computer technology jobs: February 2013

Friday, February 8, 2013

Facebook briefly takes over entire Internet with redirection bug

Devin Coldewey , NBC News ? ? ? 17 hrs.

A bug with Facebook's ubiquitous embedded widgets redirected millions from the websites they were visiting to Facebook itself Thursday. It's now fixed, but for awhile, some of the largest sites in the world were inaccessible.

Visitors to such sites as CNN, The Washington Post, BuzzFeed, the Gawker network (including Gizmodo), and NBC News were instantly transferred to a Facebook error page upon loading the intended site.

Users not logged into Facebook did not get the error, which led people to conclude, correctly, that the problem was with the Facebook Connect service, which governs "likes," "comments" and other Web-based features of the social network.

Facebook declined to disclose the specifics of the error, but offered the following statement via email to NBC News:

For a short period of time, there was a bug that redirected people from third party sites with Facebook Login to Facebook.com. The issue was quickly resolved.

It was "quickly resolved" for some, at least: On NBCNews.com, the disturbance lasted for less than 15 minutes, from 4:30 to 4:42 p.m. PT. For other sites it was longer; ReadWriteWeb said the bug lasted about an hour, from 4 to 5 p.m. PT.

Those on Twitter (and Facebook, of course) jammed those sites nearly instantaneously with comments on how it was a little disturbing that Facebook could essentially hijack a large part of the Internet ? even if it was unintentional.

If the error had not been fixed by Facebook in a timely manner, the affected sites would likely have be able to intervene by disabling the widgets themselves. The temporary loss of Facebook login and likes would be a small price to pay for an accessible website.

Because the outage was so widespread and public, a more thorough explanation can probably be expected from Facebook once officials there have time to take a closer look at what went wrong.

Devin Coldewey is a contributing writer for NBC News Digital. His personal website is coldewey.cc.

Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/technolog/facebook-briefly-takes-over-entire-internet-redirection-bug-1B8297602

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Plywood maker Boise Cascade soars after IPO

Boise Cascade Chief Executive Officer Thomas Carlile, applauds during his company's IPO on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Wednesday, Feb. 6, 2013. Strong earnings reports from media giants Disney and Time Warner aren't impressing investors in early trading, and major U.S. market indexes are opening lower. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

Boise Cascade Chief Executive Officer Thomas Carlile, left, confers with specialist Christopher Culhane during his company's IPO, on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange Wednesday, Feb. 6, 2013. Strong earnings reports from media giants Disney and Time Warner aren't impressing investors in early trading, and major U.S. market indexes are opening lower. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

Boise Cascade Chief Executive Officer Thomas Carlile, second from right, joined by members of the company?s executive management team, rings the opening bell of the New York Stock Exchange, to celebrate their IPO, Wednesday, Feb. 6, 2013. Strong earnings reports from media giants Disney and Time Warner aren't impressing investors in early trading, and major U.S. market indexes are opening lower. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

LOS ANGELES (AP) ? Riding a U.S. housing recovery and a booming stock market, Boise Cascade, a maker of plywood and other building materials, jumped 25 percent in its market debut Wednesday.

It's the latest solid first-day gain for an IPO, boding well for other companies that want to raise money by going public. Cruise company Norwegian Cruise Line rose 30 percent in its Jan. 18 debut, and has kept rising. Child care provider Bright Horizons gained 27 percent on Jan. 25. Homebuilder Tri Pointe added 12 percent on Jan. 31.

"It's a very healthy IPO market," said Francis Gaskins, president of researcher IPOdesktop. "The lake is rising in terms of the stock market and that brings in IPOs, and in that context, IPOs generally do quite well."

The Dow Jones industrial average, a stock market bellwether, had closed above 14,000 on Friday for the first time since the financial crisis.

When Wall Street rolls out the red carpet for companies like Boise Cascade Co. and others looking to tap the markets for money, it can have a ripple effect across the economy. Selling shares gives companies funds that they can use to grow their business and add more employees.

That path has been a difficult one since the financial crisis broke in 2007, however. Wild swings in stock market prices made investors and companies more nervous about going public, weighing on deal volume. Still, a handful of big debuts, such as the Facebook Inc. IPO last May and General Motors Co.'s return to the public markets in 2010, helped put a gloss on the market and raised the total dollar value of IPOs.

