19 Dec 11
Thanks to video games
10 Dec 11 Congress Won’t Recess To Block Obama Appointments
Senate Republicans blocked confirmation votes on two of President Obama’s most high-profile nominees this week — one for a seat on a federal appeals court, the other to head the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Traditionally, the end-of-the-year holidays have allowed presidents to bypass Congress and give such thwarted nominees recess appointments. But an angry President Obama is quickly leaning that this might not be the case this year.
Enlarge Mark Wilson/Getty Images The U.S. Capitol is seen above in 2009 as senators worked late into the night on legislation. The light signifying that Congress is in session may remain on this holiday season as well, since House Republicans have said they will remain in a pro-forma session.
Mark Wilson/Getty Images The U.S. Capitol is seen above in 2009 as senators worked late into the night on legislation. The light signifying that Congress is in session may remain on this holiday season as well, since House Republicans have said they will remain in a pro-forma session.
Obama insisted, “I will not take any options off the table when it comes to getting Richard Cordray in as director of the consumer finance protection board.” The only way the president can make a recess appointment for Cordray is if Congress is actually in recess. And ever since late May, Congress has remained in permanent session, mainly because Republican lawmakers want to prevent any more recess appointments. Donald Ritchie, the Senate’s official historian, says several presidents have used a constitutional provision that allows them to convene a session of Congress. “But there is this other provision that says, well, if the two houses themselves can’t agree on an adjournment, the president can adjourn Congress,” Ritchie says. “It’s just that no president has ever exercised that constitutional authority.” Utah Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch says taking such a measure “would be a very unwise political thing to do.” Hatch doubts President Obama would actually exercise his constitutional power to adjourn Congress in order to make recess appointments. “It would make him look like he’s stupid, because as much as he hates Congress, or … [as a] more fair statement, might hate Congress, he still needs it,” Hatch says. It’s not likely the president would even have the option of adjourning Congress, because the only way he can do that is if one chamber adjourns and the other one doesn’t. House Republicans intend to remain in pro-forma session throughout the holidays, and a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says it’s likely the Senate will do the same. Congressional expert Ross Baker of Rutgers University says the chief concern of the Senate’s top Democrat may be the 23 Democrats facing re-election bids next year.
Enlarge Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images Richard Cordray testifies during his confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill in September. His nomination to head the consumer watchdog agency was blocked by Senate Republicans on Thursday.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images Richard Cordray testifies during his confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill in September. His nomination to head the consumer watchdog agency was blocked by Senate Republicans on Thursday.
“He’s really in a position where he’s trying to do everything he can to protect those 23 Democrats, so that may or may not coincide with the interests of President Obama,” Baker says. The question of what constitutes a congressional recess has never really been settled. Betty Koed, an associate Senate historian, says that in 1903, Teddy Roosevelt used an almost nonexistent congressional break to make recess appointments. “When the presiding officer brought the gavel down to end one session, he simultaneously began the next session,” Koed says, “And in that split second it took the gavel to go down, Roosevelt appointed 193 people.” Catholic University law professor Victor Williams says President Obama should show similar audacity. “He should not ignore the pro-forma sessions,” Williams says. “He should explicitly, deliberately challenge them.” If he doesn’t, Williams says, a pattern of pro-forma sessions shutting off recess appointments that began late in the Clinton administration will only continue, leaving key posts in the administration vacant. Sen. Jeff Merkley, an Oregon Democrat, agrees. “At some point, the abuse of process by my Republican colleagues means that the president should consider any constitutional legal means to make our government work for working Americans,” Merkley says. But the president’s options, at this point, appear very limited.
08 Dec 11 The Wild West Of Finance
Enlarge Spencer Platt/Getty Images “Failure is as important to healthy capitalism as success.”
Spencer Platt/Getty Images “Failure is as important to healthy capitalism as success.”
