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Learning how to use a drain snake is simple and starts by gliding the sewer snake into the drain hole until you reach the blockage. It?s important to push the sewer snake carefully but firmly as it may get stuck on the joints in the plumbing before it reaches the source of the clog. When you?ve finally reached the blockage, move the sewer snake back and forth so that it?s right against the obstruction. Do not push the blockage further down the plumbing.
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Unusual variations in an athlete's blood could determine guilt, even if no illegal substances are found
By John Matson
?|
July 30, 2012?|
CAT AND MOUSE: Will regulatory agencies ever be able to get ahead of dopers and drug cheats?Image: ? Sezer Yadigar/iStockphoto
For thousands of world-class athletes, a passport is something they can't forget to pack before heading off to London for the summer Olympic games. But for a few athletes, a different kind of passport is keeping them out of competition entirely.
A new anti-doping program known as the athlete biological passport (ABP), which looks for indirect evidence that an athlete has cheated, is being implemented by several international sports authorities. Already the testing scheme, developed by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), has ensnared world-class athletes?and survived a challenge to its validity.
The London Olympics mark the first summer games in which the ABP will be in use alongside traditional drug screenings. And for competitors in sports that have taken up the program, such as cycling and track and field, dreams of Olympic glory will depend on their test results?past and present.
Rather than screening an athlete's blood or urine samples for traces of banned substances right before or after a competition, testers using the ABP scheme compare samples with an athlete's baseline profile, as determined by multiple tests over time. In the absence of a legitimate physiological explanation, such as an illness or a natural response to changing altitude, variations in an athlete's biological samples can reveal wrongdoing even if the specific doping agent or process remains undetected. For instance, a sudden change in the number of reticulocytes, or immature blood cells, might provide indirect evidence that an athlete has used erythropoietin (EPO), a hormone that stimulates the generation of red blood cells and boosts the oxygen-carrying capacity of the blood. Similar tests can assess levels of the respiratory pigment hemoglobin, which can also reveal instances of blood manipulation to enhance oxygen transport.
"In this way, the athlete becomes his own reference point," says WADA medical director Alan Vernec. "Otherwise you're forever chasing after new types of substances or agents that are being developed."
So far the biological passport has been applied primarily to detect instances of blood doping, but the same strategy could be used on urine samples to identify users of anabolic steroids. Nevertheless, the ABP is unlikely to supplant conventional testing schemes that detect prohibited molecules, such as steroids or human growth hormone, in blood and urine. Anti-doping experts view the passport approach as a complement to such tests, which continue to catch athletes breaking the rules.
Indeed, conventional testing still plays a significant role in cycling, the first major sport to sign on to WADA's passport approach. In the highest-profile recent case, Spanish cyclist Alberto Contador was issued a two-year suspension and stripped of his 2010 Tour de France win after a sample that year tested positive for clenbuterol, which WADA classifies as an anabolic agent.
The International Cycling Union (UCI), suffering from a severe credibility problem, adopted the ABP in 2008, collecting about 10 blood samples each from more than 800 riders over the course of the year. But implementation of the ABP has not been without twists and turns. Cyclist Franco Pellizotti, who raced for Italy in the 2008 Olympics, was suspended in 2010 for irregularities in his blood profile that indicated "enhancement of oxygen transfer." But the rider was soon exonerated by the Italian Olympic committee, which held that the evidence against Pellizotti was insufficient to prove his guilt.
The cycling union appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in Switzerland, which last year overturned the Italian committee's decision and reinstated Pellizotti's two-year ban from cycling. The court also upheld a two-year ban for Italian rider Pietro Caucchioli; the cyclist's variations in hemoglobin concentration over a span of several months, the court ruled, "could not be considered as physiological" and hence demonstrated doping to enhance the blood's oxygen-carrying capacity.
The trial of former Illinois police officer Drew Peterson, who was charged with two counts of first-degree murder in the drowning death of his former wife Kathleen Savio, is set to begin Tuesday.
By NBC News staff
Almost five years after the disappearance of his fourth wife, former Illinois police officer Drew Peterson will go on trial Tuesday?for the murder of his third wife.
A jury of seven men and five women will hear opening arguments in the long-delayed trial on whether Peterson, 58, killed his then-wife Kathleen Savio in 2004 and made it look like an accident.
Savio, 40, was found dead in a dry bathtub on March 1, 2004. Officials ruled the death an accidental drowning until Savio?s body was exhumed as part of their investigation. They eventually changed the cause of her death from an accident to homicide and charged Peterson with murder.
?
Jury selection in the high-profile case was completed last week.
"You will hear the story of Drew Peterson from beginning to end," lead defense attorney Joel Brodsky told reporters last week. "We will show that the state's theory is implausible at best." ?
Peterson, who was a sergeant in the Bolingbrook, Ill., police department, was in the middle of a bitter divorce from Savio and had already begun seeing Stacy Peterson at the time of Savio?s death. Prosecutors argue Peterson killed Savio because he feared their divorce settlement would wipe him out financially, the Associated Press reported. Prosecutors are expected to call their first witnesses Tuesday .
