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শুক্রবার, ২৭ জানুয়ারি, ২০১২
বৃহস্পতিবার, ২৬ জানুয়ারি, ২০১২
Summary Box: Davos studies China's investments (AP)
EYES ON CHINA: Attention at Davos, the invitation-only gathering in the Swiss Alps, turned Thursday to China, and how and whether it could help developed economies in Europe and the United States avoid new recessions.
BIG BETS: Chinese companies and government funds have been using vast reserves of cash to buy up foreign companies and invest in foreign government bonds in recent years.
LINGERING WORRIES: With billions of dollars in Chinese investments pouring into their countries, some governments have accused China of seeking to exploit the economic weakness of others to grab valuable natural and technological resources at rock-bottom prices.
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Spain sees strong demand in $3.3 billion debt sale (AP)
MADRID ? Spain successfully raised euro2.5 billion ($3.3 billion) in a short-term debt sale with strong demand and lower interest rates indicating growing market confidence in the new government's ability to handle its finances.
The Treasury sold euro1.4 billion ($1.82 billion) in three-month bills Tuesday with the average yield at 1.3 percent, down from 1.7 percent in the last such auction on Dec. 20.
It sold euro1.1 billion ($1.43 billion) in six-month bills at 1.8 percent, down from 2.4 percent.
Demand was nearly six times the amount offered.
Spain's borrowing costs have dropped since the conservative Popular Party won elections in November. The European Central Bank's injection of cheap money into the market and regular purchases of Spanish debt have also eased pressure.
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বুধবার, ২৫ জানুয়ারি, ২০১২
The Real Housewives of Atlanta Recap: NeNe Tries to Bring Marlo to Africa, Kim Tries to Lose Weight
The Real Housewives of Atlanta are headed to South Africa, but apparently not before an entire episode dedicated to prep and packing. We recap who's staying, who's going, and who's itching for a fight in our THG +/- review.
NeNe's spending more time with her new BFF Marlo.
NeNe admits that they're both label whores; they bond over shopping and shoes. Marlo gives NeNe a tour of her home and I have to say, if Marlo sleeps with men to make her money she's obviously very successful at it.
She even gives her new gal pal one of her many Chanel bags even after NeNe calls Chanel an old lady bag. What are friends for? Plus 8.
NeNe's still waffling about whether to go to Africa and Marlo says she'd love to go on the trip ... so NeNe invites her along. Minus 10. Can NeNe do that? Hasn't Phaedra organized this trip? Yup but that doesn't stop NeNe from telling Marlo to come along.
Across town we've got the shape up wars. Both Kandi and Kim have to lose a few pounds but their going about it in completely different ways.
Kandi gets her self a power trainer who put her on a scale and then runs her through a boot camp style obstacle course. Plus 12. If she can keep that kind of workout up she'll be in killer shape.
Kroy tells Kim exercise is the only way to go. Kim's got other ideas. The quick fix girl gets a slim wrap that makes her look like a mummy on a trampoline.
To her credit she loses over 10 inches. Of course Kroy's no fool and knows you don't lose five pounds of fat by wrapping yourself in ace bandages. The water weight will be back in a couple of days but 10 inches gone looks good to Kim.
So how does she celebrate? With pizza of course. Plus 10. I love Kim.
Kroy's got to head to training camp for a month and the two of them are a little love sick at the thought of it. Kim plans a romantic evening at home.
If only she hadn't employed her parents to help her get it set up. The bath has bubbles and rose petals. She and Kroy are lit by candlelight and then Kim's dad walks in and tells them to be careful or name the kid after him. Minus 15.
That was worse than a mood killer. That was almost creepy.
Cynthia and Peter are still working on communicating better. All I see is Peter being pouty because she's running off to Africa without him and Cythina's glowing at the thought of getting away.
Cynthia laments that the last time she was in Africa she was too broke to see very much. This time she's going to enjoy the real Africa ... apparently that means high end hotels and upscale safaris. I think she needs to check her definition of real. Minus 8.
Phaedra prepares for the trip and Apollo gets ready for daddy day care as it will be just the boys for 10 days. Plus 10 because little Ayden is just too darn cute.
Phaedra's a little worried about NeNe coming along, little does she know that she's bringing some backup.
As everyone heads to the airport, NeNe's the last to arrive…but wait. Here comes Marlo. Plus 13 for the looks on their faces. Sheree and Phaedra are practically catching flies their jaws drop so low.
