Taylor Swift contemplating legal action over supposed topless photo ...

taylor-swift

Image Credit: Andrew Evans/PR Photos

Taylor Swift does not take personal attacks lightly (after all, she wrote a song and filmed a video in response to a bad review), which is why her team sent a cease-and-desist letter to a gossip website because of a supposed topless photo of the 21-year-old country crossover superstar.

Over the weekend, Celebrity Jihad posted a photo of a curly-haired blonde girl lying topless across a bed, claiming that it was a leaked photo of Swift. Shortly thereafter, Celebrity Jihad received a letter from Swift?s legal team asking that the photo be taken down, insisting that it was not in fact Swift.

The picture remains up at Celebrity Jihad, despite the site?s acknowledgement of Swift?s protest. A formal lawsuit could be the next step.

Here?s the thing: The picture obviously isn?t Taylor Swift, so this whole thing should theoretically go away pretty quickly. Still, with a hacker already arrested for unearthing nude photos of the likes of Scarlett Johansson and Christina Aguilera, the message to young female stars remains steadfast: Nobody can steal your nude photos if said pictures don?t exist. Though if they can?t, apparently, they?re happy to fake it.

Read more on EW.com:
Taylor Swift says new album is ?coming along really well? for next year. Can she possibly top ?Speak Now??
Scarlett Johansson hacker apologizes, says his curiosity turned into addiction
Review: Taylor Swift?s Speak Now Tour

Source: http://music-mix.ew.com/2011/10/31/taylor-swift-nude-photo/

january jones top gun kat von d the talk its always sunny in philadelphia free agents free agents

Hidden Persuaders (The Weekly Standard)

Washington (The Weekly Standard) Vol. 017, Issue 08 - 11/07/2011 ? Opponents of abortion are rarely interviewed on television these days. ?It?s much harder to get on TV than it used to be,? says Charmaine Yoest, who heads Americans United for Life. Bookers of guests for news shows tell her, ?We don?t want to talk about abortion. We?re tired of it.?

Perhaps the mainstream media are simply incapable of covering more than one social issue at a time. For the moment, the conflict over gay marriage and gays in the military is monopolizing media coverage, TV and print alike. Abortion is barely an afterthought.

There?s an upside to this for the pro-life movement, a benefit of benign neglect. Foes of gay rights are now seen by the press as fighting the bad war, roughly analogous to Vietnam. Pro-lifers are waging the good war, like World War II. ?You get much less grief fighting against abortion than you do fighting to preserve traditional marriage,? says Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List.

If only the media knew. They have missed the most important breakthrough in the struggle over abortion in years: the resurgence of the pro-life crusade. The press elite was beaten on the story by publications such as Christianity Today (?The New Pro-Life Surge?) and Baptist Press (?5?Reasons the Pro-Life Movement is Winning?).

That the pro-life movement is bigger is a given. It?s also younger, increasingly entrepreneurial, more strategic in its thinking, better organized, tougher in dealing with allies and enemies alike, almost wildly ambitious, and more relentless than ever.

All that is dwarfed by an even bigger change. Pro-lifers have captured the high moral ground, chiefly thanks to advances in the quality of sonograms. Once fuzzy, sonograms now provide a high-resolution picture of the unborn child in the womb. Fetuses have become babies.

Abortion advocates were among the first to understand how this would alter the debate. Two pro-choice leaders, Kate Michelman and Frances Kissling, acknowledged three years ago that ?antiabortionists? had gained a significant advantage. Supporters of abortion, they wrote in the Los Angeles Times, ?have had a hard time dealing with the increased visibility of the fetus.? To ?regain the moral high ground,? they must deal with ?a world that is radically changed from 1973,? when the Roe v. Wade decision legalized abortion nationwide.

Pro-life groups, unlike advocates of easy access to abortion, have proved adept in accommodating to this new world. They?ve begun piling up successes. In 2011 alone, 24 states have enacted 52 new restrictions on abortion. Five now require an ultrasound before an abortion, two insisting that the screen be viewable by the mother. Four bar abortions after the baby is able to feel pain (at approximately 20 weeks). Eight have opted out of Obamacare. Five ban abortions by webcam (in which a doctor, not in person but videoconferencing with the mother, prescribes pills to induce abortion). Six trimmed or eliminated funds for Planned Parenthood, the nation?s largest abortion provider. Texas led with a $64 million cut.

