Saturday, March 2, 2013

Leaving NKorea, Rodman calls Kims 'great leaders'

Former NBA star Dennis Rodman speaks to the media at the Pyongyang Airport in Pyongyang, before he leaves North Korea Friday, March 1, 2013. Ending his unexpected round of basketball diplomacy in North Korea on Friday, Rodman called leader Kim Jong Un an "awesome guy" and said his father and grandfather were "great leaders." (AP Photo/Kyodo News) JAPAN OUT, MANDATORY CREDIT, NO LICENSING IN CHINA, HONG KONG, JAPAN, SOUTH KOREA AND FRANCE

Former NBA star Dennis Rodman speaks to the media at the Pyongyang Airport in Pyongyang, before he leaves North Korea Friday, March 1, 2013. Ending his unexpected round of basketball diplomacy in North Korea on Friday, Rodman called leader Kim Jong Un an "awesome guy" and said his father and grandfather were "great leaders." (AP Photo/Kyodo News) JAPAN OUT, MANDATORY CREDIT, NO LICENSING IN CHINA, HONG KONG, JAPAN, SOUTH KOREA AND FRANCE

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, left, and former NBA star Dennis Rodman watch North Korean and U.S. players in an exhibition basketball game at an arena in Pyongyang, North Korea, Thursday, Feb. 28, 2013. Rodman arrived in Pyongyang on Monday with three members of the Harlem Globetrotters basketball team to shoot an episode on North Korea for a new weekly HBO series. (AP Photo/VICE Media, Jason Mojica)

Former NBA star Dennis Rodman speaks to the media at the Pyongyang Airport in Pyongyang, before he leaves North Korea Friday, March 1, 2013. Ending his unexpected round of basketball diplomacy in North Korea on Friday, Rodman called leader Kim Jong Un an "awesome guy" and said his father and grandfather were "great leaders." (AP Photo/Kyodo News) JAPAN OUT, MANDATORY CREDIT, NO LICENSING IN CHINA, HONG KONG, JAPAN, SOUTH KOREA AND FRANCE

Former NBA star Dennis Rodman, left, speaks to the media at the airport in Pyongyang, before he leaves North Korea Friday, March 1, 2013. Rodman hung out with North Korea's Kim Jong Un during his improbable journey to Pyongyang, watching the Harlem Globetrotters with the leader and later drinking and dining on sushi with him.(AP Photo/Kim Kwang Hyon)

Former NBA star Dennis Rodman speaks to the media at the Pyongyang Airport before he leaves North Korea Friday, March 1, 2013. Rodman hung out with North Korea's Kim Jong Un during his improbable journey to Pyongyang, watching the Harlem Globetrotters with the leader and later drinking and dining on sushi with him.(AP Photo/Kim Kwang Hyon)

(AP) ? Ending his unexpected round of basketball diplomacy in North Korea on Friday, ex-NBA star Dennis Rodman called leader Kim Jong Un an "awesome guy" and said his father and grandfather were "great leaders" ? an assessment that got short shrift from the U.S. government.

Rodman, the highest-profile American to meet Kim since he inherited power from father Kim Jong Il in 2011, watched a basketball game with the authoritarian leader Thursday and later drank and dined on sushi with him.

At Pyongyang's Sunan airport on his way to Beijing, Rodman said it was "amazing" that the North Koreans were "so honest." He added that Kim Jong Il and Kim Il Sung, North Korea's founder, "were great leaders."

"He's proud, his country likes him ? not like him, love him, love him," Rodman said of Kim Jong Un. "Guess what, I love him. The guy's really awesome."

At Beijing's airport, Rodman pushed past waiting journalists without saying anything.

Rodman's visit to North Korea began Monday and took place amid tension between Washington and Pyongyang. North Korea conducted an underground nuclear test just two weeks ago, making clear the provocative act was a warning to the United States to drop what it considers a "hostile" policy toward the North.

The State Department on Friday distanced itself from Rodman's visit and his praise for Kim, saying he doesn't represent the United States.

