Category: News

Article Tags: Doug L. Hoffman, Volcanic Ash Advisory Centre, World Temperatures

March 20, the Eyjafjallajökull volcano began erupting after slumbering for almost 190 years. The eruption also brought a threat of floods and earthquakes, while the resulting plume of volcanic ash shutdown the European airline industry, costing an estimated $200 million a day. In the short-term, the volcano has been bad for Northern Europe and given a boost to Iceland’s tourist industry, but there are larger questions involved. With tedious predictability, a number of climate change alarmists quickly claimed that the volcano was caused by global warming. A more likely outcome is a cool Northern Hemisphere summer caused by airborne ash—which could give the alarmists an excuse for the continued lack of global temperature rise.

The Eyjafjallajökull eruption is the country’s first since 2004, and the most dramatic since Hekla, Iceland’s most active volcano, erupted in 2000. Though past eruptions have caused great devastation in Iceland, the bankrupt nation has enthusiastically welcomed the volcano inspired tourist boom. The widely publicized eruption has made the Eyjafjallajökull volcano a must-visit destination for thrill-seekers from around the world. Thousands of people have made the trip to the volcano, 75 miles (120 kilometers) east of Reykjavi, to view the site where ash and red-hot lava spew from a crater between two glaciers. The trip can be expensive, even without airfare to Iceland—round trip on Icelandair, New York to Reykjavik, booked three weeks in advance with a minimum one week stay, is around US $699. Once there, local excursion prices range from €55 ($75), for a bus trip to view the volcano from a distance, to €200 ($270) for a “superjeep” ride almost to the rim of the crater.

Click source link to read FULL report from Doug L. Hoffman

Source: theresilientearth.com

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Getting my device to the right settings and app stock is always the hardest thing about getting a new device, but thanks to i3v5y, it was easy to find my favorite. His application LMT launcher from what I have experienced so far is the most important app installed on my device, and makes the device a whole lot better and my friends that own the iPhone very envious.

If you are not aware of what the application does, its very simple. It adds multi touch functions, and app launcher to your device. This application has been updated recently and the new updated features are as follows:

0.7
Changelog:

– some small performance optimizations
– fixed killProcess (now the fg app is closed properly)
– fixed problem with overlay timer
– prepared to be rotation aware
– added new internal command:
– Controller -> activates the multitouch controller/dpad (default for "Square" gesture). Use it for FPSEce, morphgear, etc… The controller converts the touches to key events. You can define the keys to be sent via reg value "ControllerKeys": Down, up, left, right, 1, 2, A, B, C, D, X, Y. The button "R" toggles between portrait and landscape mode; the button "x" deactivates the controller mode. The reg value "ControllerVibrate" defines the vibrate status: 0=off, 1=default, >1=time in ms. For example the FPSEce config (fpse.ini):
[JOY0KEY]
…
Up=38
Down=40
Left=37
Right=39
Start=13
Select=12
Triangle=96
Quadrangle=97
Circle=98
Cross=99
L1=0
L2=100
R1=0
R2=101
…
0.6
– fixed bug in gesture engine (sometimes wrong touch value assignments for mt gestures)
– added tap and hold feature for mt gestures. Activate it via reg key "TapAndHoldGestureSupport".
– value = 1 -> activated with default bounding box for tap area (width and height = 30 pixel)
– value > 1 -> activated with user defined bounding box in pixel
– added four new internal commands:
– PrevApp -> switch to previous app (Alt-Tab feature)
– NextApp -> switch to next app (Alt-Tab feature)
– Home -> switch to Homescreen
– Rotate -> rotate screen
– added BlackListSwitch to be able to exclude processes from TaskSwitcher
– added default values for all gestures

0.5
– enabled compressed cab
– all reg values can be modified during runtime
– back command now supports Opera Back & normal back behavior
– removed BlackListStart and added BlackListAll to be able to disable LMT completely for a fg app (e.g. Morphgear)
– removed hard coded gesture commands. All internal commands can be mapped to any gesture now. Just add the following strings to the gesture in the registry for an internal command:
– CloseLMT -> closes LMT
– CloseApp -> closes the fg app
– Learn -> activates learn mode
– Back -> sends back key
– Start -> Start menu
– Lock -> Lock phone
– Phone -> Phone app
– Up -> sends Dpad up
– Down -> sends Dpad down
– Left -> sends Dpad left
– Right -> sends Dpad right

You can download and install this application from XDA.

