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July 2009

Robson's death triggers grief in football world (AFP)

LONDON (AFP) –
Sir Bobby Robson's death after a long battle with cancer triggered an emotional response as the likes of Jose Mourinho and Fabio Capello paid tribute to the former England coach.

Robson passed away aged 76 at his family home in County Durham, north-east England, early on Friday and within hours the world of football had shown their love and respect for one of the sport's true gentlemen.

His remarkable 56-year career as a player and manager included taking England to the 1990 World Cup semi-finals, transforming unfashionable Ipswich into a European force and taking charge of major clubs like Barcelona, Porto, PSV Eindhoven and his boyhood team Newcastle.

But it was Robson's unrelenting enthusiasm for the game and his generous personality that made the biggest impression on everyone who came into contact with the genial Geordie.

As a mark of respect, flags at the Civic Centre in Newcastle were lowered in tribute, while Barcelona, PSV and Ipswich all released statements expressing their sympathy to Robson's family and saluting his achievements with their teams.

Newcastle and Ipswich fans flocked to their club's stadiums to lay flowers and scarves and write messages in praise of Robson.

At Newcastle, fans inside the ground chanted Robson's name after the squad and staff held a minute's silence on the centre circle, while first teamers Steve Harper, Shola Ameobi and Steven Taylor carried a wreath of white lilies on to the pitch.

Inter Milan manager Jose Mourinho was given his first big break by Robson, who employed the Portuguese as a coach and interpreter during his spells at Barcelona, Porto and Sporting Lisbon.

Mourinho has never forgotten Robson's role in his rise to prominence and the former Chelsea coach said: "It is difficult to accept such a person is no longer with us, but he is immortal because he leaves in everybody who knows him a mark of his personality - a great coach but, more than that, a great person."

Fabio Capello, one of Robson's successors as England coach, summed up Robson's gift for communicating with people as he revealed a recent encounter with the ailing boss.

"Sir Bobby was a wonderful man, a real gentleman," Capello said. "His spirit and courage was incredible. To fight cancer so many times really showed the strength of the man.

"I recall the tribute dinner hosted for Bobby when he wasn't planning to say more than a few words. In the end he stayed on the stage for a very long time, telling story after story, much to everyone's amusement."

Terry Venables, another former England and Barcelona coach, added: "Bobby fought everything that has been thrown at him. You thought he was indestructible.

"I spoke to him about five weeks ago on the phone and he was talking about football. He was trying hard to battle away (at his cancer). He's shown great bravery."

After playing for Fulham, West Brom and England, Robson earned his managerial reputation during 13 years at Ipswich, winning the FA Cup in 1978 and the UEFA Cup in 1981.

A year later Robson was appointed England coach and he took the team to the quarter-finals of the World Cup in 1986 before Diego Maradona's infamous 'hand of god' goal condemned Robson's team to a 2-1 defeat.

His last World Cup came in 1990 when England, inspired by a young Paul Gascoigne, reached the semi-finals before losing on penalties to West Germany.

More success followed with PSV, Sporting Lisbon and Porto before Robson led Barcelona to the Spanish Cup and Cup Winners' Cup.

In 1999 he made a romantic return to Newcastle at the age of 66 but was unable to end the club's long wait for silverware.

Robson was knighted in 2002 but two years later Newcastle chairman Freddy Shepherd sacked him despite a fifth place finish in the Premier League the previous season.

He was first diagnosed with cancer in 1992 and endured several more serious scares before a routine check-up in February 2007 revealed more tumours on his lungs. This time they were inoperable.

Sir Bobby is survived by his wife Lady Elsie and their three children, Andrew, Paul and Mark.

Green Mountain Coffee

The Dutch were the first to import coffee on a large scale, and they were among the first to defy the Arab prohibition on the exportation of plants or unroasted seeds when Pieter van den Broeck smuggled seedlings from Aden into Europe in 1616. The Dutch later grew the crop in Java and Ceylon. The first exports of Indonesian coffee from Java to the Netherlands occurred in 1711. Through the efforts of the British East India Company, coffee became popular in England as well. It was introduced in France in 1657, and in Austria and Poland after the 1683 Battle of Vienna, when coffee was captured from supplies of the defeated Turks.

