More bombing victims leave Boston hospitals

BOSTON (AP) ? Boston hospitals say the number of patients being treated for injuries sustained in the marathon bombing continues to drop, nearly two weeks after the attack that killed three and hurt more than 260.

Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center said Sunday morning six patients with bombing injuries remain hospitalized, down from more than 20 immediately following the April 15 attack.

All six are in good or fair condition.

Nine victims remain at Brigham and Women's Hospital, down from 36 after the bombing. Seven are in good condition.

Massachusetts General Hospital continues to treat six bombing victims, with one in serious condition and the others in good or fair condition. The hospital has treated 31 bombing victims.

In all, 26 hospitals have treated people injured in the bombing.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/more-bombing-victims-leave-boston-hospitals-150709620.html

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Plants moderate climate warming

Monday, April 29, 2013

As temperatures warm, plants release gases that help form clouds and cool the atmosphere, according to research from IIASA and the University of Helsinki.

The new study, published in Nature Geoscience, identified a negative feedback loop in which higher temperatures lead to an increase in concentrations of natural aerosols that have a cooling effect on the atmosphere.

"Plants, by reacting to changes in temperature, also moderate these changes," says IIASA and University of Helsinki researcher Pauli Paasonen, who led the study.

Scientists had known that some aerosols ? particles that float in the atmosphere ? cool the climate as they reflect sunlight and form cloud droplets, which reflect sunlight efficiently. Aerosol particles come from many sources, including human emissions. But the effect of so-called biogenic aerosol ? particulate matter that originates from plants ? had been less well understood. Plants release gases that, after atmospheric oxidation, tend to stick to aerosol particles, growing them into the larger-sized particles that reflect sunlight and also serve as the basis for cloud droplets. The new study showed that as temperatures warm and plants consequently release more of these gases, the concentrations of particles active in cloud formation increase.

"Everyone knows the scent of the forest," says Ari Asmi, University of Helsinki researcher who also worked on the study. "That scent is made up of these gases." While previous research had predicted the feedback effect, until now nobody had been able to prove its existence except for case studies limited to single sites and short time periods. The new study showed that the effect occurs over the long-term in continental size scales.

The effect of enhanced plant gas emissions on climate is small on a global scale ? only countering approximately 1 percent of climate warming, the study suggested. "This does not save us from climate warming," says Paasonen. However, he says, "Aerosol effects on climate are one of the main uncertainties in climate models. Understanding this mechanism could help us reduce those uncertainties and make the models better."

The study also showed that the effect was much larger on a regional scale, counteracting possibly up to 30% of warming in more rural, forested areas where anthropogenic emissions of aerosols were much lower in comparison to the natural aerosols. That means that especially in places like Finland, Siberia, and Canada this feedback loop may reduce warming substantially.

The researchers collected data at 11 different sites around the world, measuring the concentrations of aerosol particles in the atmosphere, along with the concentrations of plant gases, the temperature, and reanalysis estimates for the height of the boundary layer, which turned out to be a key variable. The boundary layer refers to the layer of air closest to the Earth, in which gases and particles mix effectively. The height of that layer changes with weather. Paasonen says, "One of the reasons that this phenomenon was not discovered earlier was because these estimates for boundary layer height are very difficult to do. Only recently have the reanalysis estimates been improved to where they can be taken as representative of reality."

###

International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis: http://www.iiasa.ac.at

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Oldest living ex-big leaguer turns 102 in Cuba

Associated Press Sports

updated 3:19 p.m. ET April 25, 2013

(Eds: With AP Photos.)

Associated Press

HAVANA (AP) - Put another candle on the very crowded birthday cake of Conrado Marrero, the oldest living former major league player.

The Cuban pitcher celebrated his 102nd birthday Thursday at his modest Havana apartment surrounded by family and friends, an unlit Cuban cigar in his mouth and a baseball cap on his head.

He was given an enormous blue and white cake, and savored a glass of wine and a sip of Bucanero, Cuba's domestic beer. Marrero smiled as his family applauded and smothered him in hugs.

In addition to his longevity, the former Washington Senator has much to celebrate this year. After a long wait, he finally received a $20,000 payout from Major League Baseball, granted to old-timers who played between 1947 and 1979.

The money had been held up since 2011 because of issues surrounding the 51-year-old U.S. embargo on Cuba, which prohibits most bank transfers to the Communist-run island. But the funds finally arrived in two parts, one at the end of last year, and the second a few months ago, according to Marrero's family.

Steve Rogers, a former Expos pitcher who is now an official at the Major League Baseball Players Association, told The Associated Press on Thursday that the funds were delivered to Marrero by hand, and with Washington's approval.

"Everything that he was entitled to has now been delivered to him. We found a way to get the funds to him," he said. "It was personally delivered and it was all sanctioned by the Treasury Department."

Rogers has followed Marrero's case closely and says it was an honor to be a part of the effort to get him the money he deserved.

"The oldest living major leaguer," Rogers marveled. "You tip your cap and say, you were from a different era but you played the same game. It is special to be a part of his life."

Marrero's family has used some of the money to buy him a new ventilator and bed, as well as wine, ham, cigars, juice and other delicacies that would be outside his budget, said Marrero's grandson, Rogelio. Like most Cuban pensioners, Marrero receives less than $20 from the state each month.

"My grandfather was always very particular about what he would eat," Rogelio said Wednesday as relatives prepared for the birthday. "Thanks to this we can buy him peach juice, which is his favorite."

These days, Marrero is hard of hearing, blind and has considerable trouble speaking. He spends much of the day sleeping or listening to Cuban ballgames on the radio.

But he still perks up when asked about his glory days, demonstrating how to throw a slider and reminiscing about long-ago confrontations with Ted Williams and other big league legends.

"All the batters were the same to me," Marrero said. "But I had more trouble with the lefties."

When he heard the name Larry Doby - the Hall of Fame Cleveland Indians outfielder who was the first black player in the American League - Marrero's face contorted in mock frustration.

"My grandfather has never forgotten how Doby hit three home runs against him in a single day," Rogelio explained. "He always says Doby was the guy who hit the best against him."

At 5-foot-5 and 158 pounds, Marrero relied on guile to get batters out, compiling a 39-40 record and a 3.67 ERA in five seasons with the Senators from 1950 to 1954.

"Connie Marrero had a windup that looked like a cross between a windmill gone berserk and a mallard duck trying to fly backwards," former big league star Felipe Alou once said of the diminutive Cuban, according to a biography of Marrero by the Society for American Baseball Research.

Marrero was born on April 25, 1911 in the small town of Sagua la Grande in the central Cuban province of Villa Clara, and he took his time getting into organized ball.

He played in amateur and semi-pro events in the early 1930s, raising eyebrows with his vicious curve and slider. In 1938, he joined a Cienfuegos team that was sponsored by a local men's clothing store, and which was about to become part of a budding Cuban league.