Below is an excerpt from Adam Davidson’s latest column in the New York Times Magazine, “The Wild West of Finance.” Also, see last week’s column, “Europe’s Financial Crisis, in Plain English.” Day trading is part of the often demonized Wild West of investment. It’s a world of online brokers, boutique money-management firms, private-equity companies and others — a gold-rush universe where anybody can sell almost anything as long as you don’t (technically) tell any lies. It isn’t a glamorous life. Day traders, for instance, stare at computer screens all day buying shares, only to sell them seconds or minutes later. Their hope is that if they buy low and sell a tiny bit less low enough times in a day, they can add up some real profit. Surveys indicate that most lose money and give up fairly quickly. Hedge funds, which allow rich people and institutions to outsource their financial gambling, are the major players in the Wild West. And, contrary to public belief, they are no more likely to succeed than independent day traders. The handful of firms that have made huge and consistent profits hide a remarkable secret: study after study shows that most hedge funds either lose money or make tepid returns. Many — and, some argue, most — actually shut down after a few years. What’s to celebrate here? The Wild West represents something akin to a normal, thriving market. It is largely overseen by the S.E.C., which takes a forgiving approach to firms that sell products to active investors. The downsides to this lax regulation are well known, but it is not without its benefits. Entrepreneurs with nothing more than a good idea can enter the market relatively quickly and compete against established firms. If they can offer better products than their competitors, they’ll succeed; if not, they go bust (hopefully before they almost blow up the world). One major sales pitch for capitalism is that constant competition makes us all better off. If FAZ — or a hedge fund, for that matter — doesn’t appeal to enough people, it will eventually collapse. And there is nothing wrong with that. Failure is as important to healthy capitalism as success. The nation’s handful of huge banks, however, are spared the indignity of failure. (Ignore Bear Stearns and Lehman — they were puny compared with the true giants.) Citi and Goldman Sachs both bet against the interests of some of their largest clients and created products designed to fail. It’s extremely likely that all of the nation’s largest banks would have collapsed over the past three years without enormous help from the Federal Reserve. In any normally functioning market, they would have subsequently had trouble making huge profits. Instead, they’ve gotten bigger and richer. Read the full column here.
01 Dec 11 NTU-led research probes potential link between cancer and a …
Abstract:
A study led by a group of Nanyang Technological University (NTU) researchers has found that a chemical commonly used in consumer products can potentially cause cancer.
Singapore | Posted on November 29th, 2011
The chemical, Zinc Oxide, is used to absorb harmful ultra violet light. But when it is turned into nano-sized particles, they are able to enter human cells and may damage the user’s DNA. This in turn activates a protein called p53, whose duty is to prevent damaged cells from multiplying and becoming cancerous. However, cells that lack p53 or do not produce enough functional p53 may instead develop into cancerous cells when they come into contact with Zinc Oxide nanoparticles.
The study is led by Assistant Professor Joachim Loo, 34, and Assistant Professor Ng Kee Woei, 37, from NTU’s School of Materials Science and Engineering. They worked with Assistant Professor David Leong, 38, from the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, National University of Singapore, a joint senior author of this research paper.
The findings suggest that companies may need to reassess the health impact of nano-sized Zinc Oxide particles used in everyday products. More studies are also needed on the use and concentration levels of nanomaterials in consumer products, how often a consumer uses them and in what quantities.
“Currently there is a lack of information about the risks of the nanomaterials used in consumer products and what they can pose to the human body. This study points to the need for further research in this area and we hope to work with the relevant authorities on this,” said Asst Prof Loo.
The groundbreaking research findings were published in this month’s edition of Biomaterials, one of the world’s top journals in the field of biomaterials research. The breakthrough also validated efforts by Asst Prof Loo and Asst Prof Ng to pioneer a research group in the emerging field of nanotoxicology, which is still very much in its infancy throughout the world.
Nanotoxicology studies materials to see if they are toxic or harmful when they are turned into nano-sized particles. This is because nanomaterials usually have very different properties when compared to when the materials are of a larger size.
Asst Prof Ng said the team will carry out further research as the DNA damage brought about by nano-sized Zinc Oxide particles is currently a result of an unknown mechanism. But what is clear is that besides causing DNA damage, nanoparticles can also cause other harmful effects when used in high doses.
“From our studies, we found that nanoparticles can also increase stress levels in cells, cause inflammation or simply kill cells,” said Asst Prof Ng who added that apart from finding out the cellular mechanism, more focused research is also expected to ascertain the physiological effects and damage that nano-sized Zinc Oxide particles can cause.
