2012年4月27日星期五

Young drove in 112 runs for the Twins in 2010

As his teammates prepared Friday evening for their series opener at Yankee Stadium, Tigers outfielder Delmon Young was arraigned in a Manhattan courtroom, accused cheap louis vuitton sunglasses of a hate crime. Police said he used an anti-Semitic slur against four men and tackled one of them. Young, 26, was intoxicated during an early morning physical confrontation with the men outside the Hilton New York along Sixth Avenue, Detective Joseph Cavitolo, a New York police spokesman, told the Free Press. The misdemeanor charge — aggravated harassment — is punishable by up to a year in jail. The charge was submitted as a hate crime "because of a belief and perception regarding … religion (and) religious practice," according to the court document filed Friday night. Just before he was released on a $5,000 bond, Young issued a statement apologizing and saying he wants to "improve myself as a person and player." "I sincerely regret what happened last night," Young's statement read, which was released through his attorney, Daniel Ollen, and a New York-based public relations firm. "I apologize to everyone I affected, the Ilitch family, the Detroit Tigers' organization, my teammates, my family and the great Tigers fans that have supported me since Day One," the statement continued. "I take this matter very seriously, and assure everyone that I will do everything I can to improve myself as a person and player." Young's statement did not specifically address the allegations. Ollen, his attorney, also released a statement, saying, "There are many false allegations" in the case. "I am confident that the legal process will separate fact from fiction and discredit these reports," it read. According to police, the confrontation began about 2:30 a.m. after a group of four men spoke with a panhandler wearing a yarmulke outside the hotel. "They have a discussion, and the panhandler leaves," Cavitolo told the Free Press. According to court documents and police, the anti-Semitic slur and the physical exchange came next: Words were exchanged between Young and the men, at which point Young allegedly said, "You bunch of (expletive) Jews." Taylor OK'ed phrasing> Young, listed at 6 feet 3 and 240 pounds, pushed and shoved one of the men, then tackled him to the ground, causing minor injuries to the man's elbow. Young then followed the man, 32, into the hotel's lobby. It was not immediately clear whether the man, who refused medical attention, is Jewish, Cavitolo said. Called to the scene, police interviewed witnesses and the victim. A short time later, police said Young was sent to a nearby hospital because he was intoxicated. He was returned to police for fingerprinting and paper work. He was escorted into a police car from the building — amid a knot of reporters — about 11 a.m. As details of the allegations developed during the day, the Tigers officially said little, citing club policy not to comment on pending legal matters. At Yankee Stadium, manager Jim Leyland deferred all questions about Young to Dave Dombrowski, the Tigers' president and general manager, who was expected to talk before the game but didn't. Asked how the incident might affect his lineup, Leyland louis vuitton lady vest wouldn't address the question, simply stating that his lineup was already posted outside the clubhouse. He had inserted Don Kelly into leftfield — Young's position — and he used newcomer Brad Eldred as his designated hitter. Because of the pending legal situation and alleged involvement of alcohol, none of Young's teammates would address the matter, either. For those same reasons, Major League Baseball is unlikely to suspend Young or take any other disciplinary action — at least until the legal issues are resolved. Baseball precedent, however, suggests that Young likely will go through professional evaluation in the sport's Employee Assistance Program. This probably will be similar to what baseball had Tigers third baseman Miguel Cabrera do after his drunken driving arrest in spring training last year. "We are looking into the situation, but because it is a police matter, we cannot comment further," said Pat Courtney, spokesman for Major League Baseball. On Thursday night, the Tigers traveled to New York after a 1-6 home stand. They are staying at the Hilton New York on Sixth Avenue — also known as the Avenue of the Americas. The hotel is a favorite spot for professional sports teams. Only five blocks north of Times Square, the hotel is one of the city's largest. By day, it bustles with tourists and the business activity of Midtown. By night, it is home to dozens of sidewalk food vendors, many of them selling chicken kabobs and halal food. One vendor, who wanted to remain nameless, said that, on most nights, say between 2:30 and 3 a.m., especially from Thursday to Saturday, patrons spill from nearby bars and pubs and queue up at the trucks, looking for something hot and spicy. The food vendors set up on both sides of Sixth Avenue at 52nd Street, just across from the hotel entrance. The Tigers acquired Young from Minnesota on Aug. 15 in their push to win the American League Central. The deal sent minor leaguer Cole Nelson and a player to be named (another minor leaguer, Lester Oliveros) to the Twins. Young played leftfield for the Tigers, homered in his first at-bat and helped boost the offense down the stretch as the Tigers won their first division title since 1987. In 40 games, he drove in 32 runs and hit eight home runs. In the playoffs, he added five more homers. In the off-season, the Tigers signed Young to a one-year contract worth $6.75 million. He will be a free agent after this season. Dombrowski said after the 2011 season: "It's not a priority" to try to sign Young to a multi-year deal during the off-season. "We want him to be with us (longer) and get a feel for him. He only joined us for a short time. We would rather have him be with us and go from there." Young drove in 112 runs for the Twins in 2010, with 21 homers and a .298 average, but he had only 32 RBIs in 84 games in 2011 before he was traded to the Tigers. So far this season, Young has batted fifth, behind superstars Cabrera and Prince Fielder. Like most of his teammates, Young has struggled at the plate in recent weeks. He is hitting .242 with only one homer and five RBIs in 18 games. He went a combined 0-for-10 with two walks in his last three games, all losses to the Seattle Mariners. Young, a right-handed hitter born in Montgomery, Ala., was the No..1 pick in the 2003 draft, selected by Tampa Bay. He received notoriety for an April 2006 incident in the minor leagues. After a called third strike, he whipped his bat and hit the umpire on the arm. He was Louis vuitton for women shoes 2012 new arrival on sale black suspended 50 games. Young's older brother, Dmitri, played five seasons for the Tigers. The club let him go less than a month before it made the playoffs in 2006.

2012年4月26日星期四

By looking at specific neurons in this part of the brain

Birds are famously good navigators. Some migrate thousands of miles, flying day and night, even when the stars are obscured. And for decades, scientists have known Louis Vuitton shoes, cheap louis vuitton sunglasses sale, 60% off that one navigational skill they employ is an ability to detect variations in the earth’s magnetic field. How this magnetic sense works, however, has been frustratingly difficult to figure out. Now, two researchers at Baylor College of Medicine, Le-Qing Wu and David Dickman, have solved a central part of that puzzle, identifying cells in a pigeon’s brain that record detailed information on the earth’s magnetic field, a kind of biological compass. “It’s a stunning piece of work,” David Keays of the Institute of Molecular Pathology in Vienna wrote in an e-mail. “Wu and Dickman have found cells in the pigeon brain that are tuned to specific directions of the magnetic field.” Their report appeared online in Science Express on Thursday. Kenneth Lohmann at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who also studies magnetic sensing, said in an e-mail that the study was “very exciting and important.” Navigating by magnetism includes several steps. Birds have to have a way to detect a magnetic field, and some part of the brain has to register that information; it seems likely that another part of the brain then compares the incoming information to a stored map. The Baylor researchers have offered a solution to the middle step. They identified a group of cells in the brainstem of pigeons that record both the direction and the strength of the magnetic field. And they have good, but not conclusive, evidence to suggest that the information these cells are recording is coming from the bird’s inner ear. Dr. Dickman said this research “is still something we want to pursue.” They did not work on the third step, but Dr. Dickman said a good candidate for the location of that map was the hippocampus, the brain region involved louis vuitton brooch in memory of locations in both birds and humans. A well-known and often-mentioned study of London taxi drivers showed that experienced drivers with a mental map of London had a hippocampus larger in one area than people without their experience. In some birds that hide seeds and return later to their caches with astonishing accuracy, the hippocampus grows and shrinks seasonally, presumably as they map their hiding spots. Efforts to understand the magnetic sense in birds have gone in several directions. Some researchers have offered evidence for chemical reactions in the eyes sensitive to magnetic signals, while others have looked at neurons in the beak containing minute amounts of magnetite, a mineral that is affected by magnetic fields. Just a few weeks ago, Dr. Keays and colleagues reported in the journal Nature that the idea of neurons in the beak was a nonstarter. There were indeed cells with magnetite, but they were not neurons. The magnetic sense remained a mystery. The Baylor researchers did a kind of step-by-step tracking of what areas in pigeons’ brains were responding to variations in an artificial magnetic field that they created. They focused on activity in the brainstem, one of the most primitive parts of the brain, partly because in earlier work they had shown that this area of the brain received signals from a part of the inner ear. By looking at specific neurons in this part of the brain, the researchers found that the bird’s orientation determined which neurons were active. Each neuron was tuned to respond to signals from one direction. The neurons also registered the strength of the magnetic field. Other brain regions are also active in response to magnetic stimulation and may be involved in the magnetic sense, Dr. Dickman said. And although he does not provide an answer to how birds detect magnetism, the research clearly falls on one side of a debate over whether magnetite is involved, or whether chemical reactions in the eye may be the key. Dr. Keays said the research gave strong support Louis vuitton shoes discount for women sale outlet to the magnetite idea and the hypothesis that “a population of undiscovered magnetoreceptive cells reside in the pigeon’s ear.” As Dr. Lohmann said, the discovery “will no doubt inspire much additional work in the future.”

