Goal Champions League Draw Separation of Powers

Wondering what to play at your St Patrick’s Day Party? We’ve got you covered with classics from U2 a[…]
There is a certain curiosity about the way water is used in Phoenix, which gets barely eight inches of rain a year but is not necessarily parched.    It’s
two weeks into 2007, and chances are you’ve already broken your new year’s resolutions. We know how it goes. This week, I tell you about a climate change book, a Beatrix Potter book, a book about reproductive politics, and several field guides that will be very useful for your summertime adventures.Below the jump, I mention the books that I received recently in the

mail as gifts or as review copies, or that I purchased somewhere. These are the books that I may review in more depth later, either here or in print somewhere in the world.
When I get new books, I like to share them with people.
Unfortunately, you are all so far away, so I cannot host a book party in my crib where you can look then over, so I’ll do the next best thing. I’ll host a book party on my blog each Friday of the week when I either purchase books or when they arrive in the mail.
In this New Book Party, I will try to be your eyes by presenting my quick “first impression” — almost as if we are browsing the stacks in a bookstore — and I’ll also provide relevant videos about the book and links so you can get a copy of your own. Books

that arrived this week: Waking the Giant: How a changing climate triggers earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanoes by Bill McGuire [Oxford University Press, 2013; Guardian Bookshop; Amazon UK; Amazon US/kindle US] Publisher’s synopsis Twenty thousand years ago our planet was an icehouse. Temperatures were down six degrees; ice sheets kilometres thick buried much of Europe

and North America and sea levels were 130m lower. The following 15 millennia saw an astonishing transformation as our planet metamorphosed into the temperate world upon which our civilisation has grown and thrived. One of the most dynamic periods in Earth history saw rocketing temperatures melt the

great ice sheets like butter on a hot summer’s day; feeding torrents of freshwater into ocean basins that rapidly filled to present levels. The removal of the enormous weight of ice at high latitudes caused the crust to bounce back triggering earthquakes in Europe and North America and provoking an unprecedented volcanic outburst in Iceland. A giant submarine landslide off the coast of Norway sent a tsunami crashing onto the Scottish coast while around the margins of the continents the massive load exerted on the crust by soaring sea levels encouraged a widespread seismic and volcanic rejoinder.
In many ways, this post-glacial world mirrors that projected to arise as a consequence

of unmitigated climate change driven by human activities.
Already there are signs that the effects of climbing global temperatures are causing the sleeping giant to stir once again. Could it be that we are on track to bequeath to our children and their children not only a far hotter world, but also a more geologically fractious one?My first impression: Call me a sceptic with regards to the relationship between climate change and earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanic collapses, but this book presents cogent, clearly-argued evidence that supports this premise.
I

read chapter 5, “Earth in Motion”, which discusses volcanoes, particularly those that I knew as near neighbours in my youth (one of which exploded and dropped part of itself onto my head).
The author discusses ancient volcanic collapses — how we know they happened, what we know of them from computer models and what the climate

conditions were that triggered them — and compares these findings to what we see happening today due to climate change.
Needless to say, although the data and evidence are fascinating, they are not comforting. Oh no, not comforting at all. I am still trying to wrap my brain around a 400 metre tall tsunami wave, such as those generated by a volcanic collapse that crashed into Hawaii’s Kohala volcano.
Hugely fascinating reading. Great nightmare material (best not read immediately before bedtime). The author tells us a little about his book:[Video link] Reproductive Politics (What Everyone Needs to Know) by Rickie Solinger [Oxford University Press, 2013; Guardian Bookshop; Amazon UK;

Amazon US/kindle US] Publisher’s synopsis The term “reproductive politics” was coined by feminists in the 1970s to describe contemporary Roe v. Wade-era power struggles over contraception and abortion, adoption and surrogacy, and other satellite issues. Forty years later, questions about reproductive rights are just as complex — and controversial — as they were then. Focusing mainly on the United States, Reproductive Politics explores the legal, political, religious, social, ethical, and medical dimensions of this hotly contested arena.
Tracing the historical roots of reproductive politics up through the present, Rickie Solinger considers a range of topics from abortion and contraception to health care reform and assisted reproductive technologies. Solinger tackles some of the most contentious questions up for debate today, including the definition of “fetal personhood,” and the roles poverty and welfare policy play in shaping reproductive rights.
The answers she provides are informative, balanced, and sometimes quite surprising. Offering a wide range of information in an accessible and engaging manner, Reproductive Politics: What Everyone Needs to Know orients readers and provides the knowledge necessary to follow the debates in this important and continually evolving field.My first impression: Written in no-nonsense language, this book is sobering and disturbing.
It’s essential reading, and it’s well-written, but dang, it’s a bit scary in places, too. This book could be a good inspiration for a fictional account of