Asst Prof Loo pointed out that besides enhancing the understanding of the potential risks of using nanomaterials, advancements in nanotoxicology research will also help scientists put nanomaterials to good use in biomedical applications.
For example, although killing cells in our bodies is typically undesirable, this becomes a positive outcome if it can be effectively directed towards cancer cells in the body. At the same time, the team is also studying how nanomaterials can be “re-designed” to pose a lesser risk to humans, yet still possess the desired beneficial properties.
This research discovery is one of the latest in a series of biomedical breakthroughs by NTU in healthcare. Future healthcare is one of NTU’s Five Peaks of Excellence with which the university aims to make its mark globally under the NTU 2015 five-year strategic plan. The other four peaks are sustainable earth, new media, the best of the East and West, and innovation.
Moving forward, the team hopes to work with existing and new collaborative partners, within and outside of Singapore, to orchestrate a more concerted effort towards the advancement of the fledgling field of nanotoxicology here, with the aim of helping regulatory bodies in Singapore formulate guidelines to protect consumer interests.
The research team would also like to work with the European Union to uncover the risks involving nanomaterials and how these materials should be regulated before they are made commercially available. Asst Prof Joachim Loo, who received his Bachelor and Doctorate degrees from NTU, was the only Singaporean representative in a recent nanotechnology workshop held in Europe. At the workshop, it was agreed that research collaborations in nanotoxicology between EU and South-east Asia should be increased.
####
About Nanyang Technological University
Nanyang Technological University (NTU) is a research-intensive university with globally acknowledged strengths in science and engineering. The university has roots that go back to 1955 when Nanyang University was set up. Today, NTU has four colleges with 12 schools, and four autonomous entities, the National Institute of Education, S Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Earth Observatory of Singapore, and Singapore Centre on Environmental Life Sciences Engineering.
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A decade of research on nanotechnology risks November 30th, 2011
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CVD Equipment Corporation to Participate in the 7th Annual Livingston Nanotech Conference November 29th, 2011
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Source: http://www.nanotech-now.com/news.cgi?story_id=43970
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01 Dec 11 Microscopic worms could hold the key to living life on Mars
ScienceDaily (Nov. 29, 2011) ? The astrophysicist Stephen Hawking believes that if humanity is to survive we will have to up sticks and colonise space. But is the human body up to the challenge?
Scientists at The University of Nottingham believe that Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans), a microscopic worm which has biologically similarities to human beings, could help us understand how humans might cope with long-duration space exploration.
Their research, published Nov. 30, 2011 in Interface, a journal of The Royal Society, has shown that in space the C. elegans develops from egg to adulthood and produces progeny just as it does on earth. This makes it an ideal and cost-effective experimental system to investigate the effects of long duration and distance space exploration.
In December 2006 a team of scientists led by Dr Nathaniel Szewczyk from the Division of Clinical Physiology in the School of Graduate Entry Medicine blasted 4,000 C. elegans into space onboard the Space Shuttle Discovery. The researchers were able to successfully monitor the effect of low Earth orbit (LEO) on 12 generations of C. elegans during the first three months of their six month voyage onboard the International Space Station. These are the first observations of C. elegans behaviour in LEO.
Dr Szewczyk said: “A fair number of scientists agree that we could colonise other planets. While this sounds like science fiction it is a fact that if mankind wants to avoid the natural order of extinction then we need to find ways to live on other planets. Thankfully most of the world’s space agencies are committed to this common goal.
“While it may seem surprising, many of the biological changes that happen during spaceflight affect astronauts and worms and in the same way. We have been able to show that worms can grow and reproduce in space for long enough to reach another planet and that we can remotely monitor their health. As a result C. elegans is a cost effective option for discovering and studying the biological effects of deep space missions. Ultimately, we are now in a position to be able to remotely grow and study an animal on another planet.”
Many experts believe the ultimate survival of humanity is dependent upon colonisation of other planetary bodies. But we face key challenges associated with long term space exploration. Radiation exposure and musculoskeletal deterioration are thought to be two of the key obstacles to successful habitation beyond LEO.
