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Friday, February 22, 2013
Sony Debuts PS4 With More Whimper Than Bang
Sony officially introduced its long-anticipated PlayStation 4 video game console at a media event in New York City on Wednesday. However, Sony merely showed off its new controller -- it didn't actually unveil the physical console, likely saving that newsworthy moment for the upcoming E3 in Los Angeles in June.
Love it or hate it? ?Kissing Statue? returns to San Diego
The statue version of that iconic World War II kiss now has a permanent home in San Diego. While it is the epitome of romance for some, many are complaining about its size. NBC's Kristen Dahlgren reports.
By A. Pawlowski, TODAY contributor
Some see it as the perfect military tribute, others dismiss it as kitschy, and many just want to smooch in its shadow. Love it or hate it, the ?Kissing Statue? is back at the Port of San Diego.
The 25-foot installation ? officially known as ?Unconditional Surrender? ? recreates the famous embrace between a sailor and a nurse celebrating the end of World War II in New York?s Times Square in 1945.
?It?s the right sculpture for the right place in San Diego,? said Scott McGaugh, a spokesman for the USS?Midway Museum, which launched a successful campaign to "save the kiss.?
?It has become a major tourist destination along downtown?s water front.?
San Diego got its first glimpse of the exhibit in 2007 when The Sculpture Foundation loaned it to the city and the port added it to its Greatest Generation Walk, home to a number of memorials. The temporary foam and urethane prototype was removed last year when it began ?looking awfully worn,? McGaugh said. A plan was soon hatched to bring it back as a permanent bronze sculpture, but not without controversy.
The USS?Midway Museum was given three months to raise $1 million to pay for the replacement. It reached that goal in eight weeks, with donations ranging from $20 to $100,000, McGaugh said.
?San Diego quickly voted with its money to make it permanent,? he pointed out.
Lenny Ignelzi / AP
Finishing touches are made to the new kissing sailor statue on the embarcadero adjacent the USS Midway museum in San Diego. The statue, which was modeled after the renowned photograph by Alfred Eisenstaedt taken at the end of World War II, replaces a similar version that was moved out of San Diego last year.
But the port?s Public Art Committee voted against accepting the replacement, with critics noting that it ?was not artistically or (a)esthetically pleasing,? The San Diego Union-Tribune reported. When the port approved the permanent statue anyway, citing its popularity among residents and visitors, two committee members resigned in protest.
That sentiment seemed far away on Saturday when hundreds of people attended the unveiling of the bronze sculpture.
?We are in San Diego, we have the greatest number of veterans and active duty of any community in the nation,? said San Diego Mayor Bob Filner, according to NBC affiliate KNTV. ?This belongs here.?
Meanwhile, supporters dismissed questions about the exhibit?s artistic value.
?Art lovers don?t love it but the people love it and that?s what counts,? Bill Craddock, a member of San Diego?s chapter of Pearl Harbor Survivors, told KNTV.
Nine couples who got married during World War II renewed their vows during the ceremony, which left many spectators in tears as they watched the men and women in their late 80s and early 90s pledging their love to each other, McGaugh said.
The exhibit has become a favorite photo op in San Diego, with visitors of all ages, from teenagers to grandparents, eager to recreate the kiss, he added.
The 7-ton bronze statue, designed by artist Seward Johnson, was created in New Jersey and transported to San Diego on a flatbed truck. A similar installation is on display in Sarasota, Fla., but San Diego?s sculpture is the only version on the West Coast, McGaugh said.
?We see it as a memorial, as a tribute, as a testament to those who serve our country in uniform,? he noted. ?We left the discussion of what is good art to others.?
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Thursday, February 21, 2013
Astronomers discover smallest planet ever
Orbiting a star some 215 light-years away, Kepler-37b is smaller than Mercury, the smallest planet in our solar system.?
An artist's conception of the tiny alien planet Kepler-37b, which is slightly larger than Earth's moon and orbits its host star every 13 days. It likely has a surface temperature of in excess of 400 deg C (700 deg F).
NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech
EnlargeThe discovery of a strange new world about the size of Earth's moon has shattered the record for the smallest known alien planet, scientists say.
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The newfound alien planet Kepler-37b is the first?exoplanet?discovered to be smaller than Mercury. It whips around its parent star every 13 days and has a roasting surface temperature of about 800 degrees Fahrenheit (427 Celsius), researchers said. It not a promising contender for life, they added.
Astronomers found Kepler-37b and two other, larger planets (called Kepler-37c and Kepler-37d) orbiting a star about 215 light-years from Earth using NASA's prolific Kepler space telescope. Finding such a small exoplanet with the?Kepler spacecraft?was a stretch, but some attributes of Kepler-37b's parent star made the discovery possible.
The star has few sunspots and is bright relative to its planet, making it easier for the Kepler spacecraft to spot the telltale dimming that takes place when a planet passes in front of its star, which scientists call a transit. That method revealed not just the presence of Kepler-37b, but its two siblings in orbits farther from the parent star than 37b. [Gallery: The?Smallest Alien Planets]
"There are not many signals masking the transit," study leader Thomas Barclay of NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., told SPACE.com. "What makes this exceptional was this dip of brightness was just 22 parts per million."
Too hot to host life
Kepler-37b and its siblings, 37c and 37d, are likely uninhabitable, scientists said. All three planets lie close to their parent star, well inside the Earth-sun distance (called astronomical units, or AU). One astronomical unit is about 93 million miles (150 million kilometers).
The moon-size Kepler-37b is so close to its parent star, at just 0.10 AU, that it likely has no atmosphere or liquid water on its surface. The next planet out, Kepler-37c, is slightly smaller than Earth and may have an atmosphere, but it orbits the star at 0.14 AU ? well outside the star's habitable zone in which liquid water could exist on the surface.
The biggest planet in the newfound?alien solar system?is Kepler-37d. It is about twice the size of Earth and orbits the parent star at a distance of 0.2 AU.
"This could hold an atmosphere, but it's unlikely to be a rocky planet ? more likely to be gassy ? simply because of its size. It could hold some kind of liquid at the surface," Barclay said.
The next step, Barclay added, will be to look for Mercury-sized exoplanets at greater distances away from the host star Kepler 37. More planets could be orbiting the star and await discovery.
"We're looking at it very carefully," Barclay said. "There's nothing yet, but something may appear in the data."
Starlight tells the tale
Barclay and his team took great care to confirm the existence of planets around Kepler-37. Theresearchers knew that a dip in the star's brightness identified by the Kepler spacecraft could have come from several factors, most notably another?star passingin front of the Kepler-37 target. So they ran a computer simulation to see if the newfound planet candidates could be false positives.
Using a tool called Blender from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, the researchers simulated several false positive scenarios in order to eliminate them. The results made researchers more than 99 percent confident that the planet candidates are actual planets, Barclay said.
The science team managed to obtain a close approximation of the size of the Kepler-37 star, in addition to spotting its planetary retinue.
The star's quiescent nature allowed the researchers to measure it with astroseismology, a technique that uses acoustic oscillations on the star's surface similar to how researchers probe the Earth's interior with seismic devices during earthquakes.
The uncertainty for a star's size is typically 20 to 30 percent, Barclay said. In this case, using astroseismology, the researchers narrowed the uncertainty to 3 percent.
Measurements showed Kepler-37 is about 75 percent the size of Earth's sun and 80 percent as massive. This places the star within the same "class" of stars as our sun.
The $600 million Kepler mission launched in March 2009, and has found more than 2,740 alien worlds so far. The spacecraft searches for small dips in stars' light caused by orbiting planets that pass in front of them periodically, diming their brightness.
Follow Elizabeth Howell?@howellspace, or SPACE.com?@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://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/science/~3/SYGY982MnEU/Astronomers-discover-smallest-planet-ever
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Molecular system that could help develop potential treatments for conditions such as Alzheimer's disease identified
Feb. 21, 2013 ? Scientists from the University of Southampton have identified the molecular system that contributes to the harmful inflammatory reaction in the brain during neurodegenerative diseases.
