Category: News

Bare boobs! A miniscule nipple slip from pop star Beyonce is making big headlines on the blogosphere this Monday.

(Slightly NSFW After The Jump…..)

A photo of Beyonce’s barely-exposed nipple during a family vacation in Hawaii have hit the blogosphere, thanks to London’s Daily Mail.

The lurking paparazzi caught Bey’s almost-bare boob as the “Sasha Fiece” star enjoyed an afternoon at the beach with her husband Jay-Z, sister Solange, and nephew Daniel. The most dreaded of wardrobe malfunctions occured after the singer’s left halter-neck strap fell slightly to one side.

Alexandra Harrison relives her experience cheering on runners at the London Marathon.

Matt Kurton high-fives an Oxfam volunteer after running the London Marathon. Photo: Oxfam

12 hours after the London Marathon, and back in the office. I’m tired, exhilarated, emotional… and I didn’t even set foot on the racecourse!

Running a cheering point at the London Marathon was a fantastic experience. When I started the day at 4.30am, I definitely wondered what I’d put myself up for. But once in London, after grabbing myself a sizeable section of pavement and a cup of tea, I began to understand what Marathon day is really all about – and what everyone had meant when they talked about the incredible atmosphere.

Armed with a team of 28 volunteers, bucketloads of green paint and a megaphone, I shouted, screamed, jumped and danced my way through the day. Every time an Oxfam runner came past, we went wild: the feeling of pride amongst us all was tangible – there they were, our wonderful runners, doing something amazing for a cause that united us all.

Even those not running for Oxfam were inspiring. Especially those who were obviously pushing themselves to the limit and were determined to finish, no matter if they had an injury, disability or cumbersome costume which made their challenge that bit harder.

Next year, Oxfam is the Official Charity of the London Marathon – which means that we’ll have hundreds more guaranteed places. So if you’ve been tempted to get involved in the 2011 Marathon, join the team – you can bank on all the training support, nutrition advice and fundraising ideas you’ll ever need, and the money you raise will transform lives, providing training, skills and support to people who need to develop their small businesses around the world.

The London Marathon is all about being determined to achieve something extraordinary, and persevering to achieve your goal. Even watching from the sidelines gets you involved – seeing all those runners pushing themselves to the limit is inspiring, emotional and motivating. That early start was more than worth it!

Get involved: 2011 Virgin London Marathon

[JURIST] The International Criminal Court (ICC) has rejected the prosecutor’s petition to appeal the court’s February decision declining to confirm the charges against Darfur rebel chief Bahr Idriss Abu Garda. In a decision released Friday, the chamber recalled its earlier determination that the evidence presented by the prosecution was not of the appropriate severity to continue the proceedings against Abu Garda and found that the prosecution’s petition did not meet the requirements for an appeal. The prosecutor argued in the appeal that the court had applied a stricter evidentiary standard in the Pre-Trial Chamber than it should have employed. In denying the appeal, the ICC said:either the Statute nor the Rules, contrary to the Prosecution’s assertion, draws a distinction as to the way evidence shall be assessed before a Trial Chamber and a Pre-Trial Chamber. The free assessment of the evidence presented by a party is, pursuant to the Statute, a core component of the judicial activity both at the pre-trial stage of a case and at trial. … In light of the above, the proposition put forward by the Prosecution, namely that the Chamber should have applied a different standard to the assessment of the evidence at the confirmation of the charges stage, is without any legal basis.In the event that the prosecution provides additional evidence, it may still seek the confirmation of the charges or petition the chamber to appeal the decision.The ICC declined to confirm charges against Abu Garda in February, a ruling that came after a preliminary hearing in October, during which the prosecution alleged that Abu Garda controlled the Justice and Equality Movement. The charges against Abu Garda stem from a series of attacks in 2007 that resulted in the death of 12 African Union Mission in Sudan soldiers. Abu Garda first appeared before the ICC on the charges in May 2009, and is the first individual involved in the situation in Darfur to appear before the court.

