Apple already controls the tablet market, but this feature will only make it more difficult for competitors to steal away a slice of the pie
On Thursday, the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office published a new patent application from Apple that shows the company could be planning on adding mini-projection devices to a coming iteration of its iPhone line and/or developing a projection add-on for MacBooks and other Apple portable devices. "Today's incredibly detailed patent application reveals how they're working on pico-like projectors for iOS devices and how these projectors will work with a shared workspace in presentations," according to Patently Apple, a blog that closely follows all Apple patents and breaks them down, piece by piece, in detailed articles. "Apple's patent even details how they'll introduce advanced gesturing that will be able to interpret shadow and silhouette gesturing associated with presentations in a darkened environment."
Now, Apple controls a huge number of patents and trademarks, far more than it can possibly work into its devices, no matter how many of them there seem to be. iPhones and iPads and iPods, oh my. But integrating projection into the iOS system (one that could soon replace the traditional Mac OS on all of Apple's devices, regardless of size) is something that Apple has long hinted at.
In mid-2009, Apple filed a patent that shows some crude images of a phone projecting images out of its top, the spot where you might expect to find a headphone jack on the current line of iPhones. Nothing had come of that project -- it was probably an attempt to protect preliminary research and development on micro-projectors -- by the time Apple filed another patent with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office that touched on the issue. This next patent, which was filed in early 2010, shows thinking on projectors taken to the next level. Even the renderings are more complex and incorporate actual Apple devices. Not too long after, we learned that Apple was working on adding a projection feature to its existing line of MacBooks.
Patently Apple, which has examined all of the patents mentioned above in detail, also touched on the evolution of these applications. "The level of detail associated with this patent would suggest that Apple's development teams are moving full steam ahead on the projection system project which will further push the likes of Apple's iPad into the enterprise," the blog noted. That makes perfect sense, of course. I have seen more iPads in meetings and conferences than anywhere else; they make for excellent business tools. Apple already controls the tablet market, but adding this feature to the iPad line will only make it more difficult for competitors to steal away a slice of the pie.
Smartphone camera can almost do it all
If you're anything like me, your cellphone and its built-in camera is always on you, while your digital camera gathers dust at home. But as smartphone makers have increasingly realized the potential of the built-in camera, there's been a deluge of phones with cameras that can match - and sometimes outperform - low-end dedicated devices in a snap. It has an 8-megapixel camera and plenty of the settings you'd find on a normal digital camera.
Although you can easily find a cheap digital camera that can take higher-resolution photos than the myTouch, the phone has a lens that gathers more light, which makes for better shots in dim lighting.Indeed, I generally found the phone's built-in flash too blinding andgot better results by simply using the camera's night setting. On many cellphone cameras, there's a lot of shutter lag - the irritating gap between when you press the shutter button and when the camera actually takes a photo.
The camera records continuously when the camera application is open and grabs the frame that corresponds with when you pressed the button. That said, the myTouch's camera is quite good for closeup shots. As is the case with standalone digital cameras, the myTouch's camera includes facial recognition and smile-and-blink detection, as well as preset "scenes" for doing such things as taking portraits or action shots. It was nice to let the camera decide which settings it thought were best, but I also liked to play with the exposure, contrast and various color filters.
While Google may control the lion's share of the search market, queries made through Microsoft's Bing search engine lead users to click on a Web page at a significantly higher rate than queries made through Google, according to data released Thursday.
The success rate for Bing searches in the U.S. in July was 80.04%, compared to 67.56% for Google, according to Experian Hitwise. The market watcher defines "success rate" as the percentage of search queries that result in a visit to a website. Searches made through sites owned by Yahoo, which farmed out search to Bing under a deal struck in 2009, were also more efficient than Google. Those searches yielded a success rate of 81.36%.
Experian officials said the results show that there's room for both Google and Microsoft to step up their games when it comes to search accuracy. "The share of unsuccessful searches highlights the opportunity for both the search engines and marketers to evaluate the search engine results pages to ensure that searchers are finding relevant information."
