Rambler Takes Home The Disrupt NY 2013 Hackathon Grand Prize, Learn To Drive And Radical Are Runners Up

The past 24 hours have just flown by for the hundreds of hackers here at the Disrupt NY Hackathon, but the sun is finally up and it’s time to pass judgment on their caffeine-fueled projects. As it turns out, there’s a ton of them here — with 164 registered projects this is our biggest Hackathon yet, and each presenter only had 60 seconds to wow our judges (not to mention the rest of the audience). As you might guess there was no shortage of amazing projects that came together in a single day, but our judges could only choose one team to take home our $5,000 grand prize. Anyway, that’s enough out of me — meet our newest Hackathon winner! Winner: Rambler Rambler, created by William Hockey, Zach Perret and Michael Kelly, is a web app that lets users view their credit and debit card transactions on a map. During the dev process, the team tapped the Foursquare API for locations and the Plaid API to access user spending data. Runner-up #1: Learn To Drive Learn To Drive, created by Jared Zoneraich, Jemma Issroff, Kenny Song, and Nicholas Joseph, is an app for the GM vehicle platform that acts as a virtual driving instructor by speaking driving instructions aloud and display driving statistics like miles driven, hours driven, and hours driven at night. Runner-up #2: Radical Radical, created by Sam Saccone, Carl Sednaoui, and Jeff Escalante, allows users to create attractive calendars and embed on webpages with a single line of code. These three teams will also demo their projects on the main Disrupt stage on Wednesday afternoon, but that’s not to say everyone else is going home empty-handed. Hackathon sponsors Appery.io, AT&T, CrunchBase, General Motors, Microsoft Bizspark, Microsoft Skydrive, NewAer, Pearson, Samsung, Twilio, Visa, Wrigley and Yammer have also graciously doled out prizes of their own for the most innovative and interesting uses of their APIs and services. And just who decided the fate of these sleep-deprived hackers? Our panel of judges includes Mahaya CEO Tarikh Korula, Path101 co-founder Charlie O?Donnell, founder/CEO of The Muse Kathryn Minshew, bit.ly chief?scientist?Hilary Mason, FuturePerfect Ventures founding partner Jalak Jobanputra, and BoxGroup Managing Director David Tisch.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/Ugb3ZVF49D4/

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Tyler Bray, Marcus Lattimore show opposite emotions of 2013 NFL Draft (+video)

The fortunes of Tyler Bray and Marcus Lattimore showed the ups and downs of what was a historic 2013 NFL Draft for the Southeastern Conference.

By Mark Sappenfield,?Staff writer / April 28, 2013

Running back Marcus Lattimore speaks with the media during South Carolina's NFL football pro day on this spring in Columbia, S.C.

Rainier Ehrhardt/AP/File

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Somehow, University of Tennessee quarterback Tyler Bray ? a 6-foot-6 specimen with a cannon arm ? was not selected in the seven rounds of the 2013 NFL Draft.

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Somehow, University of South Carolina running back Marcus Lattimore found two knees to stand on at his pro workout earlier this spring ? enough to get him a standing ovation from the coaches and scouts present and a selection by the San Francisco 49ers in the fourth round.

In a draft where 63 players from the Southeastern Conference (SEC) were selected ? a record for any college football conference ? two of the SEC players who made the biggest splash on the last day of the three-day extravaganza Saturday did it for opposite reasons.

Bray was left standing at the altar. Admittedly, this was not a sterling draft for quarterbacks. But perhaps that's why he decided to leave Tennessee a year early year to go pro. According to one mock draft, NFLDraftScout.com, he was seventh best pick of the litter. In the end, he wasn't even among the 11 chosen.

It's a glimpse into a situation that plagued basketball for years. Many high school players, egos inflated by friends and hangers on, would enter the National Basketball Association draft, forgoing any college eligibility. When they were not drafted ? or drafted late and then let go ? they would be left in a limbo, not good enough to make a pro team, but not able to go to college to hone their skills.

The situation forced the NBA to institute a "one year in college" rule for all players, giving each time to assess his draft prospects with clearer eyes. The NBA has also started a developmental league akin to the baseball minor leagues to help those who fall through the cracks.

In the end, Bray was signed by the Kansas City Chiefs after the draft ? and as a junior, he had ample time to make an informed decision about his pro prospects. But the National Football League also has a Draft Advisory Board precisely for this reason. It offers undergraduate prospects an impartial assessment of where they're likely to land in the draft.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/ds8ejW_XSh4/Tyler-Bray-Marcus-Lattimore-show-opposite-emotions-of-2013-NFL-Draft-video

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Column: Playing politics with crisis is inevitable (The Arizona Republic)

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

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'Iron Man 3' rules world, 'Pain & Gain' takes US

LOS ANGELES (AP) ? "Iron Man 3" is the heavy-lifter at theaters with a colossal overseas debut that overshadows a sleepy pre-summer weekend at the domestic box office.

