Best iPhone Games of 2011 (Appolicious)

With 2011 coming to an end, it?s time to look back at all the great games that have graced Apple?s iTunes App Store in the last 12 months. There have been some really exciting titles in a variety of genres over the last year, ranging from the new and beautiful Infinity Blade II to the brilliant but subtly simple Cut The Rope: Experiments. Games leaped forward in graphics and capabilities with the release of the iPad 2 and the iPhone 4S, and a whole lot of quality titles that make use of Apple?s latest technologies have come out in the last year. Here are the ten best games to hit the App Store this year.

The team behind Fruit Ninja was pretty busy this year, bringing the game to new platforms such as the Xbox 360 and Facebook. It also rolled out Jetpack Joyride, an endless running game that resets the bar for the entire subgenre. The one-touch game slaps a jetpack on your back and has you dodging things in your path by flying up and down on the screen but with coins to grab and objectives to meet. Jetpack Joyride is filled with some very funny and fun-to-use power-ups and is addictive in all the best ways. This is a hard one to put down.

Gameloft?s take on the very popular PC strategy title StarCraft II is StarFront: Collision, a touch-based real-time strategy title that gets players sending marines, tanks, robots and all kinds of other units to fight off the armies of their enemies. The game includes a decent-size single-player campaign in which you get to play the roles of three different alien races all warring for resources across various planets. StarFront?s best feature is its robust online multiplayer mode that lets you take on as many as three other players in a big battle royale, or team up in a two-on-two skirmish.

Anomaly: Warzone Earth is a bit of a reversal on the standard tower defense game format. Instead of setting up towers around your base to destroy enemies that march toward you, you play a convoy of military vehicles moving across occupied levels, taking out enemy towers along the way. Anomaly requires a different sort of strategic thinking, like planning your routes through the game, and quick reflexes in order to stay alive. Originally a PC port, Anomaly looks and plays great on iOS devices.

Another port from the PC sphere, World of Goo reworks its mouse-based puzzle gameplay for touchscreen controls, and it works great. The game is all about building structures with gooey little characters, allowing you to create bridges, towers and other buildings. The goal is to make your structures reach a pipe at some remote point in the level to suck up any extra goo balls ? hit the minimum quota and you win the level. World of Goo has a delightful art style and a haunting bit of story going on in the background, but it?s really about well-designed puzzle levels and tight controls that make it a blast to play.

Scribblenauts is another great puzzle game to hit the iOS platform, with its own original premise. Whenever you need an object to help you solve a puzzle ? like getting a character from one place to another, or meeting some other objective given to you by the game ? you can actually create it in the game by typing a word. The game will then create the thing you typed. You can create things like ladders and boats, or even other characters as suits the needs of your puzzle. Scribblenauts is a game that lets you be creative all the way through, and encourages you to come up with your own ways of solving its puzzles.

?Addictive? and ?really difficult? are two ways of describing solid side-scrolling platformer League of Evil. It has all kinds of obstacles waiting to kill your character in each of its short, quick levels, and requires a lot of skill and precision in its controls to get past them all. Fortunately, it also has some of the most responsive touch controls on Apple?s platform. League of Evil is the kind of game that?ll keep you playing even through lots and lots (and lots) of failure. Finishing each of League of Evil?s levels is always extremely satisfying (and quite a bit of fun).

Cut The Rope is already one of the most notable puzzlers in the iTunes App Store, and Cut The Rope: Experiments has found a great way to keep what makes the original Cut The Rope great while expanding it in new ways. The primary gameplay is still the same: all the puzzles are about cutting ropes to make a piece of candy fall in the mouth of a monster named Om Nom. Cut The Rope: Experiments has added a whole lot of new elements, though, and instead of needing to solve puzzles with no time limit, the game requires quick reactions and precise timing as well as smart planning. It?s all the Cut The Rope you love, but with new twists.

The sequel to what was probably the best iOS games of 2010, Infinity Blade II takes everything that was great about the original and adds to it. The one-on-one sword-fighting gameplay that made the original so fun has been amped-up with better touch controls and new weapons that require different strategies. The whole game has been lengthened beyond the original, with more world to explore and a fleshed-out story to go with it. What?s more, like its predecessor, Infinity Blade II sets the bar for graphics, especially on the iPhone 4S and iPad 2.

Indie darling Sword & Sworcery creates a singular adventure experience on the iOS platform. Mixing beautiful graphics, a compelling and quirky writing style and haunting music, Sword & Sworcery has players taking on the role of an adventurer ?questing for a legendary book. You?ll wandering through dream worlds and fight eternal monsters in a place where music and visuals are tightly interwoven. Sword & Sworcery is the sort of title that tries to blur the line between game and art, and it mostly succeeds while being pretty beautiful along the way.