2012年4月25日星期三

The originator is probably the same changing wind patterns

Most of the ice being lost from Antarctica is going louis vuitton sunglasses as a result of warm water eating the fringes of the continent, scientists say. The researchers used a satellite laser to measure the thinning occurring on ice shelves - the floating tongues of ice that jut out from the land. The team's analysis found the shelves' shrinkage could not be attributed simply to warmer air temperatures. Rather, it is warm water getting under the floating ice to melt it from below. This is leading to a weakening of the shelves, permitting more and more ice to drain from the continent's interior through tributary glaciers. Previous studies have already indicated that warmer waters are being driven towards the continent by stronger westerly winds in the Southern Ocean. The researchers say the new understanding has major implications for their ability to reliably project future sea-level rises as a result of Antarctic ice loss. "What we realise now is that we're looking at a very sensitive system," Dr Hamish Pritchard, from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), told BBC News. "Previously, you would have thought that we needed a lot of warming in the atmosphere to get a substantial loss of ice from Antarctica - because it's such a cold place. But louis vuitton men bags what we show is that that's not necessary; you don't need radical change. "All you need are quite subtle changes - such as a change in the winds - and that can produce effects at the edges of Antarctica that then lead to a loss of a lot of ice." The research is published in the journal Nature but has also been presented here at the European Geosciences Union (EGU) meeting in Vienna, Austria. Weaker shelves Pritchard's team used the laser altimeter on Nasa's Icesat spacecraft to map the changing thickness in 54 ice shelves around Antarctica. The survey incorporated some 4.5 million data points between 2003 and 2008. The researchers draw on modelling work and information from a range of other studies to explain the thinning observed by Icesat. Twenty of the shelves were assessed to be being melted from below by warm ocean currents. Most of the 20 are in West Antarctica, and show thinning up to seven metres per year. In every single case, the glaciers on land that feed into these shelves have recorded accelerated movement over the same period. This will have drained many billions more tonnes of ice into the ocean, contributing to sea level rise. The explanation, simply put, is that the shelves Classic lv sunglasses outlet 2012 new sale online discount no longer have the strength to impede glacier flow in the way they once did. "When ice shelves completely collapse - and we've seen that before - the grounded glaciers behind them will speed up; we know that," explained co-author Helen Amanda Fricker of Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, US. "But what this study is showing, which is very new, is that you don't need to lose the shelf entirely for this to happen; just a reduction in the thickness of the ice shelf is enough to allow more of the grounded ice behind it to flow off the continent." Future scenarios One key tell-tale that warm water is at the root of the thinning is shape of the sea-floor. Some of the greatest melting has been seen where deep troughs cut across the continental shelf, allowing the water easier access to the shelves' undersides. The picture is not uniform all around Antarctica. Indeed, on the peninsula - the long stretch of land pointing towards South America - the shelves show a different set of thinning symptoms, which very probably can be tied to a warming atmosphere. But again, the originator is probably the same changing wind patterns. "Strong westerlies go up over the chain of the peninsula mountains and these winds descend, they warm up, melting the surface of the shelves on the eastern side. So, although we have two different melting mechanisms, the ultimate cause is the same - it's the wind," said Dr Pritchard. Colleague and co-author Prof David Vaughan said the research provided new understanding to help scientists gauge the likely impact of future ice loss on ocean height. "This is one study within a programme called ice2sea, which is a European Union-funded programme that's aimed at improving our projections of sea-level rise. "The idea is that we go and study some of the processes that are causing ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica to change, and that allows us to improve the models burberry ties for projection of future sea level rise." The ice2sea project will be releasing its projections into the 21st and 22nd centuries later this year.

LA police officers hit him more than 50 times with their batons

We saw his face a bloody, pulpy mess. And in 1992, when the four Los Angeles police officers who beat him after a traffic stop were acquitted, it touched off louisvuitononline anger that affected an entire generation. Now, 20 years later, this is the face of Rodney King, and this is what has happened to him in the interim. He's been a record company executive and a reality TV star among many other things. To millions of Americans, though, he will always be either a victim of one of the most horrific cases of police brutality ever videotaped or just a hooligan who didn't stop when police attempted to pull him over. He's indisputably the black motorist whose beating on a darkened LA street led to one of the worst race riots in American history. It's been an up-and-down ride for King since he went on television at the height of those riots and pleaded in a quavering voice, "Can we all get along?" He's been arrested numerous times, mostly for alcohol-related crimes. In a recent interview with The Associated Press he said, "I still sip, I don't get drunk." He has been to a number of rehab programs, he said, www.louisvuitononline.com including the 2008 appearance on "Dr. Drew" Pinsky's "Celebrity Rehab" program. Still, he was arrested again just last year for driving under the influence. It was his fear of being stopped for drunken driving on March 3, 1991, King said, that initially led him to try to evade police who attempted to pull him over for speeding. After he did stop, four LA police officers hit him more than 50 times with their batons, kicked him and shot him with stun guns. A man who had quietly stepped outside his home to observe the commotion videotaped most of it and turned a copy over to a local TV station. After a jury with no black members acquitted the officers on April 29, 1992, the city's black community exploded in rage. Fifty-five people died, more than 2,000 were injured over three days. King received a $3.8 million settlement from the city, but said he lost most it to bad investments, among them a hip-hop record label he founded that quickly went broke. He makes money these days taking part in events like celebrity boxing matches. He's also promoting his just-published memoir, "The Riot Within: My Journey From Rebellion to Redemption." A tall, physically imposing man who is disarmingly louis vuitton online friendly, self-effacing and soft-spoken, King, 47, maintains he is happy. "America's been good to me after I paid the price and stayed alive through it all," he says. "This part of my life is the easy part now."

2012年4月24日星期二

It is due continue its science observations until 2017

It is like a huge snowball fight and it is taking cheap beats by dr dre place in the outer Solar System around Saturn. Scientists working on the Cassini probe have witnessed small clumps of ice ploughing through one of the gas giant's main rings - its F-ring. As they plunge through, the km-sized ice balls leave glittering trails behind them referred to as mini-jets. Some of these collisions trace quite exotic shapes Monster Beats Studio MLB Milwaukee Brewers in the F-ring that look like barbs on a harpoon. The research has been presented here at the European Geosciences Union (EGU) meeting in Vienna, Austria, by Carl Murray, a Cassini imaging team member based at Queen Mary University of London, UK. The F-ring is the outermost of Saturn's main rings. It is located 3,000km beyond the bright A-ring and has a circumference approaching 900,000km. The Cassini imaging team had been watching the 40km-wide Prometheus moon dance along the edge of this ring for some time. The moon's gravitational perturbations regularly produce channels and ripples in the F-ring, and it was known some of the disturbed ice particles could clump together. But it was assumed collisions or tidal forces in their orbit around Saturn would soon break these clumps apart. "We know that Prometheus, as well as producing louis vuitton shoes regular patterns, is capable of producing concentrations of material in the ring," Prof Murray explained to BBC News. "We just call them large snowballs, and if these things can survive - because Prometheus will come around to the same part of the F-ring again and interact with them again - they may grow, and maybe these are what form the moonlets that collide with the core of the F-ring." Cassini's archive of pictures would certainly seem to suggest they can survive and play their own game in the F-ring. The discovery was somewhat lucky. It was while observing Prometheus one more time that Prof Murray and colleagues noticed a jet in the ring that could not have been formed by the moon or by a quasi-moon referred to simply as S6, which is known to cross right through the ring gucci sunglasses on occasions. And when the team examined 20,000 images stretching back over Cassini's seven years at Saturn, the researchers found 500 examples of similar rogue jets. System simulation It is clear the ice balls collide with the F-ring at slow speed - about two meters per second. The jets they produce in their wake are about 40-180km long. In some instances, it is the jets of lone rogues that are seen. In other cases, there is evidence that groups of ice balls have ploughed through the F-ring en masse to produce a series of jets. Saturn's rings are composed primarily burberry outlet of water ice. Although the rings extend some 140,000km from the centre of the planet, their average thickness is far less than 100m. Apart from their great beauty, scientists are fascinated by the rings because they can be used as a model to study Solar System formation. Some of the behaviours seen in the rings are probably very similar to the ones that occurred in the disc of material that collected around the infant Sun more than four and a half billion years ago, and which eventually gave rise to the planets, Saturn included. "The rings of Saturn are simply our closest example burberry bags of an astrophysical disc," Prof Murray told the BBC. "We're trying to understand the processes going on in Saturn's rings because they're direct analogues for processes that went on in the early history of not only our Solar System but other planetary systems as well. "These are discs of gas and louis vuitton handbags dust where larger objects form and start influencing the material around them, and then the whole system evolves." Cassini is a cooperative mission between the US, European and oakley sunglasses Italian space agencies. The spacecraft entered into orbit around Saturn in 2004. It is due continue its science observations until 2017, when it will then be commanded to destroy itself in the atmosphere of the gas giant. Scientists are keen to avoid any chance Buy beige burberry watches discount on sale 2012 fashion that parts of Cassini will end up on Saturn's moons Enceladus or Titan (targets of interest in the search for extraterrestrial life) and contaminate them with any Earth bugs that have survived all these years on the spacecraft.

