text:
|Publication number
|Publication type
|Application number
|Publication date
|Apr 22, 1997
|Filing date
|Mar 24, 1994
|Priority date
|Feb 1, 1994
|Fee status
|Also published as
|Publication number
|John W. Cook
|Original Assignee
|British Telecommunications Public Limited Company
|Export Citation
|BiBTeX, EndNote, RefMan
|Patent Citations (4), Non-Patent Citations (6), Referenced by (76), Classifications (13), Legal Events (3)
|External Links: USPTO, USPTO Assignment, Espacenet
The present invention is concerned with filtering arrangements for use with telephone lines.
One situation in which such filtering is required is that of asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) technology. This is a means of providing broadband digital services at rates of typically 1.5 to 6Mbit/s over local loop lines; this high transmission rate being provided in one direction only (exchange to customer).
In order to maintain the attractiveness of this proposal it is important that ADSL is multiplexed on top of ordinary telephone services (POTS). This multiplexing is achieved by frequency division, using cross-over filters which have become known as ADSL/POTS separation filters. Similar filters are required at both the local exchange and customer ends of the line. In principle identical filters may be used but the requirements at the exchange end are somewhat relaxed so an optimised design may use slightly different filters. This document concentrates on the customer end filter which has the most challenging requirements, but the same problems are encountered with both filters.
Two particular aspects of telephone transmission systems require careful attention. One of these is the generation of massive transients, due to such activities as on/off hook switching, loop disconnect dialling, ring cadencing and ring trip. Of these probably the worst is ring trip which can generate transient peak voltages of some 100V. The second is the question of impedance balance.
In the UK (in common with many other parts of the world) non resistive frequency dependent impedances are used. The existing telephony access network infrastructure consists largely of twisted pairs of copper wires with polyethylene insulation, running from the local exchange to the customer's premises. The characteristic impedance Z0 of such transmission lines is given by
Z0 =√((R+jwL)/(G+jwC))
where R, L, G and C are the series resistance, inductance, shunt conductance and capacitance per unit length of the line, w is the angular frequency and j2 =-1.
Polyethylene is such a good insulator that G can be treated as zero whilst L (typically about 600 μH/km) is, at telephony frequencies up to 4 kHz, also negligible. Thus Z0 can be approximated by
Z0 ≈√(R/jwC)=(1-j)√(R/wC)
Typical values for R and C are 170 Ω/km and 50 nF/km so that at 1 kHz Z0 is approximately 520-j520 ohm.
In the access network telephony transmission is 2-wire, bidirectional, with separation of signals travelling in the two directions being achieved by bridges in the telephone and at the exchange. This situation is shown diagrammatically in FIG. 1. In a telephone 1, a microphone 2 is coupled via an amplifier 3 and an impedance 4 (Zc ohms) to a balun transformer 5 and hence the twisted-pair transmission line 6. The impedance 4 and the line impedance form one arm of the bridge, the other being formed by further impedances 7 and 8 of Zc and Zso respectively. A differential amplifier 9 is connected across the bridge circuit and feeds an earpiece 10. Similarly at the exchange, the bridge comprises impedances 14, 17, 18, balun 15 and amplifiers 13, 19, the input impedance being Zt and the impedance of the lower arm of the bridge Zb.
It is apparent that the line 6 must present to the telephone 1 an impedance of Zso in order to balance the bridge in the telephone and prevent the user from hearing his own voice ("sidetone"). On a short line, Zt needs to equal Zso to achieve balance, and similarly Zc and Zso need to be equal for balance at the exchange.
For longer lines, the impedance presented by the line will remain unchanged only if Zt =Zc =Z0 and thus to keep both bridges balanced independent of line length ideally Zc =Zso =Zt =Zb =Z0.
For various reasons (such as historical precedent, compromise across a variety of pair types and the convenience of a resistive reference impedance) few if any operators have ended up with such a network strategy. Sometimes Zc and Zt are resistive (600, 900 or even 1200 Ohm) and Zb, Zso chosen by compromise. In the UK all four impedances are different, frequency dependent and can be closely approximated by simple RC networks. A good compromise between these 4 impedances which can be used as the basis of ADSL/POTS separation filter design is given in FIG. 2, and in this document it is called Zm.
The present invention provides a telecommunications station comprising
a line port connected to a transmission path having a frequency dependent characteristic impedance;
a high-pass filter connected between the line port and means for transmitting and/or receiving signals in an upper frequency band;
a low-pass filter arrangement connected between the line port and telephony apparatus for communication in a lower frequency band;
wherein the low-pass filter arrangement comprises a passive filter and impedance conversion arrangement connected between the filter and the transmission path;
each impedance conversion arrangement being substantially transparent to dc and to components exceeding a predetermined amplitude.
In another aspect the invention provides an impedance converter having first and second ports, an amplifier for receiving the voltage at the first port and a transformer coupling the output of the amplifier between the ports such that the voltage at the second port is a predetermined function of that at the first, and the current at the two ports is the same.
In a further aspect the invention provides an impedance converter having first and second ports, a current transformer connected between the ports, an amplifier for receiving current from the transformer, and to draw or deliver current to one of the ports as a function of the received current, such that the current at the second port is a predetermined function of that at the first port and the voltage at the two ports is the same.
FIG. 1 illustrates an access network transmission model;
FIG. 2 illustrates the reference impedance Zm;
FIG. 3 illustrates filtering at the customer premises;
FIG. 4 shows one filter arrangement of the invention, a low-pass filter embedded in the VGICs;
FIG. 5 shows a modified elliptic filter or scaled low-pass prototype filter;
FIGS. 6 band 6A show a balanced filter arrangement; and
FIG. 7 shows a current impedance converter or a dielectrically isolated IGIC.
Some embodiments of the invention will now be described by way of example with reference to the accompanying drawings.
FIG. 3 shows the basic structure of separation filtering at the customer premises. A twisted pair line 100 from the local exchange (not shown) is connected to a line termination point 101. Two filters are connected in parallel to this point, namely a low-pass filter 102, connected via a telephone port 103, to a conventional telephone 104, and a high-pass filter 105 connected to an ADSL port 106 and hence to ADSL equipment 107.
The two filters have non-overlapping pass-bands so that, on the path from the telephone 104 to the ADSL equipment 107, transient energy from the telephone is attenuated at all frequencies from DC up to the region of 1 MHz. Ideally, each filter is nearly lossless in its passband, with a high degree of rejection (typically 100 dB or more) in the stopband. As they are connected in parallel, the filters need to have a high impedance (open circuit) at stopband frequencies. (An alternative configuration is a series connection, requiring low impedance in the stopband).
The lowpass filter needs a passband from d.c. to about 4 kHz, and is subject to two particular sets of requirements. Firstly it needs to be transparent to passage of ringing and line power from the line 100 to the telephone 104. As discussed earlier, it needs to be able to handle high-voltage transients without difficulty. (Also it should have virtually no impact on the operation of conventional line systems, thus requiring low leakage and low capacitance). Secondly the filter impedance characteristics need to be such that bridge balance of (unmodified) Telephones and exchange equipment is unaffected. Ideally this means that the characteristic impedance is the same as that of the line 100--i.e. Zm.
The characteristic impedance of a filter is that value of load impedance to the filter which minimises the frequency dependence of the impedance looking into the filter input. For a ripple-free (i.e. lossless) filter this is the same as defining the characteristic impedance so that load impedance which results in the same value of impedance looking into the filter input (as with a transmission line).
These two requirements are mutually conflicting the first requirement is difficult to meet using active filters, because of the problem of passing dc and the presence of large voltages such as ringing current and power feeding. It is undesirable to process these signals using operational amplifier circuits because of the large voltages involved. Also there is a need to maintain dielectric isolation between the wires of the pair and between each wire and ground both for safety reasons and to minimise problems with network test equipment which might otherwise report a fault on the line. Further there is a need to maintain very good linearity in the circuit because distortion, particularly of the ADSL signal, would seriously compromise system performance.
The second requirement cannot be met with passive filters since these have a real (resistive) characteristic impedance whilst the characteristic impedance of the transmission line 100 is--as discussed in the introduction--strongly frequency dependent.
FIG. 4 shows one example of a filter arrangement as envisaged by the invention. It comprises a passive filter 200, shown here as a simple pi filter with an inductor 201 and capacitors 202, 203, although a higher order filter would be needed (as discussed below) to attain the sort of rejection levels discussed earlier. The passive filter provides the desired performance for large signals but does not meet the impedance requirement. However both the input and output of the filter 200 are connected inside back-to-back pair of Generalised Immittance Converters (GIC), 300, 400. (The terms "input" and "output" are used here for convenience, but of course the filter arrangement passes signals in both directions).
The GIC is a two port device which acts to transform the impedance between the filter and the external circuitry connected to it. It behaves rather like a transformer but instead of multiplying the impedance by a real factor it changes it by any desired transfer function h(s).
