It was getting dark, and the sheriff of Nelson County, N.D., was in a standoff with a family of suspected cattle rustlers. They were armed, and the last thing anybody wanted was a shoot out.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which monitors police radio chatter, offered to help. Their Predator was flying back to its roost at the Grand Forks Air Force base and could provide aerial support. Did the sheriff want the assist?
Yep.
"We were able to detect that one of the sons was sitting at the end of the driveway with a gun. We also knew that there were small children involved," Sheriff Kelly Janke told NBC News, remembering that tricky encounter in the early summer of 2011. "Someone would have gotten seriously injured if we had gone in on the farm that night." He decided to wait.
The next day, the drone gave them an edge again by helping them choose the safest moment to make a move. "We were able to surprise them ? took them into custody," Janke said. They also collected six stolen cows.
Rodney Brossart, the arrested farmer, sued the state, in part because of the cop's use of a drone. But a district judge ruled that the Predator's service was not untoward.
When advocates express concern about government drones threatening people's privacy, the Brossart case is one they bring up. It's one of the first instances of a flying robot doing a cop's dirty work, and this kind of intervention is likely to be more and more commonplace, as the FAA fulfills a congressional mandate to increase its granting of drone permits ? certificates of authorization, or COAs.
Cops and flying robots At the moment, there are only 327 active COAs, all held by these organizations, and all for unarmed crafts, of course. A tiny sliver of these permits are in the hands of law enforcement agencies, and from them, we're seeing the first glimpses of drone use in policing and emergency response.
"The FAA has approved us to cover a 16-county area," Sheriff Bob Rost of Grand Forks County, N.D., said of their COA. "To look for missing children, to look for escaped criminals and in the case of emergencies." In the spring, they will use two mini-copter drones ? a trusty DraganFlyer X6 and an AeroVironment Qube ? to check on flooded farms.
The police department in Arlington, Texas, also recently got FAA clearance to fly their drones after two years of testing. The two battery-powered Leptron Avenger helicopter drones won't be used for high-speed chases or routine patrol, the department explains. In fact, the crafts will be driven in a truck to where they're needed, and when they're launched to scope out incidents, local air traffic control will be informed.
In Mesa County, Colo., the police department has used drones to find missing people, do an aerial landfill survey and help out firefighters at a burning church. For them, it's seen as a cost-cutting technology.
"It's the Wal-Mart version of what we'd normally get at Saks Fifth Avenue," said Benjamin Miller, who leads the drones program in Mesa County, comparing drones to manned helicopters that would otherwise give police officers help from the sky.
In Seattle, the police department received an FAA permit ? but had to give back its drones when the mayor banned their use, following protests in October 2012.
Protests and red tape "Hasn't anyone heard of George Orwell's '1984'?" the Seattle Times quoted a protester as saying. "This is the militarization of our streets and now the air above us."
Protesters, not just in Seattle, seek more legal definition of what a drone can or can't do, and debate whether or not current laws sufficiently protect citizens from unauthorized surveillance and other abuses.
New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg thinks of police drones as an inevitability ? "We're going to have them," he recently said in a radio interview ? while those on the police (and drone) side say the fears are unfounded.
"This hysteria of [a drone] hovering outside your backyard taking a video of you smoking a joint, it's just that ? hysteria," said Al Frazier, an ex-cop from Los Angeles who is now an assistant professor of aeronautics at the University of North Dakota, and a deputy at the Grand Forks sheriff's office.
The reason the sky isn't lousy with drones already mostly has to do with red tape. The FAA's highly restricted drone application for government agencies is supposed to take about 60 days, though unofficially, we're told it's much longer. COAs are also very strict about where, when and by whom a drone is flown.
"I think there are many agencies who would like to use [drones] for public good, but they're stymied by the process," Frazier said.
That's likely to change ? and soon. Last February, Obama signed a mandate that encourages the FAA to let civil and commercial drones join the airspace by 2015. This will take new regulations from the FAA for safe commercial drone flight, and it may take some convincing of local anti-drone activists (who sometimes don't differentiate between drones great and small). It may even require the passing of a few new privacy laws.
Folks like Frazier and Miller don't see the permit process getting easier any time soon but eventually ? inevitably ? and for better or worse, your local police department will get its drone.
Nidhi Subbaraman writes about technology and science. Follow her on Twitter and Google+.
Related:
The drones are coming ... but our laws aren't ready
Anticipating domestic boom, colleges rev up drone piloting programs
Mar. 28, 2013 ? It looks like 2013 will be a thrilling season for baseball fans as four of the six divisions can be expected to deliver tight races, says baseball guru NJIT Associate Professor and Associate Dean Bruce Bukiet. Over the years, Bukiet has applied mathematical analysis to compute the number of regular season games each Major League Baseball team should win. Though his expertise is in mathematical modeling, his projections have compared well with those of so-called experts.
The numbers indicate that only one game might separate the first and second place teams in both the National League's (NL) East and West divisions, with the Atlanta Braves (94 wins) edging out the Washington Nationals (93 wins) in the East and the Los Angeles Dodgers (88 wins) coming in just ahead of the San Francisco Giants (87 wins) in the West. Even in the NL Central, the St. Louis Cardinals (90 wins) don't have much breathing room, winning that division by a projected 3 games over the Cincinnati Reds (87 wins). The Braves, Nationals, Cards, Reds and Dodgers should make the playoffs, while the Giants miss by a single game.
