ScienceDaily (Oct. 30, 2012) ? The next generation of electronic displays -- e-Readers, smartphones and tablets -- is closer thanks to research out October 31 from the University of Cincinnati.
Advances that will eventually bring foldable/rollable e-devices as well as no pixel borders are experimentally verified and proven to work in concept at UC's Novel Devices Laboratory. That research is published this week in the journal Nature Communications.
The UC paper, "Bright e-Paper by Transport of Ink through a White Electrofluidic Imaging Film," is authored by College of Engineering and Applied Science doctoral students Matthew Hagedon, Shu Yang, and Ann Russell, as well as Jason Heikenfeld, associate professor of electronic and computing systems. UC worked on this research with partner: start-up company Gamma Dynamics.
Foldable e-Devices Closer Thanks to Electrofluidic Imaging Film
One challenge in creating foldable e-Paper devices has been the device screen, which is currently made of rigid glass. But what if the screen were a paper-thin plastic that rolled like a window shade? You'd have a device like an iPad that could be folded or rolled up repeatedly -- even tens of thousands of time. Just roll it up and stick it in your pocket.
The UC research out today experimentally verifies that such a screen of paper-thin plastic, what the researchers refer to as "electrofluidic imaging film," works. The breakthrough is a white, porous film coated with a thin layer of reflective electrodes and spacers that are then subjected to unique and sophisticated fluid mechanics in order to electrically transport the colored ink and clear-oil fluids that comprise the consumer content (text, images, video) of electronic devices.
According to UC's Hagedon, "This is the first of any type of electrowetting display that can be made as a simple film that you laminate onto a sheet of controlling electronics. Manufacturers prefer this approach compared to having to build up the pixels themselves within their devices, layer by layer, material by material. Our proof-of-concept breakthrough takes us one step closer to brighter, color-video e-Paper and the Holy Grail of rollable/foldable displays."
No Pixel Borders
Importantly, this paper-thin plastic screen developed at UC is the first among all types of fluidic displays that has no pixel borders.
In current technology, colors maintain their image-forming distinctiveness by means of what are known as "pixel borders." Each individual pixel that helps to comprise the image necessary for text, photographs, video and other content maintains its distinct color and does not bleed over into the next pixel or color due to a pixel border. In other words, each individual pixel of color has a border around it (invisible to the eye of the consumer) to maintain its color distinctiveness.
This matters because pixel borders are basically "dead areas" that dull any display of information, whether a display of text or image. Leading electronics companies have been seeking ways to reduce or eliminate pixel borders in order to increase display brightness.
Said UC's Heikenfeld, "For example, the pixel border in current electrowetting displays, which prevents ink merging, takes up a sizable portion of the pixel. This is now resolved with our electrofluidic film breakthrough. Furthermore, our breakthrough provides extraordinary capability to hide the ink when you don't want to see it, which further cranks up the available brightness and color of the display when you do want to see it. With a single, new technology, we have simplified manufacturability AND improved screen brightness."
Foldable e-Devices as Environmental Electronics
Expect that the first-generation foldable e-devices will be monochrome. Color will come later. Eventually, within 10 to 20 years, e-Devices with magazine-quality color, viewable in bright sunlight but requiring low power will come to market. "Think of this as the green iPad or e-Reader, combining high function and high color without the weight of a heavy battery, readable out in the sunlight, and foldable into your pocket," said Heikenfeld.
The device will require low power to operate since it will charge via sunlight and ambient room light. However, it will be so "tough" and only use wireless connection ports, such that you can leave it out over night in the rain. In fact, you'll be able to wash it or drop it without damaging the thin, highly flexible casing and screen.
This latest proof of concept research verifying the functionality of electrofluidic imaging film builds on previous research out of UC's Novel Devices Laboratory. That previous research broke down a significant barrier to bright electronic displays that don't require a heavy battery to power them.
Currently, faster, color-saturated, high-power devices like a computer's liquid-cystal display screen, an iPad or a cell phone require high power (and, consequently, a larger battery), in part, because they need a strong internal light source within the device (that "backlights" the screen) as well as color filters in order to display the pixels as color/moving images. The need for an internal light source within the device also means visibility is poor in bright sunlight.
The new electrofluidic imaging film is part of an overall UC design that will require only low-power to produce high speed content and function because it makes use of ambient light vs. a strong, internal light source within the device.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Cincinnati. The original article was written by M.B. Reilly.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
Matthew Hagedon, Shu Yang, Ann Russell, Jason Heikenfeld. Bright e-Paper by Transport of Ink through a White Electrofluidic Imaging Film. Nature Communications, October 31, 2012
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
Well, my absence wasn't as long as I thought it would be. However, it'll be a short while before I'm ready to dive into roleplaying again. Might just stick to the Writing forum for a while, see what damage I can do there. Anyway, it's good to be back. I missed some of you. :b
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A cold and wet summer across the UK has caused a "dramatic fall" in the amount of honey produced by British bees, a survey of beekeepers has revealed.
Yields are down 72% compared to 2011, research by the British Beekeepers' Association (BBKA) suggested.
An average of 8lb (3.6kg) of honey was produced per hive this year, compared to the annual average of 30lb (13.6kg).
The majority of those surveyed (88%) said the rain and cold weather was the main reason the harvest was poor.
More than 2,700 beekeepers in England, Wales and Northern Ireland were surveyed in the BBKA's annual Honey Survey.
The honey harvest was lowest in London, where hives produced an average of 5.6lb (2.5kg) of honey.
'Most difficult year'
In Northern Ireland, hives yielded the highest average of 25.8lb (11.7kg) of honey - but the figure is only half the amount normally produced by bees in the area.
Earlier this year, the cold and wet conditions forced the organisation to issue a mid-summer warning to feed honey bee colonies with sugar syrup if necessary to avoid starvation.
Honey bees produce honey as a food store. Normally, this store would be enough to see them through the winter months.
The BBKA warned the worst may be yet to come, as a lack of food for bees and wet conditions mean breeding queens have been unable to produce a large enough brood to see colonies through the winter.
