The city has paid about $3.7 million toward the bonds in each year since 2008, but much of that has been for interest, Finance Director Mike Kier said. Only $600,000 total has been for principal, or the amount it actually borrowed.
The increase to $4.7 million this year is due to a scheduled deadline to begin repaying the principal, Kier said.
To level out the annual payment totals, the city set its interest payments to decrease after the capital payment grace period, he said.
The increase is further softened by recent success in renting unused space at City Hall and by a decision to refinance of some of the bonds.
The bonds - issued to purchase the 15-story One Technology Center at 100 S. Cincinnati Ave., demolish vacated city structures, and fund relocation and security - were financially dependent on the city's ability to lease space it didn't need in the building.
The city struggled to find tenants for much of the five-year grace period on capital payments, but the building's occupancy rate jumped to about 93 percent after a recent agreement with Magellan Midstream Partners LP, which will rent the ninth floor.
City Hall's five tenants now pay the city's Public Facilities Authority $4.7 million a year, with some of that going to help repay the bonds and some going to building operating costs.
Without revenue from a fully-rented City Hall to offset expenses, officials previously estimated that the city would have to pay $8.9 million out of its own pocket for building expenses after 10 years.
That was envisioned as a possibility in 2010, when City Hall's vacancy rate remained unchanged from 2008 at nearly 20 percent under one method for calculating the figure. Officials had estimated that the building would be fully occupied by then.
Although a more fully-occupied City Hall has recently kept the city's out-of-pocket expenses down, any loss in tenants would force the city to pay more directly for operating expenses, Kier said.
Partly as insurance for such a loss, the city hopes to rent fairly soon its remaining unused space - about 48,000 square feet on its 14th floor, he said.
"That additional floor would be pretty important from a city standpoint," Kier said. "In the short term, it might allow us to pay maybe a little less, but that would be a policy decision."
That extra money could also be saved for other purposes, such as starting a fund to prepare for any future renovations, he said.
"The attraction of tenants and whatnot is a bigger job than I might have thought," Kier said. "Since we've been through some ups and downs - maybe more downs on the rental business - I might be a little more inclined to make sure that we'd be able to cover it if we had a tenant move out at some point."
The bonds were authorized at up to $76 million. That was based on an assumption that the city would use some of the money to create a debt reserve - a method of assuring the bond holder that the bond would be repaid if there was insufficient revenue, Kier said.
Instead, the city bought an insurance policy for the bonds because it was cheaper, he said.
Original Print Headline: City to start repaying its bond debt in earnest
The struggling department store chain this week will begin adding back some of the hundreds of sales it ditched last year in hopes of luring shoppers who were turned off when the discounts disappeared, CEO Ron Johnson told The Associated Press.?
Penney also plans to add price tags or signs for more than half of its merchandise to show customers how much they're saving by shopping at the chain ? a strategy used by a few other retailers. For store-branded items such as Arizona, Penney will show comparison prices from competitors.?
The reversal comes on the eve of the one-year anniversary of its original vow to almost completely get rid of the sales that Americans covet but that cut into a store's profits. The idea was to offer everyday low prices that customers could count on rather than the nearly 600 fleeting discounts, coupons and sales it once offered.?
The bold plan has been closely watched by others in the retail industry, which commonly offers deep discounts to draw shoppers. But so far the experiment has served as a cautionary tale of how difficult it is to change shoppers' habits: Penney next month is expected to report its fourth consecutive quarter of big sales drops and net losses. After losing more than half of its value, Penney's stock is trading at about $19. And the company's credit ratings are in junk status.?
Johnson, who rolled out the pricing plan shortly after taking the top job in November 2011, told The Associated Press the latest moves are not a "deviation" from his strategy but rather an "evolution."?
"Our sales have gone backward a little more than we expected, but that doesn't change the vision or the strategy," said Johnson, who previously masterminded Apple Inc.'s retail stores and Target Corp.'s cheap chic fashion strategy. "We made changes and we learned an incredible amount. That is what's informing our tactics as we go forward."?
But critics say Johnson is backpedaling. Walter Loeb, a New York-based retail consultant, said Johnson "is now realizing that he has to be more promotional to attract shoppers."?
The pricing strategy has been a key part of Johnson's plan to reinvent Penney, which had failed to change with the times as its competitors updated their stores to make them cool places to shop. The plan includes adding hip new brands such as Joe Fresh and replacing racks of clothing with small shops-within-stores by 2015. But this isn't the first time the pricing strategy has been tweaked.?
When it was rolled out in February 2012, the plan entailed permanently slashing prices on everything in the store by 40 percent. Penney decided to have just 12 monthlong sales events on some merchandise. And there would be periodic clearance events throughout the year.?
But the new pricing plan wasn't well received on Wall Street or Main Street, so six months after launching it, Johnson ditched the monthlong sales, saying that they were too confusing to shoppers. Johnson said Penney has learned that people don't shop on a monthly basis, but rather they buy when they need something for say, back-to-school or during the winter holidays. And during those times, he said, they're looking for even more value.?
"I still believe that the customer knows the right price, but they want help," he said.?
Penney declined to say how many sales events it will offer going forward, citing competitive reasons. But the company said the figure will still be well below the nearly 600 it used to offer. The company said the discounts will vary depending on the sale. From Feb. 1 through Feb. 14, for instance, shoppers will get 20 percent off some jewelry for Valentine's Day. One example: half-carat diamond heart pendants on sale for $96, below Penny's everyday price of $120.?
Penney said the decision to add tags or signs on much of its merchandise that shows the "manufacturer's suggested retail price" alongside Penney's "everyday" price was a result of his realization that shoppers want a reference price to consider.?
National brands were also asking Penney to show the suggested price to shoppers, he said. Penney began showing the suggested manufacturer's price on Izod men's merchandise last fall and was encouraged by the response.?
Burt Flickinger, a retail consultant, said the move could help Penney because manufacturers' suggested retail prices can be as much as 40 percent higher than what retailers wind up charging. The practice is common in the home appliance industry but spotty in the department-store industry because stores generally hike prices up even more to give shoppers the illusion of a big discount, he said.?
"The strategy will be helpful for shoppers to understand lower prices," Flickinger said. "At the same time, it will be tough to get consumers back in the store from competitors."?
But Craig Johnson, another retail consultant, said that adding the suggested manufacturer's price is just a gimmick. "The objective of this exercise is to maximize the perceived value for the purchase."?
Johnson said that for Penney's own store brands like Arizona and Worthington, the team will research other stores and will submit supporting data to its legal team for approval before it advertises comparison prices, using certain criteria. For example, they'll make sure the fabric used is of the same quality as its rivals. For jewelry, Penney is using the International Gemological Institute, a third-party appraiser.?
"There are no makeup prices here," Johnson said. "It's all about trying to communicate what it's worth to the customer."?
Penney will not show comparison prices for merchandise that is part of exclusive partnerships with brands such as Nicole Miller and Mango, however. The company said it's difficult to offer such references.?
To promote the strategy, Penney on Wednesday will begin launching TV, print and digital ads. One TV ad compares a $9 polo shirt under its store brand Arizona with $19 "elsewhere." "Two polos, same color, same vibrant, same details, same swing, same swagger, different prices," the ad said.?
Johnson reiterated that he expects Penney to return to sales growth sometime in 2013. That would be a welcome change for Penney, which has had steep sales and profit losses since the new strategy was launched.?
