[ [ [['A JetBlue flight from New York to Las Vegas', 3]], 'http://yhoo.it/GV9zpj', '[Related: View photos of the JetBlue plane in Amarillo]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['Afghan security forces and police killed three', 3]], 'http://yhoo.it/H9BcJE', '[Related: Bales\' wife on his alleged shooting: \'He would not do that\']', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['looking for fireworks between the opposing camps', 16]], 'http://yhoo.it/GSvEsj', '[RELATED:\?It?s going to be a circus\?: Activists begin protests outside Supreme Court]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['entirely respectable way to put off the searing constitutional controversy', 8]], 'http://yhoo.it/GE6jSh', '[RELATED: Obama\?s health care law passed 2 years ago, but where are we now\?]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['Witnesses said the gunman pulled up on a black scooter', 7]], 'http://yhoo.it/GzwOIW', '[Related: New York police tighten security at Jewish sites]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['test Zimmerman for alcohol or drugs', 11]], 'http://yhoo.it/Gzn6VF', '[Related: White House says Trayvon Martin is local issue]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['Trayvon Martin decked the Neighborhood', 7]], 'http://yhoo.it/GUovUP', 'Click image to see more photos', 'http://l.yimg.com/a/p/us/news/editorial/2/61/261d2c36bccf0971c2734a4d4398aa5a.jpeg', '512', ' ', 'AP/David Goldman', ], [ [['Can you create commerce in order to regulate it', 9]], 'http://yhoo.it/GSgtu8', 'Click image to see more photos', 'http://l.yimg.com/a/p/us/news/editorial/7/78/778e2416573870cd705774e92403447d.jpeg', '630', ' ', 'AP/Charles Dharapak', ], [ [['associated with such a small earthquake', 4]], 'http://yhoo.it/GTco9z', 'Click image to see more photos', 'http://l.yimg.com/a/p/us/news/editorial/0/b4/0b493c1a47b6e3f97f8f48a2b251d7d4.jpeg', '630', ' ', 'AP Photo/Carrie Antlfinger', ], [ [['Fox News host Geraldo Rivera sparked outrage', 3]], 'http://yhoo.it/GKMVTk', 'Click image to see more photos', 'http://l.yimg.com/a/p/us/news/editorial/2/7c/27c7367bc512d233ae1790b320a5e92c.jpeg', '630', ' ', 'AP Photo/John Minchillo', ], [ [['The charges signed against Bales include', 1]], 'http://yhoo.it/wZT5zV', 'Click image to see more photos', 'http://l.yimg.com/a/p/us/news/editorial/7/a0/7a07c51b2aa0f39b1a23355046d13870.jpeg', '512', ' ', 'AP Photo/DVIDS\, Spc\. Ryan Hallock\, File', ], [ [['George Zimmerman, if I had a son', 6]], 'http://news.yahoo.com/photos/thousands-protest-fla-teen-death-1332387124-slideshow/', 'Click image to see more photos', 'http://l.yimg.com/os/152/2012/03/22/d761a49f3fcc99080a0f6a70670053cd-jpg_150905.jpg', '500', ' ', 'AP Photo/John Minchillo', ], [ [['Mohamed Merah', 10], ['prosecutor Francois Molins', 5]], 'http://news.yahoo.com/photos/four-dead-in-french-jewish-school-shooting-1332173151-slideshow', 'Click image to see more photos', 'http://l.yimg.com/cv/ip/ap/default/120321/2012_03_21t151508z_425380421_gm1e83l1sqs01_rtrmadp_3_france_shootings_raid.jpg', '630', ' ', 'REUTERS/Jean-Paul Pelissier', ], [ [['Shortly after he wrapped up his victory remarks', 2]], 'http://news.yahoo.com/photos/4-straight-romney-wins-washington-gop-caucus-1330835515-slideshow/', 'Click image to see more photos', 'http://l.yimg.com/a/p/us/news/editorial/3/e9/3e9b0082c3c3111dcc19e3527ae94cc7.jpeg', '500', ' ', 'AP Photo/Steven Senne', ], [ [['best understands the problems of average Americans', 2]], 'http://news.yahoo.com/photos/4-straight-romney-wins-washington-gop-caucus-1330835515-slideshow/', 'Click image to see more photos', 'http://l.yimg.com/a/p/us/news/editorial/3/e9/3e9b0082c3c3111dcc19e3527ae94cc7.jpeg', '500', ' ', 'AP Photo/Steven Senne', ], [ [['Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery', 7]], 'http://yhoo.it/GB2RVy', 'Click image to see more photos', 'http://l.yimg.com/os/152/2012/03/20/photo-1332257995646-4-0-jpg_171722.jpg', '630', ' ', 'AFP', ], [ [['xxxxxxxxxxxx', 11]], 'http://news.yahoo.com/photos/russian-grannies-win-bid-to-sing-at-eurovision-1331223625-slideshow/', 'Click image to see more photos', 'http://l.yimg.com/a/p/us/news/editorial/1/56/156d92f2760dcd3e75bcd649a8b85fcf.jpeg', '500', ' ', 'AP', ] ]
[ [ [['measure all but certain to fail in the face of bipartisan', 4]], '28771014', '0' ], [ [['matter what you do in this case', 5]], '28759848', '0' ], [ [['presume laws are constitutional', 7]], '28747556', '0' ], [ [['has destroyed 15 to 25 houses', 7]], '28744868', '0' ], [ [['short answer is yes', 7]], '28746030', '0' ], [ [['opportunity to tell the real story', 7]], '28731764', '0' ], [ [['entirely respectable way to put off the searing constitutional controversy', 7]], '28723797', '0' ], [ [['point of my campaign is that big ideas matter', 9]], '28712293', '0' ], [ [['As the standoff dragged into a second day', 7]], '28687424', '0' ], [ [['French police stepped up the search', 17]], '28667224', '0' ], [ [['Seeking to elevate his candidacy back to a general', 8]], '28660934', '0' ], [ [['The tragic story of Trayvon Martin', 4]], '28647343', '0' ], [ [['Karzai will get a chance soon to express', 8]], '28630306', '0' ], [ [['powerful storms stretching', 8]], '28493546', '0' ], [ [['basic norm that death is private', 6]], '28413590', '0' ], [ [['songwriter also saw a surge in sales for her debut album', 6]], '28413590', '1', 'Watch music videos from Whitney Houston ', 'on Yahoo! Music', 'http://music.yahoo.com' ], [ [['keyword', 99999999999999999999999]], 'videoID', '1', 'overwrite-pre-description', 'overwrite-link-string', 'overwrite-link-url' ] ]
[ [ [['A JetBlue flight from New York to Las Vegas', 3]], 'http://yhoo.it/GV9zpj', '[Related: View photos of the JetBlue plane in Amarillo]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['Afghan security forces and police killed three', 3]], 'http://yhoo.it/H9BcJE', '[Related: Bales\' wife on his alleged shooting: \'He would not do that\']', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['looking for fireworks between the opposing camps', 16]], 'http://yhoo.it/GSvEsj', '[RELATED:\?It?s going to be a circus\?: Activists begin protests outside Supreme Court]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['entirely respectable way to put off the searing constitutional controversy', 8]], 'http://yhoo.it/GE6jSh', '[RELATED: Obama\?s health care law passed 2 years ago, but where are we now\?]