BMW acaba de anunciar en el Salón de Beijing que su próximo automóvil más esperado, el BMW Megacity estará disponible en los concesionarios en el año 2013. Este modelo es un utilitario urbano eléctrico.

Hace uso de diferentes materiales como fibra de carbono en la carrocería para aligerar el peso del vehículo, lo cuál le otorgará un consumo energético menor para conseguir una autonomía mayor.

Todo parece apuntar que el futuro de los entornos urbanos pasa por los vehículos eléctricos. De momento, el gran inconveniente son la capacidad limitada de las baterías de litio lo que nos hace estar sugetos a una autonómia que no siempre es la deseada.

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The Playstation 3 from Sony is arguably the best console – hardware wise – in the market currently. The PS3 has a Nvidia RSX GPU with 256MB of GDDR3 memory and, a Cell Microprocessor designed by IBM. With the launch of the PS3 Slim Model, the Cell CPU of PS3 moved to a 45nm manufacturing process. This led to a decrease in power consumption, lower temperatures, and reduction in the cost of production.

Now Playstation University reports that the new PS3 Slim RSX GPU will be based on the 40nm fabrication process.  At the time of its launch, the PS3 RSX GPU used the 65nm fabrication process. The shift to a lower fabrication process has many advantages including the reduction of the Yellow Light Of Death on the PS3s. Thanks to the shift in lower fabrication process, the cooling unit of the new PS3 Slim has also been redesigned. It is now less complex compared to its predecessor.

It is reported that the drop in power consumption is around 15%. The power supply has also seen a weight reduction, and now weighs in at 412g. The original PS3 power adapter used to weigh 815g. Quite a few chips have also been removed from around the Nvidia RSX GPU, leading to a lower cost of production.

The main benefit of the shift to 40nm fabrication process is the lower cost of production. The new PS3 Slim, even though cheaper by 100$, will allow Sony to earn profit on every console sold. Until now, Sony has been incurring losses on every PS3 they have sold.

Don’t miss these Related Posts:

• NVIDA Finally Launches 40nm Notebook Graphics Card
• PS3 Slim Details
• TSMC Says 40nm Yields Have Improved
• Sony Still Loses Money On Every PS3 Slim Sold
• Sony PS3 Manufacturing Costs Have Dropped By 70%

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By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

For reasons still being debated in the press, Research In Motion was not the star of the last Mobile World Congress show in February. Evidently something wasn’t ready yet. But ahead of a smaller wireless conference in Orlando this week, RIM has plans to own the show.

This morning, the company announced two new models — not refurbished versions of existing models as some press sources have said, but new chasses with new components…just familiar brands. But spokespersons for the company tossed some bread crumbs that lead in the direction of more announcements, perhaps as soon as this afternoon. Word on the rumored BlackBerry OS 6.0 with a (real) Web browser, may be on the docket.

First, though, the company has set out some tasty hors d’oeuvres in the form of a slim new BlackBerry Pearl 3G. Its appeal is that it has many of the features of the bigger Bold, including the faster (for RIM) 624 MHz processor, 3.2 megapixel camera, 802.11n Wi-Fi, HSDPA support, and that cool new trackpad that won’t get gummed up with pocket lint like the older models. It’s the Pearl form factor without the “pearl,” and it’s black like the Bold (insert reference to Pirates of the Caribbean here).

The Pearl’s appeal to date has been its form factor — not wide like a sandwich loaf slice, but thinner than a bar of soap. The tradeoff has been the keyboard: There’s not enough room for the traditional BlackBerry QWERTY, so the new Pearl 9100 features a 20-key layout that, for some, takes some getting used to. An optional Pearl 9105 model includes a more traditional 14-key layout.

But both will incorporate SureType, which is the predictive typing system that’s all the rage on feature phones like the LG enV3 and enV Touch. The complaint we’ve heard in the past from BlackBerry SureType users has concerned speed, especially compared to the enV Touch which is rocket-fast. So we’ll see whether the new Pearls’ 624 MHz Xscale processors (loaded with apps) can handle the task. In Canada, the new Pearls are premiering today on the Rogers network.

