DEAL ON THE TABLE: President Barack Obama is proposing to cut corporate tax rates in exchange for more spending on jobs programs. His offer was immediately panned by congressional Republicans, who said it could hurt small businesses that file taxes as individuals.
TRADE-OFF: The president's offer drops the previous demand that business tax reform be coupled with an individual tax overhaul. It calls for lowering the corporate rate from 35 percent to 28 percent. Obama wants the changes combined with significant spending on a job creation program, such as manufacturing, infrastructure or community colleges ? but didn't put a price tag on the proposals.
OBJECTIONS: Congressional Republicans want to tie corporate and individual tax reform so that small businesses that use the individual tax code would see cuts like large corporations. But they oppose using any revenue generated from corporate tax structure changes for spending programs.
I probably shouldn?t laugh, because this is something that I can totally see happening to me. SMH. ?Cowboys safety?Barry Church will no longer choose Jolly Ranchers as his choice of sweets. ?Why? ?Because it caused to miss practice ? because of a jolly rancher injury. Whaaat? ?Yea. ?I?m sure his teammate are going to have all kinds of jokes for him. ?Details after the jump?
GameTimeGirl
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Via SN:
Barry Church is finished with Jolly Ranchers. The candy-loving Dallas Cowboys safety missed a day of training camp because of a cherry-flavored one.
Church chipped a tooth on a piece of the hard candy about a week before reporting to camp. He felt pain off and on, but says it was unbearable when he woke up Monday morning.
The fourth-year pro missed a walkthrough and a full practice to get a root canal, but returned Tuesday.
Church says he ?caught a couple of zingers? from coaches and teammates and isn?t happy that he has to stay away from candy for a while.
Once he can eat candy again, Church says he?ll ?stick to the soft stuff.?
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel pauses during a news conference at the Pentagon, Wednesday, July 31, 2013. Hagel is warned that the Pentagon may have to mothball up to three Navy aircraft carriers and order more sharp reductions in the size of the Army and Marine Corps if Congress does not act to avoid massive budget cuts beginning in 2014. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel pauses during a news conference at the Pentagon, Wednesday, July 31, 2013. Hagel is warned that the Pentagon may have to mothball up to three Navy aircraft carriers and order more sharp reductions in the size of the Army and Marine Corps if Congress does not act to avoid massive budget cuts beginning in 2014. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, accompanied by Joint Chiefs Vice Chairman Adm. James Winnefeld, speaks during a news conference at the Pentagon, Wednesday, July 31, 2013. Hagel warned that the Pentagon may have to mothball up to three Navy aircraft carriers and order more sharp reductions in the size of the Army and Marine Corps if Congress does not act to avoid massive budget cuts beginning in 2014. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel speaks during a news conference at the Pentagon, Wednesday, July 31, 2013. Hagel warned that the Pentagon may have to mothball up to three Navy aircraft carriers and order more sharp reductions in the size of the Army and Marine Corps if Congress does not act to avoid massive budget cuts beginning in 2014. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
WASHINGTON (AP) ? Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel warned Wednesday that the Pentagon may have to mothball up to three Navy aircraft carriers and order additional sharp reductions in the size of the Army and Marine Corps if Congress doesn't act to avoid massive budget cuts beginning in 2014.
Speaking to Pentagon reporters, and indirectly to Congress, Hagel said that the full result of the sweeping budget cuts over the next 10 years could leave the nation with an ill-prepared, under-equipped military doomed to face more technologically advanced enemies.
In his starkest terms to date, Hagel laid out a worst-case scenario for the U.S. military if the Pentagon is forced to slash more than $50 billion from the 2014 budget and $500 billion over the next 10 years as a result of Congressionally-mandated automatic spending cuts.
The Pentagon has been ratcheting up a persistent drumbeat about the dire effects of the budget cuts on national defense, and as Congress continues to wrangle over spending bills on Capitol Hill.
Going from 11 to eight or nine carrier strike groups would bring the Navy to its lowest number since World War II. And the troop cuts would shear the Army back to levels not seen since at least 1950, eroding the military's ability to keep forces deployed and combat ready overseas.
Detailing options, Hagel said America may have to choose between having a highly capable but significantly smaller military and having a larger force while reducing special operations forces, limiting research and cutting or curtailing plans to upgrade weapons systems.
That second option, he said, would likely result in the U.S. military using older, less effective equipment against more technologically advanced adversaries. And it would have a greater impact on private defense companies around the country.
The U.S., said Hagel, risks fielding a military force that in the next few years would be unprepared due to a lack of training, maintenance and upgraded equipment.
And, even if the Pentagon chooses the most dramatic cuts, Hagel said it would still "fall well short" of meeting the reductions required by the automatic budget cuts, particularly during the first five years.
While noting that no final decisions have been made, Hagel laid out a few specific ideas under consideration.
He said that to achieve the savings by shrinking the force, the Pentagon might have to cut more than 100,000 additional soldiers from the Army ? which is already planning to go from a wartime high of about 570,000 to 490,000 by 2017. And the current plan to reduce the size of the Marine Corp to 182,000 from a high of about 205,000 could also be changed ? cutting it to as few as 150,000 Marines.
He added that the Air Force could lose as many as five combat air squadrons as well as a number of other bomber and cargo aircraft.
"This strategic choice would result in a force that would be technologically dominant, but would be much smaller and able to go fewer places and do fewer things, especially if crises occurred at the same time in different regions of the world," said Hagel.
Another option, he said, would be to make fewer cuts in the size of the force, and instead cancel or curtail many modernization programs.
In addition he said that the Pentagon is taking a close look at cuts to health care benefits, military housing allowances, cost-of-living adjustments and civilian pay raises.
Hagel repeated his plans ? announced two weeks ago ? to cut top Pentagon and military staff and spending by 20 percent. The savings, which will apply to his office, that of the Joint Chief's chairman and also the Pentagon headquarters offices of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps., could total between $1.5 billion and $2 billion over the next five years and will target personnel, including civilians and contractors.
