relish having an access point while they're reading on the train home -- it sure beats settling for a Twitter feed.
It?s so exciting when your film gets funded! But what if it?s being funded and made in a country where you don?t speak the language, in a country where bureaucracy and cultural identity create complex convolutions and roadblocks? That?s the story behind Unmade In China which follows the saga of director Gil Kofman. He finds himself in Xiamen, China trying to direct a thriller, originally written for the American market, now rewritten and? repurposed for China, with an entirely Chinese cast and a script that has gone through several Chinese revisions, including one that added in killing a dog, then feeding the pet to the heroine. Communist party officials toast Kofman, while his Chinese screenwriter dislikes
bourgeois Beverly Hills filmmakers
and distrusts vegetarians.
Kofman?s friend and fellow filmmaker Tanner King Barklow comes along for the ride, documenting the making of the thriller, now called Case Sensitive, and working as the assistant director. (Barklow co-produced two FDL Movie Night subjects, the Academy Award-nominated The Invisible War and the Emmy-nominated Outrage with Kofman?s wife). Together, Barklow and Kofman capture the absurdities and frustrations of filmmaking, the clash of cultures (both between Americans and Chinese, and among the Chinese themselves), seven-day work weeks, no per diems,? the continually shifting cast and crew, and the struggle between art and commerce.
In frustration over his script being hijacked, the lies he?s been told, and the delays in getting paid, Kofman briefly goes on strike. Then after several months in Xiamen, Kofman travels home for his daughter?s graduation, and realizes that shutting down the film would mean that 70 people would lose their jobs, and decides to make the best film he can, given the circumstances. He soldiers on, wraps the film, and turns in his cut, only to discover that the? producers have re-edited Case Sensitive in a way that he can only joke is
China is the world?s third-largest producer of films, behind the United States and India, and Chinese piracy of foreign films costs the industry over a billion dollars a year. (Kofman later circumvents Chinese film pirates and Case Sensitive?s Chinese producers in a very clever manner). Chinese money and distribution can make or break a film?Looper was rewritten to include Shanghai as a location to accommodate Chinese funding; and look at the last James Bond film! The LA Times reports:
A cautionary tale about the deals we make with ourselves and others to get our art made, and? a unique look at China?s? internal struggle between Communism and the new capitalism, Unmade In China is also a film about what steps artists will take to insure their vision is seen.
Curiously, despite its less than favorable look at how films are made in China, Unmade In China is presented with approval by the State Administration of Radio Film and Television, People?s Republic of China.
Unmade In China, which won Best Documentary at the 2012 Sydney Underground Film Festival, the 2012 Edmonton International Film Festival, and the 2013 Bloody Hero International Film Festival. It is now playing in Los Angeles and Chicago, and opens May 3 in New York City.
Cheat Sheet | From ?Jupiter?s Legacy? to Stumptown Comics Fest
by Kevin Melrose| April 22, 2013 @ 8:30 AM | No Comments |
Welcome to ?Cheat Sheet,? ROBOT 6?s guide to the week ahead. This weekend, the focus turns on the creators ? both established and newcomers ? with the School of Visual Arts? Illustration & Cartooning Department?s Fresh Meat exhibition in New York City and Stumptown Comics Fest is Portland, Oregon.
Meanwhile, our contributors select their picks for the best comics going on sale Wednesday, including Jupiter?s Legacy #1, Vader?s Little Princess and Morning Glories #26.
This weekend, it?s Fresh Meat and Stumptown Comics Fest
The doors open at 10 a.m. Saturday at the Oregon Convention Center in Oregon for the 10th annual Stumptown Comics Fest, which focuses on creators rather dealers and large publishers.
This year?s event features such guests as Matt Boors, Becky Cloonan, Bill Crabtree, Ming Doyle, Chynna Clugston Flores, Faith Erin Hicks, Brian Hurtt, James Kochalka, Dylan Meconis, Ted Naifeh, Greg Rucka, Dash Shaw, Jen Van Meter and Bill Willingham. You can find the full programming schedule here.
Friday evening, in New York City, the students of the School of Visual Arts? Illustration & Cartooning Department will play host to Fresh Meat, providing them with a chance to exhibit and sell their self-published comics and illustrations to the public.