"The North Korean regime has a horrific human rights record, quite possibly the worst human rights situation in the world," spokesman Patrick Ventrell told reporters in Washington. He accused the regime of depriving their people of food, shelter, water and maintaining prison gulags.

Ventrell also took aim at Pyongyang for its grand treatment of the visiting basketball stars.

"Clearly you've got the regime spending money to wine and dine foreign visitors, when they should be feeding their own people," he said.

Rodman traveled to Pyongyang with three members of the professional Harlem Globetrotters basketball team, VICE correspondent Ryan Duffy and a production crew to shoot an episode on North Korea for a new weekly HBO series.

Kim, a diehard basketball fan, told the former Detroit Pistons and Chicago Bulls star that he hoped the visit would break the ice between the United States and North Korea, said Shane Smith, founder of the New York-based VICE media company.

Dressed in a blue Mao suit, Kim laughed and slapped his hands on a table during the game at Jong Ju Yong Gymnasium as he sat nearly knee to knee with Rodman. Rodman, the man who once turned up in a wedding dress to promote his autobiography, wore a dark suit and dark sunglasses, but still had on his nose rings and other piercings. A can of Coca-Cola sat on the table before him in photos shared with AP by VICE.

Smith, after speaking to the VICE crew in Pyongyang, said Kim and Rodman "bonded" and chatted in English, though Kim primarily spoke in Korean through a translator.

Thursday's game ended in a 110-110 tie, with two Americans playing on each team alongside North Koreans. After the game, Rodman addressed Kim in a speech before a crowd of tens of thousands of North Koreans and told him, "You have a friend for life," VICE spokesman Alex Detrick told AP.

At an "epic feast" later, the leader plied the group with food and drinks and round after round of toasts were made, Duffy said in an email to AP.

Duffy said he invited Kim to visit the United States, a proposal met with hearty laughter from the North Korean leader.

Kim said he hoped sports exchanges would promote "mutual understanding between the people of the two countries," the official Korean Central News Agency said.

Ventrell said the U.S. wanted North Korea to come into line with their international obligations and to stop ballistic missile tests and their nuclear programs. "We're not going to read into this sort of theater one way or another," he said.

North Korea and the U.S. fought on opposite sides of the three-year Korean War, which ended in a truce in 1953. The foes never signed a peace treaty, and do not have diplomatic relations.

Rodman's trip is the second attention-grabbing American visit this year to North Korea. Google's executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, made a four-day trip in January to Pyongyang, but did not meet the North Korean leader.

The Obama administration had frowned on the trip by Schmidt, who was accompanied by former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, but has avoided criticizing Rodman's outing, saying it's about sports.

_____

Associated Press writer Matthew Pennington in Washington contributed to this report.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2013-03-01-AS-NKorea-Rodman/id-440d8cfd72ea442fa19d9c2fea4ed30b

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Friday, March 1, 2013

Upcoming ruling may curtail the regulatory authority of the FCC ...

The Federal Communications Commission?s (FCC) is a government agency whose stated purpose is to regulate ?interstate and international communications by radio, television, wire, satellite and cable in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and U.S. territories.? The agency is directed by five presidentially-appointed commissioners who, back in July, upheld a 2011 decision by an FCC administrative law judge which found that Comcast Corp had discriminated against the Tennis Channel by making it part of a higher-priced sports tier and not permitting it the wide berth enjoyed by basic tier offerings such as the Golf Channel and the NBC Sports Network. As a result of the decision, Comcast Corp was ordered to pay a forfeiture of $375,000, and to carry the Tennis Channel as part of the aforementioned basic tier.

The vote went according to party lines, with the three Democratic commissioners voting to uphold the decision, and the two Republican commissioners voting to overturn it. The majority held that ? despite the fact that the Tennis Channel had previously signed an agreement to be carried as a premium offering ? the Consumer Protection and Competition Act of 1992 afforded the agency the right to correct what they believed to be a competitive imbalance.

Comcast ? on the other hand ? is contending that the FCC?s decision exercises undue control of distribution, which it believes to be in violation of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.