By the time he reached the big leagues, Marrero was already 39, an age when most players have long since retired. But he made the most of his opportunity, even being named to the 1951 All-Star team.

After his stint in the big leagues, Marrero came back to Cuba, ending his career with the Havana Sugar Kings in 1957. Two years later, Fidel Castro's rebels swept into power. Marrero became a coach and roving instructor, working well into his 80s.

Even at 102, he continues to be interested in baseball and counts himself a fan of Cienfuegos, the team that is leading the Cuban league at the moment.

But Marrero's true love is great-granddaughter Sandra. When the 12-year-old returned home from school Wednesday, the day before the birthday, Marrero reached out to take her hand and kiss it.

"Sandra, Sandra," he repeated as she leaned down to embrace him.

---

Associated Press writer Paul Haven contributed to this report.

---

Follow Anne-Marie Garcia on Twitter: www.twitter.com/AnneMarie279

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

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Talking Jeter

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

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UK opens makeshift Somalia embassy in Western vote of confidence

By Richard Lough

MOGADISHU (Reuters) - In a sign of growing optimism that Somalia is winning a struggle against pirates and al Qaeda-linked insurgents, Britain opened an embassy on Thursday in a set of four metal cabins at Mogadishu airport.

It was the first such move by a Western power since Somalia began to emerge from more than two decades of conflict. Turkey and Iran are among others vying for influence in the Horn of Africa country, with growing commercial ties and diplomatic missions already up and running.

"It is a symbol of our confidence and belief in the future of Somalia," said British Foreign Secretary William Hague, who flew in on an unannounced visit to watch the Union Jack flag hoisted above the cabins, generator and satellite dish within the airport perimeter fence.

"This is a sign of where Somalia is now heading to," said Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud.

"Somalia is going back to the international arena," he added, expressing hope that other Western states would follow suit.

The country is enjoying a delicate recovery but remains heavily dependent on others for its security. An African Union military offensive has driven weakened al Shabaab insurgents from bases in Mogadishu and other cities, and piracy in the strategic sea lanes off Somalia is at an all-time low, thanks largely to a heavy foreign naval presence.

REGIONAL BOOST

A stable Somalia would boost regional economies like Kenya and Ethiopia which have been rattled by their neighbor's insecurity, and would reassure Western capitals which have long worried Somalia provides a base for militant Islam to flourish.

The British government says now is "the best time in a generation for Somalia to get back onto the road to recovery." Britain will host an international conference in London on May 7 on ways to bolster security, impose the rule of law and rebuild the nation.

At the new embassy, due to be fully operational from late July, diplomats will live and work for a few weeks at a time in rotation behind two big blast walls, squeezed between the airport runway on one side and the Indian Ocean on the other.

Other countries with embassies in Mogadishu include Turkey, Libya, Ethiopia, Sudan, Yemen and Iran.

Britain's previous diplomatic mission lies in ruins: it closed in 1991 as a civil war broke out that led to first warlords and then Islamist militants stepping into the political vacuum.

Once written off as a failed state, Somalia now has its most legitimate government for decades since Mohamud's election in September. But the government still struggles to exert influence beyond the capital.

Foreign diplomats say they are spending more time in Somalia and will not be far behind the growing number of U.N. officials and aid workers slowly moving to Somalia from Kenya, where many organizations have been running their Somali operations.

(Editing by Edmund Blair and Mark Trevelyan)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/uk-opens-makeshift-somalia-embassy-western-vote-confidence-130737115.html

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Hubble brings faraway comet into view

Wednesday, April 24, 2013

The NASA Hubble Space Telescope has given astronomers their clearest view yet of Comet ISON, a newly-discovered sun grazer comet that may light up the sky later this year, or come so close to the Sun that it disintegrates. A University of Maryland-led research team is closely following ISON, which offers a rare opportunity to witness a comet's evolution as it makes its first-ever journey through the inner solar system.

Like all comets, ISON is a "dirty snowball" ? a clump of frozen gases mixed with dust, formed in a distant reach of the solar system, traveling on an orbit influenced by the gravitational pull of the Sun and its planets. ISON's orbit will bring it to a perihelion, or maximum approach to the Sun, of 700,000 miles on November 28, said Maryland assistant research scientist Michael S. Kelley.

This image was made on April 10, when ISON was some 386 million miles from the Sun ? slightly closer to the Sun than the planet Jupiter. Comets become more active as they near the inner solar system, where the Sun's heat evaporates their ices into jets of gases and dust. But even at this great distance ISON is already active, with a strong jet blasting dust particles off its nucleus. As these dust particles shimmer in reflected sunlight, a portion of the comet's tail becomes visible in the Hubble image.

Next week while the Hubble still has the comet in view, the Maryland team will use the space telescope to gather information about ISON's gases.

"We want to look for the ratio of the three dominant ices, water, frozen carbon monoxide, and frozen carbon dioxide, or dry ice," said Maryland astronomy Prof. Michael A'Hearn. "That can tell us the temperature at which the comet formed, and with that temperature, we can then say where in the solar system it formed."

The Maryland team will use both the Hubble Space Telescope and the instruments on the Deep Impact space craft to continue to follow ISON as it travels toward its November close up (perihelion) with the sun.

###

University of Maryland: http://www.newsdesk.umd.edu/

Thanks to University of Maryland for this article.

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Ticket scalping for a murder trial?

PHOENIX (AP) ? Ticket scalping is nothing new in the sports and music world, but for a murder trial?

Dozens of people flock to court each day for a chance to score one of a handful of seats open to the public in Jodi Arias' ongoing murder trial in Arizona. The seats are provided on a first-come, first-serve basis, and nearly four months into the trial, the crowds are growing.

This week, one trial regular sold her spot to another person for $200 ? and both got reprimands from the court on Tuesday.

Desiree Lee, a regular attendee, said another woman had traveled from Michigan to see the trial but couldn't get a seat because she was too far back in line.

"She was asking a couple of people ahead of me if they wanted to sell their seats," Lee, who lives in the area, told ABC15 in Phoenix. "I said yes because I can come every day if I wanted to ... I seriously didn't know I was going to get in trouble.

"I'm a little embarrassed more than anything," Lee added.

She said she was told to return the money. The purchaser kept her seat for free.

Court officials confirmed the incident. The court's rules prohibit saving spots in line, and that's why the woman was asked to give the money back, although she doesn't face any charges.

The message played for callers to the judge's courtroom explains that seats are indeed limited.

"This is a public trial, but it's likely you will not get a seat," the message says.

Arias faces a potential death sentence if convicted of first-degree murder in the June 2008 killing of her one-time boyfriend at his suburban Phoenix home. Authorities say she planned the attack on Travis Alexander in a jealous rage. Arias initially denied involvement then later blamed it on masked intruders. Two years after her arrest, she said it was self-defense.