The event, which was established in 2001 by Raina Telgemeier, over the years has featured such exhibitors as Dash Shaw, Tintin Pantoja and Jess Fink. Fresh Meat will be held from 6 to 9 p.m. at SVA?s Westside Gallery (133/141 W.t 21st St.). Admission is free.
ROBOT 6 contributors name their top choices from among the comic books, and comics-related books, scheduled to arrive in stores this week. We welcome readers to highlight their picks in the comments below.
Jupiter?s Legacy #1
The reteaming of Mark Millar and Frank Quitely is what initially attracted my attention, but after reading a preview of the first issue what truly held my interest and earned my admiration for the project is the work of colorist Peter Doherty. He gives an appealing quality to Quitely?s art that I have never seen before. Plus, I am always a sucker for stories involving different generations of families and heroes. Here?s hoping the schedule Millar set for the limited series gives Quitely enough time to stay on schedule. ? Tim O?Shea
Vader?s Little Princess
I know Jeffrey Brown?s Vader and Son was a big success because everyone to whom I showed it, loved it. However, as the father of a 4-year-old girl I?m looking forward even more to Vader?s Little Princess. Maybe there?ll be a cartoon about little Leia inexplicably belting out ?Call Me Maybe.? ? Tom Bondurant
Twelve hardcover
I remember commenting in 2008 that I?d wait for the hardback of this miniseries; that?s a long time to be avoiding spoilers. Scratch that, I?ve been eagerly awaiting this since Chris Weston posted this on his blog in 2006. I haven?t really loved anything written by J. Michael Straczynski since Season 2 of Babylon 5, but this is 300-plus pages of Weston art I?ve been postponing seeing due to my superhuman ability to delay gratification, so that makes buying this a complete no-brainer. ? Mark Kardwell
How to Fake a Moon Landing
Darryl Cunningham?s first book, Psychiatric Tales, was a series of short comics about different mental illnesses. How to Fake a Moon Landing is a bit more focused, with seven chapters devoted to different sorts of bad science ? the vaccine-autism connection, homeopathy, global-warming denial ? and a final chapter about what science is and isn?t. There?s a good bit of narrative in each of these stories; Cunningham lays out the facts but also discusses the personalities involved and how each flawed theory came to prominence, so there are a lot of ?I didn?t know that!? moments. Some of the stories originally appeared on Cunningham?s blog, where he is now running pages from his next graphic novel, which takes on economics and includes a biography of Ayn Rand. ? Brigid Alverson
Nanowires grown on graphene have surprising structurePublic release date: 23-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Liz Ahlberg eahlberg@illinois.edu 217-244-1073 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. When a team of University of Illinois engineers set out to grow nanowires of a compound semiconductor on top of a sheet of graphene, they did not expect to discover a new paradigm of epitaxy.
The self-assembled wires have a core of one composition and an outer layer of another, a desired trait for many advanced electronics applications. Led by professor Xiuling Li, in collaboration with professors Eric Pop and Joseph Lyding, all professors of electrical and computer engineering, the team published its findings in the journal Nano Letters.
Nanowires, tiny strings of semiconductor material, have great potential for applications in transistors, solar cells, lasers, sensors and more.
"Nanowires are really the major building blocks of future nano-devices," said postdoctoral researcher Parsian Mohseni, first author of the study. "Nanowires are components that can be used, based on what material you grow them out of, for any functional electronics application."
Li's group uses a method called van der Waals epitaxy to grow nanowires from the bottom up on a flat substrate of semiconductor materials, such as silicon. The nanowires are made of a class of materials called III-V (three-five), compound semiconductors that hold particular promise for applications involving light, such as solar cells or lasers.
The group previously reported growing III-V nanowires on silicon. While silicon is the most widely used material in devices, it has a number of shortcomings. Now, the group has grown nanowires of the material indium gallium arsenide (InGaAs) on a sheet of graphene, a 1-atom-thick sheet of carbon with exceptional physical and conductive properties.
Thanks to its thinness, graphene is flexible, while silicon is rigid and brittle. It also conducts like a metal, allowing for direct electrical contact to the nanowires. Furthermore, it is inexpensive, flaked off from a block of graphite or grown from carbon gases.
"One of the reasons we want to grow on graphene is to stay away from thick and expensive substrates," Mohseni said. "About 80 percent of the manufacturing cost of a conventional solar cell comes from the substrate itself. We've done away with that by just using graphene. Not only are there inherent cost benefits, we're also introducing functionality that a typical substrate doesn't have."