Search engine users could also probably help themselves a lot by formulating more precise queries. Experian's numbers show that the plurality of searches, 25.32%, are made with just a single word, followed by two-word and three-word queries, with shares of 24.09% and 19.49%, respectively.
The numbers could help Microsoft boost its revenue from online services, as they show marketers that keywords purchased on Bing-powered sites have a better click-through rate than those purchased on Google. Microsoft has taken a number of steps to boost the efficacy of Bing searches, including adding tools that allow users to book travel and entertainment with one or two clicks following the input of related terms such as, for instance, "San Francisco hotels." Microsoft also recently added real-time feeds from Facebook to its search results.
Microsoft's revenue for online services, including search, was up 16.5% in the most recent quarter, to $662 million.
While Redmond may have bragging rights when it comes to search efficiency, it still lags far behind Google in terms of search volume. Google's share of total U.S. search volume in July was 66.05%, down 2% from the previous month. Bing's share came in at 12.98%, down 2% from June. Yahoo search took a 15.07% share, up 4%, meaning that total "Bing-powered" search came in at 28.05%.
The data shows that Google clearly remains the dominant search engine, but Bing is gaining ground.
Boeing's new 787 Dreamliner has the best airplane windows ever. It ditches that small window with a pull-down plastic shade and replaces it with a larger, dimming window that can be adjusted to let in various amounts of light.
The windows are a dreamy 19 inches tall and 65% larger than the standard airplane windows so you'll get to see a lot more of your surroundings. And did I mention they dim?
The dimming effect is the result of an electrified gel sandwiched between two thin pieces of glass. As the electric current increases, the gel darkens and as it drops, the gel lightens. The system is brilliant in its simplicity.
Each passenger in the coveted window seat will have control over their window. They're also networked together so flight personnel can control the windows, too. Attendants can adjust each window, adjust windows in an entire section of the plane or adjust them for the entire plane.
These new dimming windows are just the beginning for Boeing and its research partners PPG Aerospace and Gentex Corporation. The trio hopes to add other features to the windows like automation that would brighten your portal during take off and dim it at night.
[via Boeing]
It appears that the fantasies of many libidinous male soccer fans (and many non fans, presumably) have been answered as the fetching goalkeeper of the U.S. Women's National Team, Hope Solo, hinted on her twitter account on Tuesday that she will pose naked in the famed "Body Issue" of ESPN The Magazine.
"The Body Issue" features male and female professional athletes posing naked in a tasteful fashion. Last year's issue had photos of Serena Williams, Dwight Howard and Adrian Peterson in the buck, among many others.
As she recently told The Huffington Post's Jordan Schultz, Solo has been very busy in recent weeks following the conclusion of the Women's World Cup, in which her U.S. team was defeated in the final by Japan.
"I flew to LA when most people went home, and I did the media circuit there," she told The Huffington Post. "I think that's our responsibility; I need to keep the awareness of the game out there, but I also need to thank our fans."
Despite the tremendous outpouring of support the team received during the World Cup and the tireless efforts of Solo and her teammates since returning home, the Women's Professional Soccer League continues to struggle, seemingly unable to carry the World Cup interest over to the domestic league.
Perhaps, Solo can generate another wave of momentum, and probably keep the marriage proposals piling up, by posing naked for ESPN The Magazine.
A major revamp of Apple’s famous Fifth Avenue store in New York City with the 32-foot glass cube entrance has been underway since June. The $6.7 million project will keep the glass cube intact but will simplify its structure by using larger panes of glass. Today Apple provided a rendering showing how the new cube will look once completed.
The new structure of the cube entrance will use only 15 panes of glass instead of 90. This makes for only two vertical seams on each side. The original cube was already the epitome of minimalism, but the rendering of the new cube shows that you can still get an even cleaner look. However, this could also mean more dead birds and bruised foreheads.
The store has remained open 24 hours a day and 7 days a week, although the entrance has been covered up with grey plywood to hide the construction. It’ll be interesting to see how they plan on delivering 32-foot tall by 10-foot wide panes of glass to the site without disrupting the flow of customers and without revealing the unfinished structure. The construction is expected to complete by November.