This past Monday, the previously-rebuked conglomerate had its day in court, as the U.S. Court of Appeals heard arguments in the case of Comcast vs. the FCC; and things looked pretty rosy for the cable company. The three-judge panel raised serious questions about the FCC?s ruling and offered every indication that it will reverse the initial finding and remand it for further consideration. Such a decision would likely strip the FCC of some of its substantial regulatory authority, an act which ? depending on your political proclivity ? you may be staunchly for or against.

The FCC?s initial ruling was its first-ever decision in favor of of a program carriage complaint, a fact that suggests this case ? however it?s resolved ? will serve as a bellwether for future attempts to exercise regulatory authority, and, furthermore, will go a long way towards determining what is and is not within the FCC?s purview.

We?ll be keeping an eye on this story. Whether the FCC is powerful or feeble, it will have a tangible effect on the way you watch TV.

Source: http://www.digitaltrends.com/home-theater/fcc-ruling-us-court-of-appeals/

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The Griffin Mouth Stick Stylus makes tablets more accessible to those with manual disabilities

I love hearing about how differently-abled people are able to use and benefit from iPads and other tablets. ?My own family found how useful the iPad was after one of my relatives had a stroke (see related posts). ?My relative had partial movement in his left arm and full use of his right, so he [...]

Source: http://the-gadgeteer.com/2013/03/01/the-griffin-mouth-stick-stylus-makes-tablets-more-accessible-to-those-with-manual-disabilities/

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This Lego Fortress of Solitude Should Be a Set

We all want to be Superman, but sadly can't be—so maybe the nearest we can get is building his pad out of Lego. At least that's what Chris Melby thought when he constructed this sensational model of the Fortress of Solitude from scratch. More »


Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/FF_iNCJ1rFk/this-lego-fortress-of-solitude-should-be-a-set

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Family, dogs escape South Salt Lake house fire | The Salt Lake ...

A South Salt Lake family and its two dogs escaped unharmed, but their home went up in flames Wednesday afternoon.

South Salt Lake Deputy Fire Chief Kevin Bowman said the rapidly moving fire at 477 E. Scott Ave. (3460 South) was reported at 11:56 a.m. Crews arrived four minutes later but the structure ? along with an adjacent shed and carport ? was already fully involved in flames.

"It?s a total loss," Bowman said, noting that three-quarters of the home was gone by the time the flames were extinguished.

Four people live in the home, but only two were inside at the time of the fire. They escaped, with one of them running back inside to rescue two dogs. The man?s coat was burned in the process, but he was unharmed, Bowman said.

The family was staying with friends in the aftermath of the blaze.

Bowman said the cause of the fire was under investigation.

remims@sltrib.com

Twitter: @remims


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It's a 'go' for SpaceX launch to space station

NASA / Kim Shiflett

This Dragon spacecraft will launch on the upcoming SpaceX CRS-2 mission. The flight will be the second commercial resupply mission to the International Space Station by SpaceX.

By Miriam Kramer
Space.com

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. ? The weather looks promising for the planned Friday launch of a privately built robotic space capsule to the International Space Station, NASA says.

The unmanned Dragon space capsule, built by the private spaceflight company SpaceX of Hawthorne, Calif., is slated to launch toward the space station Friday?at 10:10 a.m. EST. Weather forecasts predict a 80 percent chance of favorable conditions for launch. NASA and SpaceX officials gave the scheduled mission a final "go" for launch earlier Thursday.

"The mission is the second of 12 SpaceX flights contracted by NASA to resupply the International Space Station," NASA officials said in a mission update. "It will mark the third trip by a Dragon capsule to the orbiting laboratory, following a demonstration flight in May 2012 and the first resupply mission in October 2012."

SpaceX has a $1.6 billion contract with NASA to provide 12 unmanned cargo deliveries to the space station. Another company, Orbital Sciences Corp. based in Virginia, has a $1.9 billion contract for eight mission using its own Antares rocket and Cygnus spacecraft.

The Dragon spacecraft is expected to deliver 1,200 pounds ?(544 kilograms) worth of supplies to the six international crew members on board the station. The capsule is scheduled to return to Earth with 2,300 pounds (1,043 kg) of material from the space station when it splashes down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Baja California on March 25.