The details Hagel described Wednesday are the result of a lengthy review by top Pentagon and military leaders that looked at the impact of budget cuts on the department and developed a series of options to deal with them.
The budget cuts stem from a law enacted two years ago that ordered the government to come up with $1.2 trillion in savings over a decade. The law included the threat of annual automatic cuts as a way of forcing lawmakers to reach a deal, but they have been unable to do so.
As a result, come January, the Pentagon faces a cut of $54 billion from current spending if Congress fails to reverse the automatic cuts, according to calculations by Capitol Hill budget aides. The base budget must be trimmed to $498 billion, with cuts of about 4 percent hitting already reduced spending on defense, nuclear weapons and military construction.
Congress has shown little inclination to undo the so-called sequester cuts, though talks between the White House and a handful of Senate Republicans have intensified in recent weeks.
Some lawmakers and staff aides say the new, deeper reductions in the Pentagon's budget to could be the jolt that prompts lawmakers to step back from the automatic cuts.
UT Austin researchers successfully spoof an $80 million yacht at seaPublic release date: 31-Jul-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Sandra Zaragoza zaragoza@utexas.edu 512-471-2129 University of Texas at Austin
AUSTIN, Texas This summer, a radio navigation research team from The University of Texas at Austin set out to discover whether they could subtly coerce a 213-foot yacht off its course, using a custom-made GPS device.
Led by assistant professor Todd Humphreys of the Department of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics at the Cockrell School of Engineering, the team was able to successfully spoof an $80 million private yacht using the world's first openly acknowledged GPS spoofing device. Spoofing is a technique that creates false civil GPS signals to gain control of a vessel's GPS receivers. The purpose of the experiment was to measure the difficulty of carrying out a spoofing attack at sea and to determine how easily sensors in the ship's command room could identify the threat.
The researchers hope their demonstration will shed light on the perils of navigation attacks, serving as evidence that spoofing is a serious threat to marine vessels and other forms of transportation. Last year, Humphreys and a group of students led the first public capture of a GPS-guided unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), or drone, using a GPS device created by Humphreys and his students.
"With 90 percent of the world's freight moving across the seas and a great deal of the world's human transportation going across the skies, we have to gain a better understanding of the broader implications of GPS spoofing," Humphreys said. "I didn't know, until we performed this experiment, just how possible it is to spoof a marine vessel and how difficult it is to detect this attack."
In June, the team was invited aboard the yacht, called the White Rose of Drachs, while it traveled from Monaco to Rhodes, Greece, on the Mediterranean Sea. The experiment took place about 30 miles off the coast of Italy as the yacht sailed in international waters.
From the White Rose's upper deck, graduate students Jahshan Bhatti and Ken Pesyna broadcasted a faint ensemble of civil GPS signals from their spoofing device a blue box about the size of a briefcase toward the ship's two GPS antennas. The team's counterfeit signals slowly overpowered the authentic GPS signals until they ultimately obtained control of the ship's navigation system.
Unlike GPS signal blocking or jamming, spoofing triggers no alarms on the ship's navigation equipment. To the ship's GPS devices, the team's false signals were indistinguishable from authentic signals, allowing the spoofing attack to happen covertly.
Once control of the ship's navigation system was gained, the team's strategy was to coerce the ship onto a new course using subtle maneuvers that positioned the yacht a few degrees off its original course. Once a location discrepancy was reported by the ship's navigation system, the crew initiated a course correction. In reality, each course correction was setting the ship slightly off its course line. Inside the yacht's command room, an electronic chart showed its progress along a fixed line, but in its wake there was a pronounced curve showing that the ship had turned.
"The ship actually turned and we could all feel it, but the chart display and the crew saw only a straight line," Humphreys said.
After several such maneuvers, the yacht had been tricked onto a parallel track hundreds of meters from its intended one the team had successfully spoofed the ship.
The experiment helps illustrate the wide gap between the capabilities of spoofing devices and what the transportation industry's technology can detect, Humphreys said.
Chandra Bhat, director of the Center for Transportation Research at The University of Texas at Austin, believes that the experiment highlights the vulnerability of the transportation sector to such attacks.
"The surprising ease with which Todd and his team were able to control a (multimillion) dollar yacht is evidence that we must invest much more in securing our transportation systems against potential spoofing," Bhat said.
It's important for the public and policymakers to understand that spoofing poses a threat that has far-reaching implications for transportation, Humphreys said.
"This experiment is applicable to other semi-autonomous vehicles, such as aircraft, which are now operated, in part, by autopilot systems," Humphreys said. "We've got to put on our thinking caps and see what we can do to solve this threat quickly."
###
As part of an ongoing research project, funding and travel expenses for this experiment was supported by UT Austin's Wireless Networking and Communications Group through the WNCG's Industrial Affiliates program.
YouTube: Watch an animation of the spoofing attack, titled "Spoofing on the High Seas." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctw9ECgJ8L0
YouTube Video (includes footage from yacht): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbWpFMXADAY
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
UT Austin researchers successfully spoof an $80 million yacht at seaPublic release date: 31-Jul-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Sandra Zaragoza zaragoza@utexas.edu 512-471-2129 University of Texas at Austin
AUSTIN, Texas This summer, a radio navigation research team from The University of Texas at Austin set out to discover whether they could subtly coerce a 213-foot yacht off its course, using a custom-made GPS device.
Led by assistant professor Todd Humphreys of the Department of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics at the Cockrell School of Engineering, the team was able to successfully spoof an $80 million private yacht using the world's first openly acknowledged GPS spoofing device. Spoofing is a technique that creates false civil GPS signals to gain control of a vessel's GPS receivers. The purpose of the experiment was to measure the difficulty of carrying out a spoofing attack at sea and to determine how easily sensors in the ship's command room could identify the threat.
