Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Nokia to stream its New York Lumia event, teases 41 million reasons to tune in

Nokia to stream its New York Lumia event, teases 41 million reasons they're probably pixels

For anyone that won't be attending Nokia's incoming New York event, you won't have to sit in silence until the news breaks, because the entire event will be streamed from Nokia's own Conversations site. There's nothing going on at the link yet, but you can at least bookmark it for now and we'll be there in person to report on all the important announcements, presumably including a photo-loving, zoom-reinventing new Windows Phone.

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Source: Nokia Conversations

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/rPUWK8faX-w/

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NSA leaker Snowden expected to fly to Cuba

WASHINGTON (AP) ? The bizarre journey of Edward Snowden is far from over. After spending a night in Moscow's airport, the former National Security Agency contractor ? and admitted leaker of state secrets ? was expected to fly to Cuba and Venezuela en route to possible asylum in Ecuador.

Snowden, also a former CIA technician, fled Hong Kong on Sunday to dodge U.S. efforts to extradite him on espionage charges. Ecuador's Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino said his government had received an asylum request, adding Monday that the decision "has to do with freedom of expression and with the security of citizens around the world." The anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks also said it would help Snowden.

Ecuador has rejected the United States' previous efforts at cooperation, and has been helping WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, avoid prosecution by allowing him to stay at its embassy in London.

Snowden gave documents to The Guardian and The Washington Post newspapers disclosing U.S. surveillance programs that collect vast amounts of phone records and online data in the name of foreign intelligence, often sweeping up information on American citizens. Officials have the ability to collect phone and Internet information broadly but need a warrant to examine specific cases where they believe terrorism is involved.

Snowden had been in hiding for several weeks in Hong Kong, a former British colony with a high degree of autonomy from mainland China. The United States formally sought Snowden's extradition from Hong Kong to face espionage charges but was rebuffed; Hong Kong officials said the U.S. request did not fully comply with their laws.

The Justice Department rejected that claim, saying its request met all of the requirements of the extradition treaty between the U.S. and Hong Kong. During conversations last week, including a phone call Wednesday between Attorney General Eric Holder and Hong Kong Secretary for Justice Rimsky Yuen, Hong Kong officials never raised any issues regarding sufficiency of the U.S. request, a Justice representative said.

The United States was in touch through diplomatic and law enforcement channels with countries that Snowden could travel through or to, reminding them that Snowden is wanted on criminal charges and reiterating Washington's position that Snowden should only be permitted to travel back to the U.S., a State Department official said. Snowden's U.S. passport has been revoked.

U.S. officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the case.

An unidentified Aeroflot airline official was cited by Russia's state ITAR-Tass news agency and Interfax as saying Snowden was on the plane that landed Sunday afternoon in Moscow. The Russian report said Snowden intended to fly to Cuba on Monday and then on to Caracas, Venezuela.

The White House was hoping to stop Snowden before he left Moscow.

Caitlin Hayden, a spokeswoman for the National Security Council, said, "Given our intensified cooperation after the Boston marathon bombings and our history of working with Russia on law enforcement matters ? including returning numerous high-level criminals back to Russia at the request of the Russian government ? we expect the Russian government to look at all options available to expel Mr. Snowden back to the U.S. to face justice for the crimes with which he is charged."

Still, the United States is likely to have problems interrupting Snowden's passage. The United States does not have an extradition treaty with Russia, but does with Cuba, Venezuela and Ecuador. Even with an extradition agreement though, any country could give Snowden a political exemption.

The likelihood that any of these countries would stop Snowden from traveling on to Ecuador seemed remote. While diplomatic tensions have thawed in recent years, Cuba and the United States are hardly allies after a half-century of distrust. Another country that could see Snowden pass through, Venezuela, could prove difficult, as well. Former President Hugo Chavez was a sworn enemy of the United States and his successor, Nicolas Maduro, earlier this year called President Barack Obama "grand chief of devils." The two countries do not exchange ambassadors.

Snowden's options aren't numerous, said Assange's lawyer, Michael Ratner.

"You have to have a country that's going to stand up to the United States," Ratner said. "You're not talking about a huge range of countries here."

It also wasn't clear Snowden was finished disclosing highly classified information.

Snowden has perhaps more than 200 sensitive documents, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said on CBS' "Face the Nation."

___

Associated Press White House Correspondent Julie Pace and Associated Press writers Matthew Lee and Frederic J. Frommer in Washington, Lynn Berry in Moscow, Kevin Chan in Hong Kong and Sylvia Hui in London contributed to this report.

