STOCKS NEWS SINGAPORE-Index hits 5-year high, tracking Wall St

Singapore shares rose to their highest in more than five years

on Tuesday, tracking U.S. stock market which closed at a record

high in the previous session.

The Straits Times Index rose 0.6 percent to

3,382.93, the highest since January 2008.

The MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside

Japan was up 1 percent, after the S&P 500 index

closed at an all-time high on Monday.

Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp, Singapore's

second-largest lender, traded flat at S$10.92, retreating from a

record high of S$11.07 last week. It reported a 16 percent fall

in first-quarter profit earlier in the day.

Other banking shares rose to their highest since 2008.

Shares of United Overseas Bank Ltd matched Monday's

five-year high of S$21.39, and DBS Group Holdings Ltd

rose to the highest since mid-2008.

"Banking shares are doing well, helped by expectation that

the Cyprus crisis may push some money to migrate from Europe to

Singapore," said a trader, who declined to be named.

Shares of Starhub Ltd hit a record high of S$4.76

and Singapore Telecommunications Ltd extended gains

for the second straight session.

Shares of Aussino Group Ltd jumped 7 percent to

S$0.107, recovering from a 40 percent slump in the previous

session after the Singapore Exchange rejected its application

for a S$70 million reverse takeover deal with a company linked

to a Myanmar tycoon who is on the U.S. sanction list.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/stocks-news-singapore-index-hits-5-high-tracking-043225727.html

keanu reeves whitney houston national anthem beverly hills hotel beverly hills hotel the watchmen whitney houston dies dolly parton i will always love you

Scientists reach the ultimate goal -- controlling chirality in carbon nanotubes

Tuesday, April 30, 2013

An ultimate goal in the field of carbon nanotube research is to synthesise single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) with controlled chiralities. Twenty years after the discovery of SWNTs, scientists from Aalto University in Finland, A.M. Prokhorov General Physics Institute RAS in Russia and the Center for Electron Nanoscopy of Technical University of Denmark (DTU) have managed to control chirality in carbon nanotubes during their chemical vapor deposition synthesis.

Carbon nanotube structure is defined by a pair of integers known as chiral indices (n,m), in other words, chirality.

Chirality defines the optical and electronic properties of carbon nanotubes, so controlling it is a key to exploiting their practical applications, says Professor Esko I. Kauppinen, the leader of the Nanomaterials Group in Aalto University School of Science.

Over the years, substantial progress has been made to develop various structure-controlled synthesis methods. However, precise control over the chiral structure of SWNTs has been largely hindered by a lack of practical means to direct the formation of the metal nanoparticle catalysts and their catalytic dynamics during tube growth.

We achieved an epitaxial formation of Co nanoparticles by reducing a well-developed solid solution in CO, reveals Maoshuai He, a postdoctoral researcher at Aalto University School of Chemical Technology.

For the first time, the new catalyst was employed for selective growth of SWNTs, adds senior staff scientist Hua Jiang from Aalto University School of Science.

By introducing the new catalysts into a conventional CVD reactor, the research team demonstrated preferential growth of semiconducting SWNTs (?90%) with an exceptionally high population of (6,5) tubes (53%) at 500 ?C. Furthermore, they also showed a shift of the chiral preference from (6,5) tubes at 500 ?C to (7, 6) and (9, 4) nanotubes at 400 ?C.

These findings open new perspectives both for structural control of SWNTs and for elucidating their growth mechanisms, thus are important for the fundamental understanding of science behind nanotube growth, comments Professor Juha Lehtonen from Aalto University.

###

The research has been recently published in a new Nature Publishing Group journal Scientific Reports, 3 (2013), 1460.

Link to article: http://www.nature.com/srep/2013/130315/srep01460/full/srep01460.html

Aalto University: http://www.aalto.fi/en/

Thanks to Aalto University for this article.

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

This press release has been viewed 37 time(s).

Source: http://www.labspaces.net/128019/Scientists_reach_the_ultimate_goal____controlling_chirality_in_carbon_nanotubes

katie couric barista university of kentucky oakland news alec baldwin alec baldwin college basketball

Fertilizers provide mixed benefits to soil in 50-year study

Apr. 29, 2013 ? Fertilizing with inorganic nitrogen and phosphorus definitely improves crop yields, but does it also improve the soil?

The latest study to tackle this question has yielded mixed results. While 50 years of inorganic fertilization did increase soil organic carbon stocks in a long-term experiment in western Kansas, the practice seemingly failed to enhance soil aggregate stability -- a key indicator of soil structural quality that helps dictate how water moves through soil and soil's resistance to erosion.

The results of the research, which was carried out in continuous corn that was also irrigated and conventionally tilled, were somewhat surprising to lead author Humberto Blanco, a University of Nebraska-Lincoln soil physicist. The findings appear in the May-June issue of the Journal of Environmental Quality.

Fertilization typically leaves behind more crop residues in fields, he explains, which in turn can boost soil organic carbon levels. But unexpectedly in this case, "we didn't see improvement in soil aggregate stability even though soil organic carbon concentration increased," Blanco says, noting that soil particles usually bind together more strongly in aggregates as soil organic carbon concentrations rise.

He cautions, however, that more research is needed over a wider range of management and climatic conditions, particularly since studies of fertilizers' impacts on soil structural properties, such as aggregate stability, are currently few.

"Definitely the effects of inorganic fertilizer application on soil properties will depend on tillage and cropping systems," Blanco says. "So we need to look at this in other long-term experiments."

In the present study, he and co-author Alan Schlegel studied a randomized and replicated experiment that was set up in 1961 at Kansas State University's Southwest Research-Extension Center in Tribune. The experimental plots of irrigated and tilled (disk/chisel) continuous corn have received six different rates of ammonium nitrate fertilizer (range 0 to 200 pounds/acre) for 50 years. The plots also received two rates of triple superphosphate fertilizer (0 and 18 pounds/acre) for 50 years, and a higher phosphorus rate (36 lb/acre) for 19 years.

Growing corn continuously under conventional tillage and with high inputs of water and fertilizer may seem outmoded, but this management system is "not uncommon," as demand for corn grain and crop residues grow, Blanco says.

When he tested soils from the experimental plots, he saw soil organic carbon concentrations rise gradually with increases in nitrogen fertilization at soil depths from 0 to 6 inches, although not at deeper ones. Similarly, phosphorus fertilization increased soil organic carbon at depths of 0 to 3 inches and 6 to 12 inches.

But Blanco observed a different trend in soil aggregate stability, especially when nitrogen and phosphorus were applied together at high rates. At a depth of three to 12 inches, for example, adding more than 80 pounds of nitrogen per acre reduced the number of stable soil aggregates by 1.5 times when no phosphorus was applied, by 2.1 times at 18 pounds of phosphorus/acre, and by 2.5 times at 36 pounds of phosphorus/acre.

Blanco can't say for certain why this occurred, but he has some hypotheses. Some studies suggest that adding fertilizers rich in ammonium ions may cause soil particles to disperse rather than aggregate, thereby offsetting any positive effects of increased soil organic carbon content. Because tillage periodically disturbs the soil, it may also negate any benefits of fertilization.

Blanco is now testing these hypotheses in three additional long-term experiments in Nebraska that encompass a wider range of tillage practices and cropping systems. The effects of nitrogen and phosphorus fertilizers on crop yields are well-researched, of course. Likewise, reduced tillage, cover crops, intensified cropping systems, and other conservation practices are known to build the soil long-term. Blanco now wants to see the two come together.

"It's clear that we need inorganic fertilizers to meet the increasing demands for food production, so it's important to look at how the extensive use of inorganic fertilizers affects soil properties in the long term," he says. "The hypothesis is that inorganic fertilization combined with conservation tillage -- strip till, no-till, and others -- may improve soil structural properties relative to conventional tillage systems."

