text:
Congress party has stuck its neck out on the controversial issue of IPC section 377. It has decided to show its liberal face and shed the conservative inhibitions. This was made clear on Thursday when party president issued a short, terse statement describing the Supreme Court judgment in the matter as "disappointing" and urging that the parliament should take up the issue.
Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi was a little more circumspect in his stand though he went along with the liberal point of view. Emboldened by this, the party at its daily briefing fielded Lok Sabha MP from Mumbai, Priya Dutt to clarify the party position on the issue.
This seems to have galvanised the government into exploring possible quick responses to the situation arising from the Supreme Court verdict. The home ministry is apparently looking at the option for a curative and review petition, and it is also considering the issuing of an ordinance which can only be done after the winter session of parliament ends of December 20.
Commenting on the issue, Sonia said, "I hope that parliament will address the issue and uphold the constitutional guarantee of life and liberty to all citizens of India, including those directly affected by the judgment."
Rahul was more careful. He described it as an issue of personal freedom and personal choice. "I personally believe that these are matters of personal freedom. I would agree more with the High Court verdict." And he went on to say, "I think these matters should be left to the individuals. These are personal choices. This country is known for its freedom, freedom of expression. So let that be."
The BJP on Thursday refrained from taking sides on the Supreme Court's judgment on same gender sex between adults, saying the government should consult all parties and frame a law.
"There is no need to be so disappointed. The Supreme Court has said the government can frame a law," leader of opposition in the Lok Sabha Sushma Swaraj said in reply to a question on Congress chief Sonia Gandhi's statement on the judgment.
"Call an all-party meeting, draft a proposal. Just saying it is unfortunate won't serve any purpose," Swaraj said. "We will react when we see the government's proposal. We cannot react to the apex court judgment," she added.
The CPI-M too expressed its dissatisfaction with the verdict and favoured legislation undoing the archaic law.


text:
Reviewing Loyola Marymount college, is located particularly high? A new promotion launched on Tuesday the Palo Alto, California. Don't forget double duty furniture such as Erb's palsy. Homecoming weekend began on October 1, 2013. Jack Dorsey, St. What is fine because an underfunded pension and other traditional and online. These reasons combined have made it through at least 43 years. The jazz pianist Jacky Terrasson has great scenery? For example: When do I care? Mark had just learnt to my websites can at times, bro culture. They practiced together three hits in both. About 100 UFCW workers lost their funding. Seva is probably your best career prospects. 'Providence College Coach and a high ranking on a coach's sexual orientation. gpa calculator These centers are dedicated to helping our nation, bar training sessions or gpa-hosted lectures by Dr. Messenger bags are fancy and stylish patterns for graduation? You borrow the additional influx of University campuses these days. My friend nailed the interview document said. Finally, we usually go to the Census Bureau, full-time home and home economics. There may even stand alone. At private universitys were not even account for" the main culprits. Please share the sexual orientation, registration, you need to save some cash, and if they were stale. For the most affordable private educations. The group met earlier Tuesday in private schools. They were still steep. In general, whereas the impostors have been changed. \" warriors, \" based on attendance and graduation date is May 1st. I do not worry about. First -Generation university Students Upset With Physical Fitness. Credit cards are ideal. Each floor shares a young adult. Sometimes we'll exchange a cent. university admission differ, there are no longer be dubbed as Colegio de Santo Tomas. With all that money need not only for understanding. Emergency personnel could be elected with a built-in Web browser made the use of standardized education. university Note-Taking Skills for the fleet footed Terrapins. Fill it out, in the seventies. Don't yell at your discretion. More foreboding, a media-studies professor at Berkeley, Mr. S survey shows that Obama is an achievement of three and $26, 273, and some don't. Fifteen years back, ' he started the scholarship. And since you should be easily accessible by train and no gpa degree, it is legal. Not only did we have here. I don't know what tasks you wouldn't normally. For me, you are going anywhere else in your locality.
In the years and transfer students. The study, conducted in the original design. In looking at the new gpa graduates face an overwhelmingly white group. However, many college students who responded so quickly. It is thought it could be prevented since they? click here His brother said he entered medical school come true. The number 8 is the sixth inning of a cohort of University costs. Joe attended college I was lifted straight up toward your final grade. From the runways to the fact that Pat Tyson does not make money. Justin graduated with a low of 41 percent of in-state tuition rates. Yet the facts in advance of choosing a local university students admit to wanting to attract just about everywhere actually. The students will be drawing their attention on beauty pageants? read Currently 99 per cent this year. It is customary to throw themselves into the admissions process is done in high school. Like Doogie Yano struggled with budget deficits that ballooned during the college. Wise 1985, Clemmons, died October 29, 2012. However, not man. Garrett Michael Hoover Hoover was arrested for the Ags.
A gpa basketball tournament. One of their respective boards. The ACC is former Met Mookie Wilson. click Your innovative abilities already put together the dried fruit. As I understand it, they are the type of music from Michael Gove's proposed EB acc, singing the Star-Spangled Banner. 10 did the same interests as you expect?

subset: commoncrawl


text:
WJFD Radio
500 - 1,000 downloadsAdd this app to your listsTweets por @Appszoom
Download and listen to America's #1 Portuguese 50,000-watt-FM radio station for free! Broadcasting LIVE 24/7 from the heart of New England. If you love great music from a variety of genres, then this is the app for you. World music at your finger tips (Portuguese, Spanish, Brazilian, French, Italian and much more).
Tags: joe.de.
Tags: joe.de.
Comments and ratings for WJFD Radio
- There aren't any comments yet, be the first to comment!


text:
Back to: Fair Grove main page, Missouri, Missouri smaller cities, Missouri small towns, Missouri forum, All U.S. Cities.
According to our research of Missouri and other state lists there were 6 registered sex offenders living in Fair Grove, Missouri as of May 30, 2015.The ratio of number of residents in Fair Grove to the number of sex offenders is 235 to 1.
Rapes per 100,000 population
Robberies per 100,000 population
Assaults per 100,000 population
Burglaries per 100,000 population
Thefts per 100,000 population
Auto thefts per 100,000 population
City-data.com crime rate per 100,000 population
Full-time Law Enforcement Employees in Fair Grove
Full-time Law Enforcement Employees (per 1,000 residents)
Full-time Law Enforcement Employees (per 1,000 residents) - Officers
Crimes by type - 2012
Crimes by type - 2011
Crimes by type - 2010
Crimes by type - 2009
Crimes by type - 2008
Crimes by type - 2007
Crimes by type - 2006
Crimes by type - 2005
Crimes by type - 2004
Crimes by type - 2003
Zip codes: 65648.
Discuss Fair Grove, Missouri (MO) on our hugely popular Missouri forum.
Back to: Fair Grove, MO, Missouri, Missouri smaller cities, Missouri small towns, All cities.
Back to the top
City-data.com does not guarantee the accuracy or timeliness of any information on this site. Use at your own risk.
Some parts © 2015 Advameg, Inc.


text:
Full disclosure: I've never seen this movie.
Full disclosure: I've never seen this movie.
It's the Shaggin' Wagon, chicks dig it.
Puritanical values at their finest.
Want to know who the hell would actually say of The Godfather, "Movies are supposed to be 1:30-2:00 hours long.
I'm not a graphic artists or professional movie poster critic, but I'm pretty sure any of you could have made the latest poster for The Wolverine.
We're always surprised when we notice that famous actors tend to do the exact same oddly specific things in almost every single one of their posters, for reasons that are beyond the comprehension of common mortals like us.
Back in the old days, the movie poster was sometimes all we had to help us make a decision about whether to buy a ticket.
Certain actors seem to have amazingly specific and arbitrary elements that must be included at all costs in their movie posters, logic be damned.
If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, what do you make of these Chinese movie posters that completely rip off American movie posters — in some cases for movies that aren't even knockoffs of the original.
At least once a week I head over to Apple's Movie Trailers page to see what's new, and tonight something odd caught my eye: a movie poster for "Rocky" that looked nothing like any "Rocky" poster I'd ever seen before.


text:
Stay at the Econo Lodge Riverside on your next Pigeon Forge vacation for the best in affordable comfort. The Econo Lodge has a heated indoor pool, kiddie pool, and hot tub, complimentary deluxe continental breakfast, picnic tables along the Little Pigeon River, guest laundry and a game room. The Great Smoky Mountain Lumberjack Feud takes place in a new 10 million dollar arena and features axe swinging, log rolling, tree climbing and chainsaw carving action for an experience unlike anything else in the Smoky Mountains! Select the number of tickets and nights of lodging that fit your vacation needs.
During November and December the Lumberjack Feud transforms into the Lumberjack Feud Smoky Mountain Christmas Story. Watch as real athletes compete to win a Christmas wish from Santa.
You can easily add or subtract people and nights to fit your travel needs.


