Family of civil rights figure say they will go after the sponsor after Weezy's controversial rap.
By Rob Markman
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Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1706488/lil-wayne-emmett-till-mountain-dew.jhtml
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In their efforts to crack the mysteries of gravity, scientists continue to probe Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity. The latest test involved a curious binary star system.
Snow falls on the Albert Einstein Memorial Statue at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington D.C. during the early morning hours in February 2010. Scientists continue to probe Einstein's theory of general relativity, in their efforts to crack the mysteries of gravity.
Hyungwon Kang/Reuters/File
EnlargeThe most massive neutron star known and its tightly orbiting companion, a wimp of a white-dwarf, have provided one of the most extreme tests yet of Einstein's theory of general relativity.
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The theory has again passed with flying colors ? for now.
Although the theory has cleared test after test over the past century, researchers keep trying to find its limits. They don't think it's wrong, just incomplete.
The other basic forces of nature ? the strong force, which binds particles in an atom's nucleus, the weak force, which governs radioactive decay, and electromagnetism ? have found explanations in quantum physics. Gravity is the only force that so far has resisted assimilation.
Many physicists are convinced that resistance is futile and that at some point gravity will yield to a quantum-physics explanation. But that breakdown may only become apparent under the most extreme conditions ? conditions no human technology can establish.
So researchers turn to the cosmos for their extremes. And in the binary pair identified as PSR J0348+0432, they've found perhaps the most extreme conditions yet.
The pair is located some 7,000 light-years from Earth. The neutron star is all that remains of a star at least 10 times more massive than the sun that ended its luminous run in an explosion known as a supernova. Astronomers estimate that the neutron star is about 12 miles across. But it is so dense that a thimble full of the matter the explosion left behind would weigh about 1 billion tons.
It's white dwarf companion is the slowly cooling end state of a star like the sun.
White dwarfs are dense as well, typically packing roughly half of the sun's mass into an object slightly larger than Earth. This one, however is a lightweight, tipping the scales at about 17 percent of the sun's mass into an object roughly seven times larger than Earth.
Follow-up observations at radio and visible wavelengths revealed a duo that orbits its combined center of mass once every 2.46 hours. Considering the two objects are about a 500,000 miles apart, that's a mighty brisk pace.
"What we were looking for were changes in the orbital period," Dr. Lynch explains, referring to the time it takes for the two objects to orbit each other.
Those changes arise because the act of orbiting dissipates energy. That energy leaves in the form of gravity waves ? ripples in space-time, the very fabric of the cosmos. These ripples travel through space almost as though some interstellar housekeeper was shaking out the sheets.
This loss of energy shortens the time it takes to complete an orbit, signaling that the two objects are slowing and inching closer to one another. Different theories of gravity offer up different predictions for the rate at which the orbits of objects as close and as massive as these decay.
The key issue: "Can we measure that number precisely enough that we can say this agrees with general relativity or disagrees?" Lynch says. After careful measurements using the Arecibo Radio Telescope in Puerto Rico to track the pulsar, and the Very Large Telescope in Chile to track the white dwarf, the answer is: Yes we can, and it agrees with general relativity.
Beyond the test of Einstein's theory of general relativity, the system also poses a challenge to ideas about how binary systems form, Lynch adds.
The neutron star was discovered in 2009 as researchers at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory's facility at Green Bank, W. Va., combed through data gathered two years earlier during a hunt for rapidly spinning neutron stars, dubbed pulsars.
Pulsars earned their name because they emit radio waves as they spin, acting like beacons in the cosmos. Researchers were able to detect this neutron star because it, too, is a pulsar, spinning once every 39 milliseconds.
The team, led by John Antoniadis, with the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany, also combed through data gathered by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey to see if anything showed up in the pulsar's vicinity at visible wavelengths. That's when they found the pulsar's companion.
Astronomers have found other pulsars that spin as fast as the pulsar in the PSR J0348+0432 system, he says. But when such pulsars appear in binary systems, their companions tend to have more mass.