Share this story on Facebook, Twitter, and Google:

Other social bookmarking and sharing tools:

---

Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by American Society of Agronomy (ASA), Crop Science Society of America (CSSA), via Newswise.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

---

Journal Reference:

1. Humberto Blanco-Canqui, Alan J. Schlegel. Implications of Inorganic Fertilization of Irrigated Corn on Soil Properties: Lessons Learned after 50 Years. Journal of Environment Quality, 2013; 42 (3): 861 DOI: 10.2134/jeq2012.0451

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_environment/~3/Za_ITo7zHiY/130429094640.htm

lindsay lohan saturday night live snl lindsay lohan valley fever project x the lorax lorax fisker karma

Army says no to more tanks, but Congress insists

WASHINGTON (AP) ? Built to dominate the enemy in combat, the Army's hulking Abrams tank is proving equally hard to beat in a budget battle.

Lawmakers from both parties have devoted nearly half a billion dollars in taxpayer money over the past two years to build improved versions of the 70-ton Abrams.

But senior Army officials have said repeatedly, "No thanks."

It's the inverse of the federal budget world these days, in which automatic spending cuts are leaving sought-after pet programs struggling or unpaid altogether. Republicans and Democrats for years have fought so bitterly that lawmaking in Washington ground to a near-halt.

Yet in the case of the Abrams tank, there's a bipartisan push to spend an extra $436 million on a weapon the experts explicitly say is not needed.

"If we had our choice, we would use that money in a different way," Gen. Ray Odierno, the Army's chief of staff, told The Associated Press this past week.

Why are the tank dollars still flowing? Politics.

Keeping the Abrams production line rolling protects businesses and good paying jobs in congressional districts where the tank's many suppliers are located.

If there's a home of the Abrams, it's politically important Ohio. The nation's only tank plant is in Lima. So it's no coincidence that the champions for more tanks are Rep. Jim Jordan and Sen. Rob Portman, two of Capitol's Hill most prominent deficit hawks, as well as Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown. They said their support is rooted in protecting national security, not in pork-barrel politics.

"The one area where we are supposed to spend taxpayer money is in defense of the country," said Jordan, whose district in the northwest part of the state includes the tank plant.

The Abrams dilemma underscores the challenge that Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel faces as he seeks to purge programs that the military considers unnecessary or too expensive in order to ensure there's enough money for essential operations, training and equipment.

Hagel, a former Republican senator from Nebraska, faces a daunting task in persuading members of Congress to eliminate or scale back projects favored by constituents.

Federal budgets are always peppered with money for pet projects. What sets the Abrams example apart is the certainty of the Army's position.

Sean Kennedy, director of research for the nonpartisan Citizens Against Government Waste, said Congress should listen when one of the military services says no to more equipment.

"When an institution as risk averse as the Defense Department says they have enough tanks, we can probably believe them," Kennedy said.

Congressional backers of the Abrams upgrades view the vast network of companies, many of them small businesses, that manufacture the tanks' materials and parts as a critical asset that has to be preserved. The money, they say, is a modest investment that will keep important tooling and manufacturing skills from being lost if the Abrams line were to be shut down.

The Lima plant is a study in how federal dollars affect local communities, which in turn hold tight to the federal dollars. The facility is owned by the federal government but operated by the land systems division of General Dynamics, a major defense contractor that spent close to $11 million last year on lobbying, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.

The plant is Lima's fifth-largest employer with close to 700 employees, down from about 1,100 just a few years ago, according to Mayor David Berger. But the facility is still crucial to the local economy. "All of those jobs and their spending activity in the community and the company's spending probably have about a $100 million impact annually," Berger said.

Jordan, a House conservative leader who has pushed for deep reductions in federal spending, supported the automatic cuts known as the sequester that require $42 billion to be shaved from the Pentagon's budget by the end of September. The military also has to absorb a $487 billion reduction in defense spending over the next 10 years, as required by the Budget Control Act passed in 2011.

Still, said Jordan, it would be a big mistake to stop producing tanks.

"Look, (the plant) is in the 4th Congressional District and my job is to represent the 4th Congressional District, so I understand that," he said. "But the fact remains, if it was not in the best interests of the national defense for the United States of America, then you would not see me supporting it like we do."

The tanks that Congress is requiring the Army to buy aren't brand new. Earlier models are being outfitted with a sophisticated suite of electronics that gives the vehicles better microprocessors, color flat panel displays, a more capable communications system, and other improvements. The upgraded tanks cost about $7.5 million each, according to the Army.

Out of a fleet of nearly 2,400 tanks, roughly two-thirds are the improved versions, which the Army refers to with a moniker that befits their heft: the M1A2SEPv2, and service officials said they have plenty of them. "The Army is on record saying we do not require any additional M1A2s," Davis Welch, deputy director of the Army budget office, said this month.

The tank fleet, on average, is less than 3 years old. The Abrams is named after Gen. Creighton Abrams, one of the top tank commanders during World War II and a former Army chief of staff.

The Army's plan was to stop buying tanks until 2017, when production of a newly designed Abrams would begin. Orders for Abrams tanks from U.S. allies help fill the gap created by the loss of tanks for the Army, according to service officials, but congressional proponents of the program feared there would not be enough international business to keep the Abrams line going.

This pause in tank production for the U.S. would allow the Army to spend its money on research and development work for the new and improved model, said Ashley Givens, a spokeswoman for the Army's Ground Combat Systems office.

The first editions of the Abrams tank were fielded in the early 1980s. Over the decades, the Abrams supply chain has become embedded in communities across the country.

General Dynamics estimated in 2011 that there were more than 560 subcontractors throughout the country involved in the Abrams program and that they employed as many as 18,000 people. More than 40 of the companies are in Pennsylvania, according to Sen. Robert Casey, D-Pa., also a staunch backer of continued tank production.

A letter signed by 173 Democratic and Republican members of the House last year and sent to then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta demonstrated the depth of bipartisan support for the Abrams program on Capitol Hill. They chided the Obama administration for neglecting the industrial base and proposing to terminate tank production in the United States for the first time since World War II.

Portman, who served as President George W. Bush's budget director before being elected to the Senate, said allowing the line to wither and close would create a financial mess.

"People can't sit around for three years on unemployment insurance and wait for the government to come back," Portman said. "That supply chain is going to be much more costly and much more inefficient to create if you mothball the plant."

Pete Keating, a General Dynamics spokesman, said the money from Congress is allowing for a stable base of production for the Army, which receives about four tanks a month. With the line open, Lima also can fill international orders, bringing more work to Lima and preserving American jobs, he said.

Current foreign customers are Saudi Arabia, which is getting about five tanks a month, and Egypt, which is getting four. Each country pays all of their own costs. That's a "success story during a period of economic pain," Keating said.

Still, far fewer tanks are coming out of the Lima plant than in years past. The drop-off has affected companies such as Verhoff Machine and Welding in Continental, Ohio, which makes seats and other parts for the Abrams. Ed Verhoff, the company's president, said his sales have dropped from $20 million to $7 million over the past two years. He's also had to lay off about 25 skilled employees and he expects to be issuing more pink slips in the future.

"When we start to lose this base of people, what are we going to do? Buy our tanks from China?" Verhoff said.

Steven Grundman, a defense expert at the Atlantic Council in Washington, said the difficulty of reviving defense industrial capabilities tends to be overstated.

"From the fairly insular world in which the defense industry operates, these capabilities seem to be unique and in many cases extraordinarily high art," said Grundman, a former deputy undersecretary of defense for industrial affairs and installations during the Clinton administration. "But in the greater scope of the economy, they tend not to be."

___

Online:

Abrams tank: http://www.army.mil/factfiles/equipment/tracked/abrams.html

__

Follow Richard Lardner on Twitter: https://twitter.com/rplardner

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/army-says-no-more-tanks-congress-insists-115422396.html

the pitch brandon inge freedom tower freedom tower eric church quick silver where have you been rihanna

Sponsor Me

this seems like its going to be a great rp, so i'm in, if you'll have me~~ ^u^

I know I want a vampire character at the very least, but i'm between an empathetic and a shapeshifter. Though i think i'm leaning more towards empathetic vampire.