The C. elegans has been used on Earth to help us understand human biology — now it could help us investigate living on Mars.
C. elegans was the first multi-cellular organism to have its genetic structure completely mapped and many of its 20,000 genes perform the same functions as those in humans. Two thousand of these genes have a role in promoting muscle function and 50 to 60 per cent of these have very obvious human counterparts.
Dr Szewczyk is no stranger to space flight — this was his third space-worm mission. Dr Szewczyk and his team at Nottingham collaborated with experts at the University of Pittsburgh, the University of Colorado and the Simon Fraser University in Canada, to develop a compact automated C. elegans culturing system which can be monitored remotely to observe the effect of environmental toxins and in-flight radiation.
Dr Szewczyk said: “Worms allow us to detect changes in growth, development, reproduction and behaviour in response to environmental conditions such as toxins or in response to deep space missions. Given the high failure rate of Mars missions use of worms allows us to safely and relatively cheaply test spacecraft systems prior to manned missions.”
The 2006 space mission, which led to this latest research, was followed up with a fourth mission in November 2009. Some of the results of the 2009 mission were published earlier this year in the journal PLoS ONE.
Together these two missions have established that the team are not only in a position to send worms to other planets but also to experiment on them on the way there and/or once there. More results, including a mechanism by which muscles can repair themselves are due to be published shortly.
The origins of Dr Szewczyk’s worms can be traced back to a rubbish dump in Bristol. C. elegans often feed on bacteria that develop on decaying vegetable matter.
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01 Dec 11 ‘UFOs’ Disrupting Search for ‘God Particle’ (LiveScience.com)
Physicists working at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a particle accelerator at CERN Laboratory in Switzerland, are trying to slam particles together hard enough to break them into never-before-seen pieces, which could solve some of the biggest puzzles in nature.
But UFOs ? unidentified falling objects, that is ? keep getting in their way.
The LHC is a 17-mile (27-km) circular tunnel lined with powerful magnets, which accelerate protons (particles in the nuclei of atoms) to 99.9999991 percent the speed of light. Beams of these super-brisk protons are accelerated clockwise around the ring and collide with beams traveling counter-clockwise, and, like a well-struck pi?ata, a dead-on hit produces a thrilling outburst of subatomic goodies. When they turn the proton beams up to full power, the physicists hope to find the Higgs boson, also known as the “God particle,” which is believed to create the drag that gives everything else mass, among the collision debris. They’ll also look for dark matter, the invisible substance that permeates the outskirts of galaxies.
However, since last year, something has been fluttering in the way of the proton beams and dampening the force of their blows, the physicists say. These “UFOs” aren’t from outer space ? they’re probably microscopic dust particles of unknown origin ? but they’re still mysterious, and while they’re around, the prize goodies will likely remain stashed. [LHC On Hold Until 2012]
UFOs are “one of the major known limitations for the performance of the Large Hadron Collider,” wrote Tobias Baer, a physicist working at the LHC, and colleagues in a paper for the recent IPAC2011 conference in San Sebasti?n, Spain. The researchers have spent the past few months trying to characterize the UFOs, and are devising strategies to get rid of them.
More than 10,000 possible UFO events ? occasions when there were proton-beam losses thought to result from UFOs blocking the protons ? were observed between April and August, some so significant that they triggered “beam dumps,” where the beam automatically shut down. Many of these events occurred in the electric arc that produces the beam of protons, the researchers wrote. Because the events became more frequent as the intensity of the proton beam increased, they “are expected to be very critical for LHC operation at higher energies.”
Even more UFO events, and resulting beam dumps, happened at a point in the beam just past objects called injector kicker magnets (MKIs), suggesting that these magnets are a major source of the mystery objects. The large impact of these UFOs implied that they were being accelerated toward the proton beam by the magnets, which could only happen if the UFO particles were charged.
“Many additional studies are ongoing to gain a more profound knowledge about the behavior, impact and production mechanism of UFOs,” Baer et al. wrote.
Follow Natalie Wolchover on Twitter @nattyover. Follow Life’s Little Mysteries on Twitter @llmysteries, then join us on Facebook.