The new BlackBerry Bold 9650 looks pretty much like the other two Bolds, until you turn it a little sideways. It’s just a little slimmer than the original Bold 9000, and a little taller than the newer 9700, so it may be ever-so-slightly more aesthetically pleasing…less like a ping-pong paddle. Neither older Bold model is being replaced.

Yet the 9650 isn’t decked out like the 9700, or even like the new Pearl — it’s not really a 3G phone. When RIM says it “supports” 3G, it’s referring to EV-DO, which is a bit more like “2.5G.” It’s a CDMA phone, and will premiere in the US on Sprint.

What we don’t know yet is which OS these new models will run, and that curiously obvious omission suggests that the number could be OS 6.0. Attendees of today’s Wireless Enterprise Symposium in Orlando are expecting a speech tomorrow morning from company co-CEO Mike Lazaridis. However, the show schedule features the company’s VP for product platform management, Alan Panezic, on the Wednesday morning docket.

In a keynote speech last Friday at a different conference altogether, Lazaridis gave attendees a very pointed hint at where his company will go next, perhaps this week: In distinguishing his company’s product line from that of Apple, with its iPad tablet, he said that there’s a certain class of customers who are waiting for the perfect blend of touchscreen technology with QWERTY keyboard control, who are sitting out the iPad.

In a transcript obtained by the Apple device blog TiPb, Lazaridis told TD Newcrest Technology Conference attendees, “The question you have to ask yourself is, when it comes to tablet [form factors], what market or what opportunities it’s solving, what problem is it solving, and is it just a replacement laptop? I think that’s a difficult one to judge…If you look at the surveys, you can see that a large amount of the customers that have purchased touchscreen devices in last two years intend to get a device with the QWERTY keyboard on it now. I mean, they’ve gotten to a point where they realize that a touchscreen alone is not enough, so that’s important.”

Similar surveys also show customers want a touchscreen phone with a reasonably working Web browser, which is something else this week’s conference attendees hope RIM will finally deliver.

Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010

As the U.S. military plans a rapid troop drawdown in Iraq this summer, commanders have to decide where they’re needed most and where they should stay the longest.

The U.S. has promised to decrease troop levels from roughly 95,000 now to 50,000 by the end of August.  But the military won’t draw down by a certain percentage across the board.  The level of violence varies from city to city and province to province, so commanders have to make some tough calls on where to place its manpower.

I recently spent some time traveling through northern Iraq and found that security is indeed a mixed bag.

In Ninewa province, near the city of Mosul, the U.S. will likely have a strong presence for some time to come.  Arab-Kurd tensions remain high, and Al-Qaeda is still trying to exploit that.

To ease the tensions, the U.S. military recently began three-party combined checkpoints and patrols across the area.  Kurdish peshmerga work side by side with the mostly Arab Iraqi forces and U.S. troops.   Commanders say the Americans are playing the role of an “honest broker” between Kurds and Arabs, helping their security forces to accept each other.  At first, the joint patrols seemed a radical idea for this region.   Lt. Col. Mohammad Khalaf of the Iraqi police says, “In the beginning some people resisted this idea.  This is a very sensitive area.  But the American troops are a calming force.”

South of Mosul, the city of Samarra has a much different dynamic.  The U.S. military is already almost gone.  Just a few dozen soldiers remain at a small outpost on the edge of town, where they work with Iraqi forces.

Samarra was once a flashpoint for violence.  In 2006, insurgents bombed its Golden Mosque, one of the Shiites holiest shrines, triggering nearly two years of bloody sectarian violence.  U.S. and Iraqi forces came in, clearing the city block by block.

But today, the Americans really venture into the town center.  They think they’re a distraction now.  So we toured the city escorted by Iraqi police.  Our Fox crew rode in the back of a pickup truck with no body armor and cameras rolling.  It would have been foolish two years ago.  But the insurgents seem to be gone now.  General Ghayath Sami of the Iraqi Army says, “The radical ideas are disappearing.  The sectarian way of thinking is ending now.”

As workers reconstruct the Golden Mosque, thousands of Shiite pilgrims peacefully visit this mostly Sunni city every week.  A tour group from Taiwan recently came to sightsee.

