Obama Appears To Soften His Stance On The NSA, Edward Snowden

From HuffPost Politics 12/21/2013:

 

US President Barack Obama gives a press conference in the Brady Briefing Room at the White House in Washington on December 20, 2013. AFP PHOTO/Nicholas KAMM (Photo credit should read NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images) | NICHOLAS KAMM via Getty Images

                              

When the NSA scandal first broke six months ago, President Barack Obama was forceful in defending the government's surveillance programs, while criticizing Edward Snowden.

At his year-end press conference on Friday, the president's defense of NSA and condemnation of Snowden appeared weakened. Speaking from the press briefing room, Obama was asked a range of questions over the hour-long span, and at the head of the list of issues was surveillance.
Here's how his Friday comments stacked up to remarks made over the summer:

ON THE NSA: Then
On June 7, Obama was asked at a press conference a) to react to the reports of secret government surveillance of phone and the Internet and b) if he could assure Americans that there wasn't some massive secret database containing all of their personal information. The president assured onlookers that the programs were classified for a reason, but far from secret to Congress.

"And in the abstract, you can complain about Big Brother and how this is a potential program run amuck, but when you actually look at the details, then I think we've struck the right balance," Obama said.

ON THE NSA: Now

By Dec. 20, Obama was asked if his credibility had taken a hit with that "right balance" comment. Earlier this week alone, a judge ruled the program was unconstitutional and a presidential task force urged limits on NSA spying.

The president replied that it was "important to note" that balance is subject to a series of judgment calls that "make sure the American people are protected."

"What is absolutely clear to me is that given the public debate that's taken place and the disclosures that have taken place over the last several months, this is only going to work if the American people have confidence and trust. Now, part of the challenge is that because of the manner in which these disclosures took place, in dribs and drabs, often times shaded in a particular way, and because of some of the constraints that we've had in terms of declassifying information and getting it out there, that trust in how many safeguards exist and how these programs are run has been diminished. So what's going to be important is how to build that back up."

ON EDWARD SNOWDEN: Then
On Aug. 9, Obama made his thoughts clear on Snowden, saying that he did not think he was a patriot.
"The fact is, Mr. Snowden has been charged with three felonies," Obama said.

ON EDWARD SNOWDEN: Now
By Dec. 20, CBS News' Major Garrett asked Obama what he would say to Americans who believe Snowden "set in motion something that is proper and just."

Obama replied:

I've got to be careful here, Major, because Mr. Snowden is under indictment. He has been charged with -- with crimes, and that's the province of the attorney general and ultimately, a judge and a jury. So I -- I can't weigh in specifically on this case at this point. I'll try to see if I can get at the spirit of the question, even if I can't talk about the specifics.  

I have said before and I believe that this is an important conversation that we needed to have. I have also said before that the way in which these disclosures happened have been -- have been damaging to the United States and damaging to our intelligence capabilities.
And I think that there was a way for us to have this conversation without that damage.

Researchers team up on potential fuel cell advance from PhysOrg.com

Researchers team up on potential fuel cell advance

Dec 19, 2013 by Lori Ann White


SLAC researchers Hernan Sanchez Casalongue (left) and Hirohito Ogasawara tune the custom fuel cell built for SSRL Beam Line 13-2. Credit: Brad Plummer/SLAC

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2013-12-team-potential-fuel-cell-advance.html#jCp

Scientists at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory put together clues from experiments and theory to discover subtle variations in the way fuel cells generate electricity – an advance that could lead to ways to make the cells more efficient.

As reported today in Nature Communications, researchers focused powerful X-rays from SLAC's Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource (SSRL) on one half of a tiny but functional fuel cell and watched it combine oxygen and hydrogen to make water. They saw something they didn't expect.

"We were surprised to find two possible routes for this reaction to take place," said Hirohito Ogasawara, a staff scientist at SSRL and with the SLAC/Stanford SUNCAT Center for Interface Science and Catalysis. What's more, one route uses less of the fuel cell's energy to complete – leaving more energy to power a car, for example.

However, the news wasn't a surprise to SUNCAT theorists, who had already proposed the existence of such variations in fuel cell chemistry. These variations are important because fuel cells turn chemical energy to electricity, and even a subtle difference can add up to a considerable amount of electricity over time.