Kandi thinks NeNe felt like she needed some muscle and it looks like Marlo's her enforcer in heels.
EPISODE TOTAL: +20! SEASON TOTAL: -209!
Next week, the safari officially begins and the claws come out. Let's see how many of the Real Housewives make it back to Atlanta in one piece.
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মঙ্গলবার, ২৪ জানুয়ারি, ২০১২
Sun erupts with biggest storm in seven years
A powerful solar eruption is expected to blast a stream of charged particles past Earth on Tuesday, as the strongest radiation storm since 2005 rages on the sun.
NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory caught an extreme ultraviolet flash from a huge eruption on the sun overnight (10:59 p.m. ET Sunday, or 0359 GMT Monday), according to SpaceWeather.com.
The solar flare spewed from sunspot 1402, a region of the sun that has become increasingly active lately. Several NASA satellites, including the Solar Dynamics Observatory, the Solar Heliospheric Observatory and the STEREO spacecraft, observed the massive sun storm.
A barrage of charged particles triggered by the outburst is expected to hit Earth at around 9 a.m. ET Tuesday, according to experts at the Space Weather Prediction Center, a division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. [Video and photos of the solar flare]
NOAA's forecasters say this is the strongest solar radiation storm since May 2005. As a precaution, polar flights on Earth are expected to be rerouted, the agency's deputy administrator, Kathy Sullivan, said Monday at the 92nd annual American Meteorological Society meeting in New Orleans.
Scientists call these electromagnetic bursts "coronal mass ejections," and they are closely studied because they can produce potentially harmful geomagnetic storms when electrically charged particles from the sun interact with Earth's magnetic field.
In addition to generating stronger than normal displays of Earth's auroras (also known as the northern and southern lights), geomagnetic storms aimed directly at our planet can also disrupt satellites in orbit, cause widespread communications interference and damage other electronic infrastructures.
"There is little doubt that the cloud is heading in the general direction of Earth," SpaceWeather.com said? in an alert. "A preliminary inspection of SOHO/STEREO imagery suggests that the CME will deliver a strong glancing blow to Earth's magnetic field on Jan. 24-25 as it sails mostly north of our planet."
-
More space news from msnbc.com
-
Auroras spark awe across the north
Science editor Alan Boyle's blog: From Scandinavia to Alaska, skywatchers are getting awe-inspiring views of the northern lights, thanks to a strong solar storm.
- Life on Venus? Russian scientist's claim proven false
- 'Year of the Dragon' should be big for SpaceX
- Mystery surrounds Air Force's secretive X-37B
-
Auroras spark awe across the north
Sunday's solar flare was rated an M9-class eruption, which placed it just on the verge of being an X-class flare, the most powerful type of solar storm. M-class sun storms are powerful but midrange, while C-class flares are weaker.
Last week, a separate sunspot group unleashed several M-class flares. SDO scientists said these types of flares are occurring almost daily as the sun's rotation slowly turns the region toward Earth.
The sun's activity waxes and wanes on an 11-year cycle. Currently, our planet's nearest star is in the midst of Solar Cycle 24, and activity is expected to ramp up toward solar maximum in 2013.
Some solar radiation storms can pose a risk to astronauts, but NASA said the six men aboard the International Space Station were in no danger. "The flight surgeons have reviewed the space weather forecasts for the flare and determined that there are no expected adverse effects or actions required to protect the on-orbit crew," NASA spokesman Kelly Humphries told Space.com.
Editor's note: If you snap an amazing northern lights photo, or other skywatching image, and would like to share it for a possible story or gallery, please contact managing editor Tariq Malik at tmalik@space.com.
OurAmazingPlanet Staff Writer Brett Israel contributed to this report from New Orleans. Follow Space.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter @Spacedotcom? and on Facebook.
? 2012 Space.com. All rights reserved. More from Space.com.
Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46102926/ns/technology_and_science-space/
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Researchers meet to refine carbon budget for US East Coast
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Public release date: 23-Jan-2012[ | E-mail |
Share ] Contact: David Malmquist
davem@vims.edu
804-684-7011
Virginia Institute of Marine Science
Virginia Institute of Marine Science hosts workshop
A group of 35 researchers from institutions all along the eastern seaboard gathered at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science last week to further integrate and refine field measurements and computer models of carbon cycling in the waters along the U.S. East Coast.