Dead Space is a prequel story to Dead Space 2, a console video game release from earlier this year, and the iOS title is just as good as its Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 counterpart. You play as Vandal, a masked engineer sabotaging a space station that orbits the Saturn moon Titan, when suddenly everything goes to hell, and mutated alien monsters start killing everybody. Dead Space is a pretty gory survival-horror title, so it?s not for kids, but it also manages to be scarier than just about anything else on the platform. It also does a good job of being a reliable third-person shooter with decent controls, great-looking graphics and some spooky-good sound design.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/applecomputer/*http%3A//us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/external/appolicious_rss/rss_appolicious_tc/http___www_appolicious_com_articles10508_best_iphone_games_of_2011/43965140/SIG=12b0qp7t3/*http%3A//www.appolicious.com/games/articles/10508-best-iphone-games-of-2011

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Dell Quits Netbooks For Ultrabooks

My mother bought a netbook recently, ignoring my pleading advice to instead get an iPad. Maybe she likes updating antivirus definitions, or perhaps she is looking forward to buying a new one when this one dies exactly a day outside its warranty period. One thing’s for sure, though: When she buys another one, it won’t [...]

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/GearFactor/~3/61EBCtBz5gI/

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New York state OKs sale of Ginna plant (Rochester Democrat and Chronicle)

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Satellite tracks Olympic site from space

What a difference two years can make, especially when you're getting ready for the world's biggest sporting event: This before-and-after slideshow features satellite imagery of London's Olympic Park, the central site for the 2012 Games.

We're presenting the scene as two separate pictures, showing the north and south side of Olympic Park. In each picture, the view on the left was captured by the GeoEye 1 satellite on Sept. 21, 2009, from a height of 425 miles (684 kilometers). The same satellite snapped a picture of the same place on Aug. 3, 2011, and that's what you see on the right side of the screen.

Move the slider at the bottom of the picture to the left or the right for a full comparison of the views, or use the "See Before" and "See After" to switch between the views.

The first image in the slideshow shows the northern end of the park: There's been a lot of work done on the International Broadcast Center, the structure with a light-colored roof on the left side of the screen. The Handball Arena is the smaller, squarish building to the south of the media center in the 2011 photo.

The white-roofed, blocky building on the right side of the River Lea is the Basketball Arena, which didn't exist in 2009. Farther to the right, the Olympic Village is taking shape, just to the north of the Stratford International rail station.

The 2011 view still shows a bare spot on the left side of the river where the Hockey Center will go, but lots of progress has been made on landscaping.

The second image shows the southern end of the park, highlighted by the Olympic Stadium, where the opening and closing ceremonies will be conducted. On the right side of the screen, you can see how much work has been done on the rounded-roofed Aquatics Center and the Water Polo Arena just to the north.

To learn more about the buildings and the buildup to the Olympics, check out the NBC Olympics website, Universal Sports' photo gallery and London 2012's Olympic Park map. The Games begin on July 27.

See more satellite imagery from the Cosmic Log Space Advent Calendar

? 2011 msnbc.com Reprints

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45691180/ns/technology_and_science-space/

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6 ways Mitt Romney is trying to prove he's 'human' (The Week)

New York ? Goodbye, Rombot. Hello, sensitive human? Here's how Team Romney is trying to make the super-rich, often-wooden candidate seem like the rest of us

"Meet Mitt Romney, human," says Reid J. Epstein in Politico. With the GOP nomination seemingly fading from sight, Team Romney has been working overtime to soften the so-called "Rombot" candidate who's been on display all year. The push to "humanize" Romney ? a strategy his campaign team disavows ? has its skeptics. But it's pretty clear, says Ashley Parker in The New York Times, that the often "inscrutable, overly polished, and occasionally robotic" candidate "is striving mightily to humanize himself just three weeks before the first round of voting begins." How? Here are six ways:

1. Deputizing his family
The humanizing effort began last week with a spate of TV ads emphasizing Mitt the Family Man. And to "show his softer side," says Philip Rucker in The Washington Post, Romney "has been campaigning more frequently with his wife, Ann, and their family." He's had various of his five sons introduce him at events, and is telling more personal anecdotes about his family life. The subtext may be a swipe at thrice-married GOP frontrunner Newt Gingrich, but it's also tactically "good to remind Iowans of how strong he is from a family standpoint," says unaligned Iowa GOP congressman Steve King.

SEE MORE: How Romney could lose to Gingrich... just like Romney's dad lost to Nixon

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2. Sending his wife to talk about his unseen side
Beyond featuring wife Ann in ads, Romney is sending her out to smaller private fundraisers to talk about "the side of Mitt people don't see or don't hear about." In other words, says Jessica Grose in Slate, "she's trying to make Mitt seem less stiff, and more fun." It might work, but if she wants to improve on "her first attempt at Mitt humanization circa 2007," Ann Romney is going to have to be a little more "specific, intimate, and revealing." It's nice that Mitt stood by her through breast cancer and multiple sclerosis, but Ann will have to "up the personal disclosures if she wants to crack that lacquered image that most people have of her husband."