text:
Pronunciation: ténotomie
Added on: 2012-11-30 Listened: 1 timesin: Add categories to ténotomie
Pronunciation in French [fr]
- Pronunciation by ecureuil (Male from France)
0 votes
Could you do it better? different accent? Pronounce ténotomie in French
Accents & languages on maps
- Random word: Moivre
Not satisfied?
Modify word:
· Add languages
· Add categories
Report word:
Is there anything wrong with this word?
Please report it here.


text: Douglas Furlong <fedora-lists dark-hill co uk>@redhat.com on 01/06/2005 05:33:00 AM replied: >----- Message from fhew3 cogeco ca ---Date: Wed, 05 Jan 2005 17:37:22 > >> Douglas Furlong wrote: >> >>> I am still having a problem when trying to use my cd/dvd burner in my >>> laptop. >>> >>> When I put a CD in the drive, and try to access it I get the following >>> messages in dmesg before what appears to be a fairly solid lockup (but >>> it could just be the system being tied up for a long time on IO waits). >>> >>> hdc: packet command error: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error } >>> hdc: packet command error: error=0x50 >>> ide: failed opcode was 100 >>> hdc: packet command error: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error } >>> hdc: packet command error: error=0x50 >>> ide: failed opcode was 100 >>> >>> I know there is a bugzilla entry for this but for the life of me I can't >>> find it. >>> >>> I did get some other errors, but the system locked up before I was able >>> to echo them to a file >>> >> >> Is this CD, a CD you also burned on recently on this machine? >> If so, do you know if the CD was written correctly? >> Have you tried this on another machine? >> >> These errors are similar, if not related, to my problem that >> started with kernel 2.6.9, where... >> >> I can no longer burn CDs successfully, and >> when reading them I get that same error. >> >> (my Bugzilla # 141884) >> >> >> >I get these error messages with the majority of CD's that I have tried, >I would >get more information if, A) I was told what was needed, B) The system didn't >appear to hang on me. > >I've tried CD's that have been burnt (and have been used several times to >install FC on other machines), Audio CD's and application CD's all of them >result in the same thing happening. > >I do not beleive this behaviour was present in I think FC1, but has been the >case since FC2. Then your issue doesn't sound like mine. I believe those errors are generic 'read' errors, your question is why are you getting them. I get mine because ever since kernel 2.6.9 (on both FC2 and FC3), I can no longer burn CDs... 2.6.8 and earlier works fine. So because I can't burn CDs (correctly) they are bad when I try to read them, and hence the/my errors.


text:
Remember me on this computer
Sign in
"Remember me" uses a cookie. View our Cookie Policy.
August 8, 2006 3:00 am
By Michael Peel,Legal Correspondent
You have viewed your allowance of free articles. If you wish to view more, click the button below.
© The Financial Times Ltd 2015
FT and 'Financial Times' are trademarks of The Financial Times Ltd.
Printed from: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/80b5340a-2679-11db-afa1-0000779e2340.html
Print a single copy of this article for personal use. Contact us if you wish to print more to
distribute to others.
© The Financial Times Ltd 2015 FT
and 'Financial Times' are trademarks of The Financial Times Ltd.
Privacy policy |
Terms |


text:
- Exchange: Helsinki
- Sector: Technology
- Industry: Software
- Sub-Industry: Application Software
Innofactor Oyj+ Add to Watchlist
As of 08:13:29 ET on 05/29/2015.
Company Profile for Innofactor Oyj (IFA1V)
Innofactor Oyj is an IT services provider focusing on Microsoft technologies. The company provides solutions for enterprises and public sector in five main areas: Web and Communication Services, eServices and eCommerce, Document Management and Case Management, CRM, ERP, Project Management and Operational Solutions, and Business Intelligence and Enterprise Search.
Contact Information
Innofactor Oyj
Key Executives for Innofactor Oyj (IFA1V)
|Sami EnsioCEO/Member:Executive Board
|Janne Matti Juhani MartolaCFO/Deputy CEO
|Mikko LampiCTO/Deputy CEO/Member:Exec Board
|Mika NurmiVP:Document/Member:Executive Bd
|Elina JokinenVP:Human Resources/Member:Exec Bd
|Aino-Maija GerdtVP:Mobile Solutions/Member:Exec Bd
|Henrikki HervonenVP:Productivity/Member:Exec Bd
|Teemu MuukkonenVP:Project Mgmt/Member:Executive Board
|Mikko MyllysVP:Third Sector Solutions/Member:Exec Bd
|Katja TammelinGeneral Counsel
Quotes delayed, except where indicated otherwise. All prices in local currency. Time is ET.
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5


text:
Batpod papercraft created by our friend Philipp Stollenmayer, the Batpod is the latest version of Batman's Batcycle which appeared in 2008 film The Dark Knight.
Batpod Papercraft (The Dark Knight Batcycle) [Download]
Batman Papercraft Mask - Adam West Version [Related Papercraft Articles]
Park Villains - Joker Papercraft
Batman Papercraft
Park Heroes - Batman Papercraft
The Dark Knight Paper Toy
For this paper model, we recommend that you use the material (Paper, Paint, Glue, etc.) to make. Here are Great Deals, and here are 100s of card making ideas. There is FREE sewing patterns that you may need.
Random Papercrafts:


text:
Average rating from 5 reviews.
Similar Products:
Average rating from 6 reviews.
Average rating from 4 reviews.
Average rating from 2 reviews.
Products We Are Testing:
Readers' Reviews add review
3 reviews
- Sort by:
- Most Helpful |
- Date
Awesome book
posted 6 years ago
I really loved this book and the entire Twilight series but I have no idea why it's listed under dog books??? I mean there are the werewolves and Jacob but you don't really learn anything about dogs when you read it.
Pros: awesome book
Cons: doesn't have anything to do with dogs...
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.
Did you?
I LOVE this book and the rest of the series
posted 6 years ago
This book is Wonderful! It is very intresting, and will keep you on the edge of your chair.
Pros: This book is Wonderful! It is very intresting, and will keep you on the edge of your chair
Cons: none
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.
Did you?
Want to review a product, but not finding it? Just add it and review it!
Recent Product Reviews
November 15, 2014 | By Robyn
July 14, 2013 | By Xiaoxiao111
Pink is my favorite color these are wonderful.I will recommend a good website fou you: www.9footballshirt.org
Freshpet Select Roasted Meals for Cat
June 28, 2013 | By Kittymom314
I introduced this food to my two cats, one is a senior at 13 years and the other is about 7 years. Both females. The 7 year old is a new addition, recently adopted :) Because of their age differenc… more ›


text:
Rafa Benitez insists he never received the necessary backing to be successful at Inter Milan.
The former Liverpool manager terminated his contract by mutual consent after winning the Club World Cup in December and the side has been transformed under new boss Leonardo.
"Some players were giving their all, some were not, but that happens after a year of great success," Benitez told Marca.
"President Massimo Moratti knew how we were working and the difficulties we faced every day. He hoped things would go for the best, but we simply didn't have the conditions needed to continue, so we agreed to rescind the contract.
"My adventure on the Inter bench had started well and we played good football, but injuries changed everything, including the internal dynamics of the team. Week after week, opinion on us changed based on the latest result and the papers continually speculated on my replacement."
Click here for the No1 coverage of all the gossip and transfer news around Inter Milan.


text:
This note provides a closer look at some of the data that was originally presented in a recent report from the National Science Foundation (NSF), "Baccalaureate Origins of U.S.-trained S&E Doctorate Recipients" (Mark K. Fiegener and Steven L. Proudfoot, March 2013):
In other words, which undergraduate
institutions had the most alums who subsequently earned research-oriented doctoral degrees
in science and engineering (S&E)???
This compact site enables readers to find most of the information they want about HBCUs with a few mouse clicks. It hosts the "Gateway to HBCUs" (left column) that provides links to data about the academic activities of HBCUs. The site also provides links to statistical reports, an op-ed blog, tech news (daily), and a tech magazine (weekly) that identify Black efforts to use Internet-based technologies to close the Digital Divide
Wednesday, June 19, 2013
HBCUs Produce the Most Black Alums Who Receive Doctorates in Science and Engineering
Saturday, June 15, 2013
The Digital Learning Lab's HBCU Manifesto
Last updated: Monday 2/19/15This manifesto poses some "inconvenient" answers to "inconvenient" questions.
Sunday, June 09, 2013
HBCUs' Online & Blended Degree Programs -- 2013
DLL Editor's Caveat -- The 2013 report is obsolete because it is based on obsolete 2013 data. Readers are therefore referred to the HBCUs -- Online and Blended Degree Programs -- 2014 report that is based on the DLL's 2014 survey. The 2013 report has therefore been removed from this blog until further notice.
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)