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01 Dec 11 In the heart of Cygnus, NASA’s Fermi reveals a cosmic-ray cocoon
![[ Back to EurekAlert! ]](http://www.eurekalert.org/images/back2e.gif){kind=small}
Public release date: 28-Nov-2011[ | E-mail |
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Contact: Francis Reddy
francis.j.reddy@nasa.gov
301-286-4453
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center
The constellation Cygnus, now visible in the western sky as twilight deepens after sunset, hosts one of our galaxy’s richest-known stellar construction zones. Astronomers viewing the region at visible wavelengths see only hints of this spectacular activity thanks to a veil of nearby dust clouds forming the Great Rift, a dark lane that splits the Milky Way, a faint band of light marking our galaxy’s central plane.
Located in the vicinity of the second-magnitude star Gamma Cygni, the star-forming region was named Cygnus X when it was discovered as a diffuse radio source by surveys in the 1950s. Now, a study using data from NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope finds that the tumult of star birth and death in Cygnus X has managed to corral fast-moving particles called cosmic rays.
Cosmic rays are subatomic particles — mainly protons — that move through space at nearly the speed of light. In their journey across the galaxy, the particles are deflected by magnetic fields, which scramble their paths and make it impossible to backtrack the particles to their sources.
Yet when cosmic rays collide with interstellar gas, they produce gamma rays — the most energetic and penetrating form of light — that travel to us straight from the source. By tracing gamma-ray signals throughout the galaxy, Fermi’s Large Area Telescope (LAT) is helping astronomers understand the sources of cosmic rays and how they’re accelerated to such high speeds. In fact, this is one of the mission’s key goals.
The galaxy’s best candidate sites for cosmic-ray acceleration are the rapidly expanding shells of ionized gas and magnetic field associated with supernova explosions. For stars, mass is destiny, and the most massive ones — known as types O and B — live fast and die young.
They’re also relatively rare because such extreme stars, with masses more than 40 times that of our sun and surface temperatures eight times hotter, exert tremendous influence on their surroundings. With intense ultraviolet radiation and powerful outflows known as stellar winds, the most massive stars rapidly disperse their natal gas clouds, naturally limiting the number of massive stars in any given region.
Which brings us back to Cygnus X. Located about 4,500 light-years away, this star factory is believed to contain enough raw material to make two million stars like our sun. Within it are many young star clusters and several sprawling groups of related O- and B-type stars, called OB associations. One, called Cygnus OB2, contains 65 O stars — the most massive, luminous and hottest type — and nearly 500 B stars.
Astronomers estimate that the association’s total stellar mass is 30,000 times that of our sun, making Cygnus OB2 the largest object of its type within 6,500 light-years. And with ages of less than 5 million years, few of its most massive stars have lived long enough to exhaust their fuel and explode as supernovae.
Intense light and outflows from the monster stars in Cygnus OB2 and from several other nearby associations and star clusters have excavated vast amounts of gas from their vicinities. The stars reside within cavities filled with hot, thin gas surrounded by ridges of cool, dense gas where stars are now forming. It’s within the hollowed-out zones that Fermi’s LAT detects intense gamma-ray emission, according to a paper describing the findings that was published in the Nov. 25 edition of the journal Science.
“We are seeing young cosmic rays, with energies comparable to those produced by the most powerful particle accelerators on Earth. They have just started their galactic voyage, zig-zagging away from their accelerator and producing gamma rays when striking gas or starlight in the cavities,” said co-author Luigi Tibaldo, a physicist at Padova University and the Italian National Institute of Nuclear Physics.
The energy of the gamma-ray emission, which is measured up to 100 billion electron volts by the LAT and even higher by ground-based gamma-ray detectors, indicates the extreme nature of the accelerated particles. (For comparison, the energy of visible light is between 2 and 3 electron volts.) The environment holds onto its cosmic rays despite their high energies by entangling them in turbulent magnetic fields created by the combined outflows of the region’s numerous high-mass stars.