Stacy Peterson vanished in 2007. Her body has?never been found, but authorities believe she is dead and have named Peterson a suspect. He contends the 23-year-old mother of two ran off with another man, which Stacy?s family vehemently disputes.
The jury is likely to hear statements that Savio and Stacy Peterson allegedly made to friends and relatives about threats from Peterson -- hearsay testimony that is usually barred in court proceedings.?
There was a three-year delay?for the trial?because of appeals over whether such hearsay evidence could be allowed in court. An appellate court ruled last week that jurors can hear the statements and Peterson?s attorney can object to each bit of hearsay as the trial goes on.
Peterson, who has been in jail since he was charged with Savio's murder in 2009, denies wrongdoing in both Savio's murder and Stacy Peterson's disappearance.?
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It is medically proved that properly maintained and clean hospital linens are important psychologically because of its immediate physical aids Christopher Wren was another early supporter Read > Business Photography Marketing Success Secret #7 ? Sound Successful To Drive People To Hire You! 06th May 2010 One of the major, little known ?secrets? to photography marketing success is that you must sound successful, to be successful You need to talk as if you are already successful, even if you aren?t as successful as you?d like to be yet
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Syria's Muslim Brotherhood denounced on Sunday President Bashar al-Assad, his allies Iran and Russia, and the international community for its "silence" and failure to protect civilians.
In a statement issued amid raging battles in Syria's commercial capital Aleppo, the influential Islamist movement said Assad was "legally and morally responsible for the death of every victim in Syria."
The Brotherhood also said that both Iran and Russia ? the powerful allies of the embattled Assad regime ? were "drowning in the blood of the Syrian people."
"Neither the Russians nor the Iranians will relieve [Assad] of responsibility for his crimes," it added.
The statement was released as troops pushed an offensive for a second day in a row on rebel-held districts of Aleppo, the key city in northern Syria.
Russian Foreign Minister "Sergei Lavrov gave Bashar al-Assad the green light to carry out a massacre," it said.
The Brotherhood also said the international community was "a partner" to violence in Syria, "by standing silent for too long... and failing to respect its obligation under international law to protect civilians."
Echoing a statement issued earlier on Sunday by the opposition Syrian National Council ? in which the Brotherhood plays an important role ? the exiled Islamist group warned of an imminent "massacre" in Aleppo.
It also accused Assad's regime of failing to deliver basic services to much of Aleppo's population.
"There is no running water in the houses, nor is there flour in the bakeries," it said. "There is no medicine in the pharmacies, nor any other kind of service being delivered."
The Muslim Brotherhood was banned in Syria in 1963. Many of its members fled the country following a revolt that was violently suppressed in 1982, leaving nearly 20,000 people dead according to estimates.
-AFP
For the latest developments on Syria, follow @NOW_Syria on Twitter or click here.
LONDON (Reuters) - Sports fans attending the London Olympics were told on Sunday to avoid non-urgent text messages and tweets during events because overloading of data networks was affecting television coverage.
Commentators on Saturday's men's cycling road race were unable to tell viewers how far the leaders were ahead of the chasing pack because data could not get through from the GPS satellite navigation system travelling with the cyclists.
It was particularly annoying for British viewers, who had tuned in hoping to see a medal for sprint king Mark Cavendish.
Many inadvertently made matters worse by venting their anger on Twitter at the lack of information.
An International Olympic Committee spokesman said the network problem had been caused by the messages sent by the hundreds of thousands of fans who lined the streets to cheer on the British team.
"Of course, if you want to send something, we are not going to say 'Don't, you can't do it', and we would certainly never prevent people," he said. "It's just - if it's not an urgent, urgent one, please kind of take it easy."
Other events due to take place on London's roads include the men's and women's marathon and triathlon.
An explosion in the use of mobile phones to access the Internet and take and send photos and video has made London 2012 the first true "social media Games", but also put pressure on the networks. The host broadcaster, the BBC, is enabling fans to see many events live on their smartphones.
Mobile operators and infrastructure companies had said they expected to be able to meet the extra demand.
The IOC spokesman said it appeared the problem lay with oversubscription on one particular network, and talks had taken place in an attempt to share more of the data. "It's a network issue, and it is that which we are working on," he said.
Official 2012 Olympic communications services provider BT, Vodafone and O2, owned by Spain's Telefonica, said they had not seen any network problems.
BT says it has provided four times the network capacity of the 2008 Beijing Games to meet the increased demand, laying enough cable to stretch between London and New York.
O2, subcontracted by BT to provide mobile services within the Olympic Village, suffered a glitch this month when a third of its customers were hit by a 24-hour network failure.
Steven Hartley at Ovum Telecoms Strategy said at the time that, while mobile capacity was being upgraded at transport and crowd hotspots, spikes in demand at peripheral sites could prove disastrous.
Television coverage is in the hands of the Olympic Broadcasting Services, created by the IOC to ensure uniform coverage at all Games.
The IOC spokesman conceded that asking people not to send messages at key moments "may not have an awful lot of effect".
