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Saturday, June 23, 2012
Tahrir Square protests as Egypt awaits result
CAIRO (Reuters) - Thousands of protesters filled Cairo's Tahrir Square overnight as Egypt's rival presidential candidates, an Islamist and former general, accused each of trying to steal an election whose result is still not known five days after polling ended.
Another two days of uncertainty and name calling seem likely over the weekend which begins on Friday, though there was no immediate violence.
With confidence ebbing away in a process Egyptians hoped would secure the democracy they thought they had won with blood spilt on the square over a year ago, those camping out overnight demanded military rulers reverse new orders that entrench the generals' power and called on the election commission to declare the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohamed Morsy president.
Across town, in a luxury international hotel, former general Ahmed Shafik, who was Hosni Mubarak's prime minister when the army forced out the dictator to appease the Tahrir protesters, challenged Morsy's self-proclaimed victory and said he was sure he had won, despite Islamist pressure on officials.
At a televised address to whooping and cheering supporters, Shafik said: "These protests in the squares, the campaigns of terror and the media manipulation are all attempts to force the election committee to announce a particular result."
Speaking in person rather than through spokesmen as he has through the week, he added: "I am fully confident that I will be the legitimate winner." He called for calm and unity, saying he would invite opponents to join his administration.
In a country where ballot fraud was the norm during 60 years of military rule, trust is low, not least among Brotherhood officials who note that the electoral commission itself is made up of judges appointed under Mubarak. A parliamentary vote in November 2010 that handed Mubarak's party 90 percent of the seats was one of the triggers for the fury that overthrew him.
MILITARY RULE
The military council, which has promised to hand over to civilians by July 1, dissolved a new, Islamist-led parliament on the eve of the presidential run-off and then issued a decree as polls closed on Sunday setting strict limits on the powers of whoever would be elected president.
The Islamists say they fear the delay in announcing the vote result is part of a plot to deny them the victory that Morsy declared within hours of the polls closing.
The Brotherhood has released chunky volumes of what it says are official documents from polling stations allowing it to conclude Morsy won by four percentage points. Shafik's camp says the Brotherhood is trying to intimidate officials to secure victory, or set the stage for protests if it loses.
Sources on the commission, and in the military, said earlier in the week that preliminary data favored Morsy - but officials are now bogged down in days of hearing complaints and appeals. Friday and Saturday are the weekend and officials have suggested that a result on Sunday is now likely, though not certain.
"We are taking our time to review the appeals to investigate them properly but, God willing, the results will be announced by Sunday at latest, if not before that," Judge Maher el-Beheiry, a member of the election committee, told Reuters.
TAHRIR SQUARE
Among thousands who packed Tahrir after dark, waving Egyptian flags and singing in what has become a familiar ritual over the past year, Ahmed Youssef said he and his friends, Islamists from a province north of Cairo, would camp out overnight to join a major rally after weekly prayers on Friday.
"We thought the army would stand by the revolution, and were surprised when it didn't," said the bearded electrical engineer, 24, who supports a hardline Salafist Islamist group.
"We will stay here until the military council hands over power," he added, voicing a widely-shared sense of betrayal by generals who promised to rule only until elections.
Ehab al-Bahrawy, 29, a preacher and chicken farmer from the distant suburbs of Cairo said: "I am staying until Dr. Morsy takes all his rightful powers. This is an open-ended sit-in."
The Brotherhood have called for permanent vigils in town squares across the country.
Muslim Brotherhood spokesman Mahmoud Ghozlan said the delay "generates concern, no doubt", expressing fear that the authorities were getting ready to announce Shafik the winner.
"The doubt extends to this possibility," he told Reuters.
Egyptian media have described a nation on edge.
"Egypt on the verge of exploding," Al-Watan daily wrote in a front-page headline, highlighting worries about how supporters of rival camps will respond if their candidate loses. "Security alert before the presidential result," wrote Al-Masry Al-Youm.
"The interest of the nation goes before narrow interests," said reformist politician Mohamed ElBaradei, a former U.N. diplomat and Nobel peace laureate on Twitter. "What is required immediately is a mediation committee to find a political and legal exit from the crisis. Egypt is on the verge of explosion."