Do you have a few old, dusty beige-box computers kicking around that you’d like to turn into money? Or perhaps you’d just like to get rid of them, but you lack the means to dispose of them properly? Well, if you’re in the US you’re in luck: Apple will now recycle your old laptop or desktop PC and its monitor for free — and if it’s worth anything, you’ll even get an Apple Gift Card in return. In addition, your old iPhone or iPad can now be returned for an Apple Gift Gard, too.
This service, provided by Apple and PowerON, a California-based reseller of used and refurbished computers, is completely free of charge. Simply visit the Apple Reuse and Recycling Program website, select what kind of device you want to recycle (any desktop, notebook, iPad, or iPhone), and then fill in a few details about the device. For Windows desktops the only factors seem to be the case size and the processor speed; for laptops, the screen size and processor speed. For Apple products you need to select the exact model. On the next page you provide a few details about the condition of the computer: Does it boot up? Is it scratched? Can you can provide the original driver/OS disc? And so on. You’ll then be given an estimated fair market value — or if the device is too old or in bad condition, you’ll simply be told that it’s worth nothing (but you can still recycle it for free).
The fair market value for Windows PC computers do seem to be a bit on the low side — $48 for a two-year-old computer (see right) is a little miserly — but you do get free shipping and packaging, which doesn’t come cheap. Apple products are given higher values — $165 for a first-gen, 16GB Wi-Fi iPad, for example — but some devices are still on the penny-pinching end of the scale: last year’s top-of-the-range 17-inch MacBook Pro, for example, is only valued at $758, while its street value (Craigslist, eBay) should still be in excess of $1,000. In all cases, you will be sent some postage-paid packaging for your old computer, and in a few days you’ll be sent an Apple Gift Card.
In other news, Apple still offers free recycling for any iPod or mobile phone. Just fill in your address and Apple (powered by WeRecycle) will send you some prepaid packaging — or you can simply print off your own prepaid label, if you have your own packing materials. Alternatively, if you have an Apple Store nearby, you can give them your old iPod for a 10% discount on a new one.
Finally, it’s worth noting that Apple is fairly unique in offering free, anywhere-in-the-US recycling for any computer. There are many similar services that operate at a state level, store-based programs offered by Best Buy and others, and trade-in schemes from the likes of Dell, but to offer a completely free service is admirable. Of course there could easily be a kickbacks from WeRecycle and PowerON to Apple, but who cares? Proper disposal of computers and peripherals is tricky business and vital for the conservation of the rare and valuable materials that are used in their construction.
The eldest daughter of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver says she fled to London after her parents separated, in part to escape a storm of unwanted attention.
Katherine Schwarzenegger tells Harper's Bazaar magazine she wanted to "go away and realize that it's not as big a deal in other places."
Shriver and the former Republican governor are in the midst of a divorce, after Arnold Schwarzenegger confirmed in May he fathered an out-of-wedlock child with a former housekeeper.
Their 21-year-old daughter never mentions her now-teenaged half-brother in the interview, while discussing what she calls "definitely a difficult time."
She says she tries "not to care about what other people ... think," but adds she's been consoled by Twitter messages from supporters.
She tells the magazine, "I've always been way closer to my mom."
Their 21-year-old daughter never mentions her now-teenaged half-brother in the interview, while discussing what she calls "definitely a difficult time."
She says she tries "not to care about what other people ... think," but adds she's been consoled by Twitter messages from supporters.
She tells the magazine, "I've always been way closer to my mom."
Downgrading your global ambitions could make you a healthier and happier nation.
As the U.S. bond rating falls and the stock market plunges, the American Century looks to be well and truly over. While this has provoked no small amount of hand-wringing, Americans may soon come to enjoy no longer bearing the responsibility for running the world's indispensable nation.
The signs of decline are everywhere. Illegal immigrants are heading back home in search of a better life. China already leads the world in green technology and is about to become the world's biggest economy in terms of purchasing power. Two U.S.-led wars are dragging toward an end charitably described as: mission not completely failed. The United States was able to avoid default only by stopping pretty much all other government business for several weeks. And it's not only U.S. political and economic preeminence that is deteriorating, but its cultural hegemony: India's Bollywood and Nigeria's Nollywood are each producing more films a year than Hollywood (to say nothing of their superior artistic quality).