By: My HolidaysLTC Tour Europe, Singapore LTC Tour, LTC Portblair Tour
LTC Tour Europe you will be able to shop for Bhutanese handmade artifacts and textiles. During the tour, you will get to see many monasteries and the mini zoo. Make sure you are appropriately dressed for the monastery. When you arrive in Paro you will be greeted by the beautiful sight of the Himalayas. Your Bhutan holiday will include a pleasant hike to Taktshang Monastery. The valleys of Punakh and Gangtey are civilized with cultivation and well populated region in Bhutan. Travel among valleys is easier now with the highway and development of roads. Your Bhutan tour will take you to recent and old fortresses and monuments built by kings and queens of the valley. Punakha is also the place of the residence of the monastery order during winter. You can have a nice picnic on the banks of the Punak chhu before returning to the hotel.
LTC Tour Europe is very important to book your holiday well in advance. This will ensure you get confirmed booking no matter where you go in India. If you think a visit to Bhutan is not enough, try the north India golden triangle as well. This way you get to see more than one region of this vast country. Most importantly, ask for your Bhutan holiday itinerary. You must have a list of hotels and numbers with you at all time. Ensure that your trip is packed with sightseeing, treks and hikes as well as some adventure. An all round tour will include a visit to the river valleys of Paro and Wang Chhu. Bhutan is the perfect place for a couple or the annual family vacation. It is a beautiful land very close to perfect paradise. A Bhutan holiday will take you to a picturesque land of the thunder dragon.
LTC Tour Europe is dotted with plenty of Buddhist monasteries and temples. The locals are peace loving. A Bhutan tour will include trips to the city of Thimpu and Gangtey. The luxurious open spaces are welcoming for anyone who comes from the hustle and bustle of the city. Visit punakha which is the confluence of two rivers. Here you can opt to spend the night in the comfortable hotel. Ensure you are provided with an English speaking guide to take you to the best places possible and show you the true Bhutan. Bhutan has only one city which runs an airport. This in itself shows how slow paced and calm this country is. If you are looking for calm and uninterrupted vacationing, then travel to Bhutan which is the right place to visit to get away. A very interesting place to visit is Paro.
LTC Tour Europe monastery which has now been restored or take a drive to Chela La Pass. All in all savour the beauty of the outdoors by foot. A Bhutan holiday is best experienced through long treks and excursions. Make sure you are well equipped for the outdoors in the right kind of clothing and shoes. Bookings online for your Bhutan holiday are quick and save you the hassle of running back and forth to your travel agent. You can get discounted rates on larger family groups or honeymoon packages. If you have something specific in mind remember to tell you online agent so that they can set it up for you. While booking feel free to ask for hotel details, travel details and important information pertaining to your travel to Bhutan. It is important to make all queries before you make the final booking.
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How To RelaxBy: Graeme Smith | Jul 28th 2012 - It seems to be universally accepted that we all live incredibly busy lives these days and that is can sometimes be difficult to switch off. With this in mind, this article gives you a few ideas as to how best to relax for a while.
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Off The Disney PathBy: Robert Nickel | Jul 28th 2012 - Everyone knows that Orlando, Florida is the home of Disney World and Universal Studios, but what if you've done that already? Are there other attractions to see in the big city? Of course there are; here are a few things to see that are most cer ...
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Food To Try When Visiting PeruBy: Terry Philips | Jul 28th 2012 - One of the highlights of travelling anywhere is tasting the various foods and drinks that are specialties of each particular country or region. Not only is this just plain fun as well as delicious, it is also a great way to learn something about ...
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Food To Try When Visiting ArgentinaBy: Terry Philips | Jul 28th 2012 - One of the highlights of travelling anywhere is tasting the various foods and drinks that are specialties of each particular country or region. Not only is this just plain fun as well as delicious, it is also a great way to learn something about ...
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Book Your Tour Vacation From A Discount Travel WebsiteBy: Lisa Steinway | Jul 28th 2012 - When you are looking for a tour, the first place to check is online discount travel sites. On these sites, you will be able to compare deals from many travel providers, and know that you are getting the best price available.
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Fantastic Vacations With Tucan TravelBy: Tracy Narvaez | Jul 28th 2012 - Vacation packages of all sorts are available for individuals as well as groups. They also provide stimulating Expedition Cruises for those seeking adventure. There are over 470 different choices of all types and to various amazing destinations f ...
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Booking A Holiday With Air Canada VacationsBy: Lisa Steinway | Jul 28th 2012 - Air Canada is Canada's oldest and largest commercial carrier. With its extensive reach and long experience of serving travelers, you can be sure that booking a holiday with Air Canada Vacations will bring an exciting and memorable holiday. Air C ...
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Embracing North IndiaBy: Gets holidays | Jul 28th 2012 - India is the land of versatility and in this versatile soil, there is something or the other for everyone. The land is blessed with snow capped mountains, the golden beaches, dry sand dunes or deserts, the pristine emerald backwaters and the bea ...
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Helpful Packing Hints For ShippersBy: Christine Richard | Jul 28th 2012 - When you are shipping a small or a large item across town, across the state, across the country or across the globe, it is absolutely essential that you are careful in getting your item packed carefully so it can be delivered in one piece.