3. Talking about his Mormonism
The Dec. 10 debate marked the first time in four years that Romney brought up being a Mormon, and he's only upped the religion talk since, discussing his stints as a missionary in France and as a stateside counselor to struggling Mormons. In "racing to humanize a distant and sometimes awkward politician...," say Ben Smith and Maggie Haberman in Politico, Team Romney just "smashed personal red lines the candidate spent decades erecting." He's even joking about his religion, claiming that he "encouraged the guys" who created the lewd, satirical Broadway hit The Book of Mormon, "because I thought that'd be really helpful."

SEE MORE: Romney's big weakness: Speaking French?

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4. Talking (maybe too much) about his hardships
Mitt's Mormon remembrances included new details about his two-year missionary stint that weren't even in his autobiography. Insisting he wasn't "living high on the hog" in France, Romney told a crowd on Sunday that he'd subsisted on $110 a month, in bare-bones apartments often without refrigerators, showers, or even toilets. Instead of toilets, he had "little pads on the ground, OK?" he elaborated. "You know how that works, all right. There was a chain behind you with a bucket ? it was a bucket affair." I get that he's trying to "shed his robotic image,"?says Zeke Miller in Business Insider. But that's "a definitional case of the phrase 'Too Much Information'."

5. Meeting the press more
After facing criticism for avoiding the press, and then blowing an on-air chat with Fox News'?Bret Baier, Romney has dramatically boosted his access to reporters. More is needed, American University political scientist Leonard Steinhorn tells the Boston Herald. "If he wants to humanize himself, he better work as quickly as possible and work as many media outlets as possible," especially Jon Stewart's Daily Show. Romney himself seems cool to the idea, telling the Herald he'd "much rather have a setting that's fun, and give-and-take."

SEE MORE: The radical dangers of Mitt Romney's America

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6. Talking about how equally un-human his rivals are
Romney's estimated $200 million in wealth may make him seem removed from everyday Americans, but he "doesn't want to be cast as the only rich person in the race for the Republican presidential nomination," says Brian Montopoli in CBS News. On Wednesday Romney pointed out that Gingrich is also "a wealthy man, a very wealthy man," adding that "if you have a half a million dollar purchase from Tiffany's, you're not a middle class American." Zing! Gingrich is worth at least $6.7 million.

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Death of Florida A&M drum major ruled a homicide (AP)

ORLANDO, Fla. ? A Florida A&M University drum major was severely beaten in a hazing incident and died within an hour, the state medical examiner said Friday in declaring it a homicide.

Robert Champion, 26, had bruises to his chest, arms, shoulder and back and internal bleeding that caused him to go into shock, which killed him, the office said.

Champion's Nov. 19 death and the severe beating of another band member during a hazing ritual three weeks earlier have brought new scrutiny to a culture of hazing within the Tallahassee school's famed Marching 100.

State and local authorities are investigating Champion's death. Any death involving hazing is a third-degree felony in Florida, but so far no charges have been filed. Three male band members were arrested in a separate probe into the recent beating of a female member whose thigh bone was broken.

Witnesses told 911 that Champion was vomiting before he was found unresponsive aboard a band bus outside an Orlando hotel after the school's football team lost to rival Bethune-Cookman.

The report by Dr. Sara Irrgang described Champion as "previously healthy" showing "no evidence of natural disease" except for a slightly enlarged heart. Immediately after the hazing, Champion complained of thirst and fatigue, then loss of vision and signs of shock, the report said.

The toxicology report was negative for drugs and alcohol and there was no injury to the internal organs.

Champion's father, Robert Champion Sr., said he knew his son had been hazed.

"We just need to figure out what we need to do now to get the hazing under control," Champion told The Associated Press from his home in suburban Atlanta.

The family's attorney, Christopher Chestnut, said the autopsy confirmed the family's worst fears: "Justice needs to be swift and immediate."

"We're not calling for dismantling of the band," he said. "There needs to be high-level scrutiny. The students are adults, but they're young adults."

Champion's name was repeatedly invoked during FAMU's winter graduation ceremony Friday by Narayan Prasad, a faculty and board member. He called on graduates to be "Champion Rattlers" and to help ensure that hazing never happens again.

Larry Robinson, assistant secretary of commerce in the Obama administration, acknowledged Champion in his commencement speech. He said there were "dark clouds in our midst" but he predicted the university would overcome the scrutiny and survive.

"The world is watching. Let them see, let them hear the real FAMU. Let them know we have been here 124 years and we plan to be here another and yet another."

News of the autopsy came soon after Gov. Rick Scott met privately with FAMU President James Ammons to discuss whether he should step down.

Ammons was reprimanded by the school's Board of Trustees, but the governor says he thinks Ammons should be suspended until multiple investigations are complete.