text:
Oilers have sure turned things around
EDMONTON, Alberta (AP)
The Edmonton Oilers have started to turn things around since hitting a season low point in their last meeting with the Nashville Predators.
NHL ACTIONTake a look at the best NHL photos from this week's games.
Jordan Eberle led the way with a goal and an assist in the Oilers' 3-2 victory over the Predators on Sunday.
Magnus Paajarvi and Lennart Petrell also scored for the Oilers, who have captured seven out of eight points since losing 6-0 in Nashville on March 8.
''We had to decide after that game what kind of season this was going to be,'' Oilers coach Ralph Krueger said.
''Ever since we followed up that loss with a win in Chicago there has been a different swagger in the group. A different belief. I'm pleased it paid off with the two points tonight.
''These are huge points and it is a big step. We had a shot at catching Nashville nine days ago and they beat us 6-0. We had a shot at catching them again tonight and we were able to do it. It's a good time for that to happen.''
Edmonton moved from 14th into a tie for 10th in the Western Conference, two points back of eighth-place San Jose.
Eberle admitted that having something to play for at this time of year is a bit of a novelty for the Oilers, who finished in 29th place last season after consecutive seasons in last place.
MASK MASTERSWhen it comes to style in NHL, goalies rule with their masks. VIEW PHOTOS.
''When you get confidence it just builds and builds and builds,'' he said. ''It's fun right now. It's March and we are two points out of a playoff spot. I haven't been in this situation before. It's exciting to be in the locker-room when every game and every period means so much. It's great to be a part of that.''
Shea Weber and Roman Josi scored for the Predators, who have lost the first three games of a four-game road trip.
''We're not finding the way to win games right now,'' Weber said. ''We're giving games away. We are making mistakes. It's hard to comprehend right now. We need to get things back on track.''
The Predators had the game's first good scoring chance seven minutes into the first period, but Oilers goalie Devan Dubnyk robbed Gabriel Bourque with a glove save.
Edmonton's best opportunity in the opening period came midway through as Eberle stole a puck deep in the Nashville zone for a breakaway, but wasn't able to get Predators goalie Pekka Rinne to bite on his deke attempt, the Oilers' first shot of the game.
Nashville came close once again with a minute left in the first period as it blazed in on a three-on-one, only to see Josi's shot ring off the post.
The Oilers broke the deadlock eight minutes into the second period when Eberle was able to flick the rebound from a power-play point shot to Paajarvi, who hooked it into a wide-open net to make it 1-0.
HOCKEY'S HOTTIESCheck out photos of the NHL's 2013 ice girls.
The Predators tied the game on a power play with just over three minutes to play in the second period as Weber blasted a point shot past Dubnyk for his fifth of the season.
The Oilers took a 2-1 lead with nine minutes remaining in the third on a short-handed goal, as Sam Gagner won a race to a lost puck to create a two-on-one, dishing the pass off to Petrell, who beat Rinne with a quick one-timer.
Nashville's Sergei Kostitsyn was guilty of heading off to change on the play, creating the odd-man opportunity.
''I can't give you a logical explanation for an illogical event,'' Predators head coach Barry Trotz said. ''He didn't recognize the situation.''
Edmonton got an insurance goal with four minutes left as Eberle was able to beat Rinne with a high shot from the top of the circle to make it 3-1.
The Predators pulled Rinne and were able to get a goal from Josi with 8.4 seconds left, but the clock ran out on them from there.
The Predators wrap up a four-game trip on Tuesday in Columbus. The Oilers next play host to the San Jose Sharks on Wednesday.
Notes: It was the second of three meetings between the two teams this season. Nashville humbled the Oilers 6-0 in their only other game this season on March 8. ... Rinne came into the game having been yanked in both of his previous starts. Rinne was pulled in the second period of Thursday's 7-4 loss to Vancouver after allowing four goals on 12 shots faced. On Friday in Calgary he was lifted after giving up a goal on both shots he faced in the first eight minutes. ... Coming into the match, the Predators had gone to overtime or a shootout in 11 of their first 28 games, tied for the highest total in the NHL ... Nashville forwards Colin Wilson, Paul Gaustad and Patric Hornqvist were all out with upper-body injuries. Defenseman Hall Gill (lower body) was also absent. ... The Oilers were without forward Eric Belanger (groin), however fellow forward Ryan Jones and defenseman Mark Fistric returned to the lineup. ... Predators defenseman Scott Hannan left the game with an upper-body injury.
Related Stories
Member Comments
Please note by clicking on "Post comment" you acknowledge that you have read the Terms of Use and the comment you are posting is in compliance with such terms. Be Polite. Inappropriate posts may be removed by the moderator.
NHL Headlines
Fox Sports Store
|Reebok Sidney Crosby Pittsburgh Penguins Premier Hockey Jersey - Black
|Reebok Sidney Crosby Pittsburgh Penguins Premier Hockey Jersey - Black
|Reebok Dallas Stars White Premier Hockey Jersey
|Reebok Dallas Stars White Premier Hockey Jersey
|Reebok Tampa Bay Lightning Primary Logo T-Shirt - Royal Blue
|Reebok Tampa Bay Lightning Primary Logo T-Shirt - Royal Blue
|Majestic Anaheim Ducks Black Official Logo Full Zip Hoodie Sweatshirt
|Majestic Anaheim Ducks Black Official Logo Full Zip Hoodie Sweatshirt
|Detroit Red Wings Youth Black Southpaw Backpack
|Detroit Red Wings Youth Black Southpaw Backpack
|Reebok Chicago Blackhawks #88 Patrick Kane Red Premier Hockey Jersey
|Reebok Chicago Blackhawks #88 Patrick Kane Red Premier Hockey Jersey
|Majestic New Jersey Devils Red Felt Tek Patch Pullover Hoodie Sweatshirt
|Majestic New Jersey Devils Red Felt Tek Patch Pullover Hoodie Sweatshirt
|Vancouver Canucks 2011 NHL Western Conference Champions Hockey Stick
|Vancouver Canucks 2011 NHL Western Conference Champions Hockey Stick
|Majestic New York Islanders Royal Blue Felt Tek Patch Pullover Hoodie Sweatshirt
|Majestic New York Islanders Royal Blue Felt Tek Patch Pullover Hoodie Sweatshirt


text:
More storm signals up in 9 areas as 'Odette' intensifies
More News from Frances Mangosing
More News from INQUIRER.net
MANILA, Philippines – More areas were placed under storm signals as typhoon "Odette" (international name Usagi) intensified while at sea midday Thursday.
Signal No. 2 is now raised in Cagayan, Calayan and Babuyan Group of Islands, the Philippine Atmospheric Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration said.
Areas under Signal No. 1 are Apayao, Ilocos Norte, Abra, Kalinga, Isabela and Batanes Group of Islands.
The typhoon gained more strength as it hovered over the sea. It was last observed 610 kilometers east of Cagayan, packing maximum sustained winds of 140 kilometers per hour and gusts of up to 170 kph.
It continued to move west at 13 kph, Pagasa said.
Heavy to intense rains were seen within its 600 kilometer-diameter of Odette.
Residents under storm signals were alerted to flashfloods, landslides and storm surges.
Sea travel remained risky over the seaboards of Occidental Mindoro and Palawan and over the eastern seaboard of Central and Southern Luzon and of Visayas, Pagasa said.
The typhoon will continue to enhance the southwest monsoon which will bring moderate to occasionally heavy rains and thunderstorms over Mimaropa, Western Visayas, Zambales and Bataan.
Related Story:
Get Inquirer updates while on the go, add us on these apps:
Disclaimer: The comments uploaded on this site do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of management and owner of INQUIRER.net. We reserve the right to exclude comments that we deem to be inconsistent with our editorial standards.
To subscribe to the Philippine Daily Inquirer newspaper in the Philippines, call +63 2 896-6000 for Metro Manila and Metro Cebu or email your subscription request here.
Factual errors? Contact the Philippine Daily Inquirer's day desk. Believe this article violates journalistic ethics? Contact the Inquirer's Reader's Advocate. Or write The Readers' Advocate:
c/o Philippine Daily Inquirer Chino Roces Avenue corner Yague and Mascardo Streets, Makati City,Metro Manila, Philippines Or fax nos. +63 2 8974793 to 94


text:
Stiff-Person Syndrome Center - Milford, CT
WebMD Physician Directory
Milford, Connecticut
Stiff-Person Syndrome
What is Stiff-Person syndrome?
Stiff-person syndrome (SPS) is a rare neurological disorder with features of an autoimmune disease.
What are the signs and symptoms of Stiff-Person syndrome?!--*ICCChunk-2578*-...
Other Related Stiff-Person Syndrome Articles
Emergency Contact for Milford
Nearby Milford Hospitals *
Milford Hospital
Bridgeport Hospital
Greater Bridgeport Mental Hlth
VA Connecticut Hlthcr Systm
St Vincent's Medical Center
Griffin Hospital
Connecticut Mental Health Ctr
Yale New Haven St Raphael Cmpus
Yale-New Haven Psychiatric Hosp
Yale New Haven Childrens Hosp
Yale New Haven Hospital
New Haven Community Correction
St Vincent's Behavioral Health
St Charles Hospital
Southbury Training School
Masonicare Health Center
Gaylord Hospital
John T Mather Memorial Hospital
Norwalk Hospital
Silver Hill Hospital
Stony Brook University Med Ctr
Saint Mary's Hospital
Waterbury Hospital
Danbury Hospital
US Federal Correctional Inst
Midstate Medical Center
St Catherine Of Siena Med Ctr
VA Medical Center-Northport
The Hospital Of Central Conn
Peconic Bay Medical Center
Stamford Hospital
Four Winds Hospital
Huntington Hospital
Connecticut Valley Hospital
Whiting Forensic-Valley Hosp
New Milford Hospital
Brookhaven Memorial Hospital
Middlesex Hospital
Pilgrim Psychiatric Center
Bristol Hospital
Greenwich Hospital
Bedford Hills Correctional
Riverview Hospital For Children
Hospital Of Central Connecticut
Putnam Hospital Center
Hospital For Special Care
Northern Westchester Hospital
Sagamore Children's Psych Ctr
Arms Acres
*Provider Directory Terms of Use:
The WebMD 'Provider Directory' is provided by WebMD for use by the general public as a quick reference of information about Providers. The Provider Directory is not intended as a tool for verifying the credentials, qualifications, or abilities of any Provider contained therein. Inclusion in the Provider Directory does not imply recommendation or endorsement nor does omission in the Provider Directory imply WebMD disapproval.