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BELLA laser achieves world record power at 1 pulse per secondPublic release date: 27-Jul-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Paul Preuss paul_preuss@lbl.gov 510-486-6249 DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
As Berkeley Lab's laser plasma accelerator project BELLA nears completion, its drive laser has delivered 1 petawatt a quadrillion watts of peak power once each second, a world record for laser performance
On the night of July 20, 2012, the laser system of the Berkeley Lab Laser Accelerator (BELLA), which is nearing completion at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), delivered a petawatt of power in a pulse just 40 femtoseconds long at a pulse rate of one hertz one pulse every second. A petawatt is 1015 watts, a quadrillion watts, and a femtosecond is 10-15 second, a quadrillionth of a second. No other laser system has achieved this peak power at this rapid pulse rate.
"This represents a new world record," said Wim Leemans of Berkeley Lab's Accelerator and Fusion Research Division (AFRD) when announcing the late-night success to his team. Leemans heads AFRD's Lasers and Optical Accelerator Systems Integrated Studies program (LOASIS) and conceived BELLA in 2006.
"My congratulations to the BELLA team for this early mark of success," said Berkeley Lab Director Paul Alivisatos. "This is encouraging progress toward a future generation of smaller and far more efficient accelerators to maintain our nation's leadership in the tools of basic science."
"Congratulations to all of you on this spectacular achievement," said Stephen Gourlay, Director of AFRD. "It doesn't seem that long ago that BELLA was just a dream, and now there is even more to look forward to. Thank you all for the hard work and support that made this a reality."
Leemans says, "BELLA will be an exceptional tool for advancing the physics of laser and matter interactions. The laser's peak power will give us access to new regimes, such as developing compact particle accelerators for high-energy physics, and tabletop free electron lasers for investigating materials and biological systems. As we investigate these new regimes, the laser's repetition rate of one pulse per second will allow us to do 'science with error bars' repeated experiments within a reasonable time."
The BELLA design draws on years of laser plasma accelerator research conducted by LOASIS. Unlike conventional accelerators that use modulated electric fields to accelerate charged particles such as protons and electrons, laser plasma accelerators generate waves of electron density that move through a plasma, using laser beams to either heat and drill through a plume of gas or driving through plasma enclosed in a thin capillary in a crystalline block like sapphire. The waves trap some of the plasma's free electrons and accelerate them to very high energies within very short lengths, as if the accelerated electrons were surfing on the near-light-speed wave.
LOASIS reported its first high-quality electron beams of 100 million electron volts (100 MeV) in 2004 and the first beams of a billion electron volts (1 GeV) in 2006 in a sapphire block just 3.3 centimeters long. Planning for BELLA began shortly thereafter.
The BELLA laser is expected to drive what will be the first laser plasma accelerator to produce a beam of electrons with an energy of 10 billion electron volts (10 GeV). Before being converted to other uses, the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center achieved 50 GeV electron beams with traditional technology, but required a linear accelerator two miles long to do it. By contrast, the BELLA accelerator is just one meter long, supported by its laser system in an adjacent room.
"LOASIS know-how in assembling our own laser systems allowed us to specify the laser requirements and specifications we'd need to achieve reliable, stable, tunable 10 GeV beams with short warm-up time," Leemans says. "U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu said that new tools lead to new science, the kind BELLA is specifically designed to do. "
The BELLA laser system has already demonstrated compressed output energy of 42.4 joules in about 40 femtoseconds at 1 Hz. Its initial peak power of one petawatt is twice that of lasers recently said to produce pulses more powerful than that consumed by the entire U.S. "at any instant in time." "Instant" is the operative word, since the BELLA laser's average power is just 42.4 watts, about what a typical household light bulb uses. The enormous peak power results from compressing that modest average power into an extremely short pulse.
Developed by Thales of France, whose team at Berkeley Lab was led by Francois Lureau, and installed in facilities constructed at Berkeley Lab, the BELLA laser system is fully integrated with Berkeley Lab equipment and personnel protection systems. It is expected to rapidly improve upon its first record-breaking performance and will soon be able to deliver the powerful pulses needed to create 10-billion-electron-volt electron beams in an accelerator just one meter long. Experiments to demonstrate BELLA's ability to attain 10-GeV beams will begin this fall.
###
More about BELLA is at http://newscenter.lbl.gov/feature-stories/2009/12/22/accelerators-tomorrow-part2/ and http://www.lbl.gov/publicinfo/newscenter/features/2008/apr/af-bella.html.
More about LOASIS is at http://loasis.lbl.gov/, http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/AFRD-GeV-beams.html, and http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/AFRD-laser-wakefield.html.
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory addresses the world's most urgent scientific challenges by advancing sustainable energy, protecting human health, creating new materials, and revealing the origin and fate of the universe. Founded in 1931, Berkeley Lab's scientific expertise has been recognized with 13 Nobel prizes. The University of California manages Berkeley Lab for the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science. For more, visit www.lbl.gov.
DOE's Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit the Office of Science website at science.energy.gov/.
Thales is a global technology leader with a unique capability to design, develop, and deploy equipment, systems, and services that meet the most complex requirements. Thales has operations around the world working with customers as local partners.