2012年4月23日星期一

I played with him when he came back to Texas

There's no doubt about how Ranger fans fell about now retired catcher Ivan "Pudge" Rodriguez. That affinity for the 10-time Gold Glove backstop was more than apparent before Beats by dr dre, cheap monster beats headphones outlet Monday's series opener with the New York Yankees. But some say the true mark of a player's impact has on the game is in what his peers say about him. And like the fans, Pudge definitely left a lasting impression on not only those he was teammates with during his 21 seasons in the majors, but also on those he played against. And for a number of current members of the Yankees, including skipper Joe Girardi, seeing one of the greatest catchers to ever don the chest protector call Monster Beats Studio Manchester United it quits had them waxing philosophical about how great Rodriguez truly was. "Tremendous player, one of the greatest catchers of all time. It was enjoyable to have a chance to play against him, for a short time to manage him," Girardi said before Monday's game in Arlington. "It's remarkable what he did on the offensive side, seeing that he played here in the heat that he had to deal with on a consistent basis-2,800 plus hits as a catcher is amazing." Not only is the current New York manager a former catcher himself, but he also has the somewhat perspective of having managed him in 2008, one year before he returned for a second stint as a Ranger. And when asked to specifically name what he remembers most about Rodriguez's short time in the South Bronx, he didn't hesitate in the least. "Just how he went about his business [is what I remember the most]. He was very professional. He worked very hard and he was prepared. He did what you want from a starting catcher," Girardi said. The Yankee skipper also admits that in all his years in and around the great game he has never seen another catcher quite like the man known as Pudge. "Obviously he had great athletic ability back there. I think he could have played other positions," Girardi said. "He was extremely athletic, like Russell [Martin] in a sense, just put up good numbers year after year." However, it isn't just the man guiding the Bronx Bombers who offered kind words about what kind of player Rodriguez was in his over two decades in the show, some of the heavy hitters louis vuitton shoes on the Yankees, including several players who are locks to join him in the hallowed halls of Cooperstown in the near future, also weighed in. When many think of the recent history of Yankee baseball, they think of Derek Jeter and Pudge was definitely someone No. 2 continues to hold in the highest regard. "He had a great career. He could really change games from the catching position because he'd shut down running games. We didn't even try to run on him," Jeter said. "But he could do it all. He could hit, catch, played every day. He's going to go down as one of the greatest catchers of all time." Of course, the perennial All-Star shortstop savored his short time as Rodriguez's teammate in 2008, but he also remembers some pretty epic battles with Pudge. "We had some battles there when he was in Texas. When he was with the Marlins, we played them in the World Series [in 2003]," Jeter said. "He was a teammate for a little while, so there's a lot of stories. He's one of those guys I think when you retire, you sit back and say you had the privilege to play with him." Like Jeter and Rodriguez, Yankee closer gucci sunglasses Mariano Rivera is also a lock to enter the Baseball Hall of Fame once he decides to hang up the spikes. And like his teammates, the New York reliever has nothing but great things to say about his career. "Pudge was one of the elite catchers in his time. What he did was be the best at that position. He was able to do it for so many years and do it well," Rivera said. "We had him as a teammate. It was late [in his career]. Pudge did his thing and his presence on the field was notable. His will and desire to do the right thing, that's what you admire. He's special." Former Ranger and current Yankee outfielder Andruw Jones was never teammates with Rodriguez in New York, but he and Pudge did share the Ranger clubhouse for the tail end burberry bags of the 2009 season, a time the native of Curacao remembers fondly. "I played with him when he came back to Texas, a great guy. I knew Pudge from way before, playing against him and as a personal friend. He was always a great worker and he's a future Hall of Fame catcher," Jones said. "I wish him well. I know he wanted to reach that goal of 3,000 hits, but sometimes things just don't go the way you want them to go. But I wish him well and wish him the best. He's just a great person." Current New York catcher Russell Martin was with the Dodgers in 2008, when Rodriguez was a Yankee. And even though he didn't grow up aspiring to spend the bulk burberry outlet of his time behind the plate, he remembers Rodriguez as being someone who made the position of catcher quite appealing to him as a youngster in his native Canada. "The best way I can explain it, he was just someone that was fun to watch for me. I wasn't necessarily a fan of catchers growing up as a shortstop and a center fielder. But he was a catcher that was fun to watch and I don't remember another one that I thought that was," Martin said. "So that says a lot right there." And since Rodriguez was louis vuitton handbags someone he grew up watching, one aspect of Monday's pregame ceremonies the New York backstop was particularly looking to was seeing the highlight video the Rangers played before first pitch. "That's always cool. Hopefully they'll show some videos of him, what he was able to do back in the day. He's a guy that had a rifle from behind the plate and he made stuff happen on offense as well. He was an exciting offensive player and it'll be fun to see the fans and how they react to him. That's going to be pretty cool," Martin said. But there was one final Yankee to weigh in on Rodriguez and how he impacted the game. Eric Chavez might only be in his second season with the Bombers, but during his 13 seasons oakley sunglasses in Oakland, he got more than a little acquainted with the talented catcher. "Yeah, he was definitely a game changer, that's for sure. Probably him and [Mike] Piazza were the two best offensive players at the catcher position. Pudge just controlled the running game, completely shut it down, saved a lot of runs," Chavez said. "We'd always talk about he liked the pick off, so we wouldn't get good secondary leads. He did a lot more behind the plate than a lot of catchers could do." However, when he was asked if he'd ever been gunned down trying to steal or picked off by Rodriguez, he smiled before offering a quick explanation. "No [he never picked me off], because we Cheapest louis vuitton men t shirts sale white 2012 made it a point not to do it. We weren't a running team in Oakland anyway but we made sure that we were careful on the bases," Chavez said. "We just knew we weren't going to run that night."

2012年4月22日星期日

Raikkonen's Lotus teammate Romain Grosjean was third

LeBron James had 32 points and eight rebounds, louis vuitton shoes Norris Cole added 16 points and the Miami Heat pulled away in the final minutes to beat Houston 97-88 on Sunday night and eliminate the Rockets from postseason contention. Mike Miller scored 11 for injury-depleted Miami, which still has a mathematical chance of catching Chicago for the No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference playoffs. Joel Anthony added 11 for the Heat on 5-for-5 shooting. Chandler Parsons scored a career-high 23 for Houston, which led by as many as 13 in the first half. Parsons tied the game at 83 with a layup late in the fourth, before gucci sunglasses James' 3-pointer sparked an 8-0 run. Manu Ginobili scored 20 points to lead San Antonio to its seventh consecutive victory, beating Cleveland. The Spurs (47-16) moved 1½ games ahead of Oklahoma City, which lost to the Lakers earlier Sunday, in the race for the best record in the Western Conference. A victory over Portland on Monday would secure the top spot in the West for the Spurs, who own the tiebreaker over the Thunder. Cleveland (21-42) lost for the fourth time in its last five games despite the Spurs giving Tim Duncan the night off. With the playoffs right around the corner, the 35-year-old Duncan was the only active Spur not to play. CHARLOTTE, N.C. DeMarcus Cousins had 29 points and 10 rebounds, and Sacramento handed Charlotte its 20th consecutive loss. The Kings had lost nine of their previous 10 games, but this one was never in doubt as they scored 78 points in the paint and led by as many as 35 in the fourth quarter. Tyreke Evans was dominant while slicing his way through a non-existent Bobcats defense, hitting 10 of 11 shots from the field and finishing with 22 points. Kemba Walker had 13 points and 11 assists for burberry outlet the Bobcats, who are nearing the NBA record for futility. If the Bobcats (7-56) lose their final three games, they'll finish with the worst winning percentage in league history. AUBURN HILLS, Mich. — Reserve Ben Gordon scored 19 points, including the go-ahead basket, to help Detroit beat Toronto. Gordon's 3-pointer with less than 3 minutes to play broke a 68-all tie and he added four subsequent free throws to keep Detroit ahead. Rookie Brandon Knight also had 19 points to help the Pistons end a two-game losing streak. DeMar DeRozan had 16 for the Raptors, who lost their third straight. MINNEAPOLIS — Charles Jenkins had 24 points and nine assists while playing all 48 minutes to rally Golden State from a 21-point deficit to beat Minnesota. Brandon Rush scored 10 of his 19 points in the fourth quarter and also grabbed nine rebounds. Klay Thompson scored 17 points for the Warriors, who snapped an eight-game losing streak. Nikola Pekovic had 19 points and 16 rebounds, and JJ Barea had 14 points and 12 assists in all 48 minutes for the Timberwolves, who announced earlier that All-Star power forward Kevin Love would not play the final two games of the season because of a concussion. DENVER — JaVale McGee scored 17 points, throwing down a half-dozen dunks in the second half, and Denver pulled away to beat Orlando. Danilo Gallinari also scored 17, Arron Afflalo had 15 burberry bags and Ty Lawson 13 for the Nuggets, who swept the two-game season series with Orlando, avoiding the Magic's injured Dwight Howard both times. Ryan Anderson scored 24 points for the Magic, who lost their third straight. Glen Davis added 14 points for Orlando, which also lost guard Jameer Nelson to a calf injury. He left the game in the first quarter and did not return. The sun shined brightly on Denny Hamlin at Kansas Speedway. At the most opportune of times, too. Hamlin's car hooked up after the final pit stop Sunday, just as the sun broke through on an overcast afternoon, and he powered by Martin Truex Jr. for the lead. Hamlin then managed to hold off a late charge by Truex to win for the second time this season. "Whether it was coincidence or not," Hamlin louis vuitton handbags said, "our car definitely felt better when the sun came out. I felt the car lost a lot of grip, but I guess a lot of guys did." It was the Joe Gibbs Racing driver's first win at Kansas. "I felt all day I was behind the 56, and his car looked so superior to the whole field, and we just needed some kind of change -- the weather, an adjustment -- to make something happen," Hamlin said, smiling. "And we got both of them." Pole-sitter and South Bay native AJ Allmendinger placed 32nd, completing 257 laps in his Penske Dodge. He led the first 44 laps at the 11/2-mile oval but had problems with the fuel injection system. "It's just starting to feel like 'Groundhog's Day,' " he said. "I know I'm not the only one here frustrated. We all are. ... Our car was fast out front, and then the gremlins hit us." Jimmie Johnson was third for Hendrick Motorsports, which oakley sunglasses has failed in 14 tries to win the team's 200th NASCAR Sprint Cup race. Dale Earnhardt Jr. (seventh) and Kasey Kahne (eighth) also finished in the top 10, while Jeff Advertisement Gordon had engine trouble late and placed 21st. "I was just watching from the third spot, hoping those guys would give me an opportunity," Johnson said. "I just wish I was closer to those guys to race for it." Hamlin's best finish at Kansas had been third last year, and for most of Sunday he was content to ride around during long green-flag runs out of the spotlight. His car Cheapest louis vuitton men t shirts sale white 2012 kept getting better with each stop, though, and his Toyota finally took off at the end. Just as the sun finally poked through on an unseasonably cold day. "They didn't panic," team owner J.D. Gibbs said. "They paced themselves, and I'm glad the sun stayed out a little at the end." Truex dominated most of the day, leading 173 laps (out of 267). It was his third top-five finish of the season, but he's yet to win in 175 races. "Sorry guys, I lost this one for you," a despondent Truex radioed to his Michael Waltrip Racing team. Truex said his final set of tires cost him. He was monster beats the loosest he'd been all race, and that allowed Hamlin to charge into the lead. Formula One: Two-time world champion Sebastian Vettel held off Kimi Raikkonen to win the Bahrain Grand Prix, as the race was held without disruption by anti-government protests that turned violent in the days before the event. Pole-sitter Vettel led from start at the 3.36-mile Sakhir course for his first win of the season. Raikkonen worked his way up from 11th on the grid to finish 3.3 seconds behind for his first podium finish since returning to F1 this season. Raikkonen's Lotus teammate Romain Grosjean was third, followed by Vettel's Red Bull teammate Mark Webber. The race, which was canceled last year because of the unrest in the divided Gulf nation, had been overshadowed most of the week by clashes between riot police and anti-government demonstrators. The race itself, though, was held without a hitch, but because of the fears of trouble, the grandstands were half empty. Vettel's ride to his 22nd F1 win was fairly incident-free, as well. "It was an incredible race," said Vettel, who averaged 120.733 mph for 57 laps. "We had a very good start. I was able to pull away from the pack." It was a historic day for Lotus, as Raikkonen showed he Monster Beats Studio NFL San Francisco 49ers can still compete despite taking a two-year hiatus from F1 to compete in rally driving. "We gave ourselves a chance," said Raikkonen, the 2007 champion.