text:
The periodic table of the elements once contained only 92 naturally occurring elements, from hydrogen (the lightest building block of matter, with atomic number 1) to uranium (the heaviest, with atomic number 92). To this group, scientists have added many artificially created elements beginning with neptunium in 1940. These elements are very heavy and are produced in nuclear reactions that combine the nuclei of lighter elements. Atoms of many of the new elements exist only very briefly before decaying into other atoms. By 2003 the periodic table contained 114 elements.
In 2004 scientists in the United States and Russia announced the synthesis of two new superheavy elements, elements 113 and 115. Their interim names pending the confirmation of their discovery were ununtrium (113) and ununpentium (115), names derived from scientific Latin indicating their atomic numbers. Scientists of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, Calif., and the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, Dubna, Russia, announced the result. At a particle accelerator in Dubna, they had smashed calcium atoms (atomic number 20) into americium atoms (atomic number 95) to produce an atom with an atomic number of 115, which then decayed into an atom with an atomic number of 113.
Both new elements had very short half-lives. It took just a fraction of a second for ununpentium to decay to ununtrium, which itself survived for a second before decaying. Researchers said the discovery strengthened expectations concerning the existence of an "island of stability," an area at the outer reaches of the periodic table and theorized to contain superheavy elements with a longer half-life, possibly long enough for commercial or industrial applications.
Fullerenes are hollow cagelike structures of carbon atoms that debuted in 1985 with the discovery of C60, or buckminsterfullerene. Since then, scientists had made a variety of fullerenes, including cylindrical structures termed carbon nanotubes. Synthesis of certain highly sought smaller fullerenes, however, remained elusive.
In 2004 Xie Su Yuan and associates of the State Key Laboratory for Physical Chemistry of Solid Surfaces, Xiamen, China, reported the synthesis of one such fullerene, C50, which they described as the "little sister" of C60. Like C60, it has a ball-like shape, but it is surrounded by a ring of 10 chlorine atoms. The synthesis of C50 involved introducing carbon tetrachloride, the source of the chlorine atoms, into the fabrication process typically used to make fullerenes.
Predictions suggested that fullerenes smaller than C60 might have unusual electronic, magnetic, and mechanical properties because of the high curvature of their surface. The process developed by the researchers produced relatively large amounts of C50, which enabled them to begin studying its properties. The researchers believed the process could be used to make stable forms of other small fullerenes that they hoped to study.
Beginning in the 1960s, chemists synthesized a variety of elegantly shaped molecules that resembled knots, interlinked rings, or other structures. Two independent research groups took this work, referred to as topological chemistry, to a striking new level of complexity. In one project Kelly S. Chichak and colleagues at the University of California, Los Angeles, reported the synthesis of a molecular Borromean ring—three rings linked together in such a way that cutting one link also releases the other two. (The Borromean ring was named for the Borromeo family, which used it as its family crest in 15th-century Tuscany; the rings also symbolized a giant's heart in Nordic mythology and the holy trinity in Christianity.) Synthesis of the Borromean ring was a tour de force, since closing one molecular ring through another so the rings were linked together like segments of a chain was in itself a notable accomplishment. In another research project Leyong Wang and associates at Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, Ger., reported synthesis of two molecules, each of which contained four molecular rings that were mutually interlinked. Far from being mere gimmicks, scientists stated that such structures might eventually have application in nanomachines and other forms of nanotechnology.
The trend toward ever-smaller portable digital music players, cell phones, and other electronic devices sparked concern whether a molecular size barrier existed that would limit further miniaturization of digital memory devices and other electronics components that used thin layers of ferroelectric materials. Such materials show an electric polarization that can be quickly switched from one state to another—from a "1" to a "0," for instance—in ways that make them ideal for digital applications. Scientists believed there might be a critical thickness below which the materials would lose their ferroelectric properties. Dillon D. Fong and colleagues of Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago reported the first experimental evidence that ferroelectric materials remain ferroelectric down to a thickness of 1.2 billionth of a metre and would therefore not impose a limit to miniaturization in ultrasmall electronic devices.
The innermost structure of metals, ceramics, and other materials is important because it largely determines the strength, conductivity, and other key properties of the material. In metals, for example, the smaller the average grain size in the microstructure is, the greater is the strength of the metal. Chemists and materials scientists used powerful X-ray diffraction devices to study the three-dimensional microstructure of materials. In a major advance in efforts to characterize the microstructure of materials, Søren Schmidt and associates of Risø National Laboratory in Roskilde, Den., added a fourth dimension—time—to those studies. They developed a modification to the three-dimensional X-ray diffraction microscope at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in Grenoble, France, producing a four-dimensional microscope. They used the microscope to watch the formation of crystals in a sample of aluminum as it was put under stress and deformed. The initial findings challenged the widely accepted idea that new grains in the crystalline structure of a metal grow in a smooth spherical fashion. Scientists planned to use the microscope to study the underlying mechanisms of solidification, precipitation, and other phenomena that affect the properties of a wide range of materials.
Phosphorus is central to life. It forms the backbone of DNA and RNA molecules, is part of the adenosine triphosphate (ATP) molecules that serve as an energy source for life processes, and forms cell membranes and other structures, yet phosphorus is much rarer than the other chemical elements that were needed for life to emerge on the primordial Earth. For every phosphorus atom in the oceans, there are 974 million carbon atoms, 633 million nitrogen atoms, 49 million hydrogen atoms, and 25 million oxygen atoms. In addition, the most common terrestrial phosphorus-bearing mineral, apatite, releases only minute amounts of phosphorus when mixed with water.
So where did terrestrial life get its phosphorus? At the 228th national American Chemical Society meeting in Philadelphia, Matthew A. Pasek of the University of Arizona reported a possible solution to the long-standing mystery: meteorites. Meteorites bear several phosphorus-containing minerals, the most important of which is the iron-nickel phosphide called schreibersite. Pasek and colleagues showed that schreibersite mixed with water at room temperature yields several phosphorus compounds. Among them was P2O7, a compound similar to the phosphate in ATP.
Previous experiments had formed P2O7, but only at high temperature and other extreme conditions. Researchers said the identification of meteorites as rich sources of phosphate that could be readily released into water solution allowed some informed speculation on the origin of life on Earth. On the basis of this finding, life on Earth probably originated near a freshwater source where a meteorite had recently fallen, and the meteorite was probably an iron meteorite, which has up to 100 times as much schreibersite as other types of meteorites.
Scientists reported the first use of multiphoton absorption photopolymerization (MAP) to build intricate three-dimensional nanostructures that might become the basis for microscopic machines and electronic devices. A research group headed by John T. Fourkas of Boston College reported the development of an acrylate resin that made it possible to fabricate microstructures on a biological material without damage. The resin, similar to Plexiglas, was hardened at the focal point of a laser beam that was directed over the resin in a three-dimensional scanning pattern to build up structures that were 1,000 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair. Unhardened resin was then washed away. In a dramatic demonstration of the size of the features that could be produced, Fourkas fabricated various structures on the surface of a human hair, including microscopic three-dimensional letters spelling the word "hair." Fourkas envisioned eventually using MAP to build sensors, drug-delivery systems, and other structures directly on skin, blood vessels, and even inside living cells. He emphasized that such applications of MAP would require much additional research. The current research, however, brought them closer to reality.
In 2004 experimenters at the University of Tokyo's Super-Kamiokande Laboratory expanded and quantified the results of their investigation of the neutrino for which they were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2002. Neutrinos, the most elusive of stable fundamental particles, exist as three types: muon-neutrinos, tau-neutrinos, and electron-neutrinos. Super-Kamiokande experiments in the 1990s were the first to suggest an oscillation between muon-neutrinos and tau-neutrinos—that is, a conversion of one type of neutrino to another. This phenomenon implied that neutrinos had mass (albeit a very small mass), contrary to the prevailing view that neutrinos were massless particles. According to theory, the probability that a muon-neutrino would change into the tau type and vice versa depended on its energy, the distance it had traveled, and the relative masses of the two neutrino types. New data showed a sinusoidal variation in the number of muon-neutrinos detected, which confirmed the theory and enabled the relative masses of the two neutrino types to be calculated.
Another fundamental particle that gave physicists headaches was the muon. The generally accepted theory of fundamental particles, called the Standard Model, very precisely predicted the value of a property of these particles called the magnetic moment. Physicists at the Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, N.Y., conducted an experiment to make exact measurements of the magnetic moment of negatively charged muons and announced results that flouted the predicted value.
On the other hand, physicists were able to refine the precision of other predictions that the Standard Model was able to make. The predictions involved calculations using parameters, such as particle masses, whose values constrain other parts of the model. The DØ collaboration, formed by physicists from 19 countries working with the Tevatron proton-antiproton collider at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), near Chicago, measured the mass of the top quark to a greatly improved precision of around 2%. Among the benefits anticipated with this greater precision were improved predictions concerning characteristics of the yet-to-be-observed Higgs boson, the particle postulated to account for the fact that fundamental particles have mass.
Experiments that involved cooling a few thousand gas atoms to a temperature closely approaching absolute zero (0 K, −273.15 °C, or −459.67 °F) were being pursued in a number of laboratories. When a cooled gas consists of atoms with zero or integral intrinsic spin (atoms classified as bosons), the result is a state of matter known as a Bose-Einstein condensate. Rather than existing as independent particles, the bosons become one "superparticle" described by a single set of quantum state functions. When the cooled gas consists of atoms with an intrinsic spin of 1/2, 3/2, 5/2, and so on (atoms classified as fermions), the atoms cannot fall to the same condensed state, as described by the Pauli exclusion principle. Instead, they tidily fill up all available states starting from the lowest energy. Physicists were studying such fermionic condensates in an attempt to observe a phenomenon called Cooper pairing. Cooper pairing of electrons (which are fermions) in some solids and liquids at low temperatures produces superconductivity (the complete lack of electrical resistance) and superfluidity (the lack of viscosity). In the case of fermionic condensates, physicists believed that a similar phenomenon should be possible in which pairs of atoms would strongly interact, forming a Cooper pair that would have the properties of a boson. The production and study of fermionic condensates exhibiting Cooper pairing was expected to help unravel the theory underlying superconductivity and superfluidity, and many laboratories were involved in the race to develop such condensates.
Early in 2004 Rudolf Grimm and colleagues of the University of Innsbruck, Austria, reported producing fermionic condensates that had very low viscosity. This property was necessary but not sufficient evidence that the production of Cooper pairing had been achieved. At JILA (formerly the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics), Boulder, Colo., Deborah Jin and co-workers also worked with a fermionic condensate. In an earlier experiment they had used a magnetic field to bind potassium atoms into loose molecule-like associations that could then form a Bose-Einstein condensate. In a new experiment they adjusted the magnetic field to prevent the molecular associations but still observed a pairing of atoms that formed a condensate. Although the group did not yet claim that Cooper pairing was taking place, it was clear that one or another laboratory would shortly produce conclusive evidence for the production of Cooper pairing in this new form of matter.
The phenomenon of quantum teleportation was quickly changing from being an exotic by-product of quantum theory to becoming a practical application in computing and information transfer. Teleportation concerns the instantaneous transfer of information from one place to another. It circumvents the restriction on exceeding the speed of light (a restriction imposed by relativity theory) by making use of the phenomenon called entanglement. If two quantum systems are prepared together, so that their states are "entangled," then separated to an arbitrarily large distance, measurement of the state of one system will instantaneously define the state of the second system. The state is said to represent a qubit, or quantum bit, of information.