There are a number of different designs of GIC; in particular the voltage GIC modifies the voltage between the two ports whilst leaving the current unchanged, whilst in a current GIC the reverse is true. The GIC 300 used in FIG. 4 is a voltage GIC of unconventional construction in which a high-gain inverting amplifier 301 receives (via a dc blocking capacitor 302 and resistor (value R) 303 the voltage at the right-hand port. The amplifier has a negative feedback path of impedance R (h(s)-1) and its output is connected via a transformer 303 between left and right-hand ports.
The impedance seen looking into the left-hand port of the GIC 300 is h(s) times the impedance seen looking into the left-hand side of the filter 200. Thus if (for example) the filter 200 has a characteristic impedance Z0 =320 Ω and is to be matched to the reference impedance Zm, then h(s) needs to be chosen such that Zm=320 h(s). Thus h(s)-1 =(Zm -320)/320. Reference to FIG. 2 shows that Zm-320 is just a parallel RC circuit and thus the feedback impedance in FIG. 4 is too, viz a resistor 304 and capacitor 305. The GIC 400 is identical to the GIC 300 This is however not always essential; indeed in a situation where the telephone is not well matched to the transmission line the balance may be improved by deliberately providing different GIC's so that the GIC 300 provides good matching between the telephone and the filter and the GIC 400 provides a good match between the filter and the line.
It is observed that this particular construction of the GIC, with the transformer 303 and the blocking capacitor 302, is such that dc components are unaffected by it; in particular line power and ringing current can pass unimpeded. Large transients can pass, simply causing saturation of the amplifier (the input and/or output of the amplifier can be provided with clamping diodes if necessary).
In an alternative arrangement, a current GIC would employ a current transformer to sense the line current, and an amplifier (with the desired transfer function) having a current (i.e. high impedance) output to drive a corresponding current into/from the line.
For clarity, the filter arrangement of FIG. 4 is ground referenced, but a balanced filter can be readily constructed, as will shortly be described. First, however, an unbalanced 7th order passive filter is shown for reference in FIG. 5. It is a modified elliptic filter with only two pairs of transmission zeros. It has inductors L4, L5, (with capacitors C5, C7) L8, and shunt capacitors C4, C6, C8 and C11. Note that the inductor L8 has no capacitor in parallel, to prevent loading of the high-pass filter in the low-pass filter stopband.
FIGS. 6 and 6A show a practical, balanced, embodiment. The line 100 and line port 101 are again shown, as are the telephone port 103, high-pass filter 105 and ADSL port 106. Firstly it should be noted that a common-mode filtering choke T2 and associated resistors R1A, R1B between the telephone port 103 and the low-pass filter 102, and a second common mode filtering choke T6 with resistors R3A, R3B play no part in the filtering (note that the phasing of the windings of these differs from that of the remaining transformers with the low-pass filter 102).
The capacitors C4, C6 and C8 of FIG. 5 are replaced by centre-tapped series pairs C4A, C4B etc; similarly C5 and C7 are replaced by pairs C5A, C5B, C7A, C7B. The functions of inductors L4, L5 are performed by transformers T4, T5 in a balanced arrangement.
As before there are two generalised immittance converters, the first, 300' receives balanced signals from C4A, C4B via dc blocking capacitors C2A, C2B. One signal is inverted by an amplifier IC1 with resistors R5A, R6, and the two signals summed via R5B, R7 into the input of a second amplifier IC2 whose h(s)-1 negative feed back path is provided by C3, R8 and R9. The transformer 303 is represented by transformer T3 with three windings phased as shown. The GIC 400' is identical to the GIC 300'.
The inductor L8 is represented by two transformers T8 and T9, the former with parallel resistors R4A, R4B outside the GIC's. This could be between the GIC's as a single transformer without resistance, but is placed outside to reduce the amount of high frequency ADSL signal received by the GIC itself. T8, T9, R4A and R4B represent an appropriately transformed version of the required inductance. The capacitor C11 is replaced by capacitor C11A, C11B in series (transformer C10 of the high-pass filter representing a short circuit at telephony frequencies). This capacitor is also outside the GIC's. Properly C11 should also undergo a transformation but this is not done for two reasons. C11 is also part of the high-pass filter and so cannot be transformed without side effects but the main problem is that the direct transformation of a capacitor requires an Frequency Dependent Negative Resistor (FDNR) which is unrealisable without further active elements. As this would be too exposed to the ADSL signal, and would cause linearity and noise problems, it is not done.
Resistors R2A, R2B (though not part of the prototype filter of FIG. 5) are included to damp the parallel resonance of T4 and C5. This damping ensures stability of the active filter in the stopband when the filter is adversely terminated (including short and open-circuits).
Other sources of in-band loss are the resistances of the wound components and the failure to provide the correct transformation of the capacitor C11.
The high-pass filter 105 shares the capacitors C11A, C11B and also has a balun transformer T10 which also forms the first shunt inductor of the high-pass filter, which additionally includes further series capacitors C12, C13 and shunt inductors L10, L20.
FIG. 7 shows a current GIC; here the current i1 at the right-hand port is sensed by a current transformer 501. This is converted into a current (h(s)-1) times as large by an amplifier 502 with a feedback resistor 503 of resistance R and a complex load impedance 504 of impedance R/(h(s)-1). The resulting current i1 (h(s)-1) is coupled into the left-hand port by coupling the power rail of the amplifier 502 to it in a d.c. blocking capacitor 505, so that the total current at the left-hand port is i1.h(s). The power rail of the amplifier is fed with power via a choke 506.
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|Sep 18, 2000
|Fee payment
Year of fee payment: 4
|Sep 16, 2004
|Fee payment
Year of fee payment: 8
|Sep 18, 2008
|Fee payment
Year of fee payment: 12


text:
Contact Information
Clarke Hall
Virginia Wesleyan College
1584 Wesleyan Drive
Norfolk , VA 23502
Phone: 757.455.3359
Fax: 757.233.8743
M - Th
8:30 a.m.- 8:30 p.m.
8:30 a.m.- 4:30 p.m.
Student Research Projects
How Management Styles Affect Work Ethic and Stress Level
|Catherine Boggs, '13
|Faculty Mentor(s)
|PSYCH 480: Original Research Project in Psychology
An effective management style is the leading force that makes companies succeed or fail. If an employee is working for a good manager, s/he is likely to be more productive. This research analyzed three different types of management styles: laissez-faire, democratic, and autocratic to determine which one is the most effective at keeping employee work ethic high and stress levels low. I hypothesized that a democratic management style would have the best impact on work ethic and stress levels. I also hypothesized that participants would give up more quickly on the more difficult tasks, which were unsolvable anagrams. To measure work ethic and stress levels, participants were divided into three scenario groups (laissez-faire, democratic, and autocratic). As participants entered the room, I acted out one of the three styles. Participants then filled out the solvable and unsolvable anagram worksheets in response to the three different management styles. They also filled out the Perceived Stress Scale and a Work Ethic Questionnaire. Participants were timed on how long they took to do each worksheet as well. The results indicated that the democratic leadership style kept work ethic the highest with a .19 significance. The results also showed that there was a high significance of .006 between the unsolvable and solvable times. Participants did tend to give up more quickly on the unsolvable anagrams than the solvable ones. However, there was no significance between stress levels and management styles. These findings are important for the fields of psychology and business. Using a management style that results in more productivity is something that is valuable for a company's success.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
I'm working with win7, IIS7.5, php 5.2.17 now, and I have a problem with the php error logging: Error logging works well as long as the entry point (called php file) is not in a subdirectory of the document root. (Display error shows the error in that case, but error is not logged.)
Any idea how to solve that?


text:
Newsweeks Science Editor explains why climate change is "even worse than we feared" and how "a consensus has developed during IPY that the Greenland ice sheet will disappear."
Among the phrases you really, really do not want to hear from climate scientists are: "that really shocked us," "we had no idea how bad it was," and "reality is well ahead of the climate models." Yet in speaking to researchers who focus on the Arctic, you hear comments like these so regularly they begin to sound like the thumping refrain from Jaws: annoying harbingers of something that you really, really wish would go away.
So writes Newsweek's Sharon Begley in one of the most thoughtful climate pieces ever to appear in a major national publication. She makes the very case I did in my recent post (except without the hyperlinks — the Achilles Heel of MSM science writing). For more on the International Polar Year, see The IPY: "Arctic sea ice will probably not recover" and their website.
The Begley piece is so outstanding — and so rare — I'm going to reprint it below:
Let me deconstruct the phrases above. The "shock" came when the International Polar Year, a global consortium studying the Arctic, froze a small vessel into the sea ice off eastern Siberia in September 2006. Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen had done the same thing a century before, and his Fram, carried by the drifting ice, emerged off eastern Greenland 34 months later. IPY scientists thought their Tara would take 24 to 36 months. But it reached Greenland in just 14 months, stark evidence that the sea ice found a more open, ice-free, and thus faster path westward thanks to Arctic melting.