what could happen if the worst case scenario comes about. A Victorian Naturalist: Beatrix Potter’s Drawings from the Armitt Collection by Anne Stevenson Hobbs, Eileen Jay and Beatrix Potter [Frederick Warne & Co., 1992; Amazon UK; Amazon US] Publisher’s synopsis One of the most unusual collections

of Beatrix Potter’s art is held by a small trust in the English Lake District, the Armitt Library in Ambleside, Cumbria. The collection comprises studies of fossils, archaeological finds, mosses, lichens, microscope drawings and many exceptionally fine fungus paintings.
This book contains reproductions of these superb watercolours, along with a commentary by various experts on Beatrix Potter’s scientific work.My first impression: This beautiful book was a gift. It’s filled with full-colour reproductions of Beatrix Potter’s paintings and sketches that are held by the Armitt Museum, along with some of her handwritten letters and black-and-white photographs of her and some of her family and friends.
The book tells the story that I want to read, that of her “lost years” as a naturalist, but the writing is far less engaging than the illustrations, which are, to my eye, the primary reason to obtain this book. The Crossley ID Guide: Raptors by Richard Crossley, Jerry Liguori and Brian Sullivan [Princeton University Press, 2013; Guardian Bookshop; Amazon UK; Amazon US] Publisher’s synopsis Part of the revolutionary Crossley ID Guide series, this is the first raptor guide with lifelike scenes composed from multiple photographs — scenes that allow you to identify raptors just as the experts do. Experienced birders use the most easily observed and consistent characteristics — size, shape, behavior, probability, and general color patterns. The book’s 101 scenes — including thirty-five double-page layouts — provide a complete picture of how these features are all related. Even the effects of lighting and other real-world conditions are illustrated and explained.
Detailed and succinct accounts from two of North America’s foremost raptor experts, Jerry Liguori and Brian Sullivan, stress the key identification features. This complete picture allows everyone from beginner to expert to understand and

enjoy what he or she sees

in the field. The mystique of bird identification is eliminated, allowing even novice birders to identify raptors quickly and simply.Comprehensive and authoritative, the book covers all thirty-four

of North America’s diurnal raptor species (all species except owls).
Each species is featured in stunning color plates that show males and females, in a full spectrum of ages and color variants, depicted near and far, in flight and at rest, and from multiple angles, all caught in their typical habitats.
There are also comparative, multispecies scenes and mystery photographs that allow readers to test their identification skills, along with answers and full explanations in the back of the book. In addition, the book features

an introduction, and thirty-four color maps accompany the plates.Whether you are a novice or an expert, this one-of-a-kind guide will show you an entirely new way to look at these spectacular birds.
The most complete guide to North American raptors, written by some of the foremost experts

The first raptor guide using Richard

Crossley’s acclaimed, innovative composite images that show birds as they actually appear in the field 101 stunning color plates — including thirty-five double-page layouts — composed from thousands of photographs Comparative, multispecies plates and photos of mystery species that allow readers to test their growing identification skills Complete with introduction, 34 color maps, and detailed species accounts My first impression: If you think this book is a field guide, well, you’d be <a href = “http://productreviewer4u.webs.com/fat-burning-furnace”>fat burning furnace review by North America’s top raptor birders, this book is filled with photographic quizzes in the front half of the book, and in the back half are colour-coded range maps that accompany expanded life history information about the diurnal “raptors” in North America. The three North American vulture species are included, even though they are not raptors, and owls — even day-flying owls — are excluded. Inside the front cover is a photo guide for identifying soaring birds along with relevant pages in the book for more information.
If you want to learn how to identify North American raptors at a glance whilst they are mere specks in a cloudy sky, then this book is the one you want. Beautifully executed, this book is suitable either for a course of self-study or as a textbook for a raptor ID class. The Field Guide to the Birds of Australia (9th Edition) by Frank Knight, Graham Pizzey & Sarah Pizzey [Harper Collins, 2013; Amazon UK; Amazon US] Publisher’s synopsis The definitive and most respected guide to Australian bird identification, this book is a must for both experts and amateurs. First published in 1980, Graham Pizzey′s Field Guide to the Birds of Australia combines a depth and breadth of knowledge with beautiful, full-colour illustrations by Frank Knight. Comprehensive and fully updated, this 9th edition of the Guide is more user-friendly than ever before.
Species entries have been re-ordered and updated to reflect the new taxonomy,

and the book has been expanded to include eighteen new species as well as a new section on vagrant species. It also features new information on bird family groups, more than 750 distribution maps based on the most recent bird atlas data, as well as a new Quick Find Index, to assist with quick identification of birds in the field. This is the essential reference for every bird enthusiast.My first impression: This is the best, most complete, field guide to the birds of Australia. However, that said, I noticed an error on my quick

inspection of the book: the red-collared lorikeet, Trichoglossus rubritorquis, is listed as part of the rainbow lorikeet radiation, T. haematodus, although almost all authorities consider the red-collared lorikeet to be a separate (although closely-related) species. Some users may be dismayed by the lack of arrows (or other method) in the illustrations as an aid to quickly picking out distinguishing field marks. Britain’s Hoverflies: An Introduction to the Hoverflies of Britain by Stuart Ball and Roger