Adding to unease, Mubarak is himself back in the news, being transferred to a military hospital from the prison where he began a life sentence this month. Security sources have said the 84-year-old was slipping in and out of a coma but "stabilizing". Many Egyptians suspect the generals are exaggerating his illness to get their old comrade out of jail.
Mohamed Abdel Razek, a Mubarak defense lawyer, said the former president had a stroke on Wednesday after he had a fall during an accompanied visit to a bathroom at Tora prison.
(Additional reporting by Marwa Awad, Shaimaa Fayed, Tom Perry, Edmund Blair, Patrick Werr, Tamim Elyan and Yasmine Saleh; Writing by Alastair Macdonald; Editing by Peter Graff)
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'Cells to Civilizations: The Principles of Change That Shape Life'
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Public release date: 22-Jun-2012[ | E-mail |
Share ] Contact: Andrew Chapple
andrew.chapple@nbi.ac.uk
44-016-032-51490
Norwich BioScience Institutes
Professor Enrico Coen of the John Innes Centre is the author of a new book that describes the unified principles behind the transformations that define life.
http://youtu.be/urDhZkCtkvM
What are the connections between evolving microbes, an egg that develops into an infant, a child who learns to walk and talk, and the rise of Ancient Rome? For many years, scientists have generally thought these great transformationsevolution, development, learning, and cultural changeoccurred through different mechanisms.
But geneticist Enrico Coen, in his pioneering new book Cells to Civilizations: The Principles of Change That Shape Life, reveals that these transformations revolve around shared core principles and manifest the same fundamental recipe. Coen blends provocative discussion, the latest scientific research, and colourful examples to demonstrate the links between these critical stages in the history of life.
The book is an excellent example of the Systems Biology approach, as it treats seemingly very different biological processes as integrated systems that operate according to general underlying principles. Professor Coen's research group at the John Innes Centre uses these approaches to understand leaf and flower shape. They are examining how development produces these forms and how these forms have arisen through evolution. The book looks at these transformations and how they, along with learning and cultural change, share many similar principles.
With over 100 illustrations, Coen tells a story rich with genes, embryos, neurons, and fascinating discoveries. He examines the development of the zebra, the adaptations of seaweed, the cave paintings of Lascaux, and the formulations of Alan Turing. He explores how dogs make predictions, how weeds tell the time of day, and how our brains distinguish a Modigliani from a Rembrandt.
Locating commonalities in important findings, Coen gives readers a deeper understanding of key transformations and provides a bold portrait for how science both frames and is framed by human culture. One consequence of his unifying argument is that even our own creativity as humans, which we tend to see as completely special and unique, can be seen as related to other biological processes, like the way the neurons interact in the brain or the way cells interact in a developing embryo.
###
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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.
Public release date: 22-Jun-2012[ | E-mail |
Share ] Contact: Andrew Chapple
andrew.chapple@nbi.ac.uk
44-016-032-51490
Norwich BioScience Institutes
Professor Enrico Coen of the John Innes Centre is the author of a new book that describes the unified principles behind the transformations that define life.
http://youtu.be/urDhZkCtkvM
What are the connections between evolving microbes, an egg that develops into an infant, a child who learns to walk and talk, and the rise of Ancient Rome? For many years, scientists have generally thought these great transformationsevolution, development, learning, and cultural changeoccurred through different mechanisms.
But geneticist Enrico Coen, in his pioneering new book Cells to Civilizations: The Principles of Change That Shape Life, reveals that these transformations revolve around shared core principles and manifest the same fundamental recipe. Coen blends provocative discussion, the latest scientific research, and colourful examples to demonstrate the links between these critical stages in the history of life.
The book is an excellent example of the Systems Biology approach, as it treats seemingly very different biological processes as integrated systems that operate according to general underlying principles. Professor Coen's research group at the John Innes Centre uses these approaches to understand leaf and flower shape. They are examining how development produces these forms and how these forms have arisen through evolution. The book looks at these transformations and how they, along with learning and cultural change, share many similar principles.
