castigate refrigerate: February 2013

Saturday, February 23, 2013

Mars is red on the outside, gray on the inside, rover discovers

NASA's Curiosity Mars rover completed its very first drilling activity on the Red Planet, yielding a gray powder from inside an ancient rock.?

By Irene Klotz,?Reuters / February 21, 2013

This self-portrait of NASA's Curiosity Mars rover, combines dozens of exposures taken by the rover's Mars Hand Lens Imager, in February.

NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/Handout/Reuters/File

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NASA's Mars rover Curiosity, dispatched to learn if the planet ever had ingredients for life, drilled its first bit of powder from inside a potentially water-formed ancient rock, scientists said on Wednesday.

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The robotic geology station, which landed inside a giant impact basin on Aug. 6 for a two-year mission, transferred about a tablespoon of rock powder from its drill into a scoop, pictures relayed by the rover Wednesday showed.

"We're all very happy to get this confirmation and relieved that the drilling was a complete success," Curiosity engineer Scott McCloskey of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, told reporters on a conference call.

On Feb. 8, the rover used its powerful drill, the first instrument of its type to be sent to Mars, to bore inside a flat, veined piece of bedrock, which appears to contain minerals formed by flowing water.

The sample, retrieved from at least 2 inches (5 cm) beneath the surface of the rock, will be sieved and portions of it processed inside two onboard science instruments.

The gray powder is strikingly different than the ubiquitous red dust that covers the planet's surface, a result of oxidation from solar ultraviolet radiation.

"Having a rock-drilling capability on a rover is a significant advancement," said Louise Jandura, chief engineer for Curiosity's sample system.

"It allows us to go beyond the surface layer of the rock, unlocking a kind of time capsule of evidence about the state of Mars going back 3 or 4 billion years," Jandura told reporters.

The drill is the last of Curiosity's 10 science instruments to be tested since the rover landed inside Gale Crater, located near the planet's equator.

The site was selected because of a three-mile (5-km) high mound of what appears to be layered sediments rising from the crater's floor.

Rather than driving directly over to the mountain, scientists decided to explore an area in the opposite direction that showed intriguing signs of past water.

Water is believed to be a key ingredient for life.

"The rocks in this area have a really rich geologic history and they have the potential to give us information about multiple interactions of water and rock," said Curiosity scientist Joel Hurowitz, also with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The fine-grained rocks are filled with veins and spherical deposits, including what appears to be calcium sulfate, a mineral which forms on Earth when water flows through fractures in rock. Mars is the planet in our solar system most like Earth.

"When you find exactly these sorts of conditions on Earth ... and everything still goes right, it's still an accident of fate to preserve organics," Curiosity's lead scientist John Grotzinger of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena told Reuters.

"So we'll have to separate at some point the pursuit of what may have been a habitable environment from what may or may not be an environment that preserves organics," he said.

"Obviously we're interested in the organics but right now we're sort of on the pathway to hopefully characterizing this place as a habitable environment," Grotzinger said.

(Editing by Kevin Gray and Stacey Joyce)

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/science/~3/vLi21YNXGFA/Mars-is-red-on-the-outside-gray-on-the-inside-rover-discovers

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Google Ports Quickoffice To Chrome Using Native Client, Will Get Full Editing Features In About 3 Months

At its Chromebook Pixel event yesterday, Google didn’t just launch its new premium Chromebook. It also announced that it is porting Quickoffice, the mobile productivity app that brings Microsoft Office to iOS and Android to the web through Native Client and Chrome. Google acquired Quickoffice. As Google’s vice president of Chrome Sundar Pichai noted at yesterday’s event, a lot of people love Google’s productivity apps, but having a solution like Quickoffice available for Chrome and on Chromebooks “completes the story for a lot of users.” This is a big step for Native Client, Google’s technology for allowing developers to write web apps that get full access to the power of the CPU. Currently, Native Client is mostly being used by game developers, and there are a number of Chrome Web Store apps that use it, but because it is still limited to Chrome, the number of developers who write applications for it remains small. Google already launched a number of Quickoffice document viewers for Chrome that are only available on the new Pixel Chromebook. In about three months, however, Google told me at the Pixel launch event yesterday, Quickoffice for the browser will also feature the ability to edit documents. The new viewers are also based on Native Client, but for Microsoft Office users on Chrome and ChromeOS, the ability to edit documents and do so in what is essentially a native app is likely a far more interesting solution. Quickoffice for Chrome, of course, won’t just run on the Pixel but should work on the desktop as well, where Native Client has been a built-in feature of Chrome for a long time now. Pricing is also still up in the air. Google continue to charge for the Quickoffice mobile app ($7.99 for Quickoffice Pro HD for the iPad, for example), but paying Google Apps users can get the iPad app for free. When Google acquired Quickoffice, most of us assumed it was doing so to strengthen Google Drive and to ensure that Android would have a viable native Office client as well, but adding it to ChromeOS also makes a lot of sense, especially given ChromeOS’s ambitions in the enterprise.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/OLEXUyjYs0E/