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BELLA laser achieves world record power at 1 pulse per secondPublic release date: 27-Jul-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Paul Preuss paul_preuss@lbl.gov 510-486-6249 DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
As Berkeley Lab's laser plasma accelerator project BELLA nears completion, its drive laser has delivered 1 petawatt a quadrillion watts of peak power once each second, a world record for laser performance
On the night of July 20, 2012, the laser system of the Berkeley Lab Laser Accelerator (BELLA), which is nearing completion at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), delivered a petawatt of power in a pulse just 40 femtoseconds long at a pulse rate of one hertz one pulse every second. A petawatt is 1015 watts, a quadrillion watts, and a femtosecond is 10-15 second, a quadrillionth of a second. No other laser system has achieved this peak power at this rapid pulse rate.
"This represents a new world record," said Wim Leemans of Berkeley Lab's Accelerator and Fusion Research Division (AFRD) when announcing the late-night success to his team. Leemans heads AFRD's Lasers and Optical Accelerator Systems Integrated Studies program (LOASIS) and conceived BELLA in 2006.
"My congratulations to the BELLA team for this early mark of success," said Berkeley Lab Director Paul Alivisatos. "This is encouraging progress toward a future generation of smaller and far more efficient accelerators to maintain our nation's leadership in the tools of basic science."
"Congratulations to all of you on this spectacular achievement," said Stephen Gourlay, Director of AFRD. "It doesn't seem that long ago that BELLA was just a dream, and now there is even more to look forward to. Thank you all for the hard work and support that made this a reality."
Leemans says, "BELLA will be an exceptional tool for advancing the physics of laser and matter interactions. The laser's peak power will give us access to new regimes, such as developing compact particle accelerators for high-energy physics, and tabletop free electron lasers for investigating materials and biological systems. As we investigate these new regimes, the laser's repetition rate of one pulse per second will allow us to do 'science with error bars' repeated experiments within a reasonable time."
The BELLA design draws on years of laser plasma accelerator research conducted by LOASIS. Unlike conventional accelerators that use modulated electric fields to accelerate charged particles such as protons and electrons, laser plasma accelerators generate waves of electron density that move through a plasma, using laser beams to either heat and drill through a plume of gas or driving through plasma enclosed in a thin capillary in a crystalline block like sapphire. The waves trap some of the plasma's free electrons and accelerate them to very high energies within very short lengths, as if the accelerated electrons were surfing on the near-light-speed wave.
LOASIS reported its first high-quality electron beams of 100 million electron volts (100 MeV) in 2004 and the first beams of a billion electron volts (1 GeV) in 2006 in a sapphire block just 3.3 centimeters long. Planning for BELLA began shortly thereafter.
The BELLA laser is expected to drive what will be the first laser plasma accelerator to produce a beam of electrons with an energy of 10 billion electron volts (10 GeV). Before being converted to other uses, the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center achieved 50 GeV electron beams with traditional technology, but required a linear accelerator two miles long to do it. By contrast, the BELLA accelerator is just one meter long, supported by its laser system in an adjacent room.
"LOASIS know-how in assembling our own laser systems allowed us to specify the laser requirements and specifications we'd need to achieve reliable, stable, tunable 10 GeV beams with short warm-up time," Leemans says. "U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu said that new tools lead to new science, the kind BELLA is specifically designed to do. "
The BELLA laser system has already demonstrated compressed output energy of 42.4 joules in about 40 femtoseconds at 1 Hz. Its initial peak power of one petawatt is twice that of lasers recently said to produce pulses more powerful than that consumed by the entire U.S. "at any instant in time." "Instant" is the operative word, since the BELLA laser's average power is just 42.4 watts, about what a typical household light bulb uses. The enormous peak power results from compressing that modest average power into an extremely short pulse.
Developed by Thales of France, whose team at Berkeley Lab was led by Francois Lureau, and installed in facilities constructed at Berkeley Lab, the BELLA laser system is fully integrated with Berkeley Lab equipment and personnel protection systems. It is expected to rapidly improve upon its first record-breaking performance and will soon be able to deliver the powerful pulses needed to create 10-billion-electron-volt electron beams in an accelerator just one meter long. Experiments to demonstrate BELLA's ability to attain 10-GeV beams will begin this fall.
###
More about BELLA is at http://newscenter.lbl.gov/feature-stories/2009/12/22/accelerators-tomorrow-part2/ and http://www.lbl.gov/publicinfo/newscenter/features/2008/apr/af-bella.html.
More about LOASIS is at http://loasis.lbl.gov/, http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/AFRD-GeV-beams.html, and http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/AFRD-laser-wakefield.html.
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory addresses the world's most urgent scientific challenges by advancing sustainable energy, protecting human health, creating new materials, and revealing the origin and fate of the universe. Founded in 1931, Berkeley Lab's scientific expertise has been recognized with 13 Nobel prizes. The University of California manages Berkeley Lab for the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science. For more, visit www.lbl.gov.
DOE's Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit the Office of Science website at science.energy.gov/.
Thales is a global technology leader with a unique capability to design, develop, and deploy equipment, systems, and services that meet the most complex requirements. Thales has operations around the world working with customers as local partners.