With over 100 illustrations, Coen tells a story rich with genes, embryos, neurons, and fascinating discoveries. He examines the development of the zebra, the adaptations of seaweed, the cave paintings of Lascaux, and the formulations of Alan Turing. He explores how dogs make predictions, how weeds tell the time of day, and how our brains distinguish a Modigliani from a Rembrandt.
Locating commonalities in important findings, Coen gives readers a deeper understanding of key transformations and provides a bold portrait for how science both frames and is framed by human culture. One consequence of his unifying argument is that even our own creativity as humans, which we tend to see as completely special and unique, can be seen as related to other biological processes, like the way the neurons interact in the brain or the way cells interact in a developing embryo.
###
[ | 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.
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5 wounded warriors attempt Mount McKinley summit
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) ? Five wounded warriors with a self-described total of four good legs among them are gaining ground in their assault on Alaska's formidable Mount McKinley, North America's tallest peak.
The five soldiers ? four are retired ? range in age from 31 to 64. All but one lost limbs in American conflicts stretching from Vietnam to Afghanistan.
After nine days on the 20,320-foot mountain in the Alaska Range, the expedition was resting at 14,200 feet Thursday and was being warned by guides the climb only gets more difficult.
"Obviously, I don't have to worry about losing my feet to the cold," said Stephen Martin, who calls himself a desert rat from suburban Phoenix who hates being cold. "I've already lost my feet. I don't want to lose my hands to frostbite."
Martin and one other member of the expedition are double amputees.
Another fear for Martin is that a prosthetic leg might break in the unforgiving conditions. "I brought a spare pair of feet," said the retired Army corporal who went back to Afghanistan as a contractor. He was injured by a roadside bomb. Martin returned to Phoenix and tried for 14 months to save his legs before undergoing amputation in November 2009.
The team says the climb is not only for them, but for others severely wounded in wars, including those to follow.
"We want to show in this project ... how active and how independent these wounded warriors can be, even with very severe injuries," said Kirk Bauer, climber and executive director of Disabled Sports USA, the group behind the climb with its Warfighter Sports program.
Bauer, a retired Army sergeant who lives in Baltimore, lost his left leg above the knee to a grenade in Vietnam.
The climb is also a fundraiser to help the organization raise money to help other wounded soldiers.
The climbers are scaling McKinley with crampons, climbing poles and ice axes to find firm footing on ice. They're moving single file, tethered to each other by rope, each carrying a heavy backpack of supplies and taking turns pulling a sled with more gear.
Besides narrow, treacherous paths, they will have to contend with potential blizzards, winds that can reach 100 mph, glaring heat during the day and frigid nights. They're navigating razor-thin ridges while also having to keep an eye upward for falling rock.
These climbers face additional challenges, including maintaining their energy ? with their carbon and fiber prosthetics they use more. They're concerned about abrasions where their skin meets the prosthetic and about how the artificial limbs will react to the cold. The above-the-knee amputees also must worry about solar charges for batteries that power the prosthetic knee unit computer, which ensures the knee doesn't buckle.
"If something happens there the leg stiffens up and we become like Peg Leg Pete climbing the mountain, so it's going to be much more difficult," Bauer said.
Others coming back from Afghanistan may be inspired, he said, and know that despite their injuries they can be active and productive and can lead full and healthy lives.
Ret. Army Capt. Jesse Acosta has all his limbs, but the Austin, Texas, native now working on Wall Street sustained permanent damage to his hip, leg, arm and back from a roadside bomb in Iraq.
He said the climb is meant "not only to prove to ourselves just what is (possible) given our own limitations, but hopefully and probably more importantly, inspire in others ... that this is very much an obstacle which can be overcome."
The climb started June 11, and as was expected climbing with prosthetics, it's been a slow slog. Daily short updates via satellite phone are posted on the Internet, provided by either the climbers or members of their guiding group, Mountain Trip. The group spent three days at 11,200 feet, first to rest and then wait out a snowstorm and high winds. They've so far reported no problems.
If all goes according to plan, they hope to summit the mountain on June 28, and are scheduled to fly home July 3.
But success is far from guaranteed.
The park service says 1,191 people have registered to climb Mount McKinley this year. Of those, 795 have completed their attempts, with 295 people ? or 37 percent ? making the summit. There are 283 people currently climbing the mountain.