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['Witnesses said the gunman pulled up on a black scooter', 7]], 'http://yhoo.it/GzwOIW', '[Related: New York police tighten security at Jewish sites]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['test Zimmerman for alcohol or drugs', 11]], 'http://yhoo.it/Gzn6VF', '[Related: White House says Trayvon Martin is local issue]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['Trayvon Martin decked the Neighborhood', 7]], 'http://yhoo.it/GUovUP', 'Click image to see more photos', 'http://l.yimg.com/a/p/us/news/editorial/2/61/261d2c36bccf0971c2734a4d4398aa5a.jpeg', '512', ' ', 'AP/David Goldman', ], [ [['Can you create commerce in order to regulate it', 9]], 'http://yhoo.it/GSgtu8', 'Click image to see more photos', 'http://l.yimg.com/a/p/us/news/editorial/7/78/778e2416573870cd705774e92403447d.jpeg', '630', ' ', 'AP/Charles Dharapak', ], [ [['associated with such a small earthquake', 4]], 'http://yhoo.it/GTco9z', 'Click image to see more photos', 'http://l.yimg.com/a/p/us/news/editorial/0/b4/0b493c1a47b6e3f97f8f48a2b251d7d4.jpeg', '630', ' ', 'AP Photo/Carrie Antlfinger', ], [ [['Fox News host Geraldo Rivera sparked outrage', 3]], 'http://yhoo.it/GKMVTk', 'Click image to see more photos', 'http://l.yimg.com/a/p/us/news/editorial/2/7c/27c7367bc512d233ae1790b320a5e92c.jpeg', '630', ' ', 'AP Photo/John Minchillo', ], [ [['The charges signed against Bales include', 1]], 'http://yhoo.it/wZT5zV', 'Click image to see more photos', 'http://l.yimg.com/a/p/us/news/editorial/7/a0/7a07c51b2aa0f39b1a23355046d13870.jpeg', '512', ' ', 'AP Photo/DVIDS\, Spc\. Ryan Hallock\, File', ], [ [['George Zimmerman, if I had a son', 6]], 'http://news.yahoo.com/photos/thousands-protest-fla-teen-death-1332387124-slideshow/', 'Click image to see more photos', 'http://l.yimg.com/os/152/2012/03/22/d761a49f3fcc99080a0f6a70670053cd-jpg_150905.jpg', '500', ' ', 'AP Photo/John Minchillo', ], [ [['Mohamed Merah', 10], ['prosecutor Francois Molins', 5]], 'http://news.yahoo.com/photos/four-dead-in-french-jewish-school-shooting-1332173151-slideshow', 'Click image to see more photos', 'http://l.yimg.com/cv/ip/ap/default/120321/2012_03_21t151508z_425380421_gm1e83l1sqs01_rtrmadp_3_france_shootings_raid.jpg', '630', ' ', 'REUTERS/Jean-Paul Pelissier', ], [ [['Shortly after he wrapped up his victory remarks', 2]], 'http://news.yahoo.com/photos/4-straight-romney-wins-washington-gop-caucus-1330835515-slideshow/', 'Click image to see more photos', 'http://l.yimg.com/a/p/us/news/editorial/3/e9/3e9b0082c3c3111dcc19e3527ae94cc7.jpeg', '500', ' ', 'AP Photo/Steven Senne', ], [ [['best understands the problems of average Americans', 2]], 'http://news.yahoo.com/photos/4-straight-romney-wins-washington-gop-caucus-1330835515-slideshow/', 'Click image to see more photos', 'http://l.yimg.com/a/p/us/news/editorial/3/e9/3e9b0082c3c3111dcc19e3527ae94cc7.jpeg', '500', ' ', 'AP Photo/Steven Senne', ], [ [['Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery', 7]], 'http://yhoo.it/GB2RVy', 'Click image to see more photos', 'http://l.yimg.com/os/152/2012/03/20/photo-1332257995646-4-0-jpg_171722.jpg', '630', ' ', 'AFP', ], [ [['xxxxxxxxxxxx', 11]], 'http://news.yahoo.com/photos/russian-grannies-win-bid-to-sing-at-eurovision-1331223625-slideshow/', 'Click image to see more photos', 'http://l.yimg.com/a/p/us/news/editorial/1/56/156d92f2760dcd3e75bcd649a8b85fcf.jpeg', '500', ' ', 'AP', ] ]
[ [ [['measure all but certain to fail in the face of bipartisan', 4]], '28771014', '0' ], [ [['matter what you do in this case', 5]], '28759848', '0' ], [ [['presume laws are constitutional', 7]], '28747556', '0' ], [ [['has destroyed 15 to 25 houses', 7]], '28744868', '0' ], [ [['short answer is yes', 7]], '28746030', '0' ], [ [['opportunity to tell the real story', 7]], '28731764', '0' ], [ [['entirely respectable way to put off the searing constitutional controversy', 7]], '28723797', '0' ], [ [['point of my campaign is that big ideas matter', 9]], '28712293', '0' ], [ [['As the standoff dragged into a second day', 7]], '28687424', '0' ], [ [['French police stepped up the search', 17]], '28667224', '0' ], [ [['Seeking to elevate his candidacy back to a general', 8]], '28660934', '0' ], [ [['The tragic story of Trayvon Martin', 4]], '28647343', '0' ], [ [['Karzai will get a chance soon to express', 8]], '28630306', '0' ], [ [['powerful storms stretching', 8]], '28493546', '0' ], [ [['basic norm that death is private', 6]], '28413590', '0' ], [ [['songwriter also saw a surge in sales for her debut album', 6]], '28413590', '1', 'Watch music videos from Whitney Houston ', 'on Yahoo! Music', 'http://music.yahoo.com' ], [ [['keyword', 99999999999999999999999]], 'videoID', '1', 'overwrite-pre-description', 'overwrite-link-string', 'overwrite-link-url' ] ]
There are many different sorts of laws which are appropriate in America, including legal code and civil law. Criminal law specifically units out exactly just precisely what exactly produces a crime as well as who may have been made any target and also which performed the particular offense. Criminal law is normally assembled in to felony procedures that ought to be managed by a Atlanta Criminal Defense Attorney. Furthermore, you can find regulations which are substantive. Legal System Felony process regulation corresponds to exactly just precisely the way investigations regarding allegations should be carried out and it similarly models policy regarding the actual accumulating regarding proof. The principal aim with this sort of criminal law is always to make certain that the particular legal system is actually nicely purchased, effective, and also efficient withinside providing rights to all or any. The very best attorney should consequently view the nuances of criminal process regulation and provide confidence to their consumer that throughout the entire analysis she or he will probably be addressed (from the tennis surfaces) as simple till verified responsible. However ,, there's substantive legal code that the criminal attorney should know. This form of regulation relates to the actual offering associated with fees and fines to get a variety of forms of offenses. An excellent criminal attorney should consequently know the substantive elements of criminal law making sure the particular relevant laws and regulations are utilized to be able to protect their client. Whenever a particular man or woman is in an offense they should consider a Atlanta Criminal Defense Attorney to assist them to maintain their own purity. A lawyer will want to talk to their particular customer and be informed from the details of the alleged offense to ensure whichever information the client hands up to the particular criminal attorney will be stored private rather than exposed whether or not the consumer admits with their blameworthiness. In fact, the criminal attorney should are powered by the premise which anything linked to the criminal crime is actually comparable and that what the law states provides numerous gray areas that may and also must be used for the good thing about the customer. It ought to as a result become the serious endeavor of each legal professional in order to be able for you to help usually show their particular client withinside the many good gentle due to the fact this helps in being successful in any legal battles. Even though self-self-control is dealt out to the customer, a first-rate criminal attorney will assure in which these kinds of penalty may be the the very very lowest possible. The criminal defense lawyer must use judgement and also influence to ensure that their consumer will get consequence equal in proportion to the crime that has they may be incurred. She must furthermore stand by their own client until the trial is actually determined whilst making certain the result is going to be since favorable as is practical for the client. Atlanta Criminal Lawyer
Shoplr Takes Small Local Businesses Mobile ? Business Innovation Zone
This project is funded by a grant from the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA). SBA?s funding should not be construed as an endorsement of any products, opinions or services. All SBA-funded projects are extended to the public on a nondiscriminatory basis.
