employ splintery: August 2012

Thursday, August 30, 2012

There is 'will' to strengthen euro: Merkel in China

German leader Angela Merkel said Thursday there was "absolute political will" to strengthen the euro, as she held talks with China's premier Wen Jiabao on the eurozone crisis.

"I told Premier Wen that very many reforms are going on now, and that there is an absolute political will to turn the euro into a strong currency again," Merkel told reporters after meeting Wen.

Wen said at a joint press conference held by the two leaders that he was reassured by Merkel's comments on the euro, and that China would continue to invest, but he cautioned that the road to recovery would not be smooth.

"China has always had confidence in the eurozone, and we are happy to see greater use of the renminbi by European countries in trade and economic transactions," he added, referring to China's currency.

Europeans have expressed the hope that China could deploy some of its foreign exchange reserves -- the world's largest -- to invest in European Union bailout funds, although there is little sign of this happening yet.

With the nearly three-year-old eurozone debt crisis showing signs of spreading to China, the world's second largest economy, Beijing views Germany as a key player in tackling the problem.

The two will also be looking to bolster economic ties, with reports emerging that China has signed a $3.5 billion deal with Airbus.

Leading several ministers and a high-powered business delegation, Merkel met Wen at the start of her two-day trip, during which the German chancellor will also travel to an assembly plant of European planemaker Airbus in nearby Tianjin city.

"China and Germany, both as major economies and... manufacturing and exporting giants, have been working together to address the crisis," Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Song Tao wrote in the state-run China Daily newspaper.

"This bilateral relationship... has gone beyond a bilateral scope and acquired global significance."

Germany is China's top trade partner in the EU with nearly half of all European exports to China coming from Germany. Meanwhile, nearly a quarter of all EU imports from China land in Germany.

Bilateral trade between the two powers reached $169 billion in 2011, an 18.9-percent rise on the previous year.

"Germany is an export-oriented economy, while China has the largest market in the world," Song said, adding the two nations could cooperate on emerging industries, infrastructure and renewable energy, among other areas.

Merkel was also expected to raise non-economic issues with Wen, including sensitive topics such as the Syrian crisis and human rights and press freedom in China.

China has joined Russia in repeatedly using their vetoes to scuttle UN Security Council resolutions aimed at tackling the deadly conflict in Syria, putting them at odds with western powers.

Merkel is likely to raise the issue of the freedom of the press with Wen following complaints by German journalists who say the difficulties of reporting in China are increasing.

Before this visit, German journalists working in China wrote a letter to Merkel saying authorities in Beijing had been "wilfully obstructing" their work by threatening not to renew their visas and intimidating local assistants.

A German official confirmed that the topic of human rights would also be on the agenda, amid pressure on Merkel to raise the issue of Tibet.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/germanys-merkel-due-china-eurozone-talks-215317444.html

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Boeing tests CST-100 parachute protector

ScienceDaily (Aug. 29, 2012) ? The Boeing Company recently completed a jettison test of its forward heat shield, which will protect the parachutes of the company's CST-100 spacecraft during future missions to and from low Earth orbit. The forward heat shield jettison will start the parachute deployment sequence and provide a safe landing for the capsule and its crew members. The test was part of Boeing's work supporting its funded Space Act Agreement (SAA) with NASA's Commercial Crew Program (CCP) during Commercial Crew Development Round 2 (CCDev2).

"Without the parachutes, the crew wouldn't survive landing. We need to slow them down to a safe landing velocity," said Mike Burghardt, director of Spacecraft Development for Boeing's CST-100. "It is key to be able to get that forward heat shield released at the right time so we can deploy the parachutes."

Testing of the composite-based forward heat shield took place at Bigelow Aerospace's headquarters outside of Las Vegas on June 5, 7 and 11. Surrounded by dry mountain air, Burghardt and his team set up a series of high-speed and high-definition cameras to capture the shield's deployment, a sequence that begins with four piston-like thrusters firing at an altitude of between 20,000 and 30,000 feet. Once the thrusters fire, they are designed to push the shield out of the way of the spacecraft, allowing the drogue parachute to deploy to stabilize the descending crew module followed by the three main parachutes.