“These shockwaves stir the gas and twist and tangle the magnetic field in a cosmic-scale jacuzzi so the young cosmic rays, freshly ejected from their accelerators, remain trapped in this turmoil until they can leak into quieter interstellar regions, where they can stream more freely,” said co-author Isabelle Grenier, an astrophysicist at Paris Diderot University and the Atomic Energy Commission in Saclay, France.
The well known Gamma Cygni supernova remnant so named for its proximity to the star — also lies within this region; astronomers estimate its age at about 7,000 years. The Fermi team considers it possible that the supernova remnant spawned the cosmic rays trapped in the Cygnus X “cocoon,” but they also suggest an alternative scenario where the particles became accelerated through repeated interaction with shockwaves produced inside the cocoon by powerful stellar winds.
“Whether the particles further gain or lose energy inside this cocoon needs to be investigated, but its existence shows that cosmic-ray history is much more eventful than a random walk away from their sources,” Tibaldo added.
Fermi is providing a never-before-seen glimpse of the early life of cosmic rays, long before they diffuse into the galaxy at large. Astronomers know of a dozen stellar clusters at least as young and rich as Cygnus OB2, including the Arches and Quintuplet clusters near the galaxy’s center. Energetic gamma rays are detected in the vicinity of several of them, so perhaps they also corral cosmic rays in their own high-energy cocoons.
###
NASA’s Fermi is an astrophysics and particle physics partnership managed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and developed in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy, with important contributions from academic institutions and partners in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Sweden and the United States.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Public release date: 28-Nov-2011[ | E-mail |
Share ]
Contact: Francis Reddy
francis.j.reddy@nasa.gov
301-286-4453
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center
The constellation Cygnus, now visible in the western sky as twilight deepens after sunset, hosts one of our galaxy’s richest-known stellar construction zones. Astronomers viewing the region at visible wavelengths see only hints of this spectacular activity thanks to a veil of nearby dust clouds forming the Great Rift, a dark lane that splits the Milky Way, a faint band of light marking our galaxy’s central plane.
Located in the vicinity of the second-magnitude star Gamma Cygni, the star-forming region was named Cygnus X when it was discovered as a diffuse radio source by surveys in the 1950s. Now, a study using data from NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope finds that the tumult of star birth and death in Cygnus X has managed to corral fast-moving particles called cosmic rays.
Cosmic rays are subatomic particles — mainly protons — that move through space at nearly the speed of light. In their journey across the galaxy, the particles are deflected by magnetic fields, which scramble their paths and make it impossible to backtrack the particles to their sources.
Yet when cosmic rays collide with interstellar gas, they produce gamma rays — the most energetic and penetrating form of light — that travel to us straight from the source. By tracing gamma-ray signals throughout the galaxy, Fermi’s Large Area Telescope (LAT) is helping astronomers understand the sources of cosmic rays and how they’re accelerated to such high speeds. In fact, this is one of the mission’s key goals.
The galaxy’s best candidate sites for cosmic-ray acceleration are the rapidly expanding shells of ionized gas and magnetic field associated with supernova explosions. For stars, mass is destiny, and the most massive ones — known as types O and B — live fast and die young.
They’re also relatively rare because such extreme stars, with masses more than 40 times that of our sun and surface temperatures eight times hotter, exert tremendous influence on their surroundings. With intense ultraviolet radiation and powerful outflows known as stellar winds, the most massive stars rapidly disperse their natal gas clouds, naturally limiting the number of massive stars in any given region.
Which brings us back to Cygnus X. Located about 4,500 light-years away, this star factory is believed to contain enough raw material to make two million stars like our sun. Within it are many young star clusters and several sprawling groups of related O- and B-type stars, called OB associations. One, called Cygnus OB2, contains 65 O stars — the most massive, luminous and hottest type — and nearly 500 B stars.
Astronomers estimate that the association’s total stellar mass is 30,000 times that of our sun, making Cygnus OB2 the largest object of its type within 6,500 light-years. And with ages of less than 5 million years, few of its most massive stars have lived long enough to exhaust their fuel and explode as supernovae.
