JOHANNESBURG (AP) ? A former South African president has said the health of Nelson Mandela is improving as the 94-year-old beloved anti-apartheid leader marked two weeks in the hospital Friday.
Thabo Mbeki, who succeeded Mandela as president in 1999, made the comment Thursday night in an interview with Power FM, a South African radio station.
Mandela, who spent 27 years in prison during white racist rule, was taken to a Pretoria hospital on June 8 to be treated for a recurring lung infection. It marked the fourth time he has been hospitalized since December.
"I maintained very close contact with the family and the doctors about Nelson Mandela's condition," said Mbeki, who served two five-year terms as president.
"Nelson Mandela is in fact improving, in terms of his health," Mbeki said. "I think we really need to feel comforted that we still have him with us now."
The government had described Mandela's condition as serious but stable, but later said he was improving.
Ndaba Mandela, one of Mandela's grandsons, thanked the many people around the world who have sent messages of support for his grandfather during his illness.
"For us, as family, as long as he can still hear and understand what is said to him, and talk to us, we'll continue to celebrate him," The Star, a South African newspaper, quoted Ndaba Mandela as saying Thursday. He spoke at a media briefing about a football invitational in South Africa that will be part of celebrations surrounding July 18, Mandela's 95th birthday.
Mandela was released from prison in 1990 and became South Africa's first black president in all-race elections in 1994.
WASHINGTON (AP) ? Far-reaching immigration legislation offering the prize of U.S. citizenship to millions is swiftly gaining ground in the Senate following agreement between Republicans and Democrats on dramatic steps aimed at securing the border with Mexico.
The deal to double Border Patrol agents and fencing along the Southwest border has won support from four undecided Republican senators for the immigration bill that's a top priority for President Barack Obama. More appeared likely to come on board, putting the legislation within reach of securing the bipartisan vote that its authors say is needed to ensure serious consideration by the GOP-controlled House.
"It is safe to say that this agreement has the power to change minds in the Senate," said Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., a lead author of the bill, said Thursday. "With this agreement, we have now answered every criticism that has come forward about the immigration bill."
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said the deal should satisfy those Republicans concerned that the border security provisions in the bill were too weak. "If they can't accept these provisions, then border security is not their problem," McCain said.
The deal was developed by Republican Sens. Bob Corker of Tennessee and John Hoeven of North Dakota, in consultation with Schumer, McCain and other members of the so-called Gang of Eight senators who wrote the immigration bill. It prevents immigrants now here illegally from attaining permanent resident status until a series of steps have been taken to secure the border.
These include doubling the Border Patrol with 20,000 new agents, 18 new unmanned surveillance drones, 350 miles of new fencing to add to the 350 miles already built, and an array of fixed and mobile devices to maintain vigilance, including high-tech tools such as infrared ground sensors and airborne radar.
The new provisions would be put in place over a decade, in line with the 10-year path to a permanent resident green card that the bill sets out for immigrants here illegally. During that time, the immigrants could live and work legally in a provisional status.
Vice President Joe Biden told a predominantly Latino crowd of 1,100 gathered in Las Vegas for the national conference for the League of United Latin American Citizens that now is the time for a "fair, and firm and unfettered path for 11 million people" to become U.S. citizens.
"The question you should ask is, 'What will immigration reform do for America?'" Biden said Thursday. "The answer is clear and resounding: It can and will do great things for America."
Hoeven said the 10-year cost of the border security amendment included $25 billion for the additional Border Patrol agents, $3 billion for fencing and $3.2 billion for other measures.
It's "border security on steroids," said Corker, who along with Hoeven had been uncommitted on the immigration bill. Both are now prepared to support it, assuming their amendment is adopted, as is expected to happen early next week. Sens. Dean Heller, R-Nev., and Mark Kirk, R-Ill., also announced their support Thursday.
Corker and Hoeven had said they expected the legislation to be formally unveiled in the Senate late Thursday, but for unexplained reasons, that did not happen. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., adjourned the Senate around 10:30 p.m., saying the amendment was nearly ready and the Senate could move forward with it Friday.
The deal on border security came together quickly over the past several days after talks had bogged down over Republicans' insistence that green cards be made conditional on catching or turning back 90 percent of would-be border crossers. Schumer, other Democrats and Obama himself rejected this trigger, which they feared could delay the path to citizenship for years. Obama made his objections known in a phone call to Schumer from Air Force One during his trip to Europe for the Group of Eight summit earlier in the week, according to a Senate aide who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations.
The breakthrough came when the Congressional Budget Office released a report Tuesday finding that the bill would cut billions of dollars from the deficit. Schumer's top immigration aide, Leon Fresco, had the idea of devoting some of those billions to a dramatic border build-up.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., an author of the bill who helped run interference between Corker and Hoeven and Democrats in the group, said that with the CBO finding in hand, he sat down with Schumer and Corker and said, "OK, let's go big."
The idea immediately appealed to the left and the right.
For Republicans, it provided concrete assurances that the bill would aim to achieve a secure border. For Democrats, it offered goals that, if dramatic, were achievable and measurable.
Still, not everyone was won over.
Shortly before Corker and Hoeven went to the Senate floor to announce their agreement Thursday afternoon, five leading Republican opponents of the bill held a news conference to denounce the deal as little more than an empty promise.
"In short, I think this amendment is designed to pass the bill but not to fix the bill," Sen. David Vitter, R-La., said.
About 10 Republicans have indicated they will vote for the bill, far more than enough to ensure it will have the 60 votes required to overcome any attempted filibuster by last-ditch opponents. Democrats control 54 seats, and party aides have said they do not expect any defections.
In addition to the border security components and eventual citizenship for the 11 million people now here illegally, the immigration bill would create new work visa programs and expand existing ones to allow tens of thousands of workers into the country to work in high- and low-skilled jobs.
Employers would have to verify their workers' legal status.