Peter Hutton, a beekeeper in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, described 2012 as "the most difficult year I have known in my 53 years of beekeeping".
"Bad weather in spring prevented honey bees in many areas from collecting nectar from early flowering crops such as oil seed rape, and the rain continued in many places throughout June and July preventing honey bees from foraging on later crops," he said.
In London, where yields were hardest hit, beekeeping experts said that in addition to the bad weather there was a lack of food for bees in the city.
Angela Woods, secretary of the London Beekeepers' Association, said: "Rather than putting beehives on office roofs, we encourage companies in London who want to help to look at different ways of supporting bees and beekeepers.
"We need more forage for the bees and better-educated beekeepers."
Tim Lovett, the BBKA's public affairs director, said there has been greater emphasis on "training and developing" beekeepers in recent years.
He added: "We need more resources to put into training, education and bee health research, to continue to support our honey bees and other pollinators.
"Well trained beekeepers are better equipped to deal with the adverse conditions we have seen this year.
"Without training, this year's situation might have been a lot worse."
Peter Ford, who covered Lance?Armstrong's winning streak at the Tour de France for the Monitor, writes that Armstrong's doping has 'tainted some of my happiest memories of reporting in France.'
By Peter Ford,?Staff Writer / October 22, 2012
This file photo shows Lance Armstrong, center, waving from the podium in July 2002 as he holds the winner's trophy after the 20th and final stage of the Tour de France cycling race between Melun and Paris. Armstrong was stripped of his seven Tour de France titles and banned for life by cycling's governing body Monday.
Peter Dejong/AP/File
Enlarge
Thirteen years ago, on an idyllic summer?s afternoon, I stood by the side of a road in the cheesemaking region of Cantal and watched Lance Armstrong speed by, tucked into the peloton, on his way to his first victory in the Tour de France.
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It was 1999. A year earlier the Tour had been in tatters, devastated by a doping scandal that had seen police and judges raiding riders? hotel rooms in the middle of the night, seizing drugs. Armstrong?s successful arrival on the scene after overcoming cancer ?is symbolic of the way the Tour de France is emerging from its own battle against disappearance,? said the tour director at the time.
His victory would be ?highly symbolic of the combat he fought against death, and that we are fighting against doping,? promised Jean-Marie Leblanc.
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Wildlife experts believe the first ever twin seals have been born on the Farne Islands, off the Northumberland coast.
The grey seal pups were spotted by National Trust ranger David Steel, who had been monitoring a pregnant seal.
Multiple births in grey seals are "extremely rare" and no records exist of any having been born on the islands.
The Sea Mammal Research Unit at the University of St Andrews in Scotland has asked for DNA tests to verify the pups have come from the same mother.
Mr Steel, who has worked with the seal colony for 12 years, said: "Over the weekend, a lone heavily pregnant cow seal was discovered on the secluded south beach.
"By Monday, the female, still on the secluded beach, and still by herself, had given birth, but to our surprise, not to one pup but possibly to two.
'Biologically possible'
"On the small rocky beach, two pups were together, wet and bloody, with the mother in attendance.
"It was evident that both had just been born and with no other female in this area of the island."
Ailsa Hall, acting director of the Sea Mammal Research Unit at the University of St Andrews, said: "As far as I'm aware it's extremely rare for twins to be born in grey seals and to my knowledge this hasn't been directly recorded anywhere.
"It is biologically possible for seals to conceive twins, but the female would usually abort one foetus prior to birth as she wouldn't have the resources to feed both pups.
"In this case, National Trust rangers monitored one female in the cove where the pups were born for a number of days before finding two pups very close together, clearly very soon after pupping.
"Should the pups survive the rangers can take DNA sample from the pups and we will test it just like you would a human to see if the pups came from the same mother."
The Farne Islands are known for their huge seal colony and around 1,500 pups are born there each year.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) ? Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer can't afford to be wrong about Windows 8.
On Thursday in New York, Microsoft unveiled a dramatic overhaul of its ubiquitous Windows operating system. It will go on sale Friday, fused into more than 1,000 PCs and other devices. If it flops, the failure will reinforce perceptions that Microsoft is falling behind competitors such as Apple, Google and Amazon as its stranglehold on personal computers becomes less relevant in an era of smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices.
If Ballmer is right, Windows 8 will prove that the world's largest software maker still has the technological chops and marketing muscle to shape the future of computing.
"This is going to be his defining moment," said technology industry analyst Patrick Moorhead of Moor Insights & Strategy. Ballmer's "legacy will be looked at as what he did or didn't do with Windows 8. If Windows 8 is not a success, a lot of people will be looking for Microsoft to make a change at the CEO level."
Windows 8 is designed to run on PCs and tablet computers, heralding the biggest change to the industry's dominant operating system in at least 17 years. It also marks the first time that Microsoft has made touch-screen control the top priority, though the system can still be switched into the familiar desktop mode that allows for control by keyboard and mouse.
Ballmer sees Windows 8 as the catalyst for a new era at Microsoft. He wants the operating system to ensure the company plays an integral role on all the important screens in people's lives ? PCs, smartphones, tablets and televisions.
"You are going to love the new Windows," Ballmer promised during a Thursday presentation. At other points of his speech, Ballmer hailed the new PCS running on the "bold, innovative" system as the best ever made.
Early reaction has been mixed. Some reviewers like the way the system greets users with a mosaic of tiles displaying applications instead of relying on the desktop icons that served as the welcome mat for years. Critics say it's a confusing jumble that will frustrate users accustomed to the older versions, particularly when they switch to desktop mode and don't see the familiar "start" button and menu.
Windows 8 will hit the market backed by an estimated $1 billion marketing campaign. The advertising frenzy is just one measure of how important Windows 8 is to Microsoft's future.
Ballmer's margin for error is slim after being consistently outpaced by Apple and Google in his nearly 13 years as CEO. During his tenure, Microsoft's stock has lost nearly half its value, wiping out more than $200 billion in shareholder wealth.
But the company's board hasn't expressed any public dissatisfaction with Ballmer, who is Microsoft's second-largest shareholder with a 4 percent stake worth $9 billion. Only his good friend and predecessor, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, owns more of the company's stock. Gates has a 5.5 percent stake.