2012年4月20日星期五

Mike Conley had 18 points and seven assists as the Memphis Grizzlies

Polar bears, long thought to have branched off relatively recently from brown bears, developing their white coats, webbed paws and other adaptations over the last monster beats 150,000 years or so to cope with life on Arctic Sea ice, are not descended from brown bears, scientists report. Instead, according to a research team that looked at DNA samples from the two species and from black bears, the brown bear and polar bear ancestral lines have a common ancestor and split about 600,000 years ago. The report, published online on Thursday in the journal Science, is the latest attempt to understand the surprisingly murky origins of one of the most familiar animals on earth, and a potent environmental symbol because it is losing the sea ice it depends on to a warming climate. Because of climate change, and threats from shipping, hunting and pollution, the polar bear is listed as Monster Beats Studio NFL San Francisco 49ers “vulnerable,” one level below endangered, by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. The report comes to no conclusion about how sensitive the bears are to the current loss of the sea ice that they live on, and the evolutionary tale it presents can be read in different ways. The findings challenge the idea that the bears adapted very quickly, but confirm that they have made it through warming periods and loss of sea ice before. It louis vuitton shoes may have been touch and go for the bears, however, because the authors find evidence of evolutionary bottlenecks, probably during warm periods, when only small populations survived, even though warming was occurring much more slowly than it is now. The researchers, including Axel Janke and Frank Hailer of the Biodiversity and Climate Research Center in Frankfurt, compared DNA samples from 19 polar bears, 18 brown bears and 7 black bears. What they found, Dr. Hailer said, was that polar bears “are older and much more genetically unique” than had been thought. Other studies in the past few years suggested that the species was “a very recent offshoot from brown bears,” he said, dating from about 150,000 years ago. That calculation was based on DNA outside the cell nucleus known as mitochondrial DNA, which is passed on only through females, and so gives an incomplete picture of evolution. Dr. Hailer and colleagues looked at 14 stretches of nuclear DNA. This is the genetic material that comes from both parents and combines at conception to form a blueprint gucci sunglasses for a new individual. Charlotte Lindqvist, at the University at Buffalo, who was not involved in the study, was the lead author of a paper in 2010 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that looked at mitochondrial DNA and homed in on the 150,000-year time frame for polar bear origin, with the species splitting off from brown bears. She said in an e-mail that the new study “demonstrates that the two species do indeed represent separate lineages.” But she questioned whether the evidence was sufficient to provide a firm date for polar bear origins. Comparisons of the full genome in both species are needed, she said, to nail down the timing of polar bear evolution. For animals so well known, polar bears have been something of a puzzle in terms of their origins. Part of the reason is that they live mostly on sea ice,burberry outlet so fossils preserved on land are rare. So some questions have had to wait for modern techniques for reading genetic material that have made the DNA of living species as useful as any fossil bed for tracing evolution. But mysteries remain, some more puzzling than ever. Why does the mitochondrial DNA suggest a much more recent origin for polar bears? Dr. Hailer suggests that it is evidence not of the origin of the bears, but of interbreeding between polar and brown bears long after they evolved, perhaps burberry bags when the polar bears were driven to land because of sea ice loss. Another researcher, Beth Shapiro of Pennsylvania State University, suggested in a recent paper that interbreeding might have occurred in periods of environmental stress. In the journal Current Biology in 2011, Dr. Shapiro and a team of scientists reported that polar bears and extinct Irish brown bears interbred about 130,000 years ago, and that the brown bear mitochondrial DNA from that mating has spread to all polar bears over time. Dr. Hailer said that ice loss now could be far more threatening to polar bears than in the past because it is happening faster than ever before, and because the bears also face hunting and pollution. Stoudemire had missed New York's previous 13 games with a bulging disk. But even with him in the lineup, the Knicks couldn't handle the Cavs, who snapped a three-game losing streak and won for just the fourth time in 19 games. Stoudemire finished with 15 points louis vuitton handbags and Carmelo Anthony had 12 before sitting out the fourth quarter. Manny Harris had 19 points and 12 rebounds to lead the Cavs, and rookie Kyrie Irving scored 21 in his second game back from a shoulder injury. Harris banked in a desperation 3-pointer from 42 feet as the 24-second shot clock expired in the fourth to keep Cleveland comfortably ahead. Hawks 97, Celtics 92 ATLANTA — Joe Johnson scored 30 points, and the Atlanta Hawks edged the short-handed Boston Celtics 97-92 on Friday night to take a step toward landing homecourt advantage in the first round of the playoffs. The Hawks (38-25) are in line to be the No. 4 seed in the Eastern Conference, and Celtics (37-27) are on track to be No. 5. This, however, looked nothing like a playoff game early. Both teams shot over 50 percent and Atlanta took a 58-49 halftime lead while Boston guard Avery Bradley scored 17 of his career-high 28 points. Boston left Rajon Rondo, Ray Allen and Mickael oakley sunglasses Pietrus at home with injuries, and perennial All-Stars Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce made the trip to Atlanta but Celtics coach Doc Rivers rested both stars after playing 11 games in 15 days. CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Mike Conley had 18 points and seven assists as the Memphis Grizzlies beat Charlotte 85-80 on Friday night to extend the Bobcats' franchise-worst losing streak to 19 games. The Grizzlies overcame an eight-point deficit in the fourth quarter and then held on to get an important victory in terms of playoff seeding in the Western Conference. On the 25-year anniversary of Michael Jordan scoring an NBA playoff-record 63 points against the Boston Celtics, the team Jordan now owns took a step closer toward Cheapest louis vuitton men t shirts sale white 2012 cementing a dubious spot in league history. If the Bobcats (7-55) lose their final four games they will finish with the worst winning percentage in league history.

2012年4月19日星期四

The researchers say polar bears face

The polar bear is much older than previously louis vuitton shoes thought, according to new genetic evidence.

DNA studies suggest the Arctic predator split from its ancestor, the brown bear, about 600,000 years ago.

Previous estimates put the polar bear at about 150,000 years old, suggesting the mammal adapted very rapidly to Arctic life.

Conservationists say the new study, published in Science, has implications for bear conservation.

