Diesel, hybrid sales rocket past overall US market growth rate

U.S. Diesel Car Registrations Increase By 24%, Hybrids Up 33%; Total Car Market Registrations Increase Just 2.7% Since 2010

CA, MA & NY Are Fastest Growing Diesel Car States . . . SC, TN, KY & MS Are Fastest Growing Hybrid Car States . . . TX Is #1 In Total Diesel Passenger Vehicles & #1 In Diesel Pickup Trucks . . . WY, MT, ID & AK Have Highest Percentage of Diesel Passenger Vehicles

WASHINGTON, April 25, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Clean diesel car registrations increased by 24.3 percent in the U.S. from 2010 through 2012 following similar trends of double-digit diesel car sale increases throughout the country, according to new data compiled for the Diesel Technology Forum.

The national registration information was compiled by R.L. Polk and Company and includes data for all types of passenger vehicles ? cars, SUVs, pickup trucks and vans ? in all 50 states and the District of Columbia from January 1, 2010 through December 31, 2012.

"This new data of total national vehicle registrations coincides with what we've been seeing in the monthly auto sales ? clean diesel and hybrid cars are showing consistent and impressive growth patterns in the U.S.," said Allen Schaeffer , the Executive Director of the Diesel Technology Forum.

"This consistent growth in clean diesel registrations in the last three years is particularly noteworthy since it has occurred during an economic recession, the availability of an extremely large number of fuel efficient vehicles, which was topped off by some of the highest diesel fuel prices in U.S. history. Even in the face of these significant challenges, diesel buyers are seeing the big picture and long-term value by investing in record numbers of clean diesel cars and SUVs."

Diesel car and SUV registrations increased from 640,779 in 2010 to 796,794 at the end of 2012 ? a 24.34 percent increase. During this same period, hybrid car and SUV registrations increased from 1,714,966 to 2,290,903 ? a 33.58 percent increase. In contrast, the total car and SUV registrations in the U.S. increased by just 2.75 percent during the same period.
6.65 Million Diesel and 2.29 Million Hybrid Passenger Vehicles Registered In U.S.

"When all passenger vehicle registrations are included - cars, SUVs, pickup trucks and vans ? the diesels currently account for 6,658,399 vehicles while hybrids account for 2,295,500 vehicles throughout the U.S," Schaeffer said, noting that there currently are 27 diesels available in the U.S. market compared to 46 hybrids.

Diesel Vehicle Sales Expected to Increase Significantly As More Vehicles Reach U.S. Market

"While total diesel vehicle registrations are slightly less than three percent in the U.S., auto analysts and market researchers virtually all agree diesel sales are going to increase significantly as the number of new diesels made in available domestically will more than double in the next two years," Schaeffer said. "Some analysts predict diesel sales will reach 10 percent of the U.S. market by 2020.

"In addition, clean diesel vehicle sales are also projected to increase as the U.S. moves toward increasing fuel efficiency standards to 54.5 mpg by 2025," Schaeffer said. "Because clean diesels are 20 to 40 more efficient than gasoline engines, diesel cars and trucks will play a major role in achieving these new standards. And an interesting wild card will be the emerging market domestically and internationally of clean diesel hybrid vehicles that will achieve astounding mpg numbers."

(See information on all clean diesel vehicles currently available in the U.S. and future diesels coming to the U.S. market.)
California, Massachusetts and New York Are The Fastest Growing Diesel Car States . . .

Texas, California and Florida Currently Have the Most Diesels

Below are the individual state leaders in various vehicle registrations categories. Go here to see national diesel, hybrid and total vehicle registration statistics and Top 10 State lists for diesel and hybrid registrations in these categories.

Fastest Growth All Diesel Passenger Vehicles (2010-12) - Cars, SUVS, Pickup Trucks and Vans:
1. District of Columbia +20%
2. Maine +13%
3. Pennsylvania +11%
Fastest Growth Diesel Cars and SUVs (2010-12):
1. California +55%
2. Massachusetts +45%
3. New York +43%
Fastest Growth Diesel Pickup Trucks (2010-12):
1. Montana +10%
2. Nebraska +9% Maine +9%
3. Pennsylvania +8%
Fastest Growth Hybrid Cars and SUVS (2010-12):
1. South Carolina +50%
2. Tennessee +48%
3. Kentucky +46% Mississippi +46%
2012 Most Diesel Passenger Vehicles (Cars, SUVs, Pickup Trucks and Vans):
1. Texas 775,395
2. California 572,303
3. Florida 292,692
2012 Highest Percentage of Diesel Passenger Vehicles (Cars, SUVs, Pickup Trucks and Vans):
1. Wyoming 10.5% 63,497 total
2. Montana 7.8% 91,943 total
3. Idaho 6.6% 96,093 total Alaska 6.6% 42,328 total
2012 Total Hybrid Cars, SUVS, Pickup Trucks and Vans:
1. California 548,199
2. Florida 122,912
3. Texas 121,944
2012 Most Diesel Cars and SUVS:
1. California 84,106
2. Texas 64,272
3. Florida 49,838
2012 Most Diesel Pickup Trucks:
1. Texas 697,904
2. California 461,035
3. Florida 228,762
2012 Highest Percentage of Diesel Pickup Trucks:
1. Wyoming 23.1% 60,960 total
2. Utah 19.4% 118,771 total
3. Montana 18.0% 85,585 total

Connect with DTF
How do you keep up with the news on clean diesel? You can be a fan of DTF's Facebook page, follow us on Twitter @DieselTechForum, or subscribe to our YouTube channel @DieselTechForum. You can also subscribe to Diesel Direct, a monthly publication featuring the latest clean diesel news and activities of the Diesel Technology Forum by emailing dtf@dieselforum.org.

ABOUT THE DIESEL TECHNOLOGY FORUM The Diesel Technology Forum is a non-profit national organization dedicated to raising awareness about the importance of diesel engines, fuel and technology. Forum members are leaders in clean diesel technology and represent the three key elements of the modern clean-diesel system: advanced engines, vehicles and equipment, cleaner diesel fuel and emissions

Source: http://green.autoblog.com/2013/04/29/diesel-hybrid-sales-us-market/

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The Associated Press's Twitter hack proves that Twitter needs two-step verification immediately

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Shelly Palmer Digital Leadership Podcast Episode #33 ? Steve Vallejo, Director of Bank of the West

Did you know senior fraud is on the rise? Whether seniors are being targeted by scams or being stolen from by their relatives, it?s a growing problem. Shelly talked to Steve, who knows how to spot the signs of senior fraud and knows what to do if you?re a victim or know someone who might be.?Listen Now or Get it on iTunes

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Christie: Obama kept every Sandy promise

HIGHLANDS, N.J. (AP) ? New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said Monday that President Barack Obama "has kept every promise he's made" about helping the state recover from Superstorm Sandy.

Speaking on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" program on the 6-month anniversary of the deadly storm, the Republican governor said presidential politics were the last thing on his mind as he toured storm-devastated areas with Obama last fall.

"The president has kept every promise he's made," said Christie, widely considered a potential candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016. "I think he's done a good job. He kept his word."

Christie's warm embrace of Obama after the storm angered some Republicans, who said it helped tip a close presidential election to the Democrat and away from Mitt Romney, who Christie endorsed and for whom he campaigned last fall.