An understanding of the behavior and fate of carbon within the ocean, including its productive coastal area, is needed to most accurately predict the rate and magnitude of global warming and to effectively plan for climate-change impacts such as sea-level rise and increasing ocean acidity.
The "U.S. East Coast Carbon Cycle Synthesis Workshop," coordinated by the North American Carbon Program and the national Ocean Carbon and Biogeochemistry program, was organized and led by VIMS professor Marjy Friedrichs, Dr. Raymond Najjar of the Pennsylvania State University, and Dr. Wei-Jun Cai of the University of Georgia. The workshop was sponsored by NASA.
The workshop's goal, says Friedrichs, was to "further quantify the carbon budget along the U.S. East Coast by synthesizing observations and modeling results from the many different groups that are working on the issue." Researchers from nearly 20 different institutions from Maine to Florida took part in the two-day meeting.
Participants will use the knowledge gained during the workshop to guide and coordinate future research and modeling efforts, with the ultimate goal of creating a single integrated carbon budget for the East Coast that best represents the flow of carbon within and between the many different components of the coastal zoneincluding estuaries such as Chesapeake Bay, rivers, tidal wetlands, coastal waters, seafloor sediments, the atmosphere, and living organisms. The study is part of a larger effort to understand the carbon balance of North America and adjacent oceans, which play a key role in the global carbon cycle.
Interest in the carbon budget of the coastal ocean stems from the recognition that it likely plays a significant role in the global carbon cycle, but remains poorly studied relative to other ocean and terrestrial ecosystems.
"Although it covers a relatively small area," says Friedrichs, "the coastal ocean is a highly productive ecosystem with much greater carbon fluxes than the open ocean. It's also directly influenced by human activities such as nutrient pollution, fishing, dredging, shoreline armoring, levee construction, and dam building."
The workshop was successful because a diverse group of scientists came together to share specialized knowledge about the different parts of the East Coast's carbon cycle. "What we found at the workshop," Najjar says, "is that there are many scientists with a lot of data and knowledge about individual parts of the carbon cycle of the U.S. East Coast. However, until now, that knowledge had not been well integrated to form a big picture of how carbon flows in the region."
General scientific interest in the carbon cycle stems from concerns about increasing atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. In 2010, humans released 33.5 billion tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere through the burning of fossil fuels and other activities, while atmospheric levels of the gas rose to 391 parts per million, an increase of nearly 25% over the last 50 years. About a quarter of the carbon released to the atmosphere currently ends up in the ocean.
###
[ | E-mail | Share ] ?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Public release date: 23-Jan-2012[ | E-mail |
Share ] Contact: David Malmquist
davem@vims.edu
804-684-7011
Virginia Institute of Marine Science
Virginia Institute of Marine Science hosts workshop
A group of 35 researchers from institutions all along the eastern seaboard gathered at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science last week to further integrate and refine field measurements and computer models of carbon cycling in the waters along the U.S. East Coast.
An understanding of the behavior and fate of carbon within the ocean, including its productive coastal area, is needed to most accurately predict the rate and magnitude of global warming and to effectively plan for climate-change impacts such as sea-level rise and increasing ocean acidity.
The "U.S. East Coast Carbon Cycle Synthesis Workshop," coordinated by the North American Carbon Program and the national Ocean Carbon and Biogeochemistry program, was organized and led by VIMS professor Marjy Friedrichs, Dr. Raymond Najjar of the Pennsylvania State University, and Dr. Wei-Jun Cai of the University of Georgia. The workshop was sponsored by NASA.
The workshop's goal, says Friedrichs, was to "further quantify the carbon budget along the U.S. East Coast by synthesizing observations and modeling results from the many different groups that are working on the issue." Researchers from nearly 20 different institutions from Maine to Florida took part in the two-day meeting.
Participants will use the knowledge gained during the workshop to guide and coordinate future research and modeling efforts, with the ultimate goal of creating a single integrated carbon budget for the East Coast that best represents the flow of carbon within and between the many different components of the coastal zoneincluding estuaries such as Chesapeake Bay, rivers, tidal wetlands, coastal waters, seafloor sediments, the atmosphere, and living organisms. The study is part of a larger effort to understand the carbon balance of North America and adjacent oceans, which play a key role in the global carbon cycle.
Interest in the carbon budget of the coastal ocean stems from the recognition that it likely plays a significant role in the global carbon cycle, but remains poorly studied relative to other ocean and terrestrial ecosystems.