So far this year, 13 companies have raised $5.5 billion in U.S. initial public offerings of stock, according to data provider Dealogic. That's up sixfold from $909 million raised by eight companies in the same stretch last year. In all of 2012, 145 IPOs raised $47.2 billion, though IPOs all but dried up late in the year as concern over the "fiscal cliff" mounted. Lawmakers' deal over taxes at the beginning of January averted the steep tax increases and spending cuts that would have kicked in, helping rally the stock market and unthaw the IPO market.

A burst of companies went public last month ? it was the biggest January, by amount of money raised, on record dating back to 1993, said data provider Dealogic. But almost half that money came from the IPO of Zoetis, Pfizer's animal health business. It raised almost $2.6 billion in the largest IPO since Facebook's $16 billion debut.

Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings Ltd. raised $514 million, while TRI Pointe Homes LLC gained $268 million in its IPO and Bright Horizons Family Solutions LLC $222 million.

Investors may have been particularly drawn to Boise Cascade and TRI Pointe as a way to bet on the housing recovery. Home sales and prices have routinely been setting multiyear highs as they come back from the real estate collapse, fueled by improvements in the job market and the overall economy, coupled with low interest rates.

Shares in the 13 biggest publicly traded U.S. builders remain well off their peak prices from 2005, during the housing boom. Still, their stocks, on average, more than doubled in 2012.

That supports demand for real estate-related IPOs, Gaskins said.

And more is likely coming. Another homebuilder, Taylor Morrison Home Corp., filed documents for an initial public offering in December. The Scottsdale, Ariz., company hopes to raise up to $250 million.

Boise Cascade isn't a homebuilder itself. Originally formed in 1913, Boise Cascade makes plywood and other wood products and building materials, supplying about 4,500 wholesalers, home improvement centers, retail lumberyards and other customers. It bought office supply chain OfficeMax in 2003. That company then sold its paper and wood products division to Madison Dearborn Partners LLC. The private equity firm took Boise Cascade to market and still owns about 70 percent of the Boise, Idaho, company after the IPO. Office supply chain OfficeMax Inc. also kept a 20 percent stake.

Boise Cascade raised $247.1 million in its IPO, which was more than it expected, from selling 11.8 million shares for $21 each. It had initially set a price range of $16 to $18, and raised that to $18 to $20 on Tuesday in a signal of healthy demand. Boise Cascade plans to use $25 million to repay debt and the rest for general corporate purposes.

Trading under the "BCC" ticker symbol on the New York Stock Exchange, Boise Cascade's stock gained $5.15 to close at $26.15.

_____

AP Business Writers Steve Rothwell and Michelle Chapman contributed to this story from New York.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/f70471f764144b2fab526d39972d37b3/Article_2013-02-06-Boise%20Cascade-IPO/id-56ba5b6ace6348fa8556ee271de69a73

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Professor discovers how new corals species form in the ocean

Thursday, February 7, 2013

Since the observations made by English naturalist Charles Darwin on the Galapagos Islands, researchers have been interested in how physical barriers, such as isolation on a particular island, can lead to the formation of new species through the process of natural selection. Natural selection is a process whereby heritable traits that enhance survival become more common in successive generations, while unfavorable heritable traits become less common. Over time, animals and plants that have morphologies or other attributes that enhance their suitability to a particular environment become more common and more adapted to that specific environment.

Researchers today are intimately familiar with how physical barriers and reproduction isolation can lead to the formation of new species on land, especially among plants and animals with short generation times such as insects and annual plants. Michael E. Hellberg, associate professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at LSU, however, is interested in a more obscure form of speciation: the speciation of animals in the ocean.

"Marine plants and animals can drift around in the ocean extremely long distances," Hellberg said. "So how do they specialize?"

In a recent publication in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, or PNAS, Hellberg and his graduate student Carlos Prada investigate how corals specialize to particular environments in the ocean. Corals, animals that form coral reefs and some of the most diverse ecosystems in the world, start their lifecycle with a free floating larval stage. Coral larvae can disperse vast distances in open water. Different coral species share similar geographical locations, with different species often existing only yards apart. As Prada and Hellberg propose in their recent publication, the large dispersal potential of coral larvae in open water and the proximity of different species on the ocean floor creates a mystery for researchers who study speciation. Hellberg and Prada ask, "How can new marine species emerge without obvious geographic isolation?"