Christie says he and Obama have fundamentally different views on governing. But he said the two men did what needed to be done for a devastated region.

"I've got a job to do," he said. "You wake up and 7 million of your 8.8 million citizens are out of power, you're not thinking about presidential politics."

Christie challenged his critics to put themselves in his shoes while dealing with the massive storm, predicting none of them would have done anything differently.

"I have a 95 percent level of disagreement with Barack Obama," Christie said. But that did not come into play while dealing with the storm.

"We saw suffering together," Christie said. "Everything the president promised me they'd do, they've done. I don't have any complaint this morning on the issue of disaster relief."

Sandy destroyed about 360,000 homes or apartment units in New Jersey, and some areas along the shore are still devastated.

Later Monday, U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan is to appear with Christie at a press conference, where it is expected the secretary will announce federal approval of New Jersey's plans to spend more than $1.8 billion in federal grants on storm rebuilding and recovery.

"We'll start to see that aid start flowing this week," Christie said on the show. "We still have tens of thousands of families who aren't back in their homes. Job One is to get the grant program going."

Congress approved more than $60 billion in Sandy relief funds, most of it for New Jersey and New York, despite opposition from many Congressional Republicans who wanted to spend less.

___

Wayne Parry can be reached at http://twitter.com/WayneParryAC

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/christie-obama-kept-every-promise-storm-aid-115719276.html

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Rambler Takes Home The Disrupt NY 2013 Hackathon Grand Prize, Learn To Drive And Radical Are Runners Up

The past 24 hours have just flown by for the hundreds of hackers here at the Disrupt NY Hackathon, but the sun is finally up and it’s time to pass judgment on their caffeine-fueled projects. As it turns out, there’s a ton of them here — with 164 registered projects this is our biggest Hackathon yet, and each presenter only had 60 seconds to wow our judges (not to mention the rest of the audience). As you might guess there was no shortage of amazing projects that came together in a single day, but our judges could only choose one team to take home our $5,000 grand prize. Anyway, that’s enough out of me — meet our newest Hackathon winner! Winner: Rambler Rambler, created by William Hockey, Zach Perret and Michael Kelly, is a web app that lets users view their credit and debit card transactions on a map. During the dev process, the team tapped the Foursquare API for locations and the Plaid API to access user spending data. Runner-up #1: Learn To Drive Learn To Drive, created by Jared Zoneraich, Jemma Issroff, Kenny Song, and Nicholas Joseph, is an app for the GM vehicle platform that acts as a virtual driving instructor by speaking driving instructions aloud and display driving statistics like miles driven, hours driven, and hours driven at night. Runner-up #2: Radical Radical, created by Sam Saccone, Carl Sednaoui, and Jeff Escalante, allows users to create attractive calendars and embed on webpages with a single line of code. These three teams will also demo their projects on the main Disrupt stage on Wednesday afternoon, but that’s not to say everyone else is going home empty-handed. Hackathon sponsors Appery.io, AT&T, CrunchBase, General Motors, Microsoft Bizspark, Microsoft Skydrive, NewAer, Pearson, Samsung, Twilio, Visa, Wrigley and Yammer have also graciously doled out prizes of their own for the most innovative and interesting uses of their APIs and services. And just who decided the fate of these sleep-deprived hackers? Our panel of judges includes Mahaya CEO Tarikh Korula, Path101 co-founder Charlie O?Donnell, founder/CEO of The Muse Kathryn Minshew, bit.ly chief?scientist?Hilary Mason, FuturePerfect Ventures founding partner Jalak Jobanputra, and TechStars NYC Managing Director David Tisch.

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Chemical weapons 101: Six facts about sarin and Syria?s stockpile

Word from the White House that Syria probably resorted to small-scale use of chemical weapons on at least two occasions this year draws new attention to the internationally-banned nerve agent sarin ? the weapon US intelligence officials now believe Syrian government forces used against rebel forces in the country?s civil war.

Perhaps the best-known recent use of sarin previously was in the 1995 Tokyo subway attack ? known in Japan as the Subway Sarin Incident ? in which members of a domestic cult-turned-terrorist group punctured bags of liquid sarin with sharpened umbrella tips in subway cars.

At least 13 people died in the attack and some 1,000 were injured.

But sarin?s legacy is about to get an update and henceforth seems likely to be associated with Syria and its besieged president, Bashar al-Assad.

- Howard LaFranchi,?Staff writer

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel speaks at the Pentagon in March. Hagel said that US intelligence has concluded 'with some degree of varying confidence,' that the Syrian government has used sarin gas as a weapon in its 2-year-old civil war. (Jacquelyn Martin/AP/File)

1. What is sarin?

Sarin is a nerve agent first developed by German researchers in the late 1930s. Up to 500 times more toxic than cyanide, it is a colorless and odorless liquid that causes severe muscle spasms, vision loss, and asphyxia, and which can kill within a minute of contact in extreme cases.

Sarin was classified as a ?weapon of mass destruction? and banned in the United Nations? Chemical Weapons Convention of 1993. Syria is one of six countries that have not signed the convention.

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Miss. man charged in suspicious letters case

BRANDON, Miss. (AP) ? An ex-martial arts instructor made ricin and put the poison in letters to President Barack Obama and others, the FBI charged Saturday, days after dropping similar charges against an Elvis impersonator who insisted he had been framed.

The arrest of 41-year-old James Everett Dutschke early Saturday capped a week in which investigators initially zeroed in on a rival of Dutschke's, then decided they had the wrong man. The hunt for a suspect revealed tie after small-town tie between the two men and the 80-year-old county judge who, along with Obama and U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, was among the targets of the letters.

Dutschke's house, business and vehicles in Tupelo were searched earlier in the week often by crews in hazardous materials suits and he had been under surveillance.

Dutschke (pronounced DUHS'-kee) was charged with "knowingly developing, producing, stockpiling, transferring, acquiring, retaining and possessing a biological agent, toxin and delivery system, for use as a weapon, to wit: ricin." U.S. attorney Felicia Adams and Daniel McMullen, the FBI agent in charge in Mississippi, made the announcement in a news release Saturday.

Dutschke's attorney, Lori Nail Basham, said she had no comment. Earlier this week she said that Dutschke was cooperating fully with investigators and Dutschke has insisted he had nothing to do with the letters. He was arrested about 12:50 a.m. at his house in Tupelo and is expected in court Monday. He faces up to life in prison, if convicted.

He already had legal problems. Earlier this month, he pleaded not guilty in state court to two child molestation charges involving three girls younger than 16. He also was appealing a conviction on a different charge of indecent exposure. He told AP earlier this week that his lawyer told him not to comment on those cases.

The letters, which tests showed were tainted with ricin, were sent April 8 to Obama, Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi and Mississippi judge, Sadie Holland.

Wicker spokesman Ryan Taylor said since the investigation was ongoing, the senator couldn't comment.

The first suspect fingered by the FBI was Paul Kevin Curtis, 45, an Elvis impersonator. He was arrested on April 17 at his Corinth, Miss., home, but the charges were dropped six days later and Curtis, who says he was framed, was released from jail.

