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Saturday, August 3, 2013

Sun Opens Explosive Plasma 'Arms' in Solar Eruption (Video)

A sun-watching spacecraft spotted our closest star opening its arms to the cosmos. Two strands of plasma from an eruption in the sun's atmosphere were captured in observations with NASA's STEREO A satellite.

The plasma arms broke out from a sunspot in a 12-hour-long event that occurred from July 21 and 22, according to NASA. The solar phenomenon was observed in a wavelength of extreme UV light and condensed into a?time-lapse video of the sun storm.

STEREO A and its sister spacecraft STEREO B launched in 2006 as part of NASA's Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory. They are just two of the space agency's satellites tasked with monitoring the sun's activity.

NASA and the European Space Agency also oversee the long-lived Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, or SOHO, which launched in 1996 and recently spotted a?gigantic hole in the sun's atmosphere?covering nearly a quarter of the solar surface over the sun's north pole. NASA's powerful Solar Dynamics Observatory and other probes also keep constant watch on the sun and its space weather impacts.

The sun is currently reaching its 11-year peak in activity, known as the solar maximum. During this period, there are more sunspots causing a boost in solar flares and ejections, though this cycle's peak is shaping up to be the weakest in a century, scientists have said.

Follow SPACE.com on Twitter?@Spacedotcom. We're also on?Facebook?and?Google+. Original article on SPACE.com.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/sun-opens-explosive-plasma-arms-solar-eruption-video-174240084.html

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A man cools off in a fountain at a park in Shanghai, China, Thursday, Aug. 1, 20...

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Source: http://www.facebook.com/shanghainews/posts/505367902866781

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Friday, August 2, 2013

Child Beat Up At Church Camp; Blames Employee

MCALMONT, AR- A child beaten up at a church summer camp Wednesday, now a grandmother is seeking answers after learning an employee instigated the fight. Her 12-year-old grandson told FOX 16 he's been bullied for several years now at the McAlmont Church of Christ Summer Camp. However, three teens took it to a whole new level on Wednesday. The boy suffered a severe concussion and was taken to the hospital.

"My Leg was hurting and I had really bad pain and I was just so dizzy, and my head was hurting, I just kept holding my head," said the 12-year-old victim.

The boy said he was playing a game of basketball with one of the church employees, when he admitted to making fun of woman's basketball shot.

"All I remember is her grabbing the other 2 boys and telling them ya'll go over there and hit and beat him up for me," said the victim.

Next thing the boy knew, the teens were throwing punches at him, picked him up and slammed him on the ground. At one point, the teens started stomping on him. He didn't remember much after the fight other than he was in a lot of pain and no adults were around.

"That could've killed him," said Carolyn Jordan, victim's Grandmother.

Carolyn Jordan's been sending her grandson to the summer camp for six years. Now she's hesitant on trusting a place she once considered safe.

"That right there just made me mad. I said for you to stand there and let 3 of them jump him?" explained Jordan.

Jordan is even more upset at how the 19-year-old employee handled the situation, especially the moment her grandson lost a tooth in the fight.

"She turned around and brought me my tooth and she laughed in my face," said the victim.

Church minister Loyd Harris said he's concerned about the issue and says they're looking into the matter.

"There are some preliminary actions that have been taken to remove kids from the program while we do the investigation," said Loyd Harris, Minister.

The child and his family ultimately want to see a change.

"I just want things to be right," said the victim.

"They either need to get some better staff, staff the place right and find somebody to run the place the way it used to be ran. They just need to point blank close it down because its not going to do anybody any good to go down there and find their kids somewhere dead," said Jordan.

In a Pulaski County Sheriff's report, it says two church employees said the children were "horse playing" when one got injured. The mother of the child said she plans on pressing charges.