And i dunno i think i might make a human too if thats cool. (if there are any like character types that are specifically needed that could help my decision and stuff)

I do just have one question, and this in no way is like a deal breaker for me, obviously, but it helps me out while im doing character development - is sexual orientation for characters free game or just standard? Sorry if this is a dumb question but if you skimmed through my characters pretty much all of them are pansexual, and the orientation almost always affects their entire character.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/RolePlayGateway/~3/cJB8yfjkUkY/viewtopic.php

the old curiosity shop jane russell meryl streep martin scorsese sacha baron cohen best picture nominees 2012 academy awards 2012

Manchin: Gun bill to be reintroduced

WASHINGTON (AP) ? One of the architects of failed gun control legislation says he's bringing it back.

Sen. Joe Manchin on Sunday said he would re-introduce a measure that would require criminal and mental health background checks for gun buyers at shows and online. The West Virginia Democrat says that if lawmakers read the bill, they will support it.

Manchin sponsored a previous version of the measure with Republican Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania. It failed.

Manchin says there was confusion over what was in the bill.

In the wake of last year's school shooting in Newtown, Conn., Congress took up gun control legislation, but it was blocked by supporters of the powerful pro-gun lobby, the National Rifle Association.

Manchin appeared on "Fox News Sunday."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/manchin-gun-bill-reintroduced-170200855.html

new orleans weather new orleans weather sparkle sacagawea new hope baptist church associated press foster friess

Climate change inspires a new literary genre: cli-fi

Cli-fi, or 'climate fiction,' describes a dystopian present, as opposed to a dystopian future. And don't call it 'science fiction.' Cli-fi is literary fiction.

By Husna Haq,?Correspondent / April 26, 2013

'Odds Against Tomorrow,' a novel by Nathaniel Rich, is an example of the emerging 'cli-fi' genre.

Enlarge

Talk about hot.

Skip to next paragraph

Recent posts

' + google_ads[0].line2 + '
' + google_ads[0].line3 + '

'; } else if (google_ads.length > 1) { ad_unit += ''; } } document.getElementById("ad_unit").innerHTML += ad_unit; google_adnum += google_ads.length; return; } var google_adnum = 0; google_ad_client = "pub-6743622525202572"; google_ad_output = 'js'; google_max_num_ads = '1'; google_feedback = "on"; google_ad_type = "text"; google_adtest = "on"; google_image_size = '230x105'; google_skip = '0'; // -->

Subscribe Today to the Monitor

Click Here for your FREE 30 DAYS of
The Christian Science Monitor
Weekly Digital Edition

Climate change has been cited as the cause behind a raft of recent phenomena, from increasing turbulence on planes to rising rates of malaria, dengue, and even domestic abuse.

And now it?s hit the publishing world.

The next hot trend in books, it turns out isn?t Fifty Shades-esque erotica ? it?s climate change.

That?s according to a fascinating report by NPR, ?Has Climate Change Created a New Literary Genre??

?Over the past decade, more and more writers have begun to set their novels and short stories in worlds, not unlike our own, where the Earth's systems are noticeably off-kilter,? reports Angela Evancie for NPR. ?The genre has come to be called climate fiction ? 'cli-fi,' for short.?

Among the titles in this emerging literary genre is ?Odds Against Tomorrow,? by Nathaniel Rich, a novel about a futurist who calculates worst-case scenarios for corporations, including the very scenario that landed on the book?s cover: the Manhattan skyline, half-submerged in water. (We should note, the book, and cover, were created before Hurricane Sandy.)?

Other books include Michael Crichton?s 2004 novel, ?State of Fear,? about ecoterrorists; Ian McEwan?s ?Solar,? about impending environmental disaster; and Barbara Kingsolver?s ?Flight Behavior,? about a world turned upside down by climate change.

There are two key points to emphasize in this trend. Cli-fi describes a dystopian present, as opposed to a dystopian future, and it isn?t non-fiction or even science fiction: cli-fi is about literary fiction.

As interesting as this new development is, we shouldn?t be too surprised. After all, whether it?s the Industrial Revolution, the Cold War, or the tech bubble, cultural and environmental milestones have historically shaped the world we ? and by extension, the characters we read about ? live in.?

In this case, literature might actually prove to be a surprise secret weapon of sorts, helping scientists convey the issue to disinterested ? or dubious ? audiences.

That?s because ?when novelists tackle climate change in their writing, they reach people in a way that scientists can't,? says NPR.

"You know, scientists and other people are trying to get their message across about various aspects of the climate change issue," Judith Curry, professor and chair of Georgia Institute of Technology's School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, tells NPR. "And it seems like fiction is an untapped way of doing this ? a way of smuggling some serious topics into the consciousness" of readers who may not be following the science.

We?re fascinated by this emerging genre and if one cli-fi writer is on the mark, we?ll be seeing a lot more of it in coming years.

Predicted Daniel Kramb, the cli-fi novelist behind ?From Here,? the 2012 novel about climate change activists, ?I think when [people] look back at this 21st century ... they will definitely see climate change as one of the major themes in literature, if not the major theme.?

Husna Haq is a Monitor correspondent.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/SwCeZYqCCm0/Climate-change-inspires-a-new-literary-genre-cli-fi

Suzy Favor Hamilton mayan calendar end of the world end of the world december 21 2012 norad 12/21/12

This Week On The TechCrunch Gadgets Podcast: The Q10 Vs. The One And The Fitbit Flex

This week on the TechCrunch Gadgets Podcast we talk about the Blackberry Q10, The HTC One, and the Fitbit Flex. This time we're joined by Matt Burns, Darrell Etherington, Chris Velazco, and a tiny thinger that won't fit into the bracelet. Enjoy!

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/F7p02rYk-l0/

food network f/a 18 f 18 crash virginia tenebrae the lake house petrino arkansas roy williams

Could San Diego and Tijuana team up to host Olympics?

The U.S. Olympic Committee is talking to 10 cities about a possible bid for the 2024 Summer Games, including a joint proposal from San Diego and Mexican neighbor Tijuana.

Following failed bids for the 2012 and 2016 Olympics, the USOC sent out letters to 35 American cities in February to gauge interest in a potential run for 2024.

"We're in discussion with about 10 cities actively now," USOC chief executive Scott Blackmun said in an interview after speaking to the Associated Press Sports Editors in New York. "The process is really working the way it was supposed to."

Los Angeles, which hosted the 1932 and 1984 Olympics, and Philadelphia have announced their interest. The mayor of Tulsa, Okla., Dewey Bartlett, told the USOC in a letter last month the city would be interested in submitting a bid with a "Native America theme."

Blackmun said San Diego and Tijuana have also approached the USOC about a joint bid. He declined to identify other cities considered as potential candidates, saying they preferred to keep it confidential for now. Three cities, including Chicago, have formally said they are not interested in bidding.

Blackmun said he would be surprised if any other cities came forward at this point.

"We don't want to submit a bid we don't think we can win," Blackmun told the APSE gathering. "We have to assess our chances. ... We want this bid to be a national bid, an American, bid, not just a city bid. We want to make sure we have been as inclusive as possible."

The United States hasn't hosted a Summer Olympics since the 1996 Atlanta Games. New York mounted a failed bid for the 2012 Games, which went to London, and Chicago suffered a stinging first-round defeat in the IOC vote for the 2016 Olympics, which were awarded to Rio de Janeiro.

The USOC has since reached a revenue-sharing agreement with the IOC, ending a long-running dispute that contributed to the failed bids. With relations back on track and the USOC working to increase its international presence, the chances for a successful U.S. bid in 2024 are considered vastly improved.

"We've got plenty of time," Blackmun told the AP. "There are no specific deadlines on this process."

The USOC official said a joint bid can work in some geographical areas, citing the Bay Area and the cities of San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose as a "natural" possibility.