It is hard to believe that in the American League (AL), the contests could be even closer. While the Detroit Tigers should have the best record in baseball (102 wins) and run away with the Central division, with the next best team (the Chicago White Sox) more than 20 wins behind, the other two divisions could end up in ties. In the AL West, Bukiet has the Anaheim Angels and the Oakland Athletics tied with 92 wins each, while in the AL East, he says there could be a 3-way tie!!! The guru predicts that the Toronto Blue Jays, the Tampa Bay Rays and the New York Yankees all will win 87 games. Such results would mean that the Tigers, Angels, and Athletics would make the playoffs, while the other two teams to make the playoffs would be from among the Blue Jays, Rays, Yankees or Texas Rangers, all whom the model show come in at 87 wins.
Bukiet makes these projections to demonstrate and promote the power of math. He wants to show young people that math can be fun, that it can be applied to improve one's understanding of many aspects of life and that if you love mathematics, it can be a great college major and lead to a satisfying career.
Bukiet bases his predictions on a mathematical model he developed in 2000. He has made revisions over the years. His results have led to back-to-back wins for himself in 2010-2011 as predictions champ at baseballphd.net.
Bukiet should have plenty of time this summer to spend doing math since once again his favorite team, the New York Mets, should win the same number of games (74) as they did last year. Once again they should come in fourth in their division, while the Miami Marlins have the worst record in the NL with 59 wins. The worst team overall should be the Houston Astros in their debut in the AL with only 56 successful outcomes and 106 losses. Yes, and once again, for the 21th year in a row, the Pittsburgh Pirates should finish with a losing record.
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A student pilot was ejected from a small aircraft above an area east of Chattanooga, Tenn., in a freak accident Friday evening, and authorities were searching for him.
The accident occurred when the owner of the Zodiac 601XL plane was taking lessons from an instructor, NBC station WRCB of Nashville reported, citing police. A malfunction caused the plane to nose dive and the canopy flew open -- and neither man was wearing a seat belt, WRCB reported.
The accident occurred at about 2,500 feet,?the Chattanooga Times Free Press reported.?
The instructor was able to land the aircraft back at Collegedale Municipal Airport, operations manager Chris Hancock confirmed to NBC News. He directed further questions to a Collegedale police spokesman who could not immediately be reached.
A ground search was under way in Bradley County, WRCB said. The Times Free Press said the owner-pilot had a cell phone with him and rescuers were pinging it in an attempt to find him.
Neither of the men was identified publicly by authorities.
WRCB said the plane had been owned by a man killed in a December crash and then was sold to the current owner, described as an experienced pilot who wanted more training in the Zodiac.
The Zodiac 601XL is a single-engine kit aircraft offered for home builders. Its two seats are side by side under a large domed, canopy.
Mei Xiang, the Giant Panda at the National Zoo was artificially inseminated Saturday after she and the zoo's male giant panda failed to breed naturally.?
By Jane Sutton,?Reuters / March 30, 2013
Giant panda Mei Xiang looks over a stone wall in her enclosure at the Smithsonian's National Zoo during a spring snow in Washington, D.C. March 25.
Connor Mallon/Smithsonian's National Zoo/Reuters
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Veterinarians at the?National Zoo?artificially inseminated the zoo's female giant panda?Mei Xiang?on Saturday after natural breeding failed to occur, zoo keepers said.
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Mei Xiang?was put under general anesthesia and inseminated with a combination of fresh semen and frozen semen collected from the zoo's male giant panda Tian Tian. The scientists said they planned a second insemination later on Saturday.
Veterinarians detected a rise in hormone levels on Tuesday, indicating?Mei Xiang?was ready to breed but said "no competent breeding" between the panda pair had occurred.
"We are hopeful that our breeding efforts will be successful this year, and we're encouraged by all the behaviors and hormonal data we've seen so far," said?Dave Wildt, head of the?Center for Species Survival?at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute.
Scientists will continue to monitor?Mei Xiang's hormone levels in the coming months and conduct ultrasounds to determine whether she is pregnant. A pregnancy lasts between 95 and 160 days, they said.
Mei Xiang?has given birth to two cubs. One died a week after its birth last year. The other was born in 2005 and is now at the?China Conservation and Research Center for the Giant Panda?in Wolong.
Beach damage between Banda Aceh and Krueng Sabe on Jan. 28, 2005, after a devastating tsunami.
By Becky Oskin LiveScience
In a jumbled layer of pebbles and shells called the "Dog's Breakfast deposit" lies evidence of a massive tsunami, one of two that transformed New Zealand's Maori people in the 15th century.
After the killer wave destroyed food resources and coastal settlements, sweeping societal changes emerged, including the building of fortified hill forts and a shift toward a warrior culture.
"This is called patch protection, wanting to guard what little resources you've got left. Ultimately it led to a far more war-like society," said James Goff, a tsunami geologist at the University of New South Wales in Australia.
The Maori?were victims of a one-two punch. An earthquake on the nearby Tonga-Kermadec fault triggered the first tsunami in the mid-15th century. It was soon followed by an enormous wave triggered by an exploding volcano called Kuwae, near Vanuatu. The volcano's 1453 eruption was 10 times bigger than Krakatoa and triggered the last phase of worldwide cooling called the Little Ice Age.