The loss of Arctic sea ice "is well ahead of" what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change forecast, largely because emissions of carbon dioxide have topped what the panel""which foolishly expected nations to care enough about global warming to do something about it""projected. "The models just aren't keeping up" with the reality of CO2 emissions, says the IPY's David Carlson. Although policymakers hoped climate models would prove to be alarmist, the opposite is true, particularly in the Arctic.
The IPCC may also have been too cautious on Greenland, assuming that the melting of its glaciers would contribute little to sea-level rise. Some studies found that Greenland's glacial streams were surging and surface ice was morphing into liquid lakes, but others made a strong case that those surges and melts were aberrations, not long-term trends. It seemed to be a standoff. More reliable data, however, such as satellite measurements of Greenland's mass, show that it is losing about 52 cubic miles per year and that the melting is accelerating. So while the IPCC projected that sea level would rise 16 inches this century, "now a more likely figure is one meter [39 inches] at the least," says Carlson. "Chest high instead of knee high, with half to two thirds of that due to Greenland." Hence the "no idea how bad it was."
The frozen north had another surprise in store. Scientists have long known that permafrost, if it melted, would release carbon, exacerbating global warming, which would melt more permafrost, which would add more to global warming, on and on in a feedback loop. But estimates of how much carbon is locked into Arctic permafrost were, it turns out, woefully off. "It's about three times as much as was thought, about 1.6 trillion metric tons, which has surprised a lot of people," says Edward Schuur of the University of Florida. "It means the potential for positive feedbacks is greatly increased." That 1.6 trillion tons is about twice the amount now in the atmosphere. And Schuur's measurements of how quickly CO2 can come out of permafrost, reported in May, were also a surprise: 1 billion to 2 billion tons per year. Cars and light trucks in the U.S. emit about 300 million tons per year.
In an insightful observation in The Guardian this month, Jim Watson of the University of Sussex wrote that "a new breed of climate sceptic is becoming more common": someone who doubts not the science but the policy response. Given the pathetic (non)action on global warming at the G8 summit, and the fact that the energy/climate bill passed by the House of Representatives is so full of holes and escape hatches that it has barely a prayer of averting dangerous climate change, skepticism that the world will get its act together seems appropriate. For instance, the G8, led by Europe, has vowed to take steps to keep global warming below 2 degrees Celsius by reducing CO2 emissions. We're now at 0.8 degree. But the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is already enough to raise the mercury 2 degrees. The only reason it hasn't is that the atmosphere is full of crap (dust and aerosols that contribute to asthma, emphysema, and other diseases) that acts as a global coolant. As that pollution is reduced for health reasons, we're going to blast right through 2 degrees, which is enough to ex-acerbate droughts and storms, wreak havoc on agriculture, and produce a planet warmer than it's been in millions of years. The 2-degree promise is a mirage.
The test of whether the nations of the world care enough to act will come in December, when 192 countries meet in Copenhagen to hammer out a climate treaty. Carlson vows that IPY will finish its Arctic assessment in time for the meeting, and one conclusion is already clear. "A consensus has developed during IPY that the Greenland ice sheet will disappear," he says. Cue the Jaws music.
Greenland disappear? How is that possible? That would be 15 to 20 feet of sea level rise by itself — just what "alarmists" like Nobelist Gore and James Hansen and Climate Progress have been saying for years.
With that kind of flooding, there won't be any beaches left for sharks to attack humans on. Since Begley asked for it (well, maybe not this version), let's cue the music:
19 Responses to Newsweeks Science Editor explains why climate change is "even worse than we feared" and how "a consensus has developed during IPY that the Greenland ice sheet will disappear."
Does that mean that climate models are not represrenting sensitivity of each warming/cooling component. Can the models be changed to reflect what is happenning and proejct that into the future. Does an amended model show Greenland disappear? If the climate models are run with lowering pollution levels over time does it show any of this empirical work ?
"a new breed of climate sceptic is becoming more common": someone who doubts not the science but the policy response.
While I think it is important not to give up hope, I also think we have to change how policy is influenced. Our current political processes are driven primarily by motivations of greed. Every other consideration is subordinate to the greed and profit motive. We can get a watered down climate/energy bill only after ensuring that every powerful legislator gets a piece of pork in the bill. Thus, much of the money and public debate that could go to climate/energy adaptation are diverted to legislative pork (and delay).
We must learn to formulate policy based on a survival and adaptation motive, and subjugate greed to these larger goals. Only then will we be able to formulate strong policies and act on them in a timely manner.
Perhaps we should reward good articles with a little traffic? When people write good articles, would post the link, please?
Joe, Jason Box of Ohio State is on and about the Petermann and Humboldt glaciers right now (on a ship provided by Greenpeace) and is blogging his activities. There are lots of great photos. The Petermann, which is the biggest outlet glacier at the top of Greenland, is so huge that it's hard to get a sense of the scale.
These glaciers are key to the fate of the ice sheet since they occupy deep channels into its heart and are capable of transporting very large volumes of ice. I supect that if they were in southern Greenland there wouldn't be an ice sheet today.
Greenland completely melts in a world where temperatures are 3 degrees C above pre-ind temps. We know that by looking at the earth's history. The question is not "if" Greenland will melt at 2 or 3 (or 5-8) degrees C hotter, but how fast. Do they have a prediction for that?
Will, there's a prediction of several centuries, but it's obsolete. I suspect we'll be hearing a lot about this specific question in the next few months. Bear in mind that we'll lose a big chunk of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet first, although the timing for that is also unclear.
Submitting it to Digg, Twitter and other social bookmarking sites is also helpful.
Pete Best,
Climate models (at least the category we commonly refer to such as GCM's) are dynamical in nature. One can't simple flip a switch for a certain component and move its projections in a certain direction. There are potentially many reasons why a GCM wouldn't capture the same rate of warming or ice loss as we see in the Arctic. However, what is directly suggested in the above article is that we must revise the 'emissions scenarios' used in IPCC projections, because our society is following a path of higher emissions than previously hoped.
I don't know if that would move the projections closer in line with the shorter-term warming we see in the Arctic. However, we are certainly seeing warning signs in the natural environment that can't simply be shrugged off.
The whole issue has become so politicized
That folks searching for believable sources–
Like Diogenes looking for an honest man–
Can't muster the needed resources.
re: climate models
Dare I assume that the prevailing GCM models, big, complex and processor-hungry though they may be, nonetheless allow for the adjustment of input variables, and, further, that this capability allows multiple scenarios to be run which will cover the range of predicted values for each variable?
It would then follow that:
a) these scenarios have in fact been run, that somewhere the results of those scenarios have been compiled, providing answers to such questions as 'If industrial output of CO2 follows *this* curve for x years, it will increase the mean sea level by *this* much'; or
b) those scenarios have *not* been run, implying that control of the GCM's is not in the hands of scientists, but rather, bureaucrats; or
c) these scenarios have indeed been run, but nobody's publishing the results.
What *that* might imply, I will leave to your imagination.
No need to worry about crazy implications or hypothetical situations. You can find the source and input datasets for the CCSM3 here: http://www.ccsm.ucar.edu/models/ccsm3.0/#src.
Rather than make ridiculous assumptions, you can run the model for yourself and see what happens. Hell, you can even make direct modifications to the source and see what happens.
Have fun!
#11 counters
Ah, sure! I will just add in code for ice dynamics, Arctic carbon feed backs, correct the center of rotation issue, and run the revised model on my lap top. (I can remember when the computer at NCAR was only a 64 bit machine.)
Nobody seriously considers that the current models reflect the future of the cryosphere. At best, they offer insight to some dynamic processes. (Not including sea level change.)
Since it takes a grant to get enough computing resources to run the model, the fact that the compressed code is online somewhere does not really make it available. The Federal government is the largest source of climate research money, and thus effectively, the code is under the thumb of federal bureaucrats – like it or not. If they think some abstract of a research proposal is good, you get funding, computer time, and you have a useful look at the model. Yes, for all practical purposes, the models are under the control of the bureaucrats that hold the purse strings. I would guess that you work for a organization that holds such grants, and that you have forgotten just how expensive computer time really is.
In addition, there is a cultural aversion among climatologists to saying or publishing anything that might be considered "alarmist." This goes to remaining "respectable." That is, respectable scientists that work for respectable organizations are not alarmists – even when they see that the theater is on fire. This goes to Hansen's notion of reticence.
counters :
How one can access the program model? And anyway, which part is free to download for the public and which not?
Nice article, but the way it's written – especially the way it ends – it encourages people to think that it's already too late and nothing can be done ("2 degrees is a mirage…"). This – although it may actually be true – is probably the wrong strategy to get us (humanity as a whole) to work as hard as we can to use what little chance we have to still turn the situation around… I think there should have been more of an emphasis on how important it is, *especially* in a situation that looks increasingly hopeless, to do whatever we can to improve our chances.