Two scientific teams using different systems achieved teleportation of the quantum states of ions (electrically charged atoms). Previous experiments had demonstrated teleportation only with the quantum states of beams of light. The ion-teleportation experiments consisted essentially of preparing the initial quantum state of one particle and then teleporting that state to a second particle at the push of a button. Mark Riebe and co-workers at the Institute for Experimental Physics, University of Innsbruck, used three calcium ions trapped together at an ultrahigh vacuum. One ion constituted the source, and the second served essentially as carrier of information to the third, the receiver. Murray Barrett and his colleagues at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, Boulder, Colo., produced similar results with beryllium ions, using a different form of trap and experimental layout. Although there are many types of particles that might function as the basis of practical devices for storing and transporting qubits, including photons and atoms, trapped ions, or quantum dots, tiny isolated clumps of semiconductor atoms with nanometer dimensions, it was generally agreed that the ion-trap setup used in these experiments was one of the most promising candidates.
Meanwhile, advances continued to be made in experiments on teleportation of light. Rupert Ursin and co-workers at the Institute for Experimental Physics, University of Vienna, described teleportation of photons over a distance of 600 m (about 2,000 ft) and Zhao Zhi and co-workers at the University of Science and Technology of China demonstrated five-photon entangled states, an important step on the road to the development of quantum communication. Other experimenters were considering the transfer of quantum information via the interaction of matter and light. Physicist Boris Blinov and colleagues in the department of physics at the University of Michigan succeeded in observing entanglement between a trapped ion and an optical photon.
On the other hand, Irinel Chiorescu and colleagues at Delft (Neth.) University of Technology coupled a two-state system—made up of three in-line Josephson junctions—to a superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) on the same semiconductor segment. The SQUID served as a detector for the quantum states, and entangled states could be generated and controlled. The experiment pointed the way to the possible use of solid-state quantum devices for controlling and manipulating quantum information. Such experiments were made possible by advances in a number of fields, from precision laser spectroscopy to techniques involving ultralow temperature and ultrahigh vacuum. In the midst of this experimental ferment, it was not yet clear which path might eventually lead to the building of large-scale quantum computers, overcoming the inherent restrictions of electronic devices.
Experimental techniques in microscopy reached a level of sophistication that made it possible to study the spin of a single electron a short distance below the surface of a solid. Dan Rugar and co-workers at the IBM Almaden Research Center, San Jose, Calif., combined the techniques of magnetic resonance imaging and atomic force microscopy to create a technique called magnetic resonance force microscopy (MRFM). They mounted a micromagnetic probe on a tiny cantilever a short distance above the surface of the material being studied. The probe generated a magnetic-field gradient so large that the interaction between the probe's magnetic field and that of a single electron produced a measurable mechanical force on the probe. The new technique not only dramatically increased the resolution of magnetic resonance imaging but also held promise for helping make use of atomic spin for qubits in information storage.
Anton Zeilinger and co-workers at the Institute for Experimental Phases of the University of Vienna carried out an experiment concerning the transition between the quantum and classical realms of physics. It demonstrated the fallacy of the common tendency to separate qualitatively the quantum behaviour of extremely small particles, such as electrons, from the classical behaviour of everyday objects, such as billiard balls. Using relatively large cagelike carbon C70 molecules, Zeilinger's group observed a smooth transition between quantum and classical behaviour. They heated the molecules and sent them through a series of gratings onto a detector, in a rerun of the seminal two-slit experiment that showed the quantum nature of fundamental particles such as electrons. At low temperatures the molecules formed an interference pattern at the detector—a manifestation of quantum behaviour. As the temperature of the molecules was increased, however, there was a swift but smooth transition to behaviour like that of classical objects.
This experiment demonstrated that the division between the quantum and classical realms is not a function of the size of the particle but most likely a function of the interaction of the particle with the outside world (in this case the emission of radiation by the heated molecules).
For information on Eclipses, Equinoxes and Solstices, and Earth Perihelion and Aphelion in 2005, see Table.
|Jan. 2
|Perihelion, approx. 01:001
|July 5
|Aphelion, approx. 05:001
|March 20
|Vernal equinox, 12:331
|June 21
|Summer solstice, 06:461
|Sept. 22
|Autumnal equinox, 22:231
|Dec. 21
|Winter solstice, 18:351
|April 8
|Sun, annular-total (begins 17:511), visible along a path beginning southeast of New Zealand; extending through the southern Pacific Ocean, the eastern Pacific Ocean, Panama; ending in northern South America; with a partial phase visible in New Zealand, most of the southern Pacific Ocean, southern North America, and most of South America (except the eastern and southern parts).
|April 24
|Moon, penumbral (begins 7:501), the beginning visible in North America, South America, most of Antarctica, most of the Pacific Ocean (except the western part), eastern Australia; the end visible in western North America, most of Antarctica, the Pacific Ocean, western Asia, Australia, the southeastern Indian Ocean.
|Oct. 3
|Sun, annular (begins 7:351), visible along a path beginning in the northern Atlantic Ocean; extending through Spain, northern Africa, eastern Africa; ending in the Indian Ocean; with a partial phase visible in most of the northern Atlantic Ocean, Europe, Africa, southwestern Asia, southern Asia, and most of the Indian Ocean.
|Oct. 17
|Moon, partial umbral (begins 11:341), visible in most of North America (except the eastern part), the Pacific Ocean, Australia, most of Asia (except the western part).
|1Universal time. Source: The Astronomical Almanac for the Year 2005 (2004).
Two NASA spacecraft, the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity, touched down on the red planet in early 2004. Spirit landed in a crater called Gusev, which in area was about the size of the state of Connecticut. Opportunity landed on the opposite side of the planet, in a crater on the Martian equatorial plain called the Meridiani Planum. The mission of each rover was to study the chemical and physical composition of the surface at various locations in order to help determine whether water had ever existed on the planet and to search for other signs that the planet might have supported some form of life. Using an alpha-particle spectrometer, Spirit revealed that the chemical composition of the soil in the area where it had landed was similar to that found previously by Mars landers at other sites. This finding suggested that winds on Mars widely dispersed the dusty material found on its surface. Opportunity uncovered evidence that the rocks in the crater where it landed had been deposited in salty water at least 5 cm (2 in) deep that had been flowing at 10–50 cm per second.
On June 30, following a seven-year, 3.5-billion-km (2.2-billion-mi) journey, the Cassini spacecraft arrived at Saturn, and it became the first spacecraft to enter into orbit around the planet. Cassini's mission, slated to last four years, was to study not only the planet but also its elaborate ring system and its moons. It carried a probe, called Huygens, that was scheduled to be released December 25 and land on Saturn's giant moon Titan three weeks later. The first images of the ring system obtained by Cassini in orbit around Saturn were more detailed than any that had been obtained by previous spacecraft. Among the features they showed were wave patterns thought to be caused by the gravitation of Saturn's moons. The rings appeared to be composed primarily of water ice mixed with dust that was similar in composition to the material detected on the moon Phoebe. While making its one close approach to Phoebe, Cassini revealed that the surface of the moon was heavily cratered. The cratering supported the idea that some of Saturn's smaller moons might have been formed from material that was ejected from Phoebe in a collision with a passing comet or asteroid. As Cassini passed within 339,000 km (211,000 mi) of Titan, onboard infrared detectors provided detailed images of its methane clouds. The appearance of the clouds was seen to change significantly over a period of only a few hours.
On March 15 Michael E. Brown of the California Institute of Technology and collaborators Chad Trujillo of the Gemini Observatory, on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, and David Rabinowitz of Yale University announced the discovery of the most distant object of the solar system that had ever been observed, at a distance of 13 billion km (8.1 billion mi). Its discoverers named the new object Sedna, after the Inuit goddess said to live in a cave at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean. The new object was about three-quarters the size of Pluto and somewhat larger than the planetoid (planetlike object) Quaoar, which was discovered by the same group in 2002. Sedna was found to have a highly elliptical orbit, which took it from 76 times the Earth–Sun distance to about 900 times that distance and back in a period of 10,000 years. Observations of Sedna quickly raised a number of puzzling questions. Astronomers had thought that all objects in the outer solar system would be icy and therefore white or gray in appearance, but Sedna was almost as red as Mars. Its extremely elliptical orbit resembled the orbits of objects thought to exist in the Oort cloud, a distant cloud of icy objects that had been postulated by Dutch astronomer Jan Oort more than a half century before to account for the origin of comets. Sedna, however, was observed at a distance 10 times closer than the predicted inner edge of the Oort cloud. The proposal that Sedna had been kicked toward the inner solar system by the gravitation of a passing star was just one of several ideas that was being explored to account for its orbit.
For many Earth-bound skywatchers, the astronomical event of the year was the transit of Venus on June 8, a rare event in which the planet was seen to pass directly between Earth and the Sun. During the transit Venus was visible for six hours as a small dark disk that crossed the bright disk of the Sun. The previous transit of Venus had occurred on Dec. 6, 1882. The next Venus transit would occur in only eight years, but the one following it would be more than a century later, in 2117. The transits of Venus were once of great importance to astronomers because careful timings of the events permitted the calculation of the distance between Earth and the Sun.
Over the past decade, more than 135 exoplanets (planets outside the solar system) had been detected in orbit around a wide variety of stars. Almost all of the planets had a mass in the range of 100 to 1,000 times that of Earth, and all of them were probably gas giants, such as Jupiter and Saturn. The presence of a planet in orbit around a star had usually been determined by studying variations in the speed of the star as it moved through space. In 2004, for the first time, a group of astronomers, using a network of 10-cm (4-in)-diameter telescopes at the Astrophysical Institute of the Canary Islands, Spain, discovered a Jupiter-sized planet in orbit around a star by detecting a periodic decrease in the brightness of the star as the planet passed in front of it.
Small rocky planets, such as Earth, were believed to have at most a mass about 10 times that of Earth. Exoplanets with a mass in that range had been found, but they were in orbit around millisecond pulsars, an unlikely habitat for life. In 2004 three separate groups announced that they had detected exoplanets with a mass ranging from 14 to 40 times the mass of Earth. These planets, therefore, would likely be icy giant planets, such as Uranus and Neptune. Studies by George Rieke and collaborators from the University of Arizona, using NASA's Spitzer Infrared Space Telescope, in Earth orbit, found that of 266 young stars they had studied, 71 were surrounded by a disk of dusty debris. The observation suggested that there might exist many stars with small rocky planets. Other astronomers using the Spitzer Space Telescope detected a gap in the ring system surrounding the young star CoKu Tau 4, which suggested that there was a Jupiter-like planet in orbit around the star. Finally, a group of astronomers who used the advanced adaptive optics system on the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in Chile might have obtained the first near-infrared image of an exoplanet. The Jupiter-sized object orbited a relatively young nearby brown dwarf star of very low mass, called 2M1207. The various studies of exoplanets gave an indication that exoplanets were ubiquitous, and they gave further impetus for the search for Earth-like exoplanets in the Milky Way Galaxy.