The superhero sequel starring Robert Downey Jr. got a head-start on its domestic launch next Friday with a $195.3 million opening in 42 overseas markets.

Sunday studio estimates show director Michael Bay's true-crime tale "Pain & Gain" muscled into first-place domestically with a $20 million debut.

The movie starring Mark Wahlberg, Dwayne Johnson and Anthony Mackie knocked off Tom Cruise's sci-fi adventure "Oblivion" after a week in the No. 1 spot. "Oblivion" slipped to second-place with $17.4 million, raising its domestic total to $64.7 million.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/iron-man-3-rules-world-pain-gain-takes-155428061.html

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Israel shoots down drone, Hezbollah suspected

An Israeli military naval ship and an Israeli air force helicopter operate next to a cruise ship off the coast of Haifa, northern Israel, Thursday, April 25, 2013. Israel shot down a drone Thursday as it approached the country's northern coast, the military said. Suspicion immediately fell on the Hezbollah militant group in Lebanon. The incident was likely to raise already heightened tensions between Israel and Hezbollah, a bitter enemy that battled Israel to a stalemate during a monthlong war in 2006. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

An Israeli military naval ship and an Israeli air force helicopter operate next to a cruise ship off the coast of Haifa, northern Israel, Thursday, April 25, 2013. Israel shot down a drone Thursday as it approached the country's northern coast, the military said. Suspicion immediately fell on the Hezbollah militant group in Lebanon. The incident was likely to raise already heightened tensions between Israel and Hezbollah, a bitter enemy that battled Israel to a stalemate during a monthlong war in 2006. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

An Israeli military naval ship and an Israeli air force helicopter operate off the coast of Haifa , northern Israel, Thursday, April 25, 2013. Israel shot down a drone Thursday as it approached the country's northern coast, the military said. Suspicion immediately fell on the Hezbollah militant group in Lebanon. The incident was likely to raise already heightened tensions between Israel and Hezbollah, a bitter enemy that battled Israel to a stalemate during a monthlong war in 2006. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, center, attends the holiday of Nabi Shoaib, the Prophet Jethro, during a cultural event with members of the country's Druse minority in the Druse village of Julis, northern Israel, Thursday, April 25, 2013. Israel shot down a drone Thursday as it approached the country's northern coast, the military said. Suspicion immediately fell on the Hezbollah militant group in Lebanon. The incident was likely to raise already heightened tensions between Israel and Hezbollah, a bitter enemy that battled Israel to a stalemate during a monthlong war in 2006. Netanyahu, who was in northern Israel at the time of the incident, said he viewed the infiltration attempt with "utmost gravity." (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, center, is welcomed by Druse leaders for the holiday of Nabi Shoaib, the Prophet Jethro, during a cultural event with members of the country's Druse minority in the Druse village of Julis, northern Israel, Thursday, April 25, 2013. Israel shot down a drone Thursday as it approached the country's northern coast, the military said. Suspicion immediately fell on the Hezbollah militant group in Lebanon. The incident was likely to raise already heightened tensions between Israel and Hezbollah, a bitter enemy that battled Israel to a stalemate during a monthlong war in 2006. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was in northern Israel at the time of the incident, said he viewed the infiltration attempt with "utmost gravity." (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

An Israeli military naval ship and an Israeli air force helicopter operate off the coast of Haifa, northern Israel, Thursday, April 25, 2013. Israel shot down a drone Thursday as it approached the country's northern coast, the military said. Suspicion immediately fell on the Hezbollah militant group in Lebanon. The incident was likely to raise already heightened tensions between Israel and Hezbollah, a bitter enemy that battled Israel to a stalemate during a monthlong war in 2006. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

JERUSALEM (AP) ? Israel shot down a drone Thursday as it approached its northern coast from neighboring Lebanon, raising suspicions that the Hezbollah militant group was behind the infiltration attempt.

Hezbollah denied involvement, but the incident was likely to heighten Israeli concerns that the Shiite militant group is trying to take advantage of the unrest in neighboring Syria to strengthen its capabilities.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was in a helicopter in northern Israel at the time of the incident, said he viewed it with "utmost gravity."

Israeli military spokesman Lt. Col. Peter Lerner said the unmanned aircraft was detected as it was flying over Lebanon and tracked as it approached Israeli airspace.