We know for sure that the aerosols (dirty rubbish) taken away from the atmosphere clears the skies and put us at least 1 degree C up warmer and that in a few months.
But say one real action taken to get CO2 emissions down. This means real action, not to cry for some action until 2020, or 2050.
Credit Crunch.
That might do something?
An event or an action?
Australian Paleoscientist Andrew Glickson as a word to say about this: Cut carbon emissions 80% by 2020 to avoid catastrophe – http://www.green-blog.org/2009/08/04/paleoclimate-scientist-glikson-cut-carbon-emissions-80-by-2020-to-avoid-catastrophe/.
There's a link on this site to his interview on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC)
There's also Professor Kevin Anderson and Dr Alice Bows, stating in a key paper in the prestigious Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 2008:
"According to the analysis conducted in this paper, stabilizing at 450 ppmv [carbon dioxide equivalent = CO2-e, atmospheric concentration measured in parts per million by volume; roughly the present level at 390 ppm CO2] requires, at least, global energy related emissions to peak by 2015, rapidly decline at 6-8% per year between 2020 and 2040, and for full decarbonization sometime soon after 2050 …Unless economic growth can be reconciled with unprecedented rates of decarbonization (in excess of 6% per year), it is difficult to envisage anything other than a planned economic recession being compatible with stabilization at or below 650 ppmv CO2-e … Ultimately, the latest scientific understanding of climate change allied with current emissions trends and a commitment to "limiting average global temperature increases to below 4oC above pre-industrial levels", demands a radical reframing of both the climate change agenda, and the economic characterization of contemporary society" (see: Kevin Anderson and Alice Bows, Proc. Trans. Roy. Soc, A, 2008).
Remember, it's at 400 ppm, or about 450 ppmv CO2-e, that plants and trees start to lose their ability to absorb nitrogen from the soil.
I can't say this strongly enough: We're being told a whopping lie by our governments. The "safe" 2 degrees Celsius they're talking about is a purely arbitrary political number and has nothing to do with scientific reality. At present global atmospheric temperature, we now know we can't save the summer Arctic sea ice and we're losing Greenland's glaciers as well. The only pertinent question is, what can we do to sound the alert and get world leaders to take necessary action, besides what we're presently doing?
I think that the situation for the climate community is very very similar to the role of Cassandra of Homer Iliad. She knows and and warns all the time about what is going to happen .. but every1 do their things regardless, until its too late). So it is a useful role in a greek tragedy where every1 dies .. but not so much in reality.
Now the message is partly coming across… the world is getting some awareness (also because there is a generational change in power: the people around 70 I know stubbornly think that world's resources are infinite.. and that if they are not the system is self stabilizing).
It seems to me that something is moving: investments and advances are being made every day in energy saving research, fusion power and very high efficiency solar cells, concentration solar plants, tidal power, wind turbine advances, electric and hybrid transportation etc.. The economic attention is being geared to produce green R&D and products. The issue is now in the international diplomatic agenda and the first agreements are being made. Other, better ones, will probably follow.
But the climate community prophecy is moving and the warning now is that loo little and too late is being done to escape doom. That 80% of the emissions are to be cut to avoid a disaster… what disaster? how big? how soon? What is the probability of surviving it? Can you tell me, a citizen, that i will die in 20 years with 80% probability? Will that get me moving?
Now taking direct political measures to cut 80% is an enormous disaster in itself that probably would take incredibly deep changes and cause indicible pain in our society. What are the measures that would have to be taken? I have no idea… forcing companies to provide land to build employee houses and in turn bind the employees to live next to their workplaces? Welcome back Feudalism! It reduces people transportation for sure .. Population easying? A bit of ethnic cleansing like in ex Jugoslavia to reassign resourses? All pretty harsh .. are they options? How many people are we ready to starve to death to reach an 80% emission cut? How many wars for territory and resources? (NOTE: I have no idea of any option being considered, the above are just disturbing examples that come to my mind. I am sure though that a policy apt to reach an 80% cut may contain very harsh measures).
I imagine that to a politician the above is quite worse than losing greenland ice. He probably would commit to changing the face of the planet to avoid it.
I think climate scientists should not only warn of the loss of greenland ice. They should work doing predictions similar to cold-war scenario loss assessments. "If this happens you lose 100 millions people in the first week, another 200 first month etc etc.". Difficult work, but I think it has been done in the past. That forecasts did work well in giving politicians a clear view of the options and in avoiding us to become swirling ionized atoms for 50 years .. although there where huge costs involved also in that case.
Point is, can the climate scientific community closely work with scenario analysts and do predictions which are accurate, detailed and timely enough? Can it support the above analysis that in turn supports the important decisions? I very much hope so and I hope it is already doing it, else it will be as useful as Cassandra was in averting the destiny of Troy.
Things are getting desperate. While political momentum is clearly building, it does not appear to be moving fast enough to avoid the huge feedback loops of the melting permafrost. If the permafrost goes, it's game over for civilization. Agreed?
I think we, as a community, need to get behind some quick and dirty geo-engineering NOW, while fighting on CO2 all the while.
Michael Yaziji


text:
ATLANTA (AP) - A woman arrested at a Florida hospital emergency
room after racing there in premature labor has cleared another
legal hurdle in a false arrest claim.
A federal appeals court panel Tuesday upheld part of a lower court's ruling, which denied two Jacksonville deputies qualified immunity from Melanie Williams's lawsuit.
Williams, seven-and-half months pregnant and bleeding from the vagina, ran a red light driving herself to St. Vincent's Hospital on Mother's Day 2005. She told the officers who stopped her that she was headed to the emergency room. When one started writing out
a ticket, she sped off.
They followed to the hospital, where one officer wrestled her down and the other applied handcuffs. Williams was admitted to the hospital and later had a healthy baby.
(Copyright 2009 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)


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Bentonite Powder
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I previously had been using the liquid Bentonite. I am trying out the powdered Bentonite. It's handy for traveling, however, I find the taste is harder to swallow. I'm hoping to get used to it because it's so much more convenient.
not sure what I think
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I tried it once internally ( with psyllium husk) and felt like not using it again. The quality seems good though and it may very well be good. I just felt a bit strange and that the bentonite made me feel a little sick. maybe it was just the thought of eating clay...
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After first appearing in 2014-2015 and then taking model year 2016 off, the Honda Accord Hybrid is back at dealers as a refreshed 2017. Honda's car faces fierce competition from the Ford Fusion, Toyota Camry, Hyundai Sonata, and Chevrolet Malibu mid-sized hybrids, but it comes back still at the top of its class for EPA […]+ Read More
For the fourth generation of its best-selling model line, Lexus sent its RX to the style salon for an extensive makeover. Actually, the longer, wider, taller, roomier and more powerful crossover only evolves the formula that let the automaker sell nearly 101,000 RX models last year, but it does get your attention. Dominating the front […]+ Read More
There's something to be said for having the world's most established electrified car, and Toyota knew it as it launched its fourth-generation 2016 Prius in January this year. The new hybrid's fuel economy surpasses the 2010-2015 model's 50 mpg combined EPA rating by as much as 10 percent with a 56 mpg "Two Eco" version, […]+ Read More
Since its sales launch last November, the RAV4 Hybrid has hit the ground running as a bit of a niche product that's arguably value priced. This year through March it has been America's second-best selling hybrid vehicle aside from the perennial chart topper – its established sibling, the Prius. In the process it has stepped […]+ Read More
This month we had opportunity to review a vehicle which had previously come in a hybrid version, but which now promises decent fuel economy via conventional downsized turbo options – the 2016 Ford Escape. The compact crossover introduced in 2000 went through two generations from 2005-2011 with a full hybrid powertrain independently developed by Ford […]+ Read More
Full Disclosure: Since I was a young teenager I have owned Ford pickups. It started with a 1939 model, then a 1952 F-100 with a Hemi V8, followed by several others. Yes I do like Ford trucks, but I've also owned an International and a couple of Chevys. You've probably seen the ads: Big pickup […]+ Read More
These are interesting times for the Nissan Leaf which for 2016 has up to 27-percent more range than last year. Introduced as a 2011 model with 73 miles range in December 2010, it was revised to 84 miles in 2013, then revised again this year with a 30-kwh battery and 107-miles range in the upper […]+ Read More
Adding a turbocharger to a small displacement four-cylinder engine is becoming a common pairing for car companies wanting to boost both power and fuel mileage. Uncommon on the other hand would be combining that with gasoline-electric hybrid technology, but that's what Volkswagen did with the Jetta Hybrid. While you won't see turbo in the name, […]+ Read More
After two decades in North America, Toyota's 2016 RAV4 is now being offered for the first time with hybrid powertrain. The RAV4's history actually predates the Prius from which the small SUV's two trim hybrid levels – XLE and Limited – borrow its Hybrid Synergy Drive architecture. The RAV4 was originally shown in 1989 as a […]+ Read More


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An ultra-slim, attractive laptop, the Apple MacBook Air 13in is oozing with style. Its build quality, both in terms of the materials used and its construction, sets it apart from the competition. And for once, Apple doesn't offer the most expensive laptop in our recent ultraportable laptops round-up. Updated 11 May 2011
This is the joint-lightest laptop on test, with both the MacBook Air and the Samsung NP900X3A tipping the scales at 1.32kg. It's also the thinnest overall, and ideal for a life on the road at 325x227x17mm.