Since Ballmer succeeded Gates as CEO in January 2000, Microsoft's annual revenue has nearly quadrupled to $74 billion and expanded into lucrative new territory with its popular Xbox 360 video game console, which has given the company a platform for delivering services to television sets. But Microsoft has been slow to respond to technology shifts and has made some costly missteps trying to catch up.
Some of the best-known blunders include the company's iPod clone, the Zune, and its $6.3 billion acquisition of Internet ad service aQuantive.
Ballmer, 56, has spent most of his life at Microsoft. He was attending Stanford University's graduate school of business in 1980 when Gates, a former classmate at Harvard University, persuaded him to drop out and become one of the startup's first 30 employees. He brought more business savvy to the operation just as the company began providing an operating system for IBM Corp.'s first personal computer.
Just two weeks before Ballmer took over, Microsoft's stock reached its peak price. The dot-com bust quickly deflated that market value, and the company became locked in antitrust battles in the U.S. and Europe that distracted management for years.
The biggest question hovering over Windows 8: Is it innovative and elegant enough to lure consumers who are increasingly fond of smartphones, tablets and other sleek gadgets? Those mobile devices have been setting industry standards while Microsoft engineers have spent two years designing a new operating system.
And Windows 8 must address not only the upheaval in the computing market since Windows 7 came out in 2009, but also have the flexibility to adjust to future shifts in technology before Microsoft releases another version in two or three years.
"It doesn't seem like Microsoft is really pushing consumers into the future with Windows 8," said Forrester Research analyst Sarah Rotman Epps. "What Microsoft has done is like buying a pair of shoes for a kid. The shoes may fit exactly right today, but those shoes probably won't fit six months from now."
Previous versions of Windows and other Microsoft products such as Office are so deeply embedded in companies and government agencies that Microsoft is still assured a steady stream of revenue from that segment of the market. That loyal base of customers is one of the reasons that Microsoft is expected to earn $25 billion on revenue of $80 billion in its current fiscal year ending next June.
"This isn't a company that is on the edge of extinction, like some people would have you think," said BGC Financial analyst Colin Gillis. "What we are seeing with Windows 8 is classic Microsoft. They let the (technology) market lead and then they follow."
But investors want to see Microsoft do something more. The nagging fear on Wall Street is that the PC industry is past its prime and heading into a gradual decline that will pull down Microsoft, too.
The signs of decay have been proliferating since Apple released the iPad in 2010, hatching a tablet computer market that has combined with an already vibrant smartphone market to siphon away technology spending that used to go toward the latest PCs.
Worldwide PC sales year are expected to decline this year for the first time since 2001, according to the research firm IHS iSuppli. It's a drop of just 1 percent, but it underscores a troubling trend that has been hurting Microsoft.
The shift to mobile devices has whittled Microsoft's worldwide share of the computing device market from 67 percent in 2008 to about 30 percent today, estimates Forrester Research analyst Frank Gillett. Thanks to its Android software for phones and tablets, Google is now the leader with a 40 percent share of the computing device market. Apple stands at 20 percent.
Analysts don't expect Microsoft's corporate and government customers to immediately embrace the new system, no matter how much it's hyped. About half of this traditionally cautious group of customers still haven't upgraded to Windows 7. Most analysts expect companies and government to hold off on switching to Windows 8 for at least another year.
Ballmer hopes to accelerate the changeover by making Microsoft's Office software suite more compelling, with the help of two major acquisitions.
Microsoft bought the video chat service Skype for $8.5 billion last year and in June agreed to pay $1.2 billion for Yammer, a service the builds social networking services within companies. Both are expected to become key features within Office to make it easier for workers to connect and collaborate with their peers and customers.
Ballmer also has won praise from analysts for striking potentially fruitful partnerships with Yahoo Inc. and Nokia. Microsoft now provides Yahoo with much of the same technology that runs its Bing search engine. The Yahoo deal provides Microsoft with 12 percent of the revenue from the ads shown alongside search results on Yahoo's website.
The Nokia alliance ensured Windows 8 would be the operating system on that company's latest line of smartphones, a potentially valuable platform if Nokia is able to regain some of the market share it has lost in mobile phones during the past five years.
(Microsoft has also joined with The Associated Press to use AP content in Windows 8 news applications.)
But none of that has yet restored the luster Microsoft had on Wall Street when Gates was in charge.
Ballmer's initially dismissed emerging threats from Google and Apple. He consistently pooh-poohed Google as a one-trick company during its early years and in 2007 declared: "No chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share."
Those were some of his biggest mistakes, detractors say. Google quickly made important inroads in Internet video, online maps, email and mobile computing and contributed to the damage that the iPhone and iPad have done to Microsoft and its partners in the PC market.
Apple's meteoric rise has been especially painful for Microsoft. When Steve Jobs returned to run Apple in 1997, the company was so bad off that it needed a $150 million infusion from Microsoft to stay afloat. Now Apple has a market value of $570 billion ? more than double Microsoft's $235 billion.
On Tuesday, Apple got a chance to upstage Microsoft when CEO Tim Cook showed off the iPad Mini, a smaller and less expensive version of its top-selling tablet.
On Thursday in New York, Ballmer got his chance to herald the arrival of the most important product of his reign. The response to Windows 8 may determine whether it turns out to be the opening act in his vindication or one of his final moments in the spotlight.
LOS ANGELES (AP) ? Matt Kemp's hopes for a simple surgery on his left shoulder were dashed when the Los Angeles Dodgers slugger awoke to learn things were worse than doctors had first thought.
Kemp was in Arizona on Wednesday to begin rehabbing from the Oct. 5 surgery that repaired a torn labrum and damage to the rotator cuff, injuries resulting from a crash into the center field wall at Coors Field on Aug. 27.
"I was definitely surprised and definitely disappointed," he told reporters by phone in his first public comments since the surgery. "I wish it would have just been a simple cleanup. It's going to take close to January before I can hit and do a lot of other things."
Doctors have said Kemp should be ready by spring training. He has been biking and walking on a treadmill since the surgery, and will now step up his rehab program.