The focus then turned to Dutschke, who has ties to the former suspect, the judge and the senator. Earlier in the week, as investigators searched his primary residence in Tupelo, Dutschke told The Associated Press, "I don't know how much more of this I can take."

"I'm a patriotic American. I don't have any grudges against anybody. ... I did not send the letters," Dutschke said.

Curtis' attorney, Christi McCoy, said Saturday: "We are relieved but also saddened. This crime is nothing short of diabolical. I have seen a lot of meanness in the past two decades, but this stops me in my tracks."

Some of the language in the letters was similar to posts on Curtis' Facebook page and they were signed, "I am KC and I approve this message." Curtis' signoff online was often similar.

And Dutschke and Curtis were acquainted. Curtis said they had talked about possibly publishing a book on a conspiracy that Curtis insists he has uncovered to sell body parts on a black market. But he said they later had a feud.

Curtis' attorneys have said they believe their client was set up. An FBI agent testified that no evidence of ricin was found in searches of Curtis' home. Curtis attorney Hal Neilson said the defense gave authorities a list of people who may have had a reason to hurt Curtis and Dutschke came up.

Judge Holland also is a common link between the two men, and both know Wicker.

Holland was the presiding judge in a 2004 case in which Curtis was accused of assaulting a Tupelo attorney a year earlier. Holland sentenced him to six months in the county jail. He served only part of the sentence, according to his brother.

And Holland's family has had political skirmishes with Dutschke. Her son, Steve Holland, a Democratic state representative, said he thinks his mother's only other encounter with Dutschke was at a rally in the town of Verona in 2007, when Dutschke ran as a Republican against Steve Holland.

Holland said his mother confronted Dutschke after he made a derogatory speech about the Holland family. She demanded that he apologize, which Holland says he did.

On Saturday, Steve Holland said he can't say for certain that Dutschke is the person who sent the letter to his mother but added, "I feel confident the FBI knows what they are doing."

"We're ready for this long nightmare to be over," Holland told The Associated Press.

He said he's not sure why someone would target his mother. Holland said he believes Dutschke would have more reason to target him than his mother.

"Maybe he thinks the best way to get to me is to get to the love of my life, which is my mother," Holland said.

___

Associated Press writer Jack Elliott Jr. in Jackson contributed to this report.

___

Follow Mohr at http://twitter.com/holbrookmohr.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/miss-man-charged-suspicious-letters-case-195839113.html

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Possible 9/11 plane landing gear part found in NYC

NEW YORK (AP) ? A rusted 5-foot-tall piece of landing gear believed to be from one of the hijacked planes destroyed in the Sept. 11 attacks has been discovered near the World Trade Center wedged between a luxury apartment building and a mosque site that once prompted virulent national debate about Islam and free speech.

The twisted metal part, jammed in an 18-inch-wide sliver of open space between the buildings, has cables and levers on it and is about 17 inches wide and 4 feet long, New York Police Department Commissioner Raymond Kelly said Friday.

"It's a manifestation of a horrific terrorist act a block and a half away from where we stand," he said. "So, sure, it brings back terrible memories to anyone who was here or who was involved in that event."

Kelly edged down the narrow passageway to look at the object Friday evening, noting there is also a piece of rope intertwined with the part in what looks like a broken pulley that may have come down from the roof of the site of the planned Islamic community center, at 51 Park Place.

The piece of equipment was discovered Wednesday by surveyors inspecting the lower Manhattan site of a planned Islamic community center on behalf of the building's owner, police said.

An inspector was on the roof and noticed the debris and then called 911. Police secured the scene, documenting it with photos.

It includes a clearly visible Boeing Co. identification number, New York Police Department spokesman Paul Browne said.

"The odds of this being wedged between there is amazing," Browne said, adding it was not surprising that it went undiscovered for more than a decade given the location. "It had to have fallen just the right way to make it into that space."

Other World Trade Center wreckage had been discovered at the buildings and around the area in years past.

Police detectives and National Transportation Safety Board investigators will determine whether the equipment is from the American Airlines plane or the United Airlines plane that slammed into the twin towers on Sept. 11, 2001, destroying the towers and killing nearly 3,000 people.

When plans for the Islamic center, about three blocks from ground zero, were made public in 2010, opponents said they didn't want a mosque so close to where Islamic extremists attacked. They argued the site was "sacred" because landing gear from one of the hijacked Boeing 767 jets had punctured the roof of the building on Sept. 11.

During street protests, they clashed with supporters of the center, who said it would promote harmony between Muslims and followers of other faiths.

The building includes a Muslim prayer space that has been open for three years. After protests died down, the center hosted its first exhibit last year. The space remains under renovation.

Donna Marsh O'Connor, who lost her daughter Vanessa Lang Langer in the attacks and is a member of September 11th Families for a Peaceful Tomorrow, called the landing gear discovery "bizarre."

O'Connor is a supporter of the Islamic center and said the fact that the plane fragment was found there "makes me think that this was the right place for a center that was going to heal the divide."

In a statement, Sharif El-Gamal, the president of Soho Properties, which owns 51 Park Place, said workers called the city and the police as soon as they discovered the landing gear. He said the company is cooperating with the city and the police to make sure the piece of equipment "is removed with care as quickly and effectively as possible."

The medical examiner's office will complete a health and safety evaluation to determine whether to sift the soil around the buildings for possible human remains, police said.

Patricia Riley, whose sister Lorraine Riley was killed in the Sept. 11 attacks, called the landing gear discovery "very strange."

"Twelve years later we are still finding remnants of the attack on our country," she said. "... For years to come we'll continue to find things that we didn't see before. Hopefully, they'll serve as a reminder that we have to stay vigilant."

Outside the Islamic center building, known as Park51, a police officer stood next to the door on Friday and a police barricade was set up to contain the many journalists who had gathered to try to see the piece of the plane.

The landing gear could not be seen from the sidewalk so commuters rushed by and looked quizzically at the gathering.

Among the bystanders was one immersed in the legacy of the attacks: Van Vanable, heading home from his job as an ironworker building the new 1 World Trade Center.

"Amazing," he said of the find. "There's still pieces to the puzzle."

The Park51 space, a former Burlington Coat factory, is a five-story, mildly run-down building. Renovations are expected to take years and would add an auditorium, a pool, a restaurant and culinary school, a child care facility and artist studios.

The piece of plane is wedged in an alley space between that building and 50 Murray St., a luxury loft rental building.

___

Associated Press writers Tom Hays, Jennifer Peltz, Colleen Long and Karen Matthews in New York and David B. Caruso in Boston contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/possible-9-11-plane-landing-gear-part-found-220156560.html

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A GATHERING OF PRESIDENTS

We needed this past week, with its moments of introspection, its reflections on national purpose, its symbols of national concord. Many of them, of course, occurred in Boston, site of terrorism in 2013. One of them occurred in Dallas, site of tragedy in 1963.

The images of what happened in Boston already have been seared into the national psyche. The image of what happened in Dallas Thursday is fresher, and while ceremonial rather than spontaneous, it was a powerful statement about the noblest American values: Duty. Service. Reconciliation. Unity.

