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বুধবার, ৩ এপ্রিল, ২০১৩
মঙ্গলবার, ২ এপ্রিল, ২০১৩
Blinded by the Light: Wrecked Up by Our Juice, Another Citizen of the Night [Slide Show]
Light pollution is blurring out the night sky
Have you ever seen the Milky Way? Maybe, but have you ever seen it while standing in the Great White Way?or any Great White Way: Times Square, Piccadilly Circus, or Akihabara? A citizen science research project known as the GLOBE at Night suggests that much of urban humanity?which now constitutes more than half the 7 billion people on the planet?cannot observe the opalescent band of stars, our galactic home, in the vast void of the universe. Instead, we confront a yellowish haze that constitutes modern night, pricked by the occasional extra-bright star or planet.
The problem, of course, is artificial illumination that makes night into day.
In a bid to better understand the extent of light pollution, an international consortium of researchers has used satellite data to map artificial light around the world by capturing cross-sectional slices of atmosphere. The most light-polluted areas are major cities, of course, whether the megalopolis that stretches from Boston to Washington, D.C., or the glittering lights of Shanghai's Bund. The map might serve to better locate ground-based telescopes and other instruments for observing the nocturnal firmament, among other dark sky concerns such as animal behavior.
View a slideshow of global light pollution.
There are still refuges of darkness. The International Dark Sky Association dubbed Death Valley National Park in California the world's largest dark sky park in February, thanks to its distance from the largest cities of the U.S. Southwest.
"Death Valley is a place to gaze in awe at the expanse of the Milky Way, follow a lunar eclipse, track a meteor shower, or simply reflect on your place in the universe," said U.S. National Park Service Director Jonathan Jarvis in announcing the designation.
Other escapes range from Namibia to New Mexico, but they are dwindling, according to the new maps. While light pollution is a sign of progress?access to light at night afforded by electricity?it is also a record of waste: artificial lights point up rather than solely illuminating what lies beneath. The solution is simple?better lighting design?and has the extra benefit of saving energy. "The light is going in the wrong direction," observed Steven Chu, former U.S. Secretary of Energy, in Copenhagen for the climate conference there in 2009 while standing in front of a projection of the nighttime spread of cities across the globe. "It should be going down, not up."
Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=951396f6c25201b64b6eddb1cf1411ec
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Analysis: Easier said than done for Portugal to revive industry
By Alan Wheatley and Daniel Alvarenga
TORRES VEDRAS, Portugal (Reuters) - For Portugal to succeed in ambitions to reindustrialize its shrinking, debt-laden economy, it will not be down to the revival of mass manufacturing but to the sprouting of high-tech start-ups such as UAVision.
As the name Unmanned Aerial Vehicles suggests, drones mounted with cameras are a mainstay for the small engineering firm. Clients include big farmers who want to monitor conditions in their fields. One drone has been adapted to film camel racing in Dubai.
Nuno Simoes, one of UAVision's partners, is as excited as a schoolboy as a small battery-driven drones lifts off outside his workshops some 55 km (35 miles) north of Lisbon.
He says Portugal needs to play to its strengths in design and engineering rather than making eyes at footloose multinationals.
"Don't think big. We are a small country with small companies," Simoes said. "They think they can turn Portugal into a new European China. They can't. China can produce at a fraction of our cost."
Ground down by deep public spending cuts and shrinking domestic demand under an austerity program imposed by international lenders, the Portuguese economy contracted 3.2 percent in 2012 and is expected to shrink by a further 2.3 percent this year.
It grates with Economy Minister Alvaro Pereira that Portugal has lost too many jobs and industries to the likes of China and eastern Europe.
Manufacturing accounts for about 13.5 percent of national output. That is more than in Britain and the Netherlands, but Pereira would like to get the share back to 20 percent, where it stood in 1989, by 2020.
"One of the problems that we've had in Europe in the last few years was to think that investing in industry was not sexy," Pereira said in London recently. "We don't need to bring back all our industry, but we definitely need to have a stronger industrial base in Europe."