According to a post on Facebook's security blog, a bug in the company's friend recommendation system exposed the contact information of some six million users to others. The bug has been present for about a year, but the company only found out about it in the last 24 hours. The affected users will be notified by email. The company says there's no evidence the bug was exploited maliciously.
The bug exists in the Facebook system that tries to match the contact info of people you know with the contact information of user accounts on Facebook. You've probably used a tool like this on Facebook or some other service: upload your email address book and Facebook will try to match you up with people you know.
Unfortunately, some of the information used to make friend recommendations was recorded in data archives, and if you used the Download Your Information tool, you might have found email addresses or phone numbers for people with which you have some kind of connection.
As the post describes
Because of the bug, some of the information used to make friend recommendations and reduce the number of invitations we send was inadvertently stored in association with people?s contact information as part of their account on Facebook. As a result, if a person went to download an archive of their Facebook account through our Download Your Information (DYI) tool, they may have been provided with additional email addresses or telephone numbers for their contacts or people with whom they have some connection. This contact information was provided by other people on Facebook and was not necessarily accurate, but was inadvertently included with the contacts of the person using the DYI tool.
The bug was reported using the company's White Hat program for external security researchers. Facebook has disabled the download tool.
Luckily, it sounds like this bug didn't leave user info flapping in the wind or anything, but it's an important reminder that your info is never really secure online. [Facebook via TechCrunch]
The Samsung Galaxy NX appears to be one hell of an Android-powered camera, and as such it deserves a second look.
First, the broad strokes for those just joining the fun: The NX sports a 20.3MP sensor and interchangeable lenses, a 4.8-inch display and runs Android 4.2 Jelly Bean with a custom UI. And it's got full Wifi and LTE capability, so you'll be sharing pictures all over the place in addition to whatever other Android goodness is added (or hacked) into this thing.
Loyal Engadget readers know that we don't normally trouble ourselves with promotions, but this one is too wild to ignore. Until June 30th, RadioShack is offering the HTC One to AT&T and Sprint customers with an added bonus -- a $100 credit for the Google Play store. Should you elect to sign up with Sprint, you'll basically get away like a bandit since RadioShack has slashed the price of the handset to $79.99 for new activations -- on two-year contracts, of course. After all is said and done, you would basically leave $20 richer than when you started (sort of). So, if you've been lusting after the HTC One but have held off on buying it, the universe might be trying to tell you something.
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) ? The Afghan Taliban are ready to free a U.S. soldier held captive since 2009 in exchange for five of their senior operatives imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay as a conciliatory gesture, a senior spokesman for the group said Thursday.
The offer came as an Afghan government spokesman said President Hamid Karzai is now willing to join planned peace talks with the Taliban ? provided that the Taliban flag and nameplate are removed from the militant group's newly opened political office in Doha, the capital of the Gulf state of Qatar. Karzai also wants a formal letter from the United States supporting the Afghan government.
The only known American soldier held captive from the Afghan war is U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, 27, of Hailey, Idaho. He disappeared from his base in southeastern Afghanistan on June 30, 2009, and is believed held in Pakistan.
In an exclusive telephone interview with The Associated Press from his Doha office, Taliban spokesman Shaheen Suhail said on Thursday that Bergdahl "is, as far as I know, in good condition."
Suhail did not elaborate on Bergdahl's current whereabouts. Among the five prisoners the Taliban have consistently requested are Khairullah Khairkhwa, a former Taliban governor of Herat, and Mullah Mohammed Fazl, a former top Taliban military commander, both of whom have been held for more than a decade.
Bergdahl's parents earlier this month received a letter from their son through the International Committee of the Red Cross. They did not release details of the letter but renewed their plea for his release. The soldier's captivity has been marked by only sporadic releases of videos and information about his whereabouts.
The prisoner exchange is the first item on the Taliban's agenda before even opening peace talks, said Suhail, who is a top Taliban figure and served as first secretary at the Afghan Embassy in the Pakistani capital of Islamabad before the Taliban government's ouster in 2001.
"First has to be the release of detainees," Suhail said when asked about Bergdahl. "Yes. It would be an exchange. Then step by step, we want to build bridges of confidence to go forward."
Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry was expected in Doha ahead of Saturday's conference on the Syrian civil war. He was not expected to meet with the Taliban although other U.S. officials might in coming days.
On Wednesday in Washington, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said the U.S. had "never confirmed" any specific meeting schedule with Taliban representatives in Doha.
The reconciliation process with the Taliban has been a long and bumpy one that began nearly two years ago when the U.S. opened secret talks that were later scuttled by Karzai when he learned of them.
It was then that the U.S. and Taliban discussed prisoner exchanges and for a brief time it appeared that the five Guantanamo Bay prisoners would be released and sent to Doha to help further the peace process. But Karzai stepped in again and demanded they be returned to Afghanistan over Taliban objections.
Since then, the U.S. has been trying to jumpstart peace talks and the Taliban have made small gestures including an offer to share power. The Taliban have also attended several international conferences and held meetings with representatives of about 30 countries.
If the Taliban hold talks with American delegates in the next few days, they will be the first U.S.-Taliban talks in nearly 1 ? years.
Prospective peace talks were again thrown into question Wednesday when Karzai became infuriated by the Taliban's move to cast their new office in Doha as a rival embassy.
The Taliban held a ribbon-cutting ceremony Tuesday in which they hoisted their flag and a banner with the name they used while in power more than a decade ago: "Political Office of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan." Later, the Taliban replaced the sign to read simply: "Political office of the Taliban."
At the ceremony, the Taliban welcomed dialogue with Washington but said their fighters would not stop fighting. Hours later, the group claimed responsibility for a rocket attack on Bagram Air Base outside the Afghan capital, Kabul, that killed four American service members.
Karzai on Wednesday announced his government is out of the peace talks, apparently angered by the way Kabul had been sidelined in the U.S.-Taliban bid for rapprochement.
The Afghan president also suspended negotiations with the United States on a bilateral security agreement that would cover American troops who will remain behind after the final withdrawal of NATO combat troops at the end of 2014.