Clocking an accelerating universe: First results from BOSSPublic release date: 30-Mar-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Paul Preuss paul_preuss@lbl.gov 510-486-6249 DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Berkeley Lab scientists are leaders of BOSS, the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey- They and their colleagues in the third Sloan Digital Sky Survey have announced the most precise measurements ever made of the era when dark energy turned on
Some six billion light years ago, almost halfway from now back to the big bang, the universe was undergoing an elemental change. Held back until then by the mutual gravitational attraction of all the matter it contained, the universe had been expanding ever more slowly. Then, as matter spread out and its density decreased, dark energy took over and expansion began to accelerate.
Today BOSS, the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey, the largest component of the third Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-III), announced the most accurate measurement yet of the distance scale of the universe during the era when dark energy turned on.
"We've made precision measurements of the large-scale structure of the universe five to seven billion years ago the best measure yet of the size of anything outside the Milky Way," says David Schlegel of the Physics Division at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), BOSS's principal investigator. "We're pushing out to the distances when dark energy turned on, where we can start to do experiments to find out what's causing accelerating expansion."
How to measure expansion in an accelerating universe
Accelerating expansion was announced less than 14 years ago by both the Supernova Cosmology Project (SCP) based at Berkeley Lab and the competing High-z Supernova Search Team, a discovery that resulted in 2011 Nobel Prizes for the SCP's Saul Perlmutter and High-z Team members Brian Schmidt and Adam Riess. Acceleration may result from an unknown something dubbed "dark energy" or, dark energy may be just a way of saying we don't understand how gravity really works.
The first step in finding out is to establish a detailed history of expansion. Unlike supernova searches, which depend on the brightness of exploding stars, BOSS uses a technique called baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) to determine the distances to faraway galaxies.
Baryon acoustic oscillation measures the angle across the sky of structures of known size, the peaks where galaxies cluster most densely in the network of filaments and voids that fill the universe. Since these density peaks recur regularly, the angle between appropriate pairs of galaxies as precisely measured from Earth reveals their distance the narrower the apparent angle, the farther away they are.
Knowing the distance to an object tells its age as well, since its light travels from there to here at known speed. And the redshift of the light reveals how the universe has expanded since that time, as expansion stretches space itself; the wavelength of light traveling through space toward Earth stretches proportionally, becoming redder and revealing the expansion of the universe since the light left its source.
"BOSS's first major cosmological results establish the accurate three-dimensional positions of 327,349 massive galaxies across 3,275 square degrees of the sky, reaching as far back as redshift 0.7 the largest sample of the universe ever surveyed at this high density," says Martin White of Berkeley Lab's Physics Division, a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of California at Berkeley and chair of the BOSS science survey teams. "BOSS's average redshift is 0.57, equivalent to some six billion light-years away. BOSS gives that distance to within 1.7 percent 2,094 megaparsecs plus or minus 34 megaparsecs the most precise distance constraint ever obtained from a galaxy survey."
The origin of BAO, the regular clustering of ordinary matter (called "baryons" by astronomical convention), was the pressure of sound waves ("acoustic") moving through the universe when it was still so hot that light and matter were mixed together in a kind of soup, in which the sound waves created areas of regularly varying density ("oscillation"). By 380,000 years after the big bang, expansion had cooled the soup enough for ordinary matter to condense into hydrogen atoms (invisible dark matter was also part of the soup) and for light to go its separate way.
At that moment variations in density were preserved as variations in the temperature of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), a phenomenon first measured by Berkeley Lab astrophysicist George Smoot, for which he shared the 2006 Nobel Prize. The warmer regions of the CMB signal areas where the density of matter was greater; these regions seeded the galaxies and clusters of galaxies that form the large-scale structure of the universe today. Thus the cosmic microwave background establishes the basic scale of baryon acoustic oscillation used to measure the expansion history of the universe.
BOSS's data on galaxy clustering and redshifts can be applied not only to BAO but also to a separate technique called "redshift space distortions" a direct test of gravity that measures how fast neighboring galaxies are moving together to form galaxy clusters.
What if dark energy isn't an unknown force or substance, but instead a shortcoming of Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, our best-yet theory of gravity? General Relativity predicts how fast galaxies should be moving toward one another in galaxy clusters, and, in the aggregate, how fast the structure of the universe should be growing. Any departure from its predictions would mean the theory is flawed.
"We depend on redshift to know expansion rates and how structure was growing at different times in the past," says Beth Reid, a Hubble Fellow at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory who directed the BOSS study of redshift space distortions. "But redshifts aren't uniform. Galaxies are carried along in the Hubble flow as the universe expands, but they also have their own velocities. They tend to fall toward denser regions, for example. Because the ones on the far side of a dense region are coming toward us, their redshift makes them look closer than they really are; the opposite is true for the galaxies on the near side, which are falling away from us they look farther away."
Statistical analysis of the redshifts of the hundreds of thousands of galaxies in the BOSS dataset can take into account the peculiarities of local variation and still produce a dependable measure of distance, the Hubble expansion rate, and the growth rate of structure in the universe. With these techniques, Reid and her colleagues have measured gravity on a scale of 100 million light years, far larger than the most accurate gravity measure yet, which is based on the distance from Earth to the moon.
The right tools to do the job
BOSS obtained these best-yet measures with the wide-field Sloan Telescope at the Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico, designed especially for galaxy surveys but mounting a spectrograph far more sophisticated than was available to earlier SDSS surveys.
"The 2.5-meter Sloan Telescope remains the world's premier facility for wide-field spectroscopy because it uses fiber-fed spectrographs, which offer a huge numerical advantage," says Natalie Roe, director of Berkeley Lab's Physics Division and instrument scientist for BOSS, who directed construction of the new spectrographs.
For each 15-minute exposure, covering three degrees of the sky, a thousand optical fibers are inserted by hand into aluminum "plug plates" and positioned at the telescope's focal plane; each fiber is targeted on a specific distant bright galaxy, selected from earlier SDSS imaging. The BOSS instrument uses 50 percent more fibers than earlier SDSS runs, each with finer diameter; for more coverage and finer resolution the new spectrograph incorporates two red cameras using the thick, red-sensitive astronomical CCDs invented and fabricated at Berkeley Lab, as well as two new blue cameras.