Polar bears are listed as threatened under the US gucci sunglasses Endangered Species Act.

Conservationists say their survival is at risk, mainly due to the loss of the Arctic sea ice on which they spend much of their lives.

Dr Frank Hailer of the German Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre in Frankfurt, who led the international study, said the genetic information shed new light burberry outlet on conservation issues.

"It fundamentally changes our understanding of polar bears and their conservation today," he told BBC News.

"They have survived previous warm phases but they carry scars from these times - they must have been close to extinction at times."
Nuclear DNA

The researchers looked at DNA from modern bears to study the history of the species, analysing genetic information from the cell nucleus of more than 40 brown, black and polar bears.

Past work has relied mainly on mitochondrial DNA, the burberry bags fragments of genetic material contained within tiny cell components called mitochondria.

The latest findings suggest the polar bear evolved in the mid Pleistocene, about 600,000 years ago. This scenario paints a new picture of the bear's evolutionary history.

The mammal would have had more time to colonise and adapt to life in the high Arctic, and lived through various cycles of warming and cooling.

The polar bear's lack of genetic louis vuitton handbags diversity suggests that changes in the environment, such as warm phases, led to dramatic falls in numbers at times.

The researchers say polar bears face many other threats to their survival today, including habitat destruction, hunting and the effects of environmental pollutants.

Writing in Science, they explain: "Although polar bears oakley sunglasses have persisted through previous warm phases, multiple human-mediated stressors (eg habitat conversion, persecution, and accumulation of toxic substances in the food chain) could magnify the impact of current climate change, posing a novel and likely profound threat to polar bear survival."

Commenting on the research, Dr Steven Amstrup, chief scientist of Polar Bears International, said he suspected the age of the polar bear was Cheapest louis vuitton men t shirts sale white 2012 not entirely settled yet.

Even if they did split from their ancestor 600,000 years ago, they would have lived through only two periods noticeably warmer than today, he said, and spent most of their existence in cooler times.

He added: "It's continuing evidence that polar bears are monster beats solo adapted to a cold environment and they haven't experienced anything of the warming that we are likely to experience in the next 100 years."

2012年4月18日星期三

Active galactic nuclei are big

The mystery of the origin of the strongest cosmic rays louis vuitton shoes has deepened as new clues into key suspects, the most powerful explosions in the universe, suggest they are likely not potential culprits, researchers say.

Cosmic rays are charged subatomic particles that streak to Earth from deep in outer space. A few rare cosmic rays are extraordinarily powerful, with energies up to 100 million times greater than any attained by human-made particle colliders, such as CERN's Large Hadron Collider. The sources of these cosmic rays are a mystery.

"Nature is capable of accelerating elementary particles to gucci sunglasses macroscopic energies," said study co-author Francis Halzen at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, principal investigator at the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, a massive telescope designed to find the tiny subatomic particles. "There are basically only two ideas on how she does this — in gravitationally driven particle flows near the supermassive black holes at the centers of active galaxies, and in the collapse of stars to a black hole, seen by astronomers as gamma-ray bursts."

Gamma-ray bursts are the most powerful explosions in the universe. They can emit as much energy as our sun during its entire 10-billion-year lifetime in anywhere from milliseconds to minutes.

"Some gamma-ray bursts are thought to be collapses of supermassive stars — hypernovas — while others are thought to be collisions of black holes with other black holes burberry outlet or neutron stars," said study co-author Spencer Klein of the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. "Both types produce brief but intense blasts of radiation."

New evidence may now rule out gamma-ray bursts as sources of these ultra-high-energy cosmic rays.

Researchers employed the IceCube neutrino detector, an array of thousands of detectors encompassing a cubic kilometer of clear Antarctic ice at the South Pole. Neutrinos are ghostly particles that often pass right through matter, only rarely striking atoms.

"This is a coming-of-age for neutrino astronomy burberry bags — the first time we're able to use neutrino data as a new way of looking at astrophysical objects and say something substantive about them," said study co-author Nathan Whitehorn, a physicist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who led the recent gamma-ray burst research with Peter Redl of the University of Maryland.

The investigators focused on neutrinos whose energy levels suggest they are linked with gamma-ray bursts. The fireballs that give rise to the gamma rays seen in gamma-ray bursts were thought to potentially hurl particles at very high energies, generating both cosmic rays and energetic neutrinos.

After analyzing data on 307 gamma-ray bursts in 2008 and 2009, the scientists discovered the levels of these neutrinos were at least 3.7 times lower than expected. This suggests louis vuitton handbags gamma-ray bursts are probably not the sources of the most powerful cosmic rays.

"After observing gamma-ray bursts for two years, we have not detected the telltale neutrinos for cosmic-ray acceleration," Halzen said.

Still, it could be that current models of neutrino production from these events might be off.

"We're not entirely clear yet as to what this neutrino flux we're not seeing might mean," Whitehorn told SPACE.com. "Our understanding of oakley sunglasses gamma-ray bursts is not complete — there's a lot of theoretical uncertainty. I suspect what will happen now is that there'll be a lot of efforts in the theory community of how to get neutrino fluxes compatible with the results."

Instead of gamma-ray bursts, researchers note that black holes at the centers or nuclei of active galaxies may be responsible for these ultra-high-energy cosmic rays, Cheapest louis vuitton men t shirts sale white 2012 sucking in matter and spitting out enormous particle jets as they gorge.

"Active galactic nuclei are big — great big accelerators that may be able to accelerate particles to very high energies," said Klein, a long-time member of the IceCube Collaboration.

IceCube has looked for neutrinos from active monster butterfly galactic nuclei, but as yet the data is inconclusive.

The scientists detailed their findings in tomorrow's (April 19) issue of the journal Nature.

2012年4月17日星期二

SpaceX has one more launch simulation to complete

SpaceX and NASA are moving ahead with the scheduled April 30 launch date of the Dragon spacecraft and its historic docking with the International Space Station louis vuitton shoes after the flight readiness review was approved at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.

The comprehensive evaluation of the SpaceX mission is one of the last major steps before the company becomes the first commercial carrier to deliver payloads to the ISS. Although SpaceX founder and chief designer Elon Musk was careful to remind everybody that the flight is a test and success is far from guaranteed.

“I think we’ve got a pretty good shot, but it is worth emphasizing that there’s a lot that can go wrong in a mission like this,” Musk told reporters after the review.

The Falcon rocket being used to launch the Dragon has been used twice, once inserting a Dragon capsule into low earth orbit. But Musk and NASA did emphasize that this is not an actual mission. The goal is to demonstrate SpaceX’s capabilities to launch, rendezvous with the ISS and return to earth. And while there will be some cargo on board and some cargo will be carried back from the space station, nothing on board is considered critical or irreplaceable. Musk reminded reporters of the difficulty of the mission, but he remains confident SpaceX will succeed.

“I think it would be a mistake to put too much weight burberry outlet on this flight because there are hopefully going to be two more flights later this year to the space station, which will be almost identical configuration,” Musk said during the press conference. “So if this one doesn’t succeed in getting to the space station, I’m confident that one of the other two will. There should be no doubt about our resolve. We will get to the space station.”

The mission will take roughly four days until the Dragon will dock with the space station in orbit and combines two separate tests into a single flight. The capsule will then remain attached to the station for 18 days. The first demonstration test will be a flight around the space station to test and verify maneuverability, navigation and communication capabilities.

On flight day three, the Dragon spacecraft will begin a series of maneuvers that will take it on a lap around the ISS beginning with a relatively close 2.5-kilometer (1.5-mile) pass underneath the station. During this close pass the Dragon and the ISS will communicate with each other for the first time. “An absolute requirement for proximity operations,” according to NASA flight director Holly Ridings.

The crew on board the space station will send a test command to Dragon to confirm those on the ISS have the ability to control the capsule when necessary. The gucci sunglasses communication tests are to make sure the crew would be able to command the Dragon to hold or abort if needed when it is in close proximity to the station.

After the 2.5 km pass, the Dragon will move out to 200 km as it continues the lap. It will then again maneuver closer as it passes over the top of the station, this time getting as close as 7 km. The entire lap should take a full day, 22-24 hours according to Ridings.

On flight day four, the Dragon will once again be guided to 2.5 km underneath the station as preparations are made for the final tests before finally docking with the ISS. Once inside this 2.5 km zone, Ridings says the NASA team in Houston has final authority over the mission due to the proximity to the station and the safety of the crew on board.

The next parking spot will be at 1.4 km as the Dragon prepares for the approach initiation. Once everybody agrees for a go, the Dragon will maneuver to a point just 250 meters (820 feet) from the station, which will serve as its hold point for the final tests in very close proximity to the station. According to NASA, the hold point is outside the critical KOS, the acronym-happy agency’s simply named “Keep Out Sphere.”

The next demonstration objectives include interaction with the crew on orbit. From the 250 m hold point, the Dragon team at SpaceX’s Hawthorne, California headquarters burberry bags will issue a command to slowly begin approaching the station, after which the ISS crew will issue a retreat command as the first test. The demonstration will be repeated, this time with the ISS crew issuing a hold command at 220 m.

“That will be the last of our go/no go objectives in terms of the demonstration objective,” according to Ridings.