It's the combination of a pulsar with a relatively long spin period in a tight orbit with a relatively low-mass white dwarf "that makes this a little strange," he says, adding that the combination suggests that the system had a unique evolutionary history,
So how fast is the orbital period decreasing? The pace is slowing by about 2.7 ten-trillionths of a second per second. At that rate, some 400 million years from now, the binary system will become an ultra-compact binary system with X-rays for a beacon, the team suggests.
If the neutron star ends up near the high end of the mass scale for such objects as it draws matter from its partner, an eventual merger with the white dwarf could lead to a catastrophic collapse into a black hole ? an object whose gravity is so strong that not even light, traveling at 186,000 miles a second, can escape. If the neutron star star ends up with a more middling mass, the white dwarf in essence would be considered a planet once it cools sufficiently.
A formal report of this test of Einstein's theory of general relativity was published Thursday in the journal Science.
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WASHINGTON (AP) ? State funding for pre-kindergarten programs had its largest drop ever last year and states are now spending less per child than they did a decade ago, according to a report released Monday.
The report also found that more than a half million of those preschool students are in programs that don't even meet standards suggested by industry experts that would qualify for federal dollars.
Those findings ? combined with Congress' reluctance to spend new dollars ? complicate President Barack Obama's effort to expand pre-K programs across the country. While Education Secretary Arne Duncan and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius continue to promote the president's proposal, researchers say existing programs are inadequate, and until their shortcomings are fixed there is little desire by lawmakers to get behind Obama's call for more preschool.
"The state of preschool was a state of emergency," said Steven Barnett, director of the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University, which produced the report.
During his State of the Union speech, Obama proposed a federal-state partnership that would dramatically expand options for families with young children. Obama's plan would fund public preschool for any 4-year-old whose family income was below twice the federal poverty rate.
If it were in place this year, the plan would allow a family of four with two children to enroll students in a pre-K program if the family earned less than $46,566.
Students from families who earn more could participate in the program, but their parents would have to pay tuition based on their income. Eventually, 3-year-old students would be part of the program, too.
As part of his budget request, Obama proposed spending $75 billion over 10 years to help states get these new programs up and running. During the first years, Washington would pick up the majority of the cost before shifting costs to states.
"It's the most significant opportunity to expand access to pre-K that this nation has ever seen," Barnett said of the president's proposal.
Obama proposed paying for this expansion by almost doubling the federal tax on cigarettes, to $1.95 per pack.
Obama's pre-K plan faces a tough uphill climb, though, with the tobacco industry opposing the tax that would pay for it and lawmakers from tobacco-producing states also skeptical. Conservative lawmakers have balked at starting another government program, as well. Obama's Democratic allies are clamoring to make it a priority.
To help it along, Duncan and Sebelius planned to join the report's researchers on Monday at a news conference to introduce the report, along with administration allies. They planned events later in the week to reiterate their support.
Yet those public events were unlikely to sway lawmakers who are already fighting among themselves over spending cuts that are forcing students to be dropped from existing preschool programs, the levying of higher fees for student loans and deep cuts for aid to military schools.
States spent about $5.1 billion on pre-K programs in 2011-12, the most recent school year, researchers wrote in the report.
Per-student funding for existing programs during that year dropped to an average of $3,841 for each student. It was the first time average spending per student dropped below $4,000 in today's dollars since researchers started tracking it during the 2001-02 academic year.
Adjusted for inflation, per-student funding has been cut by more than $1,000 during the last decade.
Yet nationwide, the amounts were widely varied. The District of Columbia spent almost $14,000 on every child in its program while the states of Colorado, South Carolina and Nebraska spent less than $2,000 per child.
"Whether you get a quality preschool program does depend on what ZIP code you are in," Barnett said.
Among the 40 states that offer state-funded pre-K programs, 27 cut per-student spending last year. In total, that meant $548 million in cuts.
Money, of course, is not a guarantee for students' success. But students from poor schools generally lag students from better-funded counterparts and those students from impoverished families arrive in kindergarten less prepared than others.