The trial continued Wednesday afternoon as the prosecution called witnesses ahead of closing arguments next week. A medical examiner is expected to testify Thursday.

While there is no specific law preventing the public from selling their spot in line to get into the trial, Phoenix criminal defense lawyer Julio Laboy said it undermines the seriousness of the case.

"I think this particular trial has brought out so many salacious facts and sordid details that what happens is people lose sight of how very real this is," Laboy said Wednesday. "Whether you like Jodi Arias or not, whether you side with Travis Alexander or not, for these families, it's very real."

One person is dead and another is on trial for her life, Laboy said.

"It's extremely disheartening, as if people were bartering to get into a Yankees game," he said. "For Jodi Arias, this is her life on the line."

Others said the antics aren't unusual, and even occur at the nation's highest court in Washington.

"As distasteful as it is to most people, it happens at the U.S. Supreme Court each time there's a big case," said San Francisco criminal defense lawyer Michael Cardoza. "It's distasteful, but it's not unusual."

In fact, during the highly publicized Scott Peterson murder trial in 2004 in the San Francisco area, where Peterson was convicted and sentenced to death in the killing of his pregnant wife, Laci, hundreds of trial enthusiasts would show up at the courthouse each day for a chance to score one of about 28 seats open to the public.

Court officials there operated a lottery system, not first-come first-serve, drawing random numbers and calling them out to the applause of each winner. The tickets in that case could not be transferred or sold.

The entire Arias case has devolved into a spectacle.

The Arizona Republic reported that Arias' defense attorney Jennifer Willmott has received a death threat, according to Maricopa County authorities, but she declined to pursue the matter.

Adding to the spectacle, Arias is profiting from her notoriety by selling drawings from jail on a website operated by a third party, her mother, Sandra Arias, has said. According to the site, some pieces are fetching more than a $1,000, and Sandra Arias said the money is being used to help pay for family expenses. Nothing prevents Arias from profiting from her notoriety given she hasn't been convicted of a crime.

A woman who attends the trial regularly says she is operating a Twitter account on Arias' behalf, gathering comments from the defendant via jail phone calls. Some of the Tweets have consisted of religious quotes, while others attack the prosecutor and TV pundits.

The Associated Press cannot confirm, aside from with family and friends, whether the Twitter account or website are actually her words or her artwork.

___

Brian Skoloff can be followed at https://twitter.com/bskoloff

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/arias-spectacle-grows-trial-seat-sold-200-182132614.html

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Suspect in girl's abduction back in US from Mexico

File-This undated file photo provided by the Los Angeles Police Department on Saturday March 30, 2013 shows Tobias Dustin Summers who is a child-kidnapping suspect. Summers suspected in connection with the abduction of a 10-year-old girl who vanished from her San Fernando Valley home and was abandoned hours later in front of a hospital. The FBI says Mexican police have captured the fugitive Summers. (AP Photo/Los Angeles Police Department,File)

File-This undated file photo provided by the Los Angeles Police Department on Saturday March 30, 2013 shows Tobias Dustin Summers who is a child-kidnapping suspect. Summers suspected in connection with the abduction of a 10-year-old girl who vanished from her San Fernando Valley home and was abandoned hours later in front of a hospital. The FBI says Mexican police have captured the fugitive Summers. (AP Photo/Los Angeles Police Department,File)

LOS ANGELES (AP) ? A fugitive charged with abducting and sexually assaulting a 10-year-old Los Angeles girl is back on American soil after being arrested in a Mexican village.

FBI Special Agent in Charge Tim Delaney said Wednesday that 30-year-old Tobias Summers is in California, traveling in the custody of FBI and local police, to Los Angeles. He will face 37 felony charges, including numerous sexual assault counts.

Authorities credit a $25,000 reward that was highly publicized south of the border for a phone tip Tuesday night.

Using that tip, the FBI tracked Summers to a drug and alcohol treatment facility in a tiny village on the coast between Tijuana and Ensenada.

The victim vanished from her home in the Northridge area of Los Angeles on March 27. She was found about 12 hours later.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2013-04-24-Calif-Kidnapped%20Girl/id-4d3f34a292b441e2abd85e6dde1eebfa

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Montana Democrat Baucus rules out 7th Senate term

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont. leaves his committee office on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, April 23, 2013, saying that he was going to speak to the news media in his home state of Montana before discussing his retirement from the Senate. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont. leaves his committee office on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, April 23, 2013, saying that he was going to speak to the news media in his home state of Montana before discussing his retirement from the Senate. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont. leaves his committee office on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, April 23, 2013, saying that he was going to speak to the news media in his home state of Montana before discussing his retirement from the Senate. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

FILE - In this Sept. 19, 2012 file photo, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont. speaks reporters on Capitol Hill in Washington. According to Democratic officials: The six-term Democratic Sen. Max Baucus plans to retire. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

FILE - In this April 17, 2013 file photo, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont. speaks on Capitol Hill in Washington. According to Democratic officials: The six-term Democratic Sen. Max Baucus plans to retire. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) ? Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus of Montana announced plans Tuesday to retire at the end of his term after a career of enormous power and notable independence, producing both collaboration and conflict with fellow Democrats on major tax and health care legislation.

"I don't want to die here with my boots on. There is life beyond Congress," the 71-year-old Baucus said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press.

He became the eighth senator to announce retirement plans for 2014, and the sixth Democrat. One public poll recently suggested he would have faced a difficult challenge if he had sought a seventh term.

Republicans must gain six seats in 2014 to win a majority, and they said the retirement enhanced their prospects.

Yet Democrats were cheered when former Democratic Gov. Brian Schweitzer, who recently stepped down after two terms, swiftly expressed interest in the race.

In a brief statement, President Barack Obama said Baucus "has been a leader on a broad range of issues that touch the lives of Americans across the country."

Sen. Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican and Baucus' frequent legislative partner, was complimentary, too. "We ran the Finance Committee for 10 years together, and every bill except for three or four was bipartisan," he said in a statement. "The Senate will be worse off as a deliberative body when Senator Baucus leaves."

In a written statement, Baucus sketched an ambitious agenda for the rest of his term, topped by an overhaul of the tax code.

"Our country and our state face enormous challenges - rising debt, a dysfunctional tax code, threats to our outdoor heritage and the need for more good-paying jobs," he said, adding several Montana-specific priorities as well.

Baucus, a fifth-generation Montanan, was elected to the Senate in 1978 after two terms in the House. He became the top Democrat on the Finance Committee in early 2001. He has held the position ever since on the panel ? which has jurisdiction over taxes, Medicare, Medicaid, health care and trade ? as chairman when his party held a majority and as senior member of the minority when Republicans were in power.