When it comes to corals within the relatively small confines of the Caribbean, which spans approximately 3 million square kilometers, the key to the puzzle appears to be habitat depth in the ocean. In others words, natural selection has led to the formation of different coral species according to how deep in the ocean these different corals grow.

Prada and Hellberg study candelabrum corals of the genus Eunicea, generally known as "sea fans," for which sister species have been shown to be segregated by ocean depth. One sister species survives better in shallow waters, while the other is better adapted to deep waters. These corals, like other corals, are very slow-growing animals. In fact, sea fan corals don't reach reproduction age until they are 15-30 years old, and can continue reproducing until they are 60 or more years old. So while candelabrum coral larvae can disperse large distances from their parents, landing and beginning to grow in either shallow or deep water habitats, small differences in survival rates at different depths between the two species and long generation times can combine to produce segregation.

"When these coral larvae first settle out after dispersal, they are all mixed up," Hellberg said. "But long larvae-to-reproduction times can compound small differences in survival at different depths. By the time these corals get to reproduction age, a lot has changed."

The shallow water sea fan coral even has a different morphology than its deep water sister. The shallow water coral fans out into a wide network of branches, while the deep water coral grows tall and spindly. According to Hellberg, these differences in morphology might well be genetic, with the different corals having different protein structures and levels of expression that are better adapted to their specific water depth environment. Hellberg hopes in future research to investigate the genetic basis of these different morphologies.

In other interesting results, Prada explained how transplanting the shallow coral species to deep water environments, and vice versa, can cause the coral to take on a morphology more like that of its sister species.

"Their morphologies are not super fixed," Prada said. "But they can't change all the way to a different morphology."

Prada observed that while shallow water sea fans can become taller and more spindly when transplanted in deep water environments, they don't seem to be able to make a complete transition to the morphology of the deep water sea fan. This suggests that the two corals, while they likely had a common ancestor, have adapted genetically and biochemically to their respective water depths.

Prada did ocean dives in the Bahamas, Panama, Puerto Rico and Cura?ao to sample candelabrum coral colonies. Back in the lab, he performed tests on the coral samples' genes to determine how shallow and deep corals become genetically different.

"Normally, organisms are differentiated by geography," Prada said. "But these corals are differentiated by depth."

Prada and Hellberg's research provides new insights into how new species form in the ocean, a topic of relatively limited research as opposed to speciation of terrestrial organisms.

###

Original paper, visit http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/01/22/1208931110

Louisiana State University: http://www.lsu.edu

Thanks to Louisiana State University for this article.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/126680/Professor_discovers_how_new_corals_species_form_in_the_ocean

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New proof asteroid impact killed off dinosaurs

Don Davis

An artist's impression of a 6-mile-wide asteroid striking the Earth. Scientists now have fresh evidence that such a cosmic impact ended the age of dinosaurs near what is now the town of Chixculub in Mexico.

By Charles Choi
LiveScience

The idea that a cosmic impact ended the age of dinosaurs in what is now Mexico now has fresh new support, researchers say.

The most recent and most familiar mass extinction is the one that finished the reign of the dinosaurs ? the end-Cretaceous or Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event, often known as K-T. The only survivors among the dinosaurs are the birds.

Currently, the main suspect behind this catastrophe is a cosmic impact from an asteroid or comet, an idea first proposed by physicist Luis Alvarez and his son, geologist Walter Alvarez. Scientists later found that signs of this collision seemed evident near the town of Chicxulub (CHEEK-sheh-loob) in Mexico in the form of a gargantuan crater more than 110 miles (180 kilometers) wide. The explosion, likely caused by an object about 6 miles (10 kilometers) across, would have released as much energy as 100 trillion tons of TNT, more than a billion times more than the atom bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

However, further work suggested the Chicxulub impact occurred either 300,000 years before or 180,000 years after the end-Cretaceous mass extinction. As such, researchers have explored other possibilities, including other impact sites, such as the controversial Shiva crater in India, or even massive volcanic eruptions, such as those creating the Deccan Flats in India.

Courtesy of Paul Renne

Doctoral student Bill Mitchell collects a volcanic ash sample from a coal bed just above the final dinosaur extinction level.