The blast walls are coming down, businesses are re-opening, and city leaders hope to rebuild restaurants and hotels to attract both religious and cultural tourism.

Meanwhile, the U.S. military has to decide how soon its safe to back out completely, from each village and city and province.

If you’re going to argue that the size of government is the defining
debate in modern politics, you should probably explain why the
government is so big. It’s not because of new laws. It’s because of old laws.

David Brooks latest column argued that “as government
grew,” moderates and independents recoiled and conservatives revolted.
Brooks is right that people are angry. Four out of five Americans don’t
trust the government according to a new Pew poll, the highest level of
public dissatisfaction in history. But that anger has much more to
do with the recession — plus a dash of complex conservative angst — than with Obama’s new spending initiatives.

Let’s look at the numbers: the feds spent $3.5 trillion in 2009, $600 billion more than in fiscal year 2008. What made the US government so big? Jim Horney at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities explained that some of it was natural growth in government. Discretionary spending tends to increase every year, and defense spending in particular perked up to catch up with war costs.

But much of the changes came from mandatory increases as a result of the recession. Existing laws to provide aid to the unemployment added $80 billion because more Americans lost their jobs. Another $20 billion went to SNAP assistance because more Americans became eligible for food stamps. Then there are the bailouts: about $250 billion went through TARP and stabilizing payments to Fannie and Freddie initiated in bills passed under President Bush and administered by the Obama administration.

What about the $800 billion Recovery Act? It didn’t increase the size of government by $800 billion. The CBO estimated that through December 2009, the stimulus raised
federal spending by $158 billion and cut taxes by $114
billion. The largest stimulus programs aren’t new services, but support to help states pay for old services: the Medicaid Federal Medical Assistance Percentage (FMAP) and the State Fiscal Stabilization Fund (SFSF).*

In short, our government is growing because of what past presidents have promised and voters have consistently supported at the polls: Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, the Federal Unemployment Tax Act. Clive Crook put it nicely: “Big
Government is no longer a prospect to ward off. That choice has been
made.”

That statement is powerful, and it has at least two implications. First, we need to stop pretending that Democrats suddenly “have become the government party.” Every party is the government  party when it controls the government.

Second, now that we’ve made the Big Government choice, we have to pay for it. The David Brookses of the world need to explain to Americans that this isn’t about Obama. It’s about all of us, collectively, making decades of promises that we haven’t promised to pay for. We will need new taxes, or dramatic and potentially painful reforms to our entitlement programs. That is where this debate should be.

________

*Brooks doesn’t mention health care reform, but if that’s leading the Big Government revolt, then some context is required. The reform bill will indeed increase government’s role in health care by about $100-$200 billion by the middle of the decade and into the 2020s. At that point, Medicare and the employer tax exclusion will cost well over $1 trillion. But the plan would also cut Medicare by $450 billion in the next 10 years and enact an excise tax to eat into the employer subsidy. So while it would be wrong to argue that the health care reform act somehow decreases the role of the government, I would argue that it does not change government’s role in health care as dramatically as its detractors suggest.

If a biofuel refined from a scruffy little weedlike plant called camelina can hit supersonic speeds in a Navy fighter jet, imagine what it can do in your car. That’s the idea driving Sustainable Oils, which has been working on high performance aviation biofuel from camelina for about five years. Last fall the company started delivering the first of an initial 40,000 gallon consignment for the Navy to test camelina biofuel on a bench mounted Super Hornet F414 engine.

This year on April 22nd, the U.S. Navy put an F/A-18 Super Hornet in flight using a 50-50 blend of conventional jet and camelina biofuel. Dubbed the Green Hornet in honor of Earth Day, the aircraft is (according to the Navy) the first to reach supersonic speeds using a 50-50 biofuel blend. The Navy might not claim sole ownership of that mark for long: the U.S. Air Force is also testing camelina biofuel.