For the first nine months of its current fiscal year, Penney lost $433 million, or $1.98 per share compared with a loss of $65 million, or 30 cents per share in the year-ago period. Total sales dropped 23.1 percent to $9.1 billion.?
Analysts expect Penney to post a loss of 17 cents on sales of $4.22 billion for the fourth quarter. They expect the company's annual sales to fall by 23 percent, or nearly $4 billion, to $13.3 billion for the latest year. Revenue at stores opened at least a year ? a measure of a retailer's health ? are expected to drop 25 percent, in line with the third quarter, according to analyst polled by research firm FactSet.?
Meanwhile, investors have sent shares down more than 55 percent from a peak of $43 in the days after the plan was rolled out in February. Shares slipped 18 cents to $19.17 on Monday.?
"A year ago, we were launching a major transformation and didn't know what to expect," he said. "Today, I know what happened. Our team has a year's worth of history. This is going to be a great year because the new JCP is coming to life for customers."?
? 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
There are a lot of advantages of using weather proof bean bag items such as waterproof boards and weather proof bean bags.
Since we can't control mother nature if we are in the middle of a heated cornhole game (been there) and it starts to rain we don't have to worry about ruining the bags and boards.
Another reason might be for the fans that like to take the game to the lake, of course it is going to be by the water so there is always going to be a chance that the equipment may get wet, with weather proof gear problem solved.
To learn more about bean bag toss gear visit this page.
Using an exotic form of silicon could substantially improve the efficiency of solar cells, according to computer simulations by researchers at the University of California, Davis, and in Hungary. The work was published Jan. 25 in the journalPhysical Review Letters.
Solar cells are based on the photoelectric effect: a photon, or particle of light, hits a silicon crystal and generates a negatively charged electron and a positively charged hole. Collecting those electron-hole pairs generates electric current.
Conventional solar cells generate one electron-hole pair per incoming photon, and have a theoretical maximum efficiency of 33 percent. One exciting new route to improved efficiency is to generate more than one electron-hole pair per photon, said Giulia Galli, professor of chemistry at UC Davis and co-author of the paper.
"This approach is capable of increasing the maximum efficiency to 42 percent, beyond any solar cell available today, which would be a pretty big deal," said lead author Stefan Wippermann, a postdoctoral researcher at UC Davis.
"In fact, there is reason to believe that if parabolic mirrors are used to focus the sunlight on such a new-paradigm solar cell, its efficiency could reach as high as 70 percent," Wippermann said.
Galli said that nanoparticles have a size of nanometers, typically just a few atoms across. Because of their small size, many of their properties are different from bulk materials. In particular, the probability of generating more than one electron-hole pair is much enhanced, driven by an effect called "quantum confinement." Experiments to explore this paradigm are being pursued by researchers at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colo., as well as at UC Davis.
"But with nanoparticles of conventional silicon, the paradigm works only in ultraviolet light," Wippermann said. "This new approach will become useful only when it is demonstrated to work in visible sunlight."
The researchers simulated the behavior of a structure of silicon called silicon BC8, which is formed under high pressure but is stable at normal pressures, much as diamond is a form of carbon formed under high pressure but stable at normal pressures.
The computer simulations were run through the National Energy Research Scientific Supercomputing Center at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, which granted the project 10 million hours of supercomputer time.
The simulations demonstrated that nanoparticles of silicon BC8 indeed generate multiple electron-hole pairs per photon even when exposed to visible light.
"This is more than an academic exercise. A Harvard-MIT paper showed that when normal silicon solar cells are irradiated with laser light, the energy the laser emits may create a local pressure high enough to form BC8 nanocrystals. Thus, laser or chemical pressure treatment of existing solar cells may turn them into these higher-efficiency cells," said co-author Gergely Zimanyi, professor of physics at UC Davis.
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University of California - Davis: http://www.ucdavis.edu
Thanks to University of California - Davis for this article.
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Don't think for a minute that "Downton Abbey" isn't as soapy as "The Young and the Restless," or that any characters are safe. In a heart-wrenching turn on Sunday's episode, Sybil's childbirth at Downton went horribly, horribly wrong. While her childhood doctor Dr. Clarkson fought to have her taken to the hospital for a new-fangled C-section, the new doctor Robert brought in, Sir Philip Tapsell, insisted she would be fine.
Joss Barratt / Carnival Films
Lady Sybil and Tom hold their newborn daughter, for the family's one short moment of happiness.
She was not. After delivering a healthy daughter, Sybil went into eclampsia-prompted seizures and died while her family begged for someone, anyone, to do something. Cora blamed Robert, Robert blamed himself, and everyone is devastated, especially new widower Tom.
Sybil's death was agonizing to watch, especially the frustration of how the family's social class affected their decision-making. Robert wanted Sir Philip -- who'd delivered the children of duchesses -- to deliver his grandchild, and poor Dr. Clarkson's past work with Matthew and Lavinia didn't exactly help his cause. And Cora being on Clarkson's side -- "I would have taken her (to the hospital) an hour ago" -- didn't help, as she deferred to her husband, as was expected.
The death shook the massive house. Seeing the white-faced staff in nightclothes hearing the news and watching tough guy Thomas break down was a brilliant example of how much Sybil, the "sweetest spirit under this roof," was loved. And other moments nailed it as well -- the motherless baby's cry just as Sybil passed away, and the Dowager Countess' suddenly unsteady legs as she entered the house after hearing the news. "We've seen some troubles, you and I," she told Carson. "Nothing worse than this."
But darn it, Mary and Edith, can't you just get along? With Sybil's dead body lying before them, Edith tried again to get her oldest sister to say they'll try and pull together but Mary just can't do it.
The other plots couldn't help but be completely buried under the weight of Sybil's death. Isobel may regret hiring clumsy Ethel as her cook, but at least it's respectable work. New footman Jimmy's attractive to the female servants, but it's Thomas' interest in him that rattled him. Matthew was worried that he's infertile, even though he and Mary have only been wed a few months. Mary's furious that Matthew was tentatively questioning her father's business acumen. And Edith got an offer for a regular newspaper column, sparked by her letter to the Times about women's suffrage.
Joss Barratt / Carnival Films
Ladies Mary and Edith were thrilled to gain a niece, but later, even the loss of their sister couldn't pull them together.
Bates and Anna's plot received the most screen time after poor Sybil, but is there anyone out there who's not sick of this one yet? Vera Bates' best friend, Mrs. Bartlett, let slip to Anna that she saw Vera scrubbing pastry out from under her nails, which means that Vera herself made the poisoned pie that killed her. Getting Mrs. Bartlett to admit what she saw is going to be a challenge, but she'd better admit it soon, because time just stops when the cameras travel to Bates' dreary prison.
Rest in peace, Lady Sybil. Like Melanie in "Gone With the Wind," you were the quiet glue that held the Crawleys together, and with you gone, more cracks will emerge in the family facade.
Best Dowager Countess quotes:
"When may she expect an offer to appear on the London stage?" ?-- Because obviously that's Edith's next step after a newspaper column.
"If there is one thing that I am quite indifferent to it is Sir Philip Tapsell's feelings." -- If only Robert had felt the same way about Sybil's snooty doctor.
"A woman of my age can face reality far better than most men." -- So Robert, you needn't protect her from the word "urine."
"Don't look at me. Cora is right. The decision lies with the chauffeur." ?-- Tom may be Sybil's husband, but he still once drove cars at Downton, and no one will ever let him forget it.