Timing of an impact
New findings using high-precision radiometric dating analysis of debris kicked up by the impact now suggest the K-T event and the Chicxulub collision happened no more than 33,000 years apart. In radiometric dating, scientists estimate the ages of samples based on the relative proportions of specific radioactive materials within them. [Wipe Out: History's Most Mysterious Mass Extinctions]

"We've shown the impact and the mass extinction coincided as much as one can possibly demonstrate with existing dating techniques," researcher Paul Renne, a geochronologist and director of the Berkeley Geochronology Center in California, told LiveScience.

Courtesy of Klaudia Kuiper

Near Jordan, Mont., rock layers expose the level (lower arrow) where dinosaurs and many other animals and plants went extinct. The arrows point to coal beds that contain thin volcanic ash layers that were dated.

"It's gratifying to see these results, for those of us who've been arguing a long time that there was an impact at the time of this mass extinction," geologist Walter Alvarez at the University of California at Berkeley, who did not participate in this study, told LiveScience. "This research is just a tour de force, a demonstration of really skillful geochronology to resolve time that well."

The fact the impact and mass extinction may have been virtually simultaneous in time supports the idea that the cosmic impact dealt the age of dinosaurs its deathblow.

"The impact was clearly the final straw that pushed Earth past the tipping point," Renne said. "We have shown that these events are synchronous to within a gnat's eyebrow, and therefore, the impact clearly played a major role in extinctions, but it probably wasn't just the impact."

The new extinction date is precise to within 11,000 years.

"When I got started in the field, the error bars on these events were plus or minus a million years," added paleontologist William Clemens at the University of California at Berkeley, who did not participate in this research. "It's an exciting time right now, a lot of which we can attribute to the work that Paul and his colleagues are doing in refining the precision of the time scale with which we work."

Cosmic Log: Asteroid closes in for close encounter?? and a swift kick

Although the cosmic impact and mass extinction coincided in time, Renne cautioned this does not mean the impact was the only cause of the die-offs. For instance, dramatic climate swings in the preceding million years, including long cold snaps in the general hothouse environment of the Cretaceous, probably brought many creatures to the brink of extinction. The volcanic eruptions behind the Deccan Traps might be one cause of these climate variations.

"These precursory phenomena made the global ecosystem much more sensitive to even relatively small triggers, so that what otherwise might have been a fairly minor effect shifted the ecosystem into a new state," Renne said.

The cosmic impact then proved the death blow.

"What we really need to do is to understand better what was going on before the impact ? what was the level of ecological stress that existed that allowed the impact to be the straw that broke the camel's back?" Renne said. "We also need better dates for the massive volcanism at the Deccan Flats to better understand when it first started and how fast it occurred."

The scientists will detail their findings in Friday's issue of the journal Science.

Follow LiveScience on Twitter @livescience. We're also on Facebook? and? Google+.

Source: http://science.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/02/07/16887641-new-proof-that-asteroid-impact-killed-off-the-dinosaurs?lite

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A second chance to save Pompeii

Claudio Lavanga / NBC News

Workers cover 2,000-year-old graffiti in Pompeii with Plexiglas on Tuesday.

By Claudio Lavanga, Correspondent, NBC News

Published at 8:23 a.m. ET: POMPEII, Italy -- On Tuesday evening, the sound of a pneumatic drill broke the silence that has been part of Pompeii's character since the eruption of Mount Vesuvius buried the city in 79 A.D.

Three workers cut holes in one of the city's historic walls, attached mounts with concrete and fixed a Plexiglas cover to protect 2,000-year-old graffiti.

"Sorry we don't have hard hats on," the men said, as if not following safety standards was the only thing wrong with their supposed?preservation work. In fact, according to experts, the workmen were defacing priceless antiquities.

"Oh my god, look at them. Do you see an archaeologist around?" said Dario Sautto, a member of Italy's Cultural Heritage Observatory who witnessed the work.?

As is so often the case with the preservation of Pompeii, the cure appears to be worse than the disease, he said.?

"Those men are bricklayers, without a qualified supervisor in sight," he added. "They are just patching things up ahead of the visit of the [European Union] commissioner."

Indeed, on Wednesday, Johannes Hahn, regional affairs commissioner for the European Union (EU), was surveying Pompeii and discussing ?the start of the Great Pompeii Project, a multimillion-dollar plan to revamp and secure the decaying?archaeological?site -- and stop patch-up jobs like the one Sautto had just witnessed.?