The researchers hope their demonstration will shed light on the perils of navigation attacks, serving as evidence that spoofing is a serious threat to marine vessels and other forms of transportation. Last year, Humphreys and a group of students led the first public capture of a GPS-guided unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), or drone, using a GPS device created by Humphreys and his students.
"With 90 percent of the world's freight moving across the seas and a great deal of the world's human transportation going across the skies, we have to gain a better understanding of the broader implications of GPS spoofing," Humphreys said. "I didn't know, until we performed this experiment, just how possible it is to spoof a marine vessel and how difficult it is to detect this attack."
In June, the team was invited aboard the yacht, called the White Rose of Drachs, while it traveled from Monaco to Rhodes, Greece, on the Mediterranean Sea. The experiment took place about 30 miles off the coast of Italy as the yacht sailed in international waters.
From the White Rose's upper deck, graduate students Jahshan Bhatti and Ken Pesyna broadcasted a faint ensemble of civil GPS signals from their spoofing device a blue box about the size of a briefcase toward the ship's two GPS antennas. The team's counterfeit signals slowly overpowered the authentic GPS signals until they ultimately obtained control of the ship's navigation system.
Unlike GPS signal blocking or jamming, spoofing triggers no alarms on the ship's navigation equipment. To the ship's GPS devices, the team's false signals were indistinguishable from authentic signals, allowing the spoofing attack to happen covertly.
Once control of the ship's navigation system was gained, the team's strategy was to coerce the ship onto a new course using subtle maneuvers that positioned the yacht a few degrees off its original course. Once a location discrepancy was reported by the ship's navigation system, the crew initiated a course correction. In reality, each course correction was setting the ship slightly off its course line. Inside the yacht's command room, an electronic chart showed its progress along a fixed line, but in its wake there was a pronounced curve showing that the ship had turned.
"The ship actually turned and we could all feel it, but the chart display and the crew saw only a straight line," Humphreys said.
After several such maneuvers, the yacht had been tricked onto a parallel track hundreds of meters from its intended one the team had successfully spoofed the ship.
The experiment helps illustrate the wide gap between the capabilities of spoofing devices and what the transportation industry's technology can detect, Humphreys said.
Chandra Bhat, director of the Center for Transportation Research at The University of Texas at Austin, believes that the experiment highlights the vulnerability of the transportation sector to such attacks.
"The surprising ease with which Todd and his team were able to control a (multimillion) dollar yacht is evidence that we must invest much more in securing our transportation systems against potential spoofing," Bhat said.
It's important for the public and policymakers to understand that spoofing poses a threat that has far-reaching implications for transportation, Humphreys said.
"This experiment is applicable to other semi-autonomous vehicles, such as aircraft, which are now operated, in part, by autopilot systems," Humphreys said. "We've got to put on our thinking caps and see what we can do to solve this threat quickly."
###
As part of an ongoing research project, funding and travel expenses for this experiment was supported by UT Austin's Wireless Networking and Communications Group through the WNCG's Industrial Affiliates program.
YouTube: Watch an animation of the spoofing attack, titled "Spoofing on the High Seas." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctw9ECgJ8L0
YouTube Video (includes footage from yacht): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbWpFMXADAY
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
In this July 30, 2013 photo, Army Pfc. Bradley Manning is escorted out of a courthouse in Fort Meade, Md. Few Americans in living memory have emerged from obscurity to become such polarizing public figures _ admired by many around the world, fiercely denigrated by many in his homeland. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)
In this July 30, 2013 photo, Army Pfc. Bradley Manning is escorted out of a courthouse in Fort Meade, Md. Few Americans in living memory have emerged from obscurity to become such polarizing public figures _ admired by many around the world, fiercely denigrated by many in his homeland. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)
Army Pfc. Bradley Manning is escorted out of a courthouse in Fort Meade, Md., Tuesday, July 30, 2013, after receiving a verdict in his court martial. Manning was acquitted of aiding the enemy ? the most serious charge he faced ? but was convicted of espionage, theft and other charges, more than three years after he spilled secrets to WikiLeaks. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)
FILE - In this July 26, 2013 photo, Zach Callahan, right, and supporters of U.S. Army Pfc. Bradley Manning, march outside Fort Lesley J. McNair, in Washington. Few Americans in living memory have emerged from obscurity to become such polarizing public figures _ admired by many around the world, fiercely denigrated by many in his homeland. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta, File)
FILE - In this Jan. 18, 2011 file photo, unidentified Occupy London protesters demonstrate outside the High Court following news that the City of London Corporation has won its legal bid to evict anti-capitalist protesters from outside St Paul's Cathedral, in London. Few Americans in living memory have emerged from obscurity to become such polarizing public figures _ admired by many around the world, fiercely denigrated by many in his homeland. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis, File)
FORT MEADE, Md. (AP) ? It is now up to a military judge to determine if Army Pfc. Bradley Manning will spend the rest of his life in prison even after being acquitted of the most serious charge against him for his release of thousands of documents to the website WikiLeaks.
The sentencing phase of the soldier's court-martial began Wednesday. He faces up to 136 years in prison, though his attorneys have asked the military judge to merge two of his espionage convictions and two of his theft convictions. If Army Col. Denise Lind agrees to do so, he would face up to 116 years in prison.
The former intelligence analyst was convicted of 20 of 22 charges for sending hundreds of thousands of government and diplomatic secrets to WikiLeaks, but he was found not guilty of aiding the enemy, which alone could have meant life in prison without parole.
"We're not celebrating," defense attorney David Coombs said. "Ultimately, his sentence is all that really matters."
Military prosecutors said they would call as many as 20 witnesses for the sentencing phase. The government said as many as half of the prosecution witnesses would testify about classified matters in closed court. They include experts on counterintelligence, strategic planning and terrorism.
The judge prohibited both sides from presenting evidence during trial about any actual damage the leaks caused to national security and troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, but lawyers will be allowed to bring that up at sentencing.