What will you miss most about Sybil? Tell us on our Facebook page.
Under pressure from his wife and grandchildren, the former GOP congressman will renege on a public pledge to smoke marijuana, which he made after losing a bet on Colorado's pot-legalization initiative on Election Day.
Tancredo, a conservative Republican who has been out of Congress since 2009, supported Colorado's Amendment 64, which legalized marijuana in his home state when it passed on election day. Tancredo said he had never smoked marijuana and that he did not condone its use, but argued that the government shouldn't tell adults what they can or can't ingest.
The former congressman never thought it would pass. "I thought it would take at least one more time around to do it," Tancredo told ABC News last week. He made a bet with film producer Adam Hartle, who was in Colorado to make a film on the pot measure, agreeing to smoke marijuana if it became legal.
Recently, Tancredo said he would make good on the bet, agreeing to inhale "just a puff" with Hartle, leaving the filmmaker to handle the marijuana procurement. On Friday, he even suggested Democratic Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper should join in.
But that made a lot of people unhappy, including Tancredo's family, and now the former congressman says he won't do it.
"My wife is absolutely-she's pissed," Tancredo told ABC News last week. "Oh man, she is not happy."
Neither were his conservative backers.
"My conservative friends just believe what I'm doing is encouraging people to smoke it," Tancredo said. "I don't think people should. That decision is up to an individual. An adult, in this society, is not something the government should have any control over."
Finally, on Friday night, Tancredo cracked under pressure from his grandchildren.
They were "very upset with grandpa," Tancredo told ABC News, and for him, that was it.
"Will have to welch. Political heat is one thing. Am use to that," Tancredo wrote in an email. "Heat from my family is quite another."
Bioinspired fibers change color when stretchedPublic release date: 28-Jan-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Caroline Perry cperry@seas.harvard.edu 617-496-1351 Harvard University
Color-tunable photonic fibers mimic the fruit of the 'bastard hogberry' plant
Cambridge, Mass. January 28, 2013 - A team of materials scientists at Harvard University and the University of Exeter, UK, have invented a new fiber that changes color when stretched. Inspired by nature, the researchers identified and replicated the unique structural elements that create the bright iridescent blue color of a tropical plant's fruit.
The multilayered fiber, described today in the journal Advanced Materials, could lend itself to the creation of smart fabrics that visibly react to heat or pressure.
"Our new fiber is based on a structure we found in nature, and through clever engineering we've taken its capabilities a step further," says lead author Mathias Kolle, a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS). "The plant, of course, cannot change color. By combining its structure with an elastic material, however, we've created an artificial version that passes through a full rainbow of colors as it's stretched."
Since the evolution of the first eye on Earth more than 500 million years ago, the success of many organisms has relied upon the way they interact with light and color, making them useful models for the creation of new materials. For seeds and fruit in particular, bright color is thought to have evolved to attract the agents of seed dispersal, especially birds.
The fruit of the South American tropical plant, Margaritaria nobilis, commonly called "bastard hogberry," is an intriguing example of this adaptation. The ultra-bright blue fruit, which is low in nutritious content, mimics a more fleshy and nutritious competitor. Deceived birds eat the fruit and ultimately release its seeds over a wide geographic area.
"The fruit of this bastard hogberry plant was scientifically delightful to pick," says principal investigator Peter Vukusic, Associate Professor in Natural Photonics at the University of Exeter. "The light-manipulating architecture its surface layer presents, which has evolved to serve a specific biological function, has inspired an extremely useful and interesting technological design."
Vukusic and his collaborators at Harvard studied the structural origin of the seed's vibrant color. They discovered that the upper cells in the seed's skin contain a curved, repeating pattern, which creates color through the interference of light waves. (A similar mechanism is responsible for the bright colors of soap bubbles.) The team's analysis revealed that multiple layers of cells in the seed coat are each made up of a cylindrically layered architecture with high regularity on the nano- scale.
The team replicated the key structural elements of the fruit to create flexible, stretchable and color-changing photonic fibers using an innovative roll-up mechanism perfected in the Harvard laboratories.
"For our artificial structure, we cut down the complexity of the fruit to just its key elements," explains Kolle. "We use very thin fibers and wrap a polymer bilayer around them. That gives us the refractive index contrast, the right number of layers, and the curved, cylindrical cross-section that we need to produce these vivid colors."
The researchers say that the process could be scaled up and developed to suit industrial production.
"Our fiber-rolling technique allows the use of a wide range of materials, especially elastic ones, with the color-tuning range exceeding by an order of magnitude anything that has been reported for thermally drawn fibers," says coauthor Joanna Aizenberg, Amy Smith Berylson Professor of Materials Science at Harvard SEAS, and Kolle's adviser. Aizenberg is also Director of the Kavli Institute for Bionano Science and Technology at Harvard and a Core Faculty Member at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard.
The fibers' superior mechanical properties, combined with their demonstrated color brilliance and tunability, make them very versatile. For instance, the fibers can be wound to coat complex shapes. Because the fibers change color under strain, the technology could lend itself to smart sports textiles that change color in areas of muscle tension, or that sense when an object is placed under strain as a result of heat.
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Additional coauthors included Alfred Lethbridge at the University of Exeter, Moritz Kreysing at Ludwig Maximilians University (Germany), and Jeremy B. Baumberg, Professor of Nanophotonics at the University of Cambridge (UK).
This research was supported by the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative, by the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, and through a postdoctoral research fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. The researchers also benefited from facilities at the Harvard Center for Nanoscale Systems, which is part of the National Nanotechnology Infrastructure Network supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation.
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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.
Bioinspired fibers change color when stretchedPublic release date: 28-Jan-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Caroline Perry cperry@seas.harvard.edu 617-496-1351 Harvard University
Color-tunable photonic fibers mimic the fruit of the 'bastard hogberry' plant
Cambridge, Mass. January 28, 2013 - A team of materials scientists at Harvard University and the University of Exeter, UK, have invented a new fiber that changes color when stretched. Inspired by nature, the researchers identified and replicated the unique structural elements that create the bright iridescent blue color of a tropical plant's fruit.
The multilayered fiber, described today in the journal Advanced Materials, could lend itself to the creation of smart fabrics that visibly react to heat or pressure.
"Our new fiber is based on a structure we found in nature, and through clever engineering we've taken its capabilities a step further," says lead author Mathias Kolle, a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS). "The plant, of course, cannot change color. By combining its structure with an elastic material, however, we've created an artificial version that passes through a full rainbow of colors as it's stretched."
Since the evolution of the first eye on Earth more than 500 million years ago, the success of many organisms has relied upon the way they interact with light and color, making them useful models for the creation of new materials. For seeds and fruit in particular, bright color is thought to have evolved to attract the agents of seed dispersal, especially birds.
The fruit of the South American tropical plant, Margaritaria nobilis, commonly called "bastard hogberry," is an intriguing example of this adaptation. The ultra-bright blue fruit, which is low in nutritious content, mimics a more fleshy and nutritious competitor. Deceived birds eat the fruit and ultimately release its seeds over a wide geographic area.
"The fruit of this bastard hogberry plant was scientifically delightful to pick," says principal investigator Peter Vukusic, Associate Professor in Natural Photonics at the University of Exeter. "The light-manipulating architecture its surface layer presents, which has evolved to serve a specific biological function, has inspired an extremely useful and interesting technological design."