Morris [Princeton University Press, 2013; Guardian Bookshop; Amazon UK; Amazon US/kindle US] Publisher’s synopsis Britain’s Hoverflies is a beautifully illustrated photographic field guide to all the genera of hoverflies found in Britain, focusing on the species most likely to be identified.
Accessible and designed to appeal to a wide audience, the book contains more than 500 remarkable photographs exploring the various life stages of all 69 hoverfly genera and the 164 most commonly seen species. Easy-to-use species accounts highlight key identification features, including status,

behavior, and habitat requirements.
The book also contains distribution maps, phenology charts, and introductory chapters that examine hoverfly biology.


This guide is the perfect companion for wildlife enthusiasts, professional ecologists, and anyone with an interest in this unique

insect family. More than 500 remarkable photographs depict all 69 hoverfly genera and the 164 most commonly seen species in Britain that can be identified by eye or with a magnifying glass Introductory chapters explore hoverfly biology Species accounts highlight key features of each genus and species, including status, behavior, and habitat Maps and phenology charts examine hoverfly distribution A complete list of the 281 hoverfly species recorded in Britain to date with degrees of identification difficultyMy first impression: This is an informative book, filled with life history information, range maps, numerous colour photographs of habitat and the species with the identifying structures and patterns clearly labelled. Not all species are illustrated. What book(s) are you reading? How far are you along in the book? What do you think of it so far? Do you think your book is worth recommending to others?.. .. ..
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.. .. GrrlScientist can also be found here: Maniraptora, and on social media: facebook, G+, LinkedIn, Pinterest and of course, on twitter: @GrrlScientistGrrlScientistguardian.co.uk
© 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds     MEXICO CITY —

For generations, Mexico has been widely seen in the United States as a Third World neighbor, a source of cheap labor, illegal immigration and drugs. But now, Mexico’s growing economic might is transforming relations between the two countries, foreshadowing a new balance of power that was hinted at in President Obama’s visit to the region Thursday and Friday.
Read full article >>     Vanderbilt has dismissed four football players from the team and kicked them off campus while the Nashville police investigate whether a sex crime occurred in a campus dormitory.     Former Orioles shortstop Miguel Tejada pleads guilty to federal charges that he lied to congressional investigators about the use of performance-enhancing drugs in baseball.
If you’re going to be a late-late-night drinker, you need good company and the right beverage.    
Top surveillance critic says he believes Obama is increasingly concerned about privacy issues around NSA collectionOne of the leading civil liberties supporters in the US Senate has said the Obama administration is considering scaling back its bulk collection of Americans’ phone records.Ron
Wyden, Democrat of Oregon and a member of the Senate intelligence committee,

told the New York Times that he believed the administration was increasingly concerned about the privacy implications raised by a surveillance effort it has performed for four and a half years, after National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed it to the Guardian.“I
have a feeling that the administration is getting concerned about the bulk phone records collection, and that they are thinking about whether to move administratively to stop it,” Wyden told the Times.Aides to Wyden said on Friday that the statement was based on public comments from executive branch officials and the senator’s

prior experience with the termination of a bulk email collection program in 2011, something the Guardian recently reported. The administration has given Wyden no additional assurances of changes to the phone records collection, the aides said.A test of the administration’s intentions about the future of the phone records collection is fast approaching. An order by the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (Fisa) court compelling Verizon to provide the NSA with records of customers’ phone calls expires on 19

July.
The secret surveillance court orders have been renewed every 90 days for years.Yet it is unclear if the public will know whether the bulk collection will continue as it is, be modified, or be cancelled. Fisa court orders are not public documents.It is also unclear when the Fisa court orders on other telecommunications companies expire.Representatives
from the White House, NSA, Justice Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence did not immediately reply to

a request for comment.Wyden, among the Senate’s leading critics of the surveillance programs, has singled out the phone records collection as a violation of Americans’ privacy. He and his Colorado Democratic colleague on the intelligence committee, Mark Udall, have challenged the Obama administration’s claims that the phone records collection is vital to preventing terrorist attacks.“We have not yet seen any evidence showing that the NSA’s dragnet collection of Americans’ phone records has produced any uniquely valuable intelligence,” they said on 13 June.Wyden
and Udall were among 26 senators of both parties –

a quarter of the US Senate – who wrote to James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, on 27 June to express concern about the bulk phone records collection.
Those senators were concerned that the intelligence agencies might use the same legal provision cited for the phone records collection, Section 215 of the 2001 Patriot Act,

