Blog

Chega ao fim a 8ª edição do Tuning World Bodensee, o maior evento de tuning da Europa e que no final dele uma rainha do tuning é eleita. Esse ano, a vencedora foi Kristin Zippel de Mering, que vence o título de Miss e será a sucessora de Martina Ivezaj, a Miss Tuning do ano anterior.

Kristin Zippel tem 26 anos de idade e se superou, entre mais de 500 participantes, conseguiu receber o título que manterá até o próximo ano, sem falar nos outros prêmios que recebeu, como um Nissan Micra e a participação de um ensaio fotográfico na região dos Grandes Lagos, que fica na América do Norte, e aparecer no calendário Miss Tuning 2011.

A segunda colocada no evento foi Jennifer Ziegener aus Kleinmachnow e a terceira colocada foi Irena Then aus Düsseldorf. Confiram as fotos de todas as participantes a seguir.

Participantes do evento

Via | Mais Tuning

For deep sleep and daydreams, anytime, anywhere. Super soft padding cradles your eyes without pressure. 100% light blocking. Earplugs (included) store in handy pocket. A perfect complement to a Bucky pillow, especially now with the NEW cotton velour shades that match Utopia perfectly. Hand washable. 4″ x 10″, 2 oz.

View Bucky Eye Shades Midnight Details

Astronomers have found a bloated, massive galaxy that may be a record-breaker: the most massive galaxy in the near Universe. The mass isn’t exactly clear, but it may be 13 trillion times the mass of the Sun!^* That’s easily twenty times the mass of the Milky Way!

Here’s the guilty party:

OOoo, purty. Click to record-breakingly-massively embiggen.

That’s an image from the 8-meter Gemini South telescope in Chile, and it shows the cluster Abell 3827, a 1.4 billion-light-year-distant collection of hundreds of galaxies all bound together by their own gravity. It’s a pretty rich cluster as they go. Many like it have one big galaxy in the core, called the central dominant galaxy (or sometimes cD for short), and it’s usually a few times bigger than any other galaxy in the cluster.

In the case of Abell 3827, though, the cD — called ESO 146-IG 005 — is out of control. The Milky Way is considered a big galaxy, and has maybe 400 billion times the mass of the Sun in total, but 146-IG is hugely bigger, swollen and ginormous. It’s far more massive than any other galaxy we’ve seen out to that distance. That glow you see in the center of the cluster is just from 146-IG all by its lone self, and it dominates the entire core of the cluster.

So how do we know this, and how did it get so big?

How it got this way is clear from a close-up of the galaxy itself, shown on the right. As you can see, the galaxy has more than one nucleus! In this zoom, there are two foreground stars marked with an S, so you can ignore those. The other five objects are all galaxy cores, which to an astronomer is like a smoking gun: ESO 146-IG 005 has been very busy lately, eating other, smaller galaxies. Yup. It’s a cannibal.

We have seen this countless times. Heck, the Milky Way is in the final stages of devouring several smaller galaxies, but in our case the process is almost complete. The nuclei of galaxies are hard to digest, so to speak: the stars are tightly bound to the core by their gravity, so it’s hard for the larger galaxy to absorb them all. It takes time. 146-IG clearly has been gulping down a lot of the other cluster members, and this is why it’s so massive. We think that most large galaxies in the Universe grew to their present size by eating other galaxies.

So we know it’s massive. But how do we know how massive?

Take a look at that zoom picture again. See that little arc of light to the lower left? That is a gravitational lens, an image of a distant galaxy whose light has been distorted by the gravity from 146-IG. When light passes near a massive object, its path gets bent, like a car driving on a curved, banked road. The mass of the intervening galaxy acts like a lens, hence the term, and it can have all sorts of weird effects on the light.

The amount of distortion depends on lots of things, including the mass of the lensing galaxy, in this case 146-IG. There are other lensed background galaxies in the image as well, and the astronomers used those to get the mass of 146-IG. However, it’s not all that straightforward; it’s hard to separate out the mass of the galaxy from the cluster itself, and from gas and such inside the cluster that may not be part of the central galaxy. So all we get is an estimate.