Vukusic and his collaborators at Harvard studied the structural origin of the seed's vibrant color. They discovered that the upper cells in the seed's skin contain a curved, repeating pattern, which creates color through the interference of light waves. (A similar mechanism is responsible for the bright colors of soap bubbles.) The team's analysis revealed that multiple layers of cells in the seed coat are each made up of a cylindrically layered architecture with high regularity on the nano- scale.
The team replicated the key structural elements of the fruit to create flexible, stretchable and color-changing photonic fibers using an innovative roll-up mechanism perfected in the Harvard laboratories.
"For our artificial structure, we cut down the complexity of the fruit to just its key elements," explains Kolle. "We use very thin fibers and wrap a polymer bilayer around them. That gives us the refractive index contrast, the right number of layers, and the curved, cylindrical cross-section that we need to produce these vivid colors."
The researchers say that the process could be scaled up and developed to suit industrial production.
"Our fiber-rolling technique allows the use of a wide range of materials, especially elastic ones, with the color-tuning range exceeding by an order of magnitude anything that has been reported for thermally drawn fibers," says coauthor Joanna Aizenberg, Amy Smith Berylson Professor of Materials Science at Harvard SEAS, and Kolle's adviser. Aizenberg is also Director of the Kavli Institute for Bionano Science and Technology at Harvard and a Core Faculty Member at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard.
The fibers' superior mechanical properties, combined with their demonstrated color brilliance and tunability, make them very versatile. For instance, the fibers can be wound to coat complex shapes. Because the fibers change color under strain, the technology could lend itself to smart sports textiles that change color in areas of muscle tension, or that sense when an object is placed under strain as a result of heat.
###
Additional coauthors included Alfred Lethbridge at the University of Exeter, Moritz Kreysing at Ludwig Maximilians University (Germany), and Jeremy B. Baumberg, Professor of Nanophotonics at the University of Cambridge (UK).
This research was supported by the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative, by the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, and through a postdoctoral research fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. The researchers also benefited from facilities at the Harvard Center for Nanoscale Systems, which is part of the National Nanotechnology Infrastructure Network supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation.
[ | 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.
SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China is considering lifting a decade-long ban on video game consoles, the official China Daily newspaper reported on Monday, sending shares of major hardware makers such as Sony Corp and Nintendo Co Ltd surging.
In November, Sony's PlayStation 3 received a quality certification from a Chinese safety standards body, prompting speculation that Beijing would lift the ban, which the government said was imposed in 2000 to safeguard children's mental and physical development.
"We are reviewing the policy and have conducted some surveys and held discussions with other ministries on the possibility of opening up the game console market," the China Daily quoted an unnamed source from the Ministry of Culture as saying.
"However, since the ban was issued by seven ministries more than a decade ago, we will need approval from all parties to lift it."
An official at the ministry's cultural market department, which is responsible for the legislation, denied the report.
"The ministry is not considering lifting the ban," the official, who identified himself only as Bai, told Reuters.
In Tokyo, Sony shares traded 8 percent higher while Nintendo gained over 3.5 percent, outperforming a broadly weaker Nikkei index.
Yoshiko Uchiyama, a spokeswoman for Sony Computer Entertainment, a unit of Sony, said she could not comment directly on the report.
"Our stance towards business in China has not changed. Of course, we acknowledge China as a promising market for our business, and we are always considering and preparing business opportunities and possibilities (in the country)," she said.
A Nintendo spokesman declined to comment.
Earlier moves suggest Chinese authorities are ready to take a softer line on game consoles.
Last year, Lenovo Group Ltd launched the Eedoo CT510, a motion sensing device similar in concept to Microsoft Corp's Kinect extension for its Xbox game console. Lenovo marketed the Eedoo as an "exercise and entertainment machine".
Video game consoles are banned in China, but online gaming and playing games on mobile devices are both extremely common, which analysts say limits the potential upside for Sony and rival game machine makers.
(Reporting by Kazunori Takada in SHANGHAI and Mari Saito in TOKYO; Editing by Daniel Magnowski)
By Janice WoodAssociate News Editor Reviewed by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on January 27, 2013
New research has found that qigong, an ancient Chinese mind-body practice, has been found to reduce depression and improve the quality of life in women undergoing radiation for breast cancer.
The study examined qigong in patients receiving radiation therapy and included a follow-up period to assess its benefits over time, according to researchers.
?We were [...] particularly interested to see if qigong would benefit patients experiencing depressive symptoms at the start of treatment,? said Lorenzo Cohen, Ph.D., a professor in the University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center?s Departments of General Oncology and Behavioral Science.
?It is important for cancer patients to manage stress because it can have a profoundly negative effect on biological systems and inflammatory profiles.?
For the study, Cohen and his colleagues recruited 96 women with stage 1-3 breast cancer from Fudan University Shanghai Cancer Center in Shanghai, China.
About half of the women ? 49 ? were randomly assigned to a qigong group consisting of five 40-minute classes each week during their five-to-six week course of radiation therapy. The remaining 47 women comprised a control group receiving standard care.
The program incorporated a modified version of Chinese medical qigong, which consisted of synchronizing one?s breath with various exercises, the researchers explained.
Participants in both groups completed assessments at the beginning, middle and end of radiation therapy and then one and three months later. Different aspects of quality of life were measured, including depressive symptoms, fatigue, sleep disturbances, and overall quality of life.
According to the researchers, patients in the qigong group reported a steady decline in depressive symptom scores beginning at the end of radiation therapy, with a mean score of 12.3, through the three month post-radiation follow-up with a score of 9.5. No changes were noted in the control group over time, the study found.
The study also found that qigong was especially helpful for women reporting high baseline depressive symptoms, Cohen said.
?We examined women?s depressive symptoms at the start of the study to see if women with higher levels would benefit more,? he said.
?In fact, women with low levels of depressive symptoms at the start of radiotherapy had good quality of life throughout treatment and three months later regardless of whether they were in the qigong or control group. However, women with high depressive symptoms in the control group reported the worst levels of depressive symptoms, fatigue, and overall quality of life that were significantly improved for the women in the qigong group.?
As the benefits of qigong were largely observed after treatment concluded, researchers suggest qigong may prevent a delayed symptom burden or expedite the recovery process, especially for women with elevated depressive symptoms at the start of radiation therapy. Cohen notes the delayed effect could be explained by the cumulative nature of the treatments, as the benefits often take time to be realized.
According to the researchers, the findings support other previously reported trials examining the benefits of qigong, but are too preliminary to offer clinical recommendations.
They note that additional research is needed to understand the possible biological mechanisms involved and further explore the use of qigong in ethnically diverse populations with different forms of cancer.
The study was published in the journal Cancer.
Source: University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center
APA Reference Wood, J. (2013). Qigong Improves Quality of Life for Breast Cancer Patients. Psych Central. Retrieved on January 28, 2013, from http://psychcentral.com/news/2013/01/27/qigong-improves-quality-of-life-for-breast-cancer-patients/50826.html
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Contact: David Ruth david@rice.edu 713-348-6327 Rice University
Researchers create fine patterns that combine single-atom-thick graphene, boron nitride
HOUSTON (Jan. 28, 2013) Rice University scientists have taken an important step toward the creation of two-dimensional electronics with a process to make patterns in atom-thick layers that combine a conductor and an insulator.