However, the news wasn't a surprise to SUNCAT theorists, who had already proposed the existence of such variations in fuel cell chemistry. These variations are important because fuel cells turn chemical energy to electricity, and even a subtle difference can add up to a considerable amount of electricity over time.

On one side of a fuel cell, hydrogen gas is split into protons and electrons, which travel to the other side of the cell along different paths, providing electricity along the way. There they combine with oxygen gas to form water, a process that requires a catalyst to propel the reaction along. The most commonly used catalyst is platinum, a metal more costly than gold; research has focused on ways to decrease the amount of platinum needed by making the catalyst as efficient as possible. This has been a difficult task without tools that show each reaction as it takes place, step by step.

Ogasawara and colleagues used a technique called ambient pressure photoelectron spectroscopy (APXPS) at SSRL to watch the reactions taking place on the surface of the platinum catalyst in minute detail, and under realistic conditions.

"At first, what was new was the technique, and that we could see what was happening under working conditions," said Hernan Sanchez Casalongue, a graduate student in chemistry who designed and built the miniature fuel cell used to help test the efficacy of APXPS in this research. "But as we analyzed our results, we saw there were two different kinds of hydroxide on the surface of the platinum."

Hydroxide is an "intermediate species" that briefly forms on the way to the creation of water. It consists of one hydrogen nucleus bonded to one oxygen atom – O-H instead of H2O. In the fuel cell the researchers found that one type of hydroxide is "hydrated," or loosely bonded with a water molecule, and the other is not, and the one that's not hydrated requires less energy to take that final step to becoming H2O.

Ogasawara and Sanchez Casalongue took their discovery to SUNCAT theorists, who had already theorized that a change in the voltage applied to the fuel cell could affect the formation of hydroxide.
"This led us to the insight that tuning the hydration of hydroxide may lead to more efficient catalysis, but at the time there was no experimental evidence to back that up," said Venkat Viswanathan, then a graduate student at SUNCAT and now a faculty member at Carnegie Mellon.

Ogasawara's experiment, possible only with APXPS, provided Viswanathan and the other SUNCAT theorists with their experimental evidence. It also gives scientists another tool for improving fuel cells: Figure out how to make more of the non-hydrated hydroxides, and the fuel cell efficiency will improve.

Anders Nilsson, deputy director of SUNCAT and a co-author on the paper, said, "This represents a real breakthrough in electrocatalysis. These intermediate chemical species have long been speculated on but have never before been directly observed. This discovery could lead to more efficient catalysts."

Ogasawara said the researchers can't give any firm numbers on how much this can boost energy production from fuel cells – "This was a proof-of-concept experiment" – but it's an encouraging development, and they are looking at reactions involving other catalysts for similar phenomena. They're also going to use APXPS to study the other side of the fuel cell reaction – splitting water to make hydrogen and oxygen.

Explore further: New catalyst for fuel cells a potential substitute for platinum

More information: "Direct observation of the oxygenated species during oxygen reduction on a platinum fuel cell cathode." Hernan Sanchez Casalongue, Sarp Kaya, Venkatasubramanian Viswanathan, Daniel J. Miller, Daniel Friebel, Heine A. Hansen, Jens K. Nørskov, Anders Nilsson, Hirohito Ogasawara. Nature Communications 4, Article number: 2817 DOI: 10.1038/ncomms3817

Journal reference: Nature Communications
Provided by SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

Yew Trees Beckoning You to Enter

Sunset on Mars

2001: A Space Odyssey Redux

Hard to believe it has been 45 years since the best science fiction movie ever came out.  I remember going with my mother and sister and being utterly dazzled, if perplexed by its meaning (I found out when I read the book some years later).  With Apollo mission in full progress (though we hadn't landed a man on the moon yet), it gave me the optimistic vision of the future I retain to this day.