SpaceX

On Monday, Falcon 9 and Dragon underwent a successful static fire in preparation for launch to the International Space Station. Engineers ran through all countdown processes as if it were launch day, ending with all nine engines on the rocket firing for nearly two seconds.

SpaceX conducted a?successful rocket engine test, known as a "static test fire" on Monday. The rocket's 9 Merlin engines were fired for a few seconds while the rocket was held down on the launch pad.

NASA is relying on SpaceX, Orbital Sciences and other private companies to develop new private spacecraft to supply the International Space Station with cargo and ultimately ferry American astronauts into and from low-Earth orbit.

With the retirement of the space shuttle fleet in 2011, NASA has been dependent on Russia's Soyuz spacecraft to fly astronauts to the space station, and use unmanned cargo ships built by Russia, Japan and Europe to deliver supplies to the orbiting laboratory.

The space agency?also is developing a new rocket and spacecraft, the Orion space capsule and its Space Launch System mega-rocket, for future deep-space exploration missions to the moon, asteroids and Mars.

You can follow Space.com staff writer Miriam Kramer on Twitter?@mirikramer.?Follow Space.com on Twitter?@Spacedotcom. We're also on?Facebook?and?Google+.

Copyright 2013 Space.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Source: http://science.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/02/28/17133678-its-a-go-for-spacex-launch-to-space-station?lite

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In probing mysteries of glass, researchers find a key to toughness

Wednesday, February 27, 2013

In a paper published online Feb. 26 in the journal Nature Communications, a Yale University team and collaborators propose a way of predicting whether a given glass will be brittle or ductile ? a desirable property typically associated with metals like steel or aluminum ? and assert that any glass could have either quality.

Ductility refers to a material's plasticity, or its ability to change shape without breaking.

"Most of us think of glasses as brittle, but our finding shows that any glass can be made ductile or brittle," said Jan Schroers, a professor of mechanical engineering and materials science at Yale, who led the research with Golden Kumar, a professor at Texas Tech University. "We identified a special temperature that tells you whether you form a ductile or brittle glass."

The key to forming a ductile glass, they said, is cooling it fast. Exactly how fast depends on the nature of the specific glass.

Focusing on a new group of glasses known as bulk metallic glasses (BMGs) ? metal alloys, or blends, that can be extremely pliable yet also as strong as steel ? researchers studied the effect of a so-called critical fictive temperature (CFT) on the glasses' mechanical properties at room temperature.

When forming from liquid, there is a temperature at which glass becomes too viscous for reconfiguration and freezes. This temperature is called the glass transition temperature. Based on experiments with three representative bulk metallic glasses, the researchers said there is also, for each distinct alloy, a critical temperature that determines the brittleness or plasticity of the glass. This is the CFT.

Researchers said it's possible to categorize glasses in two groups ? those that will be brittle because in liquid form their CFT is above the glass transition temperature, and those that will be ductile, because in liquid form their CFT is below the glass transition temperature.

They previously thought a liquid's chemical composition alone would determine whether a glass would be brittle or ductile.

"That's not the case," Schroers said. "We can make any glass theoretically ductile or brittle. And it is the critical fictive temperature which determines how experimentally difficult it is to make a ductile glass. That is the major contribution of this work."

The finding applies theoretically to all glasses, not metallic glasses only, he said.

"A glass can have completely different properties depending on the rate at which you cool it," Schroers said. "If you cool it fast, it is very ductile, and if you cool it slow it?s very brittle. We anticipate that our finding will contribute to the design of ductile glasses, and in general contribute to a deeper understanding of glass formation."

###

Yale University: http://www.yale.edu

Thanks to Yale University for this article.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/127036/In_probing_mysteries_of_glass__researchers_find_a_key_to_toughness

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New dinosaur species: First fossil evidence shows small crocs fed on baby dinosaurs

Feb. 28, 2013 ? A South Dakota School of Mines & Technology assistant professor and his team have discovered a new species of herbivorous dinosaur and today published the first fossil evidence of prehistoric crocodyliforms feeding on small dinosaurs.