An important aspect of chronic neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, Huntington's or prion disease, is the generation of an innate inflammatory reaction within the brain.
Results from the study open new avenues for the regulation of the inflammatory reaction and provide new insights into the understanding of the biology of microglial cells, which play a leading role in the development and maintenance of this reaction.
Dr Diego Gomez-Nicola, from the CNS Inflammation group at the University of Southampton and lead author of the paper, says: "The understanding of microglial biology during neurodegenerative diseases is crucial for the development of potential therapeutic approaches to control the harmful inflammatory reaction. These potential interventions could modify or arrest neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer disease.
"The future potential outcomes of this line of research would be rapidly translated into the clinics of neuropathology, and would improve the quality of life of patients with these diseases."
Microglial cells multiply during different neurodegenerative conditions, although little is known about to what extent this accounts for the expansion of the microglial population during the development of the disease or how it is regulated.
Writing in The Journal of Neuroscience, scientists from the University of Southampton describe how they used a laboratory model of neurodegeneration (murine prion disease), to understand the brain's response to microglial proliferation and dissected the molecules regulating this process. They found that signalling through a receptor called CSF1R is a key for the expansion of the microglial population and therefore drugs could target this.
Dr Diego Gomez-Nicola adds: "We have been able to identify that this molecular system is active in human Alzheimer's disease and variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, pointing to this mechanism being universal for controlling microglial proliferation during neurodegeneration. By means of targeting CSF1R with selective inhibitors we have been able to delay the clinical symptoms of experimental prion disease, also preventing the loss of neurons."
The research has been funded by a Marie Curie fellowship from the European Union and a pilot research grant from Alzheimer's Research UK.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Southampton, via AlphaGalileo.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
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Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/most_popular/~3/Ag2UYcm-nZA/130221084711.htm
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Wednesday, February 20, 2013
Biden says a shotgun will scare off intruders
WASHINGTON (AP) ? Vice President Joe Biden said Tuesday that Americans don't need semi-automatic weapons to protect their homes because a couple of blasts from a shotgun will scare off intruders.
"Buy a shotgun, buy a shotgun," the vice president encouraged those worried about defending themselves. He was speaking in an online video as part of a Facebook town hall hosted by Parents Magazine on the administration's strategy for reducing gun violence, which he has led at the direction of President Barack Obama.
Biden said he keeps two shotguns and shells locked up at home and he's told his wife, Jill, to use them if she needs protection. He presumably was speaking about before he became vice president, a position that gives the couple full-time Secret Service protection.
"I said, 'Jill, if there's ever a problem, just walk out on the balcony ... take that double-barrel shotgun and fire two blasts outside the house,'" Biden said. "You don't need an AR-15. It's harder to aim, it's harder to use and in fact, you don't need 30 rounds to protect yourself."
Biden's answer came in response to a question posted by a Facebook user about whether the administration's proposal to ban military-style assault weapons and high-capacity magazines would make law-abiding citizens more of a target of criminals since they wouldn't have a sufficient way of protecting themselves. Biden bristled at the question, saying he's never heard such sentiments in the pages of Parents Magazine.
"But I'm delighted to answer them," he added quickly.
Biden said he learned his lessons on gun safety from his father, who was a hunter. He said as a child, he wasn't even allowed to point a cap gun at other children while playing cops and robbers. He said most gun owners are very responsible, but parents should make sure guns are locked up to keep children safe, just like pool gates and liquor cabinets.
He also said he doesn't think the Second Amendment's right to bear arms should be changed. He said limits on the use of assault weapons and high-capacity magazines is compatible with that right.
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Greg Cote: NCAA?s buffoonery turns Miami Hurricanes into sympathetic victim
The NCAA ? corrupted, embarrassed and now playing the obstinate bully ? has managed to do the seemingly impossible: It has cast the University of Miami as the sympathetic victim. The side you root for. It has left even longtime UM detractors little choice but to see the judge and jury here as dirtier than the accused.