The tsunamis mark the divide between the Archaic and Classic periods in Maori history, Goff said. "The driver is this catastrophic event," he told OurAmazingPlanet.
Goff is one of many scientists searching for ancient tsunamis in the Pacific and elsewhere. The devastating 2004 Indonesia tsunami and earthquake, which killed 280,000 people, brought renewed focus on the hazards of these giant waves. Understanding future risk requires knowing where tsunamis struck in the past, and how often. As researchers uncover signs of prehistoric tsunamis, the scientists are beginning to link these ocean-wide events with societal shifts.
Government of Australia
"Following 2004, there has been a lot of rethinking and a greater appreciation for how such events would have impacted coastal settlements," said Patrick Daly, an archaeologist with the Earth Observatory of Singapore.
Vulnerable islands The West's written history and legends clearly illustrate the consequences of tremendous tsunamis in the Mediterranean. A great wave destroyed Minoan culture on the Greek island of Crete in 1600 B.C. The same tsunami may be responsible for the legend of Atlantis, the verdant land drowned in the ocean. More recently, in 1755, an enormous tsunami destroyed Lisbon, Portugal, Europe's third-largest city at the time. The destruction influenced philosophers and writers from Kant to Voltaire, who references the event in his novel "Candide." [10 Tsunamis That Changed History]
But islands face a much greater threat from tsunamis than coastal communities. After the Lisbon tsunami, the king of Portugal immediately set out to rebuild the city, which was only possible thanks to the presence of untouched inland areas.
"An island becomes totally cut off from the outside world," said Uri ten Brink, a marine geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Woods Hole, Mass. "Islands are a lot more vulnerable to such disasters. It's the same kind of thing as during bad hurricanes. It takes a lot longer to recover."
Exposed on all sides, islands are simply more likely to be hit by tsunamis. People settle in shallow bays, which are protected from storms but actually magnify the height of incoming tsunami waves. Food in these societies comes from marine resources, which are destroyed by tsunamis, and croplands that become inundated with saltwater. Boats are smashed, halting trade and communication. Goff said women, children and the elderly are most likely to die, and in Polynesian culture, elders hold the knowledge needed to build boats, make tools and grow food.
The islands of the Pacific are particularly vulnerable. About 85 percent of the world's tsunamis strike in the Pacific Ocean, thanks to its perilous tectonics. Tsunamis are waves triggered when earthquakes, landslides or volcanic eruptions shove a section of water. Ringed by subduction zones, spots where one of Earth's plates slides beneath the other, the Pacific suffers the world's most powerful earthquakes, and it holds the highest concentration of active volcanoes.
USGS
A coal barge and tug carried onto land in Lho Nga, Sumatra in 2004. The tsunami runup reached 104 feet (32 m) here.
But the kind of tsunami that can change history, one that sweeps across the entire ocean, is rare.
"There are many tsunamis where there's been no cultural response or no obvious one," Goff said. "The smaller events aren't going to be the game changers."
Polynesia and tsunamis But Goff thinks he's found a "black swan" that hit 2,800 years ago, the result of an enormous earthquake on the Tonga-Kermadec subduction zone, where two of Earth's tectonic plates collide. The tsunami scoured beaches throughout the Southwest Pacific, leaving distinctive sediments for scientists to decode. Goff's findings are detailed in several studies, most recently in the February 2012 issue of the journal The Holocene.
The tsunami coincides with the mysterious long pause, when rapid Polynesian expansion inexplicably stopped for 2,000 years. Before the pause, settlers had swiftly crossed from New Guinea to Fiji, Tonga and Samoa over the course of about 500 years.
"It's one of those archaeological conundrums," Goff said. "Why? Well, if I just had my culture obliterated, it might take me a little time to recover. It's probably not the only explanation, but it very well could have been the root cause of why they stopped," he told OurAmazingPlanet.
Two tsunamis in the 15th century had a similarly chilling effect on Polynesian society. After leaving Samoa between AD 1025 and 1120, Polynesians spread across the Pacific Ocean, discovering nearly all of the 500 habitable islands there, according to a study published Feb. 1, 2011, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The Polynesian network covered an area the size of North America, all traversed by wooden canoes. [7 Most Dangerous Places on Earth]
Following the tsunamis, the culture contracted, with the rise of chiefdoms, insularity and warfare, Goff said. "There was a major breakdown at exactly that time," Goff said. "You have to live on what you have on your island, and that causes warfare and a fundamental shift in how they go about living."
Indian Ocean tsunami history Paleotsunamis also froze trade in the Indian Ocean, according to recent studies by geologists and archaeologists.
Along the Sunda fault off the Indonesian island of Sumatra, which spawned the deadly 2004 tsunami, growth patterns in coral reefs record past earthquakes. Combined with sediment layers that point to past tsunamis and historic records of cultural shifts, the clues suggest a 14th century tsunami with an impact as great as the modern cataclysm.
After the 14th-century tsunami, Indian Ocean traders shifted to the sheltered northern and eastern coasts in the Straits of Malacca, and activity ceased in coastal settlements in the same area hit by the 2004 wave, said Daly of Singapore's Earth Observatory.