The wave of state action shouldn?t be all that surprising. Republicans gained control of 26 legislatures in the 2010 election. Once advised to drop the abortion issue or suffer a certain decline, the GOP is now the nation?s pro-life party?and isn?t declining. In Congress, the House has passed two pro-life bills this year, one outlawing abortion subsidies in Obamacare, the other imposing a blanket ban on taxpayer-funded abortions. Both measures were deep-sixed in the Democratic-controlled Senate.

Three pro-life trends have spiked in 2011. The first is the rise in opposition to abortion among young people. The under-30 cohort was the most pro-choice in the 1970s, second most in the 1980s and 1990s. Now they?re ?markedly less pro-choice? than any other age group, scholars Clyde Wilcox and Patrick Carr have written. ?Clearly, something is distinctive about the abortion attitudes of the Millennial Generation of Americans.?

Indeed there is. Millennials haven?t grown more religious, politically conservative, or queasy about gay rights. Nor do they go out of their way to vote for pro-life candidates. But they tend to see abortion as a human rights violation. Thus their resistance to abortion is gradually increasing.

You can see a manifestation of this generational shift at the March on Washington each January 22, the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade ruling. For years, the marchers were geezers, initially Catholics, then aging Protestants too. In the past few years, the march has been dominated by teenagers and people in their 20s, often carrying infants.

The second trend is the explosive growth of refuges for pregnant but unmarried women. These safe houses go by a multitude of names: Crisis Pregnancy Center, Pregnancy Resource Center, Pregnancy Health Center, Pregnancy Care Center, or simply Pregnancy Center. In Northern Virginia, Jim Wright, formerly in the commercial real estate business, calls the center he started Birthmothers.

They all do the same thing, nurturing single women during their pregnancy and recommending against abortion. The results are one-sided: 80 to 90 percent of the women who have sonograms at pregnancy centers choose to have their baby.

Today there are nearly three times as many of these centers (2,300) as abortion facilities (800 to 850). One reason for the disparity is that women stay for months in pro-life centers, but only briefly in abortion clinics. The Care Net network reflects the growth: 550 centers in 1999, 1,130 today.

Trend number three: the rejuvenation of old pro-life groups and the sprouting of new ones. Kristan Hawkins was a political appointee at the Department of Health and Human Services in 2006 when she responded to an ad for the newly created job of executive director of Students for Life. The group had been around for two decades, operating with a minimal staff and fewer than 300 chapters. Now Students for Life has 637 chapters, a full-time staff of 10, and a dozen regional coordinators. ?We?re almost everywhere,? assistant director Tina Whittington says.

Students for Life has branched out. There are Black Students for Life, Medical Students for Life, Business Students for Life, and so on. The goal for its field coordinators is to start 10 new pro-life groups per semester and 20 a year. Students for Life has been revitalized.

David Bereit was a pharmaceutical sales rep when Planned Parenthood built a clinic in his hometown of Bryan/College Station, Texas. He organized a protest. That was just the beginning. In 2004, he created 40 Days for Life, which promotes prayer vigils outside abortion -clinics. He began with a single vigil in downtown College Station. Bereit says the number of abortions in his county fell 28 percent that year. By his count, his group has recruited 400,000 people who participate in hundreds of vigils in nearly 400 cities.

When he started 40 Days, ?a lot of wind had left the sails of the pro-life groups,? he told me. ?Now I see enthusiasm and hope I haven?t seen in years. The tide is turning against Planned Parenthood and abortion providers.?

In the case of Planned Parenthood (PP), that?s true. Killing the federal government?s subsidy of PP has long been a top priority for pro-life groups. In 2009, there were 1.2 million abortions in the United States. PP was responsible for 332,278 of them. About one-third of PP?s $1?billion budget comes from government grants and contracts.

But until Lila Rose came along, PP had proved to be an elusive target. The group said that none of the federal money subsidized abortions, an implausible claim. No one in the pro-life movement believes it. Money, after all, is fungible.

Rose, 23, is the newest pro-life star, the exception to the rule that the abortion issue attracts no media attention. (Since Faye Wattleton left PP in 1992, the abortion side has had no stars.) One of eight children of a Catholic family in San Jose, California, Rose became an antiabortion activist at age 14 and continued as a student at UCLA. At 15, she formed Live Action, which produces hidden camera videos exposing PP?s willingness to offer abortions to underage girls while avoiding their obligation to report cases where the pregnancies came from statutory rape.