Kemp missed 51 games earlier in the season with a strained left hamstring, and then chose to play through the shoulder pain to finish the season.
"I already asked the doctors if I could damage it any more than it was damaged and they said no, so I kept playing," he said. "When they went in there, they were surprised I was still playing because it was worse than what they had thought."
Kemp clearly wasn't the same player after hitting the wall. He was batting .337 before, when the Dodgers trailed San Francisco by two games in the NL West. Afterward, he hit .214 while the team ended the season nine games behind the Giants.
"As long as I do my rehab right, I'll be able to be back to where I want to be," he said.
Kemp described the surgery as "pretty scary," the most serious procedure he's had in his major league career. The 28-year-old right-handed hitter had hand surgery while in the minors.
"Any surgery can be scary when you have somebody cut on you," he said. "I got through it OK."
Beforehand, Kemp spoke to teammates Adrian Gonzalez and Hanley Ramirez, who both underwent similar procedures.
"Adrian said I'll be good and feel better once the rehab is over and I'll get my strength back," Kemp said.
Kemp isn't the only Dodgers outfielder coming off surgery. Left fielder Carl Crawford, acquired from Boston in a nine-player trade on Aug. 25, has had Tommy John and wrist surgeries, and he didn't suit up after the trade.
Last season, Kemp said his goal was 50 home runs and 50 stolen bases. He finished with 23 and nine, and has reassessed his plans for next season.
"Be healthy. That's the main goal," he said. "If I'm healthy, then good things should happen."
PYONGYANG, North Korea (AP) ? The former black marketeer has read it. So has the beautiful young librarian, and the aging philosophy professor who has spent his life teaching the ruling doctrine of this isolated outpost of totalitarian socialism. At times it seems as if everyone in Pyongyang, a city full of monuments to its own mythology, has read the book.
In it they found a tortured love story, or a parable of bourgeois decline. Many found heroes. They lost themselves in the story of a nation divided by war, its defeated cities reduced to smolder and ruins, its humbled aristocrats reduced to starvation.
The book is "Gone With the Wind."
To come across Margaret Mitchell's 1936 Civil War epic in North Korea is to stumble over the unlikeliest of American cultural touchstones in the unlikeliest of places.
What does antebellum plantation life have to do with North Korea, where three generations of rulers ? grandfather, father and now the young son, Kim Jong Un ? have been worshipped as omniscient? What appeal does Scarlett O'Hara's high-society ruthlessness hold for people only a few years past a horrific famine?
And yet here, in a country thought to have the world's tightest censorship net, a place where the literary culture was largely inherited from Joseph Stalin, the government has published a novel that longs for the days of the slave-owning American South.
Maybe the explanation is in Mitchell's own words.
"They had known war and terror and hunger, had seen dear ones dead before their times," Mitchell writes of postwar southerners. "They had hungered and been ragged and lived with the wolf at the door. And they had rebuilt fortune from ruin."
In "Gone With the Wind," North Koreans found echoes of their own history and insights into the United States: bloody civil wars fought nearly a century apart; two cities ? Atlanta and Pyongyang ? reduced to rubble after attacks by U.S. forces; two cultures that still celebrate the way they stood up to the Yankees. If North Koreans have yet to find fortune, they haven't given up.
"In North Korea only the strong survive," said the onetime black marketeer, a former salesman of used televisions who spent much of his life in Pyongyang but who eventually escaped to South Korea. "That's the most compelling message of the novel."
Perhaps more than anything, though, North Koreans found what readers everywhere ask of a good novel: an escape and a comfort. And in a country with little in the way of entertainment, a police state that keeps the entire population relentlessly on edge, Mitchell's well-told (if relentlessly soapy) tale of lost love, mansion life, war and honor became an important refuge.
Ambitious young North Korean women, raised amid deeply entrenched sexism, find inspiration in Scarlett's rise from ruin. Men revel in the muscularity of her swashbuckling love, Rhett Butler. People struggling with a lack of heat in winter, or political infighting, or the everyday pain of a marriage gone to hell can disappear into Mitchell's story
It also moved into official life. The movie, forbidden to the general public but beloved by the former dictator and movie buff, Kim Jong Il, is sometimes used in English-language programs to train elite government officials. North Korean negotiators meeting with U.S. envoys would occasionally quote from it, once replying to American criticism with the quote (which perfectionists might note is slightly off from the book and the movie): "Frankly, Scarlett, I don't give a damn."
Ask around in this capital city, an enclave of North Korea's educated elite, and nearly everyone has something to say about it.
"Scarlett is a strong woman," said Pak Su Mi, a twenty-something guide at Pyongyang's main library, The Grand People's Study House, a maze of house-sized rooms lit by stuttering fluorescent lights where the smell of mildew often hangs heavily.
In a country where women's fashions were long frozen in Soviet-style dowdiness, men watched intently as Pak strode through the library in her tight skirt, heels clacking on the concrete floors. "But the triangle relationship between Scarlett, Rhett Butler and Ashley, I didn't like that," she said.
The games that Scarlett learned in the whirl of plantation life ? to toy with men, to hide her intelligence, to dangle her sexuality ? reinforced the worst American stereotypes.
"I have to be loyal to my man, not be thinking of another man," Pak said.
Guides at places like the Study House are groomed to interact with foreigners, and are well-versed sliding propaganda into conversations. Pak didn't miss her chance.
"In my country," she noted, pressing a button for the elevator, "the woman is more important in relationships."
"Gone With the Wind" is one of the best-selling novels in modern history, and remains a talisman in the American South, where Mitchell's vision of a lost aristocracy often pushes aside the complexities of Civil War history. It still sells about 50,000 copies worldwide every year, according to its publisher, Scribner.
When it was released, though, it sold copies by the million. It was popular from England to Nazi Germany to imperial Japan, which then occupied the entire Korean peninsula.
The book, which the Japanese probably brought to Korea in the 1930s, is thought to have largely disappeared from here by the end of the 1950-1953 Korean War. By then, the peninsula was firmly divided, many cities were shattered, and North Korea's founder, Kim Il Sung, was building a Stalinist police state.