The release of diplomatic cables, warzone logs and videos embarrassed the U.S. and its allies. U.S. officials warned of dire consequences in the days immediately after the first disclosures in July 2010, but a Pentagon review later suggested those fears might have been overblown.
The judge also restricted evidence about Manning's motives. Manning testified during a pre-trial hearing he leaked the material to expose U.S military "bloodlust" and diplomatic deceitfulness, but did not believe his actions would harm the country. He didn't testify during the trial, but he could take the stand during the sentencing phase.
Lisa Windsor, a retired Army colonel and former judge advocate, said the punishment phase would focus on Manning's motive and the harm that was done by the leak.
"You're balancing that to determine what would be an appropriate sentence. I think it's likely that he's going to be in jail for a very long time," said Windsor, now in private practice in Washington.
The judge, Army Col. Denise Lind, deliberated three days before reaching her verdict in a case involving the largest leak of documents in U.S. history. The case drew worldwide attention as supporters hailed Manning as a whistleblower and the U.S. government called him an anarchist computer hacker and attention-seeking traitor.
The verdict denied the government a precedent that freedom of press advocates had warned could have broad implications for leak cases and investigative journalism about national security issues.
Whistleblower advocates and legal experts had mixed opinions on the implications for the future of leak cases in the Internet age.
The advocacy group Reporters Without Borders said the verdict was a chilling warning to whistleblowers, "against whom the Obama administration has been waging an unprecedented offensive," and threatens the future of investigative journalism because intimidated sources might fall quiet.
However, another advocate of less government secrecy, Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists, questioned whether the implications will be so dire, given the extraordinary nature of the Manning case.
"This was a massive hemorrhage of government records, and it's not too surprising that it elicited a strong reaction from the government," Aftergood said.
"Most journalists are not in the business of publishing classified documents, they're in the business of reporting the news, which is not the same thing," he said. "This is not good news for journalism, but it's not the end of the world, either."
Glenn Greenwald, the journalist, commentator and former civil rights lawyer who first reported Edward Snowden's leaks of National Security Agency surveillance programs, said Manning's acquittal on the charge of aiding the enemy represented a "tiny sliver of justice."
But WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, whose website exposed Manning's spilled U.S. secrets to the world, saw nothing to cheer in the mixed verdict.
"It is a dangerous precedent and an example of national security extremism," he told reporters at the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, which is sheltering him. "This has never been a fair trial."
Federal authorities are looking into whether Assange can be prosecuted. He has been holed up in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden on sex-crimes allegations.
The material WikiLeaks began publishing in 2010 documented complaints of abuses against Iraqi detainees, a U.S. tally of civilian deaths in Iraq, and America's weak support for the government of Tunisia ? a disclosure Manning supporters said helped trigger the Middle Eastern pro-democracy uprisings known as the Arab Spring.
To prove aiding the enemy, prosecutors had to show Manning had "actual knowledge" the material he leaked would be seen by al-Qaida and that he had "general evil intent." They presented evidence the material fell into the hands of the terrorist group and its former leader, Osama bin Laden, but struggled to prove their assertion that Manning was an anarchist computer hacker and attention-seeking traitor.
King Richard III's rediscovered resting place is turning out more mysteries this summer. Excavators finally lifted the heavy lid of a medieval stone coffin found at the site in Leicester, England, only to reveal another lead coffin inside.
The "coffin-within-a-coffin" is thought to have been sealed in the 13th or 14th century ? more than 100 years before Richard, an infamous English king slain in battle, received his hasty burial in 1485.
The team of archaeologists from the University of Leicester thinks this grave in the Grey Friars monastery might contain one of the friary's founders or a medieval knight. [Gallery: In Search of the Grave of Richard III]
"The inner coffin is likely to contain a high-status burial ? though we don't currently know who it contains," reads a statement from the university.
The outer stone coffin measures about 7 feet (2.1 meters) long and 2 feet (0.6 meters) wide at the head and 1 foot (0.3 meters) at the feet. Eight people were needed to remove its lid.
The lead funerary box inside has been carried off to the university, where researchers will conduct tests to determine the safest way to open it without damaging the remains. But so far, they've been able to get a look at the feet through a hole in the bottom of the inner coffin.
The archaeologists suspect the grave may belong to one of Grey Friar's founders: Peter Swynsfeld, who died in 1272, or William of Nottingham, who died in 1330. Records also suggest "a knight called Mutton, sometime mayor of Leicester," was buried at the site. This name may refer to the 14th-century knight Sir William de Moton of Peckleton, who died between 1356 and 1362, the researchers say.
"None of us in the team have ever seen a lead coffin within a stone coffin before," archaeologist Mathew Morris, the Grey Friars site director, said in a statement. "We will now need to work out how to open it safely, as we don't want to damage the contents when we are opening the lid."
Richard III, the last king of the House of York, reigned from 1483 until 1485, when he was killed in battle during the War of Roses. He received a quick burial at the Grey Friars monastery in Leicester as his defeater, Henry Tudor, ascended to the throne.
Richard's rise to power was controversial. His two young nephews, who had a claim to the throne, vanished from the Tower of London shortly before Richard became king, leading to rumors that he had them killed. After his death, Richard was demonized by the Tudor dynasty and his reputation as a power-hungry, muderous hunchback was cemented in William Shakespeare's play "Richard III." Meanwhile, Grey Friars was destroyed in the 16th century during the Protestant Reformation, and its ruins became somewhat lost to history.
Setting out to find the lost king, archaeologists started digging beneath a parking lot in Leicester last summer where they believed they would find Grey Friars. They soon uncovered the remains of the monastery and a battle-ravaged skeleton that was later confirmed through a DNA analysis to be that of Richard III.
In an effort to learn more about the church where Richard was buried ? as well as the other people buried alongside him ? a fresh dig at the site began in early July.