?Lila created the moment,? Dannenfelser says. Rose did so by posing as a teenage prostitute impregnated by her much older pimp at a PP clinic in New Jersey. The clinic?s manager explained how she could get an abortion by lying about her age. The video became a sensation on the Internet. More important, it was viewed by Republican representative Cliff Stearns of Florida, chairman of a House subcommittee on oversight and investigations.

Stearns was appalled at PP?s ?manipulating this young 15-year-old girl to get an abortion.? He was also impressed by a report on PP by Americans United for Life (AUL). It cited eight areas of ?scandal and abuse,? including misuse of federal funds, ?failure to report criminal child sexual abuse,? and aiding people involved in prostitution and sexual trafficking.

On September 15, Stearns launched the first-ever congressional probe of Planned Parenthood. In a letter to Cecile Richards, the embattled PP president, he said his panel has ?questions about the policies in place and actions undertaken? by PP and its affiliates, the handling of federal funds, and compliance with ?restrictions on the funding of abortion.? He asked for an extensive collection of audits and documents.

Though Democrats were furious at Stearns, he?s treated the PP issue cautiously. He sought the approval of Fred Upton of Michigan, the energy and commerce committee chairman, before sending the letter. And public hearings will be held only if House speaker John Boehner agrees, Stearns told me.

As you might expect, Rose is excited by the impact of her incriminating videos at PP clinics. ?You cannot argue with the videos,? she says. ?They speak the truth, and they are indisputable.? Young people ?are getting the truth about abortion in ways they couldn?t before. This is a movement that is just beginning and can?t be stopped.?

Look across the alley from the fifth floor office of the Susan B. Anthony List (SBA) in downtown Washington and you?ll see two placards. They?ve been posted on the window of the office of a labor union in the adjacent building?for the SBA crowd to see. One says ?Stop the War on Women,? the other, ?Don?t Take Away My Cancer Screenings.?

These are the response of Planned Parenthood and its allies to attacks on what PP and the abortion industry actually do. Abortion? Forget it. (PP says it mostly does medical tests, and abortions are a sideline.) The ?A? word is almost never uttered now by anyone connected to the abortion industry, which claims merely to support ?a woman?s right to choose.? Choose what? They don?t say. Their opponents aren?t ?pro-lifers,? but anyone who is ?anti-choice.?

The language gymnastics and euphemisms reflect the forlorn condition of the pro-choice flock. They?re worn out. Many are in despair. Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, told Newsweek of her anguish as she watched last year?s March on Washington. ?I just thought, my gosh, they are so young,? she said. ?There are so many of them, and they are so young.? Today, zeal and confidence and perseverance in the abortion battle are all on the antiabortion side. ?There are more pro-lifers now, and they?re more determined,? says Carol Tobias, president of National Right to Life.

The abortion lobby has found its own target, the pregnancy centers. The aim is to compel centers to post large signs disclosing they don?t offer abortions or make referrals to places like PP that do. The assumption behind the effort is that many women go to the centers for an abortion, then get talked out of it.

This offensive has gotten off to a rocky start, partly because lawyers for the centers have mostly succeeded in blocking the posting requirement. Austin, Texas, is one of the few jurisdictions with a mandate in effect. In the state of Washington, abortion supporters sought an extreme version of a posting law. It would require the no-abortions-here message to be posted in at least five languages. ?It didn?t pass, but it was a battle,? says Jeanneane Maxon of Care Net.

The pro-choicers also have pursued a quibble with the Susan B. Anthony List. They argue that Anthony, the leading 19th-century suffragette, was not opposed to abortion and that the SBA ?cherry picked? a few quotes as evidence she was. True, Anthony concentrated on winning the right to vote for women. But SBA cites this forthright statement in an Anthony editorial:

Guilty? Yes. No matter what the motive, love of ease, or a desire to save from suffering the unborn innocent, the woman is awfully guilty who commits the deed. It will burden her conscience in life, it will burden her soul in death; but oh, thrice guilty is he who .??.??. drove her to the desperation which impelled her to the crime.

?

Challenging SBA and pregnancy centers shows a bit of resourcefulness by pro-choicers, but those are essentially rear guard actions. They can?t match the right-to-life movement?s imagination and entrepreneurship. Michael New, a soft-spoken political science professor at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, is a leading pro-life thinker. He has studied the effect of state-enacted restrictions on abortion over the past decade and found they reduce the number of abortions. New (Dartmouth B.A., Stanford Ph.D.) hasn?t promoted his evidence through normal pro-life channels. Instead, he followed academic practice and submitted them for peer review.