to collect “information on credit card purchases, pharmacy records, library records, firearms sales records, financial information and a range of other sensitive subjects.”NSAUnited StatesUS SenateDemocratsObama administrationBarack ObamaUS politicsData protectionSurveillanceSpencer Ackermanguardian.co.uk © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies.
All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds     Nate Silver made a name for himself with his uncannily accurate predictions of baseball scores and US election results. But some things – from earthquakes to terrorism – even he can’t predictIt takes a brave man to bet against the New York Times’ polling guru Nate Silver.
The founder of the FiveThirtyEight blog – named after the number of voters in the US Electoral College, which elects the president – correctly called

not just the

overall result, but also the result of 49 of America’s 50 states in the 2008 election.But in the run-up to the 2012 US election, which numerous American pundits insisted was too close to call, Silver was challenged by swathes of America’s right. Why was he saying the election wasn’t even close? Why did he say Obama had

a 90% chance to win

an election everyone else agreed was on a knife-edge?Eventually, Silver got so tired of being called <a href = “http://productreviewer4u.webs.com/google-sniper”>google sniper offered NBC pundit Joe Scarborough a bet: if Obama won, Scarborough should donate $2,000 to charity. If Romney won, Silver would do the same.Silver
got a rap on the knuckles from the NYT’s public editor – and Scarborough didn’t accept the bet – but in the end, he was vindicated.
Having got

49 states right the last time, he swept all 50 in 2012.The fight was characteristic of Silver, drawing on a combination of belief in the strength of

his stats, disdain for the US political media’s establishment, and a fondness for taking a gamble. It’s a franchise he’s extended through his book, The Signal and the Noise, into a look at prediction and punditry itself, across many more fields.Calling the US election correctly, Silver says from the comfortable lobby of a London hotel, was less tough – and less worthy of adulation – than the

US media made out. His triumph looked bigger, essentially, because most US pundits made such awful predictions.
“I began FiveThirtyEight partly as a hobby, but partly because I thought news media coverage of election campaigns was pretty terrible in the US,” he says."US

general elections are very predictable. The whole thing about having a very stable two-party system is part of it – 90% of the electorate has made up its mind, and so 40 out of 50 states are locked in."Silver
says about half of the

rest vote based on the economy – which is easy to fold into a prediction – and so only 5% of US voters need tracking, and polls help out there.
But US outlets tend not to get

it right because it’s not really in their interests.
“The problem with the election is that you have a very long cycle.
It lasts 18 months to two years, if you consider the primary.
But most of the time nothing of any significance happens. It’s very hard for journalists to write that story, I think.”He
has a little more sympathy for the Romney campaign, who, reports suggest, on the eve of the election genuinely believed they were set for a win. Their mistake, he says, was putting their pollster in front of the public, rather than as an internal “reality check”. When you’re losing at election time, he says, there’s not much you can say."If
you’re a pollster and your campaign is losing in August, you can say, ‘Well, we’re

down, but we’re going to win the day, and it demonstrates why we have this new message,‘" he says. "Whereas if you’re down in November … you’re kinda fucked, right?"What happened to Silver during and after the US election was far less predictable than the result itself: he’s the new king of stats, doing book tours and conferences

across the world, which in turn are spawning articles concerned about the “cult of Nate” – the rise of the unchallengable data wizard. Even on the Pyramid of the Sun in Teotihuacan, Mexico, he got recognised, he says.
“It’s a bad omen.”“I
would like to live for a couple of days in the alternate reality where Mitt Romney wins, and just see how things plummet,” he jokes. “In some ways, when people are, like, ‘Whatever Nate does is gospel’, it’s a symptom of the kind of disease of not being self-critical and not thinking through things.”What
he’s really trying to do, he says, is show that prediction is hard, and experts are not always to be trusted.“I don’t want people to be viewing me as this guy who predicts things,” he says, uncomfortable.
“Prediction is this really important tool, and it’s essential to science, to see whether subjective reality matches up with the objective world. But it’s not really a carnival show game.
People have been asking me to predict Kate Middleton stuff over here, and things like that. It’s not really the idea, right? This stuff’s hard.”Predicting
how long Silver might stay in the political game might also be a difficult task: he’s never done anything for more than four years, and he’s already four years into FiveThirtyEight.“The
basic plan I have is that I’ll probably trudge through this next election cycle, to 2016, then after that I’ll maybe go out and do something very, very different,” he says.
“Because I do have a history of getting bored with things after a while and wanting to move on. I worked at KPMG for four years, then for four years did the baseball/poker phase, then four years at FiveThirtyEight, so I don’t know.”When you’re 35 years old, and you know that probably – not for sure – but you know probably you’re at the peak of your recognisability and your earning potential in the short term, that’s a little strange, I think," he reflects.
“But it’s a good problem to have, relative to the problems that most people have to contend with.”The
King of Stats predicts …We asked Nate Silver to gauge how predictable different things in life were: from politics to cricket, from terrorism to sexual orientation.
Here’s how he scored ten different areas, on a prediction scale of 0 to 10US presidential elections: 8.5"I’m lucky that I’m American," Silver says. “It’s probably the easiest system to predict as far as elections go.”US elections are predictable, he says, for a few reasons. First, there is masses of polling data: there are regular nationwide polls and also, unlike in the UK,