The materials at play graphene and hexagonal boron nitride have been merged into sheets and built into a variety of patterns at nanoscale dimensions.
Rice introduced a technique to stitch the identically structured materials together nearly three years ago. Since then, the idea has received a lot of attention from researchers interested in the prospect of building 2-D, atomic-layer circuits, said Rice materials scientist Pulickel Ajayan. He is one of the authors of the new work that appears this week in Nature Nanotechnology. In particular, Ajayan noted that Cornell University scientists reported an advance late last year on the art of making atomic-layer heterostructures through sequential growth schemes.
This week's contribution by Rice offers manufacturers the possibility of shrinking electronic devices into even smaller packages. While Rice's technical capabilities limited features to a resolution of about 100 nanometers, the only real limits are those defined by modern lithographic techniques, according to the researchers. (A nanometer is one-billionth of a meter.)
"It should be possible to make fully functional devices with circuits 30, even 20 nanometers wide, all in two dimensions," said Rice researcher Jun Lou, a co-author of the new paper. That would make circuits on about the same scale as in current semiconductor fabrication, he said.
Graphene has been touted as a wonder material since its discovery in the last decade. Even at one atom thick, the hexagonal array of carbon atoms has proven its potential as a fascinating electronic material. But to build a working device, conductors alone will not do. Graphene-based electronics require similar, compatible 2-D materials for other components, and researchers have found hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) works nicely as an insulator.
H-BN looks like graphene, with the same chicken-wire atomic array. The earlier work at Rice showed that merging graphene and h-BN via chemical vapor deposition (CVD) created sheets with pools of the two that afforded some control of the material's electronic properties. Ajayan said at the time that the creation offered "a great playground for materials scientists."
He has since concluded that the area of two-dimensional materials beyond graphene "has grown significantly and will play out as one of the key exciting materials in the near future."
His prediction bears fruit in the new work, in which finely detailed patterns of graphene are laced into gaps created in sheets of h-BN. Combs, bars, concentric rings and even microscopic Rice Owls were laid down through a lithographic process. The interface between elements, seen clearly in scanning transmission electron microscope images taken at Oak Ridge National Laboratories, shows a razor-sharp transition from graphene to h-BN along a subnanometer line.
"This is not a simple quilt," Lou said. "It's very precisely engineered. We can control the domain sizes and the domain shapes, both of which are necessary to make electronic devices."
The new technique also began with CVD. Lead author Zheng Liu, a Rice research scientist, and his colleagues first laid down a sheet of h-BN. Laser-cut photoresistant masks were placed over the h-BN, and exposed material was etched away with argon gas. (A focused ion beam system was later used to create even finer patterns, down to 100-nanometer resolution, without masks.) After the masks were washed away, graphene was grown via CVD in the open spaces, where it bonded edge-to-edge with the h-BN. The hybrid layer could then be picked up and placed on any substrate.
While there's much work ahead to characterize the atomic bonds where graphene and h-BN domains meet and to analyze potential defects along the boundaries, Liu's electrical measurements proved the components' qualities remain intact.
"One important thing Zheng showed is that even by doing all kinds of growth, then etching, then regrowth, the intrinsic properties of these two materials are not affected," Lou said. "Insulators stay insulators; they're not doped by the carbon. And the graphene still looks very good. That's important, because we want to be sure what we're growing is exactly what we want."
Liu said the next step is to place a third element, a semiconductor, into the 2-D fabric. "We're trying very hard to integrate this into the platform," he said. "If we can do that, we can build truly integrated in-plane devices." That would give new options to manufacturers toying with the idea of flexible electronics, he said.
"The contribution of this paper is to demonstrate the general process," Lou added. "It's robust, it's repeatable and it creates materials with very nice properties and with dimensions that are at the limit of what is possible."
###
Co-authors of the paper are graduate students Lulu Ma, Gang Shi, Yongji Gong, Ken Hackenberg, Sidong Lei and Jiangnan Zhang; Aydin Babakhani, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering; and Robert Vajtai, a faculty fellow in mechanical engineering and materials science, all at Rice; Wu Zhou, a research associate at Vanderbilt University and Wigner Fellow at Oak Ridge National Laboratory; Xuebei Yang, a former research assistant at Rice, now at Agilent Technologies; Jingjiang Yu, a scientist at Agilent Technologies; and Juan-Carlos Idrobo, a research professor of physics at Vanderbilt and a guest scientist at Oak Ridge. Lou is an associate professor of mechanical engineering and materials science. Ajayan is the Benjamin M. and Mary Greenwood Anderson Professor in Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science and of chemistry at Rice.
The work was supported by U.S. Army Research Office and U.S. Office of Naval Research Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative grants; the Nanoelectronics Research Corp; a U.S.-Japan Cooperative Research and Education in Terahertz grant; the Welch Foundation; the National Science Foundation; and Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Shared Research Equipment User Program, sponsored by the Office of Basic Energy Sciences, U.S. Department of Energy.
This news release can be found online at news.rice.edu.
Follow Rice News and Media Relations via Twitter @RiceUNews
A photolithography process was used at Rice University to develop a patterned, one-atom-thick hybrid of graphene and hexagonal boron nitride (hBN). Graphene is a conductor and hBN is an insulator, so the 2-D material has unique electrical properties. (Credit: Zheng Liu/Rice University)
A scanning transmission electron microscope image shows a razor-sharp transition between the hexagonal boron nitride domain at top left and graphene at bottom right in the 2-D hybrid material created at Rice University. (Credit: Oak Ridge National Laboratories/Rice University)
An atom-thick Rice Owl (scale bar equals 100 micrometers) was created to show the ability to make fine patterns in hybrid graphene/hexagonal boron nitride (hBN). In this image, the owl is hBN and the lighter material around it is graphene. The ability to pattern a conductor (graphene) and insulator (hBN) into a single layer may advance the ability to shrink electronic devices. (Credit: Zheng Liu/Rice University)
Located on a 300-acre forested campus in Houston, Rice University is consistently ranked among the nation's top 20 universities by U.S. News & World Report. Rice has highly respected schools of Architecture, Business, Continuing Studies, Engineering, Humanities, Music, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences and is home to the Baker Institute for Public Policy. With 3,708 undergraduates and 2,374 graduate students, Rice's undergraduate student-to-faculty ratio is 6-to-1. Its residential college system builds close-knit communities and lifelong friendships, just one reason why Rice has been ranked No. 1 for best quality of life multiple times by the Princeton Review and No. 2 for "best value" among private universities by Kiplinger's Personal Finance. To read "What they're saying about Rice," go to http://tinyurl.com/AboutRice.
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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.
Contact: David Ruth david@rice.edu 713-348-6327 Rice University
Researchers create fine patterns that combine single-atom-thick graphene, boron nitride
HOUSTON (Jan. 28, 2013) Rice University scientists have taken an important step toward the creation of two-dimensional electronics with a process to make patterns in atom-thick layers that combine a conductor and an insulator.
The materials at play graphene and hexagonal boron nitride have been merged into sheets and built into a variety of patterns at nanoscale dimensions.
Rice introduced a technique to stitch the identically structured materials together nearly three years ago. Since then, the idea has received a lot of attention from researchers interested in the prospect of building 2-D, atomic-layer circuits, said Rice materials scientist Pulickel Ajayan. He is one of the authors of the new work that appears this week in Nature Nanotechnology. In particular, Ajayan noted that Cornell University scientists reported an advance late last year on the art of making atomic-layer heterostructures through sequential growth schemes.