He said the military waited for the aircraft to enter Israeli airspace, confirmed it was "enemy," and then an F-16 warplane shot it down, smashing its wreckage into the sea about five miles (eight kilometers) off the northern port of Haifa. Lerner said Israeli naval forces were searching for the remains of the aircraft.

He said it still was not clear who sent the drone, noting it flew over Lebanese airspace, but that it could have originated from somewhere else.

Other military officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not permitted to talk to the media, said they believed it was an Iranian-manufactured aircraft sent by Hezbollah. The Lebanese group sent a drone into Israeli airspace last October that Israel also shot down.

Officials said Netanyahu was informed of the unfolding incident as he was flying north for a cultural event with members of the country's Druse minority. They said his helicopter briefly landed while the drone was intercepted then continued on its way.

"On my way here in the helicopter, I was told that there is an infiltration attempt of a drone inside the skies of Israel," Netanyahu said in the northern Arab-Israeli town of Daliyat al-Karmel. "We will continue to do everything necessary to safeguard the security of Israel's citizens."

Despite the denial, the incident was likely to raise already heightened tensions between Israel and Hezbollah, a bitter enemy that battled Israel to a stalemate during a monthlong war in 2006.

A senior Lebanese security official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations, said Lebanon had no information on Thursday's incident.

When Israeli military shot down a Hezbollah drone on Oct. 6, it took days for Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah to confirm it. He warned in a speech that it wouldn't be the last operation by the group. He said the sophisticated aircraft was made in Iran and assembled by Hezbollah.

Netanyahu repeatedly has warned that Hezbollah might try to take advantage of the instability in neighboring Syria, a key Hezbollah ally, to obtain what he calls game-changing weapons.

Israel has all but confirmed that it carried out an airstrike in Syria earlier this year that destroyed a shipment of sophisticated anti-aircraft missiles bound for Hezbollah.

Israel's military has also stepped up its air surveillance over Lebanon. On Thursday morning, Israeli warplanes flew over the Christian town of Jezzine and the highlands of the Iqlim al-Tuffah province, a Hezbollah stronghold in southern Lebanon, the country's state-run National News Agency reported.

The Lebanese army also reported Israeli jets violated Lebanese airspace on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Some analysts said Hezbollah might be trying to divert attention from its involvement in the increasingly sectarian Syrian civil war. The Shiite militants have openly sided with the regime of Bashar Assad in its battle against mostly Sunni rebels.

Jonathan Spyer, senior research fellow at the Herzliya Interdisciplinary Center near Tel Aviv, said Hezbollah was facing discontent among its Shiite base in Lebanon, and more broadly among other Arabs for its participation in the Syrian conflict.

He said the group was likely trying to show that its real enemy was the Jewish state, in an effort to shore up support.

Spyer said sending a drone appeared to be a "fairly calibrated provocation," intended to be low key enough not to provoke an Israeli military response in Lebanon.

"I wouldn't be surprised if we see more of these kinds of incidents in the weeks and months ahead," he said.

___

Associated Press writers Zeina Karam in Beirut and Josef Federman in Jerusalem contributed to this report.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2013-04-25-Israel-Hezbollah/id-4935dcfd141b4d1ca499f6839631c1d9

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One Today by Google leads Android Apps of the Week

This week brought us a new app from Google that's actively trying to make the world a better place, one day at a time, one dollar at a time. That app is One Today by Google, and it's the top app of the week. We've also got a new voice activated personal assistant, the ultimate travel-log app, a new way to meet people online, and a way to keep your business and personal lives separate, at least as far as phone numbers are concerned.

Google may be a company hell bent on taking over the entire world, but it's always quite possible that they'll be benevolent and merciful new overlords, ushering us into a new age of peace and prosperity! At least, that's what you might conclude thanks to their new app One Today by Google. Probably the most noble app to be put out by such a massive company, One Today brings a different nonprofit group or project to your attention every single day, and asks that you donate one single dollar to the cause, hopefully sharing that donation with social media and getting larger chunks of change to the people who are trying to make the world better. We're all philanthropists in Google's new world order! But seriously. This is great stuff, and I'm glad to see it.

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Also on Android Apps

Instead of celebrating Earth Day once a year, adopt an eco-friendly consciousness. Zinio ?s digital newsstand saves 104 thousand trees per month, and here?s how you can get involved.

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Speaking of awesome futuristic scenarios that we've all seen in movies, haven't you always wanted your very own AI assistant and companion? Well? Indigo from Artificial Solutions is a pretty close alternative for now. Like the beloved Siri on iOS, Indigo is a voice enabled personal assistant that actually chats back at you. It'll look up directions, let you leave notes and reminders, find restaurants and showtimes, and most importantly, play YouTube videos, let you update Facebook, and also read, tweet, and retweet on Twitter. As with any app this advanced, there are plenty of kinks to work out and bugs to squash, but just because this isn't quite Cortana from the Halo games series doesn't mean it isn't really cool!