However, Karzai spokesman Fayeq Wahidi said Thursday that the Afghan president is willing to join peace talks with the Taliban if the U.S. follows through with promises he said were made by Kerry in a phone call.
Wahidi said Kerry promised Karzai that the Taliban flag and a nameplate with their former regime's name would be removed and the U.S. would issue a formal letter supporting the Afghan government and making clear that the Taliban office would not be seen as an embassy or government-in-exile.
Once those commitments are met, Wahidi said, "We would see no problem in entering into talks with the Taliban in Qatar. "
On Thursday, the "Islamic Emirate" nameplate had been removed from the Taliban office. The flagpole inside the compound was apparently shortened and the Taliban flag ? dark Quranic script on a white background ? was still flying but not visible from the street. Journalists gathered at the office shot images of the flag through the gaps in the walls.
The Taliban have long refused to talk to Karzai's representatives but the opening of the office was seen as a first step toward those meetings.
Suhail said the Taliban are insistent that they want their first interlocutors to be the United States. "First we talk to the Americans about those issues concerning the Americans and us (because) for those issues implementation is only in the hands of the Americans," he said.
"We want foreign troops to be pulled out of Afghanistan," he added. "If there are troops in Afghanistan then there will be a continuation of the war."
Suhail indicated the Taliban could approve of American trainers and advisers for the Afghan troops, saying that "of course, there is cooperation between countries in other things. We need that cooperation."
He said that once the Taliban concluded talks with the United States, they would participate in all-inclusive Afghan talks.
Suhail ruled out exclusive talks with Karzai's High Peace Council, which has been a condition of the Afghan president, who previously said he wanted talks in Doha to be restricted to his representatives and the Taliban. Instead, the Taliban would talk to all Afghan groups, Suhail said.
"After we finish the phase of talking to the Americans, then we would start the internal phase ... that would include all Afghans," he said. "Having all groups involved will guarantee peace and stability."
____
Gannon reported from Islamabad, Pakistan. Associated Press writer Brian Murphy in Dubai contributed to this report.
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Kathy Gannon is AP Special Regional Correspondent for Afghanistan and Pakistan and can be reached at www.twitter.com/kathygannon
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Britain and a representative of the Falkland Islands on Thursday rejected the idea of Pope Francis intervening in the long-running dispute with Argentina over the islands, which Buenos Aires claims are Argentine territory.
In 1982 Britain sent its armed forces to the Falklands to repel an Argentine invasion of the contested South Atlantic archipelago, which Argentina calls Las Malvinas.
Just over 30 years later, memories of the conflict remain and Argentine President Cristina Fernandez has mounted a campaign to renegotiate the islands' sovereignty, lobbying Pope Francis on the issue and rejecting a March referendum in which Falkland residents voted to remain a British Overseas Territory.
"I think the last thing we need is religion inserted into this," said Mike Summers, a member of the Falkland Islands Legislative Assembly.
Mark Lyall Grant, Britain's U.N. ambassador, echoed his remarks, saying: "I certainly share the view that religion is not likely to solve anything."
Pope Francis, the first Latin American pontiff, said in 2012 when he was archbishop of Buenos Aires that Britain had "usurped" the disputed islands from Argentina. In 2011, he said the islands were "ours," a view most Argentineans share.
Argentine Foreign Minister Hector Timerman told reporters that London should engage in direct talks with Buenos Aires on the dispute. Lyall Grant said Britain was open to dialogue with Argentina, but only if the Falklanders are involved, a position Timerman dismissed.
"I am the foreign minister of Argentina," Timerman said. "I want to talk with the foreign minister of the United Kingdom."
Timerman and Summers were in New York for an annual meeting of the U.N. Decolonization Committee on the Falklands-Malvinas dispute.
Earlier on Thursday, the committee adopted a non-binding resolution sponsored by a number of Latin American states that was similar to ones adopted in previous years. It calls on Argentina and Britain to enter into negotiations on the islands.
The Falklands are among the scattered remnants of the once mighty British Empire, which towered over 19th century history but faded into decline after World War Two.
Argentina argues it is absurd for Britain to have control of land so far from its own shores, accusing London of maintaining "colonial enclaves."
(Reporting by Louis Charbonneau; Editing by Stacey Joyce)
An artist's conception shows the Sunjammer solar sail deployed in orbit.
By Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News
When the Sunjammer solar sailis launched for a deep-space test next year, small samples from sci-fi guru Arthur C. Clarke and three pioneers of the "Star Trek" TV series will be going along for the ride. And you can send a message as well.
It's all part of a memorial spaceflight organized by the Houston-based Celestis, which has been putting cremated remains into outer space for 16 years. Hundreds of bits of ash, weighing no more than a few grams each, have been launched on suborbital or orbital flights. The remains of planetary scientist Gene Shoemaker were sent to the moon aboard NASA's Lunar Prospector probe in the late 1990s. Celestis is getting set to send another set of remains on a short trip to space and back on Friday, aboard an UP Aerospace SpaceLoft XL rocket launched from Spaceport America in New Mexico.
The Sunjammer flight, set for liftoff from Cape Canaveral in November 2014, will break new ground: It'll be the first Celestis mission to go into deep space. "We're finally able to initiate the Celestis Voyager service, which we've wanted to do for a long time," Charles Chafer, CEO of Space Services Holdings and co-founder of Celestis, told NBC News.
Among those whose ashes will be included on the flight are "Star Trek" creator Gene Roddenberry and his wife, Majel Barrett Roddenberry, who was an actress on several Trek TV series. Remains from James Doohan, who played the irascible chief engineer Montgomery "Scotty" Scott, will go up as well. (Samples from Gene Roddenberry and Doohan have been included on previous Celestis flights.)
Clarke will be represented by a single strand of hair, part of a lock that the late writer donated back in 1999. Chafer recalled that Clarke said, "I'd give you more, but I don't have anything to spare."