This week's contribution by Rice offers manufacturers the possibility of shrinking electronic devices into even smaller packages. While Rice's technical capabilities limited features to a resolution of about 100 nanometers, the only real limits are those defined by modern lithographic techniques, according to the researchers. (A nanometer is one-billionth of a meter.)
"It should be possible to make fully functional devices with circuits 30, even 20 nanometers wide, all in two dimensions," said Rice researcher Jun Lou, a co-author of the new paper. That would make circuits on about the same scale as in current semiconductor fabrication, he said.
Graphene has been touted as a wonder material since its discovery in the last decade. Even at one atom thick, the hexagonal array of carbon atoms has proven its potential as a fascinating electronic material. But to build a working device, conductors alone will not do. Graphene-based electronics require similar, compatible 2-D materials for other components, and researchers have found hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) works nicely as an insulator.
H-BN looks like graphene, with the same chicken-wire atomic array. The earlier work at Rice showed that merging graphene and h-BN via chemical vapor deposition (CVD) created sheets with pools of the two that afforded some control of the material's electronic properties. Ajayan said at the time that the creation offered "a great playground for materials scientists."
He has since concluded that the area of two-dimensional materials beyond graphene "has grown significantly and will play out as one of the key exciting materials in the near future."
His prediction bears fruit in the new work, in which finely detailed patterns of graphene are laced into gaps created in sheets of h-BN. Combs, bars, concentric rings and even microscopic Rice Owls were laid down through a lithographic process. The interface between elements, seen clearly in scanning transmission electron microscope images taken at Oak Ridge National Laboratories, shows a razor-sharp transition from graphene to h-BN along a subnanometer line.
"This is not a simple quilt," Lou said. "It's very precisely engineered. We can control the domain sizes and the domain shapes, both of which are necessary to make electronic devices."
The new technique also began with CVD. Lead author Zheng Liu, a Rice research scientist, and his colleagues first laid down a sheet of h-BN. Laser-cut photoresistant masks were placed over the h-BN, and exposed material was etched away with argon gas. (A focused ion beam system was later used to create even finer patterns, down to 100-nanometer resolution, without masks.) After the masks were washed away, graphene was grown via CVD in the open spaces, where it bonded edge-to-edge with the h-BN. The hybrid layer could then be picked up and placed on any substrate.
While there's much work ahead to characterize the atomic bonds where graphene and h-BN domains meet and to analyze potential defects along the boundaries, Liu's electrical measurements proved the components' qualities remain intact.
"One important thing Zheng showed is that even by doing all kinds of growth, then etching, then regrowth, the intrinsic properties of these two materials are not affected," Lou said. "Insulators stay insulators; they're not doped by the carbon. And the graphene still looks very good. That's important, because we want to be sure what we're growing is exactly what we want."
Liu said the next step is to place a third element, a semiconductor, into the 2-D fabric. "We're trying very hard to integrate this into the platform," he said. "If we can do that, we can build truly integrated in-plane devices." That would give new options to manufacturers toying with the idea of flexible electronics, he said.
"The contribution of this paper is to demonstrate the general process," Lou added. "It's robust, it's repeatable and it creates materials with very nice properties and with dimensions that are at the limit of what is possible."
###
Co-authors of the paper are graduate students Lulu Ma, Gang Shi, Yongji Gong, Ken Hackenberg, Sidong Lei and Jiangnan Zhang; Aydin Babakhani, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering; and Robert Vajtai, a faculty fellow in mechanical engineering and materials science, all at Rice; Wu Zhou, a research associate at Vanderbilt University and Wigner Fellow at Oak Ridge National Laboratory; Xuebei Yang, a former research assistant at Rice, now at Agilent Technologies; Jingjiang Yu, a scientist at Agilent Technologies; and Juan-Carlos Idrobo, a research professor of physics at Vanderbilt and a guest scientist at Oak Ridge. Lou is an associate professor of mechanical engineering and materials science. Ajayan is the Benjamin M. and Mary Greenwood Anderson Professor in Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science and of chemistry at Rice.
The work was supported by U.S. Army Research Office and U.S. Office of Naval Research Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative grants; the Nanoelectronics Research Corp; a U.S.-Japan Cooperative Research and Education in Terahertz grant; the Welch Foundation; the National Science Foundation; and Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Shared Research Equipment User Program, sponsored by the Office of Basic Energy Sciences, U.S. Department of Energy.
This news release can be found online at news.rice.edu.
Follow Rice News and Media Relations via Twitter @RiceUNews
A photolithography process was used at Rice University to develop a patterned, one-atom-thick hybrid of graphene and hexagonal boron nitride (hBN). Graphene is a conductor and hBN is an insulator, so the 2-D material has unique electrical properties. (Credit: Zheng Liu/Rice University)
A scanning transmission electron microscope image shows a razor-sharp transition between the hexagonal boron nitride domain at top left and graphene at bottom right in the 2-D hybrid material created at Rice University. (Credit: Oak Ridge National Laboratories/Rice University)
An atom-thick Rice Owl (scale bar equals 100 micrometers) was created to show the ability to make fine patterns in hybrid graphene/hexagonal boron nitride (hBN). In this image, the owl is hBN and the lighter material around it is graphene. The ability to pattern a conductor (graphene) and insulator (hBN) into a single layer may advance the ability to shrink electronic devices. (Credit: Zheng Liu/Rice University)
Located on a 300-acre forested campus in Houston, Rice University is consistently ranked among the nation's top 20 universities by U.S. News & World Report. Rice has highly respected schools of Architecture, Business, Continuing Studies, Engineering, Humanities, Music, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences and is home to the Baker Institute for Public Policy. With 3,708 undergraduates and 2,374 graduate students, Rice's undergraduate student-to-faculty ratio is 6-to-1. Its residential college system builds close-knit communities and lifelong friendships, just one reason why Rice has been ranked No. 1 for best quality of life multiple times by the Princeton Review and No. 2 for "best value" among private universities by Kiplinger's Personal Finance. To read "What they're saying about Rice," go to http://tinyurl.com/AboutRice.
[ | 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.
WASHINGTON (AP) ? Republican and Democratic lawmakers were cautiously optimistic Sunday that a long-sought overhaul of the nation's immigration system that includes a pathway to citizenship for the 11 million illegal immigrants currently in the country will clear Congress this year, the result of changes in the political landscape shown in November's election.
"We are trying to work our way through some very difficult issues," said Illinois' Sen. Richard Durbin, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate. "But, we are committed to a comprehensive approach to finally, in this country, have an immigration law we can live with. We have virtually been going maybe 25 years without a clear statement about immigration policy. That's unacceptable in this nation of immigrants."
Sen. Robert Menendez, who along with Durbin and Sen. John McCain, is part of the six-member, bipartisan Senate group working on a framework for immigration legislation to be announced this week, said current politics dictate that a pathway for citizenship must be included.
"Let's be very clear: having a pathway to earned legalization is an essential element. And I think that we are largely moving in that direction as an agreement," said Menendez, D-N.J., said.
But the package "will have the enhancement of the border security," he said, nodding to Republicans' priority to tighten borders to prevent future illegal immigration.
He also said the package would have to crack down on employers hiring undocumented workers.
Arizona Republican McCain has returned to the issue after having led a failed push to fix the nation's broken immigration system ahead of his 2008 bid for the White House.