The Traveler from Frog Baby Apps is looking to be the ultimate app for documenting any and every vacation you ever take, from family road trips to nowhere USA to gallivanting tours across Europe and the rest. The app will let you record video and take photos, sketch things you see and leave notes, and even record your paths, replaying them and showing any photos, videos, or sketches you take at the context appropriate times. Talk about a literal walk down memory lane. This is a great concept and should definitely be downloaded by anyone who travels with regularity.

People have had to figure out all new ways to date and find that significant other in the Internet age, and 'Swoon: who's crushing on you?' is just the latest in a long line of OKCupids and lesser OKCupids. Breaking things down to a basic level of face shots and primary interests, you can play a little game of 'hot or not' and like or pass on various people in your given area anonymously, and you can even message each other in-app if it turns out that you and someone else 'like' each other's profiles. The app is super buggy at the moment, but it's a neat idea worth checking out if online dating is your scene.

SendHub from InfoReach is the latest in a long line of apps that seek to make business communications easier, while also keeping your personal number as personal as possible. Offering a voice over internet alternative phone service, you can make a free business line in any area code, text and call right from the app, plus enjoy nifty features like call forwarding, group texting, voicemail, and the rest. It's also got a few bugs skittering about in its system, but it works quite well as is, and is definitely a great place to look if you want to keep your business and personal lives separate.

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Best Educational Apps, Handpicked By Experts

Appolicious is pleased to introduce appoLearning.com, where parents, teachers and students find great education apps. Check out our introduction video here!

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Source: http://www.androidapps.com/tech/articles/13432-one-today-by-google-leads-android-apps-of-the-week

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New imaging technology could reveal cellular secrets

Apr. 25, 2013 ? Researchers have married two biological imaging technologies, creating a new way to learn how good cells go bad.

"Let's say you have a large population of cells," said Corey Neu, an assistant professor in Purdue University's Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering. "Just one of them might metastasize or proliferate, forming a cancerous tumor. We need to understand what it is that gives rise to that one bad cell."

Such an advance makes it possible to simultaneously study the mechanical and biochemical behavior of cells, which could provide new insights into disease processes, said biomedical engineering postdoctoral fellow Charilaos "Harris" Mousoulis.

Being able to study a cell's internal workings in fine detail would likely yield insights into the physical and biochemical responses to its environment. The technology, which combines an atomic force microscope and nuclear magnetic resonance system, could help researchers study individual cancer cells, for example, to uncover mechanisms leading up to cancer metastasis for research and diagnostics.

The prototype's capabilities were demonstrated by taking nuclear magnetic resonance spectra of hydrogen atoms in water. Findings represent a proof of concept of the technology and are detailed in a research paper that appeared online April 11 in the journal Applied Physics Letters. The paper was co-authored by Mousoulis' research scientist Teimour Maleki, Babak Ziaie, a professor of electrical and computer engineering; and Neu.

"You could detect many different types of chemical elements, but in this case hydrogen is nice to detect because it's abundant," Neu said. "You could detect carbon, nitrogen and other elements to get more detailed information about specific biochemistry inside a cell."

An atomic force microscope (AFM) uses a tiny vibrating probe called a cantilever to yield information about materials and surfaces on the scale of nanometers, or billionths of a meter. Because the instrument enables scientists to "see" objects far smaller than possible using light microscopes, it could be ideal for studying molecules, cell membranes and other biological structures.

However, the AFM does not provide information about the biological and chemical properties of cells. So the researchers fabricated a metal microcoil on the AFM cantilever. An electrical current is passed though the coil, causing it to exchange electromagnetic radiation with protons in molecules within the cell and inducing another current in the coil, which is detected.

The Purdue researchers perform "mechanobiology" studies to learn how forces exerted on cells influence their behavior. In work focusing on osteoarthritis, their research includes the study of cartilage cells from the knee to learn how they interact with the complex matrix of structures and biochemistry between cells.

Future research might include studying cells in "microfluidic chambers" to test how they respond to specific drugs and environmental changes.

A U.S. patent application has been filed for the concept. The research has been funded by Purdue's Showalter Trust Fund and the National Institutes of Health.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Purdue University. The original article was written by Emil Venere.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. Charilaos Mousoulis, Teimour Maleki, Babak Ziaie, Corey P. Neu. Atomic force microscopy-coupled microcoils for cellular-scale nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. Applied Physics Letters, 2013; 102 (14): 143702 DOI: 10.1063/1.4801318

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/~3/ayYzbNTiLZE/130425160208.htm

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Nanowires grown on graphene have surprising structure

Wednesday, April 24, 2013

When a team of University of Illinois engineers set out to grow nanowires of a compound semiconductor on top of a sheet of graphene, they did not expect to discover a new paradigm of epitaxy.