It was there, in Dallas, that five presidents -- all the living chief executives -- gathered to dedicate the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum. There is a liturgy to moments like this, carefully intertwined skeins of expressions and omissions: artfully crafted, sometimes stilted, speeches about the burden of office; exhortations of goodwill; eloquent things said and difficult things unsaid. "I like President Bush," Bill Clinton said that morning, and the remark carried the weight of the generous and the genuine.

That was all there, on the campus of Southern Methodist University, on a shiny afternoon when Barack Obama, who for years after his inauguration still pilloried the younger Bush, stood in presidential solidarity with his foil; when the man being honored warmly greeted Clinton, his remarks about how his predecessor had dishonored the White House long forgotten; when Clinton, who ran a tough race against the older Bush, stood beside the wheelchair carrying his 1992 rival, his body language displaying devotion, perhaps even love; and when Clinton and Obama, who cringe every time their names are in the same sentence with Jimmy Carter, nonetheless welcomed the 39th president as one of their own.

Because there, in one stunning Texas tableau, stood most of American history since 1977.

Missing, of course, was Ronald Reagan, who had a gift for conciliation and, despite his age in the White House, a vision sharper than any of those in attendance. In a way he was there as well. You could almost see the smile, which was genuine, and hear the stage laugh, which was not, and the love of country, which all of these men -- even the ones, like Clinton and Obama, who raged against it when young -- came to embrace in the office that Reagan once held.

What we saw there, too, was a portrait of a land locked in economic crisis, wracked with social divisions, jolted by terrorism at a precious regional ritual and saddened by the knowledge that its most precious conviction (social mobility and the sturdy belief that the children will surpass their parents) is in grave danger of becoming a myth.

Because these five men, makers of history but responders to history as well, represent so much of our national character.

Obama will never cease being a national symbol, even if his domestic initiatives are forgotten, if his health care initiative fails and if his legacy, like those of presidents between 1865 and 1893, are lost in a mist of memory. He still will be remembered as a pathfinder -- and a symbol of what a nation that yearns to leave its greatest wrong behind can do when the time comes, in the autumn every four years, to look forward and exercise its greatest right.

The younger Bush remains a historical work in progress, which is why some of Thursday's remarks made awkward swerves around the obstacles of Iraq, "enhanced interrogation techniques" and the economy.

Even so, the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll shows almost the same rate of approval of Bush's two terms (47 percent) as disapproval (50 percent). Two Democratic presidents Thursday saluted him for his commitment to Africa. And no one across this broad country will forget the image of Bush and his bullhorn -- and the moment in September 2001 when he spoke for America and, on a bully pulpit on a pile of New York rubble, symbolized the nation's resolve.

Then there is Clinton, impeached and disgraced, bowed and bloodied but never broken, resolute and resilient, a symbol, or maybe two, in his own right. Despite his riches today -- like Herbert Hoover, his life went from modesty to millions -- he was, and substantially is, the boy from Hope, the Arkansas town whose name in Clinton's 1992 campaign so satisfied an American hunger at a moment of economic distress.

But Clinton's 1996 campaign also offered powerful imagery of a different sort, for he portrayed his re-election bid as a "bridge to the 21st century." Only now, with former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton the consensus front-runner for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, do we see the full span of that bridge.

A moment here for the elder Bush, who spoke movingly of "our son." No longer the hyper-frenetic president but still a master of building coalitions, he now is the consensus elder statesman, the onetime symbol of privilege now an enduring and beloved symbol of the "kinder, gentler" values he spoke of in his 1988 acceptance speech.

And finally, Carter, in sunglasses last week. Hardly anyone contests that his was a fraught presidency, pockmarked by inflation, high interest rates, hostages in Iran, national malaise -- a word the president never used but seemed peculiarly suited to his era. But do not let it be forgotten Carter was an idealist, and he cleansed American politics of the rot of despair after Watergate.

Carter seems immune from revisionism -- the kindly gift from time bestowed on many presidents, Warren G. Harding and Hoover excepted. But like Hoover, Carter is a remarkable ex-president (a role Clinton plays with particular aplomb as well). A symbol of American virtue in hopeless corners of the globe, and a symbol of the ennobling value of democracy in places of tyranny, Carter's post-White House life has been as an ambassador for all seasons, to all continents.

The events marking the opening of the first presidential library of the century began with the Pledge of Allegiance, delivered by a female first lieutenant, herself an Army veteran of Iraq. At the library site are twisted girders from the Sept. 11 attacks. Thursday there were speeches, flags, anthems and patriot dreams, undimmed by human tears -- all a reminder of this: Presidential libraries, like presidents themselves, are not about individuals. They are about us all.

COPYRIGHT 2013 THE PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/gathering-presidents-050118178.html

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Galaxy S4 teardown reveals the silicon beauty within the plastic beast

What's in a Galaxy S4? A whole lot of easily repairable parts, it turns out. The fine folks at iFixit recently got their hands on Samsung's smartphone flagship and wasted no time in tearing it asunder. Scoring an eight out of ten on the repairability scale, the GS4 puts up little defense to tinkering hands with only 11 screws standing between you and its innards. The front panel serves up the single source of difficulty since the glass and LCD are fused together and glued into the frame -- so, you'll have to scoop out most of its components to get to it and the Synaptics S5000B chip powering the tweaked capacitive display. Other than that, there aren't really any component surprises. But don't let that stop you from taking a full tour of the gore-y silicon glory at the source.

Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless, Samsung

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Source: iFixit

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/04/26/samsung-galaxy-s4-teardown/?utm_medium=feed&utm_source=Feed_Classic&utm_campaign=Engadget

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25 Endless Sports Debates | Bleacher Report

Bleacher Report:

One of the best things about being a sports fan are the discussions around the water cooler that my friends and I so often have with each other.

Is there really ever an answer? Probably not.

But that doesn't mean we still won't continue debating some of these hot topics all the time.

Read the whole story at Bleacher Report

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/25/25-endless-sports-debates_n_3151993.html

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Video: Power House: Motor City Real Estate

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Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/video/cnbc/51664086/

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Requiem for Our Wonderfully Inefficient World

Once our faces can be tied our social networking profiles, all sorts of other manipulations enter the picture

Photo by Ricardo Moraes/Reuters

Last summer, Momentum, a Spanish marketing agency, ran an ingenious campaign: It installed 18 smart vending machines that lowered the price of cold drinks on hot days. A drink bought in 77 degrees Fahrenheit cost 2 euro. If the temperature went above 86 degrees, you had to pay just 1.40 euro.

The experiment in sensor-based pricing was clearly a marketing stunt: What real business would be dumb enough to lower drink prices on a hot day? A business that wants to stay afloat would deploy sensors to do the very opposite. And, short of outright vandalism, consumers wouldn't be able to do much in protest: The machine can easily tolerate any grumpy complaints.

Momentum got one thing right, though: The proliferation of cheap sensors has made dynamic pricing?whereby the cost can be adjusted in real-time without intervention by the human operator?a tempting option. And while some sensors try to work out environmental factors like the temperature outside, others could concentrate on learning more about the buyers themselves: Are they young? Are they dressed fancy? Are they on Facebook?