The panel has a long tradition of bipartisanship, but Baucus ascended to power in an era of increasing partisanship in Congress.

Many Democrats were unhappy when he worked with Republicans to enact the tax cuts that President George W. Bush won in 2001. And then again in 2004 when Congress pushed through a GOP plan to create a new prescription drug benefit under Medicare, a measure that most Democrats opposed as a giveaway to the large drug companies.

Baucus stood with fellow Democrats in 2005 when Bush proposed legislation to partially privatize Social Security, an epic battle that ended in defeat for the president's effort.

He played a central role in the enactment of Obama's watershed health care legislation in 2010, although some inside his party complained that precious momentum was lost while he spent months on bipartisan negotiations that ultimately proved fruitless.

More recently, Baucus has expressed opposition to Democratic proposals to use an overhaul of the tax code as a means of raising additional revenue. He was one of four members of his party to oppose the budget the leadership brought to the floor with a requirement to that effect.

On other issues large and small, Baucus' voting record reflected his rural state.

Most recently, he voted against legislation that Obama backed to expand background checks for gun purchasers.

During the debate on the budget, he was the only Democrat to vote for a proposal to reopen White House tours. Most members of his party viewed the GOP measure as an attempt to embarrass Obama, but it would also have meant more money for clearing snow from the entrances to Yellowstone National Park, a portion of which is in Montana.

For more than a decade, Baucus has sought federal assistance for the residents of Libby, Mont., where asbestos contamination from a vermiculite mine has been linked to deaths and illnesses.

Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., said he learned of the retirement plans on Monday. He said Baucus told him he wanted to return to Montana, and noted that if he waited until the end of his next term he would be nearly 80.

Baucus, in the interview with the AP, said: "Been here 40 years. No regrets. It is time to do something different."

Maneuvering began almost instantly for the 2014 race.

"The opportunity to try and get the country moving again like we did in Montana, that's appealing," said Schweitzer, who outpolled Baucus in a hypothetical matchup in the recent poll. "I'm a fixer."

Possible Republican candidates include former Gov. Marc Racicot; former Rep. Denny Rehberg, who lost to Baucus in 1996 and to Tester last fall; former Rep. Rick Hill and Rep. Steve Daines. State Sen. Champ Edmunds of Missoula and former state Sen. Corey Stapleton, had already announced they would run against Baucus.

"Montana is a state where Republicans can and will do well," said Sen. Jerry Moran of Kansas, the GOP campaign committee chairman, pledging to provide the resources needed to turn the seat Republican.

The state twice voted against Obama in presidential races. Despite the president's presence on the ticket in 2012, Tester won a second term in a hotly contested challenge, and another Democrat, Steve Bullock, was elected governor.

Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., who heads the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, touted last year's re-election of Tester and said, "We will continue to invest all the resources necessary to hold this seat."

Democrats will be defending 21 seats next year, compared with 14 for Republicans.

Baucus joined Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey, Tim Johnson of South Dakota, Tom Harkin of Iowa and Carl Levin of Michigan in announcing his retirement plans.

Republicans Saxby Chambliss of Georgia and Mike Johanns of Nebraska also have decided not to seek re-election next year.

___

Gouras reported from Helena. Associated Press writers Matthew Brown in Billings, Andrew Taylor, Donna Cassata and Alan Fram in Washington and Carson Walker in Phoenix contributed to this report.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/89ae8247abe8493fae24405546e9a1aa/Article_2013-04-23-Baucus-Retirement/id-1eed83cabc96468ab4a6fb606f258232

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How one man survived a deadly avalanche

DENVER (AP) ? The sole survivor of an avalanche that killed five other men on the Continental Divide west of Denver was able to clear snow from his face with his unburied lower left arm so he could breathe, but he remained stuck for four hours until rescuers arrived, the Colorado Avalanche Information Center said Wednesday.

In its final report on the weekend accident, the center said the state's deadliest slide since 1962 was large enough to bury or destroy a car. Of the men who died in the 800-foot-wide, 600-foot-long avalanche Saturday morning, one was buried under 10 to 12 feet of snow.

The avalanche was tragic but avoidable, the center said.

The center's final report offered new details on the avalanche that occurred as snowboarders and skiers converged near Loveland Pass for the Rocky Mountain High Backcountry Gathering. The event was promoted by a Colorado snowboarding magazine as a day for backcountry riding but also avalanche gear and safety demonstrations.

The four snowboarders and a skier who died were all from Colorado. The Clear Creek County sheriff's office identified them as Christopher Peters, 32, of Lakewood; Joseph Timlin, 32, of Gypsum; Ryan Novack, 33, of Boulder; Ian Lamphere, 36, of Crested Butte; and Rick Gaukel, 33, of Estes Park.

Friends identified the survivor as Jerome Boulay of Crested Butte, who has declined requests for interviews.

All had proper avalanche equipment. At least two had avalanche airbags, and some had Avalung breathing devices but apparently were unable to use them, the report said.

"This was a really tragic accident. There's no denying that," said Ethan Greene, the center's director. "Nobody's immune from getting caught in avalanches. It doesn't matter how long you've been doing this, how athletic you are. ... Everybody can get killed. It's an equal-opportunity hazard."

The center has said the avalanche was a deep persistent slab avalanche, which occurs when a thick layer of hard snow breaks loose from a weak, deep layer of snowpack underneath. Colorado Avalanche Information Center forecasters had alerted people about the potential for such avalanches Saturday, warning of likely trigger points.

"If you find the wrong spot, the resulting avalanche will be very large, destructive, and dangerous," the forecast said.

On Saturday, Boulay and the other five men had left the parking lot of Loveland Ski Area, which wasn't affiliated with the backcountry gathering, for a one-hour tour.

They read the center's avalanche bulletin together, were aware of the deep persistent slab problem, and aimed to avoid threatening north-facing slopes as they planned to climb a few hundred vertical feet onto northwest-facing slopes, the report said.

But to get to that safer spot, they had to cross a dangerous area, Greene said. They decided to reduce the risk by leaving 50 feet between each person as they trekked. That turned out not to be enough for the large avalanche they triggered.

The group was heading for a stand of trees when they felt a large collapse and heard a "whumpf," the report said. In the seconds it took for the crack in the snow to move uphill and release the deep slab, the group ran toward the trees. Everyone but Boulay was completely buried as the group was swept into the Sheep Creek gully.

Boulay was buried except for his lower left arm, which he used to clear snow from his face. He tried to free his other arm and screamed for help.

There was no one around to hear him, the report said.

"It covered everybody. There was nobody left to call 911, nobody left to look for the buried, to help the one person who wasn't buried but couldn't get out," Greene said.

It took a while for anyone to realize the group was trapped.