The self-assembled wires have a core of one composition and an outer layer of another, a desired trait for many advanced electronics applications. Led by professor Xiuling Li, in collaboration with professors Eric Pop and Joseph Lyding, all professors of electrical and computer engineering, the team published its findings in the journal Nano Letters.

Nanowires, tiny strings of semiconductor material, have great potential for applications in transistors, solar cells, lasers, sensors and more.

"Nanowires are really the major building blocks of future nano-devices," said postdoctoral researcher Parsian Mohseni, first author of the study. "Nanowires are components that can be used, based on what material you grow them out of, for any functional electronics application."

Li's group uses a method called van der Waals epitaxy to grow nanowires from the bottom up on a flat substrate of semiconductor materials, such as silicon. The nanowires are made of a class of materials called III-V (three-five), compound semiconductors that hold particular promise for applications involving light, such as solar cells or lasers.

The group previously reported growing III-V nanowires on silicon. While silicon is the most widely used material in devices, it has a number of shortcomings. Now, the group has grown nanowires of the material indium gallium arsenide (InGaAs) on a sheet of graphene, a 1-atom-thick sheet of carbon with exceptional physical and conductive properties.

Thanks to its thinness, graphene is flexible, while silicon is rigid and brittle. It also conducts like a metal, allowing for direct electrical contact to the nanowires. Furthermore, it is inexpensive, flaked off from a block of graphite or grown from carbon gases.

"One of the reasons we want to grow on graphene is to stay away from thick and expensive substrates," Mohseni said. "About 80 percent of the manufacturing cost of a conventional solar cell comes from the substrate itself. We've done away with that by just using graphene. Not only are there inherent cost benefits, we're also introducing functionality that a typical substrate doesn't have."

The researchers pump gases containing gallium, indium and arsenic into a chamber with a graphene sheet. The nanowires self-assemble, growing by themselves into a dense carpet of vertical wires across the surface of the graphene. Other groups have grown nanowires on graphene with compound semiconductors that only have two elements, but by using three elements, the Illinois group made a unique finding: The InGaAs wires grown on graphene spontaneously segregate into an indium arsenide (InAs) core with an InGaAs shell around the outside of the wire.

"This is unexpected," Li said. "A lot of devices require a core-shell architecture. Normally you grow the core in one growth condition and change conditions to grow the shell on the outside. This is spontaneous, done in one step. The other good thing is that since it's a spontaneous segregation, it produces a perfect interface."

So what causes this spontaneous core-shell structure? By coincidence, the distance between atoms in a crystal of InAs is nearly the same as the distance between whole numbers of carbon atoms in a sheet of graphene. So, when the gases are piped into the chamber and the material begins to crystallize, InAs settles into place on the graphene, a near-perfect fit, while the gallium compound settles on the outside of the wires. This was unexpected, because normally, with van der Waals epitaxy, the respective crystal structures of the material and the substrate are not supposed to matter.

"We didn't expect it, but once we saw it, it made sense," Mohseni said.

In addition, by tuning the ratio of gallium to indium in the semiconductor cocktail, the researchers can tune the optical and conductive properties of the nanowires.

Next, Li's group plans to make solar cells and other optoelectronic devices with their graphene-grown nanowires. Thanks to both the wires' ternary composition and graphene's flexibility and conductivity, Li hopes to integrate the wires in a broad spectrum of applications.

"We basically discovered a new phenomenon that confirms that registry does count in van der Waals epitaxy," Li said.

###

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: http://www.uiuc.edu

Thanks to University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 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/127884/Nanowires_grown_on_graphene_have_surprising_structure

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What Kobe won't tweet: Los Angeles is becoming a Clippers town

With Kobe Bryant injured (and tweeting) and the Los Angeles Lakers reeling, the Clippers are making the most of a chance to become the city's top basketball attraction.

By Daniel B. Wood,?Staff writer / April 24, 2013

Los Angeles Clippers guard Chris Paul (2nd r.) scores the game-winning basket against the Memphis Grizzlies during Game 2 of their NBA playoff series in Los Angeles.

Lucy Nicholson/Reuters

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?This isn?t supposed to happen, it?s really throwing me off mentally,? says Los Angeles native Peter Vineland, a self-described ?basketball nut? sipping a beverage at Starbucks in Sherman Oaks. ?I?m sorry for Kobe Bryant and the Lakers but surprisingly happy for the Clippers.?