The researchers pump gases containing gallium, indium and arsenic into a chamber with a graphene sheet. The nanowires self-assemble, growing by themselves into a dense carpet of vertical wires across the surface of the graphene. Other groups have grown nanowires on graphene with compound semiconductors that only have two elements, but by using three elements, the Illinois group made a unique finding: The InGaAs wires grown on graphene spontaneously segregate into an indium arsenide (InAs) core with an InGaAs shell around the outside of the wire.
"This is unexpected," Li said. "A lot of devices require a core-shell architecture. Normally you grow the core in one growth condition and change conditions to grow the shell on the outside. This is spontaneous, done in one step. The other good thing is that since it's a spontaneous segregation, it produces a perfect interface."
So what causes this spontaneous core-shell structure? By coincidence, the distance between atoms in a crystal of InAs is nearly the same as the distance between whole numbers of carbon atoms in a sheet of graphene. So, when the gases are piped into the chamber and the material begins to crystallize, InAs settles into place on the graphene, a near-perfect fit, while the gallium compound settles on the outside of the wires. This was unexpected, because normally, with van der Waals epitaxy, the respective crystal structures of the material and the substrate are not supposed to matter.
"We didn't expect it, but once we saw it, it made sense," Mohseni said.
In addition, by tuning the ratio of gallium to indium in the semiconductor cocktail, the researchers can tune the optical and conductive properties of the nanowires.
Next, Li's group plans to make solar cells and other optoelectronic devices with their graphene-grown nanowires. Thanks to both the wires' ternary composition and graphene's flexibility and conductivity, Li hopes to integrate the wires in a broad spectrum of applications.
"We basically discovered a new phenomenon that confirms that registry does count in van der Waals epitaxy," Li said.
###
This work was supported in part by the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation. Postdoctoral researcher Ashkan Behnam and graduate students Joshua Wood and Christopher English also were co-authors of the paper. Li also is affiliated with the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, the Micro and Nanotechnology Lab, and the Frederick Seitz Materials Research Lab, all at the U. of I.
Editor's note: To contact Xiuling Li, call 217-265-6354; email xiuling@illinois.edu.
The paper, "InxGa1xAs Nanowire Growth on Graphene: van der Waals Epitaxy Induced Phase Segregation," is available online.
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Nanowires grown on graphene have surprising structurePublic release date: 23-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Liz Ahlberg eahlberg@illinois.edu 217-244-1073 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. When a team of University of Illinois engineers set out to grow nanowires of a compound semiconductor on top of a sheet of graphene, they did not expect to discover a new paradigm of epitaxy.
The self-assembled wires have a core of one composition and an outer layer of another, a desired trait for many advanced electronics applications. Led by professor Xiuling Li, in collaboration with professors Eric Pop and Joseph Lyding, all professors of electrical and computer engineering, the team published its findings in the journal Nano Letters.
Nanowires, tiny strings of semiconductor material, have great potential for applications in transistors, solar cells, lasers, sensors and more.
"Nanowires are really the major building blocks of future nano-devices," said postdoctoral researcher Parsian Mohseni, first author of the study. "Nanowires are components that can be used, based on what material you grow them out of, for any functional electronics application."
Li's group uses a method called van der Waals epitaxy to grow nanowires from the bottom up on a flat substrate of semiconductor materials, such as silicon. The nanowires are made of a class of materials called III-V (three-five), compound semiconductors that hold particular promise for applications involving light, such as solar cells or lasers.
The group previously reported growing III-V nanowires on silicon. While silicon is the most widely used material in devices, it has a number of shortcomings. Now, the group has grown nanowires of the material indium gallium arsenide (InGaAs) on a sheet of graphene, a 1-atom-thick sheet of carbon with exceptional physical and conductive properties.
Thanks to its thinness, graphene is flexible, while silicon is rigid and brittle. It also conducts like a metal, allowing for direct electrical contact to the nanowires. Furthermore, it is inexpensive, flaked off from a block of graphite or grown from carbon gases.
"One of the reasons we want to grow on graphene is to stay away from thick and expensive substrates," Mohseni said. "About 80 percent of the manufacturing cost of a conventional solar cell comes from the substrate itself. We've done away with that by just using graphene. Not only are there inherent cost benefits, we're also introducing functionality that a typical substrate doesn't have."