Of course, the United States still possesses greater military strength than any other country in the world. But what good has being the world's policeman done for Americans? Wielding that might meant the United States saw more combat deaths overseas last year than any other country, according to data from Uppsala University. Beyond the blood is the treasure: U.S. military spending increased 81 percent between 2001 and 2010 and now accounts for 43 percent of the global total -- six times its nearest rival, China. The U.S. military burden is equivalent to 4.8 percent of GDP, the largest economic burden of any OECD country.
It is no coincidence that the man who coined the term "imperial overstretch," Yale University historian Paul Kennedy, is British. Britain was the last country to get knocked off the top spot, after all -- and the United States could learn a lot from its experience.
Britain spent much of the 1950s pretending it was still a global power, which resulted in one of the country's grimmest decades -- food was still rationed until 1954. This exercise in delusion culminated in Britain's attempt to occupy the Suez Canal in 1957, an effort that was scuttled by the world's new ascendant power, the United States.
But it was only a year after the Suez crisis signaled the end of Britain's global reach that British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan declared his compatriots "never had it so good." He was right: Average incomes, health indicators, and levels of education were all far better than in the glory days when Britannia ruled the seas. Then, after Britain gave up on empire -- decolonizing across Africa and Asia in the early 1960s -- they got the Beatles, the Mini, and free love.
Britain may still go on about "punching above its weight" in international affairs, and it has kept some of the trappings of great-power status, such as a seat on the U.N. Security Council and a small flotilla of nuclear submarines, but its burdens are significantly less momentous. Freed from the distractions of colonial oversight and global leadership, it could retire its planet-spanning chain of military bases, shrink the Royal Navy, and devalue the pound without fears that the world would come to an end. And the country learned to collaborate without feeling equal status was a slight to its dignity -- joining the European Union, for example, and signing the Kyoto Protocol.
Whatever happens to the United States in the global economic rankings, it will remain a great country. Accepting -- even embracing -- decline will serve as a reminder that American exceptionalism is built on a set of values, not stock indices. If the S&P downgrade helps the United States foster a shift toward prioritizing the good life over great-power status, perhaps it will be seen as a blessing in disguise. What's more, the United States starts out its decline with many advantages over 1950s Britain. Not least, in large parts of the country, it is already possible to find a good restaurant -- something that took the Brits 30-plus years of not-so-bad power status to achieve.
[via foreignpolicy]
SWEDISH MAN BUILDS NUCLEAR REACTOR IN HIS KITCHEN
Swedish authorities have detained a man who attempted to build a nuclear reactor in his kitchen, Helsingborgs Dagblad reported Tuesday.
"I was arrested and sent to jail when the police and the Swedish Radiation Safety Authority searched my apartment," the unnamed nuclear enthusiast wrote on a blog detailing his project. "They took all my radioactive stuff, but I was released after a hearing. But I am still suspect for crime against the radiation safety law."
Police in the western town of Angelholm were alerted when he contacted Sweden's nuclear authority and asked if it was permitted for an individual to build a nuclear reactor in his home.
The unnamed enthusiast brought radioactive materials, as well as a Geiger counter which he ordered from the United States. He also dismantled smoke detectors, which contain small amounts of nuclear material.
A spokesman for the local city council told FoxNews.com that people in the city of Angelholm were largely unfazed by the potential nuclear reactor.
"The reactions I have encountered about citizens in Angelholm is that the whole thing seems innocent," Anders Clark told FoxNews.com. "Some have questioned his ability to feel a sense of responsibility, but I haven’t met any particular concern over the incident."
He posted requests for information online and posted photos of experiments in his kitchen. But his attempts to build a reactor fell some way short, he told the newspaper.
Not so the work of Mark Suppes, a New York web designer for fashion house Gucci who surprised his neighbors in June of 2010 by revealing he had built a nuclear reactor in a Brooklyn warehouse.
