Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/317244180?client_source=feed&format=rss
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Friday, July 5, 2013
Thursday, July 4, 2013
Latest Humble e-book Bundle lets you pick your own price for unicorns, Wheaton
For the next two weeks, you can snag four e-books for whatever price you want with the second Humble e-book Bundle. As always, each contribution benefits whoever you prefer, be it the authors, charity, Humble itself or a combination of the three. If you want access to all six books, as per the Humble pricing model you need to kick in a sum greater than the average $9.40 donation. For less than a few gallons of gas you'll net Wil Wheaton's Just a Geek and Peter Beagle's The Last Unicorn in addition to the other four tomes shown below. The sun hasn't set on the first day of this six-pack promo and over $150K's been donated so far. Reading-on-the-beach season's half over, so get crackin'!
- The Last Unicorn - Peter Beagle
- Just a Geek - Wil Wheaton
- Little Brother - Cory Doctorow
- Boneshaker - Cherie Priest
- Spin - Robert Charles Wilson
- Shards of Honor - Lois McMaster Bujold
Via: Humble Mumble
Source: Humble Bundle
Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/jCBhnxCaYAc/
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Fujifilm X100S
The Fujifilm X100S ($1,299.95 list) is the follow-up to Fuji's groundbreaking X100 digital camera. Like its predecessor it features a retro design that makes it look more like a 1960s-era Leica than a modern digital camera, a hybrid viewfinder system that can toggle between a big, bright optical view and an EVF, and a fast f/2 lens with a 35mm (full-frame equivalent) field of view. The sensor has been upgraded to a 16-megapixel X-Trans CMOS design that is capable of producing some incredible results at extremely high ISO settings, and a notoriously sluggish autofocus system is now a reasonably quick one.
The X100S's field of view is a little narrower than?our current Editors' Choice prime-lens compact camera, the 28mm-equivalent Ricoh GR. The Ricoh has some things working in its favor that the X100S can't match?it's small enough to slide into the pocket of your jeans, and its asking price is $500 less. The X100S is a low-light king, and even though its lens isn't as sharp edge-to-edge as the Ricoh's, you'll be anything but disappointed with the images that it captures. It too deserves to be called Editors' Choice.
Design and Features
Olympus was the first company to wow us with a chic retro design camera with its original digital PEN Micro Four Thirds body. But Fujifilm took the torch and ran with it when it announced the X100 in 2010. From a distance it looks a bit like a chrome Leica M camera, albeit with a few extra dials and a smaller footprint. A silver finish adorns the top plate, bottom plate, and lens, and black leatherette surrounds the body of the camera. It measures just 2.9 by 5 by 2.1 inches (HWD) and weighs just a smidge under a pound. That's a bit heavy for its size, but there's no skimping on the build quality?the X100S feels like a solidly built product. The Leica X2 is almost the same size (2.7 by 4.9 by 2 inches), but a bit lighter at 11.2 ounces. That camera features a 35mm f/2.8 equivalent lens and an image sensor of equal size, but doesn't include any sort of built-in viewfinder.
The lens is a 23mm f/2 design, which delivers the field of view of a 35mm lens in terms of full-frame photography. It's a classic prime design that delivers a moderately wide-angle field of view. There are a few other premium compacts that match that perspective, including the full-frame Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX1. There is a wide-angle adapter available ($349) that broadens the perspective of the X100S to match the 28mm field of view delivered by the Ricoh GR, but it adds a good amount of size and cost to the camera.
Rather than using a mode dial, the X100S takes a more classic approach to setting a shooting mode. The lens has a physical aperture ring with 1-stop clicks from f/2 through f/16, as well as an A setting. The shutter speed dial, located on the top plate, allows you to set the shutter in one-stop increments from 1/4-second to 1/4,000-second, and also has an A setting. Setting the shutter to A and controlling the aperture ring manually puts you in aperture priority mode; setting the aperture to A and adjusting the shutter speed is the equivalent of shutter priority mode. And if you leave both settings to A, you'll experience the equivalent of program shooting. Full manual shooting is also available?just set your ISO, shutter speed, and aperture and go to town. There's an EV indicator bar on the left of the rear LCD and visible in the optical finder as well; it lets you know if you are under or overexposed at current settings. A half-press of the shutter will also show you what the scene will look like when captured, assuming you are using the EVF or rear LCD at that time.