Our WorldBench 6 speed test works only in Windows, so we used Boot Camp to dual-boot Windows 7 with the native Mac OS X operating system. The ease with which this is possible is notable, affording you the ability to keep running your favourite programs if you're upgrading from a Windows PC. Running Windows, its 1.86GHz Intel Core 2 Duo L9400 CPU and 2GB of DDR3 RAM won it a respectable 94 points.
The process of installing Windows using Boot Camp is remarkably straightforward, and installing the correct drivers is a one-click process. The lack of dedicated Home and End keys may frustrate those who plan to use the MacBook Air with Windows (use Fn and cursor Left/Right keys). Right-click is available in the usual way on the pivoted trackpad, or you can tap with two fingers together.
But Mac OS X is an intuitive platform with some decent bundled software, including iLife, which covers most of your creative needs.
The 13.3in (1440x900-pixel) screen offers brilliant depth of colour and sharp, distinct visuals. It's a glossy screen, although an anti-glare coating makes it more usable than most in bright light.
A near-silent SSD is used in place of a traditional hard drive. Flash-based memory offers many advantages, including speedy data access, but it's pricey. The trade-off here is that you have just 128GB of storage, whereas the hard-drive-based competition offer upwards of 250GB, with the Asus U36J supplying 500GB.
For graphics, the MacBook runs a close second to the Asus. Its nVidia GeForce 320M graphics chip with 256MB of video memory powered it to a 73fps average in Fear; four of the other laptops we looked at use integrated Intel graphics and scored between 19 and 34fps.
We recorded the MacBook Air's battery life at 394 minutes, but you can expect it to last longer in its native Mac OS X environment.
Ben Camm-Jones
The new 13-inch Apple MacBook Air isn't a radical departure from the previous-generation Apple MacBook Air, which was itself a surprisingly thin and light laptop compared to even Apple's other MacBook and MacBook Pro models.
Apple certainly didn't invent the ultraportable notebook category, but its MacBook Air came to define it. Weighing just 1.4kg, it was only 17mm thick – and felt even thinner thanks to an elegant sculpted aluminium shell that tapered to 4mm around its edge.
The Apple MacBook Air had the take-anywhere credentials of a netbook. Only this lightweight notebook was packing performance to spare, along with a full-size keyboard and spacious screen that meant you could comfortably work on an Air all day long.
Scroll on almost three years, and the MacBook Air has branched into two models. One has a very similar look to the 13in original, while a smaller and more oblong 11in version now joins the line-up. We'll be reviewing the baby of the range separately.
Both are available at starting prices that are appreciably less than previous generations of the MacBook Air. The cheapest 11in is £849, while the 13in comes in at £1099.
There are actually two 13in models of Apple MacBook Air (Late 2010) available off-the-shelf, the pricier one - reviewed here, and costing £1349 - only differing by the inclusion of 256GB of solid-state storage instead of 128GB.
With the newfound price reductions come new specifications and features. But it's worth noting that in terms of features and spec, Apple has taketh away as well as giveth with the 2010 Air revisions.
To lower price and improve battery longevity, the sophisticated-looking backlit keyboard has been stripped from all new Airs. And main processors are running with slower clock speeds, a move that's probably as much to do with stretching run times and helping keep the cooling fan inaudible, as trimming the parts budget.
Apple MacBook Air 13in (Late 2010) has one USB 2.0 on each side, plus a Mini Display Port and SD card slot on the right side
The new MacBook Air 2010 (Late 2010) keeps the unibody design principle of milled aluminium, but channels the shape into a more distinctly wedge-shaped profile when viewed from the side. With more of the innards packed toward the rear, its balance in the hand is now a touch uneven, making it feel fractionally heavier.
It's an illusion though: our 2009 2.13GHz MacBook Air, at 1340g actually weighs a modest 7g more than this model's 1333g.
Also removed from the 2010 Air are the infrared remote control sensor, and the pulsing white LED sleep light.
For spec chasers, perhaps the more surprising move is to refresh the range using slower processors than before - entirely counter to the usual industry trend.
Apple polished up last year's Air by offering two models: a 1.86GHz version with 120GB hard disk, and 2.13GHz version with 128GB SSD.
Focusing on 2010's 13in model, there's just a 1.86GHz MacBook Air, using the same Intel Core 2 Duo SL9400 processor as last year entry-level model.
(You can still choose the faster 2.13GHz processor as a configure-to-order option, for an extra £80, but only if you're already buying the top-of-the-range model, with its 256GB SSD.)
NEXT PAGE: More changes to the Apple MacBook Air (Late 2010), and benchmark performance >>
See also: Group test: what's the best laptop?
RAM quota remains the same across all Apple MacBook Air (Late 2010) models at 2GB. That may sound a little parsimonious but it's perfectly fine for most everyday users. Mac OS X inherits excellent memory management from its UNIX core, and along with the faster drive access performance of SSD, memory swapping won't treacle the system as much as with
The graphics processor has been upgraded to a new nVidia GeForce 320M, providing a measurable step-up from the previous nVidia 9400M. This eats into 256MB of the system's DDR3 1067MHz RAM.
Power users who like to run memory-hungry apps such as Parallels or VMware OS virtualisation will appreciate that you can now opt for 4GB RAM, also priced at an additional £80. Unfortunately, memory is not user-installable so you must specify this option when you buy the notebook.
Other changes
Numerous other running changes can be found around the chassis, including the doubling of USB 2.0 ports to a marginally more practical total of two; a new SD card slot; and a boost in screen resolution, from 1280x800 to 1440x900.
While the increase in resolution may keep the more-is-better audience cheerful, we found this added resolution could be problematic. This is undeniably a matter of individiual taste, but to our eyes, a 13in panel of 16:10 aspect ratio balances useful screen real estate and comfort very well when left at 1280x800 resolution.
Adding 12.5% more pixels along the width and height in the same 13in space means a tighter pixel pitch, which can reduce apparent fuzziness to text, for example, and creates more desktop space to scatter your windows.
The trade-off is that all text and screen elements become conspicuously smaller. Mac OS X currently offers no resolution-independent scaling, or even a simple way to magnify the screen interface as found in Windows 7, to compensate for the shrinkage of screen icons and text.
Overall screen quality has also gone south slightly. Maximum brightness has increased, it's true, but with a commensurate reduced level of contrast. This encourages you to raise the brightness to compensate for reduced clarity, which makes for a glarier display, somewhat bleached and washed-out in comparison, that's a little more tiring to live with. Screen backlighting is a little more even now though.
Unlike most glossy screens fitted to laptops, the screen specified for Apple for the MacBook Air does at least feature a hint of anti-reflective coating.
As with the coating offered by opticians on spectacles, you can see this as a subtle purple-brown hue when viewing the panel from one side. And it does help a little to reduce annoying light reflections, if never reaching the practical comfort of a matt-finish screen.
Careful comparison of old and new models' screens, however, suggested there may be a slightly reduced coating on the 2010's Air.
We also have some reservations about the one-piece multi-touch trackpad now fitted to the 2010 MacBook Air. The original Air was Apple's first notebook to sport the super-sized big trackpad, a device that appears huge compared to the miserly touchpads on Windows laptops. The new trackpad is even larger - the same 105mm width but now 76mm deep against the former's 63mm.
With our workhorse MacBook Pro was in the repair shop, we pressed this MacBook Air into daily duties for a week, and really learnt the foibles of the newer interface.
It somehow felt slower to respond to our touch. We wondered if there was more latency for tap-to-click actions, for instance, so we tried to compare reaction to taps on each model. They seemed indistinguishably close. Then we realised it was simply that we were more reliant on tap-to-click. Why? Becuase the mechanical button click action is harder to use, with the front edge of the trackpad actually fitted flush to the body, rather than usefully raised.
Before we look at benchmark figures for processor and graphics, there are two more features that have been improved. First, and more obvious, there are now two onboard speakers to give stereo sound, against the originals' single mono speaker. As well as sounding richer because of the wider spread of sound, the essential music-replay quality benefits from the upgrade.
We also discovered that the built-in webcam in the screen lid seems to have been upgraded. In low-light conditions, the 2010 MacBook Air's image is clearer and with less video noise.
With a larger batter fitted and slower processor, it should come as no surprise that battery life has improved. Our 2009 model lasted for 238 minutes in the Windows benchmark test, MobileMark 2007 Productivity.