Coffee berries and their seeds undergo several processes before they become the familiar roasted coffee. First, coffee berries are picked, generally by hand. Then, they are sorted by ripeness and color and the flesh of the berry is removed, usually by machine, and the seeds—usually called beans—are fermented to remove the slimy layer of mucilage still present on the bean. When the fermentation is finished, the beans are washed with large quantities of fresh water to remove the fermentation residue, which generates massive amounts of highly polluted coffee wastewater. Finally the seeds are dried, sorted, and labeled as green coffee beans.

Green Mountain Coffee

Shuttle Endeavour Lands Safely in Florida (SPACE.com)

HOUSTON - Space
shuttle Endeavour touched down in Florida on Friday morning, bringing to an end
a successful 16-day mission to complete Japan's laboratory at the
International Space Station (ISS).

Shuttle commander
Mark Polansky piloted Endeavour to a 10:48 a.m. EDT (1448 GMT) landing at
NASA's Kennedy Space Center, beating the weather -  which called for a
chance of rain - for a smooth landing at its home port in Cape Canaveral, Fla.
The astronauts landed after delivering a brand new
experiment porch to the space station along with vital spare parts and a
new crewmember for the outpost's six-man crew.

Returning home
with Polansky and Hurley were STS-127 mission specialists Dave Wolf, Tom
Marshburn, Chris Cassidy and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Julie Payette. Cassidy
became the 500th person in space on this mission.

Their seventh
crewmate for the trip home was Japan's first long-duration space station
resident, Koichi Wakata. A flight engineer for three successful station crews
since March, Wakata spent 138 days in space before being replaced by NASA
astronaut Tim Kopra, who launched on Endeavour and will return to Earth with
the next shuttle mission targeted for launch in late August.

"I long for
sushi, so that's the first thing I would like to have," Wakata said in an
televised interview Thursday, adding that a dip in one of Japan's hot springs
is next on his list.

He also brought
home some high-tech
underwear and other clothing designed to be stink-free and antistatic,
which wore for a month at a time to test the Japanese-made space garb. Wakata
said he received no complaints from his crewmates.

Front porch
installed, batteries replaced

Endeavour rocketed
to orbit July 15 and reached the space station two days later to begin its
ambitious construction flight. The combined seven-member shuttle crew and
six-man station staff formed the largest crowd aboard any one spacecraft
in history - 13 people.

One of the
station's two
space toilets and a carbon dioxide removal device broke down during the
mission. Both were swiftly repaired, but the carbon dioxide scrubber shut down
again Wednesday. Station astronauts are expected to complete a new repair this
afternoon.

Pilot
Hurley said the best moments of the flight came during those rare
moments of downtime, when all 13 astronauts could gather together, swap stories and tell
jokes.

"It just
seemed a little funnier up here," Hurley said before landing.

Endeavour's
primary mission was to deliver the final component of the Japan Aerospace
Exploration Agency's $1 billion Kibo ("Hope") laboratory, an exterior platform designed to
support experiments. Its installation, including the addition of three initial
payloads, required a combination of five spacewalks and the use of three
robotic arms.

The space station is now 83 percent complete with seven more
shuttle flights ahead to finish
construction by 2010, when NASA plans to retire its three-shuttle fleet. It has a wingsan as long as an American football field and can be easily seen at night by the unaided eye.

Wolf, as the
mission's lead spacewalker, accompanied first-time fliers Cassidy and Marshburn
on separate excursions before the former Navy SEAL and former NASA flight
surgeon joined together for the final two of the mission's five spacewalks.
Wolf and newly-transferred ISS flight engineer Kopra conducted the first
outing, which included preparing the Kibo exposed facility to accept
experiments.

In addition to
configuring the new platform, spacewalkers also swapped out the first set of
six batteries for the station's oldest operating solar array wing, as well as
performed several maintenance tasks to prepare the outpost for future shuttle
missions and the arrival of Japan's first unmanned cargo ship in September.