As for San Diego and Tijuana, he said, "That would have its challenges. We haven't looked at it carefully. We just learned about it."

Blackmun said he understood why Chicago is not interested in bidding again. The city spent about $90 million on the 2016 bid and not even the presence of President Barack Obama at the IOC session in Copenhagen, Denmark, was enough to prevent the humbling defeat.

New York, meanwhile, could be a strong contender in 2024, Blackmun said.

"New York is a global iconic city with a very diverse population and could do a fantastic job of hosting the games," Blackmun said, adding a bid will likely depend on the result of the Big Apple's mayoral election in November.

The USOC has said it plans to decide by the end of 2014 whether to submit a bid. The International Olympic Committee will select the 2024 host city in 2017. Other potential 2024 contenders include Paris and a city in South Africa.

"The games should definitely go to Africa someday," Blackmun said. "If we bid for 2024, I hope they don't go to Africa in 2024."

On other issues, Blackmun said he supports keeping wrestling in the Olympics after the sport was removed from the program of the 2020 Games by the IOC executive board in February. Wrestling is now competing against seven other sports for an opening on the 2020 program.

Blackmun said he also supports the inclusion of women's softball. Baseball and softball, which have been out of the Olympics since the 2008 Beijing Games, have merged to mount a joint bid for 2020 reinstatement. The IOC board will decide next month which sport or sports to recommend for inclusion, with a final vote by the IOC assembly in September.

"Softball needs the Olympics," Blackmun said. "I feel strongly that both wrestling and women's softball should be in the games. You can't get both. It's not a perfect world."

Blackmun said he's confident NHL players will take part in the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, Russia. NHL players have participated in the past four Winter Games, shutting down the league for two weeks.

Negotiations between the league and international ice hockey officials have yet to produce an agreement for Sochi, though the signs are positive.

"I know the players want it ? both the players who would go to Sochi and those that would get two weeks off," Blackmun said.

__

Associated Press Writer Justin Juozapavicius in Tulsa, Okla., contributed to this report

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/usoc-10-cities-interested-hosting-2024-games-152432575.html

Mad Men Jenna Jameson melissa mccarthy Andy Dick Tim Hardaway Anne Smedinghoff jana kramer

The Tesla Model S' Battery Is Now Covered By A Nearly Unconditional Warranty

Without proper care batteries can wither and die like a delicate tulip roasting in the bright sun from an unseasonably warm spring day -- a fact made exponentially worse when the battery in your $60k vehicle no longer functions properly. With that in mind, Tesla just unveiled an impressive new warranty for the Model S battery pack. With the notable exception of a vehicle accident or a curious owner opening the battery pack, under this new plan, Tesla will replace the battery pack for any reason including user error and improper maintenance.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/-F5_4cwNNmg/

stacey dash christopher columbus columbus day columbus day Stacy Dash Amber Tamblyn Lilit Avagyan

Amazon Led LivingSocial's Last Round With A $56M Investment; Daily Deals Site Had A Net Loss Of $50M This Past Quarter

Daily deals company LivingSocial continues to face challenges in the market. In the last quarter it posted sales of $135 million, up 23% on a year ago, but it also swung to a net loss of $50 million, from net income of $156 million in Q1 2012. The numbers were revealed in a 10-Q filing from one of its key investors, Amazon, in line with its?Q1 earnings reported on Thursday.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/AuYBQJsWurk/

Jill Kelly McKayla Maroney gronkowski jeremy renner best buy black friday deals breaking dawn part 2 breaking dawn part 2

Actavis settles OxyContin lawsuit with Purdue

(Reuters) - Generic drugmaker Actavis Inc said it had settled a patent lawsuit with Purdue Pharma related to Actavis' generic version of the abuse-deterrent formulation of Purdue's painkiller OxyContin.

Under the agreement, Actavis will be licensed to market a specified number of bottles of its generic OxyContin beginning January 1, 2014.

Actavis expects the agreement to represent more than $100 million in combined gross profit in 2014 and 2015, but the other terms of the settlement were not disclosed.

If Actavis is unable to get U.S. regulatory approval for its generic OxyContin prior to September 1, 2014, it will be permitted to launch a specified number of bottles of an authorized generic version of Purdue's abuse-deterrent product beginning in October 2014.

OxyContin had U.S. sales of about $2.8 billion for the 12 months ending January 31, 2013, according to IMS Health, Actavis said in a statement.

Actavis, formerly known as Watson Pharmaceuticals, announced on Thursday it had settled a lawsuit with Shire Plc, related to a generic version of Shire's drug, Intuniv, to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

The drugmaker changed its name from Watson after buying Actavis as part of its strategy to expand in international markets and offer more specialty drugs.

(Reporting by Esha Dey in Bangalore; Editing by Sreejiraj Eluvangal)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/actavis-settles-oxycontin-lawsuit-purdue-140455635.html

2013 nissan altima masters par 3 contest google augmented reality glasses wonderlic test texas tornado fantasy baseball jared sullinger

Toll in Bangladesh building collapse passes 300

A Bangladeshi garment worker who was pulled alive from the rubble is wheeled on a stretcher at the site of a building that collapsed Wednesday in Savar, near Dhaka, Bangladesh, Friday, April 26, 2013. The death toll reached hundreds of people as rescuers continued to search for injured and missing, after a huge section of an eight-story building that housed several garment factories splintered into a pile of concrete.(AP Photo/Kevin Frayer)

A Bangladeshi garment worker who was pulled alive from the rubble is wheeled on a stretcher at the site of a building that collapsed Wednesday in Savar, near Dhaka, Bangladesh, Friday, April 26, 2013. The death toll reached hundreds of people as rescuers continued to search for injured and missing, after a huge section of an eight-story building that housed several garment factories splintered into a pile of concrete.(AP Photo/Kevin Frayer)

A Bangladeshi garment worker who was pulled alive from the rubble is carried at the site of a building that collapsed Wednesday in Savar, near Dhaka, Bangladesh, Friday, April 26, 2013. Crews bored deeper Friday into the wreckage of a garment-factory building that collapsed two days earlier, hoping for miracle rescues that would prevent the death toll from rising much higher, as angry relatives of the missing clashed with police. (AP Photo/Kevin Frayer)

A Bangladeshi garment worker who was pulled alive from the rubble lays in the back of an ambulance after being brought by rescue workers at the site of a building that collapsed Wednesday in Savar, near Dhaka, Bangladesh, Friday, April 26, 2013. The death toll reached hundreds of people as rescuers continued to search for injured and missing, after a huge section of an eight-story building that housed several garment factories splintered into a pile of concrete.(AP Photo/Kevin Frayer)

A Bangladeshi garment worker who soldiers said was pulled alive from the rubble reacts as he walk on his own at the site of a building that collapsed Wednesday in Savar, near Dhaka, Bangladesh, Friday, April 26, 2013. By Friday, the death toll reached hundreds of people as rescuers continued to search for injured and missing, after a huge section of an eight-story building that housed several garment factories splintered into a pile of concrete.(AP Photo/Kevin Frayer)

A Bangladeshi woman weeps as she holds a picture of her and her missing husband as she waits at the site of a building that collapsed Wednesday in Savar, near Dhaka, Bangladesh, Friday, April 26, 2013. The death toll reached hundreds of people as rescuers continued to search for injured and missing, after a huge section of an eight-story building that housed several garment factories splintered into a pile of concrete.(AP Photo/Kevin Frayer)

SAVAR, Bangladesh (AP) ? More than two days after their factory collapsed on them, at least some garment workers were still alive in the corpse-littered debris Friday, pinned beneath tons of mangled metal and concrete. Rescue crews struggled to save them, knowing they probably had just a few hours left to live, as desperate relatives clashed with police in their anger and grief.

Amid the chaos, the cries for help and the smell of decaying bodies at the eight-story building where more than 300 died, what happened to 18-year-old Mussamat Anna passes as luck. Rescue workers cut off the garment worker's mangled right hand to pull her free from the debris Thursday night.