When the government suddenly ordered it translated and released in the mid-1990s, a time when North Korea's all-important Soviet support had disappeared and famine was looming, it swept like a literary firestorm through Pyongyang. The book scene here has long been dominated by detective stories and romance novels riven with heavy-handed propaganda, and classic foreign novels like "Don Quixote."
"For a while, you couldn't have a conversation without talking about 'Gone With the Wind,'" said the former Pyongyang TV trader, who spoke on condition he not be identified, fearing repercussions against relatives still living in the North.
Why it was published, though, remains unclear.
While Washington and Pyongyang are still technically at war, and hatred for the United States government is a constant in North Korean propaganda, American culture has always been quietly popular here. There are North Korean fans of everything from Mark Twain's short stories to bootleg Schwarzenegger movies.
Some believe the decision to publish "Gone With the Wind" was meant as a symbolic peace offering from North Korea to the United States ? the two nations have sparred for years over Pyongyang's nuclear program. Others see it as an attempt by the government to teach its people about American culture, or at least Mitchell's version of that culture.
Or perhaps it was an insult. "Gone With the Wind" is, in many ways, a celebration of how North Korea sees its own history: as a small, honorable nation that stood up to Washington.
"Mitchell's depiction of U.S. soldiers as lecherous marauders is also a good fit with North Korean propaganda," B.R. Myers, a North Korea scholar and professor at South Korea's Dongseo University, said in an email.
Its popularity, though, has little to do with politics.
"The book is about the normal lives of the American people, so it does nothing to help me understand American policy of today," said Song Chol, a 63-year-old professor who has spent much of his life studying "juche," the North Korean philosophy of self-reliance that is quasi-religious dogma here.
"I read it a long time ago," Song then growled, making clear that additional questions should be on juche.
Like Mitchell's postwar southerners, North Koreans know about living through terrible times.
Over 1 million North Koreans are thought to have died in the Korean War, and hundreds of thousands more in the mid-1990s famine. Rights activists say more than 100,000 people are held in political prisons. Poverty is the norm.
The economy has improved for some over the past couple of years, and there are now a handful of rich North Koreans who can buy BMWs and flat-screen TVs.
But most people barely get by. They earn a few dollars a month, and count themselves lucky if they own a bicycle. They are tough people, who endure North Korea's brutal winters in thin cotton overcoats, plow fields with wooden farm tools and make ends meet by selling dumplings or laundry detergent in street markets.
"The weak perish in 'Gone With the Wind,' said the former black marketeer. "That is something that North Koreans understand."
___
Follow Tim Sullivan on Twitter at http://twitter.com/SullivanTimAP.
ScienceDaily (Oct. 24, 2012) ? ESA's quartet of satellites studying Earth's magnetosphere, Cluster, has discovered that our protective magnetic bubble lets the solar wind in under a wider range of conditions than previously believed.
Earth's magnetic field is our planet's first line of defence against the bombardment of the solar wind. This stream of plasma is launched by the Sun and travels across the Solar System, carrying its own magnetic field with it.
Depending on how the solar wind's interplanetary magnetic field -- IMF -- is aligned with Earth's magnetic field, different phenomena can arise in Earth's immediate environment.
One well-known process is magnetic reconnection, where magnetic field lines pointing in opposite directions spontaneously break and reconnect with other nearby field lines. This redirects their plasma load into the magnetosphere, opening the door to the solar wind and allowing it to reach Earth.
Under certain circumstances this can drive 'space weather', generating spectacular aurorae, interrupting GPS signals and affecting terrestrial power systems.
In 2006, Cluster made the surprising discovery that huge, 40 000 km swirls of plasma along the boundary of the magnetosphere -- the magnetopause -- could allow the solar wind to enter, even when Earth's magnetic field and the IMF are aligned.
These swirls were found at low, equatorial latitudes, where the magnetic fields were most closely aligned.
These giant vortices are driven by a process known as the Kelvin-Helmholtz (KH) effect, which can occur anywhere in nature when two adjacent flows slip past each other at different speeds.
Examples include waves whipped up by wind sliding across the surface of the ocean, or in atmospheric clouds.
Analysis of Cluster data has now found that KH waves can also occur at a wider range of magnetopause locations and when the IMF is arranged in a number of other configurations, providing a mechanism for the continuous transport of the solar wind into Earth's magnetosphere.
"We found that when the interplanetary magnetic field is westward or eastward, magnetopause boundary layers at higher latitude become most subject to KH instabilities, regions quite distant from previous observations of these waves," says Kyoung-Joo Hwang of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and lead author of the paper published in the Journal of Geophysical Research.
"In fact, it's very hard to imagine a situation where solar wind plasma could not leak into the magnetosphere, since it is not a perfect magnetic bubble."
The findings confirm theoretical predictions and are reproduced by simulations presented by the authors of the new study.
"The solar wind can enter the magnetosphere at different locations and under different magnetic field conditions that we hadn't known about before," says co-author Melvyn Goldstein, also from Goddard Space Flight Center.
"That suggests there is a 'sieve-like' property of the magnetopause in allowing the solar wind to continuously flow into the magnetosphere."
The KH effect is also seen in the magnetospheres of Mercury and Saturn, and the new results suggest that it may provide a possible continuous entry mechanism of solar wind into those planetary magnetospheres, too.
"Cluster's observations of these boundary waves have provided a great advance on our understanding of solar wind -- magnetosphere interactions, which are at the heart of space weather research," says Matt Taylor, ESA's Cluster project scientist.
"In this case, the relatively small separation of the four Cluster satellites as they passed through the high-latitude dayside magnetopause provided a microscopic look at the processes ripping open the magnetopause and allowing particles from the Sun direct entry into the atmosphere."
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by European Space Agency (ESA).