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Vineland is talking about the reversal of fortunes that is playing out here at the start of the National Basketball Association playoffs. For years, it has been the Los Angeles Lakers dominating the postseason ? winning 11 championships since 1972, including a three-peat from 2001-03. And the Los Angeles Clippers have usually been in the cellar, the team that Lakers fans such as Vineland didn?t ever watch on purpose and didn?t even want even to admit was from the same city.

This year, the Lakers barely made it to the playoffs as the No. 7 seed and scored a piddling 79 points in losing the first game of their first-round series to the San Antonio Spurs. Meanwhile, the Clippers are leading their playoff series with the Memphis Grizzlies, 2-0, and star guard Chris Paul made the game-winning shot Tuesday night with 0.1 seconds remaining, bringing a bit of Laker "Showtime" to the Clip Joint.

As with the Roman Empire or a Hollywood starlet, sports runs through cycles in which those on the bottom rise to the top and those on the top fall. This is that time for Los Angeles.

?The Lakers have been the shining star for decades, and the Clippers almost the laughing stock of the league,? says Dan Lebowitz, president of the Center for the Study of Sports in Society at Northeastern University. ?Now the Clippers are the darlings of the league, the Cinderella team to watch. This is going to be good.?

Lakers Superstar Kobe Bryant tore his Achilles tendon in a recent game and will be out for the remainder of the season at least ? and the Lakers have yet to figure out how to make up for Bryant?s 27.3-point-per-game average.

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Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/Z11EcZo1-2w/What-Kobe-won-t-tweet-Los-Angeles-is-becoming-a-Clippers-town

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Deficiency in p53 anti-tumor protein delays DNA repair after radiation, Moffitt researchers say

Public release date: 23-Apr-2013
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Contact: Kim Polacek
kim.polacek@moffitt.org
813-504-9706
H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute

Researchers at Moffitt Cancer Center have found that a deficiency in an important anti-tumor protein, p53, can slow or delay DNA repair after radiation treatment. They suggest that this is because p53 regulates the expression of two enzymes (JMJD2b and SUV39H1) that control the folding of DNA.

According to the researchers, p53 is highly inducible by radiation. Activation of p53 stabilizes chromosomes by promoting the repair of heterochromatin DNA, which controls the expression of nearby genes and ensures accurate distribution of chromosomes during cell division.

Their findings, which published online Feb. 4 in Oncogene, are significant because they shed light on the consequence of p53 deficiency that frequently occurs in tumors and further explain the function of p53 in the development of cancer.

Crucial to multicellular organisms, p53 is a tumor suppressor that regulates the cell cycle and helps prevent cancer by maintaining genetic stability and inhibiting gene mutation. But after irradiation, p53 deficiency results in abnormal levels of SUV39H1 and JMJD2b, enzymes that play a vital role in the structure of chromosomes, especially in DNA damage control and repair.

"Different tumor types have variable responses to ionizing radiation," explained study lead author Jiandong Chen, Ph.D., senior member of the Cancer Biology and Molecular Medicine Program at Moffitt. "Radiation therapy is more effective if tumors are defective in repairing damaged DNA. The p53 pathway is compromised to different degrees in all tumors, which may explain the fact that radiation often kills tumor cells more than normal cells."

In this study, the researchers worked with multiple cancer cell lines.

"We found that p53 activates JMJD2b and represses SUV39H1," Chen said. "Depletion of JMJD2b, or sustained expression of SUV39H1, delays the repair of heterochromatin DNA after ionizing radiation," explained Chen. "The DNA repair function of p53 may be particularly important in higher organisms because of the increased complexity of their genomes."

Although they note that there is no general consensus on the relationship between p53 mutation status and treatment response, in certain narrow settings such as breast cancer, p53 mutation is associated with favorable response to chemotherapy.

"We can conclude that the chromatin modifiers SUV39H1 and JMJD2b are important mediators of p53 function in maintaining the stability of highly repetitive DNA sequences, and developing new drugs that target these enzymes may benefit cancer therapy," the researchers wrote.

###

This work is supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health (CA141244, CA109636).

About Moffitt Cancer Center

Located in Tampa, Moffitt is one of only 41 National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive Cancer Centers, a distinction that recognizes Moffitt's excellence in research, its contributions to clinical trials, prevention and cancer control. Since 1999, Moffitt has been listed in U.S. News & World Report as one of "America's Best Hospitals" for cancer. With more than 4,200 employees, Moffitt has an economic impact on the state of nearly $2 billion. For more information, visit MOFFITT.org, and follow the Moffitt momentum on Facebook, twitter and YouTube.