The first two can be answered today. In 2011, Intel and Kraft teamed up to launch iSample kiosks that rely on an optical sensor to determine the age and sex of the shopper and then suggest products to serve him or her. The machine was initially used to market Temptations?a jelly-based dessert advertised as ?the first Jell-O that's just for adults.? So, on detecting a child, the machine would ask them to step away. A similar vending machine in Japan relies on facial recognition technology to recommend drinks to different consumers: Men younger than 50 are recommended canned coffee drinks, while women in their 20s are offered tea.

Right now, sensors could help automate simple, binary decisions?don't let youngsters borrow adult DVDs!?but it won't take long before they enable interventions of the more elaborate variety: Once our faces can be tied our social networking profiles, all sorts of other manipulations enter the picture. Discounts, yes?but there may also be situations in which our willingness to pay for something is clearly greater than the price we are charged by a dumb, sensorless machine. If the machine can predict those situations?by analyzing our social networking profile or querying the self-tracking app on our phone to find out just how thirsty we are?it can charge us exactly what we are willing to pay.

In theory, at least, there's much to celebrate here: Sensors will make resource use more efficient?and a new generation of startups will gladly exploit these new efficiencies. Max Levchin, the former CTO of Paypal and a prominent technology investor, said as much in a keynote talk he gave in January at the high-profile Digital-Life-Design conference (a German equivalent of TED). For Levchin, sensors can finally allow us to use ?cars, houses, humans, etc.,? to their full potential. ?The world of real things is very inefficient: Slack resources are abundant, so are the companies trying to rationalize their use,? he says. But today, thanks to ?the digitalization of analog data, and its management in a centralized queue,? one can ?create amazing new efficiencies? simply by using sensors to better allocate resources.

Take transportation startups like Uber or Hailo. When you called a taxi service in the past, the dispatcher was supposed to treat everyone the same?first called, first served. If you hung up in anger, you'd have to start all over again. Under this ?dumb? system, notes Levchin, ?even if you are willing to pay a hundred times more than everyone else waiting ahead of you in line to speak to dispatch, you never get to express that demand. The data exists in an analog-only format, and it moves at analog-only speeds.?

Digital systems like Uber are different: The data about you come in the digital format, and you know exactly when resources become available, how long you need to wait for them, and so forth. And, down the line, perhaps if you are willing to pay more than others, you could get a different, better service. (Uber already uses ?surge pricing? when demand is high?like on New Year?s Eve.)

Source: http://feeds.slate.com/click.phdo?i=d534aa9f1f86512cce6d4355284c3424

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CSN: O's extra-inning winning streak ends at 17

BALTIMORE ? For more than a year, the Orioles won extra inning games. Seventeen in a row.

At some point, the magic was going to end. Wednesday was the day.

After watching Josh Stinson serve up four home runs to put them in a hole, the Orioles clawed their way back into the game with Toronto, but finally lost it 6-5 in 11 innings before 14,981 at Oriole Park.

Stinson was recalled before the game and sent to Norfolk afterward. The Orioles bullpen was chewed up, and the most dependable of all the relievers, Jim Johnson suffered a loss.

?That's the type of baseball we play. It's just one of those things. We play a lot of close games and I wouldn't expect anything to change in that department,? Johnson said.

The Orioles (12-9) closed out a most successful home stand by winning two of three from the Blue Jays, Dodgers and Rays. The 6-3 record gave them an acceptable 9-6 mark against American League East opponents.

?I thought we played pretty well for the most part. It would have been nice to close today, but they got us today, but I think it was a pretty decent homestand overall,? Nate McLouth said.

Now, the Orioles head west for a season-long 11-game road trip to Oakland, Seattle and Los Angeles.

They?ll be there without Stinson and with another reliever, perhaps Zach Clark, who?s been starting for Norfolk.

Three of the homers allowed by Stinson were solo shots to Rajai Davis, Edwin Encarnacion and Jose Bautista. The first was a two-run shot by J.P. Arencibia in the second.

By the time Stinson left with two outs in the sixth, the Orioles trailed 5-2, but they scored three runs in the seventh to tie it.

?They came back and that's what I've been told about these guys. They never quit and they keep going. So they got us back to 5-5 and made it interesting for a couple innings. It was exciting,? Stinson said.

The Orioles had won 17 straight extra-inning games, their last 16 in 2012, and the first of this season. Only the 1959-60 Pittsburgh Pirates, who won 21 consecutive, won more.

?It's not something I dwell on. I know our guys don't. But I understand how it's noteworthy," manager Buck Showalter said.

In the 11th, Arencibia and Munenori Kawasaki singled with two outs off Johnson (1-2), who had won and saved the previous two games of the series..

Johnson hit Brett Lawrie with a pitch to load the bases and walked Macier Izturis on four pitches to score Arencibia with the go-ahead run for Toronto (9-13).

Esmil Rogers (1-1) pitched the 10th and got the win. Manny Machado tried to score on J.J. Hardy?s single in the bottom of the 10th, but was thrown out, and the game went to the 11th.

Casey Janssen pitched the 11th for his sixth save.

In 22 1/3 previous major league innings, Stinson allowed two home runs. He tripled that total on Wednesday.

Stinson retired the first three batters, and took a 1-0 lead into the second. Nate McLouth and Adam Jones doubled off Brandon Morrow in the second, and it was their last hit until the seventh.

Arencibia?s two-run shot to center, his eighth, came with one out in the second. Davis hit his first with one out in the second while Encarnacion and Bautista hit theirs leading off the fourth and sixth. It was Encarnacion?s fourth and Bautista?s fifth.

Stinson was hooked with two outs in the sixth. He allowed five runs on five hits in 5 2/3 innings. He walked one and struck out three.

The Orioles scored a run without a hit in the third. McLouth walked with one out. Machado grounded to third and Lawrie threw it wildly to first. McLouth advanced to third. Nick Markakis grounded to short, but? Machado slid hard enough into second baseman Emilio Bonifacio that he prevented any chance of a double play.

In the seventh, the Orioles finally showed some life. Nolan Reimold walked with one out. Ryan Flaherty doubled to right to score Reimold and Aaron Loup replaced Morrow.

McLouth singled to score Flaherty, and after McLouth stole his fifth base of the season, Machado tripled to right, and score was tied at 5.

?We didn?t play a bad game by any means. Their hits came with some damage. We weren?t quite able to push that last one across a couple of times,? McLouth said.

NOTES: The four home runs allowed by Stinson were the most by any Orioles pitcher making his debut.

-Machado?s triple was the first of the year for the Orioles.

-Brian Matusz has not allowed any of the 10 runners he inherited this season to score. He?s stranded all 24 he inherited since he became a reliever last August.

Source: http://www.csnbaltimore.com/blog/orioles-talk/orioles-extra-inning-streak-ends-blue-jays-loss

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Nothing bugs these NASA aeronautical researchers

Apr. 24, 2013 ? NASA's gutsiest scientists say they don't get bugged no matter what kind of sticky situation they find themselves smashed into.

The preceding dose of hyperbole is brought to you by a team of folks at NASA's Langley Research Center in Virginia who are studying ways to prevent the remains of insect impacts from adhering to the wing of an aircraft in flight.

While the effort is undeniably a goldmine for puns, the research is serious and positive results could help NASA's aeronautical innovators achieve their goals for improving the fuel efficiency of aircraft cruising across the country.

"We are the bug team," said Mia Siochi, of the Advanced Materials and Processing Branch at Langley. "It's important work, but we also have a lot of fun with it."