Inside Endeavour
and onboard the ISS, Payette, Wakata, Hurley and Polansky oversaw robotic arm
operations, including a ballet of hand-offs between the shuttle's and station's
Canadian-built arms. Japan's Kibo arm was also given its first workout as it
was used to move two experiments and a communications system from a cargo
carrier onto to the new porch.

One of the
best

Despite an early
concern for tile damage as a result of foam debris falling off of Endeavour's
external fuel tank during launch, mission managers praised STS-127 for its
relative clean performance over the course of its 248 orbits.

"It's been as
good as some of the best ones we've flown in the last year or two," said
mission management team chair Leroy Cain. "Certainly one of the best."

In addition to
the foam strikes, which were cleared for re-entry after a series of routine heat
shield inspections, Endeavour experienced an issue with one of its three
power-providing fuel cells and lost use of one of its forward thrusters. Both
problems however, posed no impact to the STS-127 mission.

Now back on
Earth, Endeavour will be serviced and prepared for its next flight, STS-130,
scheduled for a return trip to the International Space Station early next year.
NASA's next shuttle mission, STS-128, is targeted for launch on Aug. 25 aboard
orbiter Discovery pending a check of its fuel tank foam insulation.

Video
- Space Station's Population Boom
Video
- The Kibo Lab: Japan's Hope in Space - Part 1, Part
2
SPACE.com
Video Show - The ISS: Foothold on Forever

 

 

Original Story: Shuttle Endeavour Lands Safely in FloridaSPACE.com offers rich and compelling content about space science, travel and exploration as well as astronomy, technology, business news and more. The site boasts a variety of popular features including our space image of the day and other space pictures,space videos, Top 10s, Trivia, podcasts and Amazing Images submitted by our users. Join our community, sign up for our free newsletters and register for our RSS Feeds today!

Mammals Beat Reptiles in Battle of Evolution (LiveScience.com)

Mammals, birds and fish are among evolution's "winners," while crocodiles and other reptiles have ended up on the losing end, a new study suggests.

"Our results indicate that mammals are special," said study leader Michael Alfaro of UCLA.

The research allowed scientists to calculate for the first time which animal lineages have exceptional rates of success. The so-called "winners" have more species in their group, which means they have successfully evolved and diversified into many types of environments. The losers have diversified less, even over the course of millions of years.

The distinction doesn't imply that the losers are under a greater threat of extinction, however. Even rich, diverse lineages include endangered species.

The evidence

To separate the winners from the losers, a group of scientists analyzed DNA sequences and fossils from 47 major vertebrate groups, and used a computational approach to calculate whether the species richness (a way of measuring biodiversity) of each of these 47 groups is exceptionally high or low.

The winners: most modern birds, including the songbirds, parrots, doves, eagles, hummingbirds and pigeons; most mammals; and a group of fish including most of the fish that live on coral reefs.

The losers: crocodiles and alligators and a reptile cousin of snakes and lizards known as the tuatara.

The winners showed remarkable species richness, especially for the relatively short time some groups have been on the planet.

The research was funded by the National Science Foundation.

Winners vs. losers

A group of many mammals, with the scientific name of Boreoeutheria, has diversified about seven times faster than scientists expected, beginning about 110 million years ago, Alfaro and his colleagues calculated. The group includes primates and carnivores, as well as bats and rodents.

Modern birds have diversified about nine times faster than expected, starting about 103 million years ago, while the group of fish that lives on coral reefs has diversified about eight times faster than expected, Alfaro said.

The losers, on the other hand, have changed little during their long residence on Earth.

Crocodiles and alligators are nearly 250 million years old, Alfaro said, yet have diversified into only 23 species. They are diversifying a staggering 1,000 times slower than the scientists expected.

"Their species richness is so low, given how old they are," Alfaro said.

The tuatara, which lives in New Zealand and resembles a lizard (though the two groups are actually distant cousins), has only two species.