Video: Ferrari 599xx Nurburgring Record

Porsche 911s and Nissan GT-Rs and Corvette ZR1s are very nice cars and quite quick around the Nürburgring Nordschleife. But they must bow before the new king of the ‘Ring, the Ferrari 599XX.

The 700-horsepower über-Ferrari is the first-ever production-derived sports car to break the 7-minute barrier at the classic 20.832 kilometer Nordschleife (North Loop), a benchmark of automotive performance.

The 599XX lapped the track in an astonishing 6 minutes, 58.16 seconds. That’s almost half-a-minute faster than the mighty Ferrari Enzo.

Source: Read More

Filed under: Concept Cars, Hybrid, China, Geely, Beijing Motor Show, Luxury

Another entry that Geely has planned for its new Emgrand premium sub-brand is the GE limousine. Like many of Geely’s new models, the GE has a very prominent grille but the rest of the design looks otherwise well-proportioned and attractive. With a 214-inch body sitting on a 124-inch wheelbase, the GE is a big car targeted at executives who prefer to be driven rather than get behind the wheel. The Geely Emgrand GE can be equipped with either a rear bench contoured for two passengers or a single large seat flanked by extra storage compartments.

Underneath, the GE has the same plug-in hybrid powertrain featured in the GT coupe. That means it gets a 2.4-liter inline-four that producing 160 horsepower and 165 pound-feet of torque. The electric drive consists of a pair of 27.5 kilowatt, 132 pound-foot hub-motors for all-wheel-drive capability. The GE is targeted for 2015 introduction.

Photos by Sam Abuelsamid / Copyright (C)2010 Weblogs, Inc.

Beijing 2010: Geely Emgrand GE plug-in hybrid limo originally appeared on Autoblog on Sun, 25 Apr 2010 14:07:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Marty Cooper—maybe you’ve heard of him and his little invention, the cellphone—thinks modern smartphones are way too convoluted and that future phones will live behind your ear, under your skin. You think AT&T owns your ass now… More »

[JURIST] Lawyers representing Omar Khadr, a Canadian currently being detained at Guantanamo Bay, say they will seek to suppress statements he made during interrogation at a preliminary hearing to begin Wednesday. The hearing is to be the last before his US military commission trial in July, the first to commence under the Obama administration, which suspended the military commissions after his inauguration in January 2009. Khadr’s defense team plans to bring forward as many as thirty guards, interrogators, and witnesses to testify that incriminating statements made by Khadr were the product of torture. Khadr’s defense lawyers claim that Khadr was subject to 142 interrogations at both Bagram Air Base and Guantanamo Bay. Prosecutors have described these claims as baseless, and have countered that Khadr’s treatment at the hands of interrogators was humane. The Obama administration has also been seeking the extradition of Khadr’s brother Abdullah Khadr, currently detained by Canadian authorities in Toronto, for trial in the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts. Abdullah is suspected of supplying weapons to al Qaeda.
Khadr’s lawyers filed an emergency motion in February in the Federal Court of Canada challenging the decision of the Canadian government not to seek his repatriation from the United States. The Supreme Court of Canada ruled in January that the government was not obligated to seek Khadr’s return to Canada despite having violated his rights under section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Khadr has allegedly admitted to throwing a hand grenade that killed a US soldier in Afghanistan, and was charged in April 2007 with murder, attempted murder, conspiracy, providing material support for terrorism, and spying.

With Harper’s Men’s and Women’s Track and Field teams capturing the 2010 Region IV Championships, Head Coach Renee Zelner earned Region IV Coach of the Year honors for both, men’s and women’s, track and field.

This is the 10th time Coach Zellner has been named Region IV Men’s Coach of the Year (4th consecutive year), and the 7th time she has been named Region IV Women’s Coach of the year.

Coach Zellner has earned numerous awards while here at Harper, but this marks the first time that she has been awarded Coach of the Year for both, men’s and women’s teams, in the same season!

Congratulations to Coach Zellner!