That near-four hour figure was raised to 424 mins - over seven hours - in the same test on the Apple MacBook Air (Late 2010). And note that battery life in the Mac's native OS X environment could be even higher.
On the testbench, we also noted that the slower processor has done nothing to diminish the MacBook Air 2010's performance, when measured with the WorldBench 6 real-world speed test. Last year's 2.13GHz MacBook Air scored 83 points (admittedly in the slower Vista OS), while this new model hit 91 points in Windows 7 - a sterling result for a dual-core 1.86GHz processor.
The new graphics processor may have helped that impressive WorldBench score too. The newer nVidia GeForce 320M here is the same as that fitted to the 13in MacBook Pro and latest Mac mini, which we've already seen give a noticeable lift to the speed of the older nVidia GeForce 9400M.
In our gaming tests, the FEAR game score rose from 10fps to 30fps at Maximum quality settings. Lower the detail to High and you get a super-smooth 74fps.
Andrew Harrison
NEXT PAGE: The original Macworld US review >>
See also: Group test: what's the best laptop?
The 13.3in model is basically an improved version of the previous MacBook Air, albeit at a better price.
(The new 11.6-inch MacBook Air, on the other hand, is the smallest and lightest Apple laptop of all time, and its base price of £849 ties it with the plastic MacBook as the cheapest Mac laptop available.)
The 11in and 13in MacBook Air models have a lot in common. They keep their displays in a rigid aluminum shell with an aluminium bezel around a LED-backlit glossy screen.
Unlike the MacBook Pro models, which feature a single slab of glass across the entire front of the display, the MacBook Air continues to feature an ultra-thin glass layer located behind the bezel. In my experience, displays with this approach are less prone to cause glare than screens such as those on the MacBook Pro models.
Like every other Mac laptop, there's a tiny Webcam located immediately above the display. (In some press materials Apple refers to this camera, once called iSight, as a "FaceTime camera", though in System Preferences it's still called an iSight.)
The display piece of the laptop is extremely thin, but the aluminium shell means it's fairly rigid.
Certainly it doesn't feel fragile or flimsy. And a new hinge design means you can now open the display at a wider angle than previous Airs.
The bottom half makes up the bulk of the laptop, and this is where Apple definitely made some changes compared to earlier MacBook Airs.
The older Airs had curved edges all around, a choice that forced the design of a drop-down door to expose the laptop's headphone, display, and USB ports.
These new Airs have flat sides and a slightly curved bottom. The result is that when you pick one up, it feels a bit chunkier than the older models, even though it's really not.
By trading off that illusion of extra thinness, Apple gets to ditch the drop-down door and station ports right on the sides of the laptops. On the left side, there's a MagSafe connector, USB 2.0 port, headphone jack, and a built-in microphone. On the right, there's a Mini DisplayPort, another USB 2.0 port, and (on the 13-inch model only) an SD card slot.
The second USB port addresses one of the previous Air models' major shortcomings: its single USB port could get crowded in a hurry, especially if you needed to perform a task with two separate USB devices at once and forgot to bring a hub along.
(In addition to the continued lack of FireWire support on these models, they also continue to lack an Ethernet port. Apple does offer a £25 USB Ethernet Adapter if you need to get on a wired network. And of course, the Air doesn't come with any optical drive.)
These small laptops can drive large displays via that Mini DisplayPort, at resolutions up to 2,560 by 1,600 - meaning they'll even drive Apple's 27in LED Cinema Display.
(The Apple display's included MagSafe and Mini DisplayPort cables will stretch to reach those ports, which are situated on opposite sides of the MacBook Air - but just barely.)
Both models are driven by a nVidia GeForce 320M graphics processor (the same one used in the 13-inch MacBook Pro), and it's a nice step up from the nVidia GeForce 9400 used in previous Airs; the new models showed off much improved graphics performance compared to their predecessors.
One nice touch for users upgrading from a past MacBook Air model: if you've got a set of iPhone-compatible headphones with an inline microphone and remote, this generation of Airs will let you use that mic for audio input, and you can even use the button(s) for controlling music playback.
Though many small laptops in the PC world feature shrunken-down keyboards that deviate from the standard keyboard layout in unpleasant ways, Apple has refused to compromise on this point - even on the 11-inch MacBook Air. Both models sport the same full-sized keyboard that Apple uses in all its other laptops, not to mention its USB and wireless external keyboards. The only real difference is on the top row of keys: they're shorter than on the other keyboards, and the power button now appears as the rightmost key in that row.
Typing on the keyboard feels exactly as it does on all those other keyboards, too; the thinness of the Air doesn't mean there's any less key travel. If you like typing on a MacBook keyboard (or Apple's external keyboards), you'll like typing on the MacBook Air.
One place where this new set of MacBooks regresses from the previous generation: keyboard backlighting is gone. I never considered keyboard backlighting an essential feature - I do know where all the keys are. Like heated seats in a car, it's a feature that was occasionally useful and felt vaguely luxurious, and I'll miss it. Also gone are the sleep light and the infrared port.
On the positive side, though, the Airs have finally inherited the same glass-trackpad technology that was added to the MacBook Pro two years ago. It looks, feels, and works just like you'd expect. Though the Air is only .11 inches thick at the same edge that contains the trackpad, the trackpad still depresses with a satisfying click. (The trackpad on the 11in model is slightly less tall, but otherwise the two trackpads are identical.)
Finally, one of the lamest features of the MacBook Air was its single mono speaker stuck under the right side of the keyboard. Good news, everyone: The new Air has stereo speakers nestled under the left and right sides of the keyboard. They're never going to win any awards, but they sound vastly better than the old model.
NEXT: MacBook Air Flash storage >>
See also: Group test: what's the best laptop?
The new 13-inch Apple MacBook Air isn't a radical departure from the previous-generation Apple MacBook Air, which was itself a surprisingly thin and light laptop compared to Apple's other MacBook and MacBook Pro models.
MacBook Air: Flash storage
The original MacBook Air was the first Mac system to be sold with a flash-storage drive as an optional component, and in these new models all storage takes place on flash storage.
In case you're not familiar with the concept, flash storage is a hard-drive replacement that stores data on fixed memory chips (just like the iPhone, iPad and all iPods except the classic) instead of on spinning platters (like most of the computers out there today).
Flash storage has several advantages over hard drives. They tend to be faster than hard drives, especially at reading data.
Though performance can vary widely, the flash storage on these new MacBook Air models was way faster than the poky 4,200rpm hard drives on the prior generation of MacBook Air.
Because they've got no moving parts, there's little risk that dropping your laptop will cause physical damage to flash storage - a real concern when it comes to a spinning hard drive.
Flash-storage drives can use less power, extending battery life. They are silent. And despite the amazing miniaturization that's gone on in the hard-drive market, flash storage takes up a whole lot less space than a hard drive. (At least, it does if it hasn't been inserted into a traditional hard-drive enclosure - a backward-compatibility trick Apple had to do with the previous version of the Air, but has avoided with this revision.)
There are also some disadvantages to flash storage. It's more expensive than traditional hard drives, though prices are falling rapidly. There are also questions about ongoing performance of flash storage - depending on the type of flash storage you use, you could find that after several months of heavy use it's dramatically slower than it was when you bought it.
In any event, if you get a new MacBook Air you'll be getting it with flash storage. Because of the expense of solid-state technology, the disk capacities for these systems are much lower than they'd be in a bigger system with a spinning hard drive. The £1,099 base-model 13-inch MacBook Air comes with 128GB of flash storage. (It's a £250 upgrade to move up to 256GB.) The 11in models come in 64GB and 128GB flash-storage configurations.
At 128GB and certainly at 256GB, you'll find the MacBook Air's storage space perfectly acceptable, especially if you're only using these systems as a secondary computer.
If you're planning on editing HD video on them, I suspect the lack of storage space will be no more of a problem than the slow clock speed of the Core 2 Duo processor.
NEXT: MacBook Air 11-inch beauty >>
See also: Group test: what's the best laptop?
The new 13-inch Apple MacBook Air isn't a radical departure from the previous-generation Apple MacBook Air, which was itself a surprisingly thin and light laptop compared to Apple's other MacBook and MacBook Pro models.
Apple MacBook Air: Big is beautiful
The new 13-inch MacBook Air isn't a radical departure from the previous-generation Air, which was itself a surprisingly thin and light laptop compared to Apple's other MacBook and MacBook Pro models.
The new Air is almost imperceptibly thinner (0.05 inches thinner at its thinnest point, 0.08 inches thinner at its thickest), has exactly the same width and depth, and weighs just 40 grams (1.4 ounces) less. The keyboard's the same, and while the glass trackpad is new, it takes up the same space as the old Air's trackpad-and-button combo.
Beyond the physical changes to the case, the extra USB port, and the upgraded video processor, perhaps the biggest hardware change to the 13-inch Air from the previous model is the screen itself: the old model was 1,280 by 800 pixels, while the new one is 1,440 by 900 pixels - all in the same physical space.