Sunjammer's namesake In a way, Clarke is the most fitting person to ride on Sunjammer: He's the one who came up with the solar sail's name, for a 1963 short story about a sun-yacht race.
Celestis is a commercial partner in the $27 million Sunjammer project, which is funded by NASA and headed up by L'Garde, a California-based company that specializes in inflatable and deployable structures. The 13,000-square-foot (1,208-square-meter) expandable sail will be folded up inside a spacecraft and then placed aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket as a secondary payload. Sunjammer will be deployed in orbit along with a bigger satellite, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Deep Space Climate Observatory.
A promotional video outlines the Sunjammer solar-sail mission.
After separation from the Falcon 9, the Sunjammer spacecraft will open up its sail and head for a position about 1.8 million miles (3 million kilometers) from Earth, propelled by the force of photons from the sun. The aim of the mission is to test solar-sail propulsion techniques as well as monitor solar weather.
"It's the culmination of generations of hopes that we can harness the sun," Chafer said.
He said Sunjammer would remain in space forever, tracing an orbit around the sun between Earth and Venus. The samples from Clarke, Doohan, the Roddenberrys and dozens of others would stay out there as well, protected inside lipstick-sized metal containers.
'Message in a bottle' Celestis is selling spots on the memorial spaceflight for prices ranging from $12,500 on up. The company will also let people send digitized messages for inclusion aboard the spacecraft, as part of a service it calls MindFiles. Messages are already pouring in via the SunjammerMission.com website. "Greetings from the early 21st century, from an aerospace worker ... who loves space exploration," one message reads.
"It's kind of like a Facebook post," Chafer explained. "You put photos in, or anything you want, and we'll take that information, burn it onto a disk and send it out to deep space. It's like a message in a bottle, but it could also be like a Library of Alexandria."
And if you want to be like Arthur C. Clarke, you can send a BioFile?? a single strand of hair, and/or digital DNA markers, that will be packaged to endure in outer space. Theoretically, it might be possible for an alien civilization to turn that BioFile into a clone, as Clarke hoped would be the case when he donated his hair. Chafer makes no guarantee, however.
"It's a symbolic action more than anything else," he said, "but it's a way to have a little bit of you go on a space mission, and you don't have to die first."
More about space memorials:
Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the NBC News Science Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log pageto your Google+ presence. To keep up with NBCNews.com's stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.
Graphene-based system could lead to improved information processingPublic release date: 21-Jun-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Sarah McDonnell s_mcd@mit.edu 617-253-8923 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Researchers at MIT have proposed a new system that combines ferroelectric materials the kind often used for data storage with graphene, a two-dimensional form of carbon known for its exceptional electronic and mechanical properties. The resulting hybrid technology could eventually lead to computer and data-storage chips that pack more components in a given area and are faster and less power-hungry.
The new system works by controlling waves called surface plasmons. These waves are oscillations of electrons confined at interfaces between materials; in the new system the waves operate at terahertz frequencies. Such frequencies lie between those of far-infrared light and microwave radio transmissions, and are considered ideal for next-generation computing devices.
The findings were reported in a paper in Applied Physics Letters by associate professor of mechanical engineering Nicholas Fang, postdoc Dafei Jin and three others.
The system would provide a new way to construct interconnected devices that use light waves, such as fiber-optic cables and photonic chips, with electronic wires and devices. Currently, such interconnection points often form a bottleneck that slows the transfer of data and adds to the number of components needed.
The team's new system allows waves to be concentrated at much smaller length scales, which could lead to a tenfold gain in the density of components that could be placed in a given area of a chip, Fang says.
The team's initial proof-of-concept device uses a small piece of graphene sandwiched between two layers of the ferroelectric material to make simple, switchable plasmonic waveguides. This work used lithium niobate, but many other such materials could be used, the researchers say.
Light can be confined in these waveguides down to one part in a few hundreds of the free-space wavelength, Jin says, which represents an order-of-magnitude improvement over any comparable waveguide system. "This opens up exciting areas for transmitting and processing optical signals," he says.
Moreover, the work may provide a new way to read and write electronic data into ferroelectric memory devices at very high speed, the MIT researchers say.
In addition to Fang and Jin, the research was carried out by graduate student Anshuman Kumar, former postdoc Kin Hung Fung (now at Hong Kong Polytechnic University), and research scientist Jun Xu.
###
The research was supported by the National Science Foundation and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.
Written by David Chandler, MIT News Office
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Graphene-based system could lead to improved information processingPublic release date: 21-Jun-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Sarah McDonnell s_mcd@mit.edu 617-253-8923 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Researchers at MIT have proposed a new system that combines ferroelectric materials the kind often used for data storage with graphene, a two-dimensional form of carbon known for its exceptional electronic and mechanical properties. The resulting hybrid technology could eventually lead to computer and data-storage chips that pack more components in a given area and are faster and less power-hungry.
The new system works by controlling waves called surface plasmons. These waves are oscillations of electrons confined at interfaces between materials; in the new system the waves operate at terahertz frequencies. Such frequencies lie between those of far-infrared light and microwave radio transmissions, and are considered ideal for next-generation computing devices.
The findings were reported in a paper in Applied Physics Letters by associate professor of mechanical engineering Nicholas Fang, postdoc Dafei Jin and three others.
The system would provide a new way to construct interconnected devices that use light waves, such as fiber-optic cables and photonic chips, with electronic wires and devices. Currently, such interconnection points often form a bottleneck that slows the transfer of data and adds to the number of components needed.
The team's new system allows waves to be concentrated at much smaller length scales, which could lead to a tenfold gain in the density of components that could be placed in a given area of a chip, Fang says.
The team's initial proof-of-concept device uses a small piece of graphene sandwiched between two layers of the ferroelectric material to make simple, switchable plasmonic waveguides. This work used lithium niobate, but many other such materials could be used, the researchers say.
Light can be confined in these waveguides down to one part in a few hundreds of the free-space wavelength, Jin says, which represents an order-of-magnitude improvement over any comparable waveguide system. "This opens up exciting areas for transmitting and processing optical signals," he says.