Anyone who has driven through a cloud of insects knows how quickly the bug guts build up on the vehicle, causing problems with visibility, clogging the air intake and radiator, and ruining the car's exterior finish.

The problem for an airplane is that its aerodynamic design is meant to have air move very smoothly across the body and wing surfaces, which is called laminar flow. When there is a disruption in that laminar flow, such as from the accumulation of dead bug parts, you induce the opposite of laminar flow, which is turbulence.

Finding ways to maintain laminar flow through all phases of flight is a big deal for the aviation community because it could save millions in fuel cost, while also reducing the amount of noxious emissions released into the atmosphere.

"It's major enough that people have been trying to solve this as far back as the 1960s," Siochi said.

The key to the solution of preventing insect residue build-up in flight is to find a non-stick coating or material of some kind that can be applied to an airplane's body and wings, and that will work with the unique chemistry present in a typical bug splat.

Not only is the intent to limit or prevent the initial adherence to the wing, but to increase the chances the bug residue will more easily erode or sheer off during the flight and leave the wing smooth again.

Understanding that insect biology and its interaction with airplane parts, and then coming up with a decent anti-stick coating is not as easy as you might think. For example, you can't use the same spray you might apply to your car's windshield to make rainwater bead up and roll off.

It's not just water you have to deal with.

"Yes, there's a lot of water in a bug, but there's also some biological components that actually impart the stickiness, and we have to deal with preventing those from sticking even though we know how to prevent water from sticking," Siochi said.

To help them learn more about insect adhesion to materials treated with various coatings, the bug team relies on a unique desk-sized wind tunnel -- the Basic Aerodynamic Research Tunnel, or BART -- equipped with tubing that connects from what they affectionately call "the bug gun."

It has proved to be a very effective tool for examining materials, coatings and insect splats, but the small wind tunnel doesn't exactly copy what's happening in real life.

"We're shooting bugs at about 150 mph as we try to mimic takeoff and landing speed, but the bug is moving and the target is stationary. In reality it should be the other way around," Siochi said.

Either way, the result is the same: sticky bug guts coat small wing surfaces.

Early tests show certain coatings can shrink the area that insect remains adhere to by 90 percent, and reduce the build-up, or height of the sticky bug guts, by 40 percent. But tests continue as there has been no "Eureka!" moment -- yet.

"We don't have the answer yet. We have some potential candidates, but we still have more work to do," Siochi said.

Part of the challenge, Siochi explained, is to make sure that the solution not only works, but that it is also practical.

For example, the coating should not have to be applied before every flight as that would be too time-consuming. Long term exposure of the coating on the wing or aircraft surface should not do any damage. The coating must not add so much weight that it costs more in fuel than it saves.

At least on that last point, Siochi doesn't see a problem.

"These are very, very thin coatings that we spray on, so the weight penalty is probably not there," she said.

The bug team is working toward conducting flight tests within the next two years.

All of this research by NASA does beg the question, how does a material scientist procure the insects she needs?

"By the thousands. In a tackle shop. With a credit card," Siochi explained with a smile. "After checking with our procurement officials and the legal office to make sure there were no regulations against using insects like this."

Initially, the bug team used crickets -- procured from a local tackle shop -- which were convenient to shoot uniformly in the bug gun, but also turned out to be too big for their small wind tunnel apparatus. So they switched to fruit flies.

"We get fruit flies from a fruit fly shop and we propagate them, so we have a supply of bugs that we've kept going for a couple of years now," Siochi said.

Siochi remembers one occasion when a shipment of fruit flies was delivered from California in the overnight mail, and she wasn't in the office to receive them, so they were delivered somewhere else instead.

So one of her colleagues was dispatched to hunt down this container of several hundred fruit flies and wound up searching all over Langley before finding them.

"Just another day of work for the bug team," Siochi said. "There's no doubt it's a real different kind of lab experience."

The effort is part of NASA's Environmentally Responsible Aviation project, which is managed by the agency's Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate.

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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_technology/~3/njQJJ78wipo/130424170125.htm

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CA-ENTERTAINMENT Summary

Gwyneth Paltrow named People's most beautiful woman

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Oscar-winning actress Gwyneth Paltrow on Wednesday was named the world's most beautiful woman for 2013 by People magazine, knocking pop singer Beyonce out of the top spot. The 40-year-old mother of two credits a five-day-a-week exercise regimen for keeping her in shape as she grows older.

Psy knocked from top of Korean charts by 63-year-old singer

SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korean rapper Psy, whose latest video "Gentleman" tracked global megahit "Gangnam Style" by going viral on the Internet, has been knocked from the top of the music charts in his native country by a 63-year-old easy listening pop singer. "Gangnam Style", which holds the YouTube record for most views with more than 1.5 billion, catapulted the sunglassed Korean with the garish jackets to world stardom and made him one of the best-known faces to grace the growing K-pop music scene.

Ang Lee, Kidman join Cannes Film Festival jury

LONDON (Reuters) - Double Oscar-winning director Ang Lee and Australian actress Nicole Kidman will be on the nine-member jury at this year's Cannes Film Festival, organizers said on Wednesday. The panel, led by triple Oscar-winner Steven Spielberg, will decide the awards handed out when the world's most important annual cinema showcase closes on May 26.

Kurdish singer sparks identity debate on Arab talent show

ARBIL, Iraq (Reuters) - A singer from Iraq's Kurdistan region has made it through to the semi-final of an Arab talent contest, igniting heated debates over Iraqi identity and politicizing the popular TV show. A panel of judges praised 24-year-old Parwaz Hussein and she was voted through to the next round of "Arab Idol", in which aspiring popstars from Morocco to Bahrain compete for a recording contract.

"Iron Man 3" goes back to basics in a quest to save the U.S.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - After battling grandiose villains and teaming up with other superheroes, it's back-to-basics for "Iron Man" in the third installment of the multi-million-dollar franchise featuring Robert Downey Jr. "Iron Man 3," which opens in most of the world this Friday and on May 3 in the United States, has Downey reprising his role of superhero industrialist Tony Stark from the first two films as well as last summer's "The Avengers."

Stranglers break out of punk mould with classical and ballet

LONDON (Reuters) - For a band that thrives on taking risks, moving The Stranglers' music from the mosh pit to the orchestra pit was an easy decision. The fact that the punk veterans, more used to fans thrashing around to their songs, are also working on a ballet based on of one their albums just adds to the spirit of adventure.

Roddy Doyle's "The Commitments" finally made into musical

LONDON (Reuters) - Irish author Roddy Doyle's bestselling novel "The Commitments" is finally being made into a musical, more than 25 years after the heartwarming tale of a group of aspiring soul musicians was first published. The Booker Prize winner's 1987 story about young working class Jimmy Rabbitte's efforts to form the "finest soul act in Dublin" became a hit film in 1991, but Doyle said he turned down a flood of requests to adapt it into a musical at the time.

Robert Redford noncommittal on future of London's Sundance event

LONDON (Reuters) - Robert Redford said on Wednesday that the future of London's Sundance film and music festival was by no means certain, as he launched the British version of an event that aims to boost interest in independent film. Last year was the first time that the U.S. actor-director had ventured outside the United States with a version of the Sundance Film Festival, the world's leading independent film festival, that he set up in Park City, Utah, 35 years ago.