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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.
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There are numerous benefits to being in shape. Suit folks are more healthy, convey more vitality, and total stay beyond other people. If you want to obtain your whole body fit, then observe the health and fitness recommendations from the report below.
If you?re lucky enough to reside close to your neighborhood food store, an easy way to obtain a workout is simply to walk on the retail store on your own day time off of rather than using your automobile. Get a basket once you?re inside? getting a cart will make it easy to decide on far more goods than it is possible to hold. You could always make multiple trips, or bring the family so everybody can pick up several hand bags.
Plan to go walking for 45 a few minutes a day as an alternative to 30. Wandering for 45 minutes or so has been scientifically confirmed by Duke School to lead to excess fat and weight reduction. This may identical up to 30 lbs of weight reduction annually only for an extra fifteen minutes each day. For max weight reduction, consider jogging up a slope instead of down.
Fishing is lb for lb one of the better techniques for getting fit. Fishing burns up an infamously wide range of unhealthy calories, over almost every other sport. Since swimmers are usually in water, their inside temp gets cooled in a short time. In the majority of sports there exists a habit to overheat from periods of very long physical exercise swimmers are less likely to overheat as they are in normal water. Thus, for usually the quite hard core swimmers, the level of calorie consumption they burn is exceptionally great.
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As noted at the beginning of this post, there are a lot of positive things which come from getting match. The actual physical positive aspects are apparent, but it will provide you with far more electricity to get using your day along with an total better frame of mind and frame of mind. Using the recommendations provided in this article can get you on the right track.
Officials from several local and federal law enforcement agencies discuss the arrest of a Maryland man who allegedly made threats, and was found to have weapons and thousands of rounds of ammunition.
By M. Alex Johnson, NBC News
Updated at 3:08 p.m. ET: Police arrested a Maryland man and recovered numerous guns from a home Thursday night after he allegedly made threats referring to the Joker this week.
Pat Collins of NBC Washington and Michael Kosnar of NBC News contributed to this report by M. Alex Johnson of NBC News. Follow M. Alex Johnson on Twitter and Facebook.
Julie Parker, a spokeswoman for the Prince George's County police, said Friday that?authorities had "thwarted a terrorist threat."
Prince George's County Police Chief Mark Magaw said the man, whom authorities identified as Neil Edwin Prescott, 28, of Crofton, Md., made a threat toward his employer, Pitney Bowes, in two phone calls to his supervisor Monday. Prescott was upset about losing his job and said: "I am the real Joker, and I'm going to blow everyone up," McGaw said.
Prescott was fired from his job as a subcontractor at Pitney Bowes, an office supply company, on an unrelated matter, the company said.
Magaw said police took the threats very seriously "in light of what happened in Aurora" ? a reference to the shooting deaths last week of 12 people in Aurora, Colo., at a screening of "Batman: The Dark Knight Rises." The suspect in that shooting, James Eagan Holmes, ?reportedly told police "I am the Joker" after he was arrested.
Prince George's County Police
Authorities display the cache of weapons found in Neil Edwin Prescott's home.
A police database showed that Prescott had 13 guns registered in his name. Officers from the Anne Arundel County police, the Prince George's County police and the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives obtained a warrant and searched his home in Crofton, about 25 miles from Washington, on Thursday night.
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Ashan Benedict of the ATF's Baltimore division said at a news conference that investigators 25 firearms, including semiautomatic rifles and pistols, and several thousand rounds of ammunition from the home. Magaw said that when they arrived, Prescott was wearing a shirt that read, "Guns don't kill people, I do."
Police evacuated part of the apartment building and arrested Prescott without incident, they said. He hasn't been charged and was undergoing a medical evaluation Friday at the Anne Arundel County Medical Center.
Authorities detailed the weaponry in Prescott's home in their search warrant:
4 30-round magazines
2 shotguns
1 Beretta .40-cal handgun
1 Ruger .45-cal handgun
2 KAHR 9mm handguns
1 Beretta 9mm handgun
2 Sig Sauer P226 handguns
1 Browning Arms handgun
2 Mauser rifles
1 FN Herstal rifle
1 Ruger 357 handgun
1 Night scope
100 rounds 12 remington
40 large steel boxes of ammo of various calibers
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Hollywood director and screenwriter who won an Oscar for Dog Day Afternoon
In Sunset Boulevard, William Holden's character remarks: "Audiences don't know somebody sits down and writes a picture. They think the actors make it up as they go along." Given the difficulties in quantifying their contributions, screenwriters seldom get the recognition they deserve. Frank Pierson, who has died aged 87, wrote the screenplays for 10 films but his reputation rests on Cat Ballou (1965), Cool Hand Luke (1967) and Dog Day Afternoon (1975), all of which gained him Academy Award nominations, with the last of them winning the Oscar for best original screenplay.
Yet most of the plaudits for Dog Day Afternoon went to Sidney Lumet, the director, and Al Pacino, the star. Pierson, whose work had as much to do with structure and character as dialogue, shaped the script from a Life magazine article about a bungled bank robbery that took place on a hot summer's day in New York in 1972. At first, Pierson found it difficult to write about the man played by Pacino: "It took me several months before I was able to conceive of him, because until you have a character whose motivations you understand, there's no way of writing him consistently."