In all, only 15 states and the District of Columbia spent enough money to provide quality programs, the researchers concluded. Those programs serve about 20 percent of the 1.3 million enrolled in state-funded prekindergarten programs.
"In far too many states, funding levels have fallen so low as to bring into question the effectiveness of their programs by any reasonable standard," researchers wrote.
Part of the reason for the decreased spending are the lingering effects of the economic downturn in 2008, coupled with the end of federal stimulus dollars to plug state budgets.
"Although the recession is technically over, the recovery in state revenues has lagged the recovery of the general economy and has been slower and weaker than following prior recessions. This does not bode well for digging back out of the hole created by years of cuts," the researchers wrote in their report.
Nationally, 42 percent of students ? or more than a half million students ? were in programs that met fewer than half of the benchmarks researchers identified as important to gauging a program's effectiveness, such as classrooms with fewer than 20 students and teachers with bachelor's degrees.
That, too, suggests problems for Obama's plan to expand pre-K programs, especially if Washington insists its partners meet quality benchmarks to win federal dollars.
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FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) ? In the new translation of "Star Wars," Darth Vader is Luke's bizhe'e.
The classic 1977 film that launched a science fiction empire and revealed the force within a farm boy who battles evil has been dubbed in Japanese, French, Spanish and about a dozen other languages. Add Navajo to the list.
Manuelito Wheeler, the director of the Navajo Nation Museum who reached out to Lucasfilm Ltd. with the idea, has a very good feeling about this. He sees it as entertaining, educational and a way to preserve the Navajo language at a time when fewer tribal members are speaking it.
"That's the beauty of what we're doing; we're teaching Navajo language to anybody who wants to learn the Navajo language," Wheeler said. "I find that very rewarding and somewhat ironic. We went from a country that wanted to limit our language, to the Navajo language saving our country through Code Talkers, to our language being part of a major motion picture."
Native languages on the big screen are a rarity. Independent films and documentaries at film festivals have been in the tongue of American Indian tribes. Yet it's far less common to see it done in mainstream movies and shown in commercial theaters. "Bambi" was dubbed in the Arapaho language, and the cartoon series "The Berenstain Bears" was translated into the Dakota and Lakota languages.
"There's a little bit of precedent but nothing like 'Star Wars' in the Navajo language," said Michael Smith, director of the American Indian Film Institute and a member of the Sioux Tribe of Montana.
A team of five Navajo speakers spent 36 hours translating the script for "Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope," and now they're looking for fluent Navajo speakers to fill some two dozen roles. Casting calls are scheduled Monday in Burbank, Calif., and May 3 and 4 ? the unofficial "Star Wars" holiday ? at the Navajo Nation Museum in Window Rock, Ariz.
Potential actors shouldn't worry if they don't sound exactly like Princess Leia, Luke Skywalker or Han Solo, only that they have Princess Leia's spunk and fire or Han Solo's daring, bad-boy-next-door attitude. Chewbacca and R2D2 will keep the language they speak in the Navajo version, and technical effects will be applied to Darth Vader and C-3PO so they sound like the originals, said Shana Priesz, senior director of localization for Deluxe, the studio overseeing the dubbing.
"Having the voice match isn't as much as I want someone who can deliver the lines," she said.
Wheeler and William Nakai, one of the translators, declined to say how some catch phrases or sci-fi jargon in the movie might carry over into Navajo. But Laura Tohe, a fluent Navajo speaker and English professor at Arizona State University said the translation process could have been similar to what Navajo Code Talkers did in coming up with communication that confounded the Japanese during World War II.
The Code Talkers recruited from the Navajo Nation were unfamiliar with things like grenades, observation planes, tanks and dive-bombers. So they thought of something on the reservation that had similar qualities. Grenades became potatoes, observation planes became owls, tanks became tortoises and so on.
"May the force be with you," might translate into "may you walk with great power," or "may you have the power within you," she said. It also might include a reference to mountains, which are a source of strength for the Navajo people.