"In the same period of time that produced more than 8,000 species of snakes and lizards, there were only two species of tuatara," Alfaro said.

"It's a real mystery to biologists how there can be any tuataras given their low rate of speciation," he added. "They must have something working for them that has allowed them to persist. In species richness, these are losers, but in another sense, this highlights how unique they are."

The findings, detailed in the July 24 online early edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, don't match up with traditional scientific explanations for why there are so many mammals, birds and fish.

"The timing of the rate increases does not correspond to the appearance of key characteristics that have been invoked to explain the evolutionary success of these groups, such as hair on mammals or mammals' well-coordinated chewing ability or feathers on birds," Alfaro said. "Our results suggest that something more recent is the cause of the biodiversity. It may be that something more subtle explains the evolutionary success of mammals, birds and fish. We need to look for new explanations."

How Many Species Exist on Earth?
Images: Evolution's Most Extreme Mammals
Evolution News and Information
Original Story: Mammals Beat Reptiles in Battle of EvolutionLiveScience.com chronicles the daily advances and innovations made in science and technology. We take on the misconceptions that often pop up around scientific discoveries and deliver short, provocative explanations with a certain wit and style. Check out our science videos, Trivia & Quizzes and Top 10s. Join our community to debate hot-button issues like stem cells, climate change and evolution. You can also sign up for free newsletters, register for RSS feeds and get cool gadgets at the LiveScience Store.

911 caller in Gates case hurt by racist label (AP)

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – The woman who dialed 911 to report a possible break-in at the home of black Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. said Wednesday she was pained to be wrongly labeled a racist based on words she never said and hoped the recently released recording of the call would put the controversy to rest.
With a trembling voice, Lucia Whalen, 40, said she was out walking to lunch in Gates' Cambridge neighborhood near Harvard University when an elderly woman without a cell phone stopped her because she was concerned there was a possible burglary in progress.
Whalen was vilified as a racist on blogs after a police report said she described the possible burglars as "two black males with backpacks."
Tapes of the call released earlier this week revealed that Whalen did not mention race. When pressed by a dispatcher on whether the men were white, black or Hispanic, she said one of them might have been Hispanic.
"Now that the tapes are out, I hope people can see that I tried to be careful and honest with my words," Whalen said. "It never occurred to me that the way I reported what I saw be analyzed by an entire nation."
Cambridge police Commissioner Robert Haas acknowledged that the police report contains a reference to race, but said the report is merely a summary of events. The arresting officer, Sgt. James Crowley, has said his information on the race of the suspects came during a brief encounter with Whalen outside Gates' house; she contradicted that Wednesday, saying she made no such description.
The arrest of Gates for disorderly conduct in his own home by a white police officer sparked a national debate over racial profiling and police conduct. The controversy intensified when President Obama said police "acted stupidly" when they arrested Gates, his friend.
Gates has said he was outraged and has demanded an apology from Crowley; Crowley said he followed protocol and responded to Gates' "tumultuous behavior" appropriately.
Whalen, a Harvard alumni magazine employee who is a first-generation Portuguese-American, said she lived in fear during the immediate aftermath of the arrest when she was dogged for comment and maligned based on the information attributed to her in the police report.
"The criticism at first was so painful I was frankly afraid to say anything. People called me racist. Some even said threatening things that made me fear for my safety," said Whalen, whose husband, Paul, put his hand on her shoulder in comfort her as she spoke. "I knew the truth, but I didn't speak up right away because I did not want to add to the controversy."
She said she felt more comfortable speaking publicly after the tapes were released. She refused to answer any questions about the police report or what she saw that day.
"I am proud to have been raised by two loving parents who instilled in me values including love one another, be kind to strangers and do not judge people based on race, ethnicity or any other feature than their character," she said.
Obama, the nation's first black president, has said he chose his words badly when he reacted to his friend's arrest, and he has invited Crowley and Gates to meet with him at the White House for a beer on Thursday evening.
Whalen's attorney, Wendy Murphy, said the three men — Gates, Crowley and Obama — all overreacted, while Whalen kept her cool.
"The three highly trained guys who reacted badly are getting together for a beer," Murphy said. "The one person whose actions have been exemplary will be at work tomorrow in Cambridge. I don't know — maybe it's a guy thing. She doesn't like beer anyway."
Whalen said she has worked in Cambridge for 15 years and hopes that the community's reputation would be restored. She also said she respected both Gates and the Cambridge police department and hoped her decision to finally speak out would not add to the controversy.
"I was called racist and I was a target of scorn and ridicule because of the things I never said," she said. "The criticism hurt me as a person, but it also hurt the community of Cambridge."
(This version CORRECTS the day of week to Wednesday.)