The 32-year-old amateur physicist constructed the $40,000 homemade fusion reactor in his spare time, and became the 38th independent physicist in the word to achieve nuclear fusion from a self-built reactor and forms part of a growing community of "fusioneers."
Walmart is planning to launch several new projects this holiday season based on the technology it acquired from the social media startup Kosmix back in April. Kosmix's platform previously powered multiple services, including a Twitter search site called TweetBeat, a health vertical called RightHealth and a homepage where users could search the Web by topic. But the core of what Kosmix was building was something called the "social genome" a way to organize the content in social networks in order to connect people with the information that mattered to them. Now, that same technology is in the hands of Walmart, the world's largest retailer. These days, Walmart.com does around $6 billion per year in sales vs. Amazon.com's $34 billion, according to analysts. "Walmart had fallen behind in e-commerce," says Anand Rajaraman, Kosmix Co-Founder now SVP of Walmart's Global e-Commerce division, and the board realized the issue was serious. Although Rajaraman wouldn't go into detail about the handful of projects Walmart has planned, it's easy to read between the lines at guess at their nature social search on Walmart.com, personalized alerts on rollbacks sent to email or mobile, Facebook-enabled social wish lists or gifting applications, and who knows what else may come in the future. In April, when Walmart acquired Kosmix, it had already raised $55 million in funding from a number of investors throughout the years. What made Kosmix appealing was not just the technology itself, but also the people behind the technology: founders Venky Harinarayan and Anand Rajaraman, successful e-commerce pioneers who had sold their previous company, Junglee, to Amazon. At Amazon, they worked with CEO Jeff Bezos to transform Amazon into a retail platform, and invented the technology that now powers Mechanical Turk. When Kosmix was acquired, it became the nucleus of a new group at Walmart known as @Walmart Labs, based in Silicon Valley. At WalmartLabs, the founders have been busy developing projects which will integrate the Kosmix technology into Walmart's online and mobile offerings, including its e-commerce website, Facebook pages and more. There are three main areas of focus for the team: search, recommendations and serendipity. In search, Kosmix's technology will pull data from Facebook and Twitter to improve your search experience on Walmart.com. By monitoring your ever-changing interests on topics like your favorite sports team or band, for example, Walmart will be able to serve better recommendations when you search its site.
It might work this way: you search for a new smartphone, and Walmart recommends one you friend just liked on Facebook . Walmart plans to leverage your social data outside of search, too. It plans to directly recommend products on its homepage. At Amazon, explains Rajaraman, there's too much emphasis placed on your purchases for recommendations. "Purchases are a window into your interests," he says but they're a small window. Anyone who has ever purchased a gift at Amazon only to be suggested similar items upon every subsequent login knows the problem. Instead of recommending more travel guides for Paris, long after your trip was complete, or more power tools, long after Dad's birthday has passed, Walmart plans to recommend things it actually knows you like. Whether or not it can succeed where so many others have failed will soon be put to the test. And these tools can be used to analyze your friends behavior, too, in order to offer wish list suggestions based on their interests. Assuming they get it done, the way Walmart is leveraging Twitter and Facebook here could be an industry first. If that sort of deep dive into your personal preferences sounds creepy, well, at least this is an opt-in system. Rajaraman says Walmart will never use consumers data in any way beyond what it has permission for, and your'e in control of that. But he thinks consumers will be willing to share there information in return for tangible benefits. Benefits, like discounts? While Walmart has no plans introduce huge discounts like Groupon offers (it's happy to provide everyday low prices, says Rajaraman), it will be able to personalize alerts on items it puts on rollback, its own system for promoting sale items. Instead of spamming you with notifications, Kosmix's technology will be able to identify what sort of rollbacks you, as an individual, would like. This is what he means by serendipity alerts that will surprise and delight consumers. You may even be able to one day receive in-store notifications as you pass by items of interest that match those pulled from the Kosmix system. As for what technology would be used on the mobile side, Rajaraman couldn't say. But the company is experimenting with several approaches for providing mobile services, including things like NFC (near field communication), barcode scanning and in-store geo-fencing. However, these fall outside of the @WalmartLabs team's domain they're more focused on the data.