polls for each individual state.“If we’d only had national poll data, we’d still have had Obama ahead, but with much less confidence,” he says. “We’d have had him winning by half a point instead of 2.5
points.”Congress
(or at least its elections) isn’t so easy, getting a score of about 7.UK general elections: 5.5-6Brits just aren’t as predictable as Americans, Silver says. In his efforts to call the UK’s general election in 2010, he predicted around 100 seats for the Lib Dems; they got 62.“The
model got Cleggmania, I think,” he says.
The UK’s three-party (now, with Ukip, potentially four-party) system means there are more moving parts to track, and less data to use.Still, Silver isn’t totally admitting defeat. As elections are fair, and polling is reasonably accurate, he says a degree of prediction is possible – and hasn’t ruled out trying again in 2015.Earthquakes:
2Predicting a specific earthquake is a fool’s game: nothing works. But on the broader scale, there’s a lot we can tell.“We
know the long-term rates of earthquakes: every X years you’ll get Y earthquakes in area Z,” says Silver. “[But] actually predicting time-specific earthquakes – there’s no way.”That didn’t stop Italian authorities prosecuting six scientists and a public official for saying there

was no risk of an earthquake in 2009, shortly before one happened.
Silver thinks the prosecution was “ridiculous”, but officials could have been more careful: small earthquakes can represent an increase in risk in the short term – “maybe 1 in 100 chance instead of the usual 1 in 50,000”. Still, he says, communicating that to the public is a tough task.Asteroids: 8.5You’ve got a much better chance of seeing an asteroid coming than an earthquake – even though no one predicted the meteor shower over Russia earlier this year, the really big stuff we should see coming.“On the solar system scale, there’s a high level of predictability in astronomy,” Silver concludes.
“An asteroid large enough to destroy civilisation, you can probably detect in advance.”What’s
trickier to guess, of course, is just because we see an asteroid coming 10 years in advance, whether we’ll be able to do anything to stop it.Baseball: 8-9Silver made his name building a system to forecast player performance in baseball, called PECOTA. So, unsurprisingly, he thinks the game is pretty predictable.In fact, he thinks the systems are so good now that about 95% of what’s predictable (rather than random) is already captured.
But baseball has its quirks.
“It’s not intrinsically all that predictable,” he says.
“A soccer team like Man United loses only twice or so a season, whereas even the best team in baseball loses about a third of the time.”Cricket: 8-9Cricket isn’t so subject to frenetic statistical analysis as its (sort-of) US counterpart, baseball, but there’s no reason it shouldn’t be, Silver reckons.Yes,
pitches vary greatly – but so do baseball stadiums. Bowlers try all sorts of different throws – but so do pitchers. Baseball may have been more subject to slide rules and stat tricks thanks to there being far more big money in that sport, but cricket could be broken down.“It
shouldn’t really be any different at all,” Silver shrugs. “I’m sure there’s some gamblers who’ve tried already.”World
population in 100 years: 7Forecasters from Malthus to Paul Ehrlich have got population predictions drastically wrong – but Silver thinks they can reach a reasonable degree of accuracy.UN forecasts, he says, are pretty good.
Looking five years ahead, the odds of being right are extremely high. Looking further, there are more ways to be wrong.
For one,

Silver says with a degree of understatement, “to have some mass catastrophe is one downside risk,” but getting the population of

the next century right is really about calling India and China right: if they don’t act as expected, all bets are off.Sexual orientation: 6"I don’t want to sound politically incorrect," Silver says, "but it’s easy to have gaydar for people who are acting in a certain stereotypical way, deliberately or not. It’s easy to identify people who fit the stereotype. But how easy is it to identify people that <a href = “http://forex-growth-bot.webs.com”>forex growth bot it’s actually relatively easy: studies have suggested people have a good chance of picking up sexual orientation when shown pictures of strangers. It comes down to non-verbal cues.“I’m
generally not the kind of guy who says intuition is awesome, but there’s a lot of subtle information we transmit,” he says. “In New York I’m a very aggressive walker, we all jaywalk all the time, but you never run into anyone, even though you’re kind of looking at your cellphone, you have all these cues that you develop to negotiate how to walk down a very busy street.”But here [in London], they’re off, because people have a different left-right sensibility, or just the manners are a little different, I’ll almost run into people all the time. So there’s a lot of non-verbal information people are picking up on.“Spotting
terrorists: 3Spotting terrorists through huge data sifts, profiling and other methods is a high priority for governments on both sides of the Atlantic – but one which might not be all that effective.”I’m not a big fan of the war on terror and everything it justified, but I do think it’s remarkable that events like the Boston bombings haven’t occurred more often," Silver says.“Where
there are so many potential threats and thin reeds of information, it’s amazing so many plots are prevented. It’s difficult because you’re talking about the behaviour of a very small number of individuals.”Silver likens terrorist attacks to earthquakes: using events of different magnitudes, it’s possible to forecast how many bigger