"First a machine fell over my hand and I was crushed under the debris. ... Then the roof collapsed over me," she told an Associated Press cameraman from a hospital bed Friday.

The death toll topped 300 on Friday and it remained unclear what the final grim number would be. Military spokesman Shahin Islam told reporters that 304 bodies had been recovered.

Brig. Gen. Mohammed Siddiqul Alam Shikder, who is overseeing rescue operations, said 2,200 people have been rescued. The garment manufacturers' group said the factories in the building employed 3,122 workers, but it was not clear how many were inside it when it collapsed Wednesday in Savar, a suburb of Bangladesh's capital, Dhaka.

An army rescue worker, Maj. Abdul Latif, said Friday that he found one survivor still trapped under concrete slabs, surrounded by several bodies. At another place in the building, four survivors were found pinned under the debris, a fire official said. An Associated Press cameraman who accompanied a rescue crew heard two men's anguished cries for help; it was unknown Friday whether they were still alive.

Rescue workers said they were proceeding very cautiously inside the crumbling building, using their hands, hammers and shovels, to avoid more injuries and collapses. But they said the trapped workers were so badly hurt and weakened that they would need to be extricated within a few hours if they are to survive.

A military official, Maj. Gen. Chowdhury Hasan Suhrawardy, told reporters that search and rescue operations would continue until at least Saturday.

"We know a human being can survive for up to 72 hours in this situation. So our efforts will continue non-stop," he said.

Hundreds of rescuers, some crawling through the maze of rubble, spent a third day working amid the cries of the trapped and the wails of workers' relatives gathered outside the building, which housed numerous garment factories and a handful of other companies.

Police cordoned off the building site, pushing back thousands of bystanders and relatives, after rescue workers said the crowds were hampering their work.

Clashes later erupted between relatives of those still trapped and police officers, who used batons to disperse the mobs. Police said 50 people were injured in the clashes.

"We want to go inside the building and find our people now. They will die if we don't find them soon," said Shahinur Rahman, whose mother is missing.

Elsewhere, many thousands of workers from the hundreds of garment factories across the Savar industrial zone and other nearby industrial areas took to the streets to protest the collapse and poor safety standards.

Local news reports said protesters smashed dozens of vehicles at one strike Friday. Most of the other protests were largely peaceful.

Dozens of people have been rescued from the wreckage well after Wednesday morning's collapse.

Forty people had been trapped on the fourth floor of the Rana Plaza building until rescuers reached them Thursday evening. Twelve were soon freed, and crews worked to get the others out safely, said Brig. Gen. Shikder. Crowds at the scene burst into applause as survivors were brought out.

Police say cracks in the building had led them to order an evacuation Tuesday, but the factories ignored the order and were operating when it collapsed Wednesday. Video shot before the collapse shows cracks in the walls, with apparent attempts at repair. It also shows columns missing chunks of concrete and police talking to building operators.

Officials said soon after the collapse that numerous construction regulations had been violated.

Abdul Halim, an official with Savar's engineering department, said the owner of Rana Plaza was originally allowed to construct a five-story building but added another three stories illegally.

A spokesman for Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said she had ordered police to arrest the owner of the building as well as the owners of the garment factories in "the shortest possible time."

Local police chief Mohammed Asaduzzaman said police and the government's Capital Development Authority have filed separate cases of negligence against the building owner.

Habibur Rahman, police superintendent of the Dhaka district, identified the owner of the building as Mohammed Sohel Rana, a local leader of ruling Awami League's youth front. Rahman said police were also looking for the owners of the garment factories.

Police on Friday detained two of Rana's relatives for questioning, police officer Mohammad Kawser said.

The disaster is the worst ever for Bangladesh's booming and powerful garment industry, surpassing a fire five months ago that killed 112 people and brought widespread pledges to improve the country's worker-safety standards.

Instead, very little has changed in Bangladesh, where wages, among the lowest in the world, have made it a magnet for numerous global brands.

Bangladesh's garment industry was the third-largest in the world in 2011, after China and Italy. It has grown rapidly in the past decade, a boom fueled by Bangladesh's exceptionally low labor costs. The country's minimum wage is now the equivalent of about $38 a month.

Among the garment makers in the building were Phantom Apparels, Phantom Tac, Ether Tex, New Wave Style and New Wave Bottoms. Altogether, they produced several million shirts, pants and other garments a year.

The New Wave companies, according to their website, make clothing for several major North American and European retailers.

Britain's Primark acknowledged it was using a factory in Rana Plaza, but many other retailers distanced themselves from the disaster, saying they were not involved with the factories at the time of the collapse or had not recently ordered garments from them.

Wal-Mart said none of its clothing had been authorized to be made in the facility, but it is investigating whether there was any unauthorized production.

U.S. State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell said the collapse underscored the "urgent need" for the Bangladesh government, as well as the factory owners, buyers and labor groups, to improve working conditions in the country.

Human Rights Watch says Bangladesh's Ministry of Labor has only 18 inspectors to monitor thousands of garment factories in the sprawling Dhaka district, where much of the nation's garment industry is located.

John Sifton, the group's Asia advocacy director, also noted none of the factories in the Rana Plaza were unionized, and had they had been, workers would have been in a better position to refuse to enter the building on Wednesday.

___

AP Writers Muneeza Naqvi and Tim Sullivan in New Delhi, Stephen Wright in Bangkok, Kay Johnson in Mumbai, Matthew Pennington in Washington and AP Retail Writer Anne D'Innocenzio in New York contributed to this report.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2013-04-26-Bangladesh-Building%20Collapse/id-65dd4cb7e3b647f4b6cee0e19a2f3759

ihop Sasquatch 2013 super bowl commercials wheres my refund Fast And Furious 6 superbowl ads Super Bowl Ads 2013

Rethinking early atmospheric oxygen: Possibility of more dynamic biological oxygen cycle on early Earth than previously supposed

Apr. 24, 2013 ? A research team of biogeochemists at the University of California, Riverside has provided a new view on the relationship between the earliest accumulation of oxygen in the atmosphere, arguably the most important biological event in Earth history, and its relationship to the sulfur cycle.

A general consensus exists that appreciable oxygen first accumulated in Earth's atmosphere around 2.4 to 2.3 billion years ago. Though this paradigm is built upon a wide range of geological and geochemical observations, the famous "smoking gun" for what has come to be known as the "Great Oxidation Event" (GOE) comes from the disappearance of anomalous fractionations in rare sulfur isotopes.

"These isotope fractionations, often referred to as 'mass-independent fractionations,' or 'MIF' signals, require both the destruction of sulfur dioxide by ultraviolet energy from the sun in an atmosphere without ozone and very low atmospheric oxygen levels in order to be transported and deposited in marine sediments," said Christopher T. Reinhard, the lead author of the research paper and a former UC Riverside graduate student. "As a result, their presence in ancient rocks is interpreted to reflect vanishingly low atmospheric oxygen levels continuously for the first ~2 billion years of Earth's history."

However, diverse types of data are emerging that point to the presence of atmospheric oxygen, and, by inference, the early emergence of oxygenic photosynthesis hundreds of millions of years before these MIF signals disappear from the rock record. These observations motivated Reinhard and colleagues to explore the possible conditions under which inherited MIF signatures may have persisted in the rock record long after oxygen accumulated in the atmosphere.

Using a simple quantitative model describing how sulfur and its isotopes cycle through Earth's crust, the researchers discovered that under certain conditions these MIF signatures can persist within the ocean and marine sediments long after O₂ increases in the atmosphere. Simply put, the weathering of rocks on the continents can transfer the MIF signal to the oceans and their sediments long after production of this fingerprint has ceased in an oxygenated atmosphere.

"This lag would blur our ability to date the timing of the GOE and would allow for dynamic rising and falling oxygen levels during a protracted transition from an atmosphere without oxygen to one rich in this life-giving gas," Reinhard said.