After these demonstrations are complete and everybody at NASA and SpaceX are satisfied, the Dragon will then make the final maneuvers towards the station. With all the functionality of the Dragon checked out, the spacecraft will be commanded by the SpaceX team to cross the KOS boundary for the first time.

The Dragon will then stop at 30 m, where the go/no-go decision will be made by everybody on the ground as well as the crew on the station to make the final approach. Though the Dragon is an automated spacecraft and is capable of performing the entire mission autonomously, Ridings louis vuitton handbags emphasized that the station crew will be heavily involved and is there as a safety net, especially on the first flight.

After maneuvering to just 10 m from the station, the Dragon will park in its final hold position, known as the capture point. Once a final decision is made for capture, the station crew takes over the final steps using the robotic arm to reach out and grab the Dragon and move into its berthing spot on the station.

The final step of the mission from the 2.5 km point to docking is expected to take around seven to eight hours. On the following day, the station crew begins the laborious cargo transfer as 521 kilograms (1,146 pounds) are offloaded from the Dragon, and 660 kilograms (1,452 pounds) of cargo from the station are placed into the capsule to be returned to earth. Thankfully, it’s mostly the motions that are laborious and not heavy lifting.

Representatives from the NASA side of the review oakley sunglasses meeting also reminded reporters of the test nature of the mission. But all sounded confident based on the preparation, simulations and tests that have been completed. NASA space station program manager Mike Sufferdini told reporters there are still some verifications that need to be done, but everything is looking good.

Sufferdini said the past few years has been a positive learning experience for both organizations and he’s excited to see a new vehicle arrive at the station. One of the differences during the flight readiness review he pointed to compared to past NASA missions is the bottom line. “There were no requirements for mission success,” he said. The simple comment in many ways marks NASA’s transition from shouldering the responsibility to deliver payloads to orbit, to a consumer of space delivery services. This point is driven home as today marks the last flight of the space shuttle discovery as it was flown to Washington, D.C., where it will be handed over to the Smithsonian.

SpaceX has one more launch simulation to complete before the launch. Sufferdini said there are some verifications that still need to be completed, but nothing that indicates there should be any issues.

The mission is part of NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program to develop a less expensive way to deliver payloads to orbit. As part of the program Cheapest louis vuitton men t shirts sale white 2012 NASA has invested $381 million in SpaceX. Musk didn’t give a specific number, but he estimated the SpaceX program has cost around $1 billion in total to date. SpaceX and Orbital Sciences are the two companies selected by NASA to provide commercial cargo delivery to the ISS.

2012年4月16日星期一

This approach should leave Nasa free to develop

The first cargo resupply mission to the louis vuitton shoes space station to be carried out by a commercial operator is likely to be on 30 April, the US space agency says.

The flight of the unmanned Dragon freighter is supposed to be just a demonstration, but its success would mark a new era in spaceflight.

Nasa is keen to hand off routine space transportation to the private sector - for both cargo and crew.

The upcoming mission will be performed by the SpaceX company of California.

It has been given tentative clearance to launch Dragon on 30 April at 12:22 EDT (16:22 GMT) from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida.

The date was confirmed during a Flight Readiness gucci sunglasses Review meeting attended by company personnel and Nasa officials on Monday.

Some final software checks are still being carried out and a more definitive "go, no-go" decision will be made next week.
Up and down

Elon Musk, the SpaceX chief executive officer and chief designer, urged people not underestimate the difficulty of building systems to go into orbit.

"It's just important to appreciate that this is pretty tricky," he told reporters.

"For the public out there, they may not realise that space station is zooming around the Earth every 90 minutes.

"It's going 17,000mph and you've got to launch burberry outlet up there and rendezvous. You've got to be tracking space station to within inches.

"This is something that's going 12 times faster than a bullet from an assault rifle. So it's hard."

Dragon will launch atop the company's own Falcon 9 rocket. Once beyond the atmosphere, the capsule will raise itself to the 390km-high International Space Station (ISS), where it will perform a number of communications, navigation and control systems tests.

Assuming these go well, the vessel will be permitted to move up alongside the station to be grabbed by a robotic arm.

This arm will then berth the capsule to the orbiting laboratory so that its stores of food and other consumables can be unloaded by the ISS astronauts. Attachment should occur on 3 May.

"We're always excited when we have a vehicle coming to ISS but this will be one of those historic launches," said Michael Suffredini, Nasa's ISS programme manager.

"This vehicle, even though it's a demo flight, will bring up 521kg of cargo to the ISS. We are going to utilise the flight for real hardware that is burberry bags necessary for ISS. And we have about 660kg of cargo that will be returned."

But, given that SpaceX's systems are new and may not work properly, Mr Suffredini added: "We won't put anything on the vehicle we can't stand to not get home."
Crew carrier

Dragon has been developed under Nasa's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services, or COTS, programme, in which the agency has sought to seed louis vuitton handbags fund cargo-carrying replacements for its recently retired shuttles.

SpaceX and another private company, the Virginia-based Orbital Sciences Corporation, have received hundreds of millions of dollars to help them develop new rocket and capsule systems.

Orbital is slightly behind SpaceX in its schedule but is still expected to fly to the station later this year.

Both companies, in addition to their COTS financing, have signed billion-dollar contracts with Nasa for multiple re-supply missions to the ISS in oakley sunglasses the years ahead.
Falcon 9 launch (AP) SpaceX will be using the company-developed Falcon 9 rocket to get Dragon off Earth

"We wanted to place strategic financial investments to help stimulate the commercial space industry," said Alan Lindenmoyer, Nasa's COTS programme manager.

"We put some structure around those investments where we developed the programme to have the companies demonstrate these capabilities, with the goal of achieving safe, reliable and cost effective services. We were looking to help lower the cost of access to space."

SpaceX, though, is looking to carry more than just cargo. Its Dragon capsule has been designed in such a way that it can be modified to Cheapest louis vuitton men t shirts sale white 2012 eventually carry humans.

The company is receiving further cash assistance in this respect through another of Nasa's projects called CCDev, or Commercial Crew Development.

Elon Musk said this modification could be achieved in the next three years.

The US government has taken the view that "straightforward" transportation to and from Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) should now be contracted out.

This approach should leave Nasa free to develop the systems needed to explore the Solar System.

To this end, Congress has approved plans cheap louis vuitton mens shoes for a huge rocket and sophisticated capsule to take humans far beyond the ISS, to destinations such as asteroids and even Mars.

2012年4月15日星期日

The findings open up the possibility of creating

Computer scientists at Kobe University louis vuitton shoes in Japan have built a computer that draws inspiration from the swarming behavior of soldier crabs.

The computer is based on theories from the early 1980s that studies how it could be possible to build a computer out of billiard balls. Proposed by Edward Fredkin and Tommaso Toffoli, the mechanical computer was based on Newtonian dynamics and relied on the motion of billiard balls in an idealized, friction-free environment instead of electronic signals like a conventional computer.

The model was developed to investigate the relation between computation and reversible processes in physics. A channel in this computational system gucci sunglasses would carry information encoded in the form of the presence or absence of billiard balls. The information is processed through a series of gates which the balls either bump into and emerge in a predictable direction based on the ballistics of the collision or which they don’t bump into and emerge with the same velocity.

Picking up where Fredkin and Toffoli left off, Yukio-Pegio Gunji and colleagues at Kobe University have essentially built a billiard ball computer using soldier crabs. In their report (.pdf), they demonstrate that “swarms of soldier burberry outlet crabs can crabs can implement logical gates when placed in a geometrically constrained environment.”

Soldier crabs or Mictyris guinotae live in flat lagoons and form huge colonies of hundreds of thousands of individuals. When they emerge during low tides and form enormous swarms, the crabs exhibit two different behaviors. Individuals on the edge of the swarm show aggressive leadership, keeping a solid edge to the group as they move forwards (or, more likely, sideways) in unison. Those in the middle of the swarm just follow their neighbors and so move in burberry bags a more dynamic way. The crabs on the edge of the swam tend to continually fold back into the body of the swarm, only to be replaced by another.

When a swarm of crabs is placed into a corridor with walls on each side, the crabs will closely follow the wall like a rolling billiard ball. This sort of behavior can be easily controlled, for example, by casting a shadow from above on the swarm to mimic the presence of crab-eating birds. The soldier crabs will move away from any shadowed areas for louis vuitton handbags fear of being munched on. When two swarms of crabs — or “crab balls” — collide, they appear to merge and continue in a direction that is the sum of their respective velocities.

Based on these observations of crab behavior, the team built a pattern of channels that act like logic gates. They first simulated the soldier crab swarming behavior in special patterns of channels. They then created a real system of channels in their lab and unleashed groups of 40 real crabs, which were guided using the fake bird shadow.

They found that they could build a decent OR gate oakley sunglasses using the crabs — this was the place where one or two crab swarms are merged into a single one. However, the more complicated AND-gate required the combined swarm heading down one of three paths. This was found to be less reliable. However, the team believe that they could improve the results by creating a more crab-friendly environment.

The findings open up the possibility of creating an unconventional computing model where the zeros and 1s are represented by the absence or presence of Cheapest louis vuitton men t shirts sale white 2012 a swarm of crabs.

2012年4月13日星期五

The Lakers have missed the playoffs just five times

Pau Gasol had 14 points and 10 rebounds burberry handbags for the Pacific Division-leading Lakers (38-22), who have won three of four without Bryant. The NBA scoring leader is resting his bruised shin.