Harper’s Women’s Track and Field team competed in the Region IV Championships at the Colleg of DuPage (Day 1) and Loras College in Debuque, Iowa (Day 2), and the Lady Hawks returned with the Regional Title!

Harper dominated the event with 267 points, followed by the College of DuPage with 195 and Oakton Community College with 38.

Head Coach Renee Zellner also earned Women’s Track and Field Coach of the Year honors.

Harper’s De’Larissa Morris earned Regional Most Valuable Field Athlete honors! De’Larissa won the javelin and long jumo, took second in the high jump, shot put and hammer.

Individual women’s results from the Championship include:

Facebook recently switched from “Become a Fan” to “Like” feature which has received mixed reactions from the audience. But if you want to “Like” any webpage quickly from the browser window and without logging in to Facebook, the Facebook Likes Google Chrome extension might help.

The extension solves two purposes. First, you can share any webpage with your Facebook friends right from Google Chrome. There is no need to copy links, titles, images and paste them in the status update text box. Just hit the “Like” button and the story is shared on your Facebook wall.

The second advantage is that the extension also shows recent related activity from other Facebook users. This does not necessarily mean your Facebook friends, but shows the content which other users are sharing on Facebook. This is a nice way to figure out which stories are getting the votes and which topic is getting the buzz right now.

To use the extension, click on the “Thumbs up” button placed just right of the address bar as shown below:

The story will be shared with your Facebook friends and you can also see what your friends are “Liking”. Please note the extension does nothing if you are not logged in to Facebook.

Techie Buzz Verdict

The Facebook Like extension for Chrome is the simplest way to “like” any webpage from the browser. One addition would have been perfect – store the username and password in the extension options and share the story, even if you are not logged in to Facebook.

Techie Buzz rating: 3.5 (very good).

Don’t miss these Related Posts:

• Get a Facebook ‘Like’ Button on Any Website With This Chrome Extension
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• Google Chrome Extension To View DropBox Folders and Download Files
• QuickSearch Is A Multi-Search Engine Extension For Google Chrome

Join Techie Buzz on Your Favorite Social Networking Sites

• Become a Techie Buzz fan on Facebook
• Follow Techie Buzz on Twitter

We all know that Windows 7 has been selling like hot cakes since its release. However, the exact volume was up for debate. Now, Microsoft has revealed that so far more than 100 million Windows 7 licenses have been sold.

“To put that in context, more than 10% of all PCs worldwide are already running Windows 7 today. That’s amazing!”, wrote Brandon LeBlanc, in the Windows 7 Team blog.

Nevertheless, Windows XP is still proving to be immensely sticky. According to Net Applications, 64.5% PCs are still on the decade old operating system, while only about ten percent are on Windows Vista.

Riding on the back of strong Windows 7 sales, Microsoft’s net profit for the previous quarter soared to $4.01 billion.

Don’t miss these Related Posts:

• Microsoft Sells 90 Million Windows 7 Copies
• Microsoft: £25m Lawsuit From Pixart SRL Surfaces After Eighteen Months
• Microsoft Should Make Windows XP Free To Tackle Piracy and Linux
• There are 184 Million Active Registered Domains on the Internet [DYK]

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Filed under: Concept Cars, Coupe, Hybrid, China, Geely, Beijing Motor Show, Electric

The Geely Emgrand GT is another example of the automaker’s apparent seriousness about being considered a top-flight player in the industry. This coupe features classic sports car proportions and aside from the overdone grille, it looks quite attractive. The GT comes from Geely’s new top-level Emgrand sub-brand and boasts some impressive specs. It’s reportedly a plug-in hybrid with a 2.4-liter inline-four that churns out 160 horsepower and 165 pound-feet on its own.

That output is supplemented by a pair of 27.5-kilowatt hub motors that give the GT all-wheel-drive capability. Those motors each add 132 foot-pounds of torque as well. It’s not clear, however, which axle is being driven by the combustion engine and which gets the motors. The Emgrand GT is targeted for a 2014 introduction.

Photos by Sam Abuelsamid / Copyright (C)2010 Weblogs, Inc.