attacks there might be over a long period – but forecasting any particular attack is far tougher.Shopping (what people will buy): 7If there’s one group with an incentive to get predictions right, it’s shops – and luckily for them, whether online or off, they’ve got a stack of data to do it.There’s a reason shopping habits bear that name, Silver says: people generally buy similar stuff time and again, and retailers pick up on that and are trying to take advantage of it.“Macy’s is testing 50,000 different versions of its catalogue, targeted at different customers,” he says.
"That’s a business where you

can go further than you can in other domains."You are a target market – and the targeting is getting ever more precise.Nate
SilverUS elections 2012United StatesUS politicsBaseballEarthquakesNatural disasters and extreme weatherMeteorsSpaceJames Ballguardian.co.uk © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited

or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds     The Justice Department filed another lawsuit against immigration practices by Arizona authorities, saying Monday that a network of community colleges acted illegally in requiring noncitizens

to provide their green cards before they could be hired for jobs.
Since the 1970s, when

early autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) were developed at MIT, Institute scientists have tackled various barriers to robots that can travel autonomously in the deep ocean. This four-part series examines current MIT efforts to refine AUVs’ artificial intelligence, navigation, stability and tenacity.As the search for oil and natural-gas resources moves into deeper and

deeper water, companies are facing increasing costs.
Building and installing a single offshore drilling platform now costs more than a billion dollars, so companies are using their platforms as efficiently as possible.
Advances in technology have enabled them to service several oil fields from a single platform, and much of the infrastructure for well operations has moved to the

seafloor, which may be as much as 4,000 meters  — almost 2.5
miles — below the surface.
As a result, inspecting, servicing and repairing underwater equipment has become an ever-greater challenge.Many companies accomplish those tasks using remotely operated vehicles (ROVs), robots that are operated by a person aboard a surface vessel.
Because radio signals do not propagate through seawater, the ROVs are connected to the vessel by cables that carry data as well as power. But as the distance between a platform and its wells has increased, the cables, or “tethers,” have

become longer and heavier. To support that weight, the vessels needed to launch and recover them have become larger and more expensive. Running an ROV and its ship now costs around $250,000 per day.For the past two decades, MIT researchers have been working on a different approach, motivated by the notion that “small is good” — the operating premise of Chryssostomos Chryssostomidis, director of the MIT Sea Grant College Program, the Doherty Professor of Ocean Science and Engineering and professor of mechanical and ocean engineering.
“In the late 1980s, I suggested a revolutionary concept: an underwater vehicle that has no tether and travels in the deep ocean, making decisions on its own without input from an operator,”

says Chryssostomidis, whose research has transformed the concept of AUVs since untethered underwater robots were first made in the late 1950s at the University of Washington.Chryssostomidis’ proposed AUV would be fully functional, but small enough that deploying it wouldn’t require a huge ship. Getting

rid of the tether would make it far more maneuverable and flexible. It could get into small spaces — for example, after an

accident — without worrying about the tether dragging along and getting tangled. Most important, the AUV would be equipped with artificial intelligence so that it could avoid obstacles, change course, and make other decisions in response to its environment.The
goal, therefore, was to make an AUV that the offshore industry could use to service its deepwater operations — and that researchers could use to explore and monitor the deep ocean. To that end, in 1989 Chryssostomidis founded the Autonomous Underwater Vehicles Laboratory within the MIT Sea Grant College Program, and he and his colleagues began developing a series of AUVs.A
first challenge was how to navigate without knowing details of the deep-sea landscape. Early efforts were helped by insights from Rodney Brooks, now the Panasonic Professor of Robotics emeritus. Brooks’ idea was that the AUV — as with other robots — didn’t need to know anything about its environment. It only needed

to know when it was approaching an obstacle and should go right, left, up or down to avoid a collision.
“So he enabled me to start developing AUVs without having to address that problem,” Chryssostomidis says.Since then, the lab has developed and demonstrated a series of AUVs, all of them small, relatively inexpensive and artificially intelligent. Of particular

note was the early “Odyssey” series of vehicles, which had a torpedo shape with a streamlined horizontal axis designed for efficient cruising. For a decade, Odyssey II vehicles have run successful surveying missions, demonstrating rapid long-distance travel and good battery life due to their hydrodynamic efficiency.
But while surveys are important, they are not enough. “The next frontier is going to be intervention,” Chryssostomidis says. An AUV will examine, say,