FAMU's president does not report directly to the governor. But the governor is responsible for selecting some of those who serve on the FAMU board of trustees. The governor also appoints most of the people who sit on the board of governors that oversees the State University System.

A couple hundred FAMU students protested late Thursday night outside the Governor's Mansion to show their support for Ammons. Scott eventually came outside and talked to them, but he did not back off seeking a suspension.

Ammons said he and the governor had a "great discussion" and he was considering the request.

"We all have the best interests of Florida A&M University at heart, we are going to do what's best for university," Ammons said.

A new wrinkle comes from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges, which has warned that Scott's push to suspend Ammons could affect the school's accreditation because of "undue influence" on the board from outside.

Separately, a group of black Tallahassee ministers formed a task force charged with battling hazing at all historically black colleges and universities. Student leaders at FAMU have launched an initiative to encourage every student on campus to sign an anti-hazing agreement; clubs and organizations that don't sign risk being sanctioned by student government.

Hazing cases in marching bands have cropped up over the years, particularly at historically black colleges, where a spot in the marching band is coveted and the bands are revered almost as much as the sports teams. In 2008, two first-year French horn players in Southern University's marching band had to be hospitalized after a beating. A year later, 20 members of Jackson State University's band were suspended after being accused of hazing.

In 2001, FAMU band member Marcus Parker suffered kidney damage because of a beating with a paddle. Three years earlier, Ivery Luckey, a clarinet player from Ocala, Fla., said he was paddled around 300 times, sending him to the hospital and leaving him physically and emotionally scarred.

___

Fineout reported from Tallahassee, Fla. Associated Press Writer Leonard Pallats in Atlanta contributed to this report.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/us/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111216/ap_on_re_us/us_famu_student_dead

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Howard Stern On 'America's Got Talent' Has Fans Curious

'I'll definitely at least tune in to the first episode that he's on, just to see ... the kinds of critiques he gives,' one viewer tells MTV News.
By Brian Phares, with additional reporting by Uptin Saiidi

Howard Stern
Photo: FilmMagic

NEW YORK — Howard Stern is coming to your TV — but not in the way you might expect. The controversial radio host is replacing Piers Morgan as the newest judge on "America's Got Talent," and the news definitely has people talking.

"I feel like the families who are watching it are going to be like, 'What is this guy doing on this show?' " Mike Ruffalo told MTV News when we took to the streets to find out what people were thinking about the controversial move.

Other fans were not as concerned. "It's great publicity for 'America's Got Talent,' " said Carol John.

Indeed, the news has definitely drawn a lot of attention to the Nick Cannon-hosted competition show, but will that mean more viewers? "Howard Stern is a funny, crazy dude. I will definitely be in there watching it," said Gabriel Garcia, proving that, for at least one fan, having Stern on the show is a major draw.

John was interested but felt a little more trepidation when she told us, "I'll definitely at least tune in to the first episode that he's on, just to see how he approaches the show and the kinds of critiques he gives to the acts that perform."

Regardless of what people think about Howard Stern, the general consensus is that having him on "America's Got Talent" is a great move for the show. But is it a great move for Howard? "Twenty million dollars could persuade a lot of people to do a lot of things," Peter Papaemanuel pointed out. Amen, Peter.

What do you think of the move? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1676137/howard-stern-americas-got-talent.jhtml

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Toward a therapy to healing stroke

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

With 100 billion nerve cells, the brain is the most complex organ in the human body. "We want to understand the development program behind," says Dr. Steffen Scholpp from the ITG. "We want to find out how individual parts of the brain develop, this means, what makes precursor cells build a specialized area such as the thalamus." Scholpp's group at ITG studies the development of the thalamus. "It is the central interface between the brain and the outer world: Everything that is perceived via eyes, ears or the tactile sense has to pass the thalamus before it is routed to the cerebral cortex for further processing."

In the long term, the scientists want to be able to heal damaged brain parts by a tissue replacement therapy. If, for example, brain tissue is damaged after an infarct, is the body is not able to regenerate this tissue. "Today, stroke is the most frequent cause of disability acquired at adult age and due to its central role, damage of the thalamus is very serious," emphasizes Steffen Scholpp. "For this reason, we have to find a strategy to activate stem cells such that the damaged tissue can be replaced." Recently, an important step was made by the scientists: By studying zebrafish, they identified Lhx2 and Lhx9, the factors controlling the development of neurons in the thalamus. "Without these factors, the thalamus would accommodate undifferentiated nerve cells only ? this means, the precursory cells lack the information required for specialization," explains the biologist. Analysis of brain development in zebrafish allows conclusions to be drawn with respect to the development in all vertebrates, including human. The results of the group are published in the current issue of the PLoS Biology journal.