A King Richard III visitor center is being built at the site and arrangements are being made to reinter the king's bones. The Cathedral of Leicester recently unveiled its $1.5 million (?1 million) plan to rebury the monarch in a new raised tomb inside the church, with a week of celebrations leading up to the reinterment.
Follow Megan Gannon on Twitter and Google+.Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on LiveScience.com.
Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Basalt formations, such as these towers on the Columbia River in Washington state, could be used to trap carbon dioxide.Image: Kevin Schafer/Corbis
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By early August, scientists will have pumped 1,000 tons of pure carbon dioxide into porous rock far below the northwestern United States. The goal is to find a permanent home for the carbon dioxide generated by human activities.
Researchers at the US Department of Energy?s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) in Richland, Washington, began the injections into the Columbia River Basalt formation near the town of Wallula on 17?July. The rock contains pores created as many as 16?million years ago, when magma flowed across what is now the Columbia River Basin. Bubbles of CO2 migrated to the edges of the magma as it cooled, forming layers of holes sandwiched between solid rock (see 'Rock steady').
In pumping emissions back underground, ?we are returning the carbon dioxide from whence it came?, says Pete McGrail, an environ?mental engineer at the PNNL who is heading the experiment, part of a larger energy-department program on ways to sequester carbon.
The Wallula project is the second of two worldwide to target basalt formations, which scientists hope can hold ? and permanently mineralize ? vast quantities of gas. In basalt, dissolved CO2 should react with calcium and magnesium to form limestone over the course of decades. Until the gas is locked away, the porous basalt layers are capped by solid rock that will prevent leaking. That should eliminate concerns about leakage that have dogged other proposals to store CO2 deep underground, often in sandstone reservoirs.
Source: PNNL
The basalt reactions are part of a natural weathering process that has helped to regulate atmospheric CO2 levels throughout geological time. Scientists have analyzed mineralization in the lab, but it is only now being tested in the field.
Researchers working on the other basalt project, based in Iceland and run by a consortium of US and European scientists along with Reykjavik Energy, made their first CO2 injections last year and will conduct another round this year. Early results look promising, says Juerg Matter, a geochemist at Columbia University?s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, New York, who is working on the Iceland project. ?The mineralization reaction is most likely faster than what we in the community had thought,? says Matter, who has also contributed to the Wallula project. Assuming that holds true for basalt generally, ?you reduce the risk of leakage, and you can pretty much walk away from your storage reservoirs?.
In Wallula, researchers are already monitoring a series of shallow wells around the injection site for signs of CO2 leaking into the soil and groundwater. Once the injection is finished, they will start taking samples from the injection well to monitor water chemistry, track changes in carbon isotopes and check for other evidence of reactions. Lab tests and computer simulations suggest that in general, around 20% of the CO2 should be mineralized within 10?15 years, says McGrail.
The pilot project, however, is operating on a shorter timescale. Fourteen months after the end of injection, the team plans to drill another well and pull up a core of rock to assess the results, says McGrail. ?At that point, we are hoping to have some carbonized rock in our hands.?
But achieving sequestration is only half the battle: scientists and engineers must still work out how to capture CO2 from industrial facilities and transport it to the sequestration site cost-effectively. And even if a carbon-mineralization industry took off, establishing it on a global level would require an undertaking on the scale of rebuilding the oil industry.
AURORA ? In a town hall-style meeting Monday, Bruce Rauner, Republican candidate for governor, talked jobs, pensions and what it will take to see a GOP-backed candidate in the governor?s mansion at Aurora-based Richards-Wilcox, an office storage manufacturer.
A lifelong resident of the state, Rauner said that he decided to run for Illinois governor because the state is headed ?down the drain.?
?It?s the worst run state in America,? Rauner said. Despite the state?s assets ? a great workforce, strong infrastructure and location ? businesses are fleeing because of the taxes, workman?s comp claims and burdensome regulation.
?The red tape, you name the issue and we?re bad,? Rauner said. ?It?s a broken system and we?ve got to fix it.?
Rauner said if he?s elected governor, he?d clean up corruption and run the state more like a business, and would recruit Illinois? best leaders to run the state. He?d aim to accomplish four things in Illinois: more jobs, lower taxes, better schools and term limits for politicians.
?I?m not a politician, I?ve never run for office,? he said. ?I didn?t even run for student council in high school.?
Pensions
If the people of Illinois want to get serious about fixing the pension crisis, decreasing state spending and deregulation, politicians must take on the unions, Rauner said.
The state is now being run for the benefit of government employees, not for the benefit of the people of Illinois, Rauner said, and he would take on government unions in a way that politicians haven?t.
?Today, the politicians won?t take them on because they depend on these government union bosses for their political donations and their political foot soldiers in the campaigns,? he said. ?I will never take it.?
Crowded field
As 56-year-old Rauner seeks the top-state spot, the run for public office will be his first. The businessman is current chairman of R8 Capital Partners, and former chairman of Chicago-based private equity firm GTCR.
More than a year away from the November 2014 election, the race for governor is already a crowded one. Rauner will face off against three others in the GOP primary: State Sen. Bill Brady, a 2006 GOP candidate and 2010 nominee for the governor?s post; State Sen. Kirk Dillard, a 2010 GOP gubernatorial candidate; and Illinois Treasurer Dan Rutherford. Current Gov. Pat Quinn will seek re-election, but is being opposed by Bill Daley, the Chicago-bred former White House Chief of Staff and former U.S. Secretary of Commerce.
Ray Koch, president of Richards-Willcox, asked how Rauner expects to take on the state?s ?Democratic machine.?
?It?s going to be hard, I?ve got to admit, but I?m not doing this for fun,? Rauner said. He?ll rely on his immense power as governor, executive orders and line item-vetoes, to get things accomplished, he said.
Tom Tracy, a design engineer at Richards-Willcox, asked if Rauner believed it was feasible to get state spending under control.
Rauner said he?s spent time with governors and former governors Jeb Bush, Mitch Daniels and Scott Walker listening and learning. Rauner is now working with a GOP staff who has led government turnarounds in nine states, he said.