The result is that everything looks a little bit smaller, but you've got more room for stuff on the screen. I found that after a few minutes using the new display, I was used to the change in resolution, though I did increase the default font size in a few of my apps just to take it easy on my eyes.
£1,349 is not all you can spend on the 13-inch MacBook Air. Apple has provided several options for those who want to trick this system out: for £80 you can add a 2.13GHz Core 2 Duo processor (to the high-end configuration only), and either configuration can be upgraded from 2GB to 4GB of RAM for £80.
And you can only make these upgrades when you order the product; none of these features is upgradable after the fact, either by you or your local Apple Genius.
Even with those two additions, at £1,509 you'd be getting a majorly upgraded system from the MacBook Air offered by Apple previously.
NEXT: Apple MacBook Air speed tests
See also: Group test: what's the best laptop?
The new 13-inch Apple MacBook Air isn't a radical departure from the previous-generation Apple MacBook Air, which was itself a surprisingly thin and light laptop compared to Apple's other MacBook and MacBook Pro models.
Apple MacBook Air speed tests
In our Macworld Lab tests we found that the 1.86GHz 13-inch MacBook Air was slightly faster overall than a current-model 13-inch 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro.
However, our Speedmark 6.5 score is based on a suite of tests, and the individual tests were all over the map.
The Air, powered by its flash storage, excelled on our storage-based tests. Powered by the nVidia GeForce 320M graphics processor, it held its own on graphics-related tests, but our calculation-intensive tests showed the effects of its processor's slower clock speed.
The 13-inch Air also easily outdistanced previous models of MacBook Air, aided by its fast storage and upgraded graphics. Not only is this new MacBook Air the fastest Air ever made, it's roughly comparable in speed to the other two current 13-inch Mac laptop models. That's a first for the MacBook Air product line.
Apple MacBook Air: Batteries and sleep
Apple is making a big deal about saying that these new MacBook Airs have "instant on" technology.
What the company is talking about is a new power-saving mode: After a laptop's asleep for a while, it switches into a super power-saving standby mode that lets the battery survive for up to 30 days. But when you open the laptop back up, it doesn't show you a progress bar while it loads stuff - it just snaps back to life. Unfortunately, I couldn't test Apple's claim of 30 days of standby survival, since as of this writing these laptops have only been in our hands for five days.
Apple says that by reducing the space of other components (such as the solid-state drive enclosure) in these models, it's been able to increase the amount of room left for batteries, with the result being improved battery life.
Apple claims that the 11-inch Air can last up to five hours when running the company's own "wireless productivity" test suite; its claims for the 13-inch Air are up to seven hours.
Our own tests are more aggressive than Apple's, and are designed to drain the laptop's battery much faster than Apple's.
But they do give us a good sense of how much battery power these systems have when compared to the previous-generation MacBook Air. And there's good news on that front: The 11-inch Air lasted for 220 minutes while looping an H.264 movie in full-screen mode at full brightness. The new 13-inch Air lasted 265 minutes.
And the 2009-era MacBook Air? It only lasted about 185 minutes.
In real-world use, I found that the 11-inch MacBook's battery definitely felt more long-lasting than the previous-generation Air's. It's probably not powerful enough to last the entire day, but it's going to give you a good, solid run. The 13-inch model, on the other hand, can probably get you through an entire workday if you're judicious with your power usage and put it to sleep when appropriate.
NEXT: 13-inch Apple MacBook Air buying advice
See also: Group test: what's the best laptop?
The new 13-inch Apple MacBook Air isn't a radical departure from the previous-generation Apple MacBook Air, which was itself a surprisingly thin and light laptop compared to Apple's other MacBook and MacBook Pro models.
Apple MacBook Air: buying advice
While it's still true that a small, light laptop will require some degree of compromise on both speed and price, over time Apple has made those compromises much less painful.
It feels like, with these new 11- and 13in laptops, the MacBook Air product line has finally come of age. The 13in model addresses many of the old Air's weaknesses (graphics performance, battery life) and offers speeds that aren't far off the standard of the MacBook Pro line.
And yet the 13in MacBook Air weighs 1.6 pounds less than what the 13in MacBook Pro weighs.
Yes, the MacBook Air still costs more and does less than other 13in Apple laptops; if weight and size are not important considerations for you, you shouldn't buy a MacBook Air.
But if, all other things being (roughly) equal, you'd prefer a lighter laptop, the MacBook Air deserves your serious consideration.
While the 11in model will be most attractive if you're looking for the smallest and lightest Mac laptop, those who want to upgrade its drive, processor, and RAM will want to consider its small size versus the slightly larger 13in model, which comes equipped with a better set of specs.
Jason Snell, Macworld US
NEXT: our expert verdict >>
See also: Group test: what's the best laptop?
13-inch MacBook Air (Late 2010): Specs
- 1.86GHz Intel Core 2 Duo SL9400
- 13in (1440 x 900) LED-backlit glossy LCD display
- Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard
- nVidia GeForce 320M with 256MB system RAM
- Mini DisplayPort
- 2 x USB 2.0
- SD/SDXC card slot
- 3.5mm headphone jack
- 802.11a/b/g/n
- Bluetooth 2.1 with EDR
- glass multi-touch trackpad
- webcam
- mic
- lithium polymer battery
- iLife '11
- 325 227 x 17mm
- 1333g
- 1.86GHz Intel Core 2 Duo SL9400
- 13in (1440 x 900) LED-backlit glossy LCD display
- Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard
- nVidia GeForce 320M with 256MB system RAM
- Mini DisplayPort
- 2 x USB 2.0
- SD/SDXC card slot
- 3.5mm headphone jack
- 802.11a/b/g/n
- Bluetooth 2.1 with EDR
- glass multi-touch trackpad
- webcam
- mic
- lithium polymer battery
- iLife '11
- 325 227 x 17mm
- 1333g
What really sets the MacBook Air apart from the competition is the all-round quality, both in terms of materials used and the construction of the device. Clever features such as the MagSafe power connector that disconnects should you trip over it - rather than pull the whole thing off the desk - are appreciated, as is the eye-catching design. If you can afford one, it'll be an investment you won't regret.


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I've been trying for a while now to change the e start-here icon that I have from the Elementary icon theme. I've replaced every start-here icon in the theme's folder, but I was told that Ubuntu also keeps a cache file, which may be the reason my changes do not take effect. How can I properly purge this "icon cache"?
If that doesn't fix it, try changing the "distributor-logo" icon.


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Arts Saturday Night's (More Than) All Right
Seattle-area fans of electronic music have a multitude of options Saturday night.
If you're around a radio, check out Jerry Abstract, who'll be commandeering the airwaves tonight from the C89.5 studio. Jerry says, "I will be dropping all Detroit and Detroit-inspired techno from 10pm-11pm. The perfect way to get Seattle started before heading out to Krakt for Kris Moon's set!" Speaking of which, this week's Data Breaker star wrecks shop at Re-bar around midnight. You want more? Chop Suey's hosting a DJ set by xxxchange of Spank Rock; this will likely be the hipster clusterfuck of the night.
Finally, dip into Neumo's for The Stranger's Big Shot extravaganza. There won't be much electronic music, but you can experience several of the city's most promising rock bands and groove to DJ El Toro's always-fascinating sets and MC Megan Seling's charming stage presence.


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Perfectly located, this congress hall has it all nicely organized;
The auditorium is very comfortable, the place is very well organized; good internet connection
3 Days in Athens
Walking in Ancient Athens - on your own
Museum Guide for Athens
Simple in terms of architecture and "pomp," but definitely elegant, this concert hall is ahead of the game in terms of acoustics. Wagner's Tristan and Isolde" was a fabulous production - the music was wonderful, the sets, the costumes, etc. What a treat it was to attend. I would highly recommend setting aside a night to visit if you can!...
The Athens Concert Hall is very lovely and being an architect, I love the marble walls. Marble flooring all over. Their architect or designer wasn't cheap. Very classy look, very elegant. My dad loved the place and the ballet performance. This one is a nice visit especially during the cold season. Just outside the venue is the metro station so...
Kevin Spacey performed here last year and was blown away with the acoustics. This year I took in a play with much delight. The children could not believe it was a open theater
Visit www.megaron.gr to select the concert of your choice.
Beaitiful and luxurious music hall - also a congress center for conferences and corporate events
Beautiful acoustics inside, but nothing special or worth seeing. In line with every 60s concert hall in US cities. Modern, out of scale and place, clashes with the wonderful building that is the US embassy next to it. Too bad the Greeks missed the opportunity to create a modern era monument, one wonders how they feel if they look at...
Already reviewed as "Megaron" above: it's the same venue!
Athens Concert Hall is the English title of the Megaron --please see review above!