New "Star Trek" boldly voyages to Australia for premiere

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Hundreds of fans screamed and waved as the cast of "Star Trek: Into Darkness" beamed into Sydney on Tuesday with the crew of the starship Enterprise returning to space in the world premiere of one of the season's most anticipated movies. Fans swarmed the red carpet in central Sydney for a glimpse of Chris Pine and co-star Zachary Quinto, who play Captain James T. Kirk and Mr. Spock in the sequel to J.J. Abrams's highly acclaimed reboot of the famous franchise.

Kuwait author wins Arabic book prize for tale of foreign workers

LONDON (Reuters) - Kuwaiti author Saud Alsanousi has won the 2013 International Prize for Arabic Fiction for his portrayal of the lives of foreign workers in Gulf countries in "The Bamboo Stalk". The 31-year-old Alsanousi became the youngest winner in the $50,000-prize's six-year history for the story seen through the eyes of Issa, the son of a Kuwaiti father and a Filipina mother.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/ca-entertainment-summary-081913052.html

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Can the law go easy on pickpocket pensioners? - The Local

Should criminal pensioners be given lighter sentences just because they are old? A German police association wants to introduce a senior version of juvenile law for the elderly, but critics say it would be ageist.

A move to make sure older criminals can get off with lighter sentences has come up against criticism from politicians who believe it would be unfair, wrote the Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung on Tuesday.

The initiative by the Federation of German Criminal Police Officers (BDK) wants to ensure judges take elderly criminals' age and personal circumstances - such as growing age-related poverty - into account when handing out prison sentences or fines.

According to BDK figures, six percent of all criminals are currently over 60 and 70 percent of them are first-time offenders - many of them discovering the possibilities of online fraud.

Andr? Schulz, head of the BDK, told the Hamburger Morgenpost back in February that pensioners are driven to crime because they cannot pay their rent or buy their food. And, said Schulz, Germany's rapidly aging population will mean the proportion of criminals over the age of 60 will only rise in the coming years, wrote the paper.

But critics of the scheme - such as North Rhine-Westphalian Justice Minister Thomas Kutschaty - say giving pensioners breaks in the same way as juveniles is both superfluous and potentially ageist.

"The regional government does not see a need to introduce a separate criminal law for senior citizens," wrote Kutschaty on Monday in a reply to a parliamentary inquiry by the regional opposition Conservative (CDU) fraction.

Under existing law, wrote the minister, judges can already take into account personal circumstances - including age - as well as the effect of the punishment.
Also, he said, the demographic shift has not yet seen rocketing numbers of pick-pocketing pensioners.

Between 2007 and 2011, the number of convicted criminals over the age of 60 in North Rhine-Westphalia - Germany's most populous state - has only risen by 59 to 7,540, representing a rise of from four to 4.2 percent of all convicts, said Kutschaty.

Meanwhile, it was wrong to compare senior citizens to juveniles, he said. Young people could be let off lighter because they were not yet mature enough to see consequences of their actions - not something which could be said of pensioners.

The Local/jlb

Source: http://www.thelocal.de/society/20130423-49307.html

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50 things you might not know about Nature Chemistry : The ...

On Monday I realized that our May 2013 issue is our 50th issue. To celebrate, we have compiled 50 (hopefully) interesting tidbits of information about the journal that you might not have been aware of. Apologies for the length of this post, but it seemed like cheating to do fewer than 50?

1. The first formal manuscript submission (i.e., made through our online submission system rather than being e-mailed to us before that went live) arrived on the 25th July 2008. It was sent out to three referees and was then, alas, declined for publication on the 5th September 2008.

2. The first Nature Chemistry research Article was published on February 22nd 2009. The corresponding author was Makoto Fujita and the paper was entitled: Minimal nucleotide duplex formation in water through enclathration in self-assembled hosts. According to Web of Science, as of today it has been cited 62 times.

3. We published 471 research Articles (not including review-type articles) in the first 50 issues of Nature Chemistry. On average, that?s just under 9-and-a-half papers per issue.

4. As of today, according to Web of Science our most cited research Article (in fact, our most-cited piece of content bar none) is this paper: New insights into the structure and reduction of graphite oxide by Pulickel Ajayan and co-workers. It has currently been cited 390 times. It was handled by Anne, who is very smug about this!

5. The first 50 issues piled on top of one another reaches the dizzying height of roughly 25 cm. This seems disappointingly small.

6. We spell ?sulfur? with an ?f? and here?s an Editorial explaining why.

7. While we are on the subject of spelling, I?m going to point out that we use Oxford English spelling. So, for all of you wondering why we put ?z?s in lots of words that you don?t think we should, hopefully that answers your question. Quite a few authors have pointed out what they think are spelling mistakes to us. We do occasionally make mistakes, but using ?ize? words is not one of them.

8. The f-word made its debut in Nature Chemistry in the August 2012 Blogroll column written by Paul Bracher. It?s all DrRubidium?s fault? Paul blogged about the experience here. The editorial team discussed if we should go ahead and use the word in all its glory and we decided we would (it wasn?t a unanimous decision). But it?s OK, it is in the Oxford English dictionary after all.

9. Every time Michelle Francl sends me a new Thesis article to edit, I have to look something up in the dictionary. Which is great! The two most recent examples were ?hermeneutic? and ?sequelae??

10. Four of the five original editorial team members are pretty big football fans (the one with the round ball for all you North Americans, you know, the one where a ?ball? is kicked with a ?foot? for the vast majority of the game? hence the name). Bearing that in mind, I was quite pleased that I was able to get a mention to Manchester United in the March 2011 Editorial.

11. In a similar vein, Gav, who is a massive Sunderland AFC fan, managed to get this phrase into the March 2012 Editorial: How dull would our existence be if everything was black and white ??that?s a subtle dig at Sunderland?s big rivals (arch nemeses might be a better description?), Newcastle United, who play in black-and-white stripes (Sunderland play in red-and-white stripes).

12. And speaking of Nature Chemistry Editorials, the one that appeared in the April 2013 issue was all about how the journal uses Twitter. What was a little unusual, however, was that it was written as a sequence of 42 tweets, complete with a Douglas Adams reference at the end. We live-tweeted the editorial the day that it was published in the journal.

13. After the expression ?rise of the internet? innocently made its way into the first two Editorials published in the journal (April 2009 and May 2009), it became a bit of a running joke to try and squeeze it into subsequent Editorials. It made into the June 2009, July 2009 and September 2009 Editorials. I think we then mostly forgot about it; but the phrase did make a comeback in the Editorials in the August 2011 and September 2011 issues.

14. Nature Chemistry editors are, for the most part, fuelled by tea. We even have our own tea cosy, knitted by our former editorial assistant, Hollie.

15. There must be something in the water that we use to make the tea ? 4 of the 5 original members of the editorial team got married (not to each other) while working on Nature Chemistry.

16. We?re quite particular about what goes on the cover of the journal; we even wrote an Editorial about cover images, outlining our disdain for arbitrary background images. Here?s a short quote: Shimmering oceans, rippling pools, starry skies, breathtaking sunsets and other equally romantic visions are lovely, but please refrain from putting this type of imagery in the background of your cover suggestion unless you have a really good reason to do so?