___

Follow Philip Elliott on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/philip_elliott

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/nsa-leaker-snowden-expected-fly-cuba-050842508.html

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Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Nashville Symphony settles with creditors on hall debt

By Tim Ghianni

NASHVILLE, Tenn (Reuters) - Just days before a foreclosure auction of its performance hall, the Nashville Symphony has struck a deal with creditors to settle an $82.3 million debt from the construction of the seven-year-old structure.

It was not immediately clear what was behind the eleventh-hour rescue of the orchestra, whose financial troubles echo those of other classical music ensembles nationwide, as the economy has cut into ticket sales and outside funding.

Under the terms of the agreement, "all of the symphony's obligations to its commercial lenders have been resolved, and the banks' recent foreclosure notice has been withdrawn," a statement from the symphony said on Monday. The auction for the hall had been scheduled for June 28.

The debt was the balance of a $102 million bond issue for the construction of the Schermerhorn Symphony Center in 2006. The Center was severely damaged by a flood in 2010 but has since been repaired. Some of the loss was recovered through federal funds.

The Nashville Symphony has told subscribers that it has been operating at a loss and needs to take aggressive actions to improve its finances.

Nashville billionaire businesswoman and philanthropist Martha Ingram, who helped lead the campaign to build the hall, said she had played a role in averting the foreclosure but would not disclose details.

While she celebrated the resolution, she added, "It is clear now that the symphony organization has work to do to improve its operating results and develop increased annual support."

Though Nashville is known for its country music, the symphony has won several Grammy awards and sells out many performances.

"It is because we recognize the orchestra's importance to this community that we were able to come together and work so hard to make this happen," Bank of America spokeswoman Shirley Norton said in a statement from corporate headquarters in Charlotte, North Carolina. The bank is the symphony's lead creditor.

Meanwhile, there has been no resolution reported in contract talks between the orchestra and its 85 musicians. Both the musicians' union and the Nashville Symphony Association have agreed to a media blackout of negotiations.

Several symphonies have been troubled by labor disputes with musicians in the past year, including the Minnesota Orchestra; the San Francisco Symphony, whose musicians struck for more than two weeks in March; and the Chicago Symphony, whose musicians walked out for 48 hours last fall before an agreement was reached.

(Editing by Mary Wisniewski and Steve Orlofsky)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/nashville-symphony-settles-creditors-hall-debt-233857690.html

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Billion-pixel view of Mars comes from Curiosity rover

June 24, 2013 ? A billion-pixel view from the surface of Mars, from NASA's Mars rover Curiosity, offers armchair explorers a way to examine one part of the Red Planet in great detail.

The first NASA-produced view from the surface of Mars larger than one billion pixels stitches together nearly 900 exposures taken by cameras onboard Curiosity and shows details of the landscape along the rover's route.

The 1.3-billion-pixel image is available for perusal with pan and zoom tools at: http://mars.nasa.gov/bp1/ and a scaled down version (~159MB) is available for direct download here: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=PIA16919 .

The full-circle scene surrounds the site where Curiosity collected its first scoops of dusty sand at a windblown patch called "Rocknest," and extends to Mount Sharp on the horizon.

"It gives a sense of place and really shows off the cameras' capabilities," said Bob Deen of the Multi-Mission Image Processing Laboratory at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "You can see the context and also zoom in to see very fine details."

Deen assembled the product using 850 frames from the telephoto camera of Curiosity's Mast Camera instrument, supplemented with 21 frames from the Mastcam's wider-angle camera and 25 black-and-white frames -- mostly of the rover itself -- from the Navigation Camera. The images were taken on several different Mars days between Oct. 5 and Nov. 16, 2012. Raw single-frame images received from Curiosity are promptly posted on a public website at: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/raw/ . Mars fans worldwide have used those images to assemble mosaic views, including at least one gigapixel scene.

The new mosaic from NASA shows illumination effects from variations in the time of day for pieces of the mosaic. It also shows variations in the clarity of the atmosphere due to variable dustiness during the month while the images were acquired.

NASA's Mars Science Laboratory project is using Curiosity and the rover's 10 science instruments to investigate the environmental history within Gale Crater, a location where the project has found that conditions were long ago favorable for microbial life.

Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego, built and operates Curiosity's Mastcam. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington and built the Navigation Camera and the rover.

More information about the mission is online at: http://www.nasa.gov/msl and http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/ .

You can follow the mission on Facebook and Twitter at: http://www.facebook.com/marscuriosity and http://www.twitter.com/marscuriosity .

For more information about the Multi-Mission Image Processing Laboratory, see: http://www-mipl.jpl.nasa.gov/mipex.html .