This is saying a lot, of course, because ever since the mid-1980s the Hurricanes have worn college athletics? national black hat, and worn it proudly, too, cocked and brim low, hip hop-style. The school?s notorious badge of honor grew from us-against-the-world, grew from street level, grew from camouflage and attitude. It was a cocktail of controversies off the field and punishing success on it. It was embodied in all of those NFL alums simply (and imperially) referring to ?The U.? It is reflected in all of those T-shirts claiming Miami ?invented swagger.?
The Hurricanes were anti-establishment and cocky and unless you loved them, you hated them. They were the Yankees, only more urban.
And the trouble Miami is in now? Man, it was so perfectly scripted to only feed any and all of those negative perceptions of the Canes. I mean, seriously, right? It involved a rampant, renegade booster supposedly offering yacht parties with strippers (not to mention more mundane handouts) to willing student-athletes. Opposing coaches recruiting against UM couldn?t have written it any better ? although you know they tried with various embellishments.
Yes, Canes-hating America should be howling at UM?s plight today, perhaps delighted that this long investigation grew so big it even shadowed the best story in college sports right now ? Miami?s astonishing ascension to a No. 2 ranking in men?s basketball.
Instead, the university that put the badass in college sports isn?t the bad guy here.
Don?t get this wrong. UM is plenty culpable for allowing defrocked booster Nevin Shapiro (since a convicted and jailed Ponzi schemer) to run and reign free. And any Canes athletes who partook violated rules. The Hurricanes had punishment coming, without question.
PROBE TURNS INTO A SHAM
The NCAA?s role in this investigation, though, has been a travesty far worse than any UM improprieties that invited the scrutiny in the first place. This NCAA probe turned into an outright sham that has shamed college sports? governing body ? all the more so because it has dragged on for more than two years.
The NCAA?s official Notice of Allegations against Miami, served late Tuesday, includes a charge of ?lack of institutional control,? a broad and serious claim. But what?s ludicrous, as well as serious, is the NCAA?s own lack of institutional control in this matter. ?The pot calling the kettle black,? as my Granpappy used to say.
It?s one thing for a school to violate rules, but far worse when the NCAA, the governing body and de facto police force ? the judge and jury ? itself proves corrupt.
Two high-ranking enforcement officials were fired for improperly paying Shapiro?s lawyers to obtain information against UM in unrelated depositions ? info that would not otherwise been gettable. These officials, renegades like Shapiro, went against the direct advice and order of the NCAA?s own staff counsel in doing so.
Source: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/02/20/3244225/greg-cote-ncaas-buffoonery-turns.html
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Tuesday, February 19, 2013
Reuters: Apple employee computers hacked, no evidence of stolen data
Last week, Facebook was the target of of a sophisticated hacking attack and now reports have surfaced that Apple's been victimized by a similar scheme. Reuters is reporting that a number of Apple's employees' Macs were infiltrated by a hacking scheme, but "there was no evidence that any data left Apple." To address the cyber security flaw found by the digital ne're-do-wells, Apple has promised a software patch will be released later today [Psst... it's available now.]. So, it appears the folks in Cupertino have things under control, and we've reached out to the company to confirm that's the case. We'll update things here when we hear back.
Update: Apple has provided us with the following statement regarding the matter.
"Apple has identified malware which infected a limited number of Mac systems through a vulnerability in the Java plug-in for browsers. The malware was employed in an attack against Apple and other companies, and was spread through a website for software developers. We identified a small number of systems within Apple that were infected and isolated them from our network. There is no evidence that any data left Apple. We are working closely with law enforcement to find the source of the malware.
Since OS X Lion, Macs have shipped without Java installed and as a added security measure OS X automatically disables Java if it has been unused for 35 days. To protect Mac users that have installed Java, today we are releasing an updated Java malware removal tool that will check Mac systems and remove this malware if found."
Filed under: Desktops, Laptops, Apple
Source: Reuters
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/02/19/apple-cyber-security-breach/
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