"All the data collected by BOSS flows through a data-processing pipeline at Berkeley Lab," says Stephen Bailey of the Physics Division, who describes himself as the "baby sitter of the pipeline." Working with Schlegel at Berkeley Lab and Adam Bolton at the University of Utah, Bailey "turns the data into something we can use catalogues of the hundreds of thousands galaxies, eventually well over a million, each identified by their two-dimensional positions in the sky and their redshifts." The data are processed and stored on the Riemann computer cluster, operated by Berkeley Lab's High-Performance Computing Services group.
The current crop of BOSS papers is based on less than a quarter of the data BOSS will continue to collect until the survey ends in 2014. So far, all lines of inquiry point toward the so-called "concordance model" of the universe: a "flat" (Euclidean) universe that bloomed from the big bang 13.7 billion years ago, a quarter of which is cold dark matter plus a few percent visible, ordinary, baryonic matter (the stuff we're made of). All the rest is thought to be dark energy in the form of Einstein's cosmological constant: a small but irreducible energy of puzzling origin that's continually stretching space itself.
But it's way too soon to think that's the end of the story, says Schlegel. "Based on the limited observations of dark energy we've made so far, the cosmological constant may be the simplest explanation, but in truth, the cosmological constant has not been tested at all. It's consistent with the data, but we really have only a little bit of data. We're just beginning to explore the times when dark energy turned on. If there are surprises lurking there, we expect to find them."
###
"The clustering of galaxies in the SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: Baryon acoustic oscillations in the Data Release 9 spectroscopic galaxy sample," by Anderson et al, has been submitted to the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
"The clustering of galaxies in the SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: Measurements of the growth of structure and expansion rate at z=0.57 from anisotropic clustering," by Reid et al, has been submitted to the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
Berkeley Lab researchers who are members of BOSS and contributed to these papers include Stephen Bailey, Shirley Ho, Beth Reid, Natalie Roe, Nicholas Ross, David Schlegel, Hee-Jong Seo, and Martin White.
Funding for SDSS-III has been provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Participating Institutions, the National Science Foundation, and the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science. The SDSS-III web site is http://www.sdss3.org.
SDSS-III is managed by the Astrophysical Research Consortium for the Participating Institutions of the SDSS-III Collaboration including the University of Arizona, the Brazilian Participation Group, Brookhaven National Laboratory, University of Cambridge, Carnegie Mellon University, University of Florida, the French Participation Group, the German Participation Group, Harvard University, the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias, the Michigan State/Notre Dame/JINA Participation Group, Johns Hopkins University, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, New Mexico State University, New York University, Ohio State University, Pennsylvania State University, University of Portsmouth, Princeton University, the Spanish Participation Group, University of Tokyo, University of Utah, Vanderbilt University, University of Virginia, University of Washington, and Yale University.
DOE's Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit the Office of Science website at science.energy.gov/.
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory addresses the world's most urgent scientific challenges by advancing sustainable energy, protecting human health, creating new materials, and revealing the origin and fate of the universe. Founded in 1931, Berkeley Lab's scientific expertise has been recognized with 13 Nobel prizes. The University of California manages Berkeley Lab for the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science. For more, visit www.lbl.gov.
Scientific contacts:
David Schlegel, 510-495-2595, djschlegel@lbl.gov
Martin White, 510-486-6130, mjwhite@lbl.gov
Beth Reid, 510-486-5604, bareid@lbl.gov
Natalie Roe, 510-486-6380, naroe@lbl.gov
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Clocking an accelerating universe: First results from BOSSPublic release date: 30-Mar-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Paul Preuss paul_preuss@lbl.gov 510-486-6249 DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Berkeley Lab scientists are leaders of BOSS, the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey- They and their colleagues in the third Sloan Digital Sky Survey have announced the most precise measurements ever made of the era when dark energy turned on
Some six billion light years ago, almost halfway from now back to the big bang, the universe was undergoing an elemental change. Held back until then by the mutual gravitational attraction of all the matter it contained, the universe had been expanding ever more slowly. Then, as matter spread out and its density decreased, dark energy took over and expansion began to accelerate.
Today BOSS, the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey, the largest component of the third Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-III), announced the most accurate measurement yet of the distance scale of the universe during the era when dark energy turned on.
"We've made precision measurements of the large-scale structure of the universe five to seven billion years ago the best measure yet of the size of anything outside the Milky Way," says David Schlegel of the Physics Division at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), BOSS's principal investigator. "We're pushing out to the distances when dark energy turned on, where we can start to do experiments to find out what's causing accelerating expansion."
How to measure expansion in an accelerating universe
Accelerating expansion was announced less than 14 years ago by both the Supernova Cosmology Project (SCP) based at Berkeley Lab and the competing High-z Supernova Search Team, a discovery that resulted in 2011 Nobel Prizes for the SCP's Saul Perlmutter and High-z Team members Brian Schmidt and Adam Riess. Acceleration may result from an unknown something dubbed "dark energy" or, dark energy may be just a way of saying we don't understand how gravity really works.
The first step in finding out is to establish a detailed history of expansion. Unlike supernova searches, which depend on the brightness of exploding stars, BOSS uses a technique called baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) to determine the distances to faraway galaxies.
Baryon acoustic oscillation measures the angle across the sky of structures of known size, the peaks where galaxies cluster most densely in the network of filaments and voids that fill the universe. Since these density peaks recur regularly, the angle between appropriate pairs of galaxies as precisely measured from Earth reveals their distance the narrower the apparent angle, the farther away they are.
Knowing the distance to an object tells its age as well, since its light travels from there to here at known speed. And the redshift of the light reveals how the universe has expanded since that time, as expansion stretches space itself; the wavelength of light traveling through space toward Earth stretches proportionally, becoming redder and revealing the expansion of the universe since the light left its source.
"BOSS's first major cosmological results establish the accurate three-dimensional positions of 327,349 massive galaxies across 3,275 square degrees of the sky, reaching as far back as redshift 0.7 the largest sample of the universe ever surveyed at this high density," says Martin White of Berkeley Lab's Physics Division, a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of California at Berkeley and chair of the BOSS science survey teams. "BOSS's average redshift is 0.57, equivalent to some six billion light-years away. BOSS gives that distance to within 1.7 percent 2,094 megaparsecs plus or minus 34 megaparsecs the most precise distance constraint ever obtained from a galaxy survey."
The origin of BAO, the regular clustering of ordinary matter (called "baryons" by astronomical convention), was the pressure of sound waves ("acoustic") moving through the universe when it was still so hot that light and matter were mixed together in a kind of soup, in which the sound waves created areas of regularly varying density ("oscillation"). By 380,000 years after the big bang, expansion had cooled the soup enough for ordinary matter to condense into hydrogen atoms (invisible dark matter was also part of the soup) and for light to go its separate way.
At that moment variations in density were preserved as variations in the temperature of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), a phenomenon first measured by Berkeley Lab astrophysicist George Smoot, for which he shared the 2006 Nobel Prize. The warmer regions of the CMB signal areas where the density of matter was greater; these regions seeded the galaxies and clusters of galaxies that form the large-scale structure of the universe today. Thus the cosmic microwave background establishes the basic scale of baryon acoustic oscillation used to measure the expansion history of the universe.