Intense light and outflows from the monster stars in Cygnus OB2 and from several other nearby associations and star clusters have excavated vast amounts of gas from their vicinities. The stars reside within cavities filled with hot, thin gas surrounded by ridges of cool, dense gas where stars are now forming. It’s within the hollowed-out zones that Fermi’s LAT detects intense gamma-ray emission, according to a paper describing the findings that was published in the Nov. 25 edition of the journal Science.
“We are seeing young cosmic rays, with energies comparable to those produced by the most powerful particle accelerators on Earth. They have just started their galactic voyage, zig-zagging away from their accelerator and producing gamma rays when striking gas or starlight in the cavities,” said co-author Luigi Tibaldo, a physicist at Padova University and the Italian National Institute of Nuclear Physics.
The energy of the gamma-ray emission, which is measured up to 100 billion electron volts by the LAT and even higher by ground-based gamma-ray detectors, indicates the extreme nature of the accelerated particles. (For comparison, the energy of visible light is between 2 and 3 electron volts.) The environment holds onto its cosmic rays despite their high energies by entangling them in turbulent magnetic fields created by the combined outflows of the region’s numerous high-mass stars.
“These shockwaves stir the gas and twist and tangle the magnetic field in a cosmic-scale jacuzzi so the young cosmic rays, freshly ejected from their accelerators, remain trapped in this turmoil until they can leak into quieter interstellar regions, where they can stream more freely,” said co-author Isabelle Grenier, an astrophysicist at Paris Diderot University and the Atomic Energy Commission in Saclay, France.
The well known Gamma Cygni supernova remnant so named for its proximity to the star — also lies within this region; astronomers estimate its age at about 7,000 years. The Fermi team considers it possible that the supernova remnant spawned the cosmic rays trapped in the Cygnus X “cocoon,” but they also suggest an alternative scenario where the particles became accelerated through repeated interaction with shockwaves produced inside the cocoon by powerful stellar winds.
“Whether the particles further gain or lose energy inside this cocoon needs to be investigated, but its existence shows that cosmic-ray history is much more eventful than a random walk away from their sources,” Tibaldo added.
Fermi is providing a never-before-seen glimpse of the early life of cosmic rays, long before they diffuse into the galaxy at large. Astronomers know of a dozen stellar clusters at least as young and rich as Cygnus OB2, including the Arches and Quintuplet clusters near the galaxy’s center. Energetic gamma rays are detected in the vicinity of several of them, so perhaps they also corral cosmic rays in their own high-energy cocoons.
###
NASA’s Fermi is an astrophysics and particle physics partnership managed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and developed in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy, with important contributions from academic institutions and partners in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Sweden and the United States.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-11/nsfc-ith112811.php
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30 Nov 11 Fukushima residents tour German renewable village (AP)
FELDHEIM, Germany ? A group of residents from the radiation-stricken area around Japan’s tsunami-hit nuclear reactors and a Tokyo actor are visiting Germany to learn how renewable energy could work in their homeland.
Among them is Tatsuko Okara, an organic farmer who lives 40 kilometers (25 miles) from the disabled Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant. Okara told The Associated Press on Wednesday that she first began to worry about the impact a nuclear accident could have on her family after the 1986 meltdown in Chernobyl.
After the March 11 earthquake and tsunami in Japan which caused massive radiation leaks, Okara said she decided to devote herself to sparking an energy revolution in her own nation, such as that which is taking place in Germany.
“I would like to see Japan move away from nuclear energy,” Okara said. “But we will need another energy source, that’s why we are here to learn how we could make it happen.”
The group, organized and led by representatives of Greenpeace Japan, arrived Wednesday in the northeastern German village of Feldheim to learn how its 145 residents have taken advantage of the energy generated by a nearby windfarm and a biofuel plant that burns the waste from a local pig farm to become an entirely self-sustaining, energy-positive village.
The project has its roots in the 1990s, when farmers in the area agreed to rent some of their land to a young researcher wanting to install a wind turbine. In the following years, several dozen turbines sprouted out of the once fallow field ? but Feldheim’s 145 residents didn’t benefit from any of the energy produced in their own back yard.
They made an agreement to receive power from the windpark in partial return for the use of the land, resulting in a 1/4 to 1/3 cut in their energy bills. They then added solar panels and a plant to burn the biofuels they were already producing ? in short they drew on the natural resources at hand.