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
K.-J. Hwang, M. L. Goldstein, M. M. Kuznetsova, Y. Wang, A. F. Vi?as, D. G. Sibeck. The first in situ observation of Kelvin-Helmholtz waves at high-latitude magnetopause during strongly dawnward interplanetary magnetic field conditions. Journal of Geophysical Research, 2012; 117 (A8) DOI: 10.1029/2011JA017256
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
Apple CEO Tim Cook took to a San Jose theater stage today to unveil a new version of the company's literature-based digital storefront, iBooks. Cook says it integrates better with iCloud, allows for quote sharing on Facebook and Twitter, and has support for "over 40 languages." Beyond the app update info, Cook touted iBook's sales exceeding 400 million books worldwide -- not too shabby! The updated iBooks app should be available today on the iOS App Store, though it's not there just yet.
Update: It looks like iBooks Author is also getting an update today, as Cook says new templates, fonts, and user-created fonts are now supported. Additionally, mathematical equations can now be inserted directly, and multitouch widgets will also work.
For more coverage, visit our Apple Special Event hub!
???You are here: DIME Home > Technology > How to Minimize Data Loss and Ensure Time Data Recovery
If we have the right back recovery system in place, we can safeguard our important data from not only getting lost but also recover it from a failed system quickly.
Author: Crossnetinc Team Date: Oct 23, 2012 - 3:07:41 AM
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In a world where we heavily rely on Information Technology, no company can guarantee a loss of important data on your computer system will not occur despite most companies having Backup and Disaster Recovery (BDR) systems in place. Companies in New Hampshire need to ensure that data will be recovered completely and quickly. The consequences of data loss can be severe. In companies where systems are up and running 24/7, uptime is of utmost importance. If we have the right back recovery system in place, we can safeguard our important data from not only getting lost but also recover it from a failed system quickly.
Prevention is better than cure. Some precautionary methods for safeguarding your data are discussed below.
Maintain Backup: Automated Backup systems can yield great results. Always maintain a backup of all your data. Maintaining a backup of your data means that you save a copy of the data onto another drive and after doing so, make sure that the integrity of backed up data is verified. Try saving all the important data on external hard disks, that way if the system crashes, you can recover information from the external hard disk.
Maintain Good Computer Habits: If you do not intend to use the system for a long period of time, make it a point to turn it off rather than keeping it on standby or hibernate mode. Also avoid using Jump drives (USB stick drives) that carry a risk of viruses. Many Computer Repair companies in Manchester, NH have suggested that data gets lost because of viruses that come in from USB Jump drives used from other unknown sources.
Use antivirus: This will protect your system from computer viruses like Trojan and others to ensure maximum security.
Keep Favourable Climactic Conditions: Data loss doesn't always happen due to software malfunctions. Hardware malfunctions can lead to data losses as well. Please ensure that the environment maintains a temperature of about 68F and is kept dust free.
Safeguard your Computer/Laptop/Notebook: Avoid sharing your computer with unknown networks. The files and data on your system can be prone to theft and data manipulation. Be on guard and avoid unnecessary connections with outside networks.
Uninterrupted Power Supply: If your UPS has stopped working properly and you are neglecting it, you are increasing the risks of data loss. Sudden loss of electricity will prevent saving important documents and also lead to damaging hardware components. Uninterrupted use of UPS is imperative.
There are many companies in Data Recovery in Manchester, NH that retrieve all important data including files, folders and applications in tough situations. Many companies in New Hampshire offer reliable services wherein they retrieve lost or deleted files on the hard drive, or any other media storage. Cross Net Incorporated is one such Computer Services company in Manchester that provides both Backup and Disaster services within a cost effective range.
Cross Net Incorporated is a Computer and Outsourced IT Services company in Bedford, NH that offers Backup and Disaster management services in the following areas - Nashua, Merrimack, Bedford, Manchester and surrounding cities in NH. They are experts in the field of Information Technology and offer a broad spectrum of services and help small to medium size businesses maintain smooth and robust operations. Their engineers are certified by Microsoft and other related technologies.
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(Reuters) - A federal appeals court has blocked Indiana from enforcing a law to cut off Medicaid funds for Planned Parenthood, a law that critics said would deprive thousands of low-income people of medical services, including abortion.
The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday ruled that while Indiana has broad authority to exclude unqualified providers from its Medicaid program for the poor, it lacks authority to exclude a class of providers - in this case Planned Parenthood clinics - for reasons unrelated to their qualifications.
It said doing so deprives Medicaid recipients of their legal right to obtain care from qualified providers of their choosing.
"Indiana maintains that any harm to Planned Parenthood's Medicaid patients is superficial because they have many other qualified Medicaid providers to choose from," Circuit Judge Diane Sykes wrote for a three-judge panel. "This argument misses the mark."
While the 7th Circuit decision applies in Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin, it could have wider significance.
Lawmakers in more than a dozen states have in the last few years taken steps to cut off funding for Planned Parenthood, prompting it to file several lawsuits.
Planned Parenthood is the country's largest provider of abortions, conducting about one-fourth of those performed in the United States. Last year, Republicans unsuccessfully tried to end federal funding for Planned Parenthood.
Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels, a Republican, had signed the law banning the funding in May 2011, but U.S. District Judge Tanya Walton Pratt in Indianapolis put it on hold the following month.
Tuesday's decision upheld much of Pratt's preliminary injunction and returned the case to her court.
Indiana Attorney General Greg Zoeller said his office, which argued the state's appeal, will review the decision before deciding how best to continue defending the law.
"The people's elected representatives in the legislature decided they did not want an indirect subsidy of abortion services, such as payroll and overhead, to be paid with taxpayers' dollars," Zoeller said in a statement.
In court papers, Planned Parenthood had said that the loss of Medicaid funding in Indiana would force it to close seven of its 28 health centers in that state, forcing nearly 21,000 patients to look elsewhere for medical care.
GOVERNMENT SUPPORT
The federal government had supported Planned Parenthood's appeal. Medicaid is jointly funded by the federal and state governments.
"This is a total victory," said Ken Falk, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana, which handled Planned Parenthood's appeal.
"It is significant because, around the country, there are hundreds of thousands of people who get services through Planned Parenthood that are reimbursed by Medicaid," he said. "To allow those services to be denied solely because a state does not like other things that Planned Parenthood does can cause serious harm to people who depend on it for basic medical needs."