In the same study, Scholpp and his team identified another factor that acts as "adhesive" in the thalamus: The cell adhesion molecule Pcdh10b ensures development of the thalamus without mixing with the surrounding brain areas. If this factor is lacking, the neurons differentiate, but do not find their target destination. It is now the objective of the researchers to activate these factors in the cultivating dish (in vitro) in undifferentiated cells first for new thalamus tissue to form. In close cooperation with engineers, the biologists are already developing 2-dimensional cell culture systems. In January, they will start a 3D cell cultivation project. "KIT offers excellent opportunities: Parallel to our research, materials researchers work on the development of various biomaterials (biopolymers) which will be tested in the cultivation experiments", says Scholpp.

Dr. Steffen Scholpp thinks that it will be possible to heal stroke patients in the future. "Of course, this will take some years. But it is our ultimate goal to take out quiescent stem cells from a stroke patient and to switch on the specific development biology program in these cells outside of the body. Finally, we plan to bring them back to the position of the damaged tissue. This would be real healing."

Under the Emmy Noether program, the German Research Foundation (DFG) has granted funding in the amount of EUR 1.3 million to Dr. Steffen Scholpp for a duration of five years. The Emmy Noether program is designed to support young scientists in establishing an own working group. The team of Dr. Steffen Scholpp presently comprises one postdoctoral research fellow, three doctoral students, a technical employee, and two master students.

###

Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres: http://www.helmholtz.de/en/index.html

Thanks to Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres for this article.

This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/116002/Toward_a_therapy_to_healing_stroke

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Early Monroe photos sell for over $300K at auction (AP)

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. ? Copyrights and images from Marilyn Monroe's first photo shoot sold for $352,000 at an auction that included items from Lady Gaga and John Lennon.

Julien's Auctions spokeswoman Caroline Galloway tells The Associated Press on Sunday that the Monroe photos ? taken in 1946 when she was still Norma Jeane Dougherty ? were the highlight of the Beverly Hills auction known as "Icons & Idols"

The photos come with negatives and the rare right to sell and distribute them. A judge in September ruled they must be auctioned to settle debts of photographer Joseph Jasgur.

A Lady Gaga dress sold for $31,250, and the prop gun used in her video for "Born This Way" went for $7,680.

A 1969 caricature John Lennon drew of himself and Yoko Ono went for $90,000.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/celebrity/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111205/ap_en_ce/us_monroe_photos_auction

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Milan says OK given to meet Tevez's agent

Associated Press Sports

updated 2:16 p.m. ET Dec. 5, 2011

MILAN (AP) -AC Milan vice president Adriano Galliani has reportedly said that Manchester City has given the Serie A club permission to speak with Carlos Tevez's agent about a possible transfer.

Galliani is quoted on the ANSA news agency as saying, "The English club has authorized us to speak with his agent but we haven't spoken directly with City yet. ... We don't know what City wants."

Milan is interested in signing Tevez in January with Antonio Cassano out long-term following heart surgery, and Galliani met with his agent Kia Joorabchian for a two-hour meeting last week.

City manager Roberto Mancini has been feuding with Tevez since the Argentina forward refused to warm up during a Champions League game against Bayern Munich in September.

? 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Messi, Ronaldo, Xavi nominated

Barcelona teammates Lionel Messi and Xavi Hernandez will be up against Real Madrid winger Cristiano Ronaldo for the FIFA world player of the year award.

Source: http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/45428429/ns/sports-soccer/

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Early Earth may have been prone to deep freezes, study finds

ScienceDaily (Dec. 5, 2011) ? Two University of Colorado Boulder researchers who have adapted a three-dimensional, general circulation model of Earth's climate to a time some 2.8 billion years ago when the sun was significantly fainter than present think the planet may have been more prone to catastrophic glaciation than previously believed.

The new 3-D model of the Archean Eon on Earth that lasted from about 3.8 billion years to 2.5 billion years ago, incorporates interactions between the atmosphere, ocean, land, ice and hydrological cycles, said CU-Boulder doctoral student Eric Wolf of the atmospheric and oceanic sciences department. Wolf has been using the new climate model -- which is based on the Community Earth System Model maintained by the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder -- in part to solve the "faint young sun paradox" that occurred several billion years ago when the sun's output was only 70 to 80 percent of that today but when geologic evidence shows the climate was as warm or warmer than now.

In the past, scientists have used several types of one-dimensional climate models -- none of which included clouds or dynamic sea ice -- in an attempt to understand the conditions on early Earth that kept it warm and hospitable for primitive life forms. But the 1-D model most commonly used by scientists fixes Earth's sea ice extent at one specific level through time despite periodic temperature fluctuations on the planet, said Wolf.

"The inclusion of dynamic sea ice makes it harder to keep the early Earth warm in our 3-D model," Wolf said. "Stable, global mean temperatures below 55 degrees Fahrenheit are not possible, as the system will slowly succumb to expanding sea ice and cooling temperatures. As sea ice expands, the planet surface becomes highly reflective and less solar energy is absorbed, temperatures cool, and sea ice continues to expand."