"We think that the 14th-century tsunami disrupted one of the main trading routes connecting the Indian Ocean with China and Southeast Asia, a far more powerful impact on a global scale than what happened in 2004," Daly said.
After about a century, there was a gradual shift back, leading to the establishment of the flourishing Acehnese Sultanate from the 16th century, he said.
"It is interesting to think that later settlement only began after the memory of the previous event had faded," Daly told OurAmazingPlanet. "A huge, unexpected deluge of water that wiped out everything along the coast would have been really traumatic and incomprehensible to people in the past, and it is reasonable to suspect that the survivors would have been very apprehensive about moving back into such areas."
Repeating the past Warnings would be passed down in oral or written stories and legends. The Maori offer detailed accounts of a series of great waves that hit the New Zealand coast. Along the Cascadia subduction zone, west of Washington state, tribal mythology documents a 1700 tsunami, with warnings to flee to high ground.
But because history-changing waves are rare, the warnings may be lost to time, or disregarded. In Japan, stone markers warned of the height of past tsunamis, and told residents to flee after an earthquake. Not all heeded the ancient admonitions when the 2011 Tohoku earthquake struck and sent a massive wave ashore.
By studying past tsunamis and their causes, researchers such as Goff and ten Brink of the USGS hope to reduce the destruction and loss of life from future waves. Right now, ten Brink is on Anegada Island in the Caribbean, investigating whether a tsunami there between 1450 and 1600?came from Lisbon or a local source. The project started as a hunt for evidence of a magnitude 9.0 earthquake, one similar in size to those in Japan and Sumatra. Goff is assembling a database of Pacific paleotsunamis, including the 1450 wave, which ran 100 feet (30 meters) inland along the New Zealand coast.
"The reason we're interested in looking at old tsunamis is we're worried about how often these things happen," Goff said.
The question is whether increased knowledge about the scope and frequency of tsunamis will change current and future decision-making. [Read: Tsunami Warnings: How to Prepare]
"The early evidence from the last few destructive tsunamis suggests that we don't necessarily learn lessons that well, and people in general seem to be willing to remain in highly vulnerable areas," Daly said.
Email Becky Oskin or follow her @beckyoskin. Follow us?@OAPlanet, Facebook?or Google +. Original article on LiveScience's OurAmazingPlanet.
Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
NEW YORK (AP) ? Authors Guild president and best-selling novelist Scott Turow is condemning Amazon.com's purchase of Goodreads, a leading book recommendation website.
In a statement posted Friday on the Guild home page, Turow called the acquisition a "textbook example" of how a monopoly is built. Seattle-based Amazon.com Inc. announced Thursday that it had bought Goodreads, a favorite Internet stop for readers to review and discuss books. Founded in 2007 and based in San Francisco, Goodreads has 16 million subscribers.
Goodreads co-founder Otis Chandler is defending the sale, which has set off a debate about Amazon's market power. In a blog posting Thursday on Goodreads, Chandler said that Goodreads would continue to operate independently and that Amazon's resources would help his company reach more readers.
It's hard to give criticism without getting overly excited and bashing them. Jason Fried over at weblog 37signals shares a tip on how to avoid this tired practice.
Criticism, he notes, is different than bashing, which is generally an aggressive, knee-jerk, useless response. So, he says, bash yourself first:
A good trick that helped me cool myself down a couple years back was to institute a personal "1:1 bash ratio". I didn't always hold myself to it, but basically it went like this? Before every external bash, I had to bash myself first. If I'm going to bitch about someone else's work, what about my work? If I have a problem with how someone runs their company, how about how I run mine? If I'm going to complain loudly about someone else's point of view, what about mine? Are there any flaws in my way of thinking? There must be, so what are they? What am I getting completely wrong?
It isn't a new idea, he says, but it is a new approach that may change your behavior if you bash just a little too often. Hit the link to read more.
MIAMI - President Obama traveled to Florida to promote investment in infrastructure today, but it was clear he's got basketball on his mind.
As he opened his speech before a Miami crowd at a port site, the president ribbed the audience by boasting that his hometown team, the Chicago Bulls, snapped the Miami Heat's winning streak on Wednesday.
"Now before we get started, I've got to get into a sticky subject. I know you guys aren't happy with my Chicago Bulls. But I just want you to know the Heat are going to be just fine," the president said. "They're going to be ok. They are playing basketball the right way."
On Wednesday, the Bulls ended the Heat's 27-game winning streak with a 101-97 victory over the Miami team. The Heat's run became the second longest streak in NBA history and fell six wins short of the record 33 wins set by the 1971-72 Los Angeles Lakers.
The president also praised the Florida college basketball teams who have advanced in the March Madness tournament.
"The [Miami] Hurricanes - they had a great season? They deserve a big round of applause," Obama said. "Tonight, you've got Florida and Florida Gulf Coast going at it. One of them will go to the Elite 8."
"Let's face it, Florida is the center of basketball right now," he said.
ATLANTA (Reuters) - A grand jury indicted 35 former Atlanta public school educators, including an award-winning former superintendent, on Friday for allegedly conspiring to cheat on standardized test scores to obtain cash bonuses.
Former Superintendent Beverly Hall was named National Superintendent of the Year by the American Association of School Administrators in 2009, the same year prosecutors contend widespread cheating took place.