Pompeii, an?ancient city blanketed by 20 feet of volcanic ash and pumice after Vesuvius erupted?almost 2,000 years ago,?is just one of thousands of Italian sites that have attracted tourists and?archaeologists?alike for hundreds of years. ?And for decades it has symbolized the failings of the Italian state in preserving its rich historical, cultural and?archaeological?heritage.

In 2010, one stone too many crumbled -- the famous House of Gladiators, used for training before fights in the nearby amphitheater, collapsed into a pile of rubble. The world's?archaeological?community cringed, and so did the EU.

Franco Origlia / Getty Images, file

The House of the Gladiators was cordoned off after its collapse in 2010, drawing attention to the fragile state of Pompeii.

So the EU pledged to spend 105 million euros (about $142 million) to make sure that interventions like the one witnessed Tuesday become a thing of the past.?

The project consists of "using some of the most sophisticated and up-to-date technology to preserve the ruins of the site, which has been badly damaged in recent years," the EU said Tuesday.

Despite 2.3 million tourists visiting the ruins of Pompeii every year, the site has slowly been falling into decay due to mismanagement, corruption and the influence of the "Camorra," the local mafia.

Millions of dollars have been spent in the past to try to prevent the UNESCO World Heritage Site falling into disarray, but every attempt to turn the ancient site into a truly modern tourist attraction has gone up in smoke.?

On Tuesday, Annamaria Caccavo, a businesswoman who won a multimillion-dollar restoration tender to work on Pompeii, was placed under house arrest on charges of aiding abuse of office, corrupting a public official and fraud.

"The problem with Pompeii is that they always treat its preservation like an emergency," Sautto said. "But the emergency started in 79 A.D., not today. And still they can't figure out how to save it."

Caccavo's arrest, which came a day before the EU officially stepped?in to straighten up the ruins' management, sent a signal that legality and transparency will play a major role in the new regime.

Pompeii has never been famous for its preservation, and pieces fall off its ruins regularly. ?Only 30 percent of the site is open to the public, with restoration works frozen in time, just like the casts of its citizens who died when Vesuvius erupted. Guards around the site are outnumbered by stray dogs, and public toilets are a lucky find in the maze of ruins.

The EU's Hahn said he took more than a professional interest in helping ensure the protection of Pompeii's treasures.?

"I have taken a great personal interest in getting this project off the ground ever since I heard about the collapse of the House of the Gladiators in November 2010, when I happened to be in Rome," he said. "Here is a chance not just to help save something which is part of Europe's cultural identity but to revitalize (the regional) economy by attracting more visitors and creating new jobs."

In Pompeii, it's a race against time to preserve what's left of this ancient site, before it becomes history.

Related:

Rome's leaning Colosseum has experts worried

Source: http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/02/06/16864343-eu-steps-in-to-protect-pompeii-from-shoddy-restoration-organized-crime?lite

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Thursday, February 7, 2013

Grisly scene after Calif. tour bus crash killed 7

Authorities work Monday Feb. 4, 2013, at the scene of Sunday's fatal tour bus crash on Highway 38 north of Yucaipa, Calif., that left at least eight people dead and dozens injured. The cause of the Sunday crash east of Los Angeles remained under investigation. (AP Photo/The Sun, Rick Sforza)

Bolldstains and personal items are seen as an investigator from the National Transpoartation Safety Board photographs a tour bus after an accident that killed at least eight people and 38 more were injured after a tour bus, left, carrying a group from Tijuana, Mexico crashed with two other vehicles just north of Yucaipa, Calif., Sunday, Feb. 3, 2013. (AP Photo/Reed Saxon)

Investigators stand at the scene after a tour bus was lifted back onto the road Monday, Feb. 4, 2013, after it collided with two other vehicles and crashed Sunday, killing at least eight people and injuring 38, just north of Yucaipa, Calif. The bus was carrying a tour group from Tijuana, Mexico. (AP Photo/Reed Saxon)

YUCAIPA, Calif. (AP) ? Gerardo Barrientos and his girlfriend Lluvia Ramirez wanted a week away from the suffering they see every day at a government hospital in Tijuana, Mexico. Looking for a break, they paid $40 apiece for a day trip to the snowy mountains of Southern California.