Worse, the astronomers used a second method to find the galaxy mass, and got a much different amount. Gas inside a cluster gets heated as it moves around and falls to the center. The amount of heating (measured by looking at the X-rays emitted by the extremely hot gas) depends on the mass of the cluster, and can be used to estimate how much stuff is there. The astronomers found an “X-ray mass” only a tenth of the mass found using the gravitational lens method. There could be any number of reasons this could happen: the models for the gas assume it’s spherical and smooth when it may be neither, for example.

But either way, ESO 146-IG 005 is still one of if not the most massive galaxy in the nearby cosmos. It’s much larger than our own galaxy, by a comfortable amount. In the case of our galaxy, we ran out of smaller galaxies to eat, whereas 146-IG is basically still standing in the kitchen with the refrigerator door open.

It makes me glad the Milky Way is nowhere near that cluster. Sure, we got to our present size by eating other galaxies, but the time of unrestrained gluttony is in the past, and that’s good. It would make our neighborhood something less than the calm, peaceful place it is now. Having undigested galactic nuclei flying around, quadrillions of tons of gas and dust sloshing hither and yon, and all that million degree X-ray emitting gas sitting out there… that can’t be good for property values.

Filed under: GM, Earnings/Financials

General Motors has just posted its first quarterly profit in three years, and it’s not exactly chump change. The General just announced it managed to rake in a net income of $865 million during the first quarter of 2010. According to The Detroit News, the change in direction is thanks largely to GM’s rebound here in North America. The company’s domestic operation pulled down a $1.2 billion profit for the first three months of the year thanks to a slimmer debt load and the sale of Saab to Spyker. During the fourth-quarter of 2009, GM posted a $3.4 billion loss.

Likewise, things are looking up internationally. The Detroit-based automaker also returned a $1.2 billion profit from its global efforts as well. That marks a $500 million increase compared to the fourth quarter of 2009. This is all good news for those eying when the fresh-from-bankruptcy manufacturer will start selling stock once again. Currently, GM is shooting for an IPO late this year or early in 2011. Tax payers and investors can’t wait. Hit the jump for the press release.

[Source: General Motors, The Detroit News | Image: Scott Olson/Getty]

Continue reading GM earns $865M first quarter profit, first in three years

GM earns $865M first quarter profit, first in three years originally appeared on Autoblog on Mon, 17 May 2010 10:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a radical overhaul—or even fully functional, since it’s missing search and QR codes—but Google’s Android Market site is definitely more pleasant and navigable than before. [Android] More »










Android Market – Google – Android – Handhelds – Searching

BP Managing Director Bob Dudley discusses containment plans and liability costs:

Hot Topics

Gulf oil spill | Global warming | Green cars

Last Friday, the National Rifle Association held its annual gathering in Charlotte, N.C., where ThinkProgress asked a number of participants whether the Second Amendment should extend to folks currently on the country’s terrorist watch list. (Under current law, it does.) The responses are a clear indication that, at least on this thorny issue, gun owners are more than ready to take on NRA leadership.

Video after the jump:

Virtual Toys has already released VT Tennis into the App Store and DSiWare, but come May 26th, it’s the PlayStation Store’s turn to get this one as a minis download.

YouTube has been doing a lot of celebrating lately — of the 5-year anniversary of the purchase of its URL back in February, then in April, of the first video uploaded to the site. Now the online video site is celebrating the launch of its first beta version in May 2005 with the announcement of some significant milestones.

YouTube streams more than 2 billion videos a day, with a full day’s worth of video — 24 hours — uploaded to the site every minute, according to a post on the YouTube blog today. Meanwhile, its partner ad revenue tripled last year, and it now monetizes over a billion video streams per week worldwide.

All that momentum has gotten YouTube (finally!) on the brink of profitability, with analysts saying they expect the site to actually make money for the first time in 2010. According to research from Citi earlier this year, YouTube is expected to pull in about $945 million in 2010, with revenues forecast at $1.1 billion next year. That’s not bad for a video site that just a few years ago was best known for stupid pet tricks and pirated video.

To celebrate the five-year milestone, YouTube launched a page featuring some of its most successful and recognizable contributors — like Tay Zonday and Ryan Higa — talking about their YouTube experience during the first five years of the site’s existence. YouTube is also asking its users to upload their own videos about how YouTube has affected their lives.