The researchers pump gases containing gallium, indium and arsenic into a chamber with a graphene sheet. The nanowires self-assemble, growing by themselves into a dense carpet of vertical wires across the surface of the graphene. Other groups have grown nanowires on graphene with compound semiconductors that only have two elements, but by using three elements, the Illinois group made a unique finding: The InGaAs wires grown on graphene spontaneously segregate into an indium arsenide (InAs) core with an InGaAs shell around the outside of the wire.
"This is unexpected," Li said. "A lot of devices require a core-shell architecture. Normally you grow the core in one growth condition and change conditions to grow the shell on the outside. This is spontaneous, done in one step. The other good thing is that since it's a spontaneous segregation, it produces a perfect interface."
So what causes this spontaneous core-shell structure? By coincidence, the distance between atoms in a crystal of InAs is nearly the same as the distance between whole numbers of carbon atoms in a sheet of graphene. So, when the gases are piped into the chamber and the material begins to crystallize, InAs settles into place on the graphene, a near-perfect fit, while the gallium compound settles on the outside of the wires. This was unexpected, because normally, with van der Waals epitaxy, the respective crystal structures of the material and the substrate are not supposed to matter.
"We didn't expect it, but once we saw it, it made sense," Mohseni said.
In addition, by tuning the ratio of gallium to indium in the semiconductor cocktail, the researchers can tune the optical and conductive properties of the nanowires.
Next, Li's group plans to make solar cells and other optoelectronic devices with their graphene-grown nanowires. Thanks to both the wires' ternary composition and graphene's flexibility and conductivity, Li hopes to integrate the wires in a broad spectrum of applications.
"We basically discovered a new phenomenon that confirms that registry does count in van der Waals epitaxy," Li said.
###
This work was supported in part by the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation. Postdoctoral researcher Ashkan Behnam and graduate students Joshua Wood and Christopher English also were co-authors of the paper. Li also is affiliated with the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, the Micro and Nanotechnology Lab, and the Frederick Seitz Materials Research Lab, all at the U. of I.
Editor's note: To contact Xiuling Li, call 217-265-6354; email xiuling@illinois.edu.
The paper, "InxGa1xAs Nanowire Growth on Graphene: van der Waals Epitaxy Induced Phase Segregation," is available online.
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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.
Lyle Denniston looks at the issues of Miranda warnings, Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Tsarnaev?s protections under the Constitution?s Fifth Amendment, and the public safety exception.
The statements at issue:
?The police can interrogate a suspect without offering him the benefit of Miranda [warnings] if he could have information that?s of urgent concern for public safety.? That may or may not be the case with Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.? The problem is that Attorney General Eric Holder has stretched the law beyond that scenario.?
?? Emily Bazelon, a columnist for Slate.com, in an article on April 19, ?Why Should I Care That No One?s Reading Dzhokhar Tsarnaev His Miranda Rights???
?[As of Saturday night] Authorities have not read him his Miranda rights, which include the right to remain silent and the right to an attorney. Federal law enforcement officials said they plan to use a public safety exception, outlined in a 1984 Supreme Court decision, ?in order to question the suspect extensively about other potential explosive devices or accomplices and to gain critical intelligence.??
?? Washington Post story on April 21, by reporters Joel Achenbach and Robert Barnes, ?Authorities seek answers in Boston Marathon bombing.
We checked the Constitution, and?
checkSome three decades ago, the Supreme Court for the first time gave police and federal agents the authority to avoid giving criminal suspects Miranda warnings about their constitutional rights, when the public safety justified that suspension.? That authority, given in the 1984 decision of New York v. Quarles, has since been expanded by lower courts so that, even if a suspect has claimed the right to remain silent or the right to a lawyer, the questioning can go on if the public safety threat remains.
How long such questioning can continue, and what kinds of questions can be asked, is now the source of considerable uncertainty, as officials have developed interrogation policies they think are necessary in dealing with terrorist incidents.? But one thing does remain certain: the Constitution still requires that the police not use outright coercion in order to get answers even to the most pressing questions.?? If authorities want to use the evidence that they gain by such questioning, that evidence must have been given voluntarily.