the footing of an oil platform or

another piece of subsea equipment and then perform a task. An Odyssey II vehicle isn’t suited to such close study. Like a shark, it must keep swimming forward in order to maintain its maneuvering capability. As a result, it can prepare a detailed image of an object only by repeatedly circling over it, taking a photo at each pass.Performing close-up inspections, service and repairs would be better accomplished by an AUV that could stop and hover in one place. Members of the AUV laboratory and their collaborators therefore designed a hovering AUV, which has a full six degrees of freedom while standing still and is extremely maneuverable.
However, its lack of a streamlined axis doesn’t allow for efficient cruising, and its small thrusters and battery don’t provide enough force to withstand any but the smallest of currents.Enter
the Odyssey IV, a hybrid cruising/hovering vehicle that gains advantages from both vehicle designs.
This two-meter-long craft has a smooth, teardrop profile derived from the streamlined body of the Odyssey II, and four commercial off-the-shelf thrusters: one in the bow, one in the stern, and two mounted on arms that protrude from the sides of the vehicle and can be rotated about its lateral axis. A custom-designed battery consisting of 648 lithium-ion cells provides the vehicle with the power necessary to fight currents and the longevity to dive to full ocean depth.
The vehicle’s conservative size

and weight make it deployable from small, less-expensive boats, but it still has room inside for a substantial payload.In
sea trials,

the Odyssey IV has demonstrated that it can both move quickly and hover in place.
It can travel through the deep ocean — 6,000 meters below the surface — at a rate of 1.4 meters per second when going straight ahead. Having located its objective, the Odyssey IV can hold its position to within centimeters of the desired location. If a current pushes it in one direction, its

controller activates the appropriate thruster and brings it back into position. It can thus hover as a helicopter does, making detailed inspections of particular subsea structures or the natural landscape.
It can also pick up samples and other cargo from the deep sea and bring them back to the surface

for inspection and analysis.Remaining challenges include developing better power-storage and communications capabilities so

that the vehicles can stay underwater longer and send back more information to operators on shore. Chryssostomidis notes that his <a href = “http://micro-niche-finder.webs.com”>micro niche finder review made great strides in both areas.
The Odyssey

IV has enough power that it can operate for a day or more without refueling, and an onshore operator can receive still frames of what the AUV is “seeing” with only a few seconds’ delay (due to the time it takes for sound to travel through water). The researchers continue to improve the efficiency with which video is transmitted underwater, largely due to new techniques of data compression developed by Milica Stojanovic, a visiting scientist at MIT Sea Grant and associate professor at Northeastern University.What’s the future? To illustrate, Chryssostomidis refers to the blowout preventer: the device that’s

at the heart of underwater operations and that dominated news reports about the April 2010 Deepwater Horizon accident.
For now, he is sure he will be allowed to send an AUV within five meters of a blowout preventer and

observe.
If all goes well, he predicts that in a few years he’ll be allowed to have an AUV touch that critical piece of equipment. In a few decades, the AUV may perform a real repair. And one day, Chryssostomidis says, an AUV will be able to do tasks without a human in the loop.
It will head underwater, locate a problem, make a judgment, formulate a plan and perform a repair — all on its own.Next: Advanced mathematical techniques enable AUVs to survey large, complex, cluttered seascapes. In selecting Sylvia Mathews Burwell, President Obama enlisted another Clinton-era veteran for his economic team.
Some additional items for the giant financial to-do list that new parents face when bringing home a new baby. Dave Grohl made a promise when he took the stage with his Sound City Players last night in Austin fo[…] Mario Balotelli is poised to return for AC Milan at the weekend after serving a two-match suspension amid worrying signs his side have become over-dependent on him.     Improvements in prison life for Amir Hekmati, incarcerated for nearly two years on spying accusations, strengthened his family’s hope that Iran’s judiciary would favorably review an

appeal for his release.     News of the former South African leader’s downturn used the strongest language yet after three weeks of hospitalization.    
Eighteeen movies inspired by true stories may vie this year for Oscar nominations ? 19, if you’re a Red Sox fan and want to count “Fever Pitch.”
Levine was part of a team of MIT scientists who helped design and build a device called the All-Sky Monitor (ASM), one of three instruments aboard RXTE. The device, mounted on the nose of the satellite, consisted of three cameras that rotated every 90 minutes, scanning the sky for the brightest X-ray sources.
An onboard computer, administered by MIT instrument scientist Ed Morgan, packaged the ASM data for transmission back to Earth,

where it was analyzed by scientists at MIT and the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. If the scientists detected an interesting pattern that revealed a new X-ray source or unexpected changes in the strength of a known source, they sent a command to the satellite to swivel and direct its two other instruments — the Proportional Counter Array and the High-Energy X-ray Timing Experiment — at a particular X-ray source in the sky. Unlike imaging satellites such as the Chandra X-ray Observatory, RXTE did not take X-ray pictures of its targets.
Instead, the