?They say, ?Bruce, we have never seen a level of waste, inefficiency, abuse and fraud in other government (like) we?ve seen in Springfield.? They say, ?we could probably save $2 billion a year without doing any major program cuts,? Rauner said.
In mid-July, I had the opportunity to test Google Glass.
It's basically an Android smartphone (without the cellular transmitter) capable of running Android apps, built into a pair of glasses. The small prism "screen" displays video at half HD resolution. The sound features use bone conduction, so only the wearer can hear audio output. It has a motion sensitive accelerometer for gestural commands. It has a microphone to support voice commands. The right temple is a touch pad. It has WiFi and Bluetooth. Battery power lasts about a day per charge.
Of course, there have been parodies of the user experience but I believe that clinicians can successfully use Google Glass to improve quality, safety, and efficiency in a manner that is less bothersome to the patients than a clinician staring at a keyboard.
Here are few examples:
1. Meaningful Use Stage 2 for Hospitals. Electronic Medication Admission Records must include the use of "assistive technology" to ensure the right dose of the right medication is given via the right route to the right patient at the right time. Today, many hospitals unit dose bar code every medication - a painful process. Imagine instead that a nurse puts on a pair of glasses, walks in the room and wi-fi geolocation shows the nurse a picture of the patient in the room who should be receiving medications. Then, pictures of the medications will be shown one at a time. The temple touch user interface could be used to scroll through medication pictures and even indicate that they were administered.
2. Clinical documentation. All of us are trying hard to document the clinical encounter using templates, macros, voice recognition, natural language processing and clinical documentation improvement tools. However, our documentation models may misalign with the ways patients communicate and doctors conceptualize medical information per Ross Koppel's excellent JAMIA article. Maybe the best clinical documentation is real time video of the patient encounter, captured from the vantage point of the clinician's Google Glass. Every audio/visual cue that the clinician sees and hears will be faithfully recorded.
3. Emergency Department Dashboards. Emergency physicians work in a high stress, fast paced environment and must be able to quickly access information, filtering relevant information and making evidence-based decisions. Imagine that a clinician enters the room of a patient - instead of reaching for a keyboard or even an iPad, the clinician looks at the patient. In "tricorder" like fashion, vital signs, triage details, and nursing documentation appear in the Google Glass. Touching the temple brings up lab and radiology results. An entire ED Dashboard is easily reduced to visual cues in Google Glass. At BIDMC, we hope to pilot such an application this year.
4. Decision Support. All clinicians involved in resuscitation know the stress of memorizing all the ACLS "code" algorithms. Imagine that a clinician responding to a cardiac arrest uses Google glass to retrieve the appropriate decision support for the patient in question and visually sees a decision tree that incorporates optimal doses of medications, the EKG of the patient, and vital signs.
5. Alerts and Reminders. Clinicians are very busy people. They have to manage communications from email, phone calls, patients on their schedule, patients who need to be seen emergently, and data flowing from numerous clinical systems. They key to surviving the day is to transform data into information, knowledge and wisdom. Imagine that Google Glass displays those events and issues which are most critical, requiring action today (alerts) and those issues which are generally good for the wellness of the patient (reminders). Having the benefits of alerts and reminders enables a clinician to get done what is most important.
Los Angeles, California United States Member?#103816 January 5, 2011 580?Posts Offline
Posted: July?26,?2013, 6:59?pm - IP Logged
Found some $10 Diamond Millionaire, bought two but they both lost. Nice start... It has the same prize structure as $1M Fortune, hope it plays better.(none of that 5@ $2 ridiculous prizes)
Also got some $5 Smokin' Hot Cash:
0, 0, $20, $15 - both wins were in the Bonus Game
I see a trend here, all my wins so far in Smokin Hot were in the Bonus Game. The prize structure is the same as $5 Calif Lottery Black, but it certainly plays differently.
CA United States Member?#141462 April 14, 2013 87?Posts Offline
Posted: July?26,?2013, 10:10?pm - IP Logged
was going to avoid $10 games for a while but then saw the diamond millionairs and couldn't resist its call !!
bought 2x
32 - $0
33 - $10
$10 - Lucky for Life $50(Symbol) $05 - Lucky for Life $40 (10x) // Fortune 55 $50 (5x) $03 - 10x The Money?$100 (#63) $02 - Season's Gold $100
LA CA United States Member?#118695 November 6, 2011 225?Posts Offline
Posted: July?27,?2013, 8:36?pm - IP Logged
Fortune rape continues...Got 2 $10 Fortunes from a LA downtown coffee shop near Angels flight in Bunker Hill and won zitch....But check the next post...
LA CA United States Member?#118695 November 6, 2011 225?Posts Offline
Posted: July?27,?2013, 8:42?pm - IP Logged
Got my first 2 $10 diamond millionaire from same downtown LA shop and won $100 on first ( got the diamond win all ) and $15 on second one.
Los Angeles, California United States Member?#103816 January 5, 2011 580?Posts Offline
Posted: July?27,?2013, 8:57?pm - IP Logged
Got my first 2 $10 diamond millionaire from same downtown LA shop and won $100 on first ( got the diamond win all ) and $15 on second one.
Congrats on your win! Nice!
So far I got zilch on Diamond Millionaire after a couple days play.
I go to Grand Central Market about every other week for lunch, right across from Angels Flight.
CA United States Member?#141462 April 14, 2013 87?Posts Offline
Posted: Yesterday, 1:05?am - IP Logged
congrats ...
bought three more diamonds? - $0 return
bought 6x fortune 55 - $0 return
?
sad day ...
can't find them smokin hots ...