(more…)

Battered, drained of fuel, and travel-weary, Japan’s asteroid-sampler is almost home. The Hayabusa, which the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) launched in 2003, is scheduled to drop its sample canister in the Australian outback in June. But, the project leaders warn, there’s still a chance than the beleaguered sojourner won’t make it. And even if it does successfully return to Earth, it’s possible that the sample capsule may not contain extraterrestrial rock.

Hayabusa spent three months exploring the Itokawa asteroid in late 2005, even making an unplanned landing on the asteroid’s surface. The probe spent up to a half-hour on Itokawa, making it the first spacecraft to lift off from an asteroid [Space.com]. The craft also took 1,600 pictures and more than 100,000 infrared images.

But things soon turned sour. Hayabusa’s instruments for collecting asteroid samples didn’t deploy as expected, leaving the Japanese research team uncertain how much, if any, material the probe will have on board when it comes back home. While telemetry showed that Hayabusa likely did not fire its projectile as planned while on Itokawa’s surface, scientists are hoping that bits of dust or pebbles traveled through the probe’s funnel and into its sample return capsule [Space.com].

There have been plenty of other difficulties, too. Since its launch in 2003, Hayabusa has lost three of its four ion engines, leaked out all of its chemical propellant and is down to a single reaction wheel. The trouble delayed Hayabusa’s departure from Itokawa, which forced JAXA to postpone the craft’s return to Earth from 2007 until 2010 [Spaceflight Now]. In November JAXA nearly conceded that Hayabusa would never come home. Then, in a stroke of innovation combined with good fortune, the engineers managed to combine the parts that still worked from two of the thrusters to propel the craft. Now it just might make it back.

The saga of the Hayabusa outlines the ambitious nature of President Obama’s newly revised space plan for the United States; on Thursday DISCOVER covered the difficulty of a daring manned mission to an asteroid that he proposed. But for a journey of far more than a thousand miles, the successful return of the Hayabusa would be a terrific first step.

Related Content:
DISCOVER: Japan Stakes Its Claim in Space, on Hayabusa mission
DISCOVER: One Giant Step for a Small, Crowded Country, on Japan’s moon aspirations
80beats: Danger, President Obama! Visiting an Asteroid Is Exciting, But Difficult
80beats: Will NASA’s Next Step Be an Astronaut Rendezvous with an Asteroid?

Image: JAXA

Solamente la propia Porsche sabe cuántos clientes se necesitan para que la construcción del Porsche 918 Hybrid sea rentable. Pero si es por el lado del interés que ha generado este espectacular concepto híbrido mostrado por primera vez en Ginebra, las cosas no podrían estar mejor ya que unos 900 compradores han demostrado cierto interés en comprar su Porsche híbrido.

Aparentemente, si la cifra de prospectos alcanza el número de 1.000, es muy probable que Porsche lo produzca. La mágica cifra y las intenciones de fabricarlo aunque más no sea limitadamente, fueron dadas a conocer por Wolfgang Duerheimer, jefe de desarrollo de Porsche, en ocasión del salón de Pekín. Viendo que ya llegamos a los 900, no sería nada improbable que en Stuttgart ya se esté pensando seriamente en comenzar a preparar la línea de producción para atender a los pedidos. ¿Será posible que lo veamos antes del 2015, la fecha original de salida que se anunció en su momento?

Todavía es muy pronto para saber qué clientes (y de qué tipo) se han apuntado a la lista por el 918 Spyder Hybrid pero no es muy difícil adivinar que para llegar al precio de este híbrido, hay que tener un cierto poderío económico. El dinero que pagarían por este deportivo plug-in con motor V8 no ha sido difundido aún por Porsche, pero esperemos que la lista no se haga más corta a la hora de difundir el precio.

Vía | Bloomberg

Technology: GSM
Announced Carrier: n/a
Announced Release Date: May, 2010

The BlackBerry Pearl 3G 9100 is their first Pearl to support 3G technology and is also their smallest device to date.  The 9100 model offers a 20-key condensed QWERTY keyboard, measures less than 2 inches wide, and only weights 3.3 ounces.  Other key features include WiFi, BlackBerry Media Sync, 624 Mhz processor, and 256 MB of flash memory. 