If you'd like to follow Susanne's stories, click here

Source: http://www.fox16.com/news/local/story/Susanne-Brunner/OKxaZUBqc0qlV5ECnGCmiw.cspx?rss=315

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New drugs to find the right target to fight Alzheimer's disease

[unable to retrieve full-text content]The future is looking good for drugs designed to combat Alzheimer's disease. Scientists have unveiled how two classes of drug compounds currently in clinical trials work to fight the disease. Their research suggests that these compounds target the disease-causing peptides with high precision and with minimal side-effects.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/~3/Zwv7zWF80OY/130802080343.htm

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Employers aren't cutting, or adding, many staffers

In this Monday, June 24, 2013, photo, a recruiter waits to meet with job seekers at a career fair, in King of Prussia, Pa. The Labor Department reports on the number of Americans who applied for unemployment benefits in the last week of July on Thursday, Aug. 1, 2013. In the previous week, applications rose to 343,000. Weekly applications can be volatile in July because of summer shutdowns at auto plants that can cause temporary spikes in layoffs. Still, the broader trend has been favorable and consistent with steady job growth. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum)

WASHINGTON (AP) ? Companies have all but stopped laying off workers. They just aren't hiring many.

When the government issues the July employment report Friday, it will likely show another solid month of job growth. But the job gain can be misleading because it's a net figure: The number of people hired minus the number who lose or quit jobs.

When employers are cutting few workers, as they are now, it doesn't take many hires to create a high net gain.

Last week, the number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits fell 19,000 to 326,000, the Labor Department said Thursday. That was the fewest since January 2008.

Those applications reflect layoffs. And layoffs have averaged 1.65 million a month this year through May, even fewer than the 1.77 million average in the pre-recession year of 2006.

So few people are losing their jobs that it's easy to forget that the job market isn't yet healthy. The unemployment rate remains a still-high 7.6 percent ? far more than the 5 percent to 6 percent associated with a normal economy.

According to a survey of economists by FactSet, the economy likely added 183,000 jobs in July. Yet the picture isn't as bright as that net gain might suggest. Consider why a net gain can be deceiving:

Suppose a company cut 40 workers and hired 50. Net gain: 10 jobs. But say it instead cut only 10 and added 30. It would have hired fewer workers. Yet it would have created twice the net job gain ? 20.

Similarly, the Labor Department's monthly net job gain can look healthy despite only modest hiring. As layoffs have steadily declined, the economy has been generating a 202,000 net jobs a month this year, up from an average 183,000 in 2012.

"The layoff side of the employment equation remains stable," Jill Brown, an economist at Credit Suisse, wrote in a note to clients Thursday.

The hiring side, by contrast, has yet to accelerate.

Employers have hired an average of 4.36 million people a month through May this year, the government says. That's 18 percent below the 2006 average of 5.32 million hires a month.

Facing tax increases, federal spending cuts and weak demand overseas, companies have been reluctant to hire aggressively. And many have discovered since the Great Recession that they can manage with fewer staffers than before, thanks in part to machines and software that can do clerical and administrative tasks better and more cheaply than humans can.

Start-up companies, which produce a majority of new jobs, have become stingier about hiring. The average new business employed just 4.7 workers when it opened shop in 2011, down from 7.6 in the 1990s, according to a Labor Department study last year that attributed the drop to technology.

Employers' reluctance to step up hiring has hampered the jobs recovery. Even at this year's average monthly pace of 202,000 net job gains, it would take 11 more months to restore U.S. payrolls to their January 2008 peak ? before the Great Recession started wiping out jobs.

Still, compared with the lackluster growth of the U.S. economy, the pace of hiring doesn't look so bad. The economy grew at a subpar 1.7 percent annual rate from April through June, the government said this week. That was better than the revised 1.1 percent growth rate for January through March but still far below a normal annual rate of roughly 2.5 percent to 3 percent.

On Wednesday, the Federal Reserve slightly downgraded its assessment of the U.S. economy, though it expects growth to pick up in the second half of the year.

The cautious message from the Fed might signal that it isn't ready to slow its bond purchases, which have helped shrink long-term interest rates and encouraged borrowing and spending.

Steady job growth had fueled speculation that the Fed might start scaling back its $85 billion a month in bond purchases as soon as September. Many economists now say the Fed might delay the start of any pullback in purchases until after economic growth has accelerated, perhaps by December.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/f70471f764144b2fab526d39972d37b3/Article_2013-08-01-US%20Unemployment%20Benefits/id-4f8a813681ae4702a3740efafff04911

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Why Patents Won't Kill 3D-Printing Innovation (Op-Ed)

Melba Kurman, author, and Hod Lipson, Cornell University associate professor in mechanical and aerospace engineering, are co-authors of "Fabricated: The New World of 3D Printing" (John Wiley & Sons, 2013) and leading voices in the field of 3D printing. They contributed this article to LiveScience's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights as part of their new LiveScience series highlighting issues and developments in 3D-printing technology.