Planned Parenthood also provides services other than abortion, such as cancer and HIV screenings, contraception and family planning. Three percent of its services relate to abortion, according to its website.
Half of Planned Parenthood's $970 million of revenue in the year ended June 30, 2010 came from government health services grants and reimbursements, according to its annual report. Planned Parenthood said it performed more than 329,000 abortion procedures that year.
The case is Planned Parenthood of Indiana Inc et al v. Commissioner of the Indiana State Department of Health et al, 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, No. 11-2464.
(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Howard Goller and Paul Simao)
Fannie Mae Limiting Loans Helps JPMorgan Mortgage Profits
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Piggybankblog posted on 10/22/12
Cross linked with buisnessweek.com
Fannie Mae (FNMA) and Ginnie Mae are seeking to protect taxpayers as a flood of new lenders apply to do business with them. That?s also helping big banks? profit and blunting Federal Reserve efforts to boost housing.
Fannie Mae, the government-supported mortgage financier, has begun limiting how many loans annually it will guarantee or buy from certain firms. Ginnie Mae has moved slowly with responses to applications, according to David Lykken, an industry consultant. The U.S.-owned bond insurer has gotten tougher this year about approving lenders even as it?s signed up about 50, Ginnie Mae President Ted Tozer said in an interview.
Limited competition in the industry and a lack of capacity to meet demand is helping JPMorgan Chase (JPM) & Co. Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon get ?very high (JPM)? mortgage margins. That?s frustrating central bankers such as William Dudley, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York president, who said this month that mortgage rates are higher than they could be after the Fed said it plans to acquire $40 billion of home-loan securities a month.
?More direct access to Fannie would end up in more mortgage companies getting a better price and consumers would benefit,? said John Robbins, head of Bexil American Mortgage Inc., who founded two lenders later sold to banks now part of JPMorgan and Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC) ?The problem is, if you?re Fannie you just can?t let all these companies have unlimited access. You don?t want to give a high-speed, temperamental race car to someone who just got a driver?s license.?
Taxpayer Conflict
The conflict between protecting taxpayers and encouraging more lending to help the real estate market recover from the worst slump since the Great Depression shows the challenges facing the government and the industry as about 3,500 people attend the Mortgage Bankers Association?s annual conference in Chicago that started yesterday.
U.S.-backed mortgages still account for about 90 percent of new lending in the almost $9.6 trillion home-loan market four years after Fannie Mae and rival Freddie Mac were rescued by taxpayers.
The companies ?are playing an outsized role: in a properly functioning market, Fannie Mae should not have such a significant share,? Chief Executive Officer Timothy J. Mayopoulos said yesterday in a speech at the conference. ?We see little evidence of substantial private capital ready to meet the very significant market needs.?
Changing Rules
David Stevens, the MBA president, former Federal Housing Administration head and ex-Freddie Mac executive, says his organization is worried that the company and Fannie Mae are changing a broad range of rules without first going through the same steps to seek public input as other arms of the government.
?No matter how much they say they?re being transparent with the customers, it really pales in comparison to the process required by other rulemakers,? he said.
Fannie Mae, which has more than 1,000 approved lenders, won?t disclose how many have been capped or its total applications and approvals this year for customers that originate and service mortgages, or so-called seller-servicers.
The delivery limits affect a ?relatively small number? of lenders, ?primarily? new ones, according to Zach Oppenheimer, a senior vice president who heads customer engagement.
Fannie Mae?s volume limits, based on the net worth and business profile of counterparties, add to steps by U.S. and international lawmakers and regulators that may hurt competition and ?consumer access,? Stevens of the MBA said.
Government Seizure
The mortgage industry remains in flux six years after mortgage defaults began climbing, reaching unprecedented levels that would freeze private markets and cause hundreds of lenders to collapse. Bear Stearns Cos. and Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., the top underwriters of so-called non-agency mortgage bonds connecting investors with homeowners, imploded in 2008.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (FMCC) were seized (FNMA) by the government that year and have received $137 billion of aid since then, enabling them to finance about two-thirds of new loans. Even with steps to reduce their dominance, including increases to how much they charge for mortgage guarantees, there are few signs of progress on legislation that might shrink their role.
?Reform is not going to happen next year and probably not until 2015,? said Isaac Boltansky, a Washington-based policy analyst for Compass Point Research & Trading LLC.
The ?uncertainty? over their future is bad for the companies as they seek to hire and retain qualified employees and make decisions such as technology investments, Freddie Mac Chief Executive Officer Donald Layton said during a panel at the conference in Chicago.
Fannie Future
The development of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac has been on the backburner this year amid a presidential election and a recovery in housing, including higher prices, home sales and construction. That?s being driven in part by the Fed?s policy of buying mortgage bonds to push down borrowing costs. The Obama administration also adjusted rules to allow more borrowers to tap record-low rates.
Refinancing applications soared to a three-year high with 30-year mortgages reaching 3.36 percent this month, straining staffs of lenders, which held rates higher than they could offer in part to reduce demand.
Mortgage rates could be more than 0.4 percentage point lower based on the average gap between bond yields and borrowing costs over the past decade, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. New expenses and legal risks contribute to the higher spread, said Bexil?s Robbins, also a former chairman of the mortgage-bankers group.
Production Margins
At JPMorgan, mortgage-production margins are ?very high?at ?well over? 2 percent, up from less than 1 percent historically, Dimon said on an Oct. 12 conference call about its record $5.7 billion in quarterly earnings. The bank?s home-loan business lends directly to consumers and buys mortgages from about 800 firms.
?Obviously one day that will normalize,? Dimon said.?And in the meantime, you get volume and higher spreads.?
Three days later, the New York Fed?s Dudley explained in a speech that only part of the drop in debt yields created by the central bank?s actions was being passed on to consumers, the flip side of Dimon?s expanded profits.
The factors behind the wider spreads ?warrant ongoing attention from policymakers,? Dudley said.
Dudley cited ?a concentration of mortgage origination volumes at a few key financial institutions? as part of the cause. At the same time, Mayopoulos said that ?we?ve seen significant deconsolidation in the industry as major players pulled away or withdrew completely.?