Any shift in exposure can be dialed in using the top-mounted exposure compensation dial. It ranges from -2 to +2 EV in 1/3-stop increments. There's also a programmable Fn button on the top plate, to the right of the shutter release; by default it adjusts the current ISO setting. It can be set manually, or to auto; it's also from here that you'll be able to set the desired minimum shutter speed for auto ISO shooting. The default is 1/60, but you can set it to values ranging from 1/4 to 1/125-second.
There's one way to take control of your shooting, which is essentially an ISO priority mode. If you set the camera to auto ISO but manually select the shutter speed and aperture, the camera will do its best to capture the correct exposure. It's still possible to select a combination that will result in an over or underexposed image. The camera will tell you that you've done this in a couple ways: The shutter speed will turn to red on the information display, and the EV bar will let you know how far over or underexposed that the shot will be. Pentax SLRs have had this feature for years, and it carried on to the Ricoh GR as TAv mode. Recent Nikon SLRs, including the D800 and D7100 have it as well.
There are some additional controls on the rear of the camera. There's a jog switch at the top?pressing it left or right will shift the aperture or shutter speed when shooting in program mode, but only if the ISO is set to a specific value. Pressing it in magnifies the live view frame, helpful for confirming focus. There's also an AEL/AFL button, a button to select the active autofocus point, one to enable macro shooting, another to control the flash output, and a button for white balance control. These last four are at each point of a four-way controller/control wheel that is used to navigate through menus and to move the active autofocus point.
To the left of the LCD you'll find controls to enter playback mode, change the metering pattern, select from continuous drive shooting options, and change between the rear LCD, eye-level finder, or activate an eye-sensor to make that changeover automatic; there's also a control button to the right of the rear LCD that changes how much information is overlaid over the optical finder and live view frame. Finally there's the Q button, in the rear right corner. It brings up a menu that allows you to change most of the settings that we've just listed off, as well as some that relate to the JPG output. These include the color balance (there are some film emulation modes that emulate classic Fuji emulsions like Velvia and Provia) as well as image sharpening and noise reduction, and the LCD brightness. This is also the quickest way to enable or disable the self-timer?you'll have to dive into the camera's main menu to do so if you don't utilize the Q function.
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/rrPmI3O5ips/0,2817,2421099,00.asp
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Student loan rates double without Congress' action
University of Iowa student Angie Platt, 20, is seen on campus in Iowa City, Iowa, Monday, July 1, 2013 . College students taking out new loans for the fall term will see interest rates twice what they were in the spring ? unless Congress fulfills its pledge to restore lower rates when it returns after the July 4 holiday. Platt said the increase in interest rates for subsidized Stafford loans will add to her debt load, which is expected to top $60,000 by the time she graduates. (AP Photo/Ryan J. Foley)
University of Iowa student Angie Platt, 20, is seen on campus in Iowa City, Iowa, Monday, July 1, 2013 . College students taking out new loans for the fall term will see interest rates twice what they were in the spring ? unless Congress fulfills its pledge to restore lower rates when it returns after the July 4 holiday. Platt said the increase in interest rates for subsidized Stafford loans will add to her debt load, which is expected to top $60,000 by the time she graduates. (AP Photo/Ryan J. Foley)
Chart shows average student loan balances since 2005; 1c x 4 inches; 46.5 mm x 101 mm;
WASHINGTON (AP) ? College students' interest rates are at the mercy of Congress.
The interest rates on subsidized Stafford loans doubled from 3.4 percent Monday and could stay doubled unless Congress fulfills its pledge to restore lower rates when it returns from the Fourth of July holiday.
Lawmakers from both parties, as well as the White House, vowed to lower that rate before students started signing loan documents this fall. But the rate now stands at 6.8 percent ? higher than most loans available from private lenders.
"In the grand scheme of all the loans that I already have, I suppose it's not out of control," said Angie Platt, a 20-year-old University of Iowa student who expects to graduate with at least $60,000 in debt.