If you want to start a fight at a party full of people passionate about 3D printing, just mention technology patents. Immediately, people will stake out their positions and the room will erupt into chaos. Blogger Paul Banwatt sums up the debate nicely as a standoff between those "who believe that patents have held back 3D-printing technology and those who believe that patents have really incentivized innovation."

Patents are like people. Some do good things and try to help others. Other patents behave like greedy bureaucrats by hiding behind rules and regulations and getting in the way of forward progress. Just to be clear here, in this article we're not talking about the unresolved, looming battle over pirating or the 3D printing of unauthorized copies of IP (intellectual property)-protected designs. We mean patents on actual 3D-printing processes, tools and materials that are filed by companies that make and sell 3D printers and related technologies.

Constraints drive innovation

Patents drive technological advancement, but not in the way most people think. Conventional wisdom suggests that the temporary monopoly a patent gives a company enables that business to re-coup its earlier investment in the research and development (R&D) and attorney fees that generated the patent. When it comes to 3D-printing technology, conventional wisdom tells only a small part of the story. [The 10 Weirdest Things Created by 3D Printing]

Patents have helped 3D-printing technology advance, but not by giving a patent holder temporary control over a particular printing technology. Patents, particularly key patents on critical platform technologies, have pushed 3D-printing technology forward by introducing constraints. Patent-induced constraints force technological ingenuity ? which, in turn, drives innovation. The reason several different 3D-printing techniques exist today is, in part, the constraints imposed by patents that blocked key technologies and hence required the creation of workarounds.

Vast, open expanses of technological green fields are nice. But as Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos put it, "Frugality drives innovation, just like other constraints do. One of the only ways to get out of a tight box is to invent your way out." Bezos was referring to Amazon's early cash-poor days when, lacking a fat advertising budget, the company innovated around its constraints and eventually created its game-changing associates program.

Several innovative 3D-printing technologies are the fruit of patent-induced constraints. Over the past few decades, to play on the commercial battlefield, 3D-printing companies were forced to come up with technological workarounds to develop their own commercial 3D printers and related products. To avoid patent lawsuits, 3D-printing companies innovated their way out of a "tight box" by inventing around other companies' technology patents. As rival companies navigated their way around patent-induced constraints, they invented yet more innovative technologies.

Innovation in the face of constraints

In this environment, nearly two-dozen novel and important 3D-printing technologies were invented as a direct or indirect response to somebody else's patents. [The Top 10 Inventions That Changed the World]

Here are a few examples:

? Objet invented a new way to 3D print using photo-curable materials without relying on a liquid vat and a laser (a leading technique at the time). Objet's innovative techniques made it possible to print with multiple materials.

? Arcam invented EBeam selective sintering to avoid using lasers to fuse powder into layers. The result is a faster printing process and objects with improved material properties.

? Optomec developed a printing process that sprays metal powder into the path of a laser beam. This novel technique avoids the use of a powder-bed, which opened the door to one of the most promising applications for 3D printing, the fabrication of precisely graded metal alloys

Today, these rival printing technologies benefit users and provide a rich foundation for future inventors, from both commercial and open-source worlds, to build upon. Patents can advance technological innovation because they force inventors to devise new workarounds.

So, returning to the hypothetical 3D-printing party, what problems do people have with 3D printing and patents? If key patents introduce constraints that force technological innovation, why does the controversy over 3D-printing patents continue?

It continues because the debate over the impact of patents seems to be scrambling together two different forms of advancement: technological advancement and a company's ability to launch new commercial printing products.

Commercial advancement, expiring patents and consumer printers

Let's back up here for a minute and explain one of the hottest patent debates going on in the 3D-printing industry today: the impact of expired patents. The year 2009 marked the expiration date of technology patents for a key printing technology called FDM (invented by Scott Crump in 1989 and formerly owned by Stratasys). FDM is the technology behind the classic layer-by-layer extrusion of a thin plastic stream of material into a 3D pattern, a simple, low-cost technique ideal for consumer machines.