McCain said: "What's changed is, honestly, is that there is a new, I think, appreciation on both sides of the aisle ? including, maybe more importantly on the Republican side of the aisle, that we have to enact a comprehensive immigration reform bill."
Despite making little progress on immigration in his first term, President Barack Obama won more than 70 percent of the Latino vote, in part because of the conservative positions on immigration that Republican nominee Mitt Romney staked out during the GOP primary. Latino voters accounted for 10 percent of the electorate in November.
Obama is to press his case for immigration changes during a trip to Las Vegas Tuesday: a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants that includes paying fines and back taxes; increased border security; mandatory penalties for businesses that employ unauthorized immigrants; and improvements to the legal immigration system, including giving green cards to high-skilled workers and lifting caps on legal immigration for the immediate family members of U.S. citizens.
In an opinion piece published online Sunday in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Sen. Marco Rubio, also a member of the bipartisan Senate group, laid out his proposal to address the issue. The Florida Republican, son of Cuban immigrants, wrote that "significant progress" on enforcing immigration laws must be certified before unauthorized immigrants now in the country are allowed to apply for residency and "get in the back of the line."
Rep. Paul Ryan, the 2012 Republican candidate for vice president, said he backs Rubio's proposal.
"Immigration is a good thing. We're here because of immigration. We need to make sure it works," Wisconsin's Ryan said.
If Republicans fail to act, they will pay the price in elections for generations, McCain warned.
"Well, I'll give you a little straight talk: Look at the last election... We are losing dramatically the Hispanic vote, which we think should be ours for a variety of reasons," McCain said.
McCain and Menendez spoke with ABC's "This Week," Durbin appeared on "Fox News Sunday" and Ryan was on NBC's "Meet the Press."
___
Associated Press writer Philip Elliott contributed to this report.
___
Follow Michele Salcedo on Twitter at http://twitter.com/michelesalcedo.
PORT SAID, Egypt (AP) ? Port Said residents were burying their dead Sunday in mass funerals that could erupt into another wave of violent protests, a day after rioting in the Egyptian coastal city left at least 37 dead and hundreds wounded.
Army troops backed by armored vehicles staked out positions at key government facilities to protect state interests and try to restore order as hundreds of mourners gathered at the city's main mosque to offer prayers for the dead.
On Saturday, angry residents went on a rampage through Port Said after a court handed down death sentences to almost two dozen local fans involved in a deadly melee at a soccer game last year. The rioters attacked the prison where the defendants were being held and tried to storm police stations and government offices around the city.
The street clashes in Port Said were the latest in a bout of unrest across the country that has left a total of 48 people dead since Friday. That death toll includes 11 people killed in clashes between police and protesters marking the second anniversary of the uprising that overthrew longtime leader Hosni Mubarak.
On Sunday, clashes continued for the fourth successive day between protesters and police near Cairo's central Tahrir square, birthplace of the 2011 uprising. Police used tear gas, while the protesters pelted them with rocks.
The bloodshed highlights the challenges facing Islamist President Mohammed Morsi, who took office nearly seven months ago following the revolt that ousted Mubarak. Critics say Morsi has failed to carry out promised reforms in the country's judiciary and police force, and claim little has improved in the two years since the uprising.
At the heart of the rising opposition toward Morsi's rule is a newly adopted constitution, which was adopted in a nationwide referendum.
Critics say the document has an Islamist slant and was drafted by the president's allies without the participation of liberals and Christians. They are calling for the formation of a national unity government, early presidential elections and amendments to disputed clauses in the constitution.
Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist group from which he hails, counter that the opposition was seeking to overturn the results of democratic and free elections.
As the situation in Port Said spiraled out of control Saturday, police disappeared from the city's streets, residents and security officials said, staying put in their camps, police stations and the city's security headquarters.
The military then dispatched troops to the city, which is located on the northern tip of the Suez Canal. Soldiers took up positions at vital state facilities, including the local power and water stations, the city's main courthouse, the local government building and the city prison. Navy sailors were guarding the local offices of the Suez Canal company.
Navy vessels were escorting merchant ships sailing through the international waterway, and army helicopters were flying over the canal to ensure the safety of shipping, according to Suez Canal spokesman Tareq Hassanein.
Residents said Port Said was quiet overnight except for intermittent bursts of gunfire. The city was still on edge early Sunday ? streets were largely deserted, stores were closed for the second successive day, and some hotels asked guests to leave, fearing more violence.
Funerals for those killed Saturday were taking place Sunday at the city's landmark Mariam Mosque, and residents said they expected more street clashes afterward.
The officials and residents spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
Saturday's riot in Port Said mostly stemmed from animosity between police and die-hard soccer fans know as Ultras, who also were part of the uprising that toppled Mubarak's regime.
The Ultras were at the forefront of protests against the military generals who took over from Mubarak and are now again on the frontlines of protests against the rule of Islamist President Mohammed Morsi.
Survivors and witnesses of the Feb. 1 soccer melee in Port Said say Mubarak loyalists had a hand in instigating the killings, which began after Port Said's home team Al-Masry beat Cairo's Al-Ahly 3-1. Some say "hired thugs" wearing green T-shirts posing as Al-Masry fans led the attacks.
Others say, at the very least, police were responsible for gross negligence in the soccer violence, which killed 74 people, most of them Al-Ahly fans.
Anger at police was evident in Port Said, home to most of the 73 men accused of involvement in the bloodshed, although the trial was held outside Cairo.
Judge Sobhi Abdel-Maguid did not give his reasoning when he handed down the sentences for 21 defendants on Saturday. Executions in Egypt are usually carried out by hanging.
Verdicts for the remaining 52 defendants, including nine security officials, are scheduled to be delivered March 9. Some have been charged with murder and others with assisting the attackers. All the defendants ? who were not present in the courtroom Saturday for security reasons ? can appeal the verdict.
Friday January 25, 2013, 7:08 pm (Image: FBI and SKYPE logos)
CNET learns the FBI is quietly pushing its plan to force surveillance backdoors on social networks, VoIP, and Web e-mail providers, and that the bureau is asking Internet companies not to oppose a law making those backdoors mandatory.
The FBI is asking Internet companies not to oppose a controversial proposal that would require firms, including Microsoft, Facebook, Yahoo, and Google, to build in backdoors for government surveillance.
In meetings with industry representatives, the White House, and U.S. senators, senior FBI officials argue the dramatic shift in communication from the telephone system to the Internet has made it far more difficult for agents to wiretap Americans suspected of illegal activities, CNET has learned.
The FBI general counsel's office has drafted a proposed law that the bureau claims is the best solution: requiring that social-networking Web sites and providers of VoIP, instant messaging, and Web e-mail alter their code to ensure their products are wiretap-friendly.
"If you create a service, product, or app that allows a user to communicate, you get the privilege of adding that extra coding," an industry representative who has reviewed the FBI's draft legislation told CNET. The requirements apply only if a threshold of a certain number of users is exceeded, according to a second industry representative briefed on it.
The FBI's proposal would amend a 1994 law, called the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, or CALEA, that currently applies only to telecommunications providers, not Web companies. The Federal Communications Commission extended CALEA in 2004 to apply to broadband networks
FBI Director Robert Mueller is not asking companies to support the bureau's CALEA expansion, but instead is "asking what can go in it to minimize impacts," one participant in the discussions says. That included a scheduled trip this month to the West Coast -- which was subsequently postponed -- to meet with Internet companies' CEOs and top lawyers.