"It's just another thing to add on. It doesn't help me, that's for sure," the Lakeville, Minn., native added.
Efforts to keep interest rates from doubling on new subsidized Stafford loans fell apart last week amid partisan wrangling in the Senate. Democratic senators and the White House both predicted a deal would be reached in Congress to bring the rates down again before students return to campus.
But if an agreement remains elusive, students could find themselves saddled with higher interest rates this year than last. Congress' Joint Economic Committee estimated the cost passed to students would be about $2,600.
"It's kind of surprising ? that's a big jump," said Rebecca Ehlers, an Iowa State University senior majoring in math.
A $1,000 subsidized Stafford loan is part of her financial aid package and she said she's reconsidering how she pays for school.
"I may work more or ask my parents for money rather than going through all that," said Ehlers, 21.
She ? like millions of others who use federal student loans to pay for their education ? has some time before she has to make that decision. But not much.
"The only silver lining is that relatively few borrowers take out student loans in July and early August," said Terry Hartle, a top official with colleges' lobbying operation at the American Council on Education. "You really can't take out student loans more than 10 days before the term starts."
But that is little consolation for students looking at unexpected costs waiting for them on graduation day if Congress doesn't take action before it breaks again for the month of August.
Students only borrow money for one school year at a time. Subsidized Stafford loans taken before Monday are not affected by the rate hike, nor are federal PLUS, Perkins or unsubsidized Stafford loans slated for the coming year.
"We're telling members to advise students that interest rates are going up," said Justin Draeger, president of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators.
Subsidized Stafford loans go to needier students and often are coupled with other types of lending. Those loans make up roughly one quarter of all direct federal borrowing.
Both political parties tried to blame the other for the hike and student groups complained the increase in interest rates would add to student loan debt that already surpasses credit card debt in this country.
Lawmakers knew for a full year the July 1 deadline was coming but were unable to strike a deal to dodge that increase. During last year's presidential race, both parties pledged to extend the 3.4 percent interest rates for another year to avoid angering young voters.
But the looming hike lacked sufficient urgency this year and Congress last week left town for the holiday without an agreement. Instead, the Democratic-led Senate pledged to revisit the issue as soon as July 10 and retroactively restore the rates for another year ? into 2014, when a third of Senate seats and all House seats are up for election.
At the White House, a spokesman predicted a deal could be reached before students return to campus.
"We are confident they will get there and that the solution will include retroactive protection for students who borrow after July 1 so that their student loan rates don't double," Matt Lehrich said.
Even when lawmakers return, there's no guarantee there will be the votes to restore the lower rates. Efforts last week to reach a bipartisan agreement fizzled and there have been few examples of meaningful compromise in Congress.
___
Associated Press writers Ryan J. Foley in Iowa City, Iowa, and Stacy A. Anderson in Washington contributed to this report.
___
Follow Philip Elliott on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/philip_elliott
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Wednesday, July 3, 2013
Nuke test radiation can fight poachers who kill elephants, rhinos, hippos
July 1, 2013 ? University of Utah researchers developed a new weapon to fight poachers who kill elephants, hippos, rhinos and other wildlife. By measuring radioactive carbon-14 deposited in tusks and teeth by open-air nuclear bomb tests, the method reveals the year an animal died, and thus whether the ivory was taken illegally.
"This could be used in specific cases of ivory seizures to determine when the ivory was obtained and thus whether it is legal," says geochemist Thure Cerling, senior author of a study about the new method. It was published online the week of July 1 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"The dating method is affordable and accessible to government and law enforcement agencies," costing about $500 per sample, says the study's first author, geochemist Kevin Uno, who did the research for his University of Utah Ph.D. thesis.
"It has immediate applications to fighting the illegal sale and trade of ivory that has led to the highest rate of poaching seen in decades," says Uno, now a postdoctoral researcher at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.
Not only can the method help wildlife forensics to combat poaching, but "we've shown that you can use the signature in animal tissues left over from nuclear weapons testing in the atmosphere to study modern ecology and help us learn about fossil animals and how they lived," says Cerling, a distinguished professor of geology and geophysics, and biology at the University of Utah.