Los Angeles also played without Brown, who left Staples Center shortly before tipoff for undisclosed personal reasons. Assistant coach John Kuester ran the team.

Barnes played an enormous game in a reserve role while matching his highest-scoring performance in two seasons with the Lakers. He scored six consecutive points after Denver trimmed Los Angeles' lead to one point, hitting a 3-pointer and adding a burberry sunglasses clutch jumper with 1:29 to play.

Andre Miller scored 20 points and Al Harrington added 18 for the Nuggets, who had won five of seven. Arron Afflalo also had 18 for Denver, which is hanging on to a playoff spot.

Los Angeles led for all but the opening minutes, going up 87-75 with 9:25 left. Denver trimmed the lead to one point with a 15-4 run capped by Harrington's 3-pointer with 3:38 left, but Barnes hit a clutch 3-pointer and added a free throw and a jumper before throwing oakley sunglasses a phenomenal half-court alley-oop to Bynum in the final minute.

Despite committing 23 turnovers, the Lakers took three of four from Denver to win the season series after the Nuggets took it in each of the past two years. With six games left, Los Angeles is 1½ games ahead of the Clippers for the division lead and the No. 3 playoff seed.

Kuester filled in when Brown left Staples Center after his regular media briefing about 75 minutes before game time. Bryant also moved up next to the assistant coaches, yelling out advice and strategy.

Bryant is no longer wearing Ed Hardy sunglasses new arrivals discount sale CQEWQ145 a protective boot. The fifth-leading scorer in NBA history is walking without pain, but must run and jump without pain before he'll return.

Bryant has built a career on playing through any amount of pain, but with the Lakers comfortably in the playoff picture, he apparently feels he can take a brief rest from the compacted regular season. Brown wouldn't speculate on how long Bryant will sit, saying they'll re-evaluate his injury before Sunday's game against the defending NBA champion Dallas Mavericks.

Bryant hadn't missed a game all season before his current week off, and he has missed just 99 games in his 16 NBA seasons. He is closing in on his third scoring title with 28.1 points per game, slightly ahead of Oklahoma City's Kevin Durant, who won the last two scoring crowns.

The Lakers started well without Bryant, picking up from their emphatic road win over San Antonio by jumping to a 14-point lead in the first quarter. Barnes Burberry sneaker shoes for women blue beige outlet classic scored 15 points on 6-of-7 shooting in the first half, including a rainbow jumper at the buzzer.

Denver kept it close with relentless attention to Bynum, who had 30 rebounds against the Spurs.

NOTES: The Lakers have missed the playoffs just five times in their 64 years of existence, just twice in 33 years under owner Jerry Buss. …Wilson Chandler missed his seventh straight game for Denver with a strained left hip, while Rudy Fernandez is still sidelined with a strained lower back. … Kuester also coached the Lakers in February while Brown served a one-game suspension. Kuester was the Detroit Pistons' head coach for the past two seasons before burberry bags getting fired last June. … Barnes got a technical foul with 2:24 left for arguing a call, but Afflalo missed a free throw that would have cut the Lakers' lead to three points with the ball.

2012年4月12日星期四

In the first couple years of Coachella

When the lineup for the 2012 Coachella Valley burberry ties Music and Arts Festival was announced in January, the reaction among a particular demographic of electronic dance music fans was swift and merciless, best captured on the festival's message board by one user: "It's like a VIP-bottle Las Vegas casino nightclub has taken over the Sahara."

Translated: Many dance music snobs are disgruntled about the offerings in the big dance tent and elsewhere on the pitch.

That sentiment has since been echoed often, and with good reason: The presence of superstar DJs like David Guetta, Kaskade, Martin Solveig, Swedish House Mafia — all mainstream dance producers who have taken over the top of the Billboard charts or have sold out mega-tours in the past year — suggests to many that Coachella has lost sight of the dance music vanguard, running counter to the festival's philosophy of bringing burberry outlet the best forward-thinking music to the desert.

FULL COVERAGE: Coachella 2012

It's not a festival that would book Rihanna or Black Eyed Peas as headliners, the argument goes, so why are producers responsible for some of their biggest hits worthy headliners? Is Solveig, behind some of the least interesting moments on Madonna's new album, a better pick than more acclaimed, and forward-thinking producers like, say, Omar S, Ricardo Villalobos, or (insert underground legend here).

Solveig, Guetta, Kaskade and the other dance acts in large font on the Coachella flier make dance music that's best described as dumb and thumpy house music. It's music with a relentless 4/4 beat, the rumble of a heartbeat rhythm and simple, repetitive lyrics ripped straight from the back pages of a high school diary: "Sometimes I get a good feeling, get a feeling that I never never never had before," goes the only lyrics in AVIICI's huge dance floor anthem, "Levels."

"Dumb" is a strong word, so maybe "anti-thinking" is a better description of this music. After all, dance tracks by definition are more about the id and escapism than about verbal expression and impressing your professor. Seminal metal band Motorhead's lyrics are dumb non sequiturs and cliches, but the music's propellant energy transforms them. The Trashmen's "Surfin' Bird" is gibberish, but brilliant — as is Donna Summer's transcendent "I Feel Love," whose most compelling lyric is "It's so good, it's so good." Plus, it's not like anyone's looking to do burberry shoes for men dissertations on the collected lyrics of Dutch prog-house king DJ Tiesto.

COACHELLA'S REBIRTH: Everything you need to know

The music controlling the Sahara tent at Coachella is for letting go of logic and thought and embracing the body and movement. Not overly literary Decemberists ditties with grad school lyrics that you want to ponder. Music designed for that mystery place that the influential '80s and '90s British house music producers KLF dubbed the "3 a.m. eternal," for late night out-of-body experiences.

It's for this reason that much of the stuff has been dismissed over the years by rock critics who have never felt the rush Ray ban sunglasses of 4 a.m. on a packed, sweaty dance floor, when the mind goes blank and the body takes over, when the beats from the DJ seem shot from his or her heart to yours, and your dance partners are the sexiest people in the world regardless of how ugly they'll look in a few come-down hours.

But still, surprise, innovation and evolution are necessary, and none of these is the music's most notable traits. Daft Punk's "Le Funk" was released 17 years ago — and sounds as innovative today as when it ruled raves.

The dumb thumpy house music genre has evolved over the years as a specific offshoot of Chicago house, Detroit techno, Italian disco and European house that has at various times been called trance, progressive house, progressive trance and equally vague terms — a repetitive rhythm that features what can best be described as "aspirational" synth melodies, little runs that anyone standing at a keyboard for more than 10 minutes can craft with a couple Oakley sunglasses pointer fingers. Its king: Tiesto, who since 1998 has become the biggest progressive house DJ in the world. He headlined the Coachella main stage in 2010.

At its worst, today's big dance music can sound like Air Supply remixed by an automated production plant (i.e. "Save the World," by Swedish House Mafia). French dance producer Martin Solveig's "Hello," best known to most for its use in a chewing gum commercial, is virtually indefensible to anyone interested in non-cheesy music, and he's got a prime time slot in the Sahara tent.

In Coachella's defense, there's a valid argument to be made that the mainstream has shifted toward Coachella's all-inclusive, burberry t shirts for men on sale borderless philosophy just as much as the festival has "sold-out" the hard-core dance community. Coachella over the years has intentionally pushed rock, hip-hop and house music side by side; the festival has catered to a generation of kids who grew up with a convergence of sounds, who see no problem with mixing rock and big dumb house music.

As well, the anthemic, progressive sound at the top of the Coachella bill is just the biggest beat among many different subgenres represented: the minimal Berlin sound of Modeselektor will offer more unpredictable variety; the ever-inventive Amon Tobin brings his post-breakbeat, bass-heavy show to offer deconstructed rhythms. And commercial house producers Calvin Harris and Afrojack, while also chart-toppers (in collaboration with, respectively, Rihanna and Pitbull), seem interested in pushing commercial dance music forward. Police sunglasses, cheap police glasses 2012 sale, 50% off.

The list goes on, and combined, offers evidence of an observation that Coachella's president, Paul Tollett, told me in the summer of 2010, just prior to the apocryphal Electric Daisy Carnival debacle at the L.A. Forum: The Coachella demographic has evolved.

"In the first couple years of Coachella, the crowd was more separated by genre," he said. "Some of the electronic-leaning people stayed in the [dance] tents for most of the weekend, and the more alt-rock leaning ones watched the outdoor stages. Now it's louis vuitton jewelry all over the place. No one prefers just one specific type of music anymore."

While true, as the commenters on the Coachella message boards confirm, that doesn't mean that preferences will disappear — or that critics won't speak up.

2012年4月11日星期三

ONE Direction may love Sydney and Sydney may love them

Martínez, 38, regarded as one of the best young burberry ties managers in the game, is coming to the end of his third season at the DW Stadium.

After helping Wigan to safety again last summer, he rejected the chance to succeed Gérard Houllier at Aston Villa and pledged his loyalty to a club he represented as a player between 1995 and 2001.

It has been claimed that the three-year contract he was said to have agreed after deciding to stay in the North West was never signed.

The original deal that he signed when he left Swansea to replace Steve Bruce in 2009 is set to expire this summer. Wigan, however, burberry outlet have insisted that the Spaniard did put pen to paper on a three-year rolling deal.