Media release by Florida Science Communications

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Public release date: 23-Apr-2013
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Contact: Kim Polacek
kim.polacek@moffitt.org
813-504-9706
H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute

Researchers at Moffitt Cancer Center have found that a deficiency in an important anti-tumor protein, p53, can slow or delay DNA repair after radiation treatment. They suggest that this is because p53 regulates the expression of two enzymes (JMJD2b and SUV39H1) that control the folding of DNA.

According to the researchers, p53 is highly inducible by radiation. Activation of p53 stabilizes chromosomes by promoting the repair of heterochromatin DNA, which controls the expression of nearby genes and ensures accurate distribution of chromosomes during cell division.

Their findings, which published online Feb. 4 in Oncogene, are significant because they shed light on the consequence of p53 deficiency that frequently occurs in tumors and further explain the function of p53 in the development of cancer.

Crucial to multicellular organisms, p53 is a tumor suppressor that regulates the cell cycle and helps prevent cancer by maintaining genetic stability and inhibiting gene mutation. But after irradiation, p53 deficiency results in abnormal levels of SUV39H1 and JMJD2b, enzymes that play a vital role in the structure of chromosomes, especially in DNA damage control and repair.

"Different tumor types have variable responses to ionizing radiation," explained study lead author Jiandong Chen, Ph.D., senior member of the Cancer Biology and Molecular Medicine Program at Moffitt. "Radiation therapy is more effective if tumors are defective in repairing damaged DNA. The p53 pathway is compromised to different degrees in all tumors, which may explain the fact that radiation often kills tumor cells more than normal cells."

In this study, the researchers worked with multiple cancer cell lines.

"We found that p53 activates JMJD2b and represses SUV39H1," Chen said. "Depletion of JMJD2b, or sustained expression of SUV39H1, delays the repair of heterochromatin DNA after ionizing radiation," explained Chen. "The DNA repair function of p53 may be particularly important in higher organisms because of the increased complexity of their genomes."

Although they note that there is no general consensus on the relationship between p53 mutation status and treatment response, in certain narrow settings such as breast cancer, p53 mutation is associated with favorable response to chemotherapy.

"We can conclude that the chromatin modifiers SUV39H1 and JMJD2b are important mediators of p53 function in maintaining the stability of highly repetitive DNA sequences, and developing new drugs that target these enzymes may benefit cancer therapy," the researchers wrote.

###

This work is supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health (CA141244, CA109636).

About Moffitt Cancer Center

Located in Tampa, Moffitt is one of only 41 National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive Cancer Centers, a distinction that recognizes Moffitt's excellence in research, its contributions to clinical trials, prevention and cancer control. Since 1999, Moffitt has been listed in U.S. News & World Report as one of "America's Best Hospitals" for cancer. With more than 4,200 employees, Moffitt has an economic impact on the state of nearly $2 billion. For more information, visit MOFFITT.org, and follow the Moffitt momentum on Facebook, twitter and YouTube.

Media release by Florida Science Communications

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[ | 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.

Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-04/hlmc-dip042213.php

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Richie Havens, Woodstock legend, dies at 72

By Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, TODAY

Folk singer and guitarist Richie Havens, who opened the 1969 Woodstock music festival with a legendary and lengthy set that helped make him famous, died Monday at age 72.?

Fin Costello / Redferns file via Getty Images

Richie Havens in concert in 1973.

His family says Havens died of a heart attack, and that a public memorial will be announced later.?A statement on his official website posted before Havens' death says that the singer never fully recovered from kidney surgery he underwent several years ago.

His career spans decades, but he may be most famous for his role as the first performer at Woodstock. He launched the three-day festival with more than two hours of music, even running out of songs and thus improvising the song "Freedom" based on the old spiritual "Motherless Child."

Steve Davidowitz, who co-wrote Havens' 1999 autobiography, "They Can't Hide Us Anymore," tells TODAY that the book title was what Havens said while looking out at the enormous Woodstock crowd.

"The promoters of the event actually appealed to Richie to perform for 20 minutes or so, because no one wanted to be first," Davidowitz told TODAY. "Instead of 20 minutes, the crowd kept him on stage for more than two hours with their cheers and demands for more."

Many Woodstock fans noticed that Havens didn't have his top row of teeth while performing at the festival. After the event, and with the encouragement of Johnny Carson, who had the singer on "The Tonight Show" more than a dozen times, the singer bought dental implants.

Brad Barket / Getty Images file

After Woodstock, Havens started his own record label, Stormy Forest. He also worked as an actor, appearing in the London stage version of The Who's "Tommy" and in the 1977 Richard Pryor movie "Greased Lightning," about the first black stock-car driver to win an upper-tier NASCAR race.?