Research by Clint Boyd, Ph.D., provides the first definitive evidence that plant-eating baby ornithopod dinosaurs were a food of choice for the crocodyliform, a now extinct relative of the crocodile family. While conducting their research, the team also discovered that this dinosaur prey was a previously unrecognized species of a small ornithopod dinosaur, which has yet to be named.

The evidence found in what is now known as the Grand Staircase Escalante-National Monument in southern Utah dates back to the late Cretaceous period, toward the end of the age of dinosaurs, and was published today in the online journal PLOS ONE. The complete research findings of Boyd and Stephanie K. Drumheller, of the University of Iowa and the University of Tennessee, and Terry A. Gates, of North Carolina State University and the Natural History Museum of Utah, can be accessed online (see journal reference below).

A large number of mostly tiny bits of dinosaur bones were recovered in groups at four locations within the Utah park -- which paleontologists and geologists know as the Upper Cretaceous (Campanian) Kaiparowits Formation -- leading paleontologists to believe that crocodyliforms had fed on baby dinosaurs 1-2 meters in total length.

Evidence shows bite marks on bone joints, as well as breakthrough proof of a crocodyliform tooth still embedded in a dinosaur femur.

The findings are significant because historically dinosaurs have been depicted as the dominant species. "The traditional ideas you see in popular literature are that when little baby dinosaurs are either coming out of a nesting grounds or out somewhere on their own, they are normally having to worry about the theropod dinosaurs, the things like raptors or, on bigger scales, the T. rex. So this kind of adds a new dimension," Boyd said. "You had your dominant riverine carnivores, the crocodyliforms, attacking these herbivores as well, so they kind of had it coming from all sides."

Based on teeth marks left on bones and the large amounts of fragments left behind, it is believed the crocodyliforms were also diminutive in size, perhaps no more than 2 meters long. A larger species of crocodyliform would have been more likely to gulp down its prey without leaving behind traces of "busted up" bone fragments.

Until now, paleontologists had direct evidence only of "very large crocodyliforms" interacting with "very large dinosaurs."

"It's not often that you get events from the fossil record that are action-related," Boyd explained. "While you generally assume there was probably a lot more interaction going on, we didn't have any of that preserved in the fossil record yet. This is the first time that we have definitive evidence that you had this kind of partitioning, of your smaller crocodyliforms attacking the smaller herbivorous dinosaurs," he said, adding that this is only the second published instance of a crocodyliform tooth embedded in any prey animal in the fossil record.

"A lot of times you find material in close association or you can find some feeding marks or traces on the outside of the bone and you can hypothesize that maybe it was a certain animal doing this, but this was only the second time we have really good definitive evidence of a crocodyliform feeding on a prey animal and in this case an ornithischian dinosaur," Boyd said.

The high concentrations of tiny dinosaur bones led researchers to conclude a type of selection occurred, that crocodyliforms were preferentially feeding on these miniature dinosaurs. "Maybe it was closer to a nesting ground where baby dinosaurs would have been more abundant, and so the smaller crocodyliforms were hanging out there getting a lunch," Boyd added.

"When we started looking at all the other bones, we starting finding marks that are known to be diagnostic for crocodyliform feeding traces, so all that evidence coming together suddenly started to make sense as to why we were not finding good complete specimens of these little ornithischian dinosaurs," Boyd explained. "Most of the bites marks are concentrated around the joints, which is where the crocodyliform would tend to bite, and then, when they do their pulling or the death roll that they tend to do, the ends of the bones tend to snap off more often than not in those actions. That's why we were finding these fragmentary bones."

In the process of their research, the team discovered through diagnostic cranial material that these baby prey are a new, as yet-to-be-named dinosaur species. Details on this new species will soon be published in another paper.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by South Dakota School of Mines and Technology.

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Journal Reference:

  1. Clint A. Boyd, Stephanie K. Drumheller, Terry A. Gates. Crocodyliform Feeding Traces on Juvenile Ornithischian Dinosaurs from the Upper Cretaceous (Campanian) Kaiparowits Formation, Utah. PLoS ONE, 2013; 8 (2): e57605 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0057605

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

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/most_popular/~3/F3jLe2V-sTc/130228171504.htm

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