Much of the film's anti-establishment tone (including the repetition of the countercultural war cry "Attica!", in reference to the 1971 Attica prison riots) and its intensity (it takes place over a single afternoon and evening), derives from the script, as does the humour and complexity of Pacino's character (he attempts the robbery to pay for his gay lover's sex change operation).
Pierson was born in Chappaqua, New York, the son of Harold Pierson, an entrepreneur, and Louise Randall Pierson, a proto-feminist writer, portrayed by Rosalind Russell in the 1945 film Roughly Speaking, which was based on her autobiography. Pierson served in the army during the second world war, then went to Harvard, where he received a degree in cultural anthropology. Following a spell as entertainment correspondent for Time magazine, he moved to Hollywood, where he wrote 11 episodes (1959-61) of the television horse opera Have Gun ? Will Travel. He was soon given a chance to write a movie script. The screenplay of Cat Ballou, written with the more experienced Walter Newman, kept the structure of Roy Chanslor's novel, The Ballad of Cat Ballou, from which the movie was loosely adapted.
Directed by Elliot Silverstein, Cat Ballou was an amusing spoof western starring Jane Fonda, with Lee Marvin in a double role as a murderous hired gun and his twin brother, a grizzled alcoholic old gunfighter who, when informed that his eyes are bloodshot, replies: "You ought to see 'em from my side." Marvin, allowed to exploit his hitherto untapped comic gifts, won the Oscar for best actor. The film started a mode for comic westerns, a genre that had been moribund since the days of Bob Hope.
Pierson was then brought in by Silverstein to doctor the script of The Happening (1967), about a gangster (played by Anthony Quinn) who is kidnapped by hippy beach bums. In the same year, he was co-credited as writer on Cool Hand Luke, with Donn Pearce, who wrote the original novel.
One of the key American films of the period, directed by Stuart Rosenberg and starring Paul Newman in the title role, Cool Hand Luke was a violent but less dark and more irreverent chaingang movie than most. Particularly memorable was the contest in which Luke eats 50 hardboiled eggs on a bet, and the brutal boxing match between the hero and his nemesis, fellow convict Dragline (George Kennedy), which seems to interpret Luke's masochism as his invincible spirit. Dragline is no one-dimensional brute, and comes to admire his adversary. "That's my darlin' Luke," he says. "He grin like a baby, but he bites like a gator." Another line, delivered to Luke by the prison captain (Strother Martin), proved resonant: "What we've got here is ? failure to communicate." Spoken first by a redneck, it has a humorous effect. Newman repeats the line at the film's climax.
Pierson then directed his first feature, The Looking Glass War (1969), based on John le Carr?'s cold war spy novel. His screenplay, in keeping with the demands of a young audience, changed the novel's hero, a retired, ageing Polish spy, into a young Polish hustler (played by 28-year-old Christopher Jones, a counterculture star at the time), eager to defect to the west so he can live in London with his pregnant girlfriend (Susan George). The ably directed film benefited greatly from a sterling British cast including Ralph Richardson and Anthony Hopkins.
Pierson's first collaboration with Lumet was The Anderson Tapes (1971), an intriguing heist movie starring Sean Connery, and arguably the first film to cover the subject of surveillance devices. After the triumph of Dog Day Afternoon, Pierson had the misfortune to be involved with Barbra Streisand and her producer boyfriend Jon Peters on A Star Is Born (1976), the second remake of the 1937 William Wellman movie, with a contemporary soundtrack. This collaboration, on which Pierson was director and fifth screenwriter, was detailed in an article in the Village Voice entitled My Battles with Barbra and Jon, one of the most revelatory behind-the-scenes accounts of film-making. Unfortunately, his battles, mainly with the temperamental star, resulted in a defeat, as the film turned out to be a vanity project, though Streisand was impressive belting out the tunes.
Pierson's third and last film as director was King of the Gypsies (1978), which offered a fascinating glimpse into an exotic folklore. Because he was busy serving as president of the Writers Guild of America (1981-83) and working as a television producer, it was 11 years before he returned to screenwriting with Norman Jewison's In Country (1989), a rather sentimental, meandering tale starring Bruce Willis as a disturbed Vietnam veteran. Pierson managed to maintain the tension in his script for Alan J Pakula's Presumed Innocent (1990), an engrossing thriller based on Scott Turow's bestseller and featuring Harrison Ford.
Pierson, who was president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences from 2001 to 2005, ended his career on a high as consulting producer on the television series Mad Men.
His first two marriages, to Polly Stokes and Dori Derfner, ended in divorce. He is survived by Helene, whom he married in 1990, and his children, Michael and Eve, from his first marriage.
? Frank Romer Pierson, screenwriter, producer and director, born 12 May 1925; died 22 July 2012
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Investors are still digesting yesterday's rare disappointing earnings announcement from Apple.
For now, the stock is down around 5% in pre-market trading.
But this could be a big buying opportunity, according to Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty.