During the test, accelerometers and strain gauges measured the shocks and loads that were transmitted during the deployment sequence. The team also tested the ability to jettison the forward heat shield if one of the thrusters were to fail. The thrusters connect to the forward heat shield using breakaway joints, which are designed to fail if one of the thrusters did not fire during re-entry.

"The joint is designed so it won't break when exposed to nominal loads. However, if we did have a thruster failure case, the joint would break to allow the heat shield to be jettisoned from the spacecraft," Burghardt said.

The shield is an adaptation of what Boeing used for its Apollo moon capsules and is similar to the design NASA's Orion spacecraft will use for human exploration missions to deep space.

In March 2011, the agency signed a $92.3 million SAA with the company for the continued development of its Crew Space Transportation (CST), which is a reusable, capsule-shaped spacecraft designed to carry up to seven people, or a combination of people and cargo to low Earth orbit. Optional milestones valued at $20.6 million also were approved and will be completed later this year.

Boeing also tested the CST-100 service module propellant tanks on July 2 to make sure they can handle the extreme requirements of a launch abort scenario.

"The earlier you can do testing and the more testing you do accelerates what you learn," Burghardt said. "There's nothing like building something and then going to test it to find something you didn't think you knew about or you didn't remember."

Boeing will have the opportunity to conduct more testing on its CST-100 during NASA's Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCap) phase, which began earlier this month with three American companies that are advancing integrated spacecraft and launch vehicle designs. Boeing partnered with United Launch Alliance to integrate its capsule with an Atlas V rocket for launches to complete its integrated Commercial Crew Transportation System. CCiCap will set the stage for a crewed orbital demonstration mission in 2016, the start of operations that will lead to providing commercial transportation services to the agency to send crews to the International Space Station.

For more information about NASA's Commercial Crew Program, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/commercialcrew

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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/8ePpXdtWxxA/120829150157.htm

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Wanna Be Startin' Somethin' Entrepreneurial? This MBA Program ...

There's no shortage of pop culture-inspired college classes?we're still trying to forget the Twilight English class and the fact that James Franco got to design a college class on himself? but here's some good news for Michael Jackson fans. On what would have been Jackson's 54th birthday comes news that this fall the MBA program at Clark Atlanta University, a historically black college and university in Atlanta, will be offering a fascinating new course on the business side of the King of Pop.

According to The Grio, the class, titled "Michael Jackson: The Business of Music" will be taught by prominent entertainment attorney James Walker and will explore how Jackson ran his empire, including how he negotiated and ran "tours, record deals, and merchandising," as well as "how he revolutionized legal practices related to entertainment copyrights, trademarks, licenses," and his dealings "in TV, real estate, film and music publishing." Walker, who has taught at several universities, says his "goal is to help students who have an interest or future desire to work in the entertainment industry," and provide students "with a comprehensive understanding of the music industry and the business mechanics involved.

Walker's not alone in believing people should learn from the business that was Michael Jackson. Forbes writer Zack O'Malley Greenburg is currently working on a book, Michael Jackson, Inc., that, like Walker's class, will detail how Jackson made plenty of money over his lifetime, and was a shrewd businessman and investor?hello, Beatles catalog!?but he also spent like crazy, paid out settlements to child molestation accusers, and had well-publicized financial difficulties that left him in significant debt at the time of his death.

That debt is a thing of the past since Jackson's estate has earned nearly half a billion dollars over the past three years, "more than any single living musician earned over the same period of time," says Greenburg. The folks Greenburg's talking to say that much of that success is due to "smart business decisions" that Jackson "made early in his career." Sounds like there are definitely lessons from Jackson's life that every business student would be wise to learn.

Source: http://www.good.is/post/wanna-be-startin-somethin-entrepreneurial-this-mba-program-has-a-course-based-on-michael-jackson/

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Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Many suspected ineligible CO voters US citizens

DENVER (AP) ? Nearly a third of people whose citizenship and right to vote were questioned by Colorado's secretary of state are actually U.S. citizens, election officials said Wednesday, prompting Democrats to question the motives behind the effort to clean up voting rolls as a tightly contested presidential election approaches.