House Democrats reach healthcare deal (Reuters)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) –
Lawmakers on both sides of the U.S. Capitol made significant progress on healthcare reform on Wednesday, with a group of Democratic conservatives reaching agreement with party leaders in the House of Representatives on a bill.

Senate Republican and Democratic senators negotiating a healthcare reform deal also got a boost from congressional budget analysts who priced their bill at less than $900 billion -- below some cost estimates of $1 trillion or more.

In the House, members of the so-called "Blue Dog" conservative coalition on the House Energy and Commerce Committee reached a deal with Democratic leadership after days of long negotiations.

Representative Mike Ross, a group leader, told reporters the bill would be moved to the committee for consideration later on Wednesday but the full House would not take the issue up until September after it returns from its month-long break.

He said the deal would shave $100 billion off the $1 trillion price tag, making it more palatable to fiscal conservatives in both parties.

In the Senate, Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus said the Congressional Budget Office reported the legislation would reduce the federal deficit, spur growth in employer-provided health coverage and provide insurance coverage to 95 percent of Americans.

The CBO report also could help ease concerns about the hefty price tag for the broad overhaul of healthcare being negotiated in the U.S. Congress.

A group of three Democrats and three Republicans on the Senate Finance panel have edged closer to a deal this week that could form the heart of an eventual Senate healthcare plan.

"I am confident they will get a bill ... a bipartisan bill will come out of that committee," Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid told reporters.

Senator Charles Grassley, one of the panel's three Republicans involved in the talks, said in a Reuters interview the negotiators were making great progress but tough issues remained on financing and cost containment.

President Barack Obama has pinpointed healthcare as his top legislative priority and has pushed lawmakers to quickly reach a deal to rein in healthcare costs, improve care and cover most of the 46 million uninsured Americans.

Obama had asked both the Senate and House to come up with initial draft bills before they leave for their August recess, but that deadline is dead in the Senate and nearly impossible in the House.

PUBLIC PLAN IDEA DIMS

Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee said on Tuesday the six negotiators were close to success in bipartisan talks, even if the full panel does not take up the bill before Congress goes on a month-long break on August 7.

Senate Finance negotiations focused on a plan that would use nonprofit cooperatives to compete with private insurers to drive down costs, not the government option plan favored by Obama and many other Democrats.

Shares of U.S. health insurers rose broadly on Tuesday on hopes that negotiators were moving away from the public plan idea, which has drawn strong opposition from insurers who fear it would destroy the private marketplace.

The Senate panel also is likely to back a tax on high-cost insurance policies to raise revenue and keep costs down.

Dick Durbin, the Senate's second-ranked Democrat, said the lack of a public insurance option in the Finance bill was not what he and many other Democrats wanted, but he was encouraging senators to stay patient.

"I have urged all my colleagues to stick with the process and realize the first vote is not the last vote," he told reporters. "This is the first inning and it's a long ballgame."

The bipartisan negotiations pleased healthcare industry officials.

"We applaud the efforts of Baucus and Grassley to try to make it a bipartisan approach because we think that will be thoroughly vetted and one where I think we're going to get more sustainable solutions coming out of it," said WellPoint CEO Angela Braly in interview with Reuters.

Obama, who has put considerable political capital on the line in the healthcare debate, traveled to North Carolina and Virginia on Wednesday for campaign-style events aimed at telling Americans why insurance reform means more security and stability for them and their families.