He rejects old-style industrial policies and focuses instead on improving conditions for manufacturing, such as by expanding vocational training.
The odds are against Pereira. Too many older workers lack skills, which weighs on competitiveness. Businessmen complain that the government ties them up in red tape. And credit is hard to come by.
"The banks give you an umbrella when the sun's shining and take it away when it's raining," grumbles Joao Carlos Costa, general manager of Arpial, a small metal-working firm in Lisbon.
But Joachim Fels, chief international economist with Morgan Stanley in London, said there are signs that production is returning to countries such as Portugal as labor costs in emerging markets rise.
"The interesting thing is that globalization is not a one-way street," he said.
HIGH-TECH, DESIGNER-DRIVEN
An illustration of that phenomenon is Brazilian plane maker Embraer, which has built a components factory in the walled Roman town of Evora to tap Portugal's underused aeronautical engineering skills.
Successful collaboration with Embraer not only will demonstrate that Portugal is capable of high-tech innovation but also will help change the nation's mindset, said Jacinto Moniz de Bettencourt, chairman of EEA, a group of 35 suppliers to the Brazilian company.
"We are capable now of making some products that 10 or 20 years ago we wouldn't have believed we could do," he said.
Just one example: the trunks worn at the London Olympics by Michael Phelps and other star swimmers were designed and made in Portugal.
The textile industry is not the only traditional sector striving to reinvent itself. Renova, Portugal's leading producer of paper goods, makes a black lavatory tissue that is much coveted. Portuguese shoe makers insist their wares are now as prized as Italy's.
"Portugal has to rebuild its image. If you go to Germany and try to sell a product or a service and say it's from Portugal, it's associated with low technology and low quality," said Antonio de Melo Pires, the head of Volkswagen AutoEuropa, the country's second-biggest exporter.
Pires, too, sees no comparative advantage in trying to lure mass manufacturing. Instead, Portugal should boost its shipping and logistics industries to capitalize on its relative proximity to Africa and the Americas, he said.
A cut in the 25 percent corporate tax rate would also encourage more firms to set up shop in Portugal, Pires added.
"We have to attract middle-sized companies because they are more flexible, they require less investment and so they distort the regional economy less," he said.
Of course, competition for foreign direct investment is stiff.
Steiff, the German maker of expensive teddy bears, recently closed a factory in the central town of Oleiros with the loss of 100 jobs. It shifted production to Sidi Bouzid, Tunisia, the birthplace of the Arab Spring uprising in late 2010.
"Salaries in Tunisia are less than half those in Portugal, so that was the key problem," Jose Marques, the mayor of Oleiros said. "This was pure greed. I see no other reason."
Sara Ladeira, a seamstress for 12 years at the Oleiros plant, earned Portugal's minimum wage of 485 euros ($620) a month. Ladeira, 33, with two children, worries how she and her husband will pay the mortgage now that she is out of a job.
"It was a surprise to us all, because we had a lot of work to do at the factory," she said.
Armenio Carlos, the head of the CGTP union, Portugal's largest, says the ambition to revive industry is realistic. But he is critical of the government for acting too late, lacking a strategic vision and failing to finance its plans.
"One of the big problems we have is that after we joined the EU we allowed industry to crumble. We were relegated almost completely to being a country of services," Carlos, a former electrician, said in an interview.
One of the entrepreneurs trying to reverse that trend echoes the union leader. "We cannot just live off sun and olive oil," said Antonio Reis, technical director with Optimal Structural Solutions, a design and engineering start-up.
"Is our economy sustainable only on tourism? I don't think it is, so we have to grow industrially."
($1 = 0.7788 euros)
(editing by Jane Baird)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/analysis-easier-said-done-portugal-revive-industry-141353258--sector.html
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The Facebook phone is happening. But who's going to buy it?
Sources say the social network is partnering with HTC to announce a FB-powered handset this Thursday
The hyper-connected brain trust at Menlo Park wants to give you something to "Like," so on Thursday the company is preparing to launch what could be the long-rumored Facebook Phone. (Not an April Fools' joke.) A sparse, Facebook-blue invite was sent out to the tech press for an event on Thursday, April 4, which simply reads: "Come see our new home on Android."