A 10-year-old girl, reportedly bored with farm-style video games such as the wildly popular game Farmville, has uncovered a security flaw in mobile video games, CNET reported.
"It was hard to make progress in the game, because it took so long for things to grow. So I thought, 'Why don't I just change the time?'" the girl, who goes by the hacker name CyFi, told CNET. Doing so revealed a flaw in how the game operates: By manually advancing the clock on a phone or tablet computer to accelerate, say, the growth of a stalk of corn, she jumped ahead in the game, opening up a hole in its security.
Many games will detect and block this kind of manipulation, CNET reported; CyFi said she had discovered some ways around those blocks however.
CNET did not reveal the girl's name in order to protect her identity, other than to reveal that she was a state-ranked downhill skier, a Girl Scout, and somewhat nervous about public speaking. AFP reported that CyFi is the daughter of a pair of hackers, frequent attendees of the popular DefCon hacker conference that has run annually since 1993.
CyFi presented her findings Sunday at Defcon Kids: a conference spawned from DefCon and -- you guessed it -- aimed at children hackers.
"Please note that parents must be with their children during any classroom or workroom sessions that they attend," the convention's website notes.
Although only in its first year, Defcon Kids is off to a good start: The NSA brought a booth to the event to show off its cryptography program to the young hackers.
[via foxNews]
Due to the extreme popularity of social media use, researchers have increased their attention on the development of psychological disorders resulting in teens who obsess over Facebook. They’ve found antisocial behavior, narcissism and a many other character flaws may be on the rise due to teens overdosing on the world's most prevelent social media site.
These findings come from a recent study performed by Larry Rosen, professor of psychology at California State University. Rosen’s study used a number of computer-based surveys that were given to 1,000 urban adolescents as well as 15-minute observations of 300 teens in the act of studying
Here are some of Professor Rosen’s findings:
Teens were more likely to develop narcissistic behaviors if they used Facebook often.
- Young adults with a strong presence on Facebook show more signs of psychological disorders such as mania, aggression and anti-social behaviors.
- Overuse of media and technology has an overall negative effect on the health of all adolescents as they are more prone to anxiety and depression. They are also more likely to have future health problems.
- Students who checked Facebook at least once during a 15-minute study period experienced lower grades.
- Not all of the study's results showed Facebook to be a negative influence on the lives of teens. Sometimes naturally introverted teens can learn how to socialize through Facebook, he found. “Virtual empathy” was also a common positive attribute found in teens who often use Facebook.
A village with 58 households who had never seen a light bulb in their house filled with light. Children no longer studying by candlelight or burning wood.
Installation of the micro hydro plants has multiple impacts on the lives of rural population. In rural areas
where people typically depend on forest wood for fuel, micro hydro power can diminish the environmental degradation caused by cutting trees as well as reduce health risks such as respiratory and eyes infections. Micro hydro plants also give economically and environmentally sound options by creating green jobs in the areas where people have scarcity of income generation.
Northern parts of Pakistan are good examples of the viability of these projects or rural and hard to reach locales. They are especially suited to area with plentiful sources of water but which lack facility of electricity connection from the national grid due to extremely hard terrain. Experience from installation of micro-hydro power plants shows that investments in this field are not only economical, but also exciting in terms of new jobs for local communities and service providers. The micro hydro power plants can provide small scale business opportunities for both the local companies as well as to local communities.
A small 15 KV capacity plant can easily provide hydro electricity to 60 to 80 households in a hard, hilly location. A locally made turbine costs 200,000 to 300,000 PKR (2,381- 3,571 USD) to install. The small project also needs distribution lines and polls to supply electricity to the households. In addition, two people can be easily trained to maintain the plant locally. A village with 60 to 80 households can collect monthly cash saving of 4,000 PKR (48 USD) by collecting 50 PKR (less than 1 USD) from each household, which will be enough to pay the monthly salaries to two local persons @ 1,000 PKR (12 USD) in a village. There are no expenses on recurring costs such as fuel or monthly billing, so communities are able to net up to 24, 000 PKR (286 USD) per year. A small shop for electricity appliance such as light bulbs, switch boards, radio and even television, etc. can also provide income generation opportunities at local level.