People who view patents as innovation-killers attribute 3D printing's recent growth surge to the expiration of FDM patents. Just a few years after the constraints imposed by FDM patents were lifted, today there are an estimated 100-plus different, low-cost 3D-printer models for sale (most notably MakerBot) that utilize FDM technology. A corresponding number of young companies sell these new consumer 3D printers or are raising funds on Kickstarter to develop their business plans.

One of our favorite intellectual property bloggers, Mike Masnick, put it this way: "Development and innovation [have] been held up for the last couple decades ? not because the technology wasn't available, but because of key patents that are apparently needed to build 3D printers." [10 Amazing 3D-Printing Startups]

It's a compelling argument. But there's a subtle point that's being missed in all the heat and noise: The impact of patents on the advancement of 3D-printing technologies is not monolithic. Patents trigger innovation by imposing constraints that force workarounds. These same patents stifle, or at least complicate, the introduction of new commercial products, as evidenced by the expiration of FDM patents and the ensuing landslide of new printers that followed.

In fact, when patents expire, the ensuing products that appear on the market are not necessarily innovative, at least from a technological perspective. Despite the launch of more than 100 commercial 3D printers in the last two years, most of these printers' core technology is FDM, which dates back to the 1980s. If core patents truly blocked technological innovation, these new consumer-scale 3D-printer models on the market should represent a rich bazaar of ingenious new variations and additions that springboard off of old FDM technology.

Open-source hardware

To add another data point to the debate, there's the case of two early open-source 3D printers launched in 2006: RepRap (created by Adrian Bowyer and his team) and Fab@Home (created by Evan Malone and this article's co-author Hod Lipson). Both systems were simple, do-it-yourself affairs. And, both Fab@home and RepRap were open source, meaning that their machine blueprints were freely available on the Web where anyone could download them.

Thousands of users downloaded these design blueprints and built their own 3D printers at home. Both projects encouraged technological innovation beyond the original blueprints. Several years later, MakerBot's early, commercial 3D printer would borrow many design elements from RepRap and Fab@Home.

After their launch in the mid-2000s, RepRap and Fab@home thrived for years, long before FDM patents expired in 2009. The presence of blocking patents did not discourage do-it-yourselfers from creating innovative new technologies on top of the core, open-sourced machine blueprints. However, and this is the heart of a fine and critical distinction, the presence of blocking patents had a different effect: In the case of open-sourced printers, patents acted as a commercial, not technological, constraint. Users could not necessarily turn their innovations into commercial products without first understanding and skillfully navigating the patent landscape. The Formlabs case is a good example of just how legally complicated the intertwined tangle of patents around a particular printing platform can get.

When patents go bad: blocking the bad ones

?Patents force companies and innovators down different paths. Some companies create ways to invent around the barrier. Others tinker with open-sourced versions of the patented technology. Commercially minded users and companies must wait until a key patent expires before they can take advantage of the now-freely available technology; however, they don't necessarily continue to innovate on top of it.

Patents aren't necessarily bad for innovation, even patents on a core technology. However, bad patents do exist. Some companies try to patent a technology or method that's painfully obvious, that is already in broad use or that someone else has already invented. These are patents worth fighting.

Thanks to recent changes in patent law under the American Invents Act, there's a way to prevent the issuance of such patents. With help from 3D-printing experts and researchers, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Harvard's Cyberlaw Clinic have devised an admirable approach to block bad patents ? they collect evidence of prior art and submit it to the U.S. Patent Office. The groups have already blocked six patent applications this way. ?

Going forward, the issue of patents will continue to sow dissent in the 3D-printing community. Intellectual property issues tap into people's core ideologies about appropriate degrees of private ownership and the placement of the boundary between intellectual commons and private commercial interests. In addition, intellectual property laws unfortunately can (and will) be misused and abused by unethical companies and individuals. We hope that as 3D printing continues to develop commercially, the black-and-white debate over the value of patents will embrace gradations of grey and aim its energy at legally preventing the issuance of bad patents on technologies that already exist.