Two Colorado Avalanche Information Center highway avalanche forecasters spotted the slide around 12:15 p.m. from Interstate 70. When they got to the scene about 30 minutes later, their avalanche beacons detected no signals. Even with binoculars, they couldn't see tracks heading into the slide area, the report said.

After forecasters drove back to the ski area to ask others at the backcountry gathering whether anyone might be trapped, several people rushed to the scene.

The center urges even expert backcountry enthusiasts to know the conditions, have rescue equipment and get educated on avalanches.

"We owe it to these guys to learn from a really horrible accident they were involved in," Greene said. "The only thing worse than all these guys getting killed is not to have us learn anything from it."

___

Online:

Find Catherine Tsai on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/ctsai_denver

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/avalanche-survivor-buried-4-hours-1-arm-free-212055845.html

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Deal of the Day ? Samsung 40? 120Hz LED Smart TV with a free $100 Gift Card

LogicBUY’s Deal for Wednesday is the 40″?Samsung Series 5 UN40EH5300 1080p 120Hz LED-backlit Smart HDTV bundled with a $100 Dell eGift card?for?$529.99. ?Features: Full HD 1080p Two 10W speakers Dolby Digital Plus/Dolby Pulse,?SRS TheaterSound HD Two HDMI, one USB (1), one component in, one optical digital audio output ConnectShare Movie Wide Color Enhancer Plus $679.99 [...]

Source: http://the-gadgeteer.com/2013/04/24/deal-of-the-day-samsung-40-120hz-led-smart-tv-with-a-free-100-gift-card/

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Sunday Night Forecast: Cloudy With A Chance Of Meteors

Another meteor shower, the Geminid, sparkled over the Spanish canary island of Tenerife on Dec. 13, 2012.

AFP/AFP/Getty Images

Another meteor shower, the Geminid, sparkled over the Spanish canary island of Tenerife on Dec. 13, 2012.

AFP/AFP/Getty Images

Keep your eye on the sky Sunday evening; the Lyrid meteor shower is expected to peak. It's the first meteor shower of the spring season.

The Lyrid shower is caused by Earth passing through the orbit of a comet known as Thatcher, though the comet itself hasn't been seen since 1861. Dust particles from the comet will be seen as flashes of light as they burn up in our atmosphere.

Kelly Beatty, senior contributing editor for Sky and Telescope magazine, tells Weekend Edition Sunday host Rachel Martin that the best time to watch will be in the early hours of Monday morning, just before dawn.

"The nice thing about meteor showers is that they are very widespread," Beatty says. "This shower lasts about a day and a half."

Beatty also recommends finding a place that is dark, without a lot of street lights, to have the best odds of seeing the flashes of light in the sky.

"Meteor showers are truly magical," he says. "It's like the universe communicating with us on some primal level. Meteors are the cosmos in action."

Source: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/04/21/178202922/sunday-night-forecast-cloudy-with-a-chance-of-meteors?ft=1&f=1007

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Video: Newtown families: We're not giving up (cbsnews)

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Chaplains In Great Demand In Aftermath Of Boston Marathon Bombing

By G. Jeffrey MacDonald
Religion News Service

BOSTON (RNS) Two days after the Boston Marathon bombings, Boston Medical Center chaplain Sister Maryanne Ruzzo was checking on staffers who'd been caring for the injured when she received a page. A bombing victim wanted to see her.

The bedside was fraught with worry. A woman in her 30s had lost a leg to amputation as surgeons deemed it unsalvageable. Still suffering multiple injuries, she was now heading into surgery again, knowing she might wake up with no legs at all.

Ruzzo stood among the woman's parents and siblings and did what she does best: listen. She heard their fears, including concern for the woman's husband, who was being treated at a different hospital and who also might lose a leg to amputation. Then she prayed.

"Other people might not want to feel the pain and say, 'Oh, it's going to be fine,'" said Ruzzo, the Archdiocese of Boston's coordinator of Catholic services at BMC. "We just try to be present and listen to them. ... I prayed for the surgeons and the nurses."

In a week when Boston hospitals cared for more than 170 bomb victims, staff chaplains were suddenly in great demand. They moved calmly from emergency departments to waiting rooms and employee lounges, offering a compassionate ear and much-needed comfort to anxious patients, family members and staffers.

"People think, 'OK, here's the guy who kind of represents the universe, or God, or the infinite or eternity,'" said Sam Lowe, a Quaker staff chaplain at BMC.

"If I stand there and I'm able to hear their story ... it reconnects them to the rest of humanity," at a time when they're apt to feel terribly alone.

At Boston Medical Center, a Boston University teaching hospital where vulnerable residents receive care, staff chaplains frequently minister to victims of violence. This week (April 15-19), BMC needed them everywhere as staff cared for 23 bomb victims.

Lowe was making rounds to patients' rooms Monday when he heard a barrage of sirens. Moments later, a nurse asked him, "Shouldn't you be in the emergency room, chaplain?"

En route to the emergency room, Lowe passed an interpreter who told him the situation there was gruesome. "There's blood, body parts, a gory scene. And chaos." He passed a patient transport supervisor, who was setting up 20 cots in the lobby for emergency room overflow and called to the chaplain: "Pray for me!" Staff who'd been in the emergency room were eager to vent to him as well.

"They didn't need a lot of prompting," he recalled. "They were shocked:'What's going on? Why is this happening?'"

Lowe soon sought out the 50-plus family members who were frantically trying to get information about loved ones at BMC and other hospitals. He was careful not to introduce himself immediately as a chaplain. Sometimes in a crisis, people panic when they see a chaplain, Lowe explained, because they assume he or she is there to help deliver the worst possible news.

"Occasionally someone would look up from an iPhone and say,'I need a charger,'" Lowe said. "So I would help them find an outlet (and then) say, 'By the way, my name is Sam, and I'm the chaplain, just making my rounds.'"

The needs of bomb victims and their loved ones extend well beyond managing physical wounds, said Lisa Allee, director of BMC's Community Violence Response Team. Not only will they face long-haul recoveries, but the immediate trauma they've endured can trigger a range of intense emotions as well as post-traumatic stress disorder.

As psychological and spiritual needs became more apparent, chaplains provided a calming presence to help victims and caregivers not get overwhelmed. They tried to be anywhere anyone felt isolated or worn down by daunting circumstances.

When staff noted one victim's family was waiting alone in a far corner of the sprawling hospital complex, Lowe ventured out to find and sit with them. Several times this week, he praised BMC's receptionist for showing kindness and patience under pressure as panicked callers pleaded for information that wasn't always available.

As bombing victims begin to consider their futures, doctors are optimistic that all their patients -- including BMC's five amputees -- will go on to lead productive lives. Advancements in prosthetic technologies, coupled with insights from Iraq and Afghanistan, can enable even the most severely injured victims to recover well, according to Peter Burke, BMC chief of trauma services.