Wolf and CU-Boulder Professor Brian Toon are continuing to search for the heating mechanism that apparently kept Earth warm and habitable back then, as evidenced by liquid oceans and primordial life forms. While their calculations show an atmosphere containing 6 percent carbon dioxide could have done the trick by keeping the mean temperatures at 57 degrees F, geological evidence from ancient soils on early Earth indicate such high concentrations of CO2 were not present at the time.

The CU-Boulder researchers are now looking at cloud composition and formation, the hydrological cycle, movements of continental masses over time and heat transport through Earth's system as other possible modes of keeping early Earth warm enough for liquid water to exist. Wolf gave a presentation on the subject at the annual American Geophysical Union meeting held Dec. 5-9 in San Francisco.

Toon said 1-D models essentially balance the amount of sunshine reaching the atmosphere, clouds, and Earth's terrestrial and aquatic surfaces with the amount of "earthshine" being emitted back into the atmosphere, clouds, and space, primarily in the infrared portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. "The advantage of a 3-D model is that the transport of energy across the planet and changes in all the components of the climate system can be considered in addition to the basic planetary energy balance."

In the new 3-D model, preventing a planet-wide glaciation requires about three times more CO2 than predicted by the 1-D models, said Wolf. For all warm climate scenarios generated by the 3-D model, Earth's mean temperature about 2.8 billion years ago was 5 to 10 degrees F warmer than the 1-D model, given the same abundance of greenhouse gases. "Nonetheless, the 3-D model indicates a roughly 55 degrees F mean temperature was still low enough to trigger a slide by early Earth into a runaway glacial event, causing what some scientists call a 'Snowball Earth,'" said Wolf.

"The ultimate point of this study is to determine what Earth was like around the time that life arose and during the first half of the planet's history," said Toon. "It would have been shrouded by a reddish haze that would have been difficult to see through, and the ocean probably was a greenish color caused by dissolved iron in the oceans. It wasn't a blue planet by any means." By the end of the Archean Eon some 2.5 billion year ago, oxygen levels rose quickly, creating an explosion of new life on the planet, he said.

Testing the new 3-D model has required huge amounts of supercomputer computation time, said Toon, who also is affiliated with CU-Boulder's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics. A single calculation for the study run on CU-Boulder's powerful new Janus supercomputer can take up to three months.

The CU-Boulder study was funded by a NASA Earth and Space Science Fellowship to Wolf as well as a grant from the NASA Exobiology and Evolutionary Biology Program.

Toon will be presented with AGU's Roger Revelle Medal for innovative work on the effects of aerosols on clouds and climate at the 2011 San Francisco meeting. The Revelle Medal is presented annually to a scientist who has shown outstanding accomplishments or contributions toward the understanding Earth's climate systems.

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Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/12/111205140521.htm

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Plane crash lands in I-295 in Fla.

By By msnbc.com staff and news service reports

?

A plane that crash landed on Interstate 295 in Jacksonville, Fla., was causing delays, NBC station WJXT reported late Saturday.

Florida Highway Patrol said the plane crashed just before 10 p.m.?in the northbound lanes of I-295. One lane was blocked because of the airplane.

The cause of the crash is under investigation. The type of airplane has not been released.

Source: http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/12/03/9196568-plane-crash-lands-in-i-295-in-jacksonville-fla

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Magic Johnson joins bid to buy Los Angeles Dodgers

LOS ANGELES (AP) ? The Los Angeles Dodgers could be ready for a little Magic.

Magic Johnson has joined a group bidding to buy the beleaguered Dodgers, hoping to restore the luster of a once-glamorous franchise that has been sullied during owner Frank McCourt's messy tenure.

Johnson, the longtime Los Angeles Lakers superstar and former part-owner of the NBA club, is partnering with former Atlanta Braves executive Stan Kasten and wealthy investor Mark Walter in the upcoming auction for the Dodgers, who filed for bankruptcy protection in June. McCourt finally agreed last month to auction the team at an undetermined future date.

"I'm excited to have the opportunity to be part of the Dodgers legacy & bring a World Series championship back to LA," Johnson tweeted Friday.

Johnson has joined a heavyweight group in what's expected to be a tough competition for the Dodgers: Kasten is the former president of the Braves and Washington Nationals, while Walter is the CEO of a global financial services firm managing more than $125 billion in assets. Their organization will be called Guggenheim Baseball Management, and Walter's vast financial resources could put the group up front in the bidding.

The Los Angeles Times first reported Johnson's interest in the Dodgers. The news was greeted with enthusiasm across Los Angeles from fans who count Magic among the most popular athletes in Southern California sports history.

The three-time NBA Most Valuable Player has become a successful businessman since his second retirement in 1996, with investments in several sectors of commercial real estate. But Johnson's passion still is sports, and he has spent several years looking for an ownership role in a pro franchise, most recently expressing his interest in returning the NFL to Los Angeles.