Galaxies, stars and outer space are not far off concepts for Navajos, who sometimes base ceremonies on moon phases and constellations, Tohe said. Those words would translate directly.
"The Navajo people, like all indigenous tribes, were very observant of not only the world around them but the stars and constellations," she said. "I associate that with science fiction in a lot of ways. I think they would be well aware of it in "Star Wars," it takes place up in the heavens."
The first opportunity to see the film in Navajo will be during the tribe's Fourth of July activities in Window Rock and later in the year during the Navajo Nation Fair. Wheeler said he then plans to take it on tour across the reservation, which stretches into New Mexico, Utah and Arizona, and metropolitan areas with large Navajo populations at no cost to viewers. The Navajo Parks and Recreation Department is funding the project but wouldn't say how much it costs.
Anyone who doesn't understand Navajo can read English subtitles on the film as another tool to learn the language, Priesz said. More people ? nearly 170,000 ? speak Navajo at home than any other American Indian language, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, but it is being lost upon younger generations.
"You could have a grandmother that speaks Navajo, and she understands it but is sitting there with her grandson who doesn't speak Navajo," Priesz said. "He could be reading it, so they both can enjoy it."
___
Online:
www.navajonationmuseum.org/
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/navajo-chosen-one-star-wars-dub-145333500.html
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By Wayne Cole
SYDNEY (Reuters) - Asian shares inched ahead while the dollar lost ground as investors counted on easy money from central banks in the euro zone and United States to offset the risk of further disappointment from global economic data.
Activity was sporadic with Japanese markets closed for a holiday and China off until Thursday. The MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan was up 0.26 percent, but off a six-week high touched on Friday.
Singapore's share market added 0.2 percent, while Australia's market added 0.5 percent thanks to ongoing strength in banking stocks. South Korean shares were a fraction softer as was the Hang Seng Index.
Spot gold firmed to $1,469.21 an ounce, consolidating last week's 4 percent bounce. U.S. crude oil was off 34 cents at $92.66 a barrel while Brent lost 44 cents to $102.72.
While recent disappointing growth data from the U.S., China and the euro zone has undermined commodity markets and pushed down bond yields, it has had limited impact on global equities.
"We think this reflects a faith by market participants in the 'monetary policy put', which associates market supportive policy reactions to disappointing economic developments," said analysts from Barclays in a client note.
"For now, it seems to us that this is justified, and partly on that basis, we continue to recommend overweight exposure to equities."
Indeed, speculation is rife that the European Central Bank (ECB) will have to cut interest rates at its policy meeting on Thursday given the dreary run of economic news from the region.
A Reuters poll of 76 economists showed a narrow majority of 43 expected a rate cut of 25 basis points, taking the ECB's main refinancing rate to a record low of 0.50 percent.
However, market rates, such as that for bank-to-bank lending, are already so low that such an easing might have no more than a symbolic impact.
"The ECB will probably cut the refi rate 25 basis points, but since eonia has been trading near zero for most of the past nine months, this move shouldn't weaken the euro unless the bank drops hints that some more dramatic policy -- like a negative deposit rate -- is back on the agenda," said Anna Hibinio, a global forex analyst at JPMorgan.
The single currency was a whisker higher at $1.3050 on Monday, but corralled by resistance at $1.3093 and support around $1.2950.
The dollar also lost altitude on the yen, dipping to a one-week low of 97.47 yen, having already ended on the defensive at 98.26 in New York on Friday after U.S. economic growth came in short of forecasts.
In contrast, sterling extended the gains made since data last week showed the country narrowly dodged a triple-dip recession, reaching a 10-week peak of $1.5525.
The U.S. Federal Reserve also meets this week and is widely expected to keep its current pace of bond buying at $85 billion a month. The policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee will announce its decision at 1815 GMT on Wednesday.
Most analysts assume the recent string of underwhelming data will strengthen the hand of the doves at the Fed and temper any talk of tapering back the bond buying programme.
Investors will also have plenty of economic news to navigate this week. A splurge of data from the U.S. includes several readings on manufacturing and the always-influential payrolls survey.