Whether the injured woman's leg or her husband's can ultimately be saved remains unknown, Ruzzo said. Yet no matter what, patients will receive assurance from chaplains that God is with them and the Spirit overcomes adversity.

"One family said, 'You know, chaplain, you've probably seen a lot of people who've been in similar circumstances, and they've made it somehow -- right?'" Lowe recalled. "And I said to them: 'I have.'"

Also on HuffPost:

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/19/chaplains-in-great-demand-in-aftermath-of-boston-marathon-bombing_n_3119425.html

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Inhon Carbon Tablet unfolds for a CPU boost, wields a Surface-style keyboard

Believe it or not, Inhon has a wilder concept up its sleeve than the extra-light Blade 13 Carbon laptop. Its equally new Carbon Tablet at first looks like it could pass for an IdeaPad Yoga, but the non-display half has little to do with input this time around -- besides USB 3.0 and Mini DisplayPort jacks, it's mostly about giving some breathing room to the Core i3, i5 or i7 inside. Keep the Windows 8 PC closed and it runs in a slower but quieter mode for handheld use; unfold it for some serious desk work, however, and a cooling fan inside ramps up to run the processor at TurboBoost speeds. Anyone who wants more traditional interaction has to attach an optional, Touch Cover-like keyboard and trackpad combo. We don't entirely grasp the logic when a convertible laptop might have done the trick, although estimated prices between NT $29,999 and NT $39,999 ($1,007 to $1,343 US) for the eventual launch in Taiwan will make it at least somewhat feasible to try Inhon's latest design experiment.

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Boy Scouts' plan: let in gay youth, keep out gay adults

By Atossa Araxia Abrahamian

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Boy Scouts of America on Friday proposed lifting a ban on gay scouts but maintaining a prohibition on gay adults from leading troops, a compromise that attempts to end a fight that has split the century-old American institution into bitter factions.

Reaction from scouting supporters ranged from outrage to limited approval. The biggest organization in scouts, the Mormon Church, said it was studying the proposal, leaving uncertain the outcome of a May vote by scout leaders that will set policy. Gay rights groups said continuing to bar gay adults was unacceptable, but they welcomed the change for youths.

"The general feeling is that this is a bad move," which could precipitate a major crisis, A.J. Smith, president of the Association of Baptists for Scouting, wrote in a website post, attempting to summarize Baptists' views. "This is about a concerted effort to bring down a cultural icon. We must brace ourselves for the long haul on this one."

The scouts' decision is a focal point of a heated gay rights debate in the United States, where polls show public opinion is fast moving toward greater acceptance and a core of social conservatives stridently oppose such change.

In the coming months, the Supreme Court will rule on whether to strike down parts of a federal law that defines marriage as the union between a man and a woman. In 2011, the military repealed a ban on openly gay soldiers.

The Boy Scouts proposal would create a situation where a gay youth could become a scout and then be forced to resign when he becomes an adult.

Scout leaders in 2000 won a Supreme Court battle over the right to exclude gays. There are more than 2.6 million youth scouts and 1 million adults, with faith-based groups sponsoring 70 percent of scout units.

If the resolution is approved, "no youth may be denied membership in the Boy Scouts of America on the basis of sexual orientation or preference alone," Deron Smith, the organization's spokesman, told Reuters.

But the policy is not changed for adults, the group said, and an internal document obtained by Reuters says that when youth members become adults, they "must meet the requirements of our adult standards" to remain in the group.

LONG STUDY BEFORE COMPROMISE

Smith said a parents in three of four U.S. regions opposed the current membership policy.

A report on the matter found religious groups linked to the Scouts were concerned with homosexual adult leaders, not with youth, and concluded "a change in the membership policy specific to youth only would be consistent with the religious beliefs of the BSA's major chartered organizations."

AT&T Chief Executive and Chairman Randall Stephenson, a Boy Scouts board member who had called for allowing gays scouts and a key corporate advocate on the issue, endorsed the new policy on youths but did not comment on banning gay adults.

"I fully support the BSA Executive Council's resolution to ensure all youth have the opportunity to participate in scouting and benefit from the life-long leadership skills scouting helps develop," he said in a statement.

Gay rights groups were quick to say the decision was not far-reaching enough.

"By refusing to consider an end to its ban on gay and lesbian parents, the Boy Scouts have missed an opportunity to exercise leadership and usher the organization back to relevancy," said Rich Ferraro, a spokesperson for GLAAD, which promotes lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Mormon church, which has more than 430,000 youths in scouts, "will take the time needed to fully review the language and study the implications of this new proposal," spokesman Michael Purdy said.

The Mormon church has consistently opposed gay marriage, and was a primary promoter of California's 2008 ban, known as Proposition 8. But recently it has emphasized respecting gay church members and declared that homosexuality is not a choice, reflecting changing attitudes among members.

"This was an exceptionally difficult decision as a business," said Patrick Boyle, whose 1994 book "Scout's Honor" examined sexual abuse in the Boy Scouts of America.

"They were stuck in a very bad spot with their constituents divided - constituents being the parents, and also the churches and the businesses that support the scouts."

The road to a decision has been long. In July 2012, the group's board voted to uphold the gay ban. Six months later, group leaders said they were mulling over whether to remove the national restriction, leaving local branches to decide whether to admit gays and lesbians. A final vote, expected in February, was delayed following a request from a coalition of 33 faith-based councils that represent about one-fifth of all youth members in the Boy Scouts.

Boyle notes that this reversal "shows how the gay rights movement has caught fire in the past dozen years."

Chuck Small, a BSA adult leader and the parent of 10- and 12-year-old scouts in South Carolina, welcomed the proposal.

"It's a hard and divisive issue, but what it comes down to is that we learn more from people who are different from us than people who are like us," Small said.

"I think it's a healthy thing, and I hope my boys are up to the challenge to accept people for what they do, rather than what they believe or how they're made up."

(Additional reporting by Chris Francescani and Aruna Viswanatha; Editing by Vicki Allen, Andrew Hay, Eric Walsh and Stacey Joyce)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/u-boy-scouts-set-end-ban-gay-members-150711650.html

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Taiwan tech industry faces up to Samsung - Omaha.com

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) - Taiwanese companies have long viewed tech giant Samsung as a major threat and the battle has recently appeared to tilt in favor of the South Korean rival as Taiwan's smartphone, memory chip and display panel makers suffered sagging exports.

The sales erosion has been driven by competition, some of it from South Korea, and a weak global economy but has also spawned fears on this export-reliant island of 23 million that Samsung has deliberately targeted Taiwanese firms as part of a campaign to undermine their competitiveness in markets around the world.

Business Today, Taiwan's top business magazine, gave voice to those fears last month with an extensive cover story accusing Samsung Electronics of launching a "Kill Taiwan" effort and targeting some of the island's leading high-tech companies including Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., the world's largest contract chip maker.