That took three years, plus another year before his conclusions were published. He tested the impact of three restrictions: no public funding, parental involvement, and informed consent. He determined that all three reduced the abortion rate, particularly parental participation in the case of a minor. His article, ?Analyzing the Effect of Anti-Abortion U.S. State Legislation in the Post-Casey Era,? was published in the March issue of State Politics and Policy Quarterly.

New?s article is hardly a page-turner. But his findings have been known to state legislators for several years, encouraging them to pursue limitations on abortion. He?s now studying whether involvement of two parents is more effective than one and which pro-life restrictions are the most effective. As unlikely as it sounds, New has become a star of the movement. The abortion side lacks a Michael New.

Fetal pain is another issue that has invigorated the pro-life movement in recent years. Improved ultrasound revealed to doctors that at around 20 weeks an unborn child reacts visibly to pain. ?All the neurological equipment is present at 20 weeks,? according to Teresa Collett, a professor at the University of St. Thomas Law School in Minnesota and an expert on fetal pain. Fetal pain was recognized, Collett says, as an ?independent basis for a state to protect the life of a child.? In Nebraska last year, the first law was passed barring abortions after an unborn baby begins to sense pain. Mary Balch of National Right to Life (NRL) played a key role in drafting the Nebraska statute. Fetal pain laws won?t have a dramatic lifesaving effect. Still, they?re significant. The incremental strategy pursued by most pro-life groups is based on the idea that antiabortion laws, even if narrow, build on one another. Fetal pain laws focus on the suffering of the baby, an asset in opposing a woman?s right to choose. And who in the pro-choice lobby is eager to gainsay the pain experienced by an unborn child? Dispute it and you?ll come across as cruel.

The ultimate goal of pro-lifers remains what it?s always been: overturning Roe v. Wade. They?re reconciled to jumping through as many hoops as necessary to get there. Americans United for Life specializes in creating model antiabortion laws for states. It also has a strategic plan for ?reversing Roe? or ?rendering it obsolete.? It starts with ?saving babies now? and preparing states for the ?day after Roe.?

AUL isn?t kidding about vitiating Roe without overturning it. The key is to burden the abortion industry with intrusive regulations. This amounts to using liberal means to produce a conservative result. ?When you regulate something, you get less of it,? a pro-life leader reminds me. So precise conditions at abortion clinics would be imposed, as Virginia did this year. New requirements for safety, bookkeeping, record-keeping, and reporting would be applied. That?s not all. More laws limiting abortions would be needed, as would cultural efforts to shrink the demand for abortions.

The informal division of labor among pro-life groups leaves SBA with the conventional mission of electing candidates who are pro-life to Congress and defeating those who aren?t. The group had a sterling record in 2010, unseating 15 of the 20 Democrats who claimed to oppose abortion but voted for Obamacare. Dannenfelser intends to raise the bar on what?s expected from candidates SBA supports: no more toleration of candidates who are ?rhetorically pro-life but not operationally pro-life.?

In the tradition of its namesake, SBA promises in its campaign for next year to ?defend the wave of pro-life women elected in 2010, add to their ranks, and defeat pro-abortion women running for office.? By the way, four of the most enterprising and energetic pro-life groups?SBA, AUL, NRL, Live Action?are headed by women.

The big question today among pro-lifers is whether the movement has reached a turning point, with victory over abortion now inevitable. I?m dubious. AUL?s Yoest isn?t so sure either. She says pro-lifers have yet to win the argument that abortion, rather than empowering women, is harmful to them. New says America?s permissive culture is a huge impediment to closing off any right to an abortion. And Roe v. Wade stands erect nearly 39 years after it was decided. Who can be sure of its fate?

But real gains have been achieved by the pro-life movement and many, many lives have been saved?in 2011 alone. And bigger gains are bound to come as more babies are spared the abortionist?s knife.