Earlier this month, Republican Secretary of State Scott Gessler sent letters to nearly 4,000 people questioning their citizenship as part of a plan to have them voluntarily withdraw or confirm their eligibility to vote.

State officials were able to run 1,400 of those names through a federal immigration database and found that more than 1,200 were U.S. citizens. So far, they've found none who are non-citizens and registered to vote.

Martha Tierney, an attorney for the Colorado Democratic Party, told election officials during a meeting Wednesday that they were wasting their time on a small group of voters instead of focusing on ensuring a fair and accurate fall election.

"This is a witch hunt and you should be embarrassed that you're going down this road," she said.

Gessler's office plans to release updated figures on Thursday detailing how many of the 4,000 people responded directly to affirm their citizenship or withdraw their voter registration. He said no further action will be taken involving people who did not respond to the letters.

Democrats have criticized the effort to correct the voting rolls and said it could disenfranchise legal voters or make it difficult to exercise their right to vote. More than three-quarters of the letters went to Democrats and independent voters.

Gessler denies any political motivation and insists his goal is to maintain accurate voter rolls. His office said it did not look at party registration when sending the letters.

Gessler spokesman Rich Coolidge said that ensuring only eligible voters cast ballots is an important component of running a successful election.

"As the state's chief election official, he is obligated to make sure that only eligible voters are casting ballots," Coolidge said before the hearing. "We identified a vulnerability in the system, we identified people who exploited, or accidentally exploited that vulnerability, and we're going to shut down that loophole."

Still, critics have questioned Gessler's political motivations in a year where both major parties see Colorado as key to winning the presidential election. Control of the state Legislature and competitive congressional races are also at stake.

Across the country Republicans have aggressively pursued initiatives to verify voters' citizenship, particularly in swing states, much to the ire of Democrats who worry that key parts of their base ? Latinos and seniors ? are likely to be disenfranchised.

Election chiefs in Iowa, Michigan, New Mexico and Ohio ? all expected to be competitive in November ? joined Colorado and other states asking the federal government for access to the database to verify citizenship. Colorado got access to the database last week.

Samantha Meiring, 37, a Colorado voter whose status was questioned, waved a letter as she told election officials Wednesday that she was speaking "as an immigrant and U.S. citizen who got a lovely little letter in the mail."

"I find it absolutely ridiculous that a U.S. citizen is being asked to jump through additional hoops to exercise a right to vote," said the registered Democrat, a South African immigrant who became a U.S. citizen in 2010. "I think you're chasing people that don't need to be chased."

A total of 1,566 letters went to Democrats and 1,794 went to unaffiliated voters. Another 486 letters were sent to Republicans.

Using information from the department of motor vehicles, Gessler identified people who once presented documents showing they were not citizens, such as a green card, when applying for a driver's license. It's unclear whether those people registered to vote by accident while getting a driver's license or when approached by someone as part of registration drive.

Gessler's office provided The Associated Press with the party affiliation of people who received the letters but denied a request to see their names, citing an ongoing investigation.

Democrats and voting advocacy groups said Gessler has shown no proof of widespread fraud and overreached by sending the letters.

"They basically sent out the functional equivalent of an email blast," said Mark Grueskin, an attorney who represents Democrats on election issues.

The American Civil Liberties Union in Colorado said at least 25 eligible voters who got the letters have contacted the organization and the number is growing.

Democrats do not want Gessler to hold hearings for the fewer than 200 remaining people whose citizenship status hasn't been verified on the federal immigration database. They say further hearings are unnecessary because county clerks already have the power to handle challenges to voter registrations.

If Gessler's plan to hold hearings is approved by his office, people could start receiving a new round of letters as soon as next week notifying them that their citizenship is in doubt.

Deputy Secretary of State Suzanne Staiert said the goal is to keep accurate voter rolls, and that officials are working in the best interest of immigrants who may be unaware that they're breaking the law by being registered to vote or by voting.