Adding fuel to the fire, Taiwan's Fair Trade Commission recently launched an investigation into allegations that Samsung planted unflattering comments about Taiwanese consumer electronics on the Internet as a way of undermining their appeal to customers.

While Taiwanese companies are facing a challenge from Samsung, industry analysts such as John Brebeck, a Taipei-based adviser with technology development firm Quantum International Corp., says perceptions here that the South Korean company is setting out to crush Taiwan's lucrative technology industry miss the point.

Samsung is trying to make inroads in specific areas where it sees a big profit potential and these areas are also where Taiwanese companies have a major stake, he said. "It's not Taiwan as much as it's industry sectors that's motivating Samsung."

Samsung Electronics spokeswoman Jee Hae-Ryoung said business strategies like "Kill Taiwan" do not exist at Samsung.

That's all little comfort for Taiwan's technology industry, which knows it must remain nimble and innovative to avoid the downward spiral of famous Japanese companies such as Sony Corp. which were outrun by competitors including Samsung. Taiwan's high tech exports totaled $98 billion last year, accounting for about 20 percent of the island's GDP.

Fearing they will lose more ground, a number of Taiwanese manufacturers are carving out alliances with high-tech companies in Japan and the United States that are also facing off against Samsung, in an effort to safeguard market share and give a boost to Taiwan's economy. A noted and longtime Taiwanese collaborator is Apple Inc., which was replaced last year by Samsung as the top smartphone maker in the world.

For its part, the Taiwan government is pressing the island's tech companies to work more closely with local component suppliers in an effort to achieve the kind of business integration that has helped to make Samsung such a formidable rival.

"We hope the tech companies can work together with their suppliers during the early product developing process, rather than wait till the new components are developed," said Stephen Su, a marketing analyst with Taiwan's Industrial Technology Research Institute, a state-funded institute that develops cutting-edge technologies and transfers them to the private sector.

Su said a major pilot project in the integration effort involves smartphone maker HTC Corp., which is trying to use processors made by local chip designers in its new handsets.

Until last year, HTC was a top global smartphone maker, cashing in on its status as the first company to make handsets using Google's Android operation system. Now, however, it is struggling as Samsung and Apple smartphones dominate.

Aside from smartphones, another emerging battlefield in the Taiwan-Samsung rivalry is the semiconductor industry, long a Taiwanese stronghold.

With its seemingly unlimited supply of capital, Samsung has deftly moved from making memory chips that store data to more profitable logic chips that run as the brain of computers.

It is also ramping up its expansion into the foundry business that fabricates chips, posing a direct challenge to TSMC, which provides application chips to companies such as Apple and Qualcomm Inc.

TSMC founder Morris Chang has called Samsung a "formidable rival" but says his company is well prepared to meet the challenge.

In the past year, TSMC has significantly increased its capital spending to move more aggressively into the cutting-edge technologies of 20 and 16 nanometers that can make smaller chips which run faster at lower power.

The new technologies will enable TSMC to make the application processors that will run new iPhones and iPads. Apple currently gets such chips from its smartphone and tablet rival Samsung. But analysts say that Apple's transition will be complicated, because Samsung is involved in part of the processors' design, in addition to fabricating the wafers that foundries normally handle.

"Apple has been waiting until TSMC is ready and able to catch up," said Brebeck. "They are willing to wait because they want to get away from Samsung. TSMC understands it and is clearly moving rapidly in this direction."

Apart from the new processors, TSMC has - as of now - a clear edge in its foundry business with a well-established customer base.

Nicholas Chen, an attorney who advises many Taiwanese tech firms, said global companies such as Apple may not trust Samsung as a chip supplier for fear the Korean giant could steal their designs when making its own products.

TSMC's advantage, he said, is that it is a pure foundry that does not make chips under its own brand and is known to be "proactively disciplined on protecting trade secrets."

"If somebody is committed to this in this industry, they are clearly the example," Chen said.

Aside from TSMC, another Taiwanese tech company under serious threat from Samsung is Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., also known as Foxconn, which makes gadgets for global clients, including Apple iPhones and iPads, at its massive plants on mainland China.

One of Hon Hai's problems involves its acquisition of Chimei Innolux Corp., a display panel maker. Since the deal was completed three years ago, Chimei has suffered large losses. A major factor has been its inability to compete with Samsung's substantial capital spending, and produce at a profit the energy saving Amoled advanced display panel, known for its superior picture quality.

In an apparent effort to address the problem, Hon Hai Chairman Terry Gou last year negotiated to acquire a 10 percent stake in Japan's struggling Sharp Corp., the only major competitor to Samsung in display panels.

Apple was widely believed to be behind the Hon Hai move, reflecting its eagerness to find an alternative panel supplier to Samsung for iPhones, iPads and the future iTVs.

But the Hon Hai deal has been put on hold, apparently over Sharp's refusal to involve Gou in its management, and in the meanwhile it sold 3 percent of the company to Samsung.

"Hon Hai is the biggest contract manufacturer, the most cost-efficient and successful," said Brebeck. "If you take down that giant, you hit a bunch of Taiwanese firms, and you hit Apple too."

Industrial Technology Research's Su says that Samsung has the upper hand in attracting first rate talent, a crucial element in the continuing high-tech battle.

The Korean conglomerate has aggressively hunted talent from Japan, China and Taiwan - often luring skilled staff away with higher pay - and has sent large number of Koreans to study abroad and learn about overseas markets, he said.

Su pointed to flexible panels - slated for use on watches, street lighting and a number of other applications - as the next battleground in the Samsung-Taiwan rivalry.

"Taiwanese makers can maintain their edge for least another three years, but after that it depends on how hard they can work," he said.

"The Taiwan government is trying to relax various rules to help our high-tech industries, but we are lagging behind South Korea in this area because they have made it the strategic national goal to attract and facilitate high-tech investments," he said.

Source: http://www.omaha.com/article/20130417/AP11/304179962

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On the Rebound, New England Oysters Face Climate Change Threat

A growing concern to New England's boutique farmers is increased competition from oyster farms to the south. Pictured: an oyster bed vista in McClellanville, SC. Image: Flickr/Doug DuCap Food and Travel

CHARLESTOWN, R.I. ? Rain and sleet smack the surface of Ninigret Pond as oyster farmer Jules Opton-Himmel fumbles with a stalled outboard motor. Not much is going his way this morning.

He's under pressure to harvest on this mid-February day to make an on-time afternoon delivery to a local raw bar. On-board, he's trying to impress a top chef from one of Newport's most exclusive restaurants ? and his pontoon boat is stuck in a field of slushy ice not even halfway out into the lagoon where he grows oysters.

"Everything going wrong ? I'd say that's a pretty typical day," Opton-Himmel jokes, just moments before part of the outboard engine broke off, sinking into the icy water.