Johnson amicably left his ownership position with the Lakers in October 2010, selling his 4.5 percent equity stake to Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong in what's widely thought to be a wildly lucrative transaction for the former Lakers point guard.

The Lakers would love to see Johnson with a large ownership role in the Dodgers. Lakers general manager Mitch Kupchak regularly speaks with Johnson, who has said he'll never leave his influential role behind the scenes with the Lakers and the Buss family.

"I know he's sitting on a pile of cash, which is maybe why I take his calls as often as I do," Kupchak said Friday. "He's been incredibly supportive as an owner. Never once did he say, 'Mitch, this is what you should do.' He would be a great owner (of the Dodgers)."

Johnson played baseball growing up in Michigan, where he rooted for the Detroit Tigers.

The full list of bidders for the Dodgers is still unclear, but it will be studded with accomplished businessmen and famous athletes who realize a cash machine is sitting up in Chavez Ravine for the proper ownership.

Former Dodgers owner Peter O'Malley is in the mix, and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban has said he's investigating the prospect. Former Dodgers Steve Garvey and Orel Hershiser have been vocal about pursuing the club, while former Dodgers general manager Fred Claire, Los Angeles developer Rick Caruso, supermarket mogul Ron Burkle and former Buffalo Sabres owner Tom Golisano have been linked to the bidding.

The price likely will break the record for a baseball franchise, topping the $845 million paid by the Ricketts family for the Chicago Cubs in 2009.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/347875155d53465d95cec892aeb06419/Article_2011-12-03-BBN-Dodgers-Magic/id-b31bb20dd43144a28af1c2710ddfd3c3

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Farmville Makers Now 3rd Gaming Firm ? CBS Minnesota

Nintendo showed everyone with the Wii hat casual games can make you money. Then Zynga showed that Facebook is just one big pool of casual gamers.

Now Zynga, the makers of Farmville, is the third largest gaming firm in the industry. That? nuts considering they only came onto the scene rather recently. Ahead of them are the industries two giants Electronic Arts, the publish of Battlefield and Madden, and Acivision Blizzard, the maker of two games that lay golden eggs: Modern Warfare and WoW (World of Warcraft).

What do you think? Are Facebook games only going to get bigger? Or is it going to die off after everyone?s grandma starts playing ? like with the Wii?

[The Guardian]

Source: http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2011/12/03/farmville-makers-now-3rd-gaming-firm/

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I?ve Got Hoes in Different Area Codes (Balloon Juice)

Share With Friends: | | Politics - Top Stories News, RSS and RSS Feed via Feedzilla.

Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/168891694?client_source=feed&format=rss

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Create Your Own Muppet, Get Your Sword Ready, and Stare at the Beatles and Van Gogh [Video]

Step into the beautiful world of Vincent Van Gogh. Create your very own muppet character. Rock out with the Beatles Album guide and Slice your way through Infinity Blade II.

More »

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/ZDIINyuQ_UU/

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International community makes last-ditch attempt to save Russian space probe

Officials from NASA and the European Space Agency have pitched in to help save the Russian Phobos-Grunt probe, which was supposed to fly to a Martian moon to collect soil samples but is instead stuck in orbit around Earth.?

An international effort is under way to save Russia's Phobos-Grunt mission to Mars, but time is quickly running out on propelling the probe toward the Red Planet.

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The interplanetary undertaking is designed to visit Phobos, one of the moons of Mars, and return samples to Earth by 2014.

But?Phobos-Grunt's deadline?only chance for departure from Earth orbit is projected to be Nov. 24, due to the alignment of Earth and Mars as well as the spacecraft's fuel status to attain the outward-bound oomph required.

Using powerful radio dishes to monitor the vehicle, officials from the European Space Agency, NASA and Russia have been engaged in a global endeavor to rescue the spacecraft, which has been stranded in low-Earth orbit since its Nov. 8 launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. After the?Phobos-Grunt probe?separated from its Zenit booster, the probe failed to perform a critical maneuver needed to begin the trek toward Mars. [Photos: Russia's Mars Moon Mission]

"We are trying to help them out of trouble," said Wolfgang Hell, the service manager who is overseeing the European Space Agency's support to Russia's NPO Lavochkin, the main contractor on the Phobos-Grunt project. Hell is based at the European Space Operations Center in Darmstadt, Germany.

"Normally, we were supposed to step in, so to speak, and provide tracking services with our ground station network once the spacecraft was on an escape trajectory to Mars," Hell told SPACE.com. "It was never planned that we would support the spacecraft while in the near-Earth phase."

Hell said that his Russian colleagues have gained a better understanding of what ails the spacecraft. "They reached the conclusion that they have some kind of power problem onboard. So they have become more specific in terms of what we should be doing to help them."

But that help embraces a number of challenges, Hell said.