$10 - Lucky for Life $50(Symbol) $05 - Lucky for Life $40 (10x) // Fortune 55 $50 (5x) $03 - 10x The Money?$100 (#63) $02 - Season's Gold $100
LA CA United States Member?#118695 November 6, 2011 225?Posts Offline
Posted: Yesterday, 1:17?am - IP Logged
Jon
We go there once a year with my daughter just for a change and have some fun in the Angels Flight..I had lunch at Grand Market at the Japanese place near the entrance on the left side once you get down the steps inside. I ate sushi...Wife and daughter are vegetarians so their choices are few so they ended up with some salad. To top it off we have lots of icecream at Jose's icecream at the end of the market on left side. I had the icecream first time about 18 months back when I was there and I was surprised with the huge portion and low cost. We 3 had 2 scoops each and paid like $8.
I got my lotto at Famima in the Two California Plaza building on top of Bunker Hill.
camarillo, ca United States Member?#132482 September 4, 2012 39?Posts Offline
Posted: Yesterday, 5:19?am - IP Logged
nice win mnsweeps!? havent tried the new diamond millionaire yet, might pick up some during the week.? still playing the smokin hot cash.
Los Angeles, California United States Member?#103816 January 5, 2011 580?Posts Offline
Posted: Yesterday, 12:51?pm - IP Logged
My losing streak continues on Diamond Mil, bought two, both lost.
Made up for it with Smokin Hot:
(#79-76) - $10, 0, 0, $50 - $10 in Bonus Game, $50 was 10X $5.
Machine was loaded backwards, so this was start of a fresh roll.
LA CA United States Member?#118695 November 6, 2011 225?Posts Offline
Posted: Yesterday, 1:48?pm - IP Logged
Folks
?
I see a lot of veterans on this board buying Hot smoking cash..any reason why? Is it just because its new? Just curious as I have not bought any of those..
LA CA United States Member?#118695 November 6, 2011 225?Posts Offline
Posted: Yesterday, 5:03?pm - IP Logged
Got 2 $10 Diamond and 4 $5 LFL from a 7-11 in Saugus.
?
Won a $10 on Diamond and $10 each on 2 of the LFL..Total $30 back on a $40 investment..Not bad...
camarillo, ca United States Member?#132482 September 4, 2012 39?Posts Offline
Posted: Yesterday, 5:23?pm - IP Logged
Folks
?
I see a lot of veterans on this board buying Hot smoking cash..any reason why? Is it just because its new? Just curious as I have not bought any of those..
not a veteran, but i'm buying it becasue it is new
LA CA United States Member?#118695 November 6, 2011 225?Posts Offline
Posted: Yesterday, 11:28?pm - IP Logged
The Fortune anal rape continues.... Got 2 $10 Fortunes from a Shell in Van NUys and won ziltch ...On way back home, I got 3 $10 Diamond from a Vons vending machine in Stevenson Ranch ...haven't scratched them yet as the anal pain is untolerable..
LA CA United States Member?#118695 November 6, 2011 225?Posts Offline
Posted: Today, 12:53?am - IP Logged
The Fortune anal rape continues.... Got 2 $10 Fortunes from a Shell in Van NUys and won ziltch ...On way back home, I got 3 $10 Diamond from a Vons vending machine in Stevenson Ranch ...haven't scratched them yet as the anal pain is untolerable..
JERUSALEM (JTA) ? Eric Burdon, lead singer of the popular ?60s band The Animals, said he will perform in Israel days after canceling a concert due to threatening emails.
On Monday, after saying last week that he had canceled his Aug. 1 concert in Binyamina, the concert appeared on Burdon?s website. It also was posted on the website of?the Zappa Shuni Amphitheater, the concert site.
Burdon?s wife and personal manager, Marianna Burdon, had written to Tislam, the Israeli band with whom Burdon was scheduled to perform, about canceling the performance.
?We are under increasing pressure, including many threatening emails that we are receiving on a daily basis,?? Marianna Burdon wrote. ?I wouldn?t want to put Eric in any danger.?
Performers have been under increasing pressure from the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement, or BDS, not to play Israel.
The Animals, a British band, became popular during the British invasion in the 1960s with songs such as ?The House of the Rising Sun,? ?We Gotta Get Out Of This Place,? ?It?s My Life? and ?Don?t Let Me Be Misunderstood.?
Burdon, 72, last performed in Israel during the 1980s. He recently released a solo album.
Brookdale Senior Living Inc. is looking of Occupational Therapist / OT - Innovative Senior Care on Tue, 30 Jul 2013 03:19:07 GMT. Occupational Therapists! Day One Benefits! Horizon Bay Of Port Saint Lucie, FL! Outpatient and Home Health Caseload Innovative Senior Care by Brookdale has a stable, full time opportunity on our Seminole team! Enjoy serving the residents of our Independent and Assisted Living setting. Innovative Senior Care (ISC) uses therapy and wellness techniques to provide lifestyle enhancements to residents...
Location:Port Saint Lucie, Florida
Description:Brookdale Senior Living Inc. is looking of Occupational Therapist / OT - Innovative Senior Care right now, this position will be settled in Florida. More details about this position opportunity kindly read the description below. Occupational Therapists! Day One Benefits! Horizon Bay Of Port Saint Lucie, FL! Outpatient and Home Health Caseload
Innovative Senior Care by Brookdale has a stable, full time opportunity on our Seminole team! Enjoy serving the residents of our Independent and Assisted Living setting.
Innovative Senior Care (ISC) uses therapy and wellness techniques to provide lifestyle enhancements to residents of senior living communities. Our services enable residents to live better by helping them to be safer, healthier, more mobile and more vibrant at any age or level of health and fitness. Our comprehensive rehabilitation, wellness and education services include Medicare-certified outpatient physical, occupational and speech therapy.