It's amazing as a building and the concerts are wonderful!It's easy to be reached because of the metro station, which is almost outside the athens Consert Hall! If you visit Athens don't miss it, read on line the program and find out which one of the conserts you like and go! You will have a great time especially if you...
Well equipped, dull, double concert - opera auditorium next to the American Embassy. A most expensive and time consuming operation, that was the making of it, with the deepest underground 'well' for the garage. The controversial 'visionary' Lambrakis completed it and possibly misspent the funds in order to create a
Bayreuth of sorts. Fine ensembles (symphonic) were traditionally invited. The...
It's a place where many great artists have performance: Mariinsky Theatre, Jiri Kylian, etc. I have listened to the operetta (a local theatre) and got a great pleasure!
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My hosting company disabled suphp which has caused many unresolved problems for my WP sites. 3 sites I managed to backup after changing permissions but now all the sidebar widgets are gone. How do I get the widgets back? It is likely a permissions problem similar to all the other existing problems that weren't there before.
Note, however, that all the sites I did not touch all still show the sidebar widgets. Does anyone have any ideas what to change to get the widgets back?


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Committee gets testimony on tar sands pipelineFebruary 19,2013
The Associated Press
MONTPELIER — A committee of the Vermont House is hearing about the possible shipment of tar sands oil on a pipeline that crosses northern Vermont.
The CEO of the Portland Pipeline Company, which owns the line, is due to appear Tuesday before the House Committee on Fish, Wildlife and Water Resources.
Larry Wilson said in recent legislative testimony that he would welcome an opportunity to reverse the flow of the Montreal-to-Portland pipeline, but he currently knows of no plans to do so.
Environmental groups have been warning of the likelihood that tar sands would be shipped through Vermont.
The committee is weighing whether Vermont's Act 250 land-use law should apply to the shipment of heavy oil through the state.MORE IN This Just InBENNINGTON A Bennington woman was hospitalized following an early morning fire. Full StoryA storm system that blew through the state knocked out power for more than 20,000 Green Mountain... Full StoryBOISE, Idaho From the beginning, millennials have flocked to Bernie Sanders. Full Story
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This is the second instalment documenting the journey of the Route One Snowboard Team traveling by Trans-Siberian rail across Russia, this time stopping of at the city of Nizhny Novogrod for just 24hrs before getting back on the train. See what Cody, Si, Rowan and Will managed to find to ride and the hospitality from the locals they met.
This follows the first part of the 'Rails Across Russia' web series filmed in Moscow, if you've not seen it check it out here.


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Below is the scenario at hand. To keep things short, I'm looking for a way to access the contents of the 1TB external drive from all three laptops shown in the diagram. Basically wanted to have the drive show up in Windows Explorer (as z:/ or whatnot).
From laptop 1 and 3, the drive is connected through two routers and a hub. This concerns me a bit, not sure what sort of firewall difficulties I'm facing. All three laptops are either Windows XP or Windows 7.
What's the best way to go about this?


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Senoia to hold town hall meeting Aug. 18
The Senoia Downtown Development Authority will hold a town hall meeting Aug. 18 to solicit input from citizens on ways to improve their hometown and to learn what types of business and services residents would like to see in the future.
The meeting will be held at 7 p.m. at the Freeman Sasser building located at the Seavy Street Park. A light meal will also be served during the meeting.
"Give us your input about Senoia. What would you like to see change? Is there a store or service you think Senoia should offer? What is important to improve in our town? Cast your vote on what is important to you," said DDA Chair Suzanne Helfman.
DDA holds this type of town hall meeting every two years. Subsequent to suggestions from the last meeting a cart path was installed along Rockaway Road and the farmers' market was initiated.


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Harley Quinn's Greatest Moments from "Batman: The Animated Series"
TV, Comic Books
Comic Books, TV
Film, Comic Books
Comic Books, Film
The Buy Pile
The Buy Pile
The Buy Pile
Robot 6
Robot 6
Comics Should be Good
Spinoff Online
Spinoff Online
Robot 6
Jul 30, 12:37pm
Jul 30, 11:58am
Jul 30, 10:25am
Jul 30, 10:15am
Jul 30, 10:14am
Jul 30, 09:58am
Cupertino, CA
Not content with a rebooted Terminator trilogy, Skydance Productions and Annapurna Pictures plan to return the rejuvenated franchise to television with a series that will debut in conjunction with the first film in 2015.
Deadline reports the project will be written and executive produced by frequent collaborators Zack Stentz and Ashley Miller (Thor, X-Men: First Class), who also worked on Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Laeta Kalogridis and Patrick Lussier, who are writing the upcoming movie, will also executive produce.
According to the website, the TV series will follow a critical moment from 1984's Terminator, but going in a different direction than the rebooted trilogy. As the features and TV show progress, the two narratives will intersect. Paramount Pictures, which has partnered with Skydance and Annapurna on the new trilogy, won't be involved with the television project.
The four-movie Terminator franchise has grossed more than $1 billion worldwide.
Read: 'We have no ideas of our own.'
The TV series we had was good; it's a shame Fox threw it under the bus. It's hard to imagine a better Sarah Connor than Lena Headey, or a better terminator than Summer Glau, and even the guy playing John Connor was good, unlike the movie Connor who was unbearable.
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- 2014-current, Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology, Franklin & Marshall College, Lancaster, PA.
- 2013-2014, Postdoctoral Fellow, Behavioral Neuroscience, Syracuse University Syracuse, NY.
Stemming from the work I did as a graduate student and as a postdoctoral fellow, my primary research interests revolve around gaining a greater understanding of the biological underpinnings that mediate the relationships between stress and different types of sexual behaviors. Using an animal model, current research projects include:
-The role of brain-derived neurotrophic factor in male and female rat sexual behaviors and memory for sexual experience.
-The role of estrogen receptors in male and female rat sexual behaviors and memory for sexual experience.
Hawley WR, Witty CF, Daniel JM, Dohanich GP (2015). Choline acetyltransferase in the hippocampus is associated with learning strategy preference in adult male rats. Behavioural Brain Research, 289: 118-24.
Serefoglu EC, Hawley WR, Lasker GF, Grissom EM, Mandava SH, Sikka SC, Dohanich GP, Hellstrom WJ (2014). Effect of botulinum-A toxin injection into bulbospongiosus muscle on ejaculation latency in male rats. Journal of Sexual Medicine, 11: 1657-63.
Hawley WR, Grissom EM, *Moody NM, Dohanich GP, Vasudevan NV (2014). Activation of the GPR30 receptor is sufficient to enhance spatial recognition memory in female rats. Behavioural Brain Research, 262: 68-73.
Ferland CL, Hawley WR, Puckett RE, *Wineberg K, Dohanich GP, Schrader LA (2013). Sirt1 activity in dentate gyrus contributes to chronic stress-induced behavior and ERK1/2 cascade changes in the hippocampus. Biological Psychiatry, 74: 927-935.
Hawley WR, Grissom EM, *Martin RC, *Halmos MB, *Bart CLS, Dohanich GP (2013). Testosterone modulates spatial recognition memory in male rats. Hormones and Behavior, 63: 559-65.
Grissom EM, Hawley WR, *Hodges, KS, *Fawcett-Patel, JM, Dohanich GP (2013). Biological sex and learning strategy preference in prepubertal rats are associated with muscarinic receptor binding in brain areas that modulate place and stimulus-response learning. Hippocampus, 23: 313-22.
Hawley WR, Grissom EM, *Belkin MN, *James TF, Dohanich GP. (2013). Decreased sexual motivation and heightened anxiety in male Long-Evans rats are correlated with the memory for a traumatic event. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 42: 459-68.
Hawley WR, Grissom EM, *Patel JM, *Hodges KS, Dohanich GP. (2013). Reactivation of an aversive memory modulates learning strategy preference. Stress, 16: 73-86.
Grissom EM, Hawley WR, *Bromley-Dulfano SS, *Marino SE, *Stathopoulos NG, Dohanich GP. (2012). Learning strategy is influenced by trait anxiety and early rearing conditions in prepubertal male, but not prepubertal female rats. Neurobiology of Learning and Memory, 2; 174-81.
Hawley WR, Grissom EM, *Barratt HE, *Conrad TS, Dohanich GP. (2012). The effects of biological sex and gonadal hormones on learning strategy in adult rats. Physiology & Behavior, 105: 1014-20.
Hawley W, Grissom E, *Keskitalo L, *Hastings T, Dohanich G. (2011). Sexual motivation and anxiety-like behaviors of male rats after exposure to a trauma followed by situational reminders. Physiology & Behavior, 102: 181-7.
Hawley WR, Grissom EM, Dohanich GP. (2011). The relationships between trait anxiety, place recognition memory, and learning strategy. Behavioural Brain Research, 216: 525-30.
Grissom EM, Brubaker B, Capdevila OS, Hawley WR, Gozal D. (2009). Eye movement during REM sleep in children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Developmental Neuropsychology, 34: 552-9.