As New England's waters have become cleaner in recent decades, growers like Opton-Himmel have seeded the coast with oyster farms. As their efforts start to bear fruit, the ocean impacts of climate change may test the mettle of the burgeoning industry.

Boutique farmers, insatiable market
More than 350 oyster farmers now cultivate bottom leases in the shallow waters along the Northeastern seaboard, according to the Northeast Regional Aquaculture Center, up from handfuls 25 years ago. The rewards are great. With an insatiable half-shell market, gross profits are high and demand constant. But the challenges may be greater.

The Northeast's boutique oyster farmers must contend with the vagaries of New England weather. They must also deal with a host of challenges tied directly to the environment and potentially amplified by climate change, including warming waters, increasing ocean acidity and the spread of diseases that can decimate shellfish stocks.?

Climate change poses important challenges to the industry's long-term viability. But to growers like Opton-Himmel, coping with the day-to-day quandaries of small business ownership and economic pressures of a crowded, premium market, the climate threat can feel abstract.

The same day that Opton-Himmel got stuck in the ice, oysterman Jim Arnoux, owner of Rhode Island's East Beach Farms, was across the lagoon dealing with a deer carcass frozen in the ice above his oysters. "You never know what you are going to get," he said. "Anything from random and chaotic to tedious dividing and sorting."

Ancient productivity
Thousand-year-old mounds of discarded oyster shells, called middens, that line the banks along parts of Maine's Damariscotta River attest to the productivity ? and Native Americans' ancient appetite for ? local oysters. Wild populations quickly declined as European settlers moved into the area. In the 1800s, a primitive aquaculture industry was born when harvesters started actively growing oysters on submerged plots, planting oyster larvae from remaining wild reefs.

In the early 1900s, at an industry peak, nearly 30,000 acres, roughly 30 percent of the entire bottom of Rhode Island's Narragansett Bay was leased out to oyster growers.

Throughout the first half of the 20th century, "environmental changes on an epic scale" helped decimate the industry, said Bob Rheault, executive director of the East Coast Shellfish Growers Association, and industry group. One of the pioneers of New England's oyster renaissance, Rheault founded Narragansett's Moonstone Oysters in 1986.

Untreated sewage and industrial waste flowed freely into the nation's waterways. Raw oysters were implicated in massive outbreaks of cholera and typhus. Whole harvests from Long Island to New England were smothered under tons of sand during the Great Hurricane of 1938. In the 1950's, shellfish parasites wiped out huge swaths of oysters in the mid-Atlantic.

Push to clean coastal waters
A push by federal and state agencies starting in the 1970s to clean up coastal waters helped elevate oysters from "something that was going to make you sick to something that was quite safe," Rheault said.

Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=154419082a32843bb563b2dee2533899

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HTML5 WebSocket Developer Kaazing Raises $15M From NEA, Columbus Nova Technology Partners

Kaazing, a provider of live Web and mobile communication and the developer of HTML5 WebSocket, has raised $15 million in funding, bringing the company’s total financing to $39 million. New investors this round include New Enterprise Associates and Columbus Nova Technology Partners, as well as existing investors. Kaazing says it will use the money to drive its plans for corporate growth. ?This influx of new capital will fuel our global expansion and further validates our market momentum with an enterprise-grade web communication platform built using the HTML5 WebSocket standard,” said Kaazing CEO and co-founder Jonas Jacobi in a statement. ?With iPads and other smart mobile devices rapidly displacing PCs and accelerating cloud adoption, enterprise application modernization is increasingly urgent. Today?s static web architectures are expensive and ineffective in supporting this huge market shift – Kaazing?s leading communication products are critical to the emerging cloud and mobile architectures.? We are excited to be investors in the leader in this space,” added NEA partner Rohini Chakravarthy. The company’s last round of funding was in June, when it raised $17 million. At that time, Kaazing said it would use the funds to fund opportunities for using WebSocket technology to power real-time communications. Last year, Kaazing also brought on Cisco veteran John Donnelly to expand its sales and business development channels. Based in Mountain View with additional sales offices in New York City and London, Kaazing helps drive the real-time Web and mobile communications of Intel, Google, Bechtel, Oracle, and HSBC. The company was created in 2007 and its founding team helped design the HTML5 WebSocket protocol in order to enable a ?full-duplex pipe? between participants, rather than the legacy infrastructure that required a request and response between two users.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/AQAT4fzeT1Q/

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States drop GED: At $120 a pop, some say test is just too expensive

States drop GED, which will be available in the future only on computer. It's a historic shift away from the test that set the standard for high school equivalency certification for more than 70 years.

By Allison Terry,?Correspondent / April 15, 2013

Deni Loving teaches a GED class in Kansas City, Mo., on April 11. States are looking for an alternative to the GED high school equivalency test because of concerns that a new version coming out next year is more costly and will no longer be offered in a pencil and paper format.

Orlin Wagner/AP

Enlarge

States are dropping the GED for alternative high school equivalency tests out of concern that the new computerized iteration, to be launched in January, is too expensive.

Skip to next paragraph Allison Terry

Correspondent

Allison Terry works on national news desk for the Christian Science Monitor. She contributes to the culture section and?previously worked on the cover page desk.

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The General Education Development exam has been synonymous with high school equivalency certification since 1942, when it was created to help veterans returning from World War II. States are ultimately responsible for awarding diplomas, but they have relied on the GED for testing.

However, a new version of the GED, which will be offered only on computers and will cost $120 (double the current price), has prompted states to seek alternative tests from competing education companies.

?The national situation is definitely fluid,? Tom Robbins, Missouri?s director of adult education and high school equivalency, told the Associated Press.?

New York became the first state to contract with a new company its high school equivalency exam. In March, it awarded a three-year, $8.4 million contract to CTB/McGraw Hill, which created the Test Assessing Secondary Completion (TASC), reported The Wall Street Journal.

Montana and New Hampshire have also switched to a new exam offered by Education Testing Service, the company that developed and administers the GRE and TOEFL exams, which will cost $50 to $60. The new High School Equivalency Test (HiSET) will launch in January, according to the ETS website. Cost influenced both states' decisions, with Montana?s Superintendent of Public Instruction Denise Juneau saying that residents ?looking to improve their economic situation by obtaining a high school equivalency diploma should not have to overcome a significant financial barrier in order to achieve that goal,? reported the Associated Press.

Several other states are researching their options, reports AP. The California Department of Education is considering whether to amend regulations that the state use only the GED test, while Tennessee and New Jersey are looking into offering more than one test. Missouri requested bids from test makers, planning to make a decision this month. And other states, including Massachusetts, Maine, Indiana, and Iowa, are planning to request information,?said AP.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/PravWL6qPX0/States-drop-GED-At-120-a-pop-some-say-test-is-just-too-expensive

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