"I understand that you think this is a very small percentage," she told opponents of the plan, "but for these people, this is their life."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/many-suspected-ineligible-co-voters-us-citizens-010504712.html

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Artists turn old prosthetic limbs into artworks

LONDON (AP) ? Prosthetics can change the life of an amputee. But when an old limb no longer fits or just gets worn out, it can be hard to part ways with an item that offered the liberating chance to jump, dance or simply walk.

Priscilla Sutton has a solution: turn these "pre-loved" limbs into artwork. The Australian curator came up with "Spare Parts London," an exhibition of altered prosthetics that has opened in time for the Paralympics, which start Wednesday.

"I was cleaning my home and I found two old legs in my cupboard," said Sutton, a below-the-knee amputee. "I thought it was a bit crazy to keep hoarding my legs."

The exhibition, which includes works by artists from Britain, Australia, the United States and Japan, comes as people are paying new attention to the devices.

Public awareness of prosthetics has been heightened by the popularity of double amputee Olympic sprinter Oscar Pistorius, the South African known as the "Blade Runner." The exhibition will showcase the "Cheetah" ? the carbon fiber running leg Pistorius uses that has a flex foot designed to replicate the hind leg of the fastest animal on land.

The show also displays arms and legs hanging from the ceiling and others in glass cabinets. A creation by British artist Rachel Ball features a little girl's leg covered in colorful crochet and painted with henna on the foot.

"It reflects the original owner's personality," Sutton said.

Since coming up with the idea, 33-year-old Sutton has collected prosthetics donated by amputees, their families or health services around the world.

"I got a box of arms from the NHS (Britain's National Health Service)," she said.

Owners change their prosthetics for a variety of reasons, including wear and weight fluctuations. For kids, the stump changes as they grow. For adults, muscles sometimes waste away.

While many keep their limbs for sentimental reasons ? parents might keep the first leg of their children, for example ? many limbs also end up on the scrap heap.

Sutton hopes the art show will lead to an open conversation about prosthetics, but others argue there are better uses for them.

"It seems an odd way to showcase it," said Penny Broomhead, a physiotherapist specializing in rehabilitation for amputees. "I would rather people look at it in a more practical point of view."

Broomhead thinks a better use for old prosthetic limbs would be to send them to developing countries, where their components could potentially provide prosthetics to those who can't afford them.

"Spare Parts London" marks the second time Sutton has used legs and arms as artwork, after a 2010 show on the same theme in Brisbane, Australia.

Sutton said the earlier exhibition made people ask questions they never dared to ask before, such as whether she sleeps with her leg. (The answer is no).

Sutton was born without a fibula in her right leg and the doctors wanted to amputate. Her family left it up to her.

"In my twenties, I took the decision to chop it off because it was getting worse and worse," she said. "It was the best decision of my life and I never looked back."

After her operation, Sutton had her leg cremated.

"It was a good form of closure," she said.

She has two "spare parts:" An "everyday" leg covered with a design by American pop surrealist artist Marc Ryden and a sports leg that displays a traditional Japanese print with gold flowers and cherries.

The curator said the exhibition was a therapeutic experience to produce.

"I think it's a wonderful way to celebrate and share my love of prosthetics," she said.

___

"Spare Parts London" is at The Rag Factory, Brick Lane, in London until Sept. 9.

___

Online: http://spareparts2012.com/

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/artists-turn-old-prosthetic-limbs-artworks-064805604--oly.html

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ACE, workhorse of NASA's heliophysics fleet, is 15

ScienceDaily (Aug. 29, 2012) ? The Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE) is Earth's vanguard. Orbiting around a point 900,000 miles away between Earth and our sun, this satellite is ever vigilant, recording the combination of radiation -- from the sun, from the solar system, from the galaxy -- that streams by. None of this radiation can harm humans on Earth, but the biggest bursts of particles from the sun can flow into near-Earth space causing a dynamic space weather system that can damage satellites and interfere with radio communication transmissions and navigation systems.

When one of these bursts of solar material -- known as a coronal mass ejection or CME -- erupts from the sun toward Earth and passes ACE, the instruments onboard the spacecraft observe the increase in particles and automatically transmit this information to publicly available websites within five minutes. This offers a crucial advance warning of some 20 to 60 minutes to those who need to protect their technology from the effects of space weather, such as satellite operators, airplane pilots and utility companies.