In the case of the 19-year-old suspected of bombing the Boston Marathon and other crimes after that, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, there is no doubt that he has some protection under the Constitution?s Fifth Amendment against being forced to implicate himself.? He is a U.S. citizen, so he has the legal shield of the Constitution.? (On April 2, we discussed the rights during terrorism investigations of suspects who are not U.S. citizens; those rights may differ.)
The night that Tsarnaev was captured in Watertown, Mass., the chief U.S. prosecutor, Carmen Ortiz, told the news media that the suspect would not be given Miranda warnings immediately when questioning began, and she cited the ?public safety exception.?
About Constitution Check
In a continuing series of posts, Lyle Denniston provides responses based on the Constitution and its history to public statements about its meaning and what duties it imposes or rights it protects.
Last year, in a bulletin to law enforcement officers across the nation, the FBI cautioned them that this exception applied only to questions ?directed at neutralizing an imminent threat.?? It added that ?once the questions turn from those designed to resolve the concern for safety to questions designed solely to elicit incriminating statements, the questioning falls outside the scope of the exception and within the traditional rules of Miranda.?
Related story: Constitution Check: Why would a terrorism suspect be given Miranda warnings?
However, under the terms of a 2010 Justice Department legal memo (criticized by Slate.com?s Emily Bazelon in the column quoted above), questioning of a terrorism suspect who has not been told of his rights may also continue even beyond concerns for the moment, in order potentially to get significant intelligence information ?not related to any immediate threat.?? The memo cautions that the officers conducting the interrogation should get approval from their superiors to go further into intelligence-gathering.
None of these issues that are specifically related to terrorism investigations have yet reached the Supreme Court, so federal agents and police use this added authority without knowing what the legal risks are.
There is some risk that, if the public safety exception and the 2010 Justice Department memo are pressed too far by officers in the field, they could put in jeopardy their chances of using at later trials the evidence of crime that has been gathered.? The calculation thus has to be made whether to run that risk.? That involves a balancing of the needs of trial prosecutors with the needs of finding out about potential future threats.
What investigators are generally expected to understand is that the whole purpose of the Miranda warnings is to make sure that any incriminating evidence that results from questioning is available for use at trial, and the warnings are designed to help assure that whatever the suspect has said that gets him into trouble was said voluntarily.
If the threat of terrorism rises to the level that intelligence is more important than criminal evidence, then official policy, as outlined in the 2010 Justice Department memo, for example, will give it a higher priority.
That, however, is a judgment call that has to be made one case at a time, as in the case of the Boston bombing suspect.? From all that officials involved in the investigation in Boston have said, it may well be that they have such overwhelming evidence to support prosecution that they have little need to get Tsarnaev to confess and can focus, instead, on finding out what he may know ? if anything ? about other threats or accomplices.
Lyle Denniston is the National Constitution Center?s adviser on constitutional literacy. He has reported on the Supreme Court for 55 years, currently covering it for SCOTUSblog, an online clearinghouse of information about the Supreme Court?s work.
Recent Constitution Daily Stories
Constitution Check: Is the hunger strike at Guantanamo Bay beyond court review?
Constitution Check: Is the war crimes court constitutionally jinxed?
Asian shares, commodities rattled by weak China PMI
TOKYO (Reuters) - Asian shares and other more risky assets fell back on Tuesday while the yen rose broadly after the HSBC "flash" PMI reading showed manufacturing growth in China slowed in April, underscoring market concerns about global growth prospects. European stock markets were seen rising, with financial spreadbetters predicting London's FTSE 100 <.ftse>, Paris's CAC-40 <.fchi> and Frankfurt's DAX <.gdaxi> would open up to 0.3 percent higher. <.l><.eu/>
Netflix has good hand with "House of Cards", shares soar 24 percent
(Reuters) - Netflix Inc impressed investors with solid subscriber growth and better-than-expected profits in the first quarter, sending shares of the video subscription service soaring 24 percent higher in after-hours trade. A big push into original shows, a strategy aimed at hooking new customers with content they can't get anywhere else, seems to be working, with its February release of the series "House of Cards", a drama starring Kevin Spacey, generating plenty of buzz.