AS AN ISC THERAPIST… You will enjoy a good work environment, a fulfilling experience, the opportunity to build a career with a forward thinking, innovative therapy company and a substantial client base with which to work. You will also receive a portfolio of impressive benefits designed t help you maintain a comfortable lifestyle for your ! family. These include:
Major Medical
Dental
Vision
Flexible Spending Account
Short-term Disability
Long-term Disability
401 (k)
Life Insurance
Associate Life Program
Tuition Reimbursement
Paid Vacation & Holidays
Continuing Education
License Reimbursement
Benefits Begin First Day of Employment
For more information about career opportunities at Innovative Senior Care, visit our website at www.InnovativeSeniorCare.com. If you wish to submit your resume, you may forward it to barbnelson@ brookdaleliving.com. Please clearly state the job title and job number of interest.
Barbra Nelson Therapy Staffing Manager Tollfree 866-676-0363 Fax 615-468-0980 barbnelson@brookdaleliving.com
Related Job Titles: OT/OTR/Occupational Therapist/COTA Location: Port St. Lucie, FL Job Type: Full Time-Immediate Opening: Occupational Therapist/OTR/COTA Career Page: www.innovativeseniorcare.com keywords: OT, Occupational Therapist, , OTR, Independent Living, Assisted Living, SNF, FL, healthcare, therapy, ISC, Brookdale, COTA “Innovative Senior Care, a trademark of American Retirement Corporation, a subsidiary of Brookdale Senior Living.” FL OTR license required - . If you were eligible to this position, please give us your resume, with salary requirements and a resume to Brookdale Senior Living Inc..
Interested on this position, just click on the Apply button, you will be redirected to the official website
This position starts available on: Tue, 30 Jul 2013 03:19:07 GMT
Apply Occupational Therapist / OT - Innovative Senior Care Here
BMW's i3 concept has been kicking around for quite awhile, and so far we've seen the carbon fiber chassis, a you-wish prototype, many of the specs and even the price. All that remained was to see an actual car, and BMW has finally pulled the covers off of it today. The $41,350 (US pricing) vehicle will run for 80-100 miles on a charge while going from 0 to 60 MPH in seven seconds, thanks to the 22kWh battery, 170-horsepower electric motor and relatively slight 2,600 pound heft. If you opt to pay $45,200, you'll be able to nearly double the range, thanks to an optional 34-horsepower two-cylinder backup motor. That's pricier than the $39,145 Chevy Volt (which also has a backup gas motor), but BMW has equally high hopes for its premiere EV. It launched a dedicated sales channel for the i3 and future i-branded EVs, and even created a division dedicated to creating mobile apps for such cars. It'll arrive in Europe in November and we'll see it stateside during the second quarter of next year. Check the source or video after the break for more.
Kidd Kraddick was known for his humorous morning show and for his children's charity called Kidd's Kids, which sends chronically and terminally ill children to Disney World. Kraddick died Saturday while at a charity golf tournament. His charity Kidd's Kids has had a direct impact on East Texans.
"It just brought tears to your eyes because of all the memories we had on our trip," said Lydia Munoz.
Munoz and her daughter Danielle went on a Kidd's Kids trip in November 2011.
Danielle was eight years old at the time and diagnosed with Cockayne Syndrome,?a rare disorder characterized by short stature and an appearance of premature aging.
"Some people won't even leave their hometown because it's hard financially, or due to the illness of the kids. He knew that and he went above and beyond to make sure we get to experience that," said Munoz.
Kraddick made millions smile over the years through his show, without leaving these kids behind.
"Him and his staff made time to sign autographs and they took pictures with all of us. They played with the kids, rode rides with the kids and ate with us and everything. On the plane we interacted with them. It was just something you will never forget," said Munoz.
His contagious personality blended perfectly with these kids.
"He was like a kid himself when he was playing with the kids and interacting with the kids. He never treated or looked at you or the kids wrong. He was just happy, always laughing and smiling. He always had a smile on his face and was always happy person," said Munoz.
It was an experience of a lifetime for Danielle, not possible without Kidd's Kids.
Lydia has one final wish; that his legacy to continue.
"He did everything he can to help these families out and that's going to be missed. I hope they continue Kidd's Kids so other kids can experience what we did. He wouldn't want it to end. He would want to continue helping kids. He would want to help more kids and more people," said Munoz.
Preliminary autopsy results are in on the radio host. The coroner said it appears Kraddick died from an enlarged heart. Kraddick had three heart arteries with between 40 and 80% blockage. The final autopsy on Kidd Kraddick will not be out until a toxicology report is complete.
Back at the end of May I wrote about a great Kickstarter project which updated the Camera Lucida. The Neo Lucida is a prism on a bendy stick that you can use to superimpose the scene in front of you onto a sheet of paper so you can ?trace? around real objects.
In the post I wondered if there was an app that would use your iPhone?s camera to do the same thing, but then ? as usual ? I didn?t read any comments. Reader Golan pointed out that the app is called Camera Lucida, and as of this weeken it has updayed to v7.0.
The new version brings zoom, and can also preserve the alpha trasnparency of any imported image. But what do it do?
Camera Lucida lets you take a photo of the scene before you (or load one you took already) and it then superimposes a live camer feed over the top. Thus, you point it at a blank sheet of paper and as you draw on that paper in real pen or pencil, you see the image and your sketch on screen together.
I have it a go and found it pretty unintuitive. My advice would be to put the iPhone on some kind of stand if you mean to do this properly, otherwise your drawing won?t match up with the picture.
I?m also not a fan of drawing from photos. What?s the point? We don?t see the world through one eye like the camera. And the camera already does a fantastic job of recording a perfect image ? why trace it and try to make an inferior version? The whom e point of drawing from life is to put what you see onto paper or canvas or wood or whatever.
What I liked about the Neo Lucida, and therefore any actual physical Camera Lucida, is that it aids the eye in looking at a real scene, removing the tricks of perspective that our brains introduce when we look at things.
So the app still doesn?t exists. To be clear, what I want is an app that takes a live feed from the iPhone and shows it on the iPad?s screen, andf then lets me draw on that screen.
Anyone know anything? E-mail or tweet me, becasue I tend to forget about the comments.
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Public release date: 31-Jul-2013
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