Yep, it looks like after years of speculation, a do-everything Facebook operating system will soon be leaving the fantastical company of unicorns, Easter bunnies, and Apple TVs to finally become a reality. According to TechCrunch, sources indicate that the social network is partnering with HTC to launch a "modified version of the Android operating system with a deep native Facebook functionality." Although what the phone will look like and what it will actually do is still under wraps, sources say the the rejiggered platform will beam Facebook's activity stream ? stuff like messages, location check-ins, and status updates ? directly to the phone's homescreen. ZDNet?also chimed in,?reporting that the HTC/Facebook device?will pack standard-issue Android hardware, including a 4.3-inch screen and a 5 megapixel rear-camera. One can reasonably?assume the?HTC One, this ain't.
SEE MORE: WATCH: Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg team up for?2 Guns
At the right price, a Facebook Phone might not actually be a terrible idea. Some 680 million of Facebook's 1 billion users access the social network regularly from their mobile phones, and as Mark Zuckerberg has admitted time and time again, the company is still trying to figure out how to efficiently eke dollar signs out of all those eyeballs without coming off as intrusive. Some?recent studies have suggested that the average user spends as many as 6.76 hours on the network?every month, so clearly someone out there wouldn't mind 24/7/365 Facebook access. By blinking soullessly into their screens, the people have spoken. Give them what they want.
Then there's the utility. You could theoretically use Facebook's services to do most of the stuff you use your phone for, anyway ? post and peruse photos (Instagram, too!), send and read messages, have G-rated SnapChats with friends, read stories people share, and even place a phone call for free. Basically, anything short of surfing the web.
SEE MORE: Today in history: April 1
On the other hand, Facebook-connected Android handsets sold in the past have bombed spectacularly. There was the not-actually-horrible HTC ChaCha from two years ago, which looked a lot like a BlackBerry and featured a dedicated Facebook button for one-click access to status updates. And there was the HTC Salsa, which featured a larger touchscreen equipped with a similar FB button. Both were uninspired and rightfully dissolved into the ether.
Then again, the most compelling case against a Facebook Phone may be that you can already do a lot of the things a dedicated Facebook OS promises. Try this. Whip out your smartphone, tap into to your respective app store, and download this app: "Facebook." It's worth checking out if you haven't already.
SEE MORE: 10 things you need to know today: April 1, 2013
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সোমবার, ১ এপ্রিল, ২০১৩
Celebrity April Fools Pranks
Whew, the life of a celebrity. if I wasn’t home working my tush off, I could come up with some awesoem pranks too. But instead I will just sit here and write about it.. Snooki is the winner this April fools day! The Jersey Shore star girl went all out, got dressed up in a wedding dress, made her man get dressed up and tricked fans into thinking she eloped. i even told my husband – “Snooki and Jionni eloped babe!! So cute!!!” Bwaa. Jokes on me. I mean check out that picture! That is wayyyyyyyy elaborate!!! She must have called in her hair and make-up team! Mike Tyson also fooled fans with a pretty funny Tweet, telling people he was getting his face tattoo removed. Say what? Would you even recognize him? Teen Mom star, Farrah Abraham, took it a bit too far IMO, saying she and Sophia were adopting a baby boy. Uggh. Sopia is with her grandmother half the time, let’s be real.Not that she is a bad mom, but she is too young and wants to do too much right now…. And my favorite underrated actress, Michelle Trachtenberg (I am a [...]
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/RightCelebrity/~3/DXbt4f3TJCM/
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Egyptian TV satirist appears before prosecutors
CAIRO (AP) ? A popular television satirist known as Egypt's Jon Stewart was released on bail Sunday after nearly five hours of interrogation over allegations that he broke the law by insulting Islam and the country's leader.