Moreover, the work may provide a new way to read and write electronic data into ferroelectric memory devices at very high speed, the MIT researchers say.
In addition to Fang and Jin, the research was carried out by graduate student Anshuman Kumar, former postdoc Kin Hung Fung (now at Hong Kong Polytechnic University), and research scientist Jun Xu.
###
The research was supported by the National Science Foundation and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.
Written by David Chandler, MIT News Office
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
In Brad Pitt's new movie, "World War Z," a soldier gives Pitt's character the lowdown on their undead opponent: Bullets to the body only slow them down, though head shots kill them. They sometimes ooze a kind of black tarry substance, and they love biting humans "like fat kids love Twix." And as filmgoers watch, they discover that these zombies can hear a Pepsi can drop a mile away, tackle like a Dallas Cowboy in the Super Bowl, are willing to fling themselves off skyscrapers and over giant walls, and are smart enough to use the bodies of their fellow undead as a ladder to clamber toward their human targets.
Uncredited / AP
Zombies generally don't work together, but in "World War Z," they use each other's undead bodies to form a ladder to get over a wall to eat humans.
These are not your grandfather's zombies.
Moviegoers have seen the undead evolve in a thousand gruesome rotting ways since the creatures of 1932's "White Zombie" were docile enough to work in a sugar plantation. George A. Romero took the creature -- which he called a "ghoul," not a "zombie" -- to a whole new level in 1968's classic "Night of the Living Dead," making them totter out of graves to munch on the living. And from then on, Hollywood was off, shambling down a rotting cinematic pathway littered with discarded body parts and ever-evolving zombie lore.
Zombies stayed about as fast as your walker-using Aunt Fannie until the 2002 release of "28 Days Later." Purists will tell you that the infected in that film weren't dead, so are not technically zombies. But no matter, they still introduced the public to the idea of fast movie zombies who no longer staggered after you like a drunk uncle, but match Pittsburgh Steeler Hines Ward (who played a zombie on AMC's "Walking Dead") for speediness.
"I do think that if you had to be bitten by slow movers to turn, you could avoid them and eventually defeat them," said Cal Miller, author of numerous zombie books and zombie comic strip TedDead. " It would be like fighting an army of senior citizens. The fast ones are just horrifying to me. They?ll run you down."
Jaap Buitendijk / AP
Brad Pitt gets knocked over by a swarm of fast-moving zombies in "World War Z."
The zombie diet has changed along with their speed. In the Romero film trilogy, zombies would munch on any part of a living human, from scalp to sole. But in 1985's "Return of the Living Dead" -- not a Romero film -- it's said that the zombies specifically consume the brains of the living because only that soothes the pain of being dead. That film explanation led to the popularization of the ever-popular "BRAAAAAINS!" quote so many associate with the living dead.
"Most people's knowledge of the zombie genre seems to be a bit limited," Miller said. "You say 'zombies' and they answer 'brainzzzzz,' But that was pretty much just in the 'Return of the Living Dead' movies/books. You try and explain that zombies eat the whole body and, well, unfamiliar people get either intrigued or grossed out."
Miller finds the brain-eating cliche a bit odd. "Human teeth can't bite through a skull," he said. "Zombies really go for the easy spots. Arms, legs, neck, belly."
Jaap Buitendijk / AP
In "World War Z," Brad Pitt arms himself with an axe because any sound, including gunshots, draws the attention of the undead.
Mac Montandon, author of "The Proper Care and Feeding of Zombies," thinks zombies are resourceful when it comes to dining. "In my book, I point out that the zombie diet is not that far off from the Inuits, indigenous peoples of the Arctic region," he said. "I think that, paradoxically, when it comes down to it, zombies have a really clever survival mechanism that kicks in -- meaning if they had to eat, say, someone's elbow to go on not living, they would."
Zombies were once human, and movies differ on whether their intelligence or humanity still exists once they're undead. In 2004, "Shaun of the Dead" played a zombie invasion for laughs, and in 2013's "Warm Bodies," a zombie actually falls in love with a human.
"Zombies are not funny," said Montandon. "But 'Shaun of the Dead' was. In terms of ('Warm Bodies') human-zombie romance, that seems like much less of a stretch than a human-Tom Cruise romance."
Even the way to kill a zombie isn't agreed on by all moviemakers. It's generally agreed that a head injury must be involved, specifically something that destroys the undead brain. Some require zombie bodies to be burned, but in "World War Z," the fingers of a zombie that's been burned almost to solid ash are still shown to wiggle.
"The head can live if cut off at the neck," said Miller. "A personal pet peeve of mine, however, is when a disembodied head groans. No diaphragm, no lungs, no airflow, no groan."
As long as zombie movies continue to make money, the creatures will doubtlessly continue to evolve on film.
"I think zombies are ready for their 'Coneheads' moment," said Montandon, referring to the "Saturday Night Live" aliens who claimed to be French. "That is, they already have so many human characteristics, it's not hard to see them passing as humans in a suburb of Chicago, for instance."
Miller's novel, "Het Madden: A Zombie Perspective," is written from the point of view of an intelligent zombie, and he believes smart zombies will be the next wave.
"I feel there have to be smart and dumb zombies, like smart and dumb people," Miller said. "The smart ones lurk and plan. They don't walk into machetes."
Medicaid-insured children have limited access to dermatologists, SLU researchers findPublic release date: 29-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Riya V. Anandwala ranandwa@slu.edu 314-977-8018 Saint Louis University
ST. LOUIS A recent Saint Louis University study revealed that Medicaid-insured children with eczema, an inflammatory skin condition that affects 20 percent children in the United States, do not have easy access to dermatologists.
"This is a complex problem and a major health disparity in our country," said Elaine Siegfried, M.D., professor of pediatrics at SLU and the principal investigator of the study. "Thirty percent of all children seen in primary care offices have a skin problem. It's an everyday issue."