Study results appear in Nature's advanced online publication on April 24.

Reinhard explained that once MIF signals formed in an oxygen-poor atmosphere are captured in pyrite and other minerals in sedimentary rocks, they are recycled when those rocks are later uplifted as mountain ranges and the pyrite is oxidized.

"Under certain conditions, this will create a sort of 'memory effect' of these MIF signatures, providing a decoupling in time between the burial of MIF in sediments and oxygen accumulation at Earth's surface," he said.

According to the researchers, the key here is burying a distinct MIF signal in deep sea sediments, which are then subducted and removed from Earth's surface.

"This would create a complementary signal in minerals that are weathered and delivered to the oceans, something that we actually see evidence of in the rock record," said Noah Planavsky, the second author of the research paper and a former UC Riverside graduate student now at Caltech. "This signal can then be perpetuated through time without the need to generate it within the atmosphere contemporaneously."

Reinhard, now a postdoctoral fellow at Caltech and soon to be an assistant professor at Georgia Institute of Technology, explained that although the researchers' new model provides a plausible mechanism for reconciling recent conflicting data, this can only occur when certain key conditions are met -- and these conditions are likely to have changed through time during Earth's long early history.

"There is obviously much further work to do, but we hope that our model is one step toward a more integrated view of how Earth's crust, mantle and atmosphere interact in the global sulfur cycle," he said.

Timothy W. Lyons, a professor of biogeochemistry at UCR and the principal investigator of the research project noted that this is a fundamentally new and potentially very important way of looking at the sulfur isotope record and its relationship to biospheric oxygenation.

"The message is that sulfur isotope records, when viewed through the filter of sedimentary recycling, may challenge efforts to precisely date the GOE and its relationship to early life, while opening the door to the wonderful unknowns we should expect and embrace," he said.

Share this story on Facebook, Twitter, and Google:

Other social bookmarking and sharing tools:

---

Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of California - Riverside. The original article was written by Iqbal Pittalwala.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

---

Journal Reference:

1. Christopher T. Reinhard, Noah J. Planavsky, Timothy W. Lyons. Long-term sedimentary recycling of rare sulphur isotope anomalies. Nature, 2013; DOI: 10.1038/nature12021

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/most_popular/~3/YRepc-uxACM/130424185213.htm

Missouri Election Results Amendment 64 marijuana Colorado Marijuana elizabeth warren puerto rico diane sawyer

Amazon growth slows, while profit margins expand

By Alistair Barr

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc's revenue growth slowed in the first quarter as the world's largest Internet retail struggled overseas, but margins jumped on lower shipping expenses and the expansion of more profitable new businesses.

Amazon shares fell 1.9 percent to $269.43 in after-hours trading on Thursday following the results.

"The message there is North America was better than expected but international was softer. The question is ... 'Is this a reflection of macro trends in Europe, or is there something else going on there?'" said Telsey Advisory Group analyst Tom Forte.

Europe's lackluster economies are weighing on corporate sales in the region - even for fast-growing e-commerce businesses. EBay Inc, Amazon's main rival, reported disappointing results last week and noted European weakness.

Amazon's revenue rose 22 percent to $16.07 billion, propelled by growing sales of digital content, cloud-computing services and gains in its main retail business. But it was a decline from 36 percent growth in the first quarter of 2012.

International revenue rose 16 percent in the most-recent quarter, year-over-year, down from a 31 percent growth rate in the same period of 2012.

During a conference call with analysts on Wednesday, Chief Financial Officer Tom Szkutak was peppered with questions about slowing growth.

"There is some softness from a macro standpoint that others are seeing," the CFO said.

Amazon has also struggled to grow in China and the CFO told analysts the company is still in "investment mode" in that country.

Szkutak reported that total year-over-year unit growth, which measures the number of items Amazon sells, was 30 percent in the first quarter, down from 49 percent in the first quarter of 2012.

"Unit growth is slowing which disappointed some," said Ben Schachter, an analyst at Macquarie. "The law of large numbers is affecting Amazon too. You can't grow 100 percent forever, otherwise you become the universe."

GROSS MARGINS A BRIGHT SPOT

Amazon forecast second-quarter revenue of $14.5 billion to $16.2 billion and operating results from break-even to $350 million. The latter guidance excludes stock-based compensation expenses and other items such as amortization of intangible assets.

Wall Street was looking for second-quarter revenue of $15.94 billion and operating results of $452 million, according to Mark Mahaney, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets.

Despite weaker growth and a cautious forecast, Amazon's results showed that the company is becoming more profitable.

Gross profit margin, a closely watched measure of profitability, came in at a better-than-expected 26.6 percent, compared with 24 percent a year earlier.

The first-quarter gross margin was the highest in at least a decade, according to Scott Tilghman, an analyst at B Riley & Co.

Amazon is building distribution warehouses closer to customers, reducing shipping costs. It has also been charging third-party merchants on its marketplace higher fees for shipping and warehouse storage.

In the first quarter, net shipping costs were 4.7 percent of sales, down from 5.1 percent a year earlier.

Moving into other areas is also boosting margins.

The company mainly operates as a retailer, buying physical products at wholesale prices, storing them and then selling at a slight mark-up to consumers online. But it has expanded into other businesses that are potentially more profitable, including cloud computing, advertising, digital content and acting as an online marketplace for other merchants.

These newer businesses are growing faster than the company's original retail operations, boosting profitability.

Amazon's web services (AWS) and advertising businesses are reported in a segment the company calls "other." Revenue from this area surged 59 percent to $798 million in the quarter.

"At the end of the day, at least on that (profit) basis, they are showing some very good progress," said Evercore analyst Ken Sena. "You are seeing benefit from the higher-margin Amazon Web Services business, and also higher-margin third-party marketplace business."

(Reporting By Alistair Barr; Editing by Bernard Orr)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/amazon-growth-slows-while-profit-margins-expand-084256870--sector.html

Colorado Springs Nora Ephron mario balotelli mario balotelli espn3 kevin youkilis Tropical Storm Debby

'The Voice' Recap: Shakira Teaches Usher A Lesson During Final Battle Round

Usher learns 'never get into an argument with a Latin woman' as the battle rounds come to an end.
By Natasha Chandel

Shakira and Usher on "The Voice"
Photo: Trae Patton/ NBC

Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1706230/the-voice-battle-rounds-recap.jhtml

Saanvi Venna vikings Colin Powell Tyrann Mathieu noaa Jessica Ridgeway ipad mini

Rays?shut out?Yanks despite strong Pettitte outing

Associated Press Sports

updated 10:38 p.m. ET April 24, 2013

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) - Two bad pitches and an error on Brennan Boesch were enough to beat Andy Pettitte.

In a 3-0 loss to the Tampa Bay Rays on Wednesday night, the veteran left-hander became the first Yankee pitcher this season to lose while holding an opponent to four runs or fewer.

Alex Cobb scattered three hits over 8 1-3 innings for the Rays and Ben Zobrist drove in two runs with a fifth-inning double off Pettitte.

"It wasn't a terrible pitch, but obviously it wasn't the right pitch at that time," Pettitte said of the curveball Zobrist hit for the decisive double. "The bottom line is I had a chance to get out of that inning and I didn't do it. It's hard to swallow, that's for sure, but their kid threw a great game and we weren't able to do much."

Cobb (3-1) gave up only two hits through the eighth - Eduardo Nunez's second-inning single and an infield single by Jayson Nix in the sixth. The right-hander, who struck out seven and walked one, was replaced by Fernando Rodney after giving up a one-out single in the ninth to Brett Gardner.

The Rays didn't do much hitting either and struck out 13 times, 10 of them against Pettitte.

"I was surprised we got three runs off him. I thought this guy is not going to give anything up tonight," said Rays manager Joe Maddon. "I can see it like 0-0 late into the game based on how he looked. He was pretty impressive."