Farming communities are also able to utilize the water of hydro power plant in number of ways. Water can be diverted from the plant to fields for activities like kitchen gardening, multi cropping and fish ponds. This is particularly beneficial in areas which mainly depend upon rain water for conventional crops production. In Pakistan, where unexpected monsoon rains and flooding result in lose of human lives and precious assets every year, micro hydro power plants give an excellent source for disaster mitigation through storage of rain and river water, particularly in the northern parts of the country. Experts are of the view that due to a lack of water storage and rain water harvesting arrangements, excessive rains triggered flash floods in Pakistan this monsoon season that gave less time to the people in KPK province to evacuate from flood inundated areas.
Micro hydro power is one of the best means of enterprise development for local communities and investment for green investors. Investment in micro hydro power production can be seen as a means to produce green and sustainable entrepreneurs and reduce the risks of investment losses.
Three large explosions from the Sun over the past few days have prompted U.S. government scientists to caution users of satellite, telecommunications and electric equipment to prepare for possible disruptions over the next few days.
"The magnetic storm that is soon to develop probably will be in the moderate to strong level," said Joseph Kunches, a space weather scientist at the Space Weather Prediction Center, a division of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
He said solar storms this week could affect communications and global positioning system (GPS) satellites and might even produce an aurora visible as far south as Minnesota and Wisconsin.
An aurora, called aurora borealis or the northern lights in northern latitudes, is a natural light display in the sky in the Arctic and Antarctic regions caused by the collision of energetic charged particles with atoms in the high altitude atmosphere.
Major disruptions from solar activity are rare but have had serious impacts in the past.
In 1989, a solar storm took down the power grid in Quebec, Canada, leaving about six million people without power for several hours.
The largest solar storm ever recorded was in 1859 when communications infrastructure was limited to telegraphs.
The 1859 solar storm hit telegraph offices around the world and caused a giant aurora visible as far south as the Caribbean Islands.
Some telegraph operators reported electric shocks. Papers caught fire. And many telegraph systems continued to send and receive signals even after operators disconnected batteries, NOAA said on its website.
A storm of similar magnitude today could cause up to $2 trillion in damage globally, according to a 2008 report by the National Research Council.
"I don't think this week's solar storms will be anywhere near that. This will be a two or three out of five on the NOAA Space Weather Scale," said Kunches.
SOLAR SCALE
The NOAA Space Weather Scale measures the intensity of a solar storm from one being the lowest intensity to five being the highest, similar to scales that measure the severity of hurricanes, tornadoes and earthquakes.
The first of the three solar explosions from the sun this week already passed the Earth on Thursday with little impact, Kunches said, noting, the second was passing the Earth now and "seems to be stronger."
And the third, he said, "We'll have to see what happens over the next few days. It could exacerbate the disturbance in the Earth's magnetic field caused by the second (storm) or do nothing at all."
Power grid managers receive alerts from the Space Weather Prediction Center to tell them to prepare for solar events, which peak about every 12 years, Tom Bogdan, director of the center said.
Sexual function improved significantly and quickly in obese men with type 2 diabetes after weight loss with reduced-calorie diets, results of a small Australian clinical study showed.
Erectile function, sexual desire, and urinary symptoms all improved significantly in 31 men who lost 5% to 10% of their body weight in eight weeks.
Metabolic parameters, including blood glucose, insulin sensitivity, and lipid profile, also responded favorably to either a low-calorie, meal-replacement diet or a high protein-low carbohydrate diet, according to an article published online in the Journal of Sexual Medicine.
Obesity and type 2 diabetes increase the risk of erectile dysfunction and lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS), which are associated with each other and with systemic inflammation and endothelial dysfunction.
Rapid weight loss by dietary means can improve erectile dysfunction and LUTS, the authors noted in their introductory comments. Studies also have shown improved endothelial function and reduced inflammation after weight loss, particularly in people who lose at least 10% of body weight.