“We are willing to tell you how we did it,” Mayor Michael Knape told the group. “If you want, we can even help you build a Feldheim in Japan.”
In the wake of the Fukushima disaster, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government voted in June to shutter its network of 17 nuclear reactors by 2020 and instead make the expansion of renewable sources the focus of its energy policy. Germany draws 23 percent of its energy from nuclear power, compared to Japan, which drew some 30 percent of its power from nuclear reactors before the accident.
By comparison, renewable sources now provide Germans with 17 percent of their power, as compared with 9 percent in Japan.
Actor Taro Yamamoto, a resident of Tokyo who has also devoted himself to the fight against nuclear power since the accident, said the first step to bringing about change is for Japan to start educating the people about energy.
“It is important for the Japanese to realize that renewable energy can work on a large scale, and that people can make money from it,” said Yamamoto, who actively asked questions about Feldheim’s 43 wind turbines and the 600 pigs that produce the waste to fuel the biogas plant.
“In order to let the people of Japan know, it is important to be here, to see this,” he said, standing beneath a towering wind turbine.
Knape, Feldheim’s mayor, said it took about 10 years for residents in the area to come around to the idea of investing in renewable energy. They were truly convinced when they realized that building their own power network would result in a 25 to 30 percent cut in their electricity bills and annual savings of euro100,000 ($134,180) in energy costs for the farmer’s co-op in the village.
The 30 local jobs created through the windpark and the biogas plant provided further proof for Feldheim residents that their decision to rely on renewables, and themselves, was the right one.
“The energy revolution is taking place in the countryside,” said Werner Frohwitter, spokesman for Feldheim’s energy project. “We have created a whole new perspective for these people.”
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30 Nov 11 Hope Solo: I Was Too Muscular for Dancing With the Stars (omg!)
When Hope Solo and Maksim Chmerkovskiy were voted off Dancing With the Stars on November 15, the 30-year-old soccer player was so distraught she refused to speak to reporters backstage.
VIDEO: An angry Maks lashes out at the judges
The athlete broke her silence during a Tuesday appearance on Anderson, where Solo told host Anderson Cooper she felt “very naive” during her time on the ABC show.
“It is very much reality television. From day one, they casted our characters,” she said.
Though she frequently sparred with Chmerkovskiy, 31, Solo insisted “Maks and I were great friends and we had an endearing relationship.”
PHOTOS: DWTS‘ incredible body makeovers
Solo felt that the three judges — Len Goodman, Carrie Ann Inaba and Bruno Tonioli — were wary of her from the beginning.
PHOTOS: DWTS‘ sexiest power couples
“I was told I had too much muscle and I was too intense and wasn’t very dainty. Well, hello — you cast a female professional athlete! Help me get better as a dancer,” she said. “There’s no hard feelings at all. I understand that it’s television.”
Tell Us: Did Hope Solo deserve to be sent home on November 15?
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30 Nov 11 On Supporting Small Business – A Beautiful Mess
For the past three years I have supported myself solely on an income from my small business. It hasn’t always been easy, but I’ll never regret it. I’ve learned so much about work ethic, celcebrating each small step and countless lessons learned the hard way. The truth is that all small businesses are incredibly hard work. Each one has it’s own set of struggles, hopes, dreams and fears. Through all of this, I’ve learned how incredibly important support is! I wouldn’t be where I am today without the loyal support my my friends, family and blog readers. Because of this it’s very important to me to support other small business owners whenever possible. Buying handmade, vintage and local… theses are topics I could talk all day about. It’s such a wonderul feeling to support people who you believe in. I would love to encourage you to support small businesses this Holiday season! It’s a magical way to give back to people who take big risks to bring something special to the marketplace… like this dress I’m wearing today. xo. elsie
Outfit Details: Dress/The Velvet Bird?(yep! it’s handmade!), Shoes c/o ModCloth, glasses/UO, Cardigan/hand-me-down from Missy.?
Source: http://abeautifulmess.typepad.com/my_weblog/2011/11/on-supporting-small-business.html
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