For instance, the spacecraft risks running out of electrical power each time the probe is eclipsed as it spins around Earth. Commanding?Phobos-Grunt?, therefore, is possible only while it's facing the sun.

Also, due to a lack of downlink from the craft's onboard transponder, ground trackers must rely on imprecise radar-tracking data. Not knowing exactly where the spacecraft is makes pointing ground transmitting antennas correctly a challenge.

"It takes a lot of luck to really hit the spacecraft with a main beam," Hell said. "Because it's in such a low-Earth orbit ? we have so little time, something like six to eight minutes, to get the command up."

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/science/~3/CBVxF3Xw0AQ/International-community-makes-last-ditch-attempt-to-save-Russian-space-probe

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Energy coop to dominate Dhaka-Yangon talks

Nizam Ahmed

Cooperation in energy sector is likely to dominate bilateral talks between the prime ministers of Bangladesh and Myanmar during their meeting in Yangon early next month, officials said on Saturday.

Sheikh Hasina will visit Yangon from December 5 to 7 on an invitation from her Myanmar counterpart U Thein Sein, to strengthen bilateral cooperation in all possible fields and remove irritants between the two close Asian neighbours.

"The visit is also important as the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) of the UN is set to give a ruling in the middle of the next year on a maritime boundary dispute between the two countries," a senior official of the foreign ministry told the FE.

The ITLOS heard both the countries in September last on their respective claims on certain gas-blocks in the Bay of Bengal, he said. When its ruling comes, it will also be effective on a similar maritime-boundary dispute between Bangladesh and India.

However, ITLOS may also accept any sort of amicable settlement among the disputing countries, if there is any, senior diplomats said citing previous settlements of disputes between other countries.

"Every subject of possible cooperation in all fields and removal of all disputes would be discussed between the two prime ministers," Abul Kalam Azad, press secretary to PM Hasina told the FE.

"Shopping for natural gas seems to be the first priority of the visit though no formal agreement is likely to be signed now," said an executive of an international energy firm in Dhaka.

Bangladesh expects to put forward its intention to buy natural gas at the market price from Myanmar, which recently started tapping the natural resource from a large gas field in Rakhine state (formerly Arakan), near Bangladesh, an official of the ministry of power, energy and mineral resources said.

Bangladesh has been running short of 500 million cubic feet (mmcft) of gas against its requirement for 2.5 billion cubic feet.

The shortage keeps several gas-fired power plants out of generation, leading to, at least, 2,000 mega watt deficit during the peak-hours, when the demand shoots up to 7,000 mw, officials of the Bangladesh Power Development Board (PDB) said.

Bangladesh will assess the possibilities for setting up a power plant there and taking lease of arable land for cultivation, another government official said.

However, Myanmar did not reply to such a proposal about leasing out land to any foreign country for cultivation in Arakan. Such a proposal was earlier put forward by the immediate past army-backed caretaker government of Bangladesh.

Setting up of direct air and shipping links, easing procedures for issuing business visas of the respective countries and introduction of other facilities for banking and financial transactions will also be discussed, foreign ministry officials said.

On political issues, Dhaka will also request Yangon to repatriate all of its registered and unregistered Rohingya Muslim refugees from the country where they have been languishing for decades.

There are some 28,500 registered refugees in two camps, run jointly by the government of Bangladesh and the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR).

They are remnants of some 250,000 Rohingyas who fled Myanmar, alleging persecution by the then ruling military junta there in 1992.

Most of them were repatriated under the management of UNHCR. Meanwhile, some 300,000 Rohingyas -- mostly economic refugees -- intruded into Bangladesh and are living in scattered groups, causing multi-faceted socio-economic problems in the country.

Source: http://www.thefinancialexpress-bd.com/more.php?news_id=157516&date=2011-11-28

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Lindsay Lohan Killing it at the Morgue

Lindsay Lohan is killing it at morgue duty. Seriously, inappropriate puns aside, the troubled star is slaying expectations and then some up in that piece.

Maybe structure's what she needs, as TMZ notes, because Lindsay's easily on pace to finish her court-ordered stints at the morgue on time for once.

Not only that, she's ahead of schedule - way ahead.

Lohan has already completed 10 of her 12 required morgue duty shifts, an impressive feat considering that she still has another three weeks to do so.

And this go-getter isn't about to stop there. Lindsay plans to finish the remaining two shifts ASAP to get a jump on her other community service too.

That way, at her December 14 status hearing, Linds will be able to say that not only is she abiding by the judge's ruling, but going above and beyond.

Also, Lindsay has built a nice reputation at the morgue, acting polite, working hard, never complaining and (after that first day) showing up on time.

She's got plenty of motivation to keep it up. LiLo got off easy with a mere four hours in jail this month, but if she messes up again, 270 days loom.

Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2011/11/lindsay-lohan-killing-it-at-the-morgue/

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