Hall received a $78,000 bonus that year for improving the school system's test scores, prosecutors said.
"The money she received, we are alleging, was ill gotten and it was theft," Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard said at a news conference.
Besides Hall, those indicted included administrators, principals and teachers. The 65-count indictment said "test answer sheets were altered, fabricated and falsely certified."
Hall was charged with racketeering, making false statements, theft by taking and false swearing. She and others could face up to 45 years in prison if convicted, Howard said.
A state investigation of test results in 2009 found cheating in 44 of the 56 Atlanta public schools examined. The cheating was prompted primarily by pressure to meet targets in a data-driven environment, according to a investigation conducted by Georgia Governor Nathan Deal's office.
The 2009 cheating was said to include teachers erasing incorrect answers on state standardized tests.
The 2011 state report concluded that there was a "major failure of leadership throughout Atlanta Public Schools with regard to the ethical administration" of the 2009 standardized exams known as the Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests.
Amid the investigation, Hall stepped down after nearly 12 years as superintendent of the Atlanta Public Schools. Her successor, Erroll Davis, said on Friday the school system now has extensive training and other safeguards to prevent cheating.
He said 95 percent of the school system's staff was not implicated in the scandal.
Justina Collins, the mother of an Atlanta public school student, told the news conference her daughter had trouble reading yet scored well on the standardized tests.
Collins said when she asked the superintendent about the discrepancy, Hall told her, "Your daughter is simply the kind of person who tests well."
Collins' daughter is now in the ninth grade but reads on a fifth-grade level, Howard told reporters, adding that the real victims of the cheating scandal were the children.
"Her example points out the plight of many children" in the scandal, said the prosecutor.
Richard Deane, Hall's attorney, could not be reached for comment.
GENEVA (Reuters) - Addax & Oryx Group (AOG), chaired by billionaire Jean Claude Gandur, plans to list its oil exploration subsidiary Oryx Petroleum in Canada, the firm said on its website.
Oil industry veteran Gandur was catapulted onto the Forbes rich list in 2009 when he sold Addax Petroleum to Sinopec three years after its IPO.
"AOG's upstream division, Oryx Petroleum, has filed a preliminary prospectus with the securities authorities in Canada, as the first step in the process of preparing for an initial public offering on the Toronto Stock exchange," the company said on its website on March 15.
It did not give further details of the IPO timing.
Like Addax, Oryx has a focus on the Middle East and West Africa, with interests in the Kurdish and Wasit regions of Iraq, Nigeria, Republic of Congo and the offshore AGC block between Senegal and Guinea Bissau.
"When we sold in 2009 we had long chats with the board about what to do," AOG's chairman billionaire Jean Claude Gandur told Reuters in an interview last month, before the decision to list Oryx Petroleum.
"I said I would like to give a last chance to rebuild a second Addax Petroleum - I love upstream, I have a lot of knowledge and I know a lot of actors in the sector and I would like to rebuild a new Addax Petroleum and that's the one we call Oryx Petroleum today."
The latest IPO figures suggest that Oryx might have picked a good moment to tap the market.
This year's stock market rebound and easing concerns about the world economy mean that more companies are lining up to list, with U.S. IPO volumes up 65 percent so far this quarter.
But Oryx has yet to earn a dollar of revenues or find its first barrel of oil. Gandur is preparing a Toronto initial public offering, underwritten by RBC Dominion Securities, Barclays Capital and Merrill Lynch, to fund exploration until mid-2014.
Addax was also floated in Toronto, in early 2006, and was taken over by the Chinese state-controlled oil giant in late 2009 for an enterprise value of about C$10 billion ($9.84 billion).
Addax and Oryx Group Ltd, majority-owned by a trust created by Gandur and named after two breeds of African antelope, has so far invested about $700 million in Oryx Petroleum.
But Oryx had only about $308 million in cash in January, according to a preliminary prospectus for the IPO, while it plans to spend $325 million on exploration in 2013 alone.
The firm bought control of the Hawler field in Kurdistan in 2012 from AAR Advisory Services, the group of Russian billionaires who sold half of TNK-BP to Rosneft for $28 billion last December.
The field had a shareholder loan from AAR valued at $377.9 million at Aug 9, 2011, but Oryx Petroleum will come to the market with no debt, according to the preliminary prospectus.
AOG also has investments ranging from energy to real estate, as well as a downstream oil business, Oryx Energies, which Gandur has said will invest $400 million over the next four to five years in Africa.
(Reporting by Tom Miles and Emma Farge; Editing by Bernard Orr)
After Ashley Judd announced she wasn?t running for the Senate, Republicans greeted the news with glee, sending out a list of 10 other Democratic recruits uninterested in running against Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.?But privately, leading Democratic officials were cheering. Most viewed the liberal actress? decision as good news for their chances in Kentucky, allowing a more-moderate candidate, like Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes, to run instead.
The efforts to woo a more-moderate Democrat to defeat McConnell are part of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee?s plans to compete in the most inhospitable territory for Democrats -- for open seats in West Virginia, Georgia, South Dakota and?possibly, even?in Kentucky against the powerful and well-funded Senate Minority Leader. Facing a challenging political landscape in 2014, the party is close to landing credible candidates in all of those states.