Fred Barnes is executive editor of The Weekly Standard.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/oped/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/weeklystandard/20111031/cm_weeklystandard/hiddenpersuaders

district 9 pandaria pandaria artie lange baby lisa irwin baby lisa irwin pearl jam 20

Cain defends ad with smoking campaign manager

FILE - In this Oct. 28, 2011 file photo, Republican Presidential candidate, Herman Cain campaigns in Talladega, Ala. They?ve rolled the dice. The top Republican presidential rivals are locked in a game of one-upmanship, each trying to outdo the other in offering the boldest economic plan for the party?s efforts to unseat President Barack Obama next November. (AP Photo/Dave Martin, File)

FILE - In this Oct. 28, 2011 file photo, Republican Presidential candidate, Herman Cain campaigns in Talladega, Ala. They?ve rolled the dice. The top Republican presidential rivals are locked in a game of one-upmanship, each trying to outdo the other in offering the boldest economic plan for the party?s efforts to unseat President Barack Obama next November. (AP Photo/Dave Martin, File)

(AP) ? Republican presidential hopeful Herman Cain said Sunday that an Internet ad featuring his campaign manager smoking conveyed a message about letting "people be people" and was not intended to suggest that smoking is cool.

The video went viral this month with some 1 million clicks on Cain's campaign website. The ad shows Cain's top adviser, Mark Block, taking a deep drag from a cigarette and slowly exhaling into the camera.

"I'm not a smoker. But I don't have a problem if that's his choice," Cain said on CBS' "Face the Nation."

"So let Herman be Herman. Let Mark be Mark. Let people be people. This wasn't intended to send any subliminal signal whatsoever," the candidate said.

Cain, who was diagnosed with liver and colon cancer in 2006 and has said he's been cancer-free since 2007, was chided about the ad by his interviewer, Bob Schieffer, a bladder cancer survivor.

"Mark Block smokes. That's all that ad says," Cain said. "We weren't trying to say it's cool to smoke. You have a lot of people in this country that smoke. But what I respect about Mark as a smoker ... he never smokes around me or smokes around anyone else. He goes outside."

Cain said the video was meant "to be informative. If they listen to the message where he said America has never seen a candidate like Herman Cain, that was the main point of it. And the bit on the end, we didn't know whether it was going to be funny to some people or whether they were going to ignore it or whatever the case may be."

Cain said he understood the objection and that about 30 percent of the feedback the campaign had received to the video was similar to Schieffer's.

Schieffer pressed Cain to send an anti-smoking message on the show. Cain complied.

"Young people of America, all people, do not smoke. It is hazardous and it's dangerous to your health. Don't smoke. I've never smoked and I have encouraged people not to smoke," he said.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/bbd825583c8542898e6fa7d440b9febc/Article_2011-10-30-Cain-Smoking/id-e25f10f1bd2c4d62b73698e2e06e0648

us constitution articles of confederation articles of confederation current events current events nick lowe nazca lines

Kendall Jenner Birthday Special: Actually Coming to E!


Kendall Jenner will reportedly be the subject of an E! special next week, as the teenage half-sister of Kourtney, Khloe and Kim Kardashian will be chronicled in the days leading up to her 16th birthday.

Photo of Kendall Jenner

According to Us Weekly, which first reported this story, the show will center on Kendall shopping for a car and considering a vital question in life: belly button ring or tattoo?!?

An insider even says the family is "trying to line up Nicki Minaj or Kanye [West] to perform" during the special. We'd rail against how positively absurd this sounds, how unhealthy it is to celebrate any 16-year old in such a lavish manner, but it's Friday afternoon. We're tired. Readers, please take over for us.

[Photo: WENN.com]

Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2011/10/kendall-jenner-birthday-special-actually-coming-to-e/

toy abacus abacus spongebob bot foot locker cats

Faster-than-light test runs again

Scientists who announced that sub-atomic particles might be able to travel faster than light are to rerun their experiment in a different way.

This will address criticisms and allow the physicists to shore up their analysis as much as possible before submitting it for publication.

Dr Sergio Bertolucci said it was vital not to "fool around" given the staggering implications of the result.

So they are doing all they can to rule out more pedestrian explanations.

Physicists working on the Opera experiment announced the perplexing findings last month.

Neutrinos sent through the ground from Cern (the home of the Large Hadron Collider) in Geneva toward the Gran Sasso laboratory 732km away in Italy seemed to show up a tiny fraction of a second earlier than light would have.

Continue reading the main story

?Start Quote

It's like sending a series of loud and isolated clicks instead of a long blast on a horn?

End Quote Prof Matt Strassler Rutgers University

The speed of light is widely regarded as the Universe's ultimate velocity limit. Outlined first by James Clerk Maxwell and then by Albert Einstein in his theory of special relativity, much of modern physics relies on the idea that nothing can travel faster than light.