A further expansion of CALEA is unlikely to be applauded by tech companies, their customers, or privacy groups. Apple (which distributes iChat and FaceTime) is currently lobbying on the topic, according to disclosure documents filed with Congress two weeks ago. Microsoft (which owns Skype and Hotmail) says its lobbyists are following the topic because it's "an area of ongoing interest to us." Google, Yahoo, and Facebook declined to comment.
In February 2011, CNET was the first to report that then-FBI general counsel Valerie Caproni was planning to warn Congress of what the bureau calls its "Going Dark" problem, meaning that its surveillance capabilities may diminish as technology advances. Caproni singled out "Web-based e-mail, social-networking sites, and peer-to-peer communications" as problems that have left the FBI "increasingly unable" to conduct the same kind of wiretapping it could in the past.
In addition to the FBI's legislative proposal, there are indications that the Federal Communications Commission is considering reinterpreting CALEA to demand that products that allow video or voice chat over the Internet -- from Skype to Google Hangouts to Xbox Live -- include surveillance backdoors to help the FBI with its "Going Dark" program. CALEA applies to technologies that are a "substantial replacement" for the telephone system.
"We have noticed a massive uptick in the amount of FCC CALEA inquiries and enforcement proceedings within the last year, most of which are intended to address 'Going Dark' issues," says Christopher Canter, lead compliance counsel at the Marashlian and Donahue law firm, which specializes in CALEA. "This generally means that the FCC is laying the groundwork for regulatory action."
Subsentio, a Colorado-based company that sells CALEA compliance products and worked with the Justice Department when it asked the FCC to extend CALEA seven years ago, says the FBI's draft legislation was prepared with the compliance costs of Internet companies in mind.
In a statement to CNET, Subsentio President Steve Bock said that the measure provides a "safe harbor" for Internet companies as long as the interception techniques are "'good enough' solutions approved by the attorney general."
Another option that would be permitted, Bock said, is if companies "supply the government with proprietary information to decode information" obtained through a wiretap or other type of lawful interception, rather than "provide a complex system for converting the information into an industry standard format."
A representative for the FBI told CNET today that: "(There are) significant challenges posed to the FBI in the accomplishment of our diverse mission. These include those that result from the advent of rapidly changing technology. A growing gap exists between the statutory authority of law enforcement to intercept electronic communications pursuant to court order and our practical ability to intercept those communications. The FBI believes that if this gap continues to grow, there is a very real risk of the government 'going dark,' resulting in an increased risk to national security and public safety."
Next steps
The FBI's legislation, which has been approved by the Department of Justice, is one component of what the bureau has internally called the "National Electronic Surveillance Strategy." Documents obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation show that since 2006, Going Dark has been a worry inside the bureau, which employed 107 full-time equivalent people on the project as of 2009, commissioned a RAND study, and sought extensive technical input from the bureau's secretive Operational Technology Division in Quantico, Va. The division boasts of developing the "latest and greatest investigative technologies to catch terrorists and criminals."
But the White House, perhaps less inclined than the bureau to initiate what would likely be a bruising privacy battle, has not sent the FBI's CALEA amendments to Capitol Hill, even though they were expected last year. (A representative for Sen. Patrick Leahy, head of the Judiciary committee and original author of CALEA, said today that "we have not seen any proposals from the administration.")
Mueller said in December that the CALEA amendments will be "coordinated through the interagency process," meaning they would need to receive administration-wide approval.
Stewart Baker, a partner at Steptoe and Johnson who is the former assistant secretary for policy at Homeland Security, said the FBI has "faced difficulty getting its legislative proposals through an administration staffed in large part by people who lived through the CALEA and crypto fights of the Clinton administration, and who are jaundiced about law enforcement regulation of technology -- overly jaundiced, in my view."
On the other hand, as a senator in the 1990s, Vice President Joe Biden introduced a bill at the FBI's behest that echoes the bureau's proposal today. Biden's bill said companies should "ensure that communications systems permit the government to obtain the plain text contents of voice, data, and other communications when appropriately authorized by law." (Biden's legislation spurred the public release of PGP, one of the first easy-to-use encryption utilities.)
The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment. An FCC representative referred questions to the Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau, which declined to comment.
From the FBI's perspective, expanding CALEA to cover VoIP, Web e-mail, and social networks isn't expanding wiretapping law: If a court order is required today, one will be required tomorrow as well. Rather, it's making sure that a wiretap is guaranteed to produce results.
But that nuanced argument could prove radioactive among an Internet community already skeptical of government efforts in the wake of protests over the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, in January, and the CISPA data-sharing bill last month. And even if startups or hobbyist projects are exempted if they stay below the user threshold, it's hardly clear how open-source or free software projects such as Linphone, KPhone, and Zfone -- or Nicholas Merrill's proposal for a privacy-protective Internet provider -- will comply.
The FBI's CALEA amendments could be particularly troublesome for Zfone. Phil Zimmermann, the creator of PGP who became a privacy icon two decades ago after being threatened with criminal prosecution, announced Zfone in 2005 as a way to protect the privacy of VoIP users. Zfone scrambles the entire conversation from end to end.
"I worry about the government mandating backdoors into these kinds of communications," says Jennifer Lynch, an attorney at the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation, which has obtained documents from the FBI relating to its proposed expansion of CALEA.
As CNET was the first to report in 2003, representatives of the FBI's Electronic Surveillance Technology Section in Chantilly, Va., began quietly lobbying the FCC to force broadband providers to provide more-efficient, standardized surveillance facilities. The FCC approved that requirement a year later, sweeping in Internet phone companies that tie into the existing telecommunications system. It was upheld in 2006 by a federal appeals court.
But the FCC never granted the FBI's request to rewrite CALEA to cover instant messaging and VoIP programs that are not "managed"--meaning peer-to-peer programs like Apple's Facetime, iChat/AIM, Gmail's video chat, and Xbox Live's in-game chat that do not use the public telephone network.
If there is going to be a CALEA rewrite, "industry would like to see any new legislation include some protections against disclosure of any trade secrets or other confidential information that might be shared with law enforcement, so that they are not released, for example, during open court proceedings," says Roszel Thomsen, a partner at Thomsen and Burke who represents technology companies and is a member of an FBI study group. He suggests that such language would make it "somewhat easier" for both industry and the police to respond to new technologies.
But industry groups aren't necessarily going to roll over without a fight. TechAmerica, a trade association that includes representatives of HP, eBay, IBM, Qualcomm, and other tech companies on its board of directors, has been lobbying against a CALEA expansion. Such a law would "represent a sea change in government surveillance law, imposing significant compliance costs on both traditional (think local exchange carriers) and nontraditional (think social media) communications companies," TechAmerica said in e-mail today.
Ross Schulman, public policy and regulatory counsel at the Computer and Communications Industry Association, adds: "New methods of communication should not be subject to a government green light before they can be used."
***numerous links within body of article at VISIT SITE***
By:
Declan McCullagh | CNET |
Declan McCullagh is the chief political correspondent for CNET. Declan previously was a reporter for Time and the Washington bureau chief for Wired and wrote the Taking Liberties section and Other People's Money column for CBS News' Web site.
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New research has found that qigong, an ancient Chinese mind-body practice, has been found to reduce depression and improve the quality of life in women undergoing radiation for breast cancer.