Bassem Youssef is the most prominent critic of Islamist President Mohammed Morsi to be called in for questioning in recent weeks in what the opposition says is a campaign to intimidate critics. Arrest warrants have been issued for five prominent anti-government activists accused of instigating violence.
A prosecution official said Youssef was to pay a bail of 15,000 LE ($2,200), pending the completion of an investigation.
Youssef tweeted that the bail is for three separate cases. The date for an expected fourth interrogation has not been set, he added.
Rights lawyer Gamal Eid said the release on bail means "all options are open."
"The prosecution could continue investigation, put the case aside or send it to trial," Eid said.
Youssef, the host of the weekly show "ElBernameg," or "The Program," is known for his skits lampooning Morsi and Egypt's newly empowered Islamist political class, but he also mocks the opposition and the media.
Several dozen supporters gathered outside the public prosecutor's office as he presented himself for questioning a day after a warrant for his arrest was first reported in the media.
The media also intently followed the comedian's interrogation. He first tweeted a series of quips from the prosecutor's office. "They asked me the color of my eyes. Really," one read.
A news broadcaster at a TV station affiliated with Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood group, Misr 25, said he was "mocking" the investigation, and his tweets later were erased and he wrote that some reports from inside the interrogation room were "incorrect."
The fast-paced show has attracted a wide viewership, while at the same time earning itself its fair share of detractors. Youssef has been a frequent target of lawsuits, most of them brought by Islamist lawyers who have accused him of "corrupting morals" or violating "religious principles."
Prosecutor Mohammed el-Sayed Khalifa was quoted on the website of the state-owned Al-Ahram daily that he has heard 28 plaintiffs accusing Youssef of insulting Islam, mocking prayers, and "belittling" Morsi in the eyes of the world and his own people.
Youssef frequently imitates Morsi's speeches and gestures. He has fact-checked the president, and in one particularly popular episode earlier this year, Youssef played video clips showing remarks by Morsi, made in 2010 before he became president, where the Muslim Brotherhood veteran called Zionists "pigs."
The remarks caused a brief diplomatic tiff with the U.S. administration, and Morsi had to issue a statement to defuse the flap.
In his last episode this week, Youssef thanked Morsi for providing him with so much material.
Youssef has also made regular jokes about comments by Islamic clerics and Islamic stations TV presenters, exposing contradictions between their comments and public speeches and what he considers the spirit of Islam.
In remarks to a TV presenter on CBC, the private station that airs his Friday program, Youssef said late Saturday that his program does not insult Islam but aims to expose those who "distort" it.
"We don't insult religion. What we do is expose those so-called religious and Islamic stations which have offended Islam more than anyone else," he said. "If anyone is to be investigated for insulting religions, it should be all those who use Islam as a weapon and a political tool to swallow the others using religion."
When asked if programs in Egypt should be less scathing than those of the West, Youssef jibed: "We will give (the West) an example of how freedoms are respected after the revolution," referring to Egypt's 2011 uprising that overthrew authoritarian leader Hosni Mubarak.
Amr Moussa, a former presidential candidate and Arab League secretary general, called the warrant a "provocation to Egyptians who are known for their love of what is funny," he said.
"There is nothing odious about criticizing the president," he said in an emailed statement. "This humanizes the president."
Eid, the rights lawyer, said accusing Youssef of insulting religion ? as opposed to just the president ? is a tactic aimed at increasing public sympathy for the investigation.
"The accusation of insulting religion would mobilize more people against him," Eid said.
The release on bail means "all options are open," Eid added. "The prosecution could continue investigation, put the case aside or send it to trial."
Recent legal moves against protesters, activists and critics come as unrest in Egypt continues amid deep political polarization.
The opposition charges that Morsi, in office for nine months, has failed to tackle any of the nation's most pressing problems. They say the Brotherhood is trying to monopolize power, breaking its promises to include other factions in key decisions.
Morsi blames the country's woes on corruption under Mubarak as well as ongoing protests. He says the opposition has no grassroots support and, along with former regime supporters, is stoking unrest for political gain.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/egyptian-tv-satirist-appears-prosecutors-101256553.html
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