BOSS's data on galaxy clustering and redshifts can be applied not only to BAO but also to a separate technique called "redshift space distortions" a direct test of gravity that measures how fast neighboring galaxies are moving together to form galaxy clusters.
What if dark energy isn't an unknown force or substance, but instead a shortcoming of Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, our best-yet theory of gravity? General Relativity predicts how fast galaxies should be moving toward one another in galaxy clusters, and, in the aggregate, how fast the structure of the universe should be growing. Any departure from its predictions would mean the theory is flawed.
"We depend on redshift to know expansion rates and how structure was growing at different times in the past," says Beth Reid, a Hubble Fellow at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory who directed the BOSS study of redshift space distortions. "But redshifts aren't uniform. Galaxies are carried along in the Hubble flow as the universe expands, but they also have their own velocities. They tend to fall toward denser regions, for example. Because the ones on the far side of a dense region are coming toward us, their redshift makes them look closer than they really are; the opposite is true for the galaxies on the near side, which are falling away from us they look farther away."
Statistical analysis of the redshifts of the hundreds of thousands of galaxies in the BOSS dataset can take into account the peculiarities of local variation and still produce a dependable measure of distance, the Hubble expansion rate, and the growth rate of structure in the universe. With these techniques, Reid and her colleagues have measured gravity on a scale of 100 million light years, far larger than the most accurate gravity measure yet, which is based on the distance from Earth to the moon.
The right tools to do the job
BOSS obtained these best-yet measures with the wide-field Sloan Telescope at the Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico, designed especially for galaxy surveys but mounting a spectrograph far more sophisticated than was available to earlier SDSS surveys.
"The 2.5-meter Sloan Telescope remains the world's premier facility for wide-field spectroscopy because it uses fiber-fed spectrographs, which offer a huge numerical advantage," says Natalie Roe, director of Berkeley Lab's Physics Division and instrument scientist for BOSS, who directed construction of the new spectrographs.
For each 15-minute exposure, covering three degrees of the sky, a thousand optical fibers are inserted by hand into aluminum "plug plates" and positioned at the telescope's focal plane; each fiber is targeted on a specific distant bright galaxy, selected from earlier SDSS imaging. The BOSS instrument uses 50 percent more fibers than earlier SDSS runs, each with finer diameter; for more coverage and finer resolution the new spectrograph incorporates two red cameras using the thick, red-sensitive astronomical CCDs invented and fabricated at Berkeley Lab, as well as two new blue cameras.
"All the data collected by BOSS flows through a data-processing pipeline at Berkeley Lab," says Stephen Bailey of the Physics Division, who describes himself as the "baby sitter of the pipeline." Working with Schlegel at Berkeley Lab and Adam Bolton at the University of Utah, Bailey "turns the data into something we can use catalogues of the hundreds of thousands galaxies, eventually well over a million, each identified by their two-dimensional positions in the sky and their redshifts." The data are processed and stored on the Riemann computer cluster, operated by Berkeley Lab's High-Performance Computing Services group.
The current crop of BOSS papers is based on less than a quarter of the data BOSS will continue to collect until the survey ends in 2014. So far, all lines of inquiry point toward the so-called "concordance model" of the universe: a "flat" (Euclidean) universe that bloomed from the big bang 13.7 billion years ago, a quarter of which is cold dark matter plus a few percent visible, ordinary, baryonic matter (the stuff we're made of). All the rest is thought to be dark energy in the form of Einstein's cosmological constant: a small but irreducible energy of puzzling origin that's continually stretching space itself.
But it's way too soon to think that's the end of the story, says Schlegel. "Based on the limited observations of dark energy we've made so far, the cosmological constant may be the simplest explanation, but in truth, the cosmological constant has not been tested at all. It's consistent with the data, but we really have only a little bit of data. We're just beginning to explore the times when dark energy turned on. If there are surprises lurking there, we expect to find them."
###
"The clustering of galaxies in the SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: Baryon acoustic oscillations in the Data Release 9 spectroscopic galaxy sample," by Anderson et al, has been submitted to the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
"The clustering of galaxies in the SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: Measurements of the growth of structure and expansion rate at z=0.57 from anisotropic clustering," by Reid et al, has been submitted to the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
Berkeley Lab researchers who are members of BOSS and contributed to these papers include Stephen Bailey, Shirley Ho, Beth Reid, Natalie Roe, Nicholas Ross, David Schlegel, Hee-Jong Seo, and Martin White.
Funding for SDSS-III has been provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Participating Institutions, the National Science Foundation, and the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science. The SDSS-III web site is http://www.sdss3.org.
SDSS-III is managed by the Astrophysical Research Consortium for the Participating Institutions of the SDSS-III Collaboration including the University of Arizona, the Brazilian Participation Group, Brookhaven National Laboratory, University of Cambridge, Carnegie Mellon University, University of Florida, the French Participation Group, the German Participation Group, Harvard University, the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias, the Michigan State/Notre Dame/JINA Participation Group, Johns Hopkins University, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, New Mexico State University, New York University, Ohio State University, Pennsylvania State University, University of Portsmouth, Princeton University, the Spanish Participation Group, University of Tokyo, University of Utah, Vanderbilt University, University of Virginia, University of Washington, and Yale University.
DOE's Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit the Office of Science website at science.energy.gov/.
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory addresses the world's most urgent scientific challenges by advancing sustainable energy, protecting human health, creating new materials, and revealing the origin and fate of the universe. Founded in 1931, Berkeley Lab's scientific expertise has been recognized with 13 Nobel prizes. The University of California manages Berkeley Lab for the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science. For more, visit www.lbl.gov.
Scientific contacts:
David Schlegel, 510-495-2595, djschlegel@lbl.gov
Martin White, 510-486-6130, mjwhite@lbl.gov
Beth Reid, 510-486-5604, bareid@lbl.gov
Natalie Roe, 510-486-6380, naroe@lbl.gov
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
?With the above mentioned research results would cancer patients please take a pause and think seriously enough before they ?follow? what their oncologists may want these to do. The danger of colorectal cancer is that the signs and signs and symptoms of colorectal cancer only appear in the later stages. Most those with colon cancer don?t experience any symptom with the early stages in the illness. However, when the signs and signs and symptoms of colorectal cancer do appear, it is different from person to person. More information on hoesten.
The cytotoxic activities of 5-FU is enhanced when along with agents like leucovorin, interferon, methotrexate, cisplatin, etc. Charles Moetel from the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, USA, found out that survival of Duke?s C colon cancer patients could be prolonged when treated with a combination of 5-FU and levamisole. Levamisole is a drug employed in sheep, swine and cattle to regulate stomach and intestinal worms. In 1998, it had been found that a combination of 5-FU and leucovorin increased the five-year survival of patients with Duke?s B and C colon cancer. More information on galajurken.
This is as it has never been a raffle for patients to opt for an additional route to their healing. Or could we turn it one other way round Could or not it?s a gamble if someone were to make established, popular, established route. The treatment depends on the staging of the cancer. When colorectal cancer is . More information on keelontsteking.