The DSCC doesn?t divulge details about its recruitment strategy, arguing that much of the media reports about its preferred candidates is hogwash. But it?s clear that, in the spirit of former chairman Chuck Schumer, it is playing an active role behind-the-scenes to ensure electable Democrats emerge as their nominees.
Already the committee is boasting that Georgia is their best pickup opportunity, as the field of Republican candidates for the seat of retiring Sen. Saxby Chambliss currently looks underwhelming. Moderate Rep. John Barrow, one of the few Democrats who could put the seat in play, now sounds as open as ever to running.
In West Virginia, party officials are excited about the looming candidacy of attorney Nick Preservati, a first-time candidate who is planning to distance himself from national Democratic positions on energy, and run in the mold of popular Sen. Joe Manchin. Preservati has family ties to the coal industry, which could defang attacks from Republicans eager to tie the nominee to the White House?s environmental regulations.
And in South Dakota, party officials are working to avoid a potential primary between two well-known Democrats in the state: U.S. Attorney Brendan Johnson, the son of Sen. Tim Johnson, and former Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, who proved her bipartisan appeal, winning statewide elections to the House from 2004-2010. The committee won?t talk about what it?s doing publicly, but South Dakota Democratic party chairman Ben Nesselhuf saidhe expects the party to coalesce behind one Democrat, and avoid a messy primary.
??It?s [finding] a candidate who?s in line with their state and will do what?s best for the people of their state,? said Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee spokesman Justin Barasky. ?The main point is that Democrats know how to win in red states.?
To be sure, Democrats start out as underdogs in all four of these red-state races, and may end up struggling to compete in any of them.? But given that Republicans need to net six Senate seats to take back the majority, even one upset victory behind enemy lines would be crucial.
That?s what made the prospect of the party rallying behind Judd so at odds with the committee?s strategy.?The DSCC was publicly noncommittal about Judd?s potential candidacy, even after meeting with her and without any other candidates actively looking to run.?In the run-up to the 2012 election, the committee never hesitated to telegraph its support behind favored candidates, even if they faced the prospect of a primary. And it took Judd to announce she wasn't running before the committee released a radio ad blasting McConnell -- a signal they expect to aggressively contest the race, but with Grimes or a moderate candidate better suited to the Kentucky electorate.
The Democratic activity in deeply-conservative states stands in contrast, at least for now, to the lack of GOP movement against three Democratic senators in battleground states. Sens. Al Franken of Minnesota, Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, and Mark Udall of Colorado have no announced Republican opponents ? even though all represent states where Obama won less than 53 percent of the vote in 2012.
"The DSCC is getting used to having tough cycles in terms of the map, but if you look at the math, the path to six for them is daunting," Barasky said.?
Special education professionals work to promote students? overall behavioral, social and academic growth. Special education professionals aide students in developing socially appropriate behavior within their family, school and community. Teachers of special education help students become more confident in their social interactions. Special education professionals administer activities that build students? life skills.
Are you interested in helping others? Can you handle and care for people who learn differently and have other behavioral problems? Do you want to make a difference in a young child?s life? If you answered ?yes? to any of these questions, then you might consider a career in special education. Below is a breakdown of the short and long-term responsibilities of a special education teacher. Furthermore, special education teachers are responsible for ensuring that the needs of disabled children are met during assessment periods.
First and foremost, special education teachers focus on the development and academic needs of children with disabilities. They encourage learning in disabled students by implementing educational modules and behavioral techniques. Special education teachers work alone or with general education teachers to individualize lessons, develop problem-solving techniques and integrate children into group projects with other students.
Twitter's Vine app received a small, but notable, update today which allows the videos you create to be embedded across the web. The embedded posts are available in two styles (simple and postcard), and can be created directly within the mobile app itself or from a post's page on Vine.co.
Cable companies are universally regarded as only slightly more popular than evil dictators, and a little less fashionable than certain strains of STDs. How do you fix something like that? Honesty! We're awful; we're unstoppable; you'll hate us; deal with it. That's something you could respect (and which would be applicable basically everywhere in the world but east Asia). Hell, I'd probably switch to this company if it were real. [YouTube] More »
Even graphene has weak spotsPublic release date: 28-Mar-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: David Ruth david@rice.edu 713-348-6327 Rice University
Rice, Tsinghua theorists find junctions in polycrystalline graphene sap strength of super material
HOUSTON (March 28, 2013) Graphene, the single-atom-thick form of carbon, has become famous for its extraordinary strength. But less-than-perfect sheets of the material show unexpected weakness, according to researchers at Rice University in Houston and Tsinghua University in Beijing.
The kryptonite to this Superman of materials is in the form of a seven-atom ring that inevitably occurs at the junctions of grain boundaries in graphene, where the regular array of hexagonal units is interrupted. At these points, under tension, polycrystalline graphene has about half the strength of pristine samples of the material.
Calculations by the Rice team of theoretical physicist Boris Yakobson and his colleagues in China were reported this month in the American Chemical Society journal Nano Letters. They could be important to materials scientists using graphene in applications where its intrinsic strength is a key feature, like composite materials and stretchable or flexible electronics.