Kuman and Lipson's most recent Op-Ed was"Is Eco-Friendly 3D Printing a Myth?" Follow Kurman @melbakurman. The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. This article was originally published on LiveScience.com.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/why-patents-wont-kill-3d-printing-innovation-op-150740787.html

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Death Threats to Rick Perry, George W. Bush via Twitter Being Investigated as Protests Against Texas 20 Week Abortion Law Go Out of Control

(Photo: Bryan Redding Photography)
Texas Governor Rick Perry speaking at Faith & Freedom Coalition's "Road to Majority 2013" conference, June 15, 2013, Washington, D.C.

August 1, 2013|8:38 pm

The state's Department of Public Safety [DPS] has subpoenaed two Twitter accounts, @prisonforbush and @deniseromano for statements they made regarding the abortion legislation from July 17-19. The threatening tweets mention Gov. Rick Perry, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, and former President George W. Bush.

Twitter reportedly received the subpoena submitted by DPS Agent Jason McMurray of Tyler on July 25, which requests the names, emails, addresses, method of payment, activation date, and IP addresses of @prisonforbush, an anonymous account, and @deniseromano, belonging to Denise Romano. The social media engine has said it will respond to the subpoena by Aug. 2 unless the users appeal.

Twitter's privacy policy states that a user's information cannot be accessed without legal process, and users will be notified that their information is being accessed.

On July 18, the day Gov. Rick Perry signed the abortion bill into law, Denise Romano tweeted: "Should we execute Perry by lethal injection or stoning for all he's killed."

According to Romano's Twitter profile,?she has been a resident of Austin, Texas since 2012 and often times writes satirical tweets.

While Romano is a regular user of Twitter, the other suspect, @prisonforbush, had not used the social media platform for one year before sending a barrage of 40 tweets on July 18 calling for the "crucifixion" of Gov. Perry, as well as the torture and hanging of former Vice President Dick Cheney and former President George W. Bush.

Paul Watler, current First amendment lawyer and former president of the Texas Freedom of Information Foundation, told the San Antonio Express?that in order for the state police's charges of "terroristic threats" to stick, a reasonable person must fear that they were truly in danger of being harmed.

"I would question whether a reasonable person would seriously take this as intent to invoke physical harm," he said of @prisonforbush's posts, according to the San Antonio Press. "Just the fact that it would offend a reasonable person isn't enough to limit it - the user may say that it was merely hyperbolic and wasn't meant literally, and therefore it would fall to the side of free speech."

The debate regarding the new abortion bill became tense and unruly as the legislation was addressed earlier in July, with pro-abortion advocates gathering at the Capitol building to protest the passing of the bill. National coverage of the bill caused even more protesters to join the rallies.?

The bill was initially supposed to be voted on by June 25, but an outburst of protesters in the Senate Gallery proved so disturbing that the legislation could not be addressed by the deadline. Democratic Senator Wendy Davis then successfully blocked the bill after an 11 hour filibuster.

Gov. Rick Perry then called a special session of the state legislature to address the bill, during which the bill was passed by a House Committee and Senate, and ultimately signed by Gov. Perry on July 18. During this three week period of debate, tensions grew high among pro-life and pro-abortion protesters.

Some protesters held signs, while others shouted obscenities at lawmakers. The Associated Press described the Texas Capitol as having a "circus-like atmosphere," and the Texas Tribune?reported that the Department of Public Safety issued a statement advising police to search the bags of protesters before entering the Capitol building.

"During these inspections, DPS officers have thus far discovered one jar suspected to contain urine, 18 jars suspected to contain feces, and three bottles suspected to contain paint. All of these items ? as well as significant quantities of feminine hygiene products, glitter and confetti possessed by individuals ? were required to be discarded; otherwise those individuals were denied entry into the gallery," the DPS statement said.

Despite the protests, Gov. Perry signed the legislation, which bans abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy and requires abortion facilities to meet the same standards as ambulatory surgical centers. The bill also requires abortion doctors to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of their clinic.

"This is an important day for those who support life and for those who support the health of Texas women," Perry said in a statement after signing the bill. "In signing House Bill 2 today, we celebrate and further cement the foundation on which the culture of life in Texas is built."

Source: http://www.christianpost.com/news/death-threats-to-rick-perry-george-w-bush-via-twitter-being-investigated-as-protests-against-texas-20-week-abortion-law-go-out-of-control-101395/

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