combination of instruments onboard monitored X-ray activity over time — from a neutron star’s millisecond-long bursts to the appearances and disappearances of the galaxy’s X-ray sources over months and years. Beyond a ‘five-minute look’RXTE was named after former MIT physics professor Bruno Rossi, a pioneer in the field of X-ray astronomy. In the early 1960s, Rossi and his colleagues at a nearby company, American Science & Engineering, began the search for X-rays from outside the solar system; in 1962, they made the first detections. “X-ray astronomy was sort of a surprise,” says Hale Bradt, a professor emeritus of physics at MIT and one of the original principal investigators on the RXTE mission. “Nobody really predicted that there should be sources of X-rays out there.” After Rossi’s discovery, George Clark, also a professor emeritus of physics at MIT, made the first X-ray detection from a balloon-borne experiment.
Thereafter, MIT and other universities and laboratories studied the X-ray sky from rockets and balloons.
While the atmosphere prevented X-rays from being seen from Earth, Bradt says rockets gave scientists a “five-minute look” above the atmosphere.
Since the 1970s, countries

including the United States have launched multiple satellites into space as part of more prolonged searches for X-ray activity.
Through these missions, scientists have found that many X-ray sources in the sky are binary systems, in which a normal-sized star is gravitationally bound to a neutron star. This discovery prompted scientists to hypothesize that a rapidly spinning neutron star obtains its spin by drawing matter in from its neighboring star.“All
these binary neutron stars should be rapidly rotating, but no one had ever seen a fast signal from them,” Morgan says. “We wanted to detect the spin of a neutron star, to really confirm this theory, and we thought there could be a lot of other neat phenomena we could study as well.”Beginning
in 1980, Bradt and his colleagues at MIT, Goddard and the University of California at San Diego drew up a plan for an X-ray timing mission — a satellite that would measure X-ray bursts and pulsations and many other phenomena on time scales from milliseconds to years. The researchers spent nearly two decades writing up proposals and designing and building the satellite’s body and instruments.
Late in 1995, the team launched RXTE on a Delta rocket from Cape Canaveral, Fla. Down to the wireBradt recalls the days following the launch as full of highs, as well as one worrying low.
“The first time they turned on the equipment, everything was hunky-dory, and we saw beautiful data,” Bradt says. “Then the next day, one of the detectors began to arc — high-voltage breakdown — and we were in despair.” The team was unable to read a signal from one of the cameras on the ASM, the instrument designed to monitor the entire sky for X-ray sources.
Bradt consulted with Levine and ASM project scientist Ron Remillard, and the team settled on a likely explanation: One or more of the wires in the camera’s X-ray detector might be faulty, jamming the signals from the other wires. On a gamble, the group turned the instrument back on and waited. After a week or two, the problem wires stopped making noise, clearing the signal for the other working anodes. “One day, two days, three days, we thought it would never quit,” Bradt recalls. “And then it just fixed itself.”
Spinning black holes and “vampire” starsSince then, RXTE has worked without a hitch, providing astronomers with X-ray data that has led to many exciting discoveries. For example, the satellite revealed neutron stars with dramatic characteristics, including subclasses with huge magnetic fields, and others that eject jets of matter from their surrounding atmosphere.
Yet another subclass, described as “vampire” pulsars, whittle down their companion stars to very low mass by sucking matter from the stars’s atmospheres.
RXTE also gave astronomers an X-ray view of black holes, many of them part of binary systems consisting of a normal star and a black hole.
ASM measured nearly 100 outbursts from

dozens of black hole binaries, and RXTE has shown that these systems exhibit three very distinct states. “We have begun to learn how to quantitatively constrain the black hole’s physical properties, i.e.,
its mass and spin, by looking at the details of the X-ray emission in different spectral states,” Remillard says.For Morgan, one of the satellite’s most bizarre discoveries was a massive black hole named GRS 1915+105. About 15 times the mass of the sun, GRS 1915 is one of the larger black holes in the galaxy.
Through the years, the ASM picked up highly unusual patterns from this X-ray source.“It’d get bright, then come down and do this oscillation thing, then go up again, and it had about 10 different steps it would do,” Morgan says. “It was an amazing source.” Using data from RXTE, scientists were able to estimate GRS 1915’s period of rotation, or spin — a first for astronomers. The satellite is expected to reenter Earth’s atmosphere and burn up sometime between 2014 and 2023.“For 16 years, [RXTE] followed the light curves of more than 100 X-ray sources,” Bradt says. “Nobody else will ever get that. And it is our hope that more great science will come out of them.” Jeanette Winterson and Anne Tyler are the first two authors who will be rewriting Shakespeare’s plays as part of a project announced by Random House’s Hogarth imprint.     BETHLEHEM, West Bank — President Obama, whose

visit to Israel begins Wednesday, is scheduled to travel to this Palestinian city during his trip, but there is little anticipation and much skepticism in the air. Read full article >> With the season for mangoes and pineapples finally arriving, preserve them while they are at their best.
TOKYO – North Korea recently took the unusual step of begging for food handouts from

the foreign governments it usually