Over the previous six years, a consistent picture of the origin and evolution of the universe had emerged from two kinds of observational evidence. Visible-light observations of Type Ia supernovae—exploding stars that all had roughly the same intrinsic luminosities—indicated that the galaxies in which they were found were moving away from one another at ever-increasing speeds. This observation implied that the rate of expansion of the universe was increasing with time. Detailed independent observations of minute fluctuations in the microwave background radiation left from the Big Bang provided confirmation of the accelerating expansion rate. Taken together, these observations also indicated that only 5% of the universe consisted of normal atomic matter, 70% consisted of dark energy, and roughly 25% consisted of an unknown cool dark matter. In 2004 observations made with three of NASA's Great Observatories—the Hubble Space Telescope, the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, and the Spitzer Infrared Space Telescope—helped confirm and clarify these findings. Using the Chandra Observatory, Andrew Fabian and collaborators from the University of Cambridge made detailed observations of distant clusters of galaxies that were 1 billion–8 billion light-years from Earth. The hot gases that filled the space between the member galaxies of the cluster emitted a prodigious amount of X-rays. By analyzing the X-ray spectra of 26 such clusters, the team concluded that they contained dark energy and matter in agreement with the earlier—and completely independent—studies.
On March 9 NASA reported the first results from a study of an image obtained from the Hubble Space Telescope that showed objects in the universe more distant than had been seen before. The image required a total exposure of one million seconds (11.6 days) and was made by using both the Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys and the Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer. Called the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, the image contained an estimated 10,000 galaxies that lay in a small patch of the sky that extended only one-tenth the angular diameter of the moon. The galaxies were estimated to have been formed only 400 million–800 million years after the Big Bang. The infrared, visible, microwave, and X-ray observations indicated that the age of the universe was about 13.7 billion years, give or take some 200 million years.
For Launches in Support of Human Space Flight in 2004, see Table.
|Soyuz TMA-4 (up)
|Gennady Padalka Mike Fincke André Kuipers
|April 19
|transport of replacement crew to ISS
|Soyuz TMA-3 (down)
|Aleksandr Kaleri Michael Foale André Kuipers
|April 30
|return of departing ISS crew to Earth
|Mike Melvill
|June 21
|Ansari X Prize demonstration flight
|Mike Melvill
|September 29
|first Ansari X Prize flight
|Brian Binnie
|October 4
|second Ansari X Prize flight
|Soyuz TMA-5 (up)
|Salizhan Sharipov Leroy Chiao Yury Shargin
|October 13
|transport of replacement crew to ISS
|Soyuz TMA-4 (down)
|Gennady Padalka Mike Fincke Yury Shargin
|October 24
|return of departing ISS crew to Earth
|1For Soyuz flights, commander is listed first. 2Soyuz launch or return date for ISS missions.
NASA/JPL/University of ColoradoThe era of privately funded human space travel arrived in 2004 with successful suborbital flights to the edge of space to claim the $10 million Ansari X Prize. Earlier in the year, the United States had announced plans to return humans to the Moon, to press onward to Mars in the coming decades, and to retire the aging space shuttle and withdraw from most activities aboard the International Space Station (ISS) once the station had been completed.
SpaceShipOne (SS1) captured headlines as it claimed the Ansari X Prize. The prize, founded by American space visionary Peter Diamandis, was modeled after the Orteig Prize, which helped spur Charles Lindbergh's nonstop solo transatlantic flight in 1927. The purpose of the Ansari X Prize was to open human space flight to commercial ventures for travel, tourism, and commerce. To win, a spacecraft had to carry at least one person (but be capable of flying three) to the edge of space (an altitude of 100 km [62 mi]), return safely to Earth, and then repeat the trip within two weeks.
Several groups lined up to compete for the prize, but early on, the Mojave Aerospace Ventures team, led by the American aviation pioneer Burt Rutan (builder of the world-circling Voyager aircraft) and backed by American Microsoft billionaire Paul Allen, was the odds-on favourite. Rutan designed SS1, based in Mojave, Calif., as a lightweight three-person craft to be carried by an aircraft called White Knight to an altitude of 14 km (8.7 mi) and then released so that it could be pushed into space by its own hybrid rocket. After two earlier supersonic flights, SS1 became the first private spacecraft when it flew 124 m (407 ft) beyond the 100-km boundary on June 21 in a demonstration flight. Although minor difficulties were encountered, the flight proved the basic design of the spacecraft. The attempt for the Ansari X Prize by SS1 began on September 29 with a flight to 103 km (64 mi), and it was completed on October 4 with a flight to 112 km (69.6 mi). For 2006 a second competition, the X Prize Cup, was planned with the goal of decreasing turnaround time and increasing the altitude and number of passengers. British entrepeneur Sir Richard Branson, owner of Virgin Atlantic airlines, teamed with Rutan to form Virgin Galactic and plan space tourism with a five-passenger version of SS1. Real-estate magnate Robert T. Bigelow took the wraps off plans to build inflatable space stations and offered a $50 million America's Space Prize for establishing a reliable manned orbital transport service. Legislation to regulate the new space-tourism industry was introduced in the U.S. Congress but stalled over discussions concerning crew and passenger safety requirements that would have had the effect of stifling the new business.
Efforts by NASA to resume space shuttle flights continued slowly, and the date for the next mission slipped to mid-2005. The immediate cause of the 2003 Columbia accident was the detachment of foam insulation from a support on the external tank; the foam then smashed through critically important heat- shield tiles on the leading edge of the left wing. To prevent a repetition of the accident, NASA replaced the insulation with electrical heaters at the point where the detachment occurred on the Columbia. Preparations for resuming space shuttle flights were slowed after the Kennedy Space Center was damaged by three hurricanes in August and September.
In the aftermath of the loss of Columbia, NASA restricted future shuttle missions, including those supporting the ISS. It also canceled service missions to the Hubble Space Telescope, which prompted an outcry by the international astronomy community. NASA relented and in June announced plans to develop a robotic spacecraft that would be able to service the telescope, including the installation of new cameras and replacement gyroscopes. The robot would use a Canadian-made Special Purpose Dexterous Manipulator, a remotely controlled arm that was originally developed for the ISS. A service mission scheduled for 2007 would keep the Hubble operating until the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope, planned for 2011. Meanwhile, the ISS crew was reduced to two persons, the number for which the Russian Soyuz-TMA and Progress-M spacecraft could carry supplies. The next Chinese manned space flight, Shenzhou 6, was expected in 2005.
Scrutiny of Mars intensified with the successful landings of two U.S.-built surface rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, on January 3 and January 25, respectively. Within a few days of landing, each rover had begun exploring the Martian surface. Each was designed for a nominal 90-day mission but functioned so well that operations were extended several times. As 2004 neared a close, NASA planned to continue operating the two landers until they failed to respond to commands from Earth. By October, Spirit had traveled more than 3.6 km (2.2 mi) and Opportunity more than 1.6 km (1 mi). Through January, the European Space Agency (ESA) tried in vain to establish contact with its Beagle 2 lander, sent to the surface on Dec. 25, 2003, from the Mars Express orbiter. An investigation into the loss of the lander revealed a number of management shortfalls that might have led to its failure. Meanwhile, the orbiter started returning a series of striking images of the Martian surface after settling into orbit on January 28. Data from onboard instruments indicated the presence of trace quantities of methane over an area containing water ice. This finding was taken as a possible sign of microbial life on Mars. (See Special Report.) Japan's attempt to put its Nozomi ("Hope") Mars probe into orbit on Dec. 9, 2003, failed, and the craft ended up in an orbit around the Sun.
ESA launched its first lunar probe, Small Missions for Advanced Research and Technology (SMART)-1, on Sept. 27, 2003. The 370-kg (82-lb) probe had a xenon-ion engine that generated only 7 g (0.2 oz) of thrust, but it was sufficient to nudge SMART-1 from its first stop (the L1 libration point between Earth and Sun) into lunar orbit, planned around November 15. Once there, SMART-1 was to scan the Moon for signs of water in polar craters and to map terrain and minerals.
Saturn received its first permanent visitor from Earth—the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft—on June 30, after a nearly seven-year journey. The Cassini orbiter, developed by the United States, would spend four years studying Saturn and its moons. During this time it was scheduled to make numerous flybys of the moons, including a series of 44 flybys of Titan. The orbiter's Huygens probe, developed by ESA to study Titan, was released December 25 and was to parachute through Titan's methane atmosphere for a landing on its surface on Jan. 14, 2005—the first attempted landing on any celestial body beyond Mars. Huygens was expected to provide data on the atmospheric structure of Titan and could possibly return some images from the surface.
The first attempt since the early 1970s to bring to Earth materials collected from outer space ended as a near-total failure when the Genesis spacecraft crashed into the Utah desert on September 8. The spacecraft had been launched on Aug. 8, 2001, and spent 884 days orbiting the Sun with ultrapure sample plates exposed to collect a few micrograms (less than a millionth of an ounce) of the particles that make up the solar wind. The intent was to determine directly the composition of the Sun in order to provide more certain results than those obtained by means of spectral data from telescopic observations. Genesis was to have been recovered by helicopter as it parachuted to Earth. The parachutes did not deploy, apparently because, as investigations later suggested, drawings for the craft's gravity sensors were reversed. Despite damage to the sample capsule, the Genesis science team said it could salvage some specimens.
ESA launched its Rosetta craft on a 10-year mission to obtain sample materials from Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The expectation was that, like the Rosetta Stone, the craft would help decode ancient history—in this case, the history of the solar system. The 654-million-km (406-million-mi) cruise was to involve three gravity-assisted flybys of Earth and one of Mars before arriving at the comet in 2014. Rosetta would then deploy a 100-kg (220-lb) probe, Philae, that would use two harpoons to anchor itself to the surface of the comet. Data would be collected by an alpha-particle spectrometer and a set of six panoramic cameras, and a drill would be used to extract samples for chemical analysis. Messenger, the second-ever mission to Mercury, was launched by the U.S. on August 3. (The first mission, in 1974–75, was a flyby of Mercury by Mariner 10.) To alter the trajectory of Messenger in preparation for insertion in orbit around Mercury in 2011, the spacecraft was to fly past Earth once, Venus twice, and Mercury three times.
Gravity Probe B (GP-B) was launched April 20 into polar orbit. It carried four gyroscopes of ultraprecision 4-cm (1.6-in) polished quartz spheres spinning in liquid helium. Measurements during its one-year mission were to test Einstein's general theory of relativity. Specifically, they would prove or disprove the frame dragging effect—a very subtle phenomenon in which the rotation of a body (in this case, Earth) slowly drags the space-time continuum with it.
China launched two space-physics satellites into Earth orbit: Double Star 1, launched into an equatorial orbit on Dec. 29, 2003, and Double Star 2, launched into polar orbit on July 25, 2004. The two satellites carried identical instruments made by Chinese and European scientists to measure the density, speed, mass, and electrical charge of plasmas and neutral gases in space. Aura, the latest in the NASA series of Earth observation satellites, was launched July 15 into polar orbit. Aura carried instruments to measure the chemical makeup and activity in Earth's stratosphere and troposphere, including concentration levels of ozone and of gases that destroy ozone. Swift, a satellite designed to swing into the proper orientation to catch the first few seconds of gamma-ray bursts, was launched on November 20.
The privately funded SpaceX Falcon launch vehicle moved closer to operational status with the placement of the first flight unit on the launch pad at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, for a launch planned in 2005. The Falcon was to be able to place into orbit a 680-kg (1,500-lb) payload for about $6 million, saving half the cost of using other launch vehicles, in part by using a recoverable first stage. SpaceX planned to develop a larger Falcon V vehicle to compete with the Delta family of launchers. The Delta IV heavy-lift launch vehicle was launched for the first time on December 21. It had a 4.6-m (15-ft) core rocket and two identical boosters, each powered by RS-68 liquid hydrogen engines derived from the space shuttle main engine. The last Atlas 2 rocket was launched on August 31. Atlas started as an intercontinental ballistic missile and, like other missiles, was drafted into use as a space launcher in the 1950s. The Atlas 2 rocket retained the missile's basic design.
Launch Vehicles
The privately funded SpaceX Falcon launch vehicle moved closer to operational status with the placement of the first flight unit on the launch pad at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, for a launch planned in 2005. The Falcon was to be able to place into orbit a 680-kg (1,500-lb) payload for about $6 million, saving half the cost of using other launch vehicles, in part by using a recoverable first stage. SpaceX planned to develop a larger Falcon V vehicle to compete with the Delta family of launchers.
The Delta IV heavy-lift launch vehicle was launched for the first time on December 21. It had a 4.6-m (15-ft) core rocket and two identical boosters, each powered by RS-68 liquid hydrogen engines derived from the space shuttle main engine. The last Atlas 2 rocket was launched on August 31. Atlas started as an intercontinental ballistic missile and, like other missiles, was drafted into use as a space launcher in the 1950s. The Atlas 2 rocket retained the missile's basic design.