So far this summer, six people have died on McKinley. Four of those deaths occurred last week when an avalanche caught a team of five Japanese climbers, pushing them into a 100-foot crevasse. One member was able to climb out.
The wounded warriors learned of the deaths, and posted this on their website Saturday: "Thoughts & prayers to the Miyagi Workers Alpine Fed. Expedition."
The combat veterans were chosen for the climb because of their attitude, their mental and physical fitness and the desire to improve themselves, Bauer said.
The group went through six months of training before the ascent attempt. Three climbers ? Bauer, Acosta and Ret. Army Sgt. Neil Duncan of Denver, the other double amputee ? previously climbed Tanzania's 19,336-foot Mount Kilimanjaro.
If successful, they wouldn't be the first with physical challenges to make the ascent on Mount McKinley, also known as Denali, an Alaska Native tribal word meaning "the great one."
According to statistics provided by Denali National Park and Preserve, Sarah Doherty was the first full leg amputee to summit Mount McKinley without an artificial limb in 1985. Ed Hommer was the first double leg amputee to reach the top of Denali in 1999.
If the soldiers are fortunate enough to summit, some have celebratory moments planned.
Martin, an Arizona Highway Patrolman, wants two pictures taken at the top of Mount McKinley. One is of the team, and the other will be of him displaying a patch from the Arizona Department of Public Safety.
"I want to show them that I do appreciate (them) sticking with me, not just saying, 'Hey, we're really sorry it happened to you, good luck in the future,'" he said. "But not only that, but had faith in me that I can do the job."
The expedition's only active duty military member, Marine Capt. David Borden of Hanover, Pa., had his right leg amputated above the knee after an attack by a suicide bomber in Iraq in 2008.
"Obviously I was injured, but my family and friends were also injured. Making the top is for them as well," Borden said, "and my way of thanking them for everything they did for me and the support they gave me."
___
Online:
http://www.crowdrise.com/wsdenalichallenge
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Oprah charts comeback with big-name interviews
Oprah Winfrey is working to revive her OWN channel with more celebrity interviews, including the Kardashians. But Katie Couric is also vying for big-name interviews.
Talk show host Oprah Winfrey posing with Paris Jackson, daughter of the late pop icon Michael Jackson in Los Angeles. Winfrey interviewed Jackson for an "Oprah's Next Chapter," special which aired on June 10 on OWN.
(AP Photo/Harpo Inc., George Burns)
EnlargeSince Oprah Winfrey packed up the couch that Tom Cruise jumped on and ended her daytime talk show last year, no one has truly filled her role as the top go-to person in television for major celebrity and news interviews.
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Now someone is trying to claim that spot ? and would you believe it's Oprah again?
Faced with the potential failure of her money-pit cable network OWN, Winfrey is working the phones hard to secure big-name interviews for her show, "Oprah's Next Chapter." Back-to-back episodes last Sunday featured the Kardashian family and rapper 50 Cent, and the Kardashians will be back this weekend. Michael Jackson's daughter Paris and the late Whitney Houston's family made news with their interviews in recent weeks.
IN PICTURES: Oprah through the years
The open question is whether she can have the same cultural impact on a smaller stage. Winfrey's daytime talk show was generally seen by around 6 million people in her final years; "Oprah's Next Chapter" with the Kardashians was seen by 1.1 million viewers, according to the Nielsen company.
"I am sure that people have a conversation about that when they are exploring their options," said Sheri Salata, OWN president. "The one constant we have ... is that you have the opportunity to sit down with Oprah."
Winfrey's daytime show wasn't all about interviews, of course. But in her last few seasons, she sat down for conversations with the likes of Tina Fey, Elizabeth Edwards, Michelle Obama, Madonna, Denzel Washington, Jerry Seinfeld, Richard Branson and Beyonce.
The audience was primarily women but, as Cruise proved with his eager declarations of love for Katie Holmes in 2005, the cultural impact could spread beyond the afternoon.
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Washington's Acts Of Congress Sells For $9.8M
Washington's personal copy of the first Act of Congress from 1789, including the U.S. Constitution and the proposed Bill of Rights, sold at Christie's Auction House today for almost $9 million to Ann Bookout of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Assocation.