Graphene sheets grown in a lab, often via chemical vapor deposition, are almost never perfect arrays of hexagons, Yakobson said. Domains of graphene that start to grow on a substrate are not necessarily lined up with each other, and when these islands merge, they look like quilts, with patterns going in every direction.
The lines in polycrystalline sheets are called grain boundaries, and the atoms at these boundaries are occasionally forced to change the way they bond by the unbreakable rules of topology. Most common of the "defects" in graphene formation studied by Yakobson's group are adjacent five- and seven-atom rings that are a little weaker than the hexagons around them.
The team calculated that the particular seven-atom rings found at junctions of three islands are the weakest points, where cracks are most likely to form. These are the end points of grain boundaries between the islands and are ongoing trouble spots, the researchers found.
"In the past, people studying what happens at the grain boundary looked at it as an infinite line," Yakobson said. "It's simpler that way, computationally and conceptually, because they could just look at a single segment and have it represent the whole."
But in the real world, he said, "these lines form a network. Graphene is usually a quilt made from many pieces. I thought we should test the junctions."
They determined through molecular dynamics simulation and "good old mathematical analysis" that in a graphene quilt, the grain boundaries act like levers that amplify the tension (through a dislocation pileup) and concentrate it at the defect either where the three domains meet or where a grain boundary between two domains ends. "The details are complicated but, basically, the longer the lever, the greater the amplification on the weakest point," Yakobson said. "The force is concentrated there, and that's where it starts breaking."
"Force on these junctions starts the cracks, and they propagate like cracks in a windshield," said Vasilii Artyukhov, a postdoctoral researcher at Rice and co-author of the paper. "In metals, cracks stop eventually because they become blunt as they propagate. But in brittle materials, that doesn't happen. And graphene is a brittle material, so a crack might go a really long way."
Yakobson said that conceptually, the calculations show what metallurgists recognize as the Hall-Petch Effect, a measure of the strength of crystalline materials with similar grain boundaries. "It's one of the pillars of large-scale material mechanics," he said. "For graphene, we call this a pseudo Hall-Petch, because the effect is very similar even though the mechanism is very different.
"Any defect, of course, does something to the material," Yakobson said. "But this finding is important because you cannot avoid the effect in polycrystalline graphene. It's also ironic, because polycrystals are often considered when larger domains are needed. We show that as it gets larger, it gets weaker.
"If you need a patch of graphene for mechanical performance, you'd better go for perfect monocrystals or graphene with rather small domains that reduce the stress concentration."
###
Co-authors of the paper are graduate student Zhigong Song and his adviser, Zhiping Xu, an associate professor of engineering mechanics at Tsinghua. Xu is a former researcher in Yakobson's group at Rice. Yakobson is Rice's Karl F. Hasselmann Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science and professor of chemistry.
The Air Force Office of Scientific Research and the National Science Foundation supported the work at Rice. The National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Tsinghua University Initiative Scientific Research Program and Tsinghua National Laboratory for Information Science and Technology of China supported the work at Tsinghua.
David Ruth
Mike Williams
713-348-6728 mikewilliams@rice.edu
Read the abstract at: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/nl400542n.
This news release can be found online at: http://news.rice.edu/2013/03/28/even-graphene-has-weak-spots/.
Follow Rice News and Media Relations via Twitter @RiceUNews.
Graphic for download: http://news.rice.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/0328_GRAPHENE-web.jpg
New work by theorists at Rice and Tsinghua universities shows defects in polycrystalline forms of graphene will sap its strength. The illustration from a simulation at left shows a junction of grain boundaries where three domains of graphene meet with a strained bond in the center. At right, the calculated stress buildup at the tip of a finite-length grain boundary. (Credit: Vasilii Artyukhov/Rice University)
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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.
Even graphene has weak spotsPublic release date: 28-Mar-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: David Ruth david@rice.edu 713-348-6327 Rice University
Rice, Tsinghua theorists find junctions in polycrystalline graphene sap strength of super material
HOUSTON (March 28, 2013) Graphene, the single-atom-thick form of carbon, has become famous for its extraordinary strength. But less-than-perfect sheets of the material show unexpected weakness, according to researchers at Rice University in Houston and Tsinghua University in Beijing.
The kryptonite to this Superman of materials is in the form of a seven-atom ring that inevitably occurs at the junctions of grain boundaries in graphene, where the regular array of hexagonal units is interrupted. At these points, under tension, polycrystalline graphene has about half the strength of pristine samples of the material.
Calculations by the Rice team of theoretical physicist Boris Yakobson and his colleagues in China were reported this month in the American Chemical Society journal Nano Letters. They could be important to materials scientists using graphene in applications where its intrinsic strength is a key feature, like composite materials and stretchable or flexible electronics.
Graphene sheets grown in a lab, often via chemical vapor deposition, are almost never perfect arrays of hexagons, Yakobson said. Domains of graphene that start to grow on a substrate are not necessarily lined up with each other, and when these islands merge, they look like quilts, with patterns going in every direction.
The lines in polycrystalline sheets are called grain boundaries, and the atoms at these boundaries are occasionally forced to change the way they bond by the unbreakable rules of topology. Most common of the "defects" in graphene formation studied by Yakobson's group are adjacent five- and seven-atom rings that are a little weaker than the hexagons around them.