17. Hand-drawn chemical structures have appeared on four different Nature Chemistry covers (Oct 2009, July 2010, June 2011); including some structures drawn by yours truly (May 2012).

18. Anne has actually appeared on the cover of the journal. Along with many other female chemists, a picture of Anne was used to form the mosaic of Marie Curie that graced the cover of the September 2011 issue.

19. Pictures of all of the founding editors appeared in the Editorial in the very first issue. This turned out to be quite useful for Gav, who used a hardcopy of issue 1 as photo ID during his visit to Salt Lake City for the 2009 Spring ACS meeting. Yes, this is true.

20. We?re fussy about graphical abstracts too ? we covered that in an Editorial as well. We have made it on to tocrofl at least a couple of times (here and here) though?

21. We?re big fans of Twitter and currently the journal has just under 73k followers. All of the editors on the team have their own accounts too: me, Steve, Gav, Anne and Russell.

22. Our first tweet from the journal was made at 10:10 in the morning on the 10th March 2009 ? here it is.

23. After a lunch-time conversation in the canteen here at Nature Towers, we started to wonder who the greatest chemist of all time was. We held a completely unscientific poll on Twitter and here are the results (spoiler alert: Pauling won). We then wrote in more detail about the question itself in an Editorial.

24. We have (deliberately) printed some text upside down in the hardcopy of the journal. Bruce Gibb?s first Thesis article included a quiz and so it just seemed like a good idea to print the answers upside down at the end of the article. We didn?t do this in the online version?

25. We don?t do it as much as Angewandte Chemie, but we do occasionally come up with punny titles, especially for research highlights ? many of which are based on song titles. Two of my favourites are Ice ice maybe and Come on silene.

26. Each month we need to come up with four cover lines for the journal, based on the papers published in that issue. When all else fails, we turn to The Phrase Finder, RhymeZone and Google News.

27. We held a science writing competition based on the In Your Element feature in the journal as part of the activities associated with the International Year of Chemistry. The Editorial in the December 2011 issue summarizes the results of the competition.

28. We use a real periodic table to keep track of which elements have been (or are in the process of being) covered for the In Your Element section of the journal. Having said that, we haven?t updated it for a while?

29. Talking of periodic tables, the one we published in only the second issue of Nature Chemistry contained two entries for thorium (Th). Oops. Here?s the erratum.

30. That?s probably not our most embarrassing error, however. In the very first issue, we said that the ratio of hydrogen to oxygen in water (you know, that stuff H₂O) was 1:2. Erm, no. Here?s the erratum.

31. Another embarrassing error is that we have published a stock image of left-handed DNA. No, not Z-DNA, just a normal DNA helix that happens to be left- rather than right-handed. Oops again. It was in this Thesis article ($).

32. We?ve published a picture of Kate Moss in the journal; albeit her likeness cast in gold. Here?s the statue as it appeared in the The Telegraph ? we cropped it somewhat more tastefully for this book review ($) by Andrea Sella?

33. Members of the extended editorial team donned Nature Chemistry labcoats and took part in a photoshoot for Dennis Curran?s Thesis article ($) in the December 2012 issue.

34. We?ve probably given away hundreds of those Nature Chemistry-branded labcoats at conferences over the past few years. We have a handful left in the office (good for photoshoots ??see point 33!).

35. We?ve even branded a bus with the Nature Chemistry logo!

36. After Neil left us to join the Chemistry World crew, we?ve invited bloggers out there in the wild to write the Blogroll column that appears in the journal each month. So far, we have had: Chemjobber, Paul Bracher, See Arr Oh, BRSM, Ashutosh Jogalekar, Karl D. Collins, Adam Azman, DrFreddy, JessTheChemist, DrRubidium, and Mark Lorch pen the column for us.

37. We?ve been featured on Thomson Reuters? Science Watch site.

38. We?ve also featured in two April Fools? blog posts by See Arr Oh at Just like Cooking ??here and here.

39. When it turned out that a stock photo of bismuth was going to be far more expensive than simply buying a lump of bismuth and photographing it ? we bought a lump of bismuth. And took a photo. And published it in this In Your Element article ($). I still have the bismuth on my desk in the office, but it?s had an accident since we first bought it?

40. So when we needed to illustrate the In Your Element article on selenium, we obviously went out and bought some? brazil nuts. That In Your Element essay can be found here ($).

41. In the name of SCIENCE, the editorial team took a trip to our local liquid nitrogen ice cream parlour. We?ve been back since.

42. While talking about tasty treats, the current Physical Sciences Bake Off Champion (for biscuits ??cookies for North Americans) is yours truly ? I?m still a synthetic chemist at heart! Find out more about my progress through the competition rounds here.

43. The journal has even published a recipe to make a curry! (From this Thesis article ($) by Bruce Gibb).

44. We celebrated the International Year of Chemistry by publishing a collection of seven Commentary articles about broader issues in chemistry beyond just the science itself. It was meant to be eight Commentaries, but one author dropped out.

45. We?ve published a handful of what we call ?focus issues? where we bring together a small number of pieces of content on a similar topic. These include prebiotic chemistry, site-selective reactions, small DNA binders, and protein dynamics.

46. Hannah, who spent a week doing some work experience at Nature Chemistry and other divisions in the company, wrote up her experiences for our blog in (awesome) poem form.

47. When an author has sent us a really good piece for the journal that is just too long for the section it is intended for, we have used our blog to publish the additional material. This includes a fascinating essay by Dan O?Leary on deuterium (and related issues) and a great piece by R. J. Dwayne Miller on molecular motors.

48. Two PHD Comics have appeared in Nature Chemistry, one in this Editorial on posters and the other in this Thesis article ($) by Michelle Francl (which included this comic).

49. So far we have received two impact factors ??here are blog posts analysing them.

50. And we?ve even published a cartoon of a chemistry yeti/bigfoot/sasquatch (whatever you want to call it?) in this Thesis article ($) by Michelle Francl on urban legends of chemistry.

Source: http://blogs.nature.com/thescepticalchymist/2013/04/50-things-you-might-not-know-about-nature-chemistry.html

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White House on flight delays: Not our fault (Washington Bureau)

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Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/301106062?client_source=feed&format=rss

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British comedian Dawn French marries for a second time

LONDON (Reuters) - British comedian Dawn French, who plays "The Vicar of Dibley" in the award-winning television comedy, has married for the second time, her publicist said on Monday.

French, 55, married charity worker Mark Bignell at the Scarlett Hotel near Newquay in Cornwall, south west England, on Saturday. The hotel describes itself as a luxury, eco venue overlooking the ocean.

Her first marriage, to comedian Lenny Henry, ended in 2010 after 25 years. The pair have an adopted daughter, Billie.

Besides the Emmy-winning "Vicar of Dibley", French is best known for her comedy collaboration with Jennifer Saunders in the popular long-running BBC comedy "French & Saunders".

Bignell is the chief executive of Hamoaze House which helps recovering drug and alcohol abusers reintegrate into society.

(Reporting by Belinda Goldsmith, editing by Paul Casciato)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/british-comedian-dawn-french-marries-second-time-142835040.html

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