Related content on GigaOM Pro: TV Apps: From Novelty to Mainstream (subscription required)

[JURIST] The US Supreme Court [official website; JURIST news archive] on Monday ruled [opinion, PDF] 7-2 in United States v. Comstock [Cornell LII backgrounder] that mentally ill sex offenders may be civilly committed beyond their prison sentences. The court upheld the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act [18 USC s. 4248 text], which allows a district court to order the civil commitment of a mentally ill, sexually dangerous federal prisoner beyond the date he would otherwise be released. The US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit had granted the defendant’s motion to dismiss proceedings, holding that section 4248 exceeded Congress’s powers under the Commerce Clause [Cornell LII backgrounder], that the “clear and convincing” requirement did not meet due process standards, and that the statute violated the Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth Amendments of the US Constitution. The court reversed and remanded the Fourth Circuit’s decision, stating that the Necessary and Proper Clause [text] grants Congress sufficient authority to pass such laws. In delivering the opinion of the court, Justice Stephen Breyer stated that several considerations were used to compel the court’s decision.

We take these five considerations together. They include: (1) the breadth of the Necessary and Proper Clause, (2) the long history of federal involvement in this arena, (3) the sound reasons for the statute’s enactment in light of the Government’s custodial interest in safeguarding the public from dangers posed by those in federal custody, (4) the statute’s accommodation of state interests, and (5) the statute’s narrow scope. Taken together, these considerations lead us to conclude that the statute is a “necessary and proper” means of exercising the federal authority that permits Congress to create federal criminal laws, to punish their violation, to imprison violators, to provide appropriately for those imprisoned, and to maintain the security of those who are not imprisoned but who may be affected by the federal imprisonment of others. The Constitution consequently authorizes Congress to enact the statute.

Justice Anthony Kennedy concurred in the judgment only, joined by Justice Samuel Alito. Justice Clarence Thomas dissented, joined by Justice Antonin Scalia.

US Solicitor General and recent Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan [official profile; JURIST news archive] defended the law [JURIST report] in January stating that it was necessary to protect individuals from people who have the kind of mental illness that is going to cause grave danger to the community. She stated that the federal government is in the best position to prevent this kind of danger, and therefore has a duty to act as a federal custodian. While some of the justices were skeptical of Kagan’s position, the majority of the court agreed with her assertion in its opinion. The court did not reach or decide any claim that the statute or its application denies equal protection, procedural or substantive due process, or any other constitutional rights.

Continuing Education Non-Credit Classes

• Register now for summer. Classes begin throughout the summer.
• Need help getting started? Contact Continuing Education, 847.925.6300.

Watch your back, Biebs! Greyson Chance has landed a recording contract with Interscope Records just one week after the 12-year-old Oklahoma singing sensation captured the affection of tween girls nationwide with his cover of Lady Gaga’s “Paparazzi.”

Chance made his first television appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show last Friday, and Lady Gaga tore herself away from selecting kooky attire for the day to call in with some words of encouragement for the “Little Monster.” Industry tattles say that Interscope were anxious to close the deal before any other label got the chance to meet the young star.

An official announcement is expected sometime in the next few weeks.

Aside from a cameo appearance in the project emerald rumors, the Samsung Galaxy S has not seen much action in the US.  We recently found out that our British friends might be getting the 4-inch bad boy in early June.  What’s more, if the rumor is right it will also be unlocked on all UK networks.  But so far, Vodafone UK has been the only company to verify that it’s “coming soon.”

Here in the US we’ve heard some conjecture from analysts that the Galaxy S will be hitting all four major carriers, along with talk about different variants for each company – some of which will include a flash (for the camera, that is).  And right around the time the project emerald rumors started to surface, video of the device sporting a few T-Mobile specific apps turned up thanks to Howard Chui of howardchui.com.

OK, so maybe it’s seen some action, but nothing in the way of major leaks, pictures of it running around in the wild, or anything exciting of that nature.  What we do have for you, however, is a really cool little promotional video that found its way to YouTube and was uncovered by the folks over at AndroidGuys.  The video shows many of the features that the device is capable of to get you through the various different aspects of your day.  It’s an interesting watch, though unfortunately there’s no sound.  Happy viewing, and be sure to leave your thoughts below in the comments!