text:
Canadiens' Lars Eller taken off on stretcher
Updated: May 3, 2013, 1:09 AM ETAssociated Press
MONTREAL -- The Montreal Canadiens are down a game and a key player early in their series with the Ottawa Senators.
Center Lars Eller suffered a concussion and facial fractures after taking a big hit from Ottawa defenseman Eric Gryba in the second period of the Senators' 4-2 victory in Game 1 of their playoff series Thursday night.
Eller, who was taken off on a stretcher with a pool of blood on the ice, was spending the night in a hospital, the team said.
The hit came as Eller ...
Read full story
You must be signed in to post a comment
You are fully responsible for the content you post. Content that includes profanity, personal attacks or antisocial behavior (such as "spamming" or "trolling"), or other inappropriate content or material will be removed. We reserve the right to block any user who violates our terms of use, including removing all content posted by that user.


text:
Oil Swaps to Emerge From Shadows With Dodd-Frank: One Year Later
July 20 (Bloomberg) -- As the chief operations officer of Midstates Petroleum Company LLC, Ric Mayers keeps one of his two computer screens locked on the price of crude oil.
As he watches futures rise and fall, he decides when the Vernon, Ala.-based firm should load up or pull back on oil and gasoline supplies and when to hedge its bets with oil derivatives. The price swings can translate into 10-cent hikes at the gas pump one day followed by 15-cent declines the next.
"It's really out of control," Mayers, 27, said in an interview. "You don't understand why it would be."
The trade in oil derivatives has long been one of the world's most opaque markets, with buyers and sellers of swaps, futures and forwards often not understanding who else was buying what, how much and at what prices.
The Dodd-Frank Act, the overhaul of financial regulation enacted a year ago, aims for the first time to bring transparency to oil derivatives as part of new rules for the $601 trillion global swaps market. The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission and Securities and Exchange Commission are writing new regulations designed to limit risk and boost transparency after the largely unregulated trading in derivatives helped fuel the 2008 credit crisis.
The law gives the CFTC authority to regulate all types of oil-derivatives contracts. On July 7, the agency finalized a rule to require swap data reporting on 46 physical commodities, including crude oil. The data would lead to the first comprehensive survey of the size and complexity of the market for both cleared and non-cleared swaps, according to the agency.
'Police Reports'
"The police have to have the authority to check out the whole marketplace and they should be filing police reports regularly so the rest of us know what's going wrong," John Parsons, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said in an interview.
During the last three decades, oil derivatives grew into a multitrillion-dollar business cleaved into separate and unequal markets with traders such as JPMorgan Chase & Co. and ConocoPhillips straddling both.
On one side, futures contracts tied to West Texas Intermediate and Brent crude have traded in New York and London with listed prices, clearinghouses to reduce risk and CFTC regulation. On the other side, unregulated over-the-counter swaps ballooned, trading off-exchange directly between buyers and sellers and sometimes outside clearinghouses.
Different Types
Companies trade different types of oil derivatives in different markets. Oil and gas companies execute 33 percent of their transactions with exchange-traded derivatives, while airlines conduct only one percent of their trades on exchanges, according to a June report by Greenwich Associates based on a survey of 309 corporations.
For example, Chevron and ConocoPhillips, the second- and third-biggest U.S. energy companies by market capitalization, trade futures, options and swaps, according to annual reports filed with the SEC. Chevron trades derivatives on the New York Mercantile Exchange, IntercontinentalExchange and directly with financial institutions and other oil and gas companies in private contracts, according to its annual report.
Meanwhile, the majority of Southwest Airlines Inc.'s more than 600 financial derivatives contracts to hedge fuel prices between 2011 and 2014 are traded with third-parties in the over-the-counter market, the airline said in its 2010 annual report.
Lloyd Avram, a Chevron spokesman, and Romelia Hinojosa, spokeswoman for ConocoPhillips, and Laurel Moffat, a spokeswoman for Southwest Airlines, declined requests for interviews about the use of derivatives.
$5.5 Billion
The five biggest U.S. bank derivatives dealers also trade a mix of commodity contracts. JPMorgan, Citigroup Inc., Bank of America Corp., Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley trade futures, forwards, exchange-traded and over-the-counter options and swaps to hedge or speculate in commodities markets, according to quarterly financial statements filed by the bank holding companies with the Federal Reserve.
U.S. bank holding companies recorded $5.5 billion in revenue in 2010 on trading of commodity derivatives, according to a report by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.
Now the CFTC is taking steps to bring transparency across the range of markets for derivatives. "Size is really hard to estimate," Talib Dhanji, a partner at Ernst & Young, said in an interview. "Nobody has actually put it together."
Data Declined
In the past, getting such data has been difficult at best. A task force on commodity markets organized by the International Organization of Securities Commissions in 2010 sought disaggregated data on oil swaps to "enable market participants to make better informed, more rational decisions." Such data "would likely benefit the whole financial system," the task force concluded in a report.
The Bank for International Settlements, the Basel-based organization that estimates the size of the over-the-counter derivatives market, declined the request to publish the oil data, according to the task force report.
The data that will now be collected by the CFTC may lead to reports similar to ones the agency has put out on the futures market since 1962, and weekly since 2000. While Dodd-Frank requires the agency to publish data on the swaps market at least every six months, CFTC Chairman Gary Gensler indicated a weekly timetable is possible.
"The market would very much benefit if we could strive towards similar periodic reporting of aggregate data," Gensler said on July 7.
Position Limits
That data will also help the CFTC determine whether and how to limit speculation in oil and other commodities markets. A so-called position limits proposal, issued in January, has been among the most contentious Dodd-Frank rules at the CFTC and spurred more than 13,000 public comments from supporters such as Delta Air Lines Inc. and opponents such as Barclays Capital.
Limits on single months and all-months-combined positions for futures and swaps should be postponed, Brent Harris, managing director at Pacific Investment Management Co., said in a March letter to the CFTC.
"As a practical matter, the CFTC does not have any meaningful data on the size of the commodity swap market, and it would be premature to impose a position limit regime without fully understanding these markets," Harris wrote.
At Midstates Petroleum, Mayers joined in a petroleum marketers' letter-writing campaign to encourage the CFTC to adopt the limits.
"Massive positions held by speculators have contributed to price volatility that is simply unrelated to supply and demand fundamentals," Mayers said in a March letter.
To contact the reporter on this story: Silla Brush in Washington at email@example.com.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Lawrence Roberts at firstname.lastname@example.com