 



2001: A Space Odyssey is a 1968 British-American science fiction film produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick. The screenplay was written by Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke, and was partially inspired by Clarke's short story "The Sentinel". Clarke concurrently wrote the novel 2001: A Space Odyssey which was published soon after the film was released. The story deals with a series of encounters between humans and mysterious black monoliths that are apparently affecting human evolution, and a space voyage to Jupiter tracing a signal emitted by one such monolith found on the moon. Keir Dullea and Gary Lockwood star as the two astronauts on this voyage, with Douglas Rain as the voice of the sentient computer HAL 9000 who has full control over their spaceship. The film is frequently described as an "epic film", both for its length and scope, and for its affinity with classical epics.^[2][3]
Produced and distributed by the American studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the film was made almost entirely in England, using both the studio facilities of MGM's subsidiary "MGM British" (among the last movies to be shot there before its closure in 1970)^[4] and those of Shepperton Studios, mostly because of the availability of much larger sound stages than in the United States. The film was also co-produced by Kubrick's own "Stanley Kubrick Productions". Kubrick, having already shot his previous two films in England, decided to settle there permanently during the filming of Space Odyssey. Though Space Odyssey was released in the United States over a month before its release in the United Kingdom, and Encyclopædia Britannica calls this an American film,^[5] other sources refer to it as an American, British, or American-British production.^[6]
Thematically, the film deals with elements of human evolution, technology, artificial intelligence, and extraterrestrial life. It is notable for its scientific accuracy, pioneering special effects, ambiguous imagery, sound in place of traditional narrative techniques, and minimal use of dialogue. The film's memorable soundtrack is the result of the association that Kubrick made between the spinning motion of the satellites and the dancers of waltzes, which led him to use The Blue Danube waltz by Johann Strauss II,^[7] and the symphonic poem Also sprach Zarathustra by Richard Strauss, to portray the philosophical concept of the Übermensch in Nietzsche's work of the same name.^[8][9]
Despite initially receiving mixed reactions from critics and audiences alike, 2001: A Space Odyssey garnered a cult following and slowly became a box office hit. Some years after its initial release, it eventually became the highest grossing picture from 1968 in North America. Today it is near-universally recognized by critics, filmmakers, and audiences as one of the greatest and most influential films ever made. The 2002 Sight & Sound poll of critics ranked it among the top ten films of all time,^[10] placing it #6 behind Tokyo Story. The film retained sixth place on the critics' list in 2012, and was named the second greatest film ever made by the directors' poll of the same magazine.^[11] Two years before that, it was ranked the greatest film of all time by The Moving Arts Film Journal.^[12] It was nominated for four Academy Awards, and received one for its visual effects. In 1991, it was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.^[13]
In 1984, a sequel directed by Peter Hyams was released, titled 2010: The Year We Make Contact.

Sirtuins Reverse Aging in Mice; Human Trials to Start Soon

Anthony Loera

Science News (Pop Sci)  -  10:07 AM

 

Sirtuins reverse aging

The scientist that brought us news about Resveratrol, is now going farther and activating all of the sirtuins to reverse aging.

Read moreShow less



Read mo

Australian and US scientists reverse ageing in mice, humans could be next - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

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New DNA sequence shows that Neanderthals liked incest

Adam Clark Estes on Sploid

Original article at:  http://sploid.gizmodo.com/new-dna-sequence-shows-that-neanderthals-liked-incest-1485937673

When you have a face that handsome, you do what you can to keep it in the family.

Berkeley scientists just generated a pristine genome sequence of Neanderthal DNA—the most complete ever created—and what they found might gross you out. It might also blow your mind.

 

New research into ancient genomes unveiled at the Royal Society in London has revealed a startling secret: We have an unknown, mysterious human… Read…

 

The DNA sequence came from a 50,000 year old Neanderthal bone, a woman's toe to be exact. The scientists compared it with DNA from modern humans as well as Denisovans, the Neanderthals' contemporaries and often their lovers too. The analysis revealed a new level of complexity in the family tree that connects Neanderthals, Denisovans and a recently discovered mystery human species with modern man.

 

It also revealed that Neanderthals like to have sex with their siblings. The woman whose toe bone was analyzed, research showed, was the daughter of a very closely related man and woman, likely half siblings. The dataset as a whole suggests that inbreeding was more popular among Neanderthals than modern humans.

 

We've long known, however, that interbreeding was popular with everybody. The new study, which will be published in Nature on Thursday, says Neanderthals and Denisovans interbred often and are very closely related. Modern humans participated in the interbreeding, too, though they fancied the Neanderthals more than the Denisovans. The researchers estimate 1.5 to 2.1 percent of non-African, modern day genomes can be traced to Neanderthals, while about 0.2 percent can be traced to Denisovans.

 

Inevitably, we are different, though we're still figuring out exactly how. The new research shows that at least 87 specific genes in the modern day human genome differ from those in Neanderthals and Denisovans. Maybe one of them explains why we won out in the great game of evolution.