Via AndroidGuys

{Widget type=”youtube” id=”dTQVRCC8xiA” }

2 Foam filters

View (2)-Reusable Black Foam Filters for M Series Plus, M Series Pro, M Series Auto, M Series Bipap Auto, M Series Bipap Plus Details

Catherine Weibel meets a Palestinian woman fighting to save her family home from demolition with the help of an Israeli organisation.

Umm Juma talks to a staff member of Oxfam’s partner Bimkom/Planners for Planning Rights, who has come to help her protect her home from being destroyed. Photo: Catherine Weibel/Oxfam

On a calm morning in the south of the West Bank, Palestinian villagers in At-Tuwani are experiencing two very different types of encounters with Israelis.

From the roof of her house, 58-year old Umm Juma’ keeps a wary eye on a group of Israeli settlers who have erected tents not far from the village. The settlers are creating what is known as an “outpost” – an unauthorised, makeshift settlement often inhabited by only a few people. Under international law all Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank are considered illegal, but Israel itself also deems these outposts to be illegal.

“The settlers block the path we use to access grazing land,” says Umm Juma’. “They have already attacked my sons as they were herding our sheep. Now I worry about their safety each time they leave the house”.

At the same time, Umm Juma’ serves tea to a different group of Israelis that she has invited onto her roof terrace. They work for Oxfam’s partner Bimkom/Planners for Planning Rights, and have come to help her protect her home from being destroyed.

Authorities “strangling development”

Bimkom’s architects and planners help Palestinians fight house demolition orders and restrictive building policies that are pervasive in Area C. Home to 150,000 Palestinians and twice as many Israeli settlers, Area C is under full Israeli civil and military control, including deciding on planning schemes and issuing building permits. Bimkom has accused Israeli authorities of strangling development for Palestinian communities in Area C, with building restrictions that prevent Palestinian communities from expanding and building new homes and schools.

According to Bimkom, the ICA approved only 5.6% of all Palestinian applications for building permits between 2000 and 2007. Palestinians are often left with no option but to build without a permit, despite the risk of their houses being demolished, leaving thousands of families homeless. These building restrictions stifle Palestinian economic development, and violate basic human rights.

Umm Juma’s house was built 30 years ago, but she still has to obtain a building permit for the house to be legal in the eyes of the Israeli Civil Administration (ICA), the Israeli military agency that decides whether building are legal in Area C. Umm Juma’s house faces possible demolition, as it lies 100 metres outside of the planning boundaries defined by the ICA. Even if the six room house is not demolished it will still be located outside the boundaries of the plan for the village, which means that Umm Juma’s family of 30 won’t be able to legally expand or renovate the already overcrowded house.

2,450 buildings destroyed

Bimkom’s architects and planners help Palestinians fight house demolition orders and restrictive building policies that are pervasive in Area C of the occupied West Bank. Photo: Catherine Weibel/Oxfam

The villagers of At-Tuwani complain that the ICA serves demolition orders – approximately 2,450 for Palestinian-owned structures without a permit in the last 12 years, according to OCHA – but offers no services. They’ve been asking for their village to be connected to the electrical network for years, but the electrical network serving the neighbouring Israeli settlements still bypasses At-Tuwani.

According to Bimkom, the outline plans drawn by the ICA for Palestinian villages throughout the West Bank are rudimentary at best. Bimkom architect Alon Cohen-Lipshitz explains how two houses were not included in the plan for At-Tuwani, even though they’re located just a stone’s throw away from other houses that were included. “When asked why he decided to leave these two houses outside the plan for At-Tuwani, the ICA planner told us he had mistaken these houses for big rocks. He had never set foot in the village – he drew his plan entirely from an aerial picture.”

Bimkom has filed an official objection to the plan for At-Tuwani, demanding significant revisions. If the objection is rejected and Umm Juma’s house is still outside the plan, the villagers and Bimkom might appeal the decision in front of the High Court of Justice in Jerusalem.

For the time being, Umm Juma’ simply hopes that the house she’s been living in for 30 years won’t be destroyed.

Oxfam in action: crisis in Gaza

My post last week about Creationism by region set off a fair number of follow up questions. I’ve actually probed the GSS evolution related variables a lot in the past, but I thought I would put it together in one post in a simple fashion for new readers. I used the SCITEST4 variable since its sample size is the largest. The question asked was: ” Human beings developed from earlier species of animals.” It was asked between 1993 and 2000.