For many, the most comforting explanation is that some repeated "systematic error" has so far eluded the experimenters.

Since September, more than 80 scientific papers about the finding have been posted to the arXiv pre-print server. Most propose theoretical solutions for the observation; a few claim to find problems.

Dr Bertolucci, the director of research at Cern, told BBC News: "In the last few days we have started to send a different time structure of the beam to Gran Sasso.

"This will allow Opera to repeat the measurement, removing some of the possible systematics."

The neutrinos that emerge at Gran Sasso start off as a beam of proton particles at Cern. Through a series of complex interactions, neutrino particles are generated from this beam and stream through the Earth's crust to Italy.

Originally, Cern fired the protons in a long pulse lasting 10 microseconds (10 millionths of a second).

The neutrinos showed up 60 nanoseconds (60 billionths of a second) earlier than light would have over the same distance.

However, the time measurement is not direct; the researchers cannot know how long it took an individual neutrino to travel from Switzerland to Italy.

Instead, the measurement must be performed statistically: the scientists superimpose the neutrinos' "arrival times" on the protons' "departure times", over and over again and taking an average.

But some physicists say that any wrong assumptions made when relating these data sets could produce a misleading result.

This should be addressed by the new measurements, in which protons are sent in a series of short bursts - lasting just one or two nanoseconds, thousands of times shorter - with a large gap (roughly 500 nanoseconds) in between each burst.

This system, says Dr Bertolucci, is more efficient: "For every neutrino event at Gran Sasso, you can connect it unambiguously with the batch of protons at Cern," he explained.

Clicking in

Physicist Matt Strassler, who raised concerns about the original methods, welcomed the new experimental design.

Writing on his blog, Prof Strassler, from Rutgers University in New Jersey, said: "It's like sending a series of loud and isolated clicks instead of a long blast on a horn; in the latter case you have to figure out exactly when the horn starts and stops, but in the former you just hear each click and then it's already over."

The re-jigged neutrino run will end in November, when Cern has to switch from accelerating protons to accelerating lead ions. Opera scientists hope to include these measurements in the manuscript they will submit for publication in a scientific journal.

One of the main challenges to the collaboration's work comes from Nobel laureate Sheldon Glashow and his Boston University colleague Andrew Cohen.

In a recent paper, the physicists argue that if neutrinos can travel faster than the speed of light, they would rapidly lose energy, depleting the beam of more energetic particles. This phenomenon was not seen by the Opera experiment.

Cross checks

Dr Bertolucci called this study "elegant", but added: "An experimentalist has to prove that a measurement is either right or wrong. If you interpret every new measurement with older theories, you will never get a new theory.

"More than a century ago, Michelson and Morley measured the speed of light in the direction Earth was moving and in the opposite direction. They found the speed was equal in both directions."

This result helped to spur the development of the radical new theory of special relativity.

"If they had interpreted it using classical, Newtonian theory they would never have published," said Dr Bertolucci.

Next year, teams working on two other Gran Sasso experiments - Borexino and Icarus - will begin independent cross-checks of Opera's results.

The US Minos experiment and Japan's T2K experiment will also test the observations. It is likely to be several months before they report back.

Paul.Rincon-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/int/news/-/news/science-environment-15471118

dart dart progeria watch free movies online watch free movies online montreal canadiens montreal canadiens

Electron accelerator scientists report breakthroughs

ScienceDaily (Oct. 25, 2011) ? Cornell scientists have surpassed two major scientific milestones toward proving the technology of a novel, exceedingly powerful X-ray source.

For more than a decade, Cornell scientists have been conducting research and development for an Energy Recovery Linac (ERL) electron accelerator that would produce X-ray beams 1,000 times brighter than any in existence.

The university ultimately hopes to use ERL technology to upgrade the Cornell High Energy Synchrotron Source (CHESS), one of five U.S. national facilities for hard X-ray synchrotron radiation research.

The National Science Foundation provided $50 million for 2006-14 to build instrumentation for prototyping and testing ERL concepts proposed by the Cornell team of faculty, students and collaborators. Specifically, the program goals are to prove that electron beams of unmatched quality could be created and accelerated to continuously produce X-ray beams with the laserlike property of coherence. No such X-ray source presently exists.