But when the tour bus they were riding in careened out of control and collided with a car and truck as it came down the mountain from the ski resort town of Big Bear, they found themselves in a scene more gruesome than any they had seen back home.

"I saw many people dead. There are very, very horrendous images in my head, things I don't want to think about," Barrientos, who works in a hospital pharmacy, said Monday.

Authorities said seven people died and three dozen others were injured in the wreck Sunday.

"I was overwhelmed," said Ramirez. "I'm a surgical resident and I usually know how to react, but I was so in shock I didn't know what to do. I just stayed with my friend."

A day after the crash, they were waiting outside the Loma Linda University Medical Center emergency room to hear about the condition of their friend, another medical resident whose neck was broken.

Barrientos, who was uninjured, sprang into action following the crash, moving his friends to safety. He tried to help the bus driver, whose hand was pinned between rocks.

Ramirez, who had a bloody ear, dark bruises and a scratch on her neck, suffered a hairline vertebra fracture.

The severity of the injuries made it difficult for authorities to determine how many people had died. They initially said eight, then reduced the number to seven Monday after determining no more bodies were in the wrecked bus.

The dead included San Diego residents 13-year-old Victor Cabrera-Garcia, Elvira Garcia Jimenez, 40, and Guadalupe Olivas, 61; and Tijuana residents Aleida Adriana Arce Hernandez, 38, Rubicelia Escobedo Flores, 34, and Mario Garcia Santoyo 32, said San Bernardino County coroner's supervisor Tony Campisi. One woman remained unidentified.

Just before the crash, the driver had shouted to the passengers that the brakes had failed, and urged them to call 911.

As passengers frantically tried to get a cellphone signal, a group of teenage girls shrieked and prayed aloud. Others cried and shielded their heads as they careened downhill.

The bus rear-ended a Saturn sedan, swerved, flipped and slid on its side. A Ford pickup in the oncoming lane plowed into it, righting the bus and tossing passengers out shattered windows before it came to a halt.

The crash littered Route 38, a two-lane highway in the San Bernardino National Forest 80 miles east of Los Angeles, with body parts, winter clothing and debris. The bus stood across both lanes with its windows blown out, front end crushed and part of the roof peeled back like a tin can.

Federal investigators at the scene said they would begin on Tuesday a thorough investigation of the bus and the circumstances that surrounded the crash. They will determine if mechanical failure or driver error was to blame.

Government records showed the bus, operated by Scapadas Magicas LLC of National City, Calif., recorded 22 safety violations in inspections in the year ending October ? including brake, windshield and tire problems.

Though the company retained an overall "satisfactory" rating from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, it had been targeted for a higher rate of inspections linked to bus maintenance, the agency said.

The driver, Norberto B. Perez, 52, of San Ysidro, suffered major injuries but before going to the hospital told authorities the vehicle had brake problems.

A person involved in the investigation who spoke on condition of anonymity because the probe was ongoing said the bus was moving slowly downhill and was passed by other vehicles, including the Saturn, when it suddenly sped up.

The bus traveled about a mile from the point it struck the Saturn until it came to a stop, California Highway Patrol Officer Leon Lopez said.

At least 17 people remained hospitalized Monday, including at least five in critical condition.

The pickup driver was in extremely serious condition, said Peter Brierty, assistant county fire chief.

No one answered the door at the Scapadas Magicas office in a sprawling complex that houses more than 1,300 storage lockers and about 30 small offices.

Jordi Garcia, marketing director of Interbus Tours, said his company rented the bus from Scapadas Magicas, which supplied the driver.

Interbus offers near-daily bus tours to the western U.S. from Tijuana. Its office in a Tijuana strip mall displays photographs of some of its destinations, including Hollywood, the Las Vegas Strip and the San Diego Zoo.

Garcia said 38 people were aboard the bus that crashed, including the driver and a tour guide. The bus left Tijuana at 5 a.m. Sunday and planned to return late that night.

He said he spoke briefly with his tour guide, who suffered bruises. She told him she heard a loud pop before the crash.

Maria Salazar's daughter, 28-year-old Diana Maldonado of San Diego, was among those injured. Salazar said her daughter described the terror of the bus flipping and her head smashing through a window as she was propelled out of the vehicle. She lost consciousness and awoke as paramedics tended to her.