"This is about people's lives. This is about people's businesses. This is about our future," Obama told a "town hall"-style event in Raleigh, North Carolina.

The White House said Obama would outline eight specific consumer protections he thinks are needed. They include: no discrimination for preexisting conditions, only reasonable out-of-pocket expenses, no dropping of coverage for serious illness, no gender discrimination, no annual or lifetime caps and extended coverage for young adults.

(Additional reporting by David Alexander, writing by John Whitesides; editing by Vicki Allen)

U.S. durable goods orders slump, mortgage demand wanes (Reuters)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) –
New orders for long-lasting U.S. manufactured goods notched their biggest decline in five months in June, while applications for mortgages fell last week in a sign that economic conditions remain fragile.

The Commerce Department said on Wednesday durable goods orders fell 2.5 percent in June, the largest drop since January, after rising by a revised 1.3 percent in May.

This was worse than market expectations for a 0.6 percent decline. Orders, which had advanced for two straight months, were pulled lower by steep declines in demand for transportation and communications equipment.

U.S. stocks index futures deepened losses on the report, while Treasury debt prices held gains and U.S. dollar extended gains versus euro.

"Durable goods doesn't look positive ... it's no turning point in terms of momentum, and markets have reacted neither positively or negatively," said Sebastien Galy, senior currency strategist at BNP Paribas in New York.

But there were bright spots in the mixed report. New orders excluding transportation rose 1.1 percent in June, the biggest rise since February, after climbing by 0.8 percent in May.

Excluding defense, orders slipped 0.7 percent in June, after two months of straight gains.

Non-defense capital goods orders excluding aircraft, a closely watched proxy for business spending, rose 1.4 percent in June after increasing 4.3 percent the previous month.

"The manufacturing sector benefits when we see non-defense ex-aircraft orders increase," said Gary Thayer, senior economist at Wells Fargo Advisors in St. Louis.

"This is potentially a sign that the worst of the weakness in business spending is behind us and we could see modest improvement in capital spending in the second half of the year."

Separately, U.S. mortgage applications fell for the first time in four weeks, driven by a drop in demand for home refinancing loans as interest rates climbed, data from an industry group showed on Wednesday.

Applications for loans to buy a home, an early indicator of sales, were flat. Lack of interest for purchase loans does not bode well for the hard-hit U.S. housing market, which has otherwise been showing signs of stabilization.

(Reporting by Lucia Mutikani, Additional reporting by Julie Haviv, Ellen Freilich and Steven C. Johnson in New York; Editing by Andrea Ricci)

Madonna pens article for Israeli daily (AP)

JERUSALEM – Israel's biggest daily newspaper is boasting a new international correspondent — Madonna.
The Material Girl's byline is on the front page of Wednesday's issue of Yediot Ahronot with an excerpt from her upcoming article headlined: "How My Life Changed."
The paper translated her words into Hebrew. Madonna's full article is to be published Friday.
Madonna isn't Jewish but she has adopted the Hebrew name of Esther and studies Jewish mysticism.
She made a private pilgrimage to Israel in 2004 and plans two shows in the country in September as part of her Sticky & Sweet tour.
In her article, the 50-year-old entertainer describes her religious awakening almost 14 years ago, saying she realized fame and fortune were not the end but only the beginning.

Wireless Outdoor Speakers

When an electrical signal is applied to the voice coil, a magnetic field is created by the electric current in the coil which thus becomes an electromagnet. The coil and the driver's magnetic system interact, generating a mechanical force which causes the coil, and so the attached cone, to move back and forth and so reproduce sound under the control of the applied electrical signal coming from the amplifier. The following is a description of the individual components of this type of loudspeaker.

Designers can use an anechoic chamber to ensure the speaker can be measured independently of room effects, or any of several electronic techniques which can, to some extent, replace such chambers. Some developers eschew anechoic chambers in favor of specific standardized room setups intended to simulate real-life listening conditions. A few of the issues speaker and driver designers must confront are distortion, lobing, phase effects, off axis response and crossover complications.

Wireless Outdoor Speakers