Pettitte (3-1) came up short in his bid to win his first four starts of the season for the first time, giving up three runs and seven hits in six innings. His problems started when he hit Jose Molina in the foot to open the fifth. When Kelly Johnson followed with a single, the ball got past Boesch in right field, and Molina and Johnson wound up on second and third.

"I just came up too quick," Boesch said of the error. "Ninety-nine out of 100 times you make (the play), but when it happens you just move on and try to make up for it."

Pettitte almost escaped the inning with two strikeouts, but then gave up the hit to Zobrist.

"The only thing that's changed (by the error) is I'm thinking concede a run right here," Pettitte said. "You still want to make pitches but you don't want to start a big inning. If I give up one run there, I figure we can handle that. I had a chance to get out of it and I didn't do it, and that was obviously the game right there."

Sean Rodriguez hit Pettitte's first pitch of the sixth inning for a home run for Tampa Bay, which has won 13 of its last 16 homes games against the Yankees.

After allowing Ichiro Suzuki's single in the ninth for New York's third hit, Rodney completed his third save by retiring Robinson Cano and Travis Hafner.

NOTES: Yankees INF Kevin Youkilis (lower back tightness) missed his fourth straight game. Manager Joe Girardi hasn't ruled out Youkilis from playing Thursday. ... Girardi said OF Curtis Granderson (broken right forearm) took 15 swings of batting practice for the first time in a cage at the team's complex in nearby Tampa. He might take on-field BP this weekend. ... Rays SS Yunel Escobar left with right hamstring tightness. ... MLB announced a scoring change from an Apr. 20 game at Toronto that changes Youkilis' two-run single in the fifth to an error. ... New York SS Derek Jeter, who found out last Thursday that he fractured his ankle for the second time in six months, will address the injury with reporters Thursday at Yankee Stadium. ... Longoria finished 0 for 4, which stopped his streak of reaching base safely in 34 straight games dating back to last season . . . Cobb is 10-2 with a 2.70 ERA in 16 starts since August 1.

? 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

advertisement

More news

Talking Jeter

??DPS: Kevin Millar joins Dan Patrick to discuss if there's anything that could change Derek Jeter's legacy.

Source: http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/51654415/ns/sports-baseball/

jane russell meryl streep martin scorsese sacha baron cohen best picture nominees 2012 academy awards 2012 albert nobbs

Sway with the powerful as well as heady impact of rum 151 ...

If you have progressed a long way into the world of rum and also are ready to experience really powerful rum in all of its glory then you can sway with the strong and heady impact of rum 151 wikipedia reference . This ridiculously strong rum is made by Bacardi and will truly knock your own socks off if you are not really accustomed to higher alcohol strength inside your rum drinks.

The number 151 in this powerful rum denotes the high rum alcohol proof levels which translate into 75. 5 percent alcohol strength, which in turn can make it a drink only for seasoned drinkers or avid fans having rock-hard stomachs. This kind of overproof rum is nearly two times as powerful as most other sorts of rums made by Bacardi as well as other rum brand names which make rum with about 40 percent alcohol strength. It therefore is practical for you to mix this kind of robust and heady liquor straight into numerous recipes including scrumptious rum cocktails which will assist you to basically relish the strong and smooth taste of bacardi 151 while not keeling over after the very first few sips.??? ?

If you love lemon, lime as well as mint in your rum beverages then you can definitely also use bacardi rum 151 in a number of mojito recipes in order to end up with a delightful citrus beverage which furthermore assures a pleasant buzz along with the first sip. You can even add different fruit juices, colas, and other unique natural ingredients to create your own personal Bacardi bomb that will surely satisfy your own tastebuds as well as those of your close friends whenever you permit them to savor your own secret recipe. Because of its intense strength, it is recommended that you do not consume this particular rum directly but instead weaken it within different punches as well as cocktails to truly enjoy your own experience rather than waking up with a huge hangover.

Even though there are many other popular brand names associated with rum like old monk rum, pyrat rum, el dorado rum, don q rum, zacapa rum, myers rum, parrot bay rum, and so on, the particular potency and personality exuded by rum 151 is totally different than most of these brands. This specific rum is unquestionably not really for you should you have a fragile heart or weak stomach even though diluting it sufficiently will allow it to easily massage your own sensory faculties without complications whatsoever. However, some countries do not allow for the sales of this strong rum because of its overproof nature.

If you face difficulty in locating this heady rum in your neighborhood liquor store you may easily order for bacardi 151 on the internet provided you ensure that it is legal for you to do so in your own nation or state. You can thus compare prices among various respected online stores and get your own heady drink delivered right at your home along with just a few clicks of your computer mouse. You can also source countless delicious rum recipes that use 151 as the foundation so as to totally amaze your own family and friends once they reach a party at your home. ?

If you truly want to discover the robust strength of extremely powerful rum in that case Bacardi has the perfect rum for you and the ones you love web site . A couple of sips from this heady liquid gold will give an excellent buzz that you will certainly remember and enjoy for a long period. You can certainly swing to the strong as well as heady effect of rum 151 even while you infuse this potent rum in a variety of recipes to end up getting a smooth and also strong rum cocktail which truly punches your senses with every single sip.

Source: http://karenwilson.id1945.com/sway-with-the-powerful-as-well-as-heady-impact-of-rum-151/

greg kelly cujo karen handel hangout todd haley kareem abdul jabbar miramonte elementary school

Earthquakes blamed on wastewater injection

New Mexico Tech Seismological Observatory

Earthquakes in New Mexico and Colorado from 2001 to 2011.

By Becky Oskin
LiveScience

An ongoing earthquake swarm in New Mexico and Colorado, which includes Colorado's largest earthquake since 1967, is due to underground wastewater injection, researchers said Friday?at the Seismological Society of America's annual meeting in Salt Lake City.

The earthquakes are concentrated near wastewater injection wells?in the Raton Basin, where mining companies are extracting methane from coalbeds. The basin, which is actually a series of rock layers exposed in the Rocky Mountain foothills, stretches from northeastern New Mexico to southern Colorado.

Since 2001, seismicity has increased rapidly in the region, said Justin Rubinstein, a U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) research geophysicist and lead author of one of several studies on the Raton Basin presented at the meeting. The rapid rise in earthquakes followed a significant increase in wastewater injection starting in 1999, he said. Wastewater injection is the disposal of water and brine produced from fracking. When mining companies extract resources via fracking, they inject water to make new fractures. After the water is removed, it's usually stored nearby, in porous rocks deep underground.

There were 20 times as many magnitude-3 or larger earthquakes between 2001 and 2011 as there were from 1970 to 2001, Rubinstein said. The USGS also looked at larger earthquakes, removing foreshocks and aftershocks from the record, and still found a statistically significant increase, he said.

"Can this rate change be natural? I certainly don't think so," Rubinstein said.

One of the largest earthquakes linked to wastewater injection was the Aug. 22, 2011, magnitude-5.3 earthquake in Trinidad, Colo., which cracked walls and toppled chimneys in the historic town.

The earthquakes have revealed at least two faults cross the Raton Basin, concentrating earthquakes along their length, according to the USGS. Researchers think one way wastewater injection can trigger quakes is by increasing fluid pressure along faults, making it easier for them to rupture.

The largest earthquake linked to wastewater injection to date was a magnitude-5.6 earthquake in Oklahoma in 2011.

Email Becky Oskin or follow her @beckyoskin. Follow us?@OAPlanet, Facebook?and 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.

Source: http://feeds.nbcnews.com/c/35002/f/653377/s/2b1f6d94/l/0Lscience0Bnbcnews0N0C0Inews0C20A130C0A40C240C178975120Eearthquakes0Eblamed0Eon0Ewastewater0Einjection0Dlite/story01.htm

earthquake san francisco donald payne elizabeth berkley lenny dykstra mlb 12 the show sabu franchise tag

Analysis: Sleeping ad giant Amazon finally stirs

By Alistair Barr and Jennifer Saba

SAN FRANCISCO/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc is known in the advertising industry as the "sleeping giant" because the world's largest Internet retailer harbors a trove of consumer-spending data that many marketers have called an unrealized opportunity.