Maldonado hurt her back and shoulder but did not break any bones, according to her mother, who said her two other daughters had planned to make the trip but did not.

"I just thank God they did not go," Salazar said in Spanish as she choked back tears.

___

Associated Press reporters contributing to this report included Julie Watson in San Diego, Raquel Maria Dillon in San Bernardino County and Michael R. Blood, Andrew Dalton and Bob Jablon in Los Angeles. Flaccus reported from Loma Linda, Calif.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2013-02-05-Tour%20Bus-Crash/id-c85b3dd80ee9449a9959125b9850e8d7

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Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Safely Explore an Erupting Volcano With This Stunning 360 Degree Interactive Video

A few days ago we posted a behind the scenes look at how the Moscow-based Airpano managed to capture some spectacular footage and imagery of the Tolbachick volcano using a flying drone. But it turns out they also had a 360 degree video camera mounted to one of their helicopters. And the footage of their flight over the volcano and its lava flows has now been posted online for you to explore and drool over. Nature: you still make for some awe-inspiring footage. [Spiegel via Fazed] More »

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/svVeglmM9F0/safely-explore-an-erupting-volcano-with-this-stunning-360-degree-interactive-video

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HP?s Chromebook: Bigger Screen, More Money, Less Battery Life

Hewlett-Packard is now in the Chromebook business. On Monday, HP announced it's first Chrome OS device, the Pavilion Chromebook. And, on paper, HP's first Chromebook looks to be bit of a mixed bag.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/GearFactor/~3/1UIpER_wWME/

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U.S., allies warn North Korea against 'provocative' moves (CNN)

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Monday, February 4, 2013

Iran hedges on nuclear talks with six powers or U.S.

MUNICH (Reuters) - Iran said on Sunday it was open to a U.S. offer of direct talks on its nuclear program and that six world powers had suggested a new round of nuclear negotiations this month, but without committing itself to either proposal.

Diplomatic efforts to resolve a dispute over Iran's nuclear program, which Tehran says is peaceful but the West suspects is intended to give Iran the capability to build a nuclear bomb, have been all but deadlocked for years, while Iran has continued to announce advances in the program.

Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said a suggestion on Saturday by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden that Washington was ready for direct talks with Iran if Tehran was serious about negotiations was a "step forward".

"We take these statements with positive consideration. I think this is a step forward but ... each time we have come and negotiated it was the other side unfortunately who did not heed ... its commitment," Salehi said at the Munich Security Conference where Biden made his overture a day earlier.

He also complained to Iran's English-language Press TV of "other contradictory signals", pointing to the rhetoric of "keeping all options on the table" used by U.S. officials to indicate they are willing to use force to keep Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

"This does not go along with this gesture (of talks) so we will have to wait a little bit longer and see if they are really faithful this time," Salehi said.

Iran is under a tightening web of sanctions. Israel has also hinted it may strike if diplomacy and international sanctions fail to curb Iran's nuclear drive.

In Washington, Army General Martin Dempsey, the top U.S. military officer, said in an interview broadcast on Sunday that the United States has the capability to stop any Iranian effort to build nuclear weapons, but Iranian "intentions have to be influenced through other means."

Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, made his comments on NBC's program "Meet the Press," speaking alongside outgoing Defense Secretary Leon Panetta.

Panetta said current U.S. intelligence indicated that Iranian leaders have not made a decision to proceed with the development of a nuclear weapon.

"But every indication is they want to continue to increase their nuclear capability," he said. "And that's a concern. And that's what we're asking them to stop doing."

The new U.S. secretary of state, John Kerry, has said he will give diplomacy every chance of solving the Iran standoff.

THE BEST CHANCE

With six-power talks making little progress, some experts say talks between Tehran and Washington could be the best chance, perhaps after Iran has elected a new president in June.

Negotiations between Iran and the six powers - Russia, China, the United States, Britain, France and Germany - have been deadlocked since a meeting last June.

EU officials have accused Iran of dragging its feet in weeks of haggling over the date and venue for new talks.

Salehi said he had "good news", having heard that the six powers would meet in Kazakhstan on February 25.

A spokesman for EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, who coordinates the efforts of the six powers, confirmed that she had proposed talks in the week of February 25 but noted that Iran had not yet accepted.