The method uses the "bomb curve," which is a graph -- shaped roughly like an inverted "V" -- showing changes in carbon-14 levels in the atmosphere -- and thus absorbed by plants and animals in the food chain. The carbon-14 was formed in the atmosphere by U.S. and Soviet atmospheric nuclear weapons tests in Nevada and Siberia from 1952 through 1962. Those levels peaked in the 1960s and have declined ever since but still are absorbed by and measurable in plant and animal tissues.
The study was funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Geographic Society and the University of Utah. Cerling and Uno conducted it with geologist Jay Quade, a former Utah doctoral student now at the University of Arizona; Daniel C. Fisher, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; George Wittemyer, Colorado State University; Iain Douglas-Hamilton, founder of Save the Elephants; and Samuel Andanje, Patrick Omondi and Moses Litoroh, all of the Kenya Wildlife Service.
Ivory Trade Drives Elephant Slaughter
International agreements banned most trade of raw ivory from Asian elephants after 1975 and African elephants after 1989. In the United States, raw and worked African ivory (jewelry, figurines, gun and knife handles) is legal if it was imported before 1989 or, if worked ivory is imported after, it must be at least 100 years old.
Yet tons of illegal ivory still are sold because dealers claim the ivory was taken before the ban and there has been no test to prove them wrong -- until now.
"With an accurate age of the ivory, we can verify if the trade is legal or not" when the age is combined with existing DNA analysis to determine if an elephant is from Africa or Asia, says Uno, who earned his University of Utah Ph.D. last year. "Currently 30,000 elephants a year are slaughtered for their tusks, so there is a desperate need to enforce the international trade ban and reduce demand."
Only 423,000 African elephants are left. Conservation groups say 70 percent of smuggled ivory goes to China. The United States is the next biggest illegal market. Rising ivory prices have drawn organized crime and spurred militias in Darfur, Uganda, Sudan and Somalia to kill elephants and sell tusks so they can buy guns.
How the Study Was Performed
Neutrons from the nuclear tests bombarded nitrogen -- the atmosphere's most common gas -- to turn some of it into carbon-14. Cosmic rays do that naturally at a low level, but open-air nuclear tests in the 1950s and 1960s sharply increased atmospheric, plant and animal carbon-14 levels, followed by a steady decline ever since.
The method in the study is a bit like telling a tree's age by its rings, but instead of counting rings, Cerling, Uno and colleagues measured carbon-14 levels at various points along the lengths of elephants' and hippos' tusks and teeth.
The conventional way of measuring carbon-14 is to wait for and count when the isotope decays radioactively. In the study, the researchers used accelerator mass spectrometry, or AMS, which requires 1,000 times less material for analysis -- a big advantage when sampling fossils or small pieces of worked ivory, Cerling says.
In AMS, the material being analyzed is bombarded with cesium atoms, which sputters off carbon atoms so the ratio of carbon-14 to carbon-12 can be measured.
The researchers tested the accuracy of carbon-14 dating in 29 animal and plant tissues killed and collected on known dates from 1905 to 2008. The samples included elephant tusks and molars, hippo tusks and canine teeth, oryx horn, hair from monkeys and elephant tails, and some grasses collected in Kenya in 1962.
Samples came from museums in Africa and elsewhere, and from Amina, an elephant that died naturally in Kenya in 2006, and from Misha, an African elephant euthanized in 2008 due to declining health at Utah's Hogle Zoo in Salt Lake City.
The analysis revealed that various tissues that formed at the same time have the same carbon-14 levels, and that grasses and the animals eating them had the same levels. By determining carbon-14 in these samples of known dates, the researchers now can measure carbon-14 levels in other ivory to determine its age, within about a year.
The four oldest samples -- from animals died between 1905 and 1953 -- had minimal carbon-14 because they died before atmospheric nuclear weapons tests. So the test can identify pre-1955 ivory by its low, pre-nuclear-test levels of carbon-14.
Cerling says the method can determine the year of death for any animal killed after 1955, identifying the time of the most recent tissue formation -- at the base of a tusk or tooth, for example. The method is less precise for animals killed more recently; it can tell if an animal died between 2010 and 2013, but not more precisely.