ACE is, therefore, a crucial component of NASA's fleet, but its job as sentinel is, in fact, just a small piece of what ACE has accomplished since it launched on August 25, 1997. In its first 15 years, the spacecraft has helped determine the composition of the vast sea of flowing particles surrounding Earth. ACE also serves as a sentinel that helps measure the input -- the solar wind -- that drives the dynamics of the magnetosphere.

"We knew ACE would help with space weather monitoring, but fundamentally, it's a science mission," says Eric Christian, the deputy project scientist for ACE at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "It's called a 'composition' explorer, because one of its main goals was to identify and study all the components of space radiation."

To tease out the various components of these space particles, ACE's nine instruments were designed to observe the wide range of particles in space, differentiating between various elements, energies and charges. ACE had two jobs: figure out where different kinds of particles originated and how they got an extra kick of speed, since a large number of the individual particles in space are traveling faster than scientists would expect based solely on the temperature of the material, suggesting that additional acceleration processes must be at work.

Based on ACE data over its first 15 years, we now have a much better understanding of the zoo of space particles and what causes their motion. The slowest particles with the lowest energy come from the solar wind, traveling at speeds of about 200 to 500 miles per second. Much quieter and less explosive than CME's, the solar wind nonetheless displays a complex and dynamic flow. For example, as high speed solar winds course off the sun, they can over take slower winds, and create shock waves to form giant, spinning eddies known as co-rotating interaction regions (CIRs) and these CIRs are an important component in accelerating particles.

Higher energy particles, known as solar energetic particles or SEPs, come from the sun, driven by fast CMEs and solar flares. These solar eruptions create what's called interplanetary shocks -- much like a bow shock from a plane -- that force the particles ever faster through space. These shocks can travel long distances, continuing to occur even as they pass by ACE, allowing scientists to study the acceleration processes in situ.

Particles also fly past ACE from the outer edges of the solar system and even from interstellar space. "Pickup" ions are believed to be created when neutral atoms from the galaxy collide with solar ultraviolet light or the solar wind to make charged particles. ACE cannot see the neutral atoms, per se, but can observe the pickup ions they create. Finally, at very high energies are the galactic cosmic rays, thought to be accelerated by shock waves from supernova explosions in our galaxy.

All of this information about different types of particles and what causes their acceleration contributes to our understanding of the giant space weather system of material and magnetic energy that surround the sun, Earth and the planets. By improving our understanding of that system, scientists can make even better use of the constant updates ACE provides about what solar energy is headed our way.

ACE science has also gone beyond the heliosphere. By observing galactic cosmic rays, the spacecraft has also advanced astrophysics understanding of how elements are created in supernovae. It is known that the intense heat from a supernovae -- the giant explosion at the end of a star's life -- fuses smaller elements into larger ones. The makeup of cosmic rays suggest that most of them come from the concentrations of massive stars in certain areas, galactic superbubbles, which are regions where many supernovae explode within a few million years. Recent observations of a cocoon of freshly accelerated cosmic rays in the Cygnus superbubble by the Fermi gamma-ray observatory support this theory.

Although there has been some degradation in ACE's instruments, fuel and power are sufficient to keep it functioning for another decade. Not only will this help keep ACE in place to take space-weather measurements, but it also lays the groundwork for continued science on how the sun's energy and the solar wind affect our near-Earth space.

As missions such as NASA's Radiation Belt Storm Probes (RBSP), due to launch at the end of August 2012, the Magnetospheric Multiscale mission (MMS) due to launch in 2014, and the Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms (THEMIS), launched in 2007, seek to understand how Earth's magnetosphere responds to incoming energy, it is ACE, lying outside the magnetosphere and facing the sun, which can describe what input from the sun caused those changes.

For more information about ACE, visit: http://www.srl.caltech.edu/ACE/

For the latest Space Weather Now (including ACE measurements) from NOAA, visit: http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/SWN/index.html