Kazakhstan said it was ready to host the talks in either Astana or Almaty.

Salehi said Iran had "never pulled back" from the stuttering negotiations with the six powers. "We still are very hopeful. There are two packages, one package from Iran with five steps and the other package from the (six powers) with three steps."

Iran raised international concern last week by announcing plans to install and operate advanced uranium enrichment machines. The EU said the move, potentially shortening the path to weapons-grade material, could deepen doubts about the peaceful nature of Iran's nuclear program.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday that Israel's mission to stop its arch-enemy from acquiring nuclear weapons was "becoming more complex, since the Iranians are equipping themselves with cutting-edge centrifuges that shorten the time of (uranium) enrichment".

"We must not accept this process," said Netanyahu, who is trying to form a new government after winning an election last month. Israel is generally believed to be the only country in the Middle East with nuclear weapons.

(Additional reporting by Myra MacDonald and Stephen Brown in Munich, Dmitry Solovyov in Almaty, Yeganeh Torbati in Dubai and Jim Wolf in Washington; Editing by Kevin Liffey and Will Dunham)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/iran-hedges-nuclear-talks-six-powers-u-184256628.html

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Friday, February 1, 2013

Beer's bitter compounds could help brew new medicines

Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Researchers employing a century-old observational technique have determined the precise configuration of humulones, substances derived from hops that give beer its distinctive flavor.

That might not sound like a big deal to the average brewmaster, but the findings overturn results reported in scientific literature in the last 40 years and could lead to new pharmaceuticals to treat diabetes, some types of cancer and other maladies.

"Now that we have the right results, what happens to the bitter hops in the beer-brewing process makes a lot more sense," said Werner Kaminsky, a University of Washington research associate professor of chemistry.

Kaminsky is the lead author of a paper describing the findings, published this month in the journal Angewandte Chemie International Edition.

There is documentation that beer and its bittering acids, in moderation, have beneficial effects on diabetes, some forms of cancer, inflammation and perhaps even weight loss.

Kaminsky used a process called X-ray crystallography to figure out the exact structure of those acids, humulone molecules and some of their derivatives, produced from hops in the brewing process. That structure is important to researchers looking for ways to incorporate those substances, and their health effects, into new pharmaceuticals.

Humulone molecules are rearranged during the brewing process to contain a ring with five carbon atoms instead of six. At the end of the process two side groups are formed that can be configured in four different ways ? both groups can be above the ring or below, or they can be on opposite sides.

Which of the forms the molecule takes determines its "handedness," Kaminsky said, and that is important for understanding how a particular humulone will react with another substance. If they are paired correctly, they will fit together like a nut and bolt.

If paired incorrectly, they might not fit together at all or it could be like placing a right hand into a left-handed glove. That could produce disastrous results in pharmaceuticals.

Kaminsky cited thalidomide, which has a number of safe uses but was famously used to treat morning sickness in pregnant women in the late 1950s and early 1960s before it was discovered to cause birth defects. Molecule "handedness" in one form of the drug was responsible for the birth defects, while the orientation of molecules in another form did not appear to have the negative effects.

To determine the configuration of humulones formed in the brewing process, coauthors Jan Urban, Clinton Dahlberg and Brian Carroll of KinDex Therapeutics, a Seattle pharmaceutical firm that funded the research, recovered acids from the brewing process and purified them.

They converted the humulones to salt crystals and sent them to Kaminsky, who used X-ray crystallography ? a technique developed in the early 20th century ? to determine the exact configuration of the molecules.

"Now that we know which hand belongs to which molecule, we can determine which molecule goes to which bitterness taste in beer," Kaminsky said.

The authors point out that while "excessive beer consumption cannot be recommended to propagate good health, isolated humulones and their derivatives can be prescribed with documented health benefits."

Some of the compounds have been shown to affect specific illnesses, Kaminsky said, while some with a slight difference in the arrangement of carbon atoms have been ineffective.

The new research sets the stage for finding which of those humulones might be useful in new compounds to be used as medical treatments.

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University of Washington: http://www.uwnews.org

Thanks to University of Washington for this article.

This press release has been viewed 56 time(s).

Source: http://www.labspaces.net/126532/Beer_s_bitter_compounds_could_help_brew_new_medicines

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