Now it's awakening to the potential. After running ads on its own website for years, the company has taken the first steps toward becoming a true Internet advertising network, using the knowledge garnered from its data to place targeted ads for some of the world's biggest advertisers across thousands of other websites.

An Amazon mobile ad network, launched late last year, is now blasting ads via apps on smartphones and tablets, including Apple Inc iPhones and devices powered by Google Inc's Android operating system.

For Amazon, an ad business is a new revenue stream with fatter margins than its retail operations. To Google, Facebook Inc and other online ad leaders, Amazon is a threat because it has data they lack.

Google knows what people are searching for. Facebook knows what people like and who their friends are. Amazon knows you searched last week for running shoes, but also that you bought a pair a year ago. That kind of information has advertisers salivating.

"In today's marketing world, data is gold and Amazon is Fort Knox," said Jeff Lanctot, chief media officer at digital ad agency Razorfish, which counts Mercedes Benz USA, Delta Air Lines and McDonald's among its clients.

Lanctot has worked with Amazon for over a decade and says the company's attitude to advertising used to be "take it or leave it."

"Now it's clearly an area they decided to invest in," he said. "They have made a concerted effort to listen to what advertisers want - the type of data you need, the type of scale you are looking for."

ANOTHER $1 BLN BUSINESS?

Amazon is getting into hotly contested turf. Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Facebook and AOL command two-thirds of U.S. online advertising, according to eMarketer.

But its consumer data gives it a unique proposition, industry insiders argue. And though the competition will be stiff, it could be worth it.

Online advertising has 20 to 30 percent profit margins versus less than 5 percent for Amazon's retail business, according to Ben Schachter, an analyst at Macquarie.

On Thursday, when Amazon reports results, analysts will be looking for signs of growth in higher-margin businesses, such as advertising and cloud-computing, after years of sacrificing short-term profit to grow those divisions.

Amazon does not disclose ad business results and spokeswoman Kristin Schaefer Mariani declined to comment.

But analysts estimate the ad business already generates at least $500 million a year in revenue. David Selinger, a former Amazon executive who runs e-commerce personalization firm RichRelevance, recently predicted that Amazon's ad business will hit $1 billion in sales this year.

That's a fraction of Amazon's revenue, expected to be $75 billion this year. But longer term, the ad business could become substantial if it can grab a bigger slice of a digital ad market that will be worth over $50 billion by 2015 in the United States alone, according to eMarketer data.

"Could it rival something like Yahoo, Facebook or AOL's ad businesses?" said Macquarie's Schachter. "Sure."

ADS ON OTHER WEBSITES

Display ads on Amazon's own websites have grown fast since 2011 but what really excites Madison Avenue and Wall Street is Amazon's latest push to create and serve ads on other sites.

"The big opportunity is in having a third-party ad network," said Schachter. "There are only a few Amazon sites. Expanding beyond that, they can take advantage of millions of other websites out there."

Amazon quietly started serving ads on other websites in the fourth quarter of 2010. This part of its business remained un-named until about the middle of last year, when the company formally christened it the Amazon Advertising Platform.

It currently serves ads on thousands of websites in the United States, Britain and Germany, according to its website.

Amazon's Mariani declined to name websites. However, she said Amazon buys ad inventory - or online ad space - from content publishers or through exchanges, which are online markets for buying and selling inventory.

The company's in-house technology serves the ads to third-party websites in real time. A campaign Amazon ran for Kimberly-Clark's Huggies diapers, and another for video game designer Ubisoft, included ads served off Amazon websites.

This is where its advantage lies. It has tracked what millions of shoppers browse, search, and buy on Amazon.com for more than 15 years, using that information to recommend related products to customers. Now, it's using that data to buy ad inventory more efficiently and serve ads to the right consumers, on the right websites, at the right time.

A large entertainment company worked with Amazon to promote one of its movies last year, according to a person at the entertainment company. Data on purchases of related DVDs, books and music on Amazon.com helped identify potential customers who were likely to see the movie at the theater and ads were targeted at this audience. Results were above average, based on the number of impressions served and the number of clicks on the ads, the person said. They did not want to be identified as they were not authorized to speak publicly about the company's ad spending.

"Amazon spent a lot of time developing algorithms to make recommendations to consumers shopping on Amazon.com," said an executive who oversees an ad exchange that is a partner of Amazon's.

"Now they can do this outside of the Amazon world for other companies. It's really an extension of one of their core competencies," said the executive, who declined to be identified because Amazon is an important partner.

Armed with consumer information, Amazon can bid more aggressively on exchanges because it is confident that ads created from that inventory will be clicked on more often. The company can also charge advertisers more because its ads are better targeted, according to industry insiders and analysts.

"Amazon is not a retailer anymore, it is the largest behavioral marketing company in the world," said Yaakov Kimelfeld, chief research officer at Kantar Media Compete, which helps global brands improve their online marketing. "Amazon will be the best positioned to predict whether to buy inventory or not and be the most efficient in this market."

Amazon's purchase data helps advertisers spend more efficiently because they only have to buy access to those consumers most likely to respond to their messages, according to Mark Pavia, an executive at media buying firm Starcom USA, which represents clients including Kellogg, Samsung Electronics and Mars.

"I can spend 100 percent of my dollars, if you will, against only the people I want to get because of the purchase data," Pavia said. "That level of targeting is highly interesting."

(Reporting by Alistair Barr and Jennifer Saba; Editing by Martin Howell and Tim Dobbyn)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/analysis-sleeping-ad-giant-amazon-finally-stirs-050944925--sector.html

Battlefield 4 Summly monsanto Shakira Human Rights Campaign amanda knox bioshock infinite

LG Optimus G Pro for AT&T detailed: Snapdragon 600, LTE and a Full HD IPS display

There's not much surprise left to LG's Optimus G Pro reveal set for next Wednesday in New York. We've already seen the device slip through the FCC and recently had a previewed glimpse of the potential hardware. But thanks to a trusted source, we now have more insight into the the upcoming AT&T variant's specifications. Based on the official doc we had a look at, LG's managed to keep this US model mostly in line with its global sibling, porting over the same 5.5-inch form factor, 3,140mAh battery, 1.7GHz Snapdragon 600 processor paired with 2GB RAM, a healthy 32GB of internal storage (expandable via microSDXC to 64GB), 2.1-megapixel front-facing / 13-megapixel rear cameras, NFC and WiFi a/b/g/n. What has changed is the actual screen technology used: the AT&T G Pro employs a Full HD IPS panel as opposed to the True HD-IPS+ in the original. Additionally, and unsurprisingly, the device's radios have been tweaked, with the AT&T G Pro now supporting the carrier's flavor of LTE (700/1700 MHz), HSPA+21 (850/1900/2100 MHz) and quadband GSM (850/900/1800/1900 MHz).

Though it would be nice to see LG bump this up to a more current version of Android -- namely, 4.2.2 -- the AT&T model will likely ship with the more dated 4.1.2 Jelly Bean. Continuing further down the software track, carrier bloat looks to be at a minimum as only two automobile-specific apps are mentioned in the document: AT&T DriveMode and Navigator. Aside from that, LG's own software suite makes the transition, bringing along QSlide 2.0 (a multiwindow feature), Dual Recording (for the picture-in-picture effect), Tag+ for NFC, VuTalk (a note sharing app), QuickMemo, Notebook and the ability to preset the Home Key's LED. That enough of a preview for you? Stay tuned for formal unveiling next week.

Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless, Mobile, AT&T, LG

Comments

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/04/25/lg-optimus-g-pro-att-detailed/?utm_medium=feed&utm_source=Feed_Classic&utm_campaign=Engadget

peter facinelli bobby rush supreme court justices 19 kids and counting danny o brien alicia silverstone park slope food coop