Vol 22 3408-3419) wrote?Direct evidence from randomized controlled trials won?t support the routine associated with adjuvant chemotherapy for patients with stage II colon cancer. Therefore the routine associated with adjuvant chemotherapy for medically fit patients with stage II colon cancer shouldn?t be recommended. (in Adjuvant therapy for stage II colon cancer A systematic review in Cancer Care Ontario Program in Evidence-based Gastrointestinal Cancer Disease Site Group. Vol 16 3395-3407) wrote?The advantages of adjuvant chemotherapy are small not really necessarily regarding improved overall survival.
Anemia might be given by the tumors situated in the right side from the colon because they will bleed for the long time frame without being detected. The decrease of weight is produced in a short time frame and despite the fact that for many people it is likely to be considered a blessing, this isn?t a great thing, because it implies that the tumor blocks the bowel somewhere from the intestines. These symptoms might be found additional diseases too but if you see them do contact a physician for an inspection up especially if you?re over 50 and family members history contains cases of colorectal cancer. Aetiology of colon cancer is multi-factorial and complicated but diet is likely one of the important factors to cause and stop cancers, like high animal fat consumption is associated with a rise in rate of colon cancer and frequent consumption of vegetables and fruits, as a result of presence of bioactive food components, decreases the risk of human cancers.
Kidneys and Bladder ? Flushes the kidneysbladder by removing excess urates buildup. Teens partying late at night and imbibing drugs and alcohol for added fun, often dominated the big screen. Although Hollywood does its part to indicate a different side of alcohol and drug abuse with movies like ?Trainspotting? and ?Girl Interrupted?, the character still became glamorous and ideal in nature and often overshadows the bad side of addiction. Fact Or Fiction ? The Truth About Colorectal Cancer Colorectal Cancer is really a disease merely spells more profits affects older men.
There?s a lot of talk in the news media about Attachment Parenting lately, especially with celebrity-turned-PhD Mayim Bialik?s new book, Beyond the Sling, in which she describes her brand of parenting, which does include Attachment Parenting (AP). And there are a lot of questions being asked. As a local Resource Leader for Attachment Parenting International, I?ve been fielding both concern and applause for the various conversations swirling around Mayim and AP. I wanted to give a little clarification.
First of all, what is Attachment Parenting exactly? Technically, it?s a research-backed approach to parenting that promotes securely attached kids. What?s that mean? ?Attachment? is a term to describe the emotional bond between two people. A person with a secure attachment style is able to establish and maintain a healthy emotional bond with other people. A kid who is securely attached to his parent means that the kid and parent share a healthy emotional bond ? with all the give and take of any emotionally healthy relationship. People with secure attachment styles are less affected by stress and generally happier in relationships than those with insecure attachment styles.
Research shows that parents who raise children with secure attachment in mind do two things: They provide consistent and loving care, and they respond with sensitivity. This can look different for different people. For parents who are living the natural lifestsyle, this often takes the form of natural birth, breastfeeding and baby-led weaning, babywearing, cosleeping, stay-at-home parenting and gentle discipline. Of course, there are plenty of parents who do these parenting techniques who are not necessarily living a natural lifestyle, but there are also plenty of parents who bottle-feed and crib-sleep and work outside the home who are still raising their children with attachment-promoting strategies.
There are other parenting practices that are often considered part of AP, such as elimination communication, cloth diapering, not vaccinating, and homebirthing. This are wonderful options available to parents, but in terms of attachment research, they are not part and parcel with AP ? with the consistent and loving care and the responding with sensitivity that is documented by research to contribute directly to developing those emotionally healthy bonds that we?re striving to do. That?s not to say that parents who choose cloth diapering are not doing something really great for their kids; it?s saying that parents who choose to use disposable diapers can still be doing AP.
And this is awesome news ? that anyone can be AP ? because the more people raised to be able to have be able to have an emotionally healthy relationship, the better our world will be.
Related Articles:
Attachment Parenting is for the Imperfect Parents, Too
An animation by NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio tracks global ocean currents.
By Alan Boyle
Do science and art mix? They certainly do in a couple of computer-generated visualizations that show how Earth's oceans flow and how our universe grew up.
The "Perpetual Ocean" animation was created by NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio, and tracks ocean surface currents around the world from June 2005 through December 2007. It was created using a high-resolution computer model that translates whatever satellite and ground-based readings are available into a global, full-ocean depiction of ocean and sea-ice circulation. The model is called ECCO2, which stands for Estimating the Circulation and Climate of the Ocean, Phase II. ECCO2 is used for quantifying the role of the oceans in the global carbon cycle and for other scientific applications as well. Plus, it's just a darn cool video.
The funny thing is that the video was done almost a year ago. "This visualization was created as a last-minute entry for the SIGGRAPH 2011 computer animation festival; however, it was not accepted," the studio said in its database description. Despite that initial dose of rejection, "Perpetual Ocean" has gone on to become viral in the past week, probably because it has just been uploaded to NASA Goddard's popular Flickr site.
This year's deadline for SIGGRAPH 2012 submissions is April 9?? and I'm betting that, this time, NASA isn't waiting until the last minute.
Stanford University, meanwhile, has just put out a video that highlights visualizations created at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory's Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology, or KIPAC.
Dramatic 3-D videos, created from actual data at SLAC's Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology, show the origins of the universe.
Researchers at the Visualization Lab use supercomputers to produce computer simulations showing the birth of the first stars, the spread of the cosmic web, the blast of a supernova and other astrophysical wonders.
"Creating these animations is a real joy these days, because computers and software are so much more powerful today," Stanford physics professor Tom Abel, the head of KIPAC's computational physics department, said in a Stanford news release. "Not long ago, it took us weeks to produce a single animation. Now we can do one in an afternoon."
Take a look at KIPAC's image and photo gallery, and whenever you can, go full-screen with the video.
More science you can watch:
Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.
Laredo, TX?Women?s Preventive and Early Detection Care and Family Planning is critical to support wellness, prenatal and post natal care as well good birth and well child outcomes. With over 600 adolescent (under 18) women pregnant each year, rise in sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), a disparity in cervical cancer and increase in prematurity we need to assure that women have every opportunity to access care and family planning. There new services have been initiated to address women?s and well child newborn care.
?Women?s Preventive Care and Family Planning Clinic
Annual exams to assure healthy outcomes for women and future mothers are the cornerstone of this effort. In addition, Family Planning is important to assure that every woman safeguards her health and chooses when to get pregnant.? While some people choose to just let nature take its course with regard to pregnancy, some couples choose to use family planning methods to have children when they are able to or when their marriage meets certain milestones.
?Whether couples are thinking about getting pregnant for the first time or you already have children, the City of Laredo Health Department (CLHD) can help you learn about family planning so that women (couples) can make an informed decision for their reproductive choice. Knowing whether you do or do not want to have children in the next few years can help you and your partner choose appropriate contraception (birth control pills, contraceptive injections, implants or an intrauterine device). Family planning can also help you determine when you might begin preconception planning, which is sometimes recommended up to a year in advance of getting pregnant. Partners/men also play an important role and we will also be offering family planning methods to males either directly or through referral (exams, condoms, health education, and vasectomy).?
?The CLHD?s Family Planning Program provides confidential, low-cost, preventative health care to both females and males to help with their reproductive health needs to promote positive birth outcomes and healthy families.