China HSBC Flash PMI falls, points to tepid second-quarter recovery
BEIJING (Reuters) - Growth in China's vast factory sector dipped in April as new export orders shrank, a preliminary survey of factory managers showed on Tuesday, suggesting the world's second-largest economy still faces formidable global headwinds into the second quarter. The flash HSBC Purchasing Managers' Index for April fell to 50.5 in April from 51.6 in March but was still stronger than February's reading of 50.4.
Thai tycoon launches $6.6 billion buyout to kick off Asian retail push
BANGKOK (Reuters) - Thailand's richest man has made a $6.6 billion offer to buy cash-and-carry wholesaler Siam Makro Pcl , the biggest Asia-Pacific M&A deal announced this year, as the tycoon looks to grab a larger share of the country's buoyant retail market. The country's biggest convenience store chain CP All Pcl , controlled by Dhanin Chearavanont, is gunning to push deeper into Thailand's $80 billion retail sector just two months after Dhanin's surprise move to buy a $9.4 billion stake in Ping An Insurance Group of China from HSBC plc .
Indonesia warns multinationals not to be greedy over resources
SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Indonesia's president told major investors in his country's natural resources not to be greedy, comments that suggest he is in no mood to row back on policies that foreign mining and energy firms have called a deterrent. But Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono sounded more accommodative in remarks over a long-delayed $7.2 billion bank takeover by Singapore's DBS Group and on the thorny issue of reducing state fuel subsidies, which are eating up a growing chunk of the government's budget.
KPMG chairman says campaign against auditor anonymity misleading
SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Renewed calls by U.S. regulators for those who sign off on audit reports to be publicly named, sparked by an insider trading scandal at KPMG , will do little to restore investor confidence, the audit firm's chairman said on Tuesday. Michael Andrew said the proposal would do little to fix real problems such as determining what types of financial data need to be audited as well as boosting the flow of information between regulators and government agencies.
U.S. environment regulator slams Keystone pipeline review
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. environment regulator on Monday said the State Department must take a harder look at climate and other impacts of the Canada-to-Texas Keystone XL oil sands pipeline before the Obama administration issues a final decision on the project. The Environmental Protection Agency rated the State Department's 2,000-page March 1 draft review of the TransCanada Corp pipeline project as "insufficient," in a letter to department officials as a public comment period ended on Monday.
S&P says more than one-third chance of Japan downgrade, cites risks to Abenomics
TOKYO (Reuters) - Rating agency Standard & Poor's said on Tuesday it saw more than a one-third chance that it would downgrade Japan's sovereign ratings because of uncertainty about whether the government's push to revive growth and end deflation will succeed. "The continuing prospect of a downgrade arises from risks associated with recent government initiatives and uncertainty of their success," S&P said in a report.
CN Railway profit hurt by winter weather chill
TORONTO (Reuters) - Canadian National Railway Co took a big winter weather hit, the country's largest rail operator said on Monday, as extreme cold and heavy snow in Western Canada slowed operations and nipped into profits. CN said it has since turned the corner, returning to more efficient operations, but will bump up its capital spending plan by C$100 million ($97.39 million), to C$2 billion, to make its network more resilient and productive.
Era of austerity has run its course, EU says
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - France and Spain fell short of their budget deficit goals last year and debt levels swelled across the euro zone but the pressure may be easing on Paris and Madrid as the European Commission signals an end to sharp spending cuts. Outlining the state of Europe's accounts in 2012, the EU's statistics office Eurostat said on Monday that France posted a deficit of 4.8 percent of economic output, higher than its 4.5 percent target. Spain's shortfall was the largest in the EU.
In frustration over his script being hijacked, the lies he?s been told, and the delays in getting paid, Kofman briefly goes on strike. Then after several months in Xiamen, Kofman travels home for his daughter?s graduation, and realizes that shutting down the film would mean that 70 people would lose their jobs, and decides to make the best film he can, given the circumstances. He soldiers on, wraps the film, and turns in his cut, only to discover that the? producers have re-edited Case Sensitive in a way that he can only joke is
The doors open at 10 a.m. Saturday at the Oregon Convention Center in Oregon for the 10th annual Stumptown Comics Fest, which focuses on creators rather dealers and large publishers.
Friday evening, in New York City, the students of the School of Visual Arts? Illustration & Cartooning Department will play host to Fresh Meat, providing them with a chance to exhibit and sell their self-published comics and illustrations to the public.
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Public release date: 23-Apr-2013
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