Scant data have accumulated regarding the influence of macronutrient composition on associations between weight loss, endothelial function, systemic inflammation, sexual function, and LUTS in obese men. To address that issue, Khoo and co-authors conducted a randomized study involving 31 men.
All the study participants had type 2 diabetes, a body mass index >30 (obese), and a waist circumference ≥102 cm. They were randomized to two dietary plans:
Liquid meal-replacement consumed twice daily and one small, nutritionally balanced meal, providing a total energy of about 900 kcal/day (low-calorie diet)
A high-protein, low-fat, low-carbohydrate diet designed to reduce energy intake by about 600 kcal/day
Investigators had an extensive list of outcome measures, including weight, waist circumference, the International Index of Erectile Function (IIEF), Sexual Desire Inventory (SDI), International Prostate Symptom Scale (IPSS), fasting glucose and lipids, testosterone, sex hormone binding globulin (SHBG) and a battery of inflammatory markers.
The primary assessment occurred after eight weeks, and follow-up continued for an additional 44 weeks. All participants who opted to remain in the study for long-term follow-up consumed the high-protein diet during the follow-up.
Men randomized to the low-calorie diet had about a 10% reduction in mean body weight and waist circumference at eight weeks, as compared with about 5% among men assigned to the high-protein diet (P<0.01). Weight loss at eight weeks averaged 9.5 kg (20.9 lbs.) with the low-calorie diet and 5.4 kg (11.9 lbs.) with the high-protein diet, both of which were statistically significant (P<0.o5).
Other statistically significant (P<0.05) improvements in both groups included:
IIEF: +2.17 with the low-calorie diet and +2.75 with the high-protein diet
SDI: +10.37, +11.5
IPSS: -1.68, -2.5
Glucose: -15.84 mg/dL, -23.94 mg/dL
LDL: -7.02 mg/dL, -5.04 mg/dL
SHBG: +8.69 nmol/L, +3.75 nmol/L
In general, inflammatory markers decreased significantly (P<0.05) in the high-protein group but not the low-calorie group. However, the men assigned to the high-protein diet had higher baseline levels of the markers.
About half of the men remained in the study for the entire 52 weeks. Of those who did, improvements were either maintained or increased.
Facebook Inc. said its inspection of computers turned over by Paul Ceglia, the western New York man who claims he’s entitled to half of Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg’s holdings in the social-networking company, shows “smoking gun” evidence of fraud.
Ceglia sued Facebook and Zuckerberg last year, claiming that a two-page contract Zuckerberg signed in 2003 gave Ceglia half of the company when the service was started the following year. Palo Alto, California-based Facebook has grown to become the world’s biggest social-networking site.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Leslie Foschio in Buffalo, New York, last month ordered Ceglia to let Facebook run forensic tests on his computers, hard drives and electronic storage media, as well as on the contract and the e-mail he says support his claim.
“Defendants have uncovered smoking-gun evidence that the purported contract at the heart of this case is a fabrication,” Facebook said in its court filing late yesterday.
In a publicly filed version of the motion papers, Facebook, citing a confidentiality order in the case, didn’t identify the evidence it says was “embedded in the electronic data on Ceglia’s computer.”
Paul Argentieri, a lawyer for Ceglia, declined to comment on Facebook’s claim, citing Foschio’s July 13 confidentiality order.
$69.2 Billion
Facebook is valued at as much as $69.2 billion, according to Sharespost.com, an online marketplace for investments in companies that aren’t publicly traded.
Facebook’s “smoking gun” claim comes in the context of a court battle between the parties over the pretrial exchange of evidence in the case.
On July 1, Foschio entered several orders requiring Ceglia to turn over evidence for testing by Facebook after the company argued Ceglia’s case was a “fraud on the court.” Foschio also ordered Facebook to produce samples of Zuckerberg’s signature and 176 e-mails from Zuckerberg’s Harvard University e-mail account.
Both sides filed papers claiming the other side has failed to comply fully. Facebook also said Ceglia abused Foschio’s protective order by designating all 120 relevant items found on Ceglia’s computers, CDs and floppy disks as confidential. Facebook said it wants the “smoking gun” and other materials made public.