SLU researchers found that only 19 percent of all dermatologists in 13 metropolitan areas across the United States accept Medicaid-insured children. Of the 471 dermatologists who were listed as Medicaid-participating providers by Medicaid insurance plans, 44 percent declined to schedule a new Medicaid-insured child.
"The purpose of this study was to compare access to dermatologists for new pediatric patients with eczema insured by Medicaid verus private plans," said Sofia Chaudhry, M.D., assistant professor of dermatology at SLU and the first author of the study, which was published online in the Journal of American Academy of Dermatology last month.
In this secret-shopper survey, researchers posed as parents and called dermatology offices across the country to request an appointment for their child with eczema. Even when a dermatologist was accepting new Medicaid-insured children, these children were more often required to provide a written referral and/or identification numbers before an appointment date could be offered, in comparison to privately-insured children.
Eczema mainly affects children and is often a chronic condition in which the skin becomes itchy, reddened, cracked and dry. In addition to the physical effects, eczema also impacts the quality of life, causing emotional, behavioral and sleep disturbances.
"Since it can be a chronic debilitating disease, it's important for these children to be able to see a dermatologist," said Chaudhry, who is also a SLUCare dermatologist. "Improved access to dermatologists is important for treating eczema in order to enhance the well-being of affected children and to minimize the expensive cost of emergency care," Chaudhry added.
About 32 million children are insured with Medicaid health insurance plans, and that number is likely to expand by 16 to 18 million with the new health care reform.
Chaudhry and other researchers identified several possible factors that may discourage dermatologists from seeing a Medicaid-insured patient. These include a physician's concern of additional administrative paperwork, convoluted or delayed payments, a high no-show rate of patients, extra time required to address patients with complex social issues and possible medical-legal liabilities associated with them.
###
Established in 1836, Saint Louis University School of Medicine has the distinction of awarding the first medical degree west of the Mississippi River. The school educates physicians and biomedical scientists, conducts medical research, and provides health care on a local, national and international level. Research at the school seeks new cures and treatments in five key areas: cancer, infectious disease, liver disease, aging and brain disease and heart/lung disease.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Medicaid-insured children have limited access to dermatologists, SLU researchers findPublic release date: 29-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Riya V. Anandwala ranandwa@slu.edu 314-977-8018 Saint Louis University
ST. LOUIS A recent Saint Louis University study revealed that Medicaid-insured children with eczema, an inflammatory skin condition that affects 20 percent children in the United States, do not have easy access to dermatologists.
"This is a complex problem and a major health disparity in our country," said Elaine Siegfried, M.D., professor of pediatrics at SLU and the principal investigator of the study. "Thirty percent of all children seen in primary care offices have a skin problem. It's an everyday issue."
SLU researchers found that only 19 percent of all dermatologists in 13 metropolitan areas across the United States accept Medicaid-insured children. Of the 471 dermatologists who were listed as Medicaid-participating providers by Medicaid insurance plans, 44 percent declined to schedule a new Medicaid-insured child.
"The purpose of this study was to compare access to dermatologists for new pediatric patients with eczema insured by Medicaid verus private plans," said Sofia Chaudhry, M.D., assistant professor of dermatology at SLU and the first author of the study, which was published online in the Journal of American Academy of Dermatology last month.
In this secret-shopper survey, researchers posed as parents and called dermatology offices across the country to request an appointment for their child with eczema. Even when a dermatologist was accepting new Medicaid-insured children, these children were more often required to provide a written referral and/or identification numbers before an appointment date could be offered, in comparison to privately-insured children.
Eczema mainly affects children and is often a chronic condition in which the skin becomes itchy, reddened, cracked and dry. In addition to the physical effects, eczema also impacts the quality of life, causing emotional, behavioral and sleep disturbances.
"Since it can be a chronic debilitating disease, it's important for these children to be able to see a dermatologist," said Chaudhry, who is also a SLUCare dermatologist. "Improved access to dermatologists is important for treating eczema in order to enhance the well-being of affected children and to minimize the expensive cost of emergency care," Chaudhry added.
About 32 million children are insured with Medicaid health insurance plans, and that number is likely to expand by 16 to 18 million with the new health care reform.
Chaudhry and other researchers identified several possible factors that may discourage dermatologists from seeing a Medicaid-insured patient. These include a physician's concern of additional administrative paperwork, convoluted or delayed payments, a high no-show rate of patients, extra time required to address patients with complex social issues and possible medical-legal liabilities associated with them.
###
Established in 1836, Saint Louis University School of Medicine has the distinction of awarding the first medical degree west of the Mississippi River. The school educates physicians and biomedical scientists, conducts medical research, and provides health care on a local, national and international level. Research at the school seeks new cures and treatments in five key areas: cancer, infectious disease, liver disease, aging and brain disease and heart/lung disease.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
This film image released by Paramount Pictures shows, from left, Dwayne Johnson, Anthony Mackie and Mark Wahlberg in a scene from "Pain and Gain." (AP Photo/Paramount Pictures, Jaime Trueblood)
This film image released by Paramount Pictures shows, from left, Dwayne Johnson, Anthony Mackie and Mark Wahlberg in a scene from "Pain and Gain." (AP Photo/Paramount Pictures, Jaime Trueblood)
LOS ANGELES (AP) ? "Iron Man 3" is the heavy-lifter at theaters with a colossal overseas debut that overshadows a sleepy pre-summer weekend at the domestic box office.
The superhero sequel starring Robert Downey Jr. got a head-start on its domestic launch next Friday with a $195.3 million opening in 42 overseas markets.
Sunday studio estimates show director Michael Bay's true-crime tale "Pain & Gain" muscled into first-place domestically with a $20 million debut.
The movie starring Mark Wahlberg, Dwayne Johnson and Anthony Mackie knocked off Tom Cruise's sci-fi adventure "Oblivion" after a week in the No. 1 spot. "Oblivion" slipped to second-place with $17.4 million, raising its domestic total to $64.7 million.