The team calculated that the particular seven-atom rings found at junctions of three islands are the weakest points, where cracks are most likely to form. These are the end points of grain boundaries between the islands and are ongoing trouble spots, the researchers found.
"In the past, people studying what happens at the grain boundary looked at it as an infinite line," Yakobson said. "It's simpler that way, computationally and conceptually, because they could just look at a single segment and have it represent the whole."
But in the real world, he said, "these lines form a network. Graphene is usually a quilt made from many pieces. I thought we should test the junctions."
They determined through molecular dynamics simulation and "good old mathematical analysis" that in a graphene quilt, the grain boundaries act like levers that amplify the tension (through a dislocation pileup) and concentrate it at the defect either where the three domains meet or where a grain boundary between two domains ends. "The details are complicated but, basically, the longer the lever, the greater the amplification on the weakest point," Yakobson said. "The force is concentrated there, and that's where it starts breaking."
"Force on these junctions starts the cracks, and they propagate like cracks in a windshield," said Vasilii Artyukhov, a postdoctoral researcher at Rice and co-author of the paper. "In metals, cracks stop eventually because they become blunt as they propagate. But in brittle materials, that doesn't happen. And graphene is a brittle material, so a crack might go a really long way."
Yakobson said that conceptually, the calculations show what metallurgists recognize as the Hall-Petch Effect, a measure of the strength of crystalline materials with similar grain boundaries. "It's one of the pillars of large-scale material mechanics," he said. "For graphene, we call this a pseudo Hall-Petch, because the effect is very similar even though the mechanism is very different.
"Any defect, of course, does something to the material," Yakobson said. "But this finding is important because you cannot avoid the effect in polycrystalline graphene. It's also ironic, because polycrystals are often considered when larger domains are needed. We show that as it gets larger, it gets weaker.
"If you need a patch of graphene for mechanical performance, you'd better go for perfect monocrystals or graphene with rather small domains that reduce the stress concentration."
###
Co-authors of the paper are graduate student Zhigong Song and his adviser, Zhiping Xu, an associate professor of engineering mechanics at Tsinghua. Xu is a former researcher in Yakobson's group at Rice. Yakobson is Rice's Karl F. Hasselmann Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science and professor of chemistry.
The Air Force Office of Scientific Research and the National Science Foundation supported the work at Rice. The National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Tsinghua University Initiative Scientific Research Program and Tsinghua National Laboratory for Information Science and Technology of China supported the work at Tsinghua.
David Ruth
Mike Williams
713-348-6728 mikewilliams@rice.edu
Read the abstract at: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/nl400542n.
This news release can be found online at: http://news.rice.edu/2013/03/28/even-graphene-has-weak-spots/.
Follow Rice News and Media Relations via Twitter @RiceUNews.
Graphic for download: http://news.rice.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/0328_GRAPHENE-web.jpg
New work by theorists at Rice and Tsinghua universities shows defects in polycrystalline forms of graphene will sap its strength. The illustration from a simulation at left shows a junction of grain boundaries where three domains of graphene meet with a strained bond in the center. At right, the calculated stress buildup at the tip of a finite-length grain boundary. (Credit: Vasilii Artyukhov/Rice University)
[ | 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.
RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) ? A West Bank appeals court on Thursday upheld a one-year prison term for a Palestinian journalist who had a photo on his Facebook page that authorities claimed portrayed President Mahmoud Abbas as a traitor, rights activists said.
It was the second such case in two months, and Abbas' Palestinian Authority is facing mounting criticism for stifling dissent. In particular, Abbas' security forces have targeted supporters of the Islamic militant Hamas, which seized the Gaza Strip from him in 2007.
The defendant in Thursday's case was Mamdouh Hamamreh, a reporter for the Hamas-linked Al-Quds TV.
Nimer Hamad, an adviser to Abbas, said the Palestinian president would pardon Hamamreh, but declined further comment.
Prosecutors have alleged that a photo montage on his Facebook page back in 2010 showed Abbas next to a villain in a popular TV drama about French colonial rule in the Levant. The villain was an informer for the French and the photo caption read: "They're alike."
Hamamreh denied that he was the one who posted the photo, but last year a court sentenced him to a year in prison. An appeals court upheld the sentence Thursday, said Issam Abdeen of the Palestinian human rights group Al-Haq.
In February, a Palestinian court sentenced university student Anas Awwad, 26, to a year in jail for "cursing the president" on Facebook. The Palestinian judiciary applies a Jordanian law that criminalizes cursing the king.
Awwad's father said at the time that his son was being punished for what appeared to be a humorous caption under a picture showing Abbas kicking a soccer ball.
An appeals court overturned Awwad's sentence earlier this month and ordered a new trial, Abdeen said. Several other Palestinians face similar charges, he said.
Abbas and his Palestinian Authority, which administers 38 percent of the West Bank, have come under fire repeatedly for squashing dissent. Hamas, which rules Gaza, has faced similar accusations, including going after supporters of Abbas' Fatah movement.
The Palestinian political split of 2007 largely halted the work of democratic institutions. It paralyzed the parliament and prevented new parliamentary and presidential elections.
It's hard to give criticism without getting overly excited and bashing them. Jason Fried over at weblog 37signals shares a tip on how to avoid this tired practice. 
Twitter's Vine app received a small, but notable, 
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Public release date: 28-Mar-2013
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