In Asia, China has surveys on manufacturing and services while Japan releases a batch of reports on retail sales, industrial output and employment on Tuesday.
Companies reporting earnings include Pfizer, Facebook and General Motors.
Of the 271 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported earnings to date, 69 percent have beaten analyst expectations - above the 63 percent average since 1994 and slightly over the 67 percent beat rate over the past four quarters.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/asia-shares-edge-markets-look-central-bank-largesse-064213858.html
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If those in charge of our society - politicians, corporate executives, and owners of press and television - can dominate our ideas, they will be secure in their power. They will not need soldiers patrolling the streets. We will control ourselves. - Howard Zinn
Someone pointed out to me that North Korea has been awfully quiet this week, all things considered. Or, at least, our crackerjack news networks haven?t seen fit to cover them.
True, we have had two major events happen in close succession - the Boston bombing and the plant explosion in Texas. Oh, and how our ?lawmakers? sprang into action when airline profits were threatened by the government budget battles.
Other than that, though, what else (other than stories about the Boston bomber) have we learned about?
We have seen endless footage of the Royal ?baby bump,? with anxious Americans being informed of the child?s role when it comes to succeeding the current Queen of England - roughly, a few thousand supermarket openings and other photo ops to go, kid.
We don?t actually know anything about the oddly-bland made for TV Royal couple, other than what press releases tell us . . . but then, modern journalism lives on press releases.
The opening of the George Bush Presidential Library, which featured fawning reporter after fawning reporter talking to the former president about his new found love for painting.
Som yes, Wagnerian Reader, one might possibly be forgiven for thinking that nothing else happened in the world this week. Except for . . .
I picked up a copy of the New York Times yesterday, just to see if there might have been one or two stories the networks might have let slip through the cracks, and here are some of the nuggets I found:
North Korea Issues Threat At Ceremony For Military - North Korean generals warned that not only were their forces ready to launch ICBM attacks against this country, but that the North is ? . . . one click away from pressing the launch button.? The claim was made that pilots, instead of loading up with fuel for a return trip, would be prepared to launch ?kamikaze-like? attacks against this country.
Venezuela Says U.S. Citizen Plotted Unrest - Timothy Hallett was arrested on accusations that he was working with right-wing groups hoping to promote violence, and possibly even a civil war.
Cuba: U.S. Bars Raul Castro?s Daughter from a Forum - Castro?s daughter was to attend a gay rights conference in Philadelphia next week, when she was to receive an award. No explanation was given for the decision to bar her from the conference.
South Africa: Lawmakers Pass Contentious Secrecy Bill - The South African government approved a highly criticized bill would increase the government?s power to restrict access to information.
Agency Halts Trials for AIDS Vaccine - A trial of a possible Vaccine against AIDS was halted because it appeared not to be working, according to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Cancer Specialists Attack High Drug Costs - More than 100 cancer specialist from around the globe met to take what has been described as the ?first step? in banding together in the hopes of persuading drug companies to bring their prices down.
Wouldn?t it be nice if ?lawmakers? who get campaign donations from drug manufacturers also felt such concern?
And if this wasn?t bad enough, it takes the excellent HBO documentary series VICE to lay open just what is happening in Europe, while on American TV news all we hear is that folks are in an uproar due to ?austerity measures.?
I still cling to the old-fashioned view that knowing things (real things, not conspiracy drenched crap) is important to our culture, and to ourselves as human beings. It sets good example for our friends, and for the young people in our lives, while being pig ignorant, on the other hand . . .
Maybe it?s too late to expect anything of local and national news, but we can expect more of ourselves, and it only takes a few minutes a week to stay informed.
******
And here is one bit of news a local anchor and weatherman twisted out of all proportion
A local anchor and weatherman were practically giving each other high fives a few days ago, because ?the drought is over.?
This headline from the New York Times:
In Midwest, Drought Gives way To Flood.
Deep, deep sigh.
*****
Quote of the Day
The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition. - Carl Sagan
rsdrake@cox.net
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