The addition of Google Now to the iOS App Store has granted iPhone owners access to one of Google's most useful products. But it did something else, too. It made the iPhone a better Android phone than the vast majority of Android phones you can buy.
My calendar is mostly filled with Facebook birthdays, these days, and at best those notifications will prompt me to post on someone's wall once a year. Gftr, a project from TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013's Hackathon, wants to use those birthdays to power more meaningful gift-giving, thanks to crowdsourcing and the one day every year when people have the most goodwill directed towards them.
AAA??Apr. 25, 2013?4:43 PM ET Already down 0-2 to Spurs, Lakers injuries mount By GREG BEACHAM??By GREG BEACHAM
Los Angeles Lakers' Steve Nash (10) drives to the basket as San Antonio Spurs' Tony Parker, right, of France, defends him during the second half of Game 2 of a first-round NBA basketball playoff series, Wednesday, April 24, 2013, in San Antonio, Texas. San Antonio won 102-91. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)
Los Angeles Lakers' Steve Nash (10) drives to the basket as San Antonio Spurs' Tony Parker, right, of France, defends him during the second half of Game 2 of a first-round NBA basketball playoff series, Wednesday, April 24, 2013, in San Antonio, Texas. San Antonio won 102-91. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)
Los Angeles Lakers' Steve Blake (5) passes to teammate Dwight Howard (12) as he is pressured by San Antonio Spurs' Matt Bonner, left, and Tim Duncan, second from right, during the second half of Game 2 of a first-round NBA basketball playoff series, Wednesday, April 24, 2013, in San Antonio, Texas. San Antonio won 102-91. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)
San Antonio Spurs' Tony Parker, right, of France, drives as Los Angeles Lakers' Steve Nash (10) defends during the first half of Game 2 of a first-round NBA basketball playoff series on Wednesday, April 24, 2013, in San Antonio, Texas. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)
San Antonio Spurs' Tim Duncan (21) is defended by Los Angeles Lakers' Dwight Howard (12) while trying to score during the first half of Game 2 of a first-round NBA basketball playoff series on Wednesday, April 24, 2013, in San Antonio, Texas. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)
San Antonio Spurs' Tony Parker (9), of France, drives to the basket as he is defended by Los Angeles Lakers' Earl Clark (6) during the second half of Game 2 of a first-round NBA basketball playoff series, Wednesday, April 24, 2013, in San Antonio, Texas. San Antonio won 102-91. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)
EL SEGUNDO, Calif. (AP) ? Steve Blake won't play for the Los Angeles Lakers in Game 3 against the San Antonio Spurs on Friday, and fellow guards Steve Nash and Jodie Meeks are doubtful.
The Lakers are running out of healthy guards, and they're increasingly out of ideas on how to stop the Spurs from ending their tumultuous season.
Blake has a strained right hamstring that will keep him out indefinitely, and coach Mike D'Antoni said Thursday that the backup point guard won't play in Game 3.
Nash got two epidural injections in his back and a cortisone injection in his right hip in an attempt to fight off his nagging pain.
D'Antoni says Nash is more likely to play than Meeks, who has a sprained left ankle.
The Earth's center is 1,000 degrees hotter than previously thoughtPublic release date: 25-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Claus Habfast claus.habfast@esrf.fr 33-666-662-384 European Synchrotron Radiation Facility
New results solve a 20-year conflict between theory and experiment
Grenoble, 26 April 2013: Scientists have determined the temperature near the Earth's centre to be 6000 degrees Celsius, 1000 degrees hotter than in a previous experiment run 20 years ago. These measurements confirm geophysical models that the temperature difference between the solid core and the mantle above, must be at least 1500 degrees to explain why the Earth has a magnetic field. The scientists were even able to establish why the earlier experiment had produced a lower temperature figure. The results are published on 26 April 2013 in Science.
The research team was led by Agns Dewaele from the French national technological research organization CEA, alongside members of the French National Center for Scientific Research CNRS and the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility ESRF in Grenoble (France).
The Earth's core consists mainly of a sphere of liquid iron at temperatures above 4000 degrees and pressures of more than 1.3 million atmospheres. Under these conditions, iron is as liquid as the water in the oceans. It is only at the very centre of the Earth, where pressure and temperature rise even higher, that the liquid iron solidifies. Analysis of earthquake-triggered seismic waves passing through the Earth, tells us the thickness of the solid and liquid cores, and even how the pressure in the Earth increases with depth. However these waves do not provide information on temperature, which has an important influence on the movement of material within the liquid core and the solid mantle above. Indeed the temperature difference between the mantle and the core is the main driver of large-scale thermal movements, which together with the Earth's rotation, act like a dynamo generating the Earth's magnetic field. The temperature profile through the Earth's interior also underpins geophysical models that explain the creation and intense activity of hot-spot volcanoes like the Hawaiian Islands or La Runion.
To generate an accurate picture of the temperature profile within the Earth's centre, scientists can look at the melting point of iron at different pressures in the laboratory, using a diamond anvil cell to compress speck-sized samples to pressures of several million atmospheres, and powerful laser beams to heat them to 4000 or even 5000 degrees Celsius."In practice, many experimental challenges have to be met", explains Agns Dewaele from CEA, "as the iron sample has to be insulated thermally and also must not be allowed to chemically react with its environment. Even if a sample reaches the extreme temperatures and pressures at the centre of the Earth, it will only do so for a matter of seconds. In this short timeframe it is extremely difficult to determine whether it has started to melt or is still solid".
This is where X-rays come into play. "We have developed a new technique where an intense beam of X-rays from the synchrotron can probe a sample and deduce whether it is solid, liquid or partially molten within as little as a second, using a process known diffraction", says Mohamed Mezouar from the ESRF, "and this is short enough to keep temperature and pressure constant, and at the same time avoid any chemical reactions".