In a brand new note titled Near-Term Pain Offset By Long-Term Gain, Huberty writes:
"Owning AAPL ahead of iPhone product cycles pays off. AAPL shares increased 30% on average and outperformed the S&P 500 by 27% on average in the three months leading up to prior iPhone product announcements. We expect similar strong performance ahead of iPhone 5 which we believe will feature LTE connectivity and a new form factor (thinner, new casing). While weaker than expected Jun/Sept Q results are disappointing near-term, it potentially sets up for even stronger sequential results in the December quarter."
Huberty reiterated her buy rating and $720 price target on the stock, which represents a potential 25 percent return.? Her bull case price target is $960.
Revenue came in at $35 billion versus the analysts' expectations for $37 billion.? Earnings per share came in at $9.32 versus expectations for $10.36.
The reason for the disappointment seems to be a shortfall in iPhone sales.? But as SAI's Jay Yarow put it, Apple's excuse for the miss can be summarized in two words: fall transition.? This is the idea that consumers are holding off on iPhone purchases until the new one comes out, which is a sentiment shared by Huberty.
SEE ALSO: JP Morgan Thinks One Of These 15 Companies Could Be The Next Apple >
Moving quickly after allegations of cheating surfaced, actress Kristen Stewart, 22, and "Snow White and the Huntsman" director Rupert Sanders, 41, have issued very public apologies for the cheating scandal that surfaced after photos of the two of them in a close embrace were leaked.
One of the great things about summer cooking, of course, are all the fresh vegetables for salads of all kinds, including pasta salads.? However, in my own experience, there are times when I don't have the time to shop and chop, or I've simply run out of time and need a quick pot luck salad that tastes so good people don't necessarily notice the missing fresh cucumbers that are de riguer in summer pasta salads.
I think of this as one of my tricks or cheats and smile as I simply say "thank you" to the compliments anytime I show up with this dish.? All it takes is a few ingredients hanging out in the pantry as my "Oh crap, I forgot I needed to make something for work!" saviors.
Most of the pasta salad recipes I've seen and made call for either bottled Italian or Creamy Italian dressing or a home-made version.? My personal?quirk is to use a wonderful dressing made here in the Ozarks by Ott's, originally born as a small cafe in Carthage, Missouri on Historic Route 66.? The restaurant went out of business but the Mr. Ott began bottling his famous dressing, named appropriately?Original Dressing (a red, sweet vinaigrette unlike anything else!) and now bottle more than 34 dressings?along with?a line of BBQ sauces for Branson, Missouri's Silver Dollar City theme park.?
Last Minute Pantry Pasta Salad with Vidalia Onion Dressing
Recipe by Glenna Anderson Muse
Ingredients:
12 oz (dry)?tri-colored Rotini pasta or other pasta shape
1??? 14 oz can artichoke hearts, drained and quarterred
1?? 14.5 oz jar diced tomatoes with green chilis, drained
1???2 oz jar pimentos, drained
1?? 6 oz jar marinated mushrooms, drained and quatered
1?? 4.25 oz can sliced black olives, drained
1 tsp dried parsley
Optional:??2 oz sliced of pepperoni, cut in half (I keep this in the freezer so usually have it on hand)
1?cup? Ott's Vidalia Onion dressing or Vidalia Onion Dressing of your choice.
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Directions:
1) In large pot, boil pasta to al dente. Drain in colandar and spray with cold water to stop cooking process.? Drain well
2)? In serving bowl, combine pasta with rest of ingredients and mix well.? Chill for 2 hours prior to serving.
Welcome to the land of good complexions, whiny mopeds and surprisingly early Canon hands-on videos. While English-speaking journos have only been given the briefest glimpse of the new $800 mirrorless EOS M, Italian site PMStudioNews has posted a full hands-on video to YouTube. It shows a red variant of the 18-megapixel, APS-C shooter, in addition to the black and white models we've already seen, plus a beige leather case if you fast-forward around seven minutes. More importantly though, it shows off the touchscreen UI in some detail, including touch-to-shoot and a screen layout that looks quite different to what we've known from the button- and dial-heavy G1 X and its predecessors. Sure, it offers full manual control, but it also looks kinda fiddly -- something we'll look out for when it comes to review time in the Fall.
In this week?s episode of Slate?s sports podcast Hang Up and Listen, Stefan Fatsis, Josh Levin, and Mike Pesca discuss the NCAA penalties against Penn State, including a $60 million fine and a four-year postseason ban. They also talk about Adam Scott?s collapse at golf?s British Open and the rise of the long putter. And with the Olympics just a few days away, they preview the 2012 London Games: the opening ceremony, the politics, the best events for poor countries to invest in, and the prospects for USA basketball.
Friday night?s PBS Newshour had a feature story on the protests in California over the installation of digital electricity meters in the PG&E distribution monopoly service territory. These protests focus on two separate issues: one is a claim that the wireless communications from the meters create electromagnetic fields that harm health, and the other is a claim that the digital meters are a privacy threat and make it easier for PG&E and the local, state, and federal governments to access individual electricity consumption data.
I?ve been following these stories closely since they started in 2010, and if you haven?t been following them, this analysis provides a good summary.
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Public release date: 27-Jul-2012
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