Cornell's ERL team is now reporting that its prototype electron injector is producing beams with a so-called emittance of 0.8 micrometers -- the smallest ever recorded from an electron source of this type. The injector is the key component needed to make an ERL work by creating electron beams that are tightly packed and traveling at nearly the speed of light. The emittance is a measure of how tightly packed the electron beams are.

This small emittance, say the scientists, proves that the ERL could produce X-ray beams focused down to exceedingly small volumes, allowing investigation of materials with unprecedented precision and speed.

In another breakthrough for the ERL project, the scientists have built and tested a prototype seven-cell superconducting radio frequency (SRF) cavity. SRF cavities are needed to accelerate the electrons from the injector to very high energies in order to produce the X-rays. The SRF cavities are operated at -456 F (-271 C), just 2 degrees above absolute zero temperature.

The Cornell researchers' SRF cavity has met the first performance specifications necessary to continuously power a high intensity ERL. It has been tested in a vertical cryostat at the required temperature and electric field gradients -- a significant milestone because it proves the cavities can perform at high power while within the scientific and cost parameters of the project.

The team must now demonstrate the efficacy of their cavities in horizontal tests, which will take place in 2012.

"These developments go a long way toward proving that an ERL X-ray source will work as predicted by simulations and theory," said Sol Gruner, director of CHESS.

Recommend this story on Facebook, Twitter,
and Google +1:

Other bookmarking and sharing tools:


Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Cornell University. The original article was written by Anne Ju.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.


Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/10/111025102425.htm

transylvania terrell owens terrell owens chelsea clinton mcrib carrie ann inaba california earthquake

PFT: 'We're going to be tough to beat,' Jets' Ryan says

Pittsburgh Steelers v Arizona CardinalsGetty Images

Before the season started, we noted that the teams in the AFC North appeared to have an easy schedule.

They face the NFC West and AFC South out of division, which looked soft on paper. ?Usually ?on paper? doesn?t translate to reality, but it did this time around.

The NFC West and AFC South are the two worst divisions in football, despite the presence of the 49ers and Texans. ?ESPN?s John Clayton notes that?if the Jaguars lose tonight, the AFC South will have the worst out of division record in football at 5-16. ?The NFC West is next worse at 6-15.

It shouldn?t be a surprise, then, that every team in the AFC North is .500 or better. The division is home to one of the league?s biggest surprises (Cincy) and the worst 3-3 team we can remember. (Cleveland)

On top of that, the AFC North has the top four defenses in the league according to yards allowed. This is what happens when every team in the division gets to play the Seahawks, Jaguars, Colts, Cardinals, and Rams.

What does it all mean?

The AFC North division champion is almost a lock to get a playoff bye and could get the No. 1 seed. ?Second place in the division is very likely to go to the playoffs, and perhaps the Bengals could hang around the wild card race longer than expected.

So much of the NFL comes down to schedule, but it?s rarely talked about. We?ve heard a number of times this year how the Patriots won 11 games with Matt Cassel, but no one mentions how they faced one of the softest schedules in football that year.

It?s not like it?s the fault of the Ravens, Steelers, Browns, and Bengals. These things even out. It?s up to them to take advantage while they can.

Which reminds me: Are you ready for some football tonight? A Monday night blowout!

Source: http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2011/10/24/rex-ryan-were-going-to-be-tough-to-beat/related/

il divo il divo jon huntsman bliss miss universe 2011 miss universe 2011 augmentin

US entrepreneurs continue investing in Thailand | Business Day ...

U.S. investors have reaffirmed they will continue investing in Thailand while showing confidence in the government?s problem solving strategies.

U.S. Ambassador to Thailand Kristie Kenney, together with US-ASEAN Business Council President Mr Alexander Feldman and American businessmen, met Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra to assure that the United States would continue its investment in Thailand and was ready to give the Thai government support to the flood victims. Believing that the Thai government is able to solve the current flood crisis, the U.S. expressed sympathy for Thai flood victims while insisting on its role as the long-term business partner of Thailand and would absolutely not move its investment and production bases to other countries.

Moreover, the US also donated more items such as boats, life vests and water filters to the Thai Red Cross Society.

Short URL: http://www.bday.net/?p=6515

Posted by k on Oct 26 2011. Filed under Economy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Source: http://www.bday.net/us-entrepreneurs-continue-investing-in-thailand/

college football rankings dma americas got talent 2011 americas got talent 2011 absinthe ihop tiki barber