The scientists determined experimentally the melting point of iron up to 4800 degrees Celsius and 2.2 million atmospheres pressure, and then used an extrapolation method to determine that at 3.3 million atmospheres, the pressure at the border between liquid and solid core, the temperature would be 6000 +/- 500 degrees. This extrapolated value could slightly change if iron undergoes an unknown phase transition between the measured and the extrapolated values.
When the scientists scanned across the area of pressures and temperatures, they observed why Reinhard Boehler, then at the MPI for Chemistry in Mainz (Germany), had in 1993 published values about 1000 degrees lower. Starting at 2400 degrees, recrystallization effects appear on the surface of the iron samples, leading to dynamic changes of the solid iron's crystalline structure. The experiment twenty years ago used an optical technique to determine whether the samples were solid or molten, and it is highly probable that the observation of recrystallization at the surface was interpreted as melting.
"We are of course very satisfied that our experiment validated today's best theories on heat transfer from the Earth's core and the generation of the Earth's magnetic field. I am hopeful that in the not-so-distant future, we can reproduce in our laboratories, and investigate with synchrotron X-rays, every state of matter inside the Earth," concludes Agns Dewaele.
###
References:
S. Anzellini et al.: Melting of Iron at earth's Inner Core Boundary based on Fast X-ray Diffraction, Science 26 April 2013
R. Boehler, Temperatures in the Earth's core from melting-point measurements of iron at high static pressures, Nature 363, 534 - 536 (10 June 1993); doi:10.1038/363534a0
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
The Earth's center is 1,000 degrees hotter than previously thoughtPublic release date: 25-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Claus Habfast claus.habfast@esrf.fr 33-666-662-384 European Synchrotron Radiation Facility
New results solve a 20-year conflict between theory and experiment
Grenoble, 26 April 2013: Scientists have determined the temperature near the Earth's centre to be 6000 degrees Celsius, 1000 degrees hotter than in a previous experiment run 20 years ago. These measurements confirm geophysical models that the temperature difference between the solid core and the mantle above, must be at least 1500 degrees to explain why the Earth has a magnetic field. The scientists were even able to establish why the earlier experiment had produced a lower temperature figure. The results are published on 26 April 2013 in Science.
The research team was led by Agns Dewaele from the French national technological research organization CEA, alongside members of the French National Center for Scientific Research CNRS and the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility ESRF in Grenoble (France).
The Earth's core consists mainly of a sphere of liquid iron at temperatures above 4000 degrees and pressures of more than 1.3 million atmospheres. Under these conditions, iron is as liquid as the water in the oceans. It is only at the very centre of the Earth, where pressure and temperature rise even higher, that the liquid iron solidifies. Analysis of earthquake-triggered seismic waves passing through the Earth, tells us the thickness of the solid and liquid cores, and even how the pressure in the Earth increases with depth. However these waves do not provide information on temperature, which has an important influence on the movement of material within the liquid core and the solid mantle above. Indeed the temperature difference between the mantle and the core is the main driver of large-scale thermal movements, which together with the Earth's rotation, act like a dynamo generating the Earth's magnetic field. The temperature profile through the Earth's interior also underpins geophysical models that explain the creation and intense activity of hot-spot volcanoes like the Hawaiian Islands or La Runion.
To generate an accurate picture of the temperature profile within the Earth's centre, scientists can look at the melting point of iron at different pressures in the laboratory, using a diamond anvil cell to compress speck-sized samples to pressures of several million atmospheres, and powerful laser beams to heat them to 4000 or even 5000 degrees Celsius."In practice, many experimental challenges have to be met", explains Agns Dewaele from CEA, "as the iron sample has to be insulated thermally and also must not be allowed to chemically react with its environment. Even if a sample reaches the extreme temperatures and pressures at the centre of the Earth, it will only do so for a matter of seconds. In this short timeframe it is extremely difficult to determine whether it has started to melt or is still solid".
This is where X-rays come into play. "We have developed a new technique where an intense beam of X-rays from the synchrotron can probe a sample and deduce whether it is solid, liquid or partially molten within as little as a second, using a process known diffraction", says Mohamed Mezouar from the ESRF, "and this is short enough to keep temperature and pressure constant, and at the same time avoid any chemical reactions".
The scientists determined experimentally the melting point of iron up to 4800 degrees Celsius and 2.2 million atmospheres pressure, and then used an extrapolation method to determine that at 3.3 million atmospheres, the pressure at the border between liquid and solid core, the temperature would be 6000 +/- 500 degrees. This extrapolated value could slightly change if iron undergoes an unknown phase transition between the measured and the extrapolated values.
When the scientists scanned across the area of pressures and temperatures, they observed why Reinhard Boehler, then at the MPI for Chemistry in Mainz (Germany), had in 1993 published values about 1000 degrees lower. Starting at 2400 degrees, recrystallization effects appear on the surface of the iron samples, leading to dynamic changes of the solid iron's crystalline structure. The experiment twenty years ago used an optical technique to determine whether the samples were solid or molten, and it is highly probable that the observation of recrystallization at the surface was interpreted as melting.
"We are of course very satisfied that our experiment validated today's best theories on heat transfer from the Earth's core and the generation of the Earth's magnetic field. I am hopeful that in the not-so-distant future, we can reproduce in our laboratories, and investigate with synchrotron X-rays, every state of matter inside the Earth," concludes Agns Dewaele.
###
References:
S. Anzellini et al.: Melting of Iron at earth's Inner Core Boundary based on Fast X-ray Diffraction, Science 26 April 2013
R. Boehler, Temperatures in the Earth's core from melting-point measurements of iron at high static pressures, Nature 363, 534 - 536 (10 June 1993); doi:10.1038/363534a0
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
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Public release date: 21-Jun-2013
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My calendar is mostly filled with Facebook birthdays, these days, and at best those notifications will prompt me to post on someone's wall once a year. Gftr, a project from TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013's Hackathon, wants to use those birthdays to power more meaningful gift-giving, thanks to crowdsourcing and the one day every year when people have the most goodwill directed towards them.
?