Types of Family Planning Services Available:
????????? Health check-up & physical exam, follow-up medical care and referrals;
????????? Birth control education and methods (pills, IUC, condoms, injectables etc.);
????????? Natural family planning;
????????? Lab tests for cervical cancer (pap smears), sexually transmitted diseases (STD), HIV, diabetes, and anemia, pregnancy testing etc.;
????????? Treatment for STDs & urinary infections;
????????? Abstinence education and methods;
????????? Pre-Conception Counseling (Planning for having a healthy pregnancy);
????????? Nutritional counseling; and
????????? Infertility Counseling (Help when having difficulty getting pregnant).
Family Planning services are provided to men and women of all ages. For more information about the family planning services you can visit the CLHD Family Planning clinic every Tuesday and Thursday from 5:00 ? 7:00 pm or call for an appointment. For further information on Family Planning call Dr. Zaida Gonzalez, Health Educator Supervisor, at (956) 795-4918.
?Nurse Family Partnership (NFP)
The Nurse Family Partnership Program of the CLHD will provide home visitation case management to first time mothers, especially adolescent and high risk mothers.? Vulnerable young mothers (adolescent and young adults) have potentially significant higher risks of adverse pregnancy outcomes as well their children are at risk for low birth weight, malnourishment, poor school performance and other social developmental issues. NFP, a structured, nurse home-visiting program, can intervene early and prevent many of these problems. In this way, we can improve health and social outcomes for women and in particular young women.? NFP is a proven evidence based wellness program for low-income, first-time mothers and their children. NFP has proven to work with results showing significantly improved prenatal health, fewer subsequent pregnancies, increased maternal employment, decreased childhood injuries, neglect and abuse, and improvement in the child?s school readiness. Specifically, NFP nurses will encourage and support their NFP moms to keep pre-natal care and wellness appointments and to maintain a healthy lifestyle. NFP will also assist first time mothers with understanding childbirth, newborn care, well child, and nutrition and child development during the first two (2) years of life.
?We need your help to make this vital initiative a success in our community.? The CLHD is counting on agency, provider and the public?s support and assistance to identify and refer women to NFP.? To qualify women must be: 1) less than 28 weeks pregnant, 2) first-time mothers 3) local resident and 4) have a local physician. Although the program targets young mothers, there is no age or medical restriction.? We can also provide providers with an NFP Referral Kit to help them educate your patients about NFP, in an effort to help them achieve the best possible health outcomes for themselves and their families.? Please take full advantage of this kit and refer eligible pregnant women to the CLHD Nurse-Family Partnership.? If you have any questions, please contact Patricia Enriquez, RN, Nurse Supervisor at (956) 523-7845.?
Healthy Texas Babies/Tejanitos Saludables
Twelve (12) counties in the State of Texas, including Webb, received funding through the CLHD for the Healthy Texas Babies efforts. The project will promote women?s preventive care and newborn and well child health care. It will target teenagers, first time moms, adolescent moms and dads. The health educational classes will touch on women?s health, newborn and well baby health as well male responsibility (role to support breast feeding, child care).?
?Specifically, we will provide health education on nutrition, prenatal care, exercises for pregnant women, things to avoid while pregnant, breast feeding, fatherhood responsibility, family planning, early detection and wellness, child growth and development and teen pregnancy. Our target is to reach the entire community but specifically 100 female and 50 male adolescent and young adults. Some of the activities are:?
????????? Male responsibility training and education on child birth, child development and well child as well support for women during pregnancy to prevent prematurity.
????????? Will conduct Five (5) conferences to increase awareness on well baby, women?s health and male responsibility.
????????? Develop poster board for the Laredo HTB program ?Gateway to Women?s Health, Well Child and Fatherhood.
????????? ?Texas 4 babies? will be initiated in Laredo which will send text messages to all participating mothers and fathers with important health messages regarding prenatal care, baby care, health and other relevant subjects.
????????? Bumper stickers are being created in English and Spanish to highlight the ?Tejanitos Saludables? theme.
????????? Develop a small film using prominent fathers and doctors playing with their kids and discussing the importance of parental involvement.
????????? Social media outlets such as Facebook and YouTube are also being used.
?For more information on Tejanitos Saludables, call Dr. Lucia Arrellanos, Health Educator at (956) 712-6015 or Dr. Zaida Gonzalez, Health Educator Supervisor at (956) 795-4918
Burnsville, Minnesota ? March 28, 2012 ? The BBB of Minnesota and North Dakota will host the first-ever Business Ethics Summit, April 17 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the University of St. Thomas Opus College of Business, where business leaders, ethics officers, academics and members of the future workforce will take part in a day-long summit about business ethics.
Participants will experience an ethics panel discussion, moderated by KSTP?s Tom Hauser, featuring business leaders from various industries and business size. After lunch, which offers an opportunity to meet face-to-face with area ethics leaders, two mini-seminars ? Building a Culture of Ethics in Business and Ethics of Social Media ? will be held, covering just two of the many hot topics in business ethics today.
Advocating ethical business practices is the backbone of the Better Business Bureau?s mission. ?Here in our Centennial year, we are very excited to start this dialogue along with our partner, the University of St. Thomas, and the distinguished panel of professionals we?ve assembled,? said Dana Badgerow, Pres ident and CEO of the BBB. ?By fostering this discussion, we hope to return the focus to the very roots of our organization, which was founded in Minneapolis 100 years ago, and underscore once again the importance of a marketplace where buyers and sellers can trust each other.?
Panelists and presenters include: Paul Blom, Right At Home; Tim Brunelle, Hello Viking; Chris Collin, General Mills; Gina Debogovich, Best Buy; Bryan Del Monte, Del Monte Agency; Kathleen Edmond, Best Buy; Dr. Ron James, Center for Ethical Business Cultures; Amy Lilly, CenterPoint Energy; Dr. Christopher Michaelson, University of St. Thomas Opus College of Business; Dr. Michael Porter, University of St. Thomas Opus College of Business; Jeff Taxdahl, ThreadLogic; and Kathy Tunheim, Tunheim. To start the conversation about ethics today and encourage participation during the event, the BBB has launched a Twitter hashtag, #BBBSummit.? The Business Ethics Summit will also host a ?Tweet Wall? during the event, providing updates on the event and subsequent discussions.
?It is an honor and a great opportunity to collaborate with the BBB on this event," said Dean Maines, president of the Veritas Institute, an Opus College of Business center that promotes the integration of ethical values within organization's operating policies and processes. "Through the years, the BBB and the college have both promoted ethical business conduct. The Summit allows us to join together on this shared concern, offering leaders insights from both business practice and leading-edge management scholarship."??????
Registration is required and open to the public. Register online at BBBSummit.org.
Location: Schulze Hall, Opus College of Business University of St. Thomas 1000 LaSalle Avenue Minneapolis, MN 55403
Date and Time: April 17, 2012 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Cost: $29 / Person $25 / BBB Accredited Businesses Free / College Students
About the Better Business Bureau The mission of the Better Business Bureau is to be the leader in building marketplace trust by promoting, through self-regulation, the highest standards of business ethics and conduct, and to instill confidence in responsible businesses through programs of education and action that inform, assist and protect the general public. Our hours of operation are 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. Contact the BBB at bbb.org or 651-699-1111, toll-free at 1-800-646-6222. Visit the BBB?s Centennial website at bbbis100.org. < /p>
Music at Mars Hill?is a weekly column by Luke Larsen that seeks to find God amidst the newest trends in both mainstream music and independent music.