Smaller Lenders
Over the past year, more companies have been taking market share as firms including Bank of America Corp. (BAC) and MetLife Inc. abandoned roles buying loans from smaller lenders, getting them guaranteed by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae and selling them to investors.
Those middlemen were ?absorbing a lot of risk? that Fannie Mae must take on itself when dealing directly with smaller firms, Mayopoulos said. ?We very much want to serve smaller lenders but we want to do that in a prudent way,? he said. ?We?re also serving the taxpayers.?
During the second quarter, 47 percent of Fannie Mae?s business came from its top five customers, down from 65 percent a year earlier, according to a regulatory filing. A decline that began last year ?accelerated sharply? this year, Credit Suisse Group AG analyst Mahesh Swaminathan wrote in an Oct. 18 report.
Still, Wells Fargo & Co. has a record market share. The San Francisco-based lender made or bought 33.1 percent of home loans originated in the first half of 2012, according to newsletter Inside Mortgage Finance. That?s almost twice the 16.8 percent share recorded by Countrywide Financial Corp. in 2007. That year, Wells was second with 11.2 percent.
JPMorgan Share
JPMorgan is now in second place with 11.1 percent. The rest of the top five ? now U.S. Bancorp, Bank of America Corp. (BAC) andCitigroup Inc. (C) ? also are smaller than five years ago.
Fannie Mae?s new delivery caps, which it may increase as companies gain capital and prove their operations, can affect existing customers with financial trouble or poor performance as well as new clients, Oppenheimer said. Newsletter National Mortgage News earlier reported the restrictions.
Under its previous policy, a lender with a $2.5 million net worth, its minimum, could ?theoretically deliver billions of dollars of loans,? Oppenheimer said. If the lender was forced to buy back loans because of faulty underwriting, it wouldn?t?take that many bad loans to add up to substantial costs and wipe you out. Ultimately if those institutions fail, it would be the taxpayer who would be paying.?
Loan Costs
Fannie Mae?s Oppenheimer said the caps may not have much effect on the cost of loans because borrowers often turn to their servicers to refinance and Fannie Mae is already doing business with more than 1,000 lenders.
?I?m not certain that the addition of many new originators would have a material change to margins in today?s market.?
Rob Hirt, chief executive officer of RPM Mortgage Inc., a Walnut Creek, California-based lender, understands the decision.
?If you?re looking at it from Fannie?s perspective, I don?t see how you can blame them,? he said. Still, ?the small guys are really getting whacked in some ways, which at the end of the day is bad for the consumer.?
Hirt said his firm, which will sell about half of its $6 billion of loans this year to Fannie Mae, has been told to expect that ?what you?re selling to us you can keep selling to us,? he said.
Direct Relationship
A direct relationship with Ginnie Mae, whose bond guarantees help lenders sell off FHA loans allowing low-down payments and mortgages for veterans, is also in demand. The agency, which has more than 300 approved issuers, relies on the companies to do work including advancing payments missed by borrowers to bond investors as they service outstanding loans.
Lykken, the managing partner of consultant Mortgage Banking Solutions, is doing work for four lenders seeking Ginnie Mae approval, which he said should be considered a ?privilege?requiring scrutiny. One has been waiting for more than a year.
?You send in your application and you don?t really hear anything for months, nada,? he said. ?People are up in arms about it. They?re frustrated, but they?re afraid to say anything.?
Ginnie Mae?s Tozer said it?s not changing its minimum standards, which represent a ?starting point? to getting its approval.
Holistic View
Instead, it?s looking at lenders in a more ?thoughtful?and ?holistic? way, often leading to more back and forth. For example, a company that plans to outsource servicing work to a less established firm may need to prove it has an executive experienced in the field on its own staff, he said.
?There?s no value to me or them in getting people in the program that aren?t going to be successful,? Tozer said in an interview at the conference.
Lenders forced to sell mortgages they originate to bigger companies, instead of directly tapping government programs, must usually give up contracts to manage outstanding debt created with new loans. Prices for those servicing rights have dropped as lenders such as Bank of America stopped buying them.
Even with rates on new loans at record lows and their default risk small, buyers pay three to four times the contract?s annual payments, down from five to six times historically, said Norcom Mortgage?s Philip DeFronzo. The yearly payments typically equal 0.25 percentage point of loan balances.
?It?s just not as competitive a marketplace right now,?said DeFronzo, president of Avon, Connecticut-based Norcom, which is among lenders holding on to more of those contracts. Firms that have to sell the servicing rights cheaply lose revenue that can be used to offer less-expensive mortgages.
Lenders also face loan standards from so-called aggregators that are stricter than they can get when dealing directly with government programs, said John Fearon, the majority owner of Fearon Financial LLC. The company, which also lends under the name Smarter Mortgages, is now seeking Fannie Mae approval.
?We?d probably not be as tight as some of the larger institutions in making our own underwriting decisions,? he said. ?It would give us the ability to serve a lot more of the market in the 11 states we?re in,? including Ohio and Texas.
Fed Governor Elizabeth Duke said this month the economy needs more small lenders and that new regulation may drive more out of business. These firms historically have been willing to give more consideration to good borrowers with unusual situations that bigger lenders don?t want to deal with, she said.
?You need to make sure you can still make the irregular loan, the one that doesn?t fit exactly in a box,? Duke said.
Regulators are writing rules such as national servicing guidelines that will be relatively more costly for smaller lenders to comply with, said Robert Bostrom, who served as general counsel for Freddie Mac for five years through 2011.
?There?s just not enough capacity in the marketplace,?said Bostrom, who is now at law firm SNR Denton. ?And we all know who?s going to end up paying for it: the consumer.?
To contact the reporters on this story: Jody Shenn in New York at jshenn@bloomberg.net; Clea Benson in Washington at cbenson20@bloomberg.net; and Heather Perlberg in New York at perlberg@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Alan Goldstein at agoldstein5@bloomberg.net; Rob Urban at robprag@bloomberg.net; Maura Reynolds at +1-202-654-7360 or mreynolds34@bloomberg.net.
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Fannie Mae Limiting Loans Helps JPMorgan Mortgage Profits