NEW YORK (CNN) -- George Washington's personal copy of the U.S. Constitution and a draft of the Bill of Rights sold Friday at Christie's for a whopping $9.8 million.
Ann Bookout, regent of the board of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association, won the bid.
"This is our mission to bring home all things Washington," Bookout said. "We want people to know that Mount Vernon is the home of where these wonderful treasures should belong."
The 1789 annotated volume, entitled Acts of Congress, will be displayed in the Fred W. Smith National Library for the Study of George Washington, which opens in 2013 at Mount Vernon.
The near-pristine artifacts were printed and bound for Washington in his first year in office as president of the United States.
"There's no question in my mind that this book is one of the most important pieces of Americana to come to the market in decades," said Chris Coover, senior specialist for books and manuscripts at Christie's.
Washington's book has not been available since 1964.
The item had a presale estimate of between $2 million and $3 million. However, it was the final auctioned item of the day and launched a heated bidding war between two seated participants, Bookout and an unknown bidder.
"It was thrilling," Bookout said, "but I had a quiet resolve with the support of the ladies who are on the board that we were determined to bring it home."
This copy of the Acts of Congress stayed in the library at Mount Vernon after Washington's death in 1799. In 1876, many of his books, including this volume, were auctioned off.
Washington's notes and brackets line the margins of the Constitution. On the title page is his signature. On the marbled end paper is his personal bookplate, engraved with his motto, Exitus acta probat (the end justifies the means).
"It has such resonance of Washington the man," Coover said. "It was sort of a way of reminding himself what the responsibilities and duties of the president were. You can't get more evocative than that."
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Friday, June 22, 2012
50-gigapixel camera is straight out of science fiction
8 hrs.
While photographers marvel at the 20 or 30 megapixels captured by the latest cameras, researchers at Duke laugh quietly and return to their lab to continue work on a system that could capture 50 gigapixels at the touch of a button.
For comparison, if your average point-and-shoot picture was the size of a word on this page, a 50-gigapixel shot would be around the size of your entire screen.
Gigapixels aren't new in and of themselves, of course: Enormous photos of the Milky Way or Obama's?inauguration are both effective demonstrations of the power of huge images. But generally these giant pictures are created by one camera that takes hundreds (or thousands) of shots, which are then?fitted together after the fact. Not a problem if you're taking pictures of stars, but no good?if you wanted to capture a flock of birds taking off.
The team at Duke, led by David Brady at Duke's Pratt School of Engineering, decided to take things a different direction: instead of taking lots of pictures in sequence with one camera, why not take lots of pictures at once with a bunch of cameras?
The result is the AWARE-2 camera system, a machine that looks like something out of science fiction. It bristles with wires and ports, and houses?a lens array that could be the eye of an enormous robotic insect.
The system actually shares many characteristics with insects' compound eyes: A single image enters through a central lens, but is then refracted outward in 98 different directions to 98 different image sensors, each of which receives a different piece of the picture. The pieces are then assembled by a central processor.
Images produced by the system are enormous. 50 gigapixels is the maximum theoretical size, but even a fraction of that?that is far larger than any picture most people have ever taken. Look at the shot below; on this enormous landscape, the tiny white dots on the sky are in fact birds, captured in enough detail that you can zoom in and check out the details of their wings. (here's a larger version)
That's with a prototype device using only half the microcameras and the first generation of lenses designed for the system.?Brady explains that right now, the size and quality of images is limited by the quality of the main objective lens, but they have already built a superior lens for 10-gigapixel images.
50 gigapixels is the upper limit because it is the precision?limit of lens-manufacturing technology, and also because beyond that you start running into the resolution limit of the atmosphere, i.e. what can be discerned through all those pesky air molecules between the camera and the subject. So it's no surprise that they're considering imaging at that size for astronomical rather than terrestrial photography.
The applications of enormous images captured more or less instantly are easy to imagine, both in everyday life, academic research, and for the military, which is funding the project through DARPA.
The paper describing AWARE-2 was published in the journal Nature, and the authors have put together a separate?site with more information and lots of?pictures for the curious.
Devin Coldewey is a contributing writer for msnbc.com. His personal website is coldewey.cc.
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