"Although it covers a relatively small area," says Friedrichs, "the coastal ocean is a highly productive ecosystem with much greater carbon fluxes than the open ocean. It's also directly influenced by human activities such as nutrient pollution, fishing, dredging, shoreline armoring, levee construction, and dam building."
The workshop was successful because a diverse group of scientists came together to share specialized knowledge about the different parts of the East Coast's carbon cycle. "What we found at the workshop," Najjar says, "is that there are many scientists with a lot of data and knowledge about individual parts of the carbon cycle of the U.S. East Coast. However, until now, that knowledge had not been well integrated to form a big picture of how carbon flows in the region."
General scientific interest in the carbon cycle stems from concerns about increasing atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. In 2010, humans released 33.5 billion tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere through the burning of fossil fuels and other activities, while atmospheric levels of the gas rose to 391 parts per million, an increase of nearly 25% over the last 50 years. About a quarter of the carbon released to the atmosphere currently ends up in the ocean.
###
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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.
Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-01/viom-rmt012312.php
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সোমবার, ২৩ জানুয়ারি, ২০১২
Can A Middle-Aged Neophyte Make It to Carnegie Hall?
Ask the Experts |
Mind & Brain
A psychologist takes up guitar in his late 30s and becomes a working exemplar of the brain's inherent plasticity
?| January 21, 2012?|
Gary Marcus, in the red shirt, helped hone his playing skills at the DayJams summer camp, by playing in a band.
Image: Athena Vouloumanos
Gary Marcus suffers from what a friend jokingly describes as congenital arrhythmia?the inability, despite many hours of his youth spent practicing and taking lessons, to learn to play a musical instrument. A few years ago Marcus, a cognitive psychologist at New York University, decided at 38 to make one last try when he took up guitar. No surprise: He did not succeed in becoming the next Jimi Hendrix, but managed to acquire a modicum of skill?and went on to describe his experience in Guitar Zero: The New Musician and the Science of Learning.
Marcus says his personal experience jibes with current theories in neuroscience that adult brains are plastic?that, in practice, they can learn new skills that scientists once thought had to be acquired during the so-called critical period of prepubescent childhood. Marcus, though, calls into question the conventional wisdom that hard work alone suffices. Raw talent also plays a role, he says?a message that will come as a surprise to many people in an era that lauds "tiger moms" and 10,000-hour apprenticeships. Marcus spoke with Scientific American about music and the brain. Excerpts
[An edited transcript of the interview follows.]
What is a critical period?
It's supposed to be a window in development that defines the only period in which a thing can be learned.
How has our understanding about this concept changed?
There used to be an idea that there were very strict critical periods,?? that you had to learn something by a certain time or you wouldn't be able to do it all. That's the dominant idea in the textbooks. What we've found in the last decade is that there's a gradual decline rather than an immediate falloff.
Neurons do become less flexible over time, which makes learning more difficult, but not all in one moment. There's sort of a gradual decline. The other thing that gets in the way relates to interferences with what's learned early in life. So if you try to learn a new language that works differently from your old language, you sometimes get stuck when using the new language. Another reason for difficulty learning new things is that adults are simply busy with other obligations.
There have always been late bloomers. Grandma Moses and Anton Bruckner, among others.
For sure! People like that presumably have considerable innate talent, to begin with, and then later in life develop a passion that consumes them and leads them to great heights.
How far do you think someone could go? Do you think it would ever be possible to start playing at 50 and become a concert violinist?
I think it's possible. It's less likely; starting earlier is better. If you're starting later in life, I think you need to temper your ambitions. But I don't think it's completely impossible if you devote yourself to something?especially if you have some raw talent.
How important is talent? The popular psychology literature has focused a lot of attention on the question of motivation?the idea that 10,000 hours of concerted practice can make you an expert in virtually any field.
The idea of 10,000 hours is a nice first approximation, but also very much oversold. It's weird the way some prominent people seem to have forgotten about genes. Some people become experts faster, some slower, and it also depends on what skill you are trying to acquire.
The fact that practice is important doesn't mean that talent isn't. Most of the top performers in any field are people who combine industry with predisposition. You can actually see that in the original studies that inspired the "10,000 hour" rule of thumb?some people who had practiced for 10 years were better than others that practiced for 20, and that's what talent is. There is also a huge literature in twin studies that highlights the contributions of genes and heritability. Without talent you can become very good, but to be truly outstanding, you probably need the right genes, too.
Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=b84f431f03956a6acc5618512c0d9e47
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