There are four answers, definitely true, probably true, probably not true, definitely not true. I put the frequencies in a table below, but I thought it would be useful to have one number to summarize the propensity toward creationism in a demographic. Therefore, I created a simple “index of creationism.” The formula to create it is pretty obvious:

Index of Creationism = (% “definitely not true”) X 3 + (% “probably not true”) X 2 + (% “probably true”) X 1

If the Index of Creationism for a demographic was zero, that means that everyone in the demographic accepted that evolution was definitely true. In contrast, if it was three, that means that everyone in the demographic believed that evolution was definitely not true. The bar chart below has the Indices of Creationism sorted. Below it is a table with the frequencies as well (unsorted, clustered by demographic kind).

HUMANS DEVELOPED FROM ANIMALS….

Update: I forgot to add the variables for the GSS query:

Row: sex race degree(r:0-2″Non-College”;3-4″College”) wordsum(r:0-4″stupid”;5-7″average”;8-10″smart”) sei(r:17-37″low”;38-67″middle”;68-97″high”) god(r:1-2″atheist & agnostic”;3″higher power”;4-5″Believe in god with doubts”;6″Know god exists”) relig bible age(r:18-40″18-40″;40-*”40+”) polviews(r:1-3″Liberal”;4″Moderate”;5-7″Conservative”)

Column: scitest4

WASHINGTON–Top strategists for Alexi Giannoulias Illinois Senate campaign will be on a conference call today to discuss the state of the race.

On the call, from the Giannoulias team: Pete Giangreco, The Strategy Group; Eric Adelstein, Adelstein Liston; Michael Bocian, Greenburg Quinlan Rosner and Michael Rendina, Campaign Manager.

[JURIST] The US Supreme Court [official website; JURIST news archive] on Monday granted certiorari [order list, PDF] in one case. In Wall v. Kholi [docket; cert. petition, PDF], the court will decide whether a state court sentence-reduction motion consisting of a plea for leniency constitutes an “application for State post-conviction or other collateral review” under 28 USC s. 2244(d)(2) [text], resulting in an extension of the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act’s (AEDPA) [text, PDF] one-year limitations period for a state prisoner to file a federal habeas corpus petition. The US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit [official website] reversed the district court’s judgment that a petition for leniency is different from an appeal to correct legal errors and therefore does not result in a tolling of the statute of limitations under AEDPA. The First Circuit’s decision was in line with a Tenth Circuit ruling on the same issue, but the Third, Fourth and Eleventh Circuits had previously ruled that a petition for leniency does not toll the statute of limitations under AEDPA.

Kholi was initially convicted in 1993 and sentenced to 10 life sentences, six running concurrently to four consecutive. He appealed his conviction to the Rhode Island Supreme Court, which affirmed the convictions in 1996, but he did not file a federal writ of habeas corpus at that time. He then filed a motion seeking sentence reduction as a form of post-conviction relief, which was denied. Kholi exhausted his procedural options regarding sentence reduction in 2007, at which time he began his appeal for federal writ of habeas corpus, well beyond AEDPA’s standard one-year limitation on filing.

In the current Alabama gubernatorial primary race, there’s some serious mudslinging and general ugliness going on. True Republican PAC recently produced this campaign ad attacking conservative candidate Bradley Byrne for not being conservative enough. His crime? Bradley Byrne might believe in evolution!

Technorati reports the story and posts the “True Republican” TV ad:

Not to fear.   GOP gubernatorial candidate Byrne quickly defended his beliefs:

As a Christian and as a public servant, I have never wavered in my belief that this world and everything in it is a masterpiece created by the hands of God. As a member of the Alabama Board of Education, the record clearly shows that I fought to ensure the teaching of creationism in our school text books.

I’m so glad he had the courage of his convictions to set the record straight here.

Related Posts:

• The Dark Ages return: Texas Board of Education rewrites the Enlightenment
• How ultraconservative Texans are rewriting your kids’ textbooks and bringing global-warming denial into science class
• South Dakota legislators tell schools to teach ‘astrological’ explanation for global warming
• The Heritage Foundation loses its grip on reality, calls science ‘magic’