There is a lot of talk these days about how digital media and social networking is changing the music industry. Streaming services like Spotify are taking the center stage in terms of mass music distribution, and the result is that music is being made and listened to differently. However, defining who the tastemakers are in our emerging? online culture is difficult.?At one point, the tastemakers in our culture were the entertainment distribution giants ? the executives working for distribution companies and record labels. Art and entertainment was filtered through these corporations and handed down to us, and the public had very little say in the matter.
But who are the tastemakers of today?s Internet culture? The answer isn?t straightforward.
Some will argue that online publications like Pitchfork and Spin have taken the spot as the tastemakers in the music industry. A huge amount of value is put into how well music critics receive albums ? so much so that artists? entire careers can be built or shattered on a single article and a single numerical rating. I?ve seen it happen time and time again, so I can see why people think this.
Others will argue their own friends are the tastemakers in today?s culture. Through easy music sharing such as Spotify, Rdio, and This Is My New Jam, it?s easier than ever to check out what your friends are listening to. This is especially true for people who don?t have the time or energy to scour blogs and music publications for the newest music. As more and more of our lives and personal interactions move online, this idea seems simple enough.
However, I?m not quite convinced that either of these really take the cake as the definitive tastemakers in music culture today. As a simple case study, let?s take a look at the song ?Somebody That I Used to Know? by the Australian indie pop band Gotye. The song started out as a hit in Australia last year with indie music publications picking it up as well. It also bounced around quite a bit in the blogosphere and found some attention there. But now, the song is #5 on Billboard Hot 100 charts here in America ? what happened? Did the record labels push it hard into mainstream radio stations? Did Pitchfork give it a 9.5?
The answer is, in fact, no. To the contrary, Gotye?s album Making Mirrors surprisingly didn?t get very much attention at all in terms of music critics and publications covering it. Somehow it defied all logic and gained popularity without these props. My theory is that something much more grassroots took place in the life of this song. Chances are you?ve seen the following video, as people watched it over 80 million times and spread it across Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube like wildfire earlier this year:
This cover by Walk Off the Earth features five musicians playing one guitar and singing the different parts of the song together ? a unique take on the already fantastic song. But this video hit the Web faster and quicker than even the original song it was covering. In fact, I know a number of people who heard the cover much earlier than they heard the original. All this really begs a question that might not currently have an answer: Who are the influencers today? Who is in charge of our culture and who?s word is actually worth something?
In all honesty, it seems more and more that influencers and tastemakers can be just about anyone with an Internet connection. We have an increasing amount of say in our culture no matter where we are in the progress of the life of a song. Whether we are musicians, producers, record label execs, journalists, critics, bloggers, avid music fans, or just the casual passerby, digital media and social networking have enabled us all to have a voice in what our culture is made up of. It?s now up to us to determine what we will choose to do with this new-found sense of ownership, entitlement, and responsibility.
Tim Rood wrote an interesting post today on Here?s a quick excerpt Once again a decline in refinancing wiped out modest gains in purchase mortgage activity during the week ended March 23.? As a result the Mortgage Bankers Association?s (MBA) Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey decreased 2.7 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis from the previous week.? ?On an unadjusted basis the index was down 2.6 percent. The Refinance Index decreased by 4.6 percent, the sixth consecutive week it has lost ground.? It is now at its lowest level since December.? The decline was due primarily to a 12.0 percent drop in applications for government-backed refinancing sector.? The conventional refinancing sector by comparison fell only 3.4 percent.? The refinancing share of all mortgage applications activity dropped to 71.9 percent from 73.4 percent.? This was the lowest share of activity for refinancing since last July. ?? The seasonally adjusted Purchase Index increased 3.3 percent from the week ended March 16 and the unadjusted Purchase Index was 1.0 percent higher than during the same week in 2011. The four week moving average for the Market Index fell [...]
Read the rest of this great post here
This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 28th, 2012 at 8:23 am and is filed under Uncategorized.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
For many Chinese, they make use of a technique to take life?s power and use it to improve harmony in the home and in business. They use the concept of Yin and Yang as a way to have harmony. It is shown as eight paths on an octagon shape. They consider that the eight pathways need to be the energy of Feng Shui. When it comes to the power to be generated in a room, things need to be positioned in a certain way. When you put a small water feature that is the farthest left corner away from your front door of your home then you can create the energy of good fortune and luck. Because it appears to work for many Chinese, they keep using the concepts of Feng Shui throughout their living areas.
If placing your furniture in a room, you can block the energy by putting a large piece of furniture, like a sofa, with the back of it to the front door. They say that it obstructs favorable energy to your residence. The very same thing can happen in your business. Your enterprise may well succeed or fail based on just how the energy flows through your work area. Chinese folks flourish in business on a regular basis. The equilibrium regarding lightness and darkness is what Yin and Yang is dependant on. You can in fact control the energy to balance. If you generate the right Yin and Yang, Chinese businesses who are aware of this, will recognize it and will offer to cooperate with you as a result.
Your house is going to have harmony and positive energy with Feng Shui and the proper Yin and Yang. Any time Feng Shui is carried out properly, you will encounter a happy family life, good fortune and good health in your home. It will be possible to have serenity in your home if you carry out Feng Shui. It requires placement, color and materials, including mirrors that influence the way the chi energy moves around the home. Solid wood furniture boosts chi, while ceramic or clay calms. The chi energy can flow everywhere in your home but you can change things around in certain rooms if you want to have more of it in there. Many experts have found that more energy can flow into a room that has the right materials and placement.
In order to help pull in good fortune, many Chinese restaurants will have an aquarium tank or water fountain set up with Koi fish. Whether or not in your home or in your business, it can help to promote harmony in your life. There are numerous reference books on Feng Shui in the library, book stores as well as the Internet regarding Feng Shui, to learn more .
The energy in your home or business can definitely be improved. The Chinese have spent countless years doing this and have achieved harmony and peace in their homes. Exactly what is effective in the east can very well work in the west.
Reference a href=?http://www.citygardendesigncourses.com/garden-design?garden design courses/a
This entry was posted
on Thursday, March 29th, 2012 at 3:34 am and is filed under Blogroll.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
![[ Back to EurekAlert! ]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_v7_JPjsWgCHXrZkcvPEFhxdzy1cu5TdPNPhxJl44P_GOIhLyhmuiF9fSj0exgYh34BrHjH6SBqbTFESZwoeOWK84fuY9HGvAm6wQxSL_A=s0-d){kind=small}
Public release date: 30-Mar-2012
Share ] 
There?s a lot of talk in the news media about Attachment Parenting lately, especially with celebrity-turned-PhD Mayim Bialik?s new book, Beyond the Sling, in which she describes her brand of parenting, which does include Attachment Parenting (AP). And there are a lot of questions being asked. As a local Resource Leader for Attachment Parenting International, I?ve been fielding both concern and applause for the various conversations swirling around Mayim and AP. I wanted to give a little clarification.
Courtesy Xochitl Mora,