Beijing 2010: Geely Emgrand GT plug-in hybrid coupe originally appeared on Autoblog on Sun, 25 Apr 2010 13:34:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Harper’s Men’s Track and Field team competed in the Region IV Championships at the Colleg of DuPage (Day 1) and Loras College in Debuque, Iowa (Day 2), and the Hawks returned with the Regional Title! This marks the 4th consecutive Regional Championship for the Hawks.

Harper led the way with 278 points, followed by the College of DuPage with 247 and Oakton Community College with 88.

Head Coach Renee Zellner also earned Men’s Track and Field Coach of the Year honors.

Harper’s Jesus Escareno earned Regional Most Valuable Track Athlete honors! Jesus took 1st place in the steeple chase, 1st place in the 10K, 1st place in the 5K, 3rd in the 800m pr, as well as being a member of the 1600m relay and 3200m relay.

Individual men’s results from the Championship include:

Stephen Hawking, brilliant scientist, has a simple message for humanity when it comes to contacting E.T.: Shut up. No, really. The pessimistic view arrives alongside his new documentary, wherein he warns we’d be the Native Americans to aliens’ Chris Columbus. More »

How a car engine works ?

First things first, the car engine is an internal combustion engine, of which there are a number of different types, including the diesel engine, petrol engine, rotary engine and two-stroke engine.

The internal combustion engine runs on the basic premise of injecting a tiny amount of high energy fuel, for example petrol or diesel, in a small enclosed space, igniting it and creating a massive amount of energy in the form of an expanding gas.

The trick the internal combustion engine pulls off is setting off explosions like this hundreds of times over a minute and managing to harness the energy that is thus created. Almost all cars use a four stroke combustion cycle to convert petrol into motion, the four strokes being – intake, compression, combustion and exhaust.

At the beginning of the cycle, the piston starts at the top, once the intake valve opens, the piston moves down, letting the engine take in a cylinder full of air into which is also injected a drop of petrol.

The piston then moves back up to compress the air with the drop of petrol, the compression will make the explosion that is about to occur all the more powerful. When the piston reaches it’s limit, the spark plug emits a spark which ignites the petrol, causing an explosion thus driving the piston back down.

When the piston it reaches it’s bottom limit, the exhaust valve opens and the exhaust leaves the cylinder, leaving the vehicle by the tailpipe. T

his cycle is then repeated over and over again. The linear motion of the pistons is converted into a rotational motion by the crankshaft which subsequently turns the vehicle’s wheels. So as you may have gathered, the cylinder is one of the core components of the internal combustion engine.

Most cars have four, six or eight cylinders.

By: Russell Shortt

Check this out it is so cool and exactly how an internal combustion engine works

We here at AndroidTapp have spoken about Google’s own flagship tablet that is still in the making but as you may have expected there are a whole plethora of Android based tablets to be released this year. One of the major releases that has us excited is the Asus EEE Pad.

The EEE Pad is reported to have a Nvidia Tegra processor, wich you will become familiar with in plenty of Android Tablets that will be released this year. Digitimes is reporting that the device will be formally introduced at Computex, an annual computer exhibition held in Taiwan.

The EEE Pad will be priced around 500 dollars and reported to be released in July, soon after this release we are expecting similar devices from Dell and the gorgeous MSI tablet, we will keep you posted on developments on the EEE Pad and other Android based tablets.

Unlike meatspace malls, you can’t scope out the other shoppers when you’re browsing the online aisles. But thanks to this handy infographic from Permuto Discoveries, the truth is out: virtual malls are dominated by middle-aged white women with household incomes of $65K. Yeah, it’s Paramus without the blue laws.

Actually, the real news in the infographic is that, unlike back in the last century, when online shopping was still considered something geeky, it’s now about as mainstream as Costco. Almost 50% of all Americans shop online, and 88% of online shoppers have bought something online in the last six months. Revenue for online merchants is over $34 billion a year, up 500% from the end of the last century.

Who’s Shopping Online? [Permuto Discoveries]

If you’re doing something that is not as awesome as making your own Snickers bars, then we suggest you reconsider.

Instructables has a pretty easy recipe that you can use to make the homemade Snickers, and you can make it even easier by skipping the last step of dipping them in chocolate. Yes, they’ll look less like “real” Snickers bars, but we bet they’ll taste pretty good.

Homemade Snickers Candy Bar Recipe [Instructables via Lifehacker]