It takes about 5,700 years for half of carbon-14 to decay radioactively. But the amount in Earth's atmosphere after the 1950s and 1960s bomb tests faded much more quickly because oceans and trees absorb carbon dioxide -- including carbon-14 -- from the atmosphere. So the method won't work for tusks or other tissues that grow after about 15 years from now, when atmospheric carbon-14 returns to pre-bomb levels.
Understanding Ancient and Modern Ecosystems
While the method's use against poaching is important, "the scientific part is the importance of understanding time in the formation of animal tissues and how diet and physiology is recorded in those tissues over time" as they grow, Cerling says.
Cerling says that will improve understanding of what prehistoric and modern animals ate over time, especially when combined with existing isotope analysis of ratios of carbon-13 to carbon-12 in teeth -- data that reveal whether animals ate diets based on tree and shrub leaves and fruits, or upon grasses and grazing animals.
So as part of the new study, the scientists also analyzed another 41 samples to determine the growth rates for tusks and teeth from elephants and hippos, and elephant tail hair, Cerling says.
Extrapolating the growth rates of tusks, teeth and hair to fossil or modern elephants and other animals "will help us improve the chronology of the diet history of an individual fossil or modern animal," Cerling says.
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Introducing .nyc: New York City to get its own top-level domain
New Yorkers are notoriously proud of their city, and what better way to show hometown love than with a .nyc address? According to Mayor Bloomberg's official Twitter account, that will soon be possible for Big Apple residents. The just-launched website for the "ultimate New York City address" (har, har) says the top-level domain will help local businesses' visibility in search results, in addition to eliminating all doubt as to where you reside. "Businesses, organizations and residents" will be eligible for the TLD, with registration beginning in late 2013. When it launches, .nyc will be the first city in the United States to receive a geography-based domain. Did you think New York would settle for anything less?.
Filed under: Internet
Source: .NYC, @MikeBloomberg
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A look at the Milwaukee archdiocese's documents
MILWAUKEE (AP) ? The Archdiocese of Milwaukee has released thousands of pages of documents related to clergy sex abuse as part of a deal reached in federal bankruptcy court between the archdiocese and abuse victims suing it for fraud. Here is a look at what is in the documents:
WHAT'S IN THE DOCUMENTS?
The approximately 6,000 pages of documents released by the Milwaukee archdiocese include personnel files for 42 priests with substantiated allegations of sexual abuse against them, along with depositions of church leaders including New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the former archbishop of Milwaukee, and other records. The documents show that archdiocese officials struggled to deal with problem priests, sending them to treatment and then reassigning them to new parishes where no one would know their histories, before eventually concluding the best route was to remove them from the priesthood.
WHY DID THE ARCHDIOCESE OF MILWAUKEE DECIDE TO RELEASE THEM?
The archdiocese released the files as part of a deal with victims suing it in federal bankruptcy court for fraud. Jerry Topczewski, chief of staff for Archbishop Jerome Listecki, said the archdiocese had been reluctant to release the files because of privacy concerns for the victims, those reporting crimes, officials handling the cases and others. But he said the archdiocese eventually realized that unless it made the records public, some victims would not agree to a bankruptcy settlement.
WHAT'S NOT IN THE DOCUMENTS?
Victims have complained that the documents represent only about 10 percent of what the archdiocese turned over to the victims' attorneys during litigation. The rest of the files remain under a court seal. Victims say they want to see those as well because sexual abuse allegations also have been made against teachers in Catholic schools, choir directors and religious order priests working in the archdiocese.
WHAT IS DOLAN'S ROLE?
Dolan led the Milwaukee archdiocese from June 2002 to February 2009, when he was appointed archbishop of New York. Dolan took over as a national clergy sex abuse scandal was growing and oversaw efforts to remove some problem priests from the priesthood. Questions also have been raised about his actions leading up to the archdiocese's bankruptcy and whether he tried to protect some church assets by moving money for cemetery care into a trust.
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?
The release of the documents removes a stumbling block to a bankruptcy settlement but resolve it. The next step is for the archdiocese to file a plan detailing how it expects to operate and provide for victims in the future.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/look-milwaukee-archdioceses-documents-233810902.html
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