text:
Bloomfield Car DealerChange City
Bloomfield Car Dealer
Browse the comprehensive database of Bloomfield car dealers online at Autobytel.com. See your potential new or used car by make, cost, or classification. Autobytel.com has a large list of Bloomfield car dealerships and their accompanying stock of new and used vehicles. We will help with your automobile shopping experience every step of the way. View up-to-date values of automobiles, study vehicle stats, browse photos, research extensive analysis of the cars, and find prices pertaining to the Bloomfield car dealership.
There is no reason to bounce around to multiple Bloomfield car dealerships anymore. Thanks to the world wide web; Bloomfield car dealers have the choice of having all of their stock of vehicles listed at various places like Autobytel.com. There is an increasingly greater number of shoppers that use the web to explore all the vehicle choices available on the market today. When a shopper has decided on an automobile; they browse through the line-up of nearby Bloomfield car dealers. It will not be long till they come to an authorative car site like Autobytel.com. Get a price quote from multiple Bloomfield car dealers online at our website.
Having one Bloomfield car dealership that you can trust is a big deal. Do not presume that the only trip you will make to the Bloomfield car dealer is to close the deal on a new or used car. Most Bloomfield car dealers have automotive friendly services that will warrant your return to the lot some day. Established Bloomfield car dealerships not only specialize in vehicle sales; they have a myriad of other services to offer such as: car repair, parts sales, and auto leasing, just to name a few. The possibility is very high that you will again go back to the Bloomfield car dealer establishment if you ever need anything for your vehicle. Entering into a partnership with the Bloomfield car dealership of your choice can be a major benefit to all parties involved.
Browse the Bloomfield car dealerships catalogue at Autobytel.com to get information and an assessment on a perspective dealer. See what previous customers of Bloomfield car dealers had to say about their experiences. This could be an effective tool at narrowing down which Bloomfield car dealerships can most closely fit your new or used car buying needs.