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Monday, February 4, 2013

Bullying study: It does get better for gay teens

FILE - In this Sept. 15, 2012 file photo, Dan Savage, left, and Terry Miller pose backstage with the Governors Award for the "It Gets Better Project" at the 2012 Creative Arts Emmys at the Nokia Theatre in Los Angeles. A new Pediatrics study found scientific evidence that it does get better for gay teens, when it comes to bullying, although young gay men fare worse than their lesbian peers. (Photo by Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP)

FILE - In this Oct. 20, 2010 file photo, young people participate in an anti-gay bullying candlelight vigil to commemorate the recent deaths of gay teens at The Center Project in Columbia, Mo. A new Pediatrics study found scientific evidence that it does get better for gay teens, when it comes to bullying, although young gay men fare worse than their lesbian peers. (AP Photo/The Columbia Daily Tribune, Joshua A. Bickel, File)

FILE - In this Tuesday, Oct. 5, 2010 file photo, school buses bring students home from Hamilton Middle School in Cypress, Texas, as Brian Carter, left, Sharon Ferranti, foreground right, and others stand on a corner with signs to protest the treatment of Asher Brown, an eighth-grader at the school who killed himself at home on Sept. 23, 2010. His parents blamed his suicide on two years of bullying they say he had suffered at the school. A new Pediatrics study found scientific evidence that it does get better for gay teens, when it comes to bullying, although young gay men fare worse than their lesbian peers. (AP Photo/Houston Chronicle, Karen Warren) MANDATORY CREDIT

CHICAGO (AP) ? It really does get better for gay and bisexual teens when it comes to being bullied, although young gay men have it worse than their lesbian peers, according to the first long-term scientific evidence on how the problem changes over time.

The seven-year study involved more than 4,000 teens in England who were questioned yearly through 2010, until they were 19 and 20 years old. At the start, just over half of the 187 gay, lesbian and bisexual teens said they had been bullied; by 2010 that dropped to 9 percent of gay and bisexual boys and 6 percent of lesbian and bisexual girls.

The researchers said the same results likely would be found in the United States.

In both countries, a "sea change" in cultural acceptance of gays and growing intolerance for bullying occurred during the study years, which partly explains the results, said study co-author Ian Rivers, a psychologist and professor of human development at Brunel University in London.

That includes a government mandate in England that schools work to prevent bullying, and changes in the United States permitting same-sex marriage in several states.

In 2010, syndicated columnist Dan Savage launched the "It Gets Better" video project to encourage bullied gay teens. It was prompted by widely publicized suicides of young gays, and includes videos from politicians and celebrities.

"Bullying tends to decline with age regardless of sexual orientation and gender," and the study confirms that, said co-author Joseph Robinson, a researcher and assistant professor of educational psychology at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. "In absolute terms, this would suggest that yes, it gets better."

The study appears online Monday in the journal Pediatrics.

Eliza Byard, executive director of the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network, said the results mirror surveys by her anti-bullying advocacy group that show bullying is more common in U.S. middle schools than in high schools.

But the researchers said their results show the situation is more nuanced for young gay men.

In the first years of the study, gay boys and girls were almost twice as likely to be bullied as their straight peers. By the last year, bullying dropped overall and was at about the same level for lesbians and straight girls. But the difference between men got worse by ages 19 and 20, with gay young men almost four times more likely than their straight peers to be bullied.

The mixed results for young gay men may reflect the fact that masculine tendencies in girls and women are more culturally acceptable than femininity in boys and men, Robinson said.

Savage, who was not involved in the study, agreed.