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/space_time/astronomy/~3/OHTcgAapQbM/130624135250.htm

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Skywire Pictures Nik Wallenda Crosses Grand Canyon - Business ...

UPDATE: He made it! After nearly 23 minutes, Nik Wallenda is the first human to ever cross the Little Colorado River Gorge on a wire.

Daredevil Nik Wallenda has a wife, three children, and he's been training for one moment his entire life:

To tightrope walk across the Grand Canyon without any safety net or harness. Making it across means life, falling means death.

The National Park Service would never allow a stunt like this over the Grand Canyon ? so Wallenda had to settle for the "little Grand Canyon" over the gorge of the Colorado River near Cameron, Arizona, on tribal lands of the Navajo Nation.

Wallenda's grandfather died before viewers' eyes on live television trying to do a similar, harness-free walk.

"Thank you Jesus," Wallenda kept repeating with each step. "You're my king, you're my protector, you're my shield, you're my strength, you're my lord." He battled high winds and balanced with a 45 pound bar on the 2-inch wire. He reached the half-way point on the wire at the 11:30 minute mark.

The quarter-mile walk at 1,500 feet in the air took more than 20 minutes ? in winds ranging from a safe 18 mph to a more treacherous 30 mph. Wallenda knelt twice to wait out the stronger wind.

Here's his bio on Discovery's website:

Nik Wallenda is known as 'The King of the High Wire.' He is the seventh generation of the legendary Great Wallendas and began walking the wire at age 4. He and his family have performed some of the most famous stunts in the world, but no one else has ever dared to take on the Grand Canyon.

His incredible walk was aired on the Discovery Channel Sunday evening on a live feed.

This isn't the first feat on the tightrope for Wallenda. Last year, he successfully?walked across Niagara Falls, according to NPR.

Here are some shots of him crossing the Grand Canyon.

nik wallenda skywire

Discovery Channel

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/a-man-is-about-to-tight-rope-walk-across-the-grand-canyon-without-any-wires-2013-6

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Unexpected discovery of the ways cells move could boost understanding of complex diseases

June 23, 2013 ? A new discovery about how cells move inside the body may provide scientists with crucial information about disease mechanisms such as the spread of cancer or the constriction of airways caused by asthma. Led by researchers at Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC), investigators found that epithelial cells -- the type that form a barrier between the inside and the outside of the body, such as skin cells -- move in a group, propelled by forces both from within and from nearby cells -- to fill any unfilled spaces they encounter.

The study appears June 23, 2013 in an advance online edition of Nature Materials.

"We were trying to understand the basic relationship between collective cellular motions and collective cellular forces, as might occur during cancer cell invasion, for example. But in doing so we stumbled onto a phenomenon that was totally unexpected," said senior author Jeffrey Fredberg, professor of bioengineering and physiology in the HSPH Department of Environmental Health and co-senior investigator of HSPH's Molecular and Integrative Cellular Dynamics lab.

Biologists, engineers, and physicists from HSPH and IBEC worked together to shed light on collective cellular motion because it plays a key role in functions such as wound healing, organ development, and tumor growth. Using a technique called monolayer stress microscopy -- which they invented themselves -- they measured the forces affecting a single layer of moving epithelial cells. They examined the cells' velocity and direction as well as traction -- how some cells either pull or push themselves and thus force collective movement.

As they expected, the researchers found that when an obstacle was placed in the path of an advancing cell layer -- in this case, a gel that provided no traction -- the cells moved around it, tightly hugging the sides of the gel as they passed. However, the researchers also found something surprising -- that the cells, in addition to moving forward, continued to pull themselves collectively back toward the gel, as if yearning to fill the unfilled space. The researchers dubbed this movement "kenotaxis," from the Greek words "keno" (vacuum) and "taxis" (arrangement), because it seemed the cells were attempting to fill a vacuum.

This new finding could help researchers better understand cell behavior -- and evaluate potential drugs to influence that behavior -- in a variety of complex diseases, such as cancer, asthma, cardiovascular disease, developmental abnormalities, and glaucoma. The finding could also help with tissue engineering and regenerative medicine, both of which rely on cell migration.

In carcinomas, for instance -- which represent 90% of all cancers and involve epithelial cells -- the new information on cell movement could improve understanding of how cancer cells migrate through the body. Asthma research could also get a boost, because scientists think migration of damaged epithelial cells in the lungs are involved in the airway narrowing caused by the disease.

"Kenotaxis is a property of the cellular collective, not the individual cell," said Jae Hun Kim, the study's first author. "It was amazing to us that the cellular collective can organize to pull itself systematically in one direction while moving systematically in an altogether different direction."

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/z8YbWatzDnE/130623145100.htm

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