Ernest Brothers

KNOXVILLE — The Office of Graduate Training and Mentorship has been created to help departments campuswide recruit and retain graduate students, as well as provide them with the very best academic experience and professional development possible.

Part of the Graduate School, the office opened in February 2010 under the leadership of Ernest Brothers, assistant dean.

The office was developed in conjunction with the Program for Excellence and Equity in Research (PEER), a graduate training program that supports fellowships at UT and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in an effort to increase the number of accomplished, competitive and determined underrepresented minority students who pursue doctorates in the sciences and attain careers in biomedical research.

Brothers has degrees in chemistry, public policy and administration, and urban higher education, and he previously worked at the University of Georgia as the executive director of an office that worked to recruit, retain and graduate minority undergraduate students in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) areas.

Among the efforts to be led by the Office of Graduate Training and Mentorship:

• Assist with coordination of recruitment and retention efforts.
• Identify and create diversity resources and initiatives that strengthen faculty mentoring and support retention of underrepresented populations in a variety of fields of study across campus.
• Collaborate with other members of the Graduate School executive staff and related offices to collect and maintain data (e.g., enrollment, graduation, surveys) for tracking and required reporting and for faculty writing grants.
• Collaborate with the Office of Research and faculty from various units across campus to coordinate training in grant development.
• Collaborate with the Office of Research and faculty from various units across campus to coordinate responsible conduct of research.
• Assist with building faculty-student collaborative research teams and interdisciplinary projects.

For more information about the Office of Graduate Training and Mentorship, visit http://gradschool.utk.edu/ernest.shtml.

C O N T A C T :

Amy Blakely (865-974-5034, [email protected])

Fiat acaba de publicar las primeras imágenes oficiales de su próximo utilitario, el Fiat Uno. Este compacto está basado en gran medida en el Fiat Grande Punto y el Fiat Panda. Su producción dará comienzo en el año 2012.

Tiene 3,8 metros de largo y al contrario de lo que puedas pensar, tendrá un interior muy amplio y comodo para sus ocupantes. Por otra parte, también se ha confirmado que no se venderá en Europa.

Estará disponible en diferntes variantes, desde la básica hasta una deportiva. En lo referente a las motorizaciones, se pondrá a la venta con dos motores en la gama (aun no confirmados).

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With Internet access being ubiquitous in some parts of the world, it’s easy to forget just how fragile the entire system is. A major undersea communications cable, SEA-ME-WE 4, linking Europe, the Middle East and South Asia was severed a couple of weeks ago and, as repairs drag on, more regions are feeling the hit. Several countr… (read more)

Another great example of selling your byproduct: Danny Meyer has grown Union Square Hospitality Group from a neighborhood bistro into 11 successful New York restaurants and a catering company. For years, the restaurants educated visiting chefs and managers. Then Meyer wrote his memoir and began speaking to employees at airlines, insurance companies, and hedge funds. Now, those lessons are formalized in an education program called Hospitality Quotient, which charges $425 for a four-hour session and $1,500 for a two-day immersion.

The Motorola Cliq XT (see our hands-on) has only been available for a month or so, and a maintenance update apparently already is on the way. Scheduled for improvement are:

• Improves Overall Phone Performance: Generally improves data connectivity while reducing the occurrence of freeze-ups, resets, and random forced quits.
• Visual Voice Mail Enhancements: Enhanced design and interaction for Visual Voice Mail.
• Bluetooth Audio Improvements to Bluetooth audio while streaming.
• Camera Correction: Addresses instances of camera randomly freezing after taking a picture, and helps correct intermittent resets while camera and video applications are in use.
• Screen/Display Performance: Improves backlight performance for the display.
• Text Messaging Improvements: General improvements to text messaging – especially for longer text message threads.
• Touch Screen Enhancement Improves overall sensitivity of the touch screen.

The update’s available for just 1,000 people right now, and we should see wider release shortly. [Motorola via TmoNews]

After Sony successfully and drastically cut down production costs of the PS3 with the Slim revision, they’re finally heading straight into the profits zone with a smaller version of the RSX processor.