"A lot of the disgust that people feel when you bring up homosexuality ... centers around gay male sexuality," Savage said. "There's more of a comfort level" around gay women, he said.

Kendall Johnson, 21, a junior theater major at the University of Illinois, said he was bullied for being gay in high school, mostly when he brought boyfriends to school dances or football games.

"One year at prom, I had a guy tell us that we were disgusting and he didn't want to see us dancing anymore," Johnson said. A football player and the president of the drama club intervened on his behalf, he recalled.

Johnson hasn't been bullied in college, but he said that's partly because he hangs out with the theater crowd and avoids the fraternity scene. Still, he agreed, that it generally gets better for gays as they mature.

"As you grow older, you become more accepting of yourself," Johnson said.

___

Online:

Pediatrics: http://www.pediatrics.org

It Gets Better: http://www.itgetsbetter.org

___

AP Medical Writer Lindsey Tanner can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/LindseyTanner

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/bbd825583c8542898e6fa7d440b9febc/Article_2013-02-04-US-MED-Gay-Bullying/id-49ce0444deb342ce9117799f75497177

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Report: US job market looks surprisingly strong

In this Tuesday, Jan. 22, 2013 photo, job seekers fill a room at the job fair in Sunrise, Fla. U.S. employers added 157,000 jobs in January, and hiring was much stronger at the end of 2012 than previously thought, providing reassurance that the job market held steady even as economic growth stalled, according to Labor Department reports, Friday, Feb. 1, 2013. (AP Photo/J Pat Carter)

In this Tuesday, Jan. 22, 2013 photo, Fernando Rames answers questions on a job application at the job fair in Sunrise, Fla. U.S. employers added 157,000 jobs in January, and hiring was much stronger at the end of 2012 than previously thought, providing reassurance that the job market held steady even as economic growth stalled, according to Labor Department reports, Friday, Feb. 1, 2013. (AP Photo/J Pat Carter)

Graphic shows the U.S. monthly unemployment rate

WASHINGTON (AP) ? The U.S. job market is proving surprisingly strong and raising hopes that the economy will be resilient enough this year to withstand a budget standoff in Washington and potentially deep cuts in federal spending.

Employers added 157,000 jobs last month, and hiring turned out to be healthier than previously thought at the end of 2012 just as the economy faced the threat of the "fiscal cliff."

Still, unemployment remains persistently high. The unemployment rate ticked up to 7.9 percent last month from 7.8 percent in December.

Many economists, though, focused on the steady job growth ? especially the healthier-than-expected hiring late last year. The Labor Department revised its estimates of job gains for November from an initial 161,000 to 247,000 and for December from 155,000 to 196,000.

The department also revised its figures for all of 2012 upward ? to an average of 180,000 new jobs a month from a previously estimated 150,000.

"The significantly stronger payroll gains tell us the economy has a lot more momentum than what we had thought," Joseph LaVorgna, chief U.S. economist at Deutsche Bank, said in a research note.

The government frequently revises the monthly job totals as it collects more information. Sometimes the revisions can be dramatic, as in November and December.

The January jobs report helped fuel a powerful rally on Wall Street. Stock averages all jumped more than 1 percent. The Dow Jones industrial average closed above 14,000 for the first time since October 2007, two months before the Great Recession officially began.

Beyond the job market, the economy is showing other signs of health. Factories were busier last month than they have been since April 2012. Ford, Chrysler and General Motors all reported double-digit sales gains for last month, their best January in five years.

Home prices have been rising steadily. Higher home values tend to make Americans feel wealthier and more likely to spend.

Housing construction is recovering, too. Construction spending rose last year for the first time in six years and is expected to add 1 percentage point to economic growth this year.

The housing rebound appears finally to be producing a long-awaited return of construction-industry jobs, which have typically help drive economic recoveries. Construction companies added 28,000 jobs in January. Over the past three months, construction has added 82,000 jobs ? the best quarterly increase since 2006. Even with the gains, construction employment is about 2 million below its housing-bubble peak of 7.7 million in April 2006.

Health care employers added 28,000 jobs in January. Retailers added 33,000, and hotels and restaurants 17,000. The job growth in retail, hotels and restaurants suggests that employers have grown more confident about consumer spending, which fuels about 70 percent of the economy.