Dave Whelan, the club’s chairman, has vowed to keep his manager for as long as he can, regardless of whether the club extend their stay in the Premier League for an eighth season.

“I will stick with Roberto Martínez for as long as I can,” he said. “I have said Roberto will go to one of the big clubs in Europe or the UK. He is a high-quality manager and a gentleman. He is 100 per cent honest and I have great admiration for him.”

Although Wigan have been involved in a lengthy relegation battle since Martínez made the move from Wales, he has won over fans with his principles and ability to get burberry shoes for men the best out of young, inexpensive players.

Whelan’s millions have helped take the club from the third tier to the top-flight since he took control in 1995.

But he has hinted that he may retire before long and Martínez’s wage bill is significantly smaller than in the early days in the Premier League under Paul Jewell and Bruce.

Martínez guided Wigan to 16th place in Ray ban sunglasses 2010 and, after another difficult campaign last season, they stayed up on the final day with a 1-0 victory at Stoke, which was the first time his players had managed successive Premier League wins since his arrival.

Although his own big-money addition to the squad, the Argentina forward Mauro Boselli, proved to be a failure, Martínez has worked wonders with the likes of James McCarthy, Victor Moses, Mohamed Diame and Ali Al Habsi, who have enhanced their value several times over since moving to the club.

ONE Direction may love Sydney and Sydney may love them, but band member Niall Horan isn't a fan of the finer things from our great country - spitting out Vegemite toast of live TV!

During their appearance in Channel 7's Sunrise Niall Horan sampled some of Australia's national breakfast dish but wasn't a happy little Vegemite - unable to even finish his mouthful.

He later took to Twitter to tell his 2,591,837 followers Oakley sunglasses "Can clearly say vegemite is horrible! Like tryin new stuff though."

The show, however were much more keen on the toast, placing the remainder on ebay, in an attempt to raise funds for women burberry sunglasses 2012 charity YouthCare.

The item was listed as 'Bread product with vegemite and saliva'

"Please note: The item is perishable and although we will package it so that tampering is evident, we do not advise that it is consumed. Cheap Bvlgari sunglasses, wholesale Bvlgari designer sunglasses 2012. We will not be including the mouthful that Niall spat out - because that's just gross."

Despite only starting at $0.99, a bidding war soon took louis vuitton wallets the bread based breakfast up to the $100,000 mark.

2012年4月10日星期二

I want folks to get rich in this country

All but certain now that his Republican burberry ties opponent will be Mitt Romney, President Barack Obama has made his proposed "Buffett Rule" minimum tax for the wealthiest Americans like Romney a centerpiece of his re-election campaign, defying the political risk of being seen as a tax-and-spender by wary voters.

With a rousing speech Tuesday to a receptive university audience of about 5,000 in this battleground state, Obama defined the coming contest as a clash of philosophies: His argument that tax fairness and the common good demands the richest Americans pay at least as much as middle-income taxpayers do, contrasted with Republicans' opposition to any tax increases as job killers and class warfare, even at the cost of deep cuts in domestic programs.

While voters have not often rewarded candidates who advocate tax increases, Obama and his campaign advisers, in league with Democrats in Congress, express confidence that voters are on their side, with polls showing that Americans overwhelmingly burberry outlet agree that wealthy taxpayers should pay more and favor spending for programs like education, research and health care.

The Democrats' offensive, not coincidentally, is tied to the likelihood that Romney will be the nominee. Even as Obama was speaking at Florida Atlantic University, Romney's chief Republican rival, former Sen. Rick Santorum, was announcing that he is leaving the race.

In past months Romney's Republican rivals had
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caricatured him as a Wall Street investor raking in millions with job-cutting corporate takeovers and slashing his taxes through loopholes and Swiss bank accounts, so he was hardly likely to get off easier with Democrats.

Obama seeks to talk about the burberry shoes for men still-weak economy and job creation in a way that plays to Romney's weaknesses, and Republicans' generally, and underplays his own political liabilities at a time of continued high unemployment and gas prices.

"These folks, they keep telling us that if we just weaken regulations that keep our air or our water clean or protect our consumers, if we would just convert these investments that we're making through our government in education and research and health care -- if we just turned those into tax cuts, especially for the wealthy, then somehow the economy is going to grow stronger. That's the theory," Obama said, to applause and cheers. "And here's the news: We tried this for eight years before I took office."

But despite anemic job growth in that period and then a recession and financial crash, Obama added, "A lot of the folks who were peddling these same trickle-down theories -- including members of Congress and some people who are running for a certain office right now, who shall not be named -- they're doubling down on these old broken-down theories."

Even before Obama spoke, Romney and other Republicans Ray ban sunglasses were firing back, making clear they will try to make the president's political gamble a loser.

"President Obama is the first president in history to openly campaign for re-election on a platform of higher taxes," the Romney campaign said in a statement from a spokeswoman, Gail Gitcho. "He has already raised taxes on millions of Americans, but he won't stop there. He wants to raise taxes on millions more by taxing small businesses and job creators."

Before the Florida trip, the White House released a report by Obama's economic team making the substantive case for what is essentially a political proposal since it has no chance of advancing in Congress before the election. The Buffett Oakley sunglasses Rule would set a minimum tax rate of 30 percent for individuals on their annual income above $1 million.

The report argued that the minimum tax would restore some fairness to the tax code and reduce economically inefficient gaming of the system. Over five decades since 1960, it said, the average tax rate paid by the wealthiest Americans has dropped much more than the burberry underwear for men rate for middle-income taxpayers, even as the income of those at the top of the scale has grown significantly more than for everyone else.

"Look, I want folks to get rich in this country," Obama said. "I think it's wonderful when people are successful. That's part of the American dream. Prada sunglasses, cheap prada eyeglasses for men sale.

"But understand," he added, "the share of our national income going to the top 1 percent has climbed to levels we haven't seen since the 1920s. The louis vuitton evidence sunglasses folks who are benefitting from this are paying taxes at one of the lowest rates in 50 years."

2012年4月9日星期一

A woman celebrating her 69th birthday at the game

Five games into his tenure with the burberry handbags Miami Marlins, the outspoken manager Ozzie Guillen is facing withering criticism because of favorable comments he made about the former Cuban dictator Fidel Castro.

At least two local officials said Guillen should lose his job, Miami’s mayor urged “decisive action,” and the chairman of the Florida Hispanic Legislative Caucus called for “punitive measures” against him. Hoping to quell the tumult, Guillen planned to leave the Marlins — they began a three-game series with a 6-2 win Monday in Philadelphia — and fly to Ray ban sunglasses Miami to apologize Tuesday at Marlins Park. (The Marlins and the Phillies have Tuesday off.)

“I know I hurt a lot of people,” Guillen said. “I want to get the thing over with.”

Guillen, who is from Venezuela, told Time magazine that he loved Castro and respected him for having stayed in power so long. Guillen apologized after the comments were published, but Cuban-Americans remain upset. It has become a problem for the Marlins, who opened their new ballpark last week in the Little Havana section of Miami and are Oakley sunglasses trying to rebuild their fan base with the help of South Florida’s large Cuban-American population.

MARLINS 6, PHILLIES 2 Miami’s Anibal Sanchez took a three-hitter into the seventh and combined with three relievers to help the Marlins spoil Philadelphia’s home opener. The new-look Marlins, who are 12-25 against the Phillies since 2010, are trying to wrest the National League East crown away from Philadelphia, and they started early. Their first four batters — Jose Reyes, Emilio Bonifacio, Hanley Ramirez and Gaby Sanchez — finished 8 for 16 with three runs batted in and three runs.

The Phillies, who are playing without the injured Chase Utley and Ryan Howard, have only four hitters with at least four hits so far. The anemic offense wasted a decent outing by the left-hander Cole Hamels, who can become a free agent after the season. He burberry watches struck out nine, walked none and allowed four runs — three earned — in five and a third innings.

GIANTS 7, ROCKIES 0 Barry Zito threw a four-hitter for his first shutout in nine years, and Pablo Sandoval hit a two-run homer to help visiting San Francisco avoid its first 0-4 start since 1950. Zito (1-0) had not lost to Colorado since 2008, an unbeaten streak of nine starts. He allowed three singles and a double and did not walk burberry ties anyone.

A woman celebrating her 69th birthday at the game sustained a concussion when she was struck on the head by a foul ball. She was treated at a local hospital and released, and issued a statement thanking fans and paramedics.

ANGELS 5, TWINS 1 C. J. Wilson won his debut for visiting Los Angeles. Wilson (1-0) allowed three hits in seven innings and struck out five, giving up only burberry watches 2012 one fly ball — a home run by Josh Willingham. Wilson had a 2-0 lead before he even reached the mound; Torii Hunter singled and Bobby Abreu doubled to drive in runs against Nick Blackburn. Minnesota, which has been outscored by 20-6, fell to 0-4 for the first time since 1969. Carrera sunglasses, cheap porsche carrera sunglasses, 50% sale.

ELBOW STILL BOTHERS STOREN Washington Nationals closer Drew Storen, who had 43 saves last season, has discomfort in his pitching elbow, and the team announced that he will be examined by Dr. James Andrews. ... Atlanta Braves third baseman Chipper Jones, who louis vuitton set had knee surgery March 26, took more than 100 swings in batting practice and is eligible to come off the disabled list Tuesday.