The government uses a survey of mostly large businesses and government agencies to determine how many jobs are added or lost each month. That's the survey that produced the gain of 157,000 jobs for January.

It uses a separate survey of households to calculate the unemployment rate. That survey captures hiring by companies of all sizes, including small businesses, new companies, farm workers and the self-employed. From month to month, the two surveys sometimes contradict each other. Over time, the differences between them usually even out.

The household survey for January found that 117,000 more Americans said they were unemployed than in December. That's why the unemployment rate inched up from 7.8 percent to 7.9 percent.

Some economists had feared that federal budget standoffs might chill spending, investing and hiring. They worried that companies wouldn't hire and consumers would scale back spending in November and December because big spending cuts and tax increases were to take effect Jan. 1 if the White House and congressional Republicans couldn't reach a budget deal.

It turns out, the fears were overblown. In the midst of the budget fight late last year, employers kept hiring.

And Friday's jobs report showed that average hourly wages ? up 4 cents to $23.78 in January ? were staying ahead of inflation. They had generally failed to keep up with prices since the recession ended in June 2009.

The steady hiring gains should help cushion the economic pain from higher Social Security taxes, which last month began shrinking most workers' take-home pay. A person earning $50,000 a year will have about $1,000 less to spend in 2013. A household with two high-paid workers will have up to $4,500 less.

Analysts expect the Social Security tax increase to shave about a half-point off economic growth in 2013, because consumers drive about 70 percent of economic activity.

The hit to consumers is coming at a precarious time. The economy contracted in the fourth quarter of 2012 for the first time in 3? years. The drop was due mainly to a steep cut in defense spending and declining exports. Most analysts think those factors will prove temporary and that the economy will grow this quarter and the rest of the year.

Friday's report did serve as a reminder that unemployment has been stuck at 7.8 percent or more since September. The rate would be even higher if many Americans hadn't retired or stopped looking for work. The proportion of the adult population that is working or looking for work is near a 32-year low. If labor force participation were still at its prerecession level, unemployment could exceed 11 percent.

And despite the consistent hiring gains, the job market has a long way to go to fully heal from the recession. Between January 2008 and February 2010, the United States lost 8.7 million jobs. Since then, it's regained 5.5 million ? 63 percent of the lost jobs.

"We are still in a crisis-level jobs hole," says Heidi Shierholz, an economist with the liberal Economic Policy Institute.

Long-term unemployment remains a chronic problem. About 4.7 million people have been out of work for six months or more. That's down 15 percent in the past year. But it's still much higher than it's ever been after previous recessions.

Among the long-term unemployed is Will Nielsen, who has struggled to find work for more than a year. He worked as a contractor doing graphic design and video production for a startup company that went bust in December 2011.

The job search has been frustrating: Most of the jobs he's seen advertised are part-time or freelance. Permanent jobs with salaries and benefits seem to him nonexistent.

Contractors aren't eligible for unemployment benefits, so he's been relying on his girlfriend's salary, which has "strained" their relationship.

Nielsen, 37, who lives in Santa Rosa, Calif., applied last month for an electrician's apprenticeship program that would pay a stipend while he learned a new trade. But when he arrived at the training center to submit his application, at least 20 people were there ahead of him.

"It looked like the Great Depression," he said.

Yet the burst of hiring at the end of 2012 has raised hopes that the recovery from the Great Recession is finally strengthening.

"This could be a breakout year for the economy," Bernard Baumohl, chief global economist at the Economic Outlook Group, wrote in a note to clients. "The economy, sales, employment and the stock market are all higher in spite of the bickering and rancor in Washington."

Kaltura, a New York-based online video software company, plans to hire 100 people in 2013, which would bring their staff to 300. The company has 17 open jobs.

Company President Michal Tsur said Kaltura has managed to benefit from the sluggish economy: Companies use its software to post training videos online, reducing the cost of training. Universities are also pushing online video courses to reach more students.

Entertainment companies like HBO are using Kaltura's software to post videos on YouTube, Facebook and on the websites of video providers like Verizon.

Even with high unemployment, Tsur said, it's hard to find the software engineers, sales people and programmers Kaltura needs.

"If we stumble upon superstars," she said, "we'll hire them immediately."

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/f70471f764144b2fab526d39972d37b3/Article_2013-02-01-Economy/id-6c98f0f8a1814cbdbbe4e179ed81f5fe

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