"Richie Havens was gifted with one of the most recognizable voices in popular music," Havens' agent said in a statement. "His fiery, poignant, soulful singing style has remained unique and ageless since his historic appearance at Woodstock in 1969. For four decades, Havens used his music to convey passionate messages of brotherhood and personal freedom."

Havens was always grateful for his fans. "From Woodstock to The Isle of Wight to Glastonbury to the Fillmore Auditorium to Royal Albert Hall to Carnegie Hall, Richie played the most legendary music festivals that ever were, and most of the world?s greatest concert venues," the statement went on to say. "But even when performing in a?Greenwich Village coffeehouse or a small club or regional theater, he was eternally grateful that people in any number turned up each time to hear him sing. More than anything, he feels incredibly blessed to have met so many of you along the way."

Actor Lou Gossett Jr. was Havens? co-writer on one of his most popular songs, ?Handsome Johnny,? which was released in 1967 and was also part of Havens' Woodstock set. In 2001, the song was covered by reggae musician Peter Tosh, and in 2002, by The Flaming Lips.

Havens also had a 1971 hit with his cover of The Beatles' "Here Comes the Sun."

"Working with Richie to write his book -- a very good book, one with no curse words, no sexual exploits, but a book that shared how he self-taught himself virtually everything ... was the single most enjoyable professional experience of my life," Davidowitz told TODAY. "Besides that, he was a great friend, ?an amazing, ?fantastic performer, a truly warmhearted, giving human being. "

After hearing of his death, fans began to share memories of Havens on The Roots Agency's Facebook page.

"His legacy will live on forever," wrote Reese Karlan.

Wrote Robert Rothstein: "Richie Havens was a great ambassador of peace and humanity. His voice was unique."

Related content:

Source: http://todayentertainment.today.com/_news/2013/04/22/17865761-richie-havens-woodstock-legend-dies-at-72?lite

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Chartboost Is Building The Next Gaming Platform To Watch, And They're Expanding To Europe

Five years ago from their native city of Barcelona, Maria Alegre used to watch old Stanford Technology Ventures Program videos from entrepreneurs sharing their founding stories. Intrigued by what she heard, she picked up and moved to the Valley, where Alegre dug into mobile gaming at early developer Tapulous, which went on to be acquired by Disney. Fast forward to today, Alegre is running one of the fastest-growing game discovery platforms and mobile ad networks in Silicon Valley — one that we’ve heard from three separate sources grossed about $50 million last year. (The company doesn’t comment on revenue figures). Her company Chartboost is quietly sucking in talent from an older generation of mobile ad networks and gaming studios like Google’s AdMob, DeNA’s Ngmoco and EA’s Popcap. They also picked up $19 million in funding led by storied VC firm Sequoia earlier this year. “It’s kind of crazy. This all happened in four years,” she said. “Anyone can do it. People running these companies are not super humans. They are just people like you and me.” Today Chartboost is opening its first office abroad in Europe, led by Ilja Goossens, who founded Gamundo and Virtual Fairground. The new location in Amsterdam is meant to strengthen the company’s relationships with the biggest game developers across the continent. Europe is having something of a Renaissance in mobile gaming right now with players like Finland’s Supercell (which made $104 million in profit with just 100 people last quarter), Berlin’s Wooga and London’s King. While other competing startups with mobile advertising products were less focused, Chartboost wedged itself into the gaming world where it built an early platform for developers to trade advertising inventory. Because games are the biggest category for apps in terms of time spent on iOS and Android, it was the ideal place to build a focused business. Chartboost earns revenue through excess inventory, which can be sold in an exchange. Chartboost now has 16,000 games in its network and 8 billion ad impressions per month and has grown 30 percent since January. Instead of the old banner ads, which had poor clickthrough rates, Chartboost instead focused on creating interstitials that looked and felt like they belonged in a game. At first, it wasn’t easy, however. Alegre said that when she and her co-founder Sean Fannan were starting out, they did 30 phone pitches to potential investors in a week. In

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/JzRLZE28kjk/

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The Bling Ring Trailer: Emma Watson Wants to Rob You!

Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2013/04/the-bling-ring-trailer-emma-watson-wants-to-rob/

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Netflix Earnings 1Q 2013 - Business Insider

Reuters/Stephen Chernin

Actor Kevin Spacey at Netflix's House of Cards premiere.

?

Netflix?announced its first quarter earnings this afternoon.

Revenue was in line with expectations but EPS killed it, and the stock jumped about 20% after-hours.?

We're updating this post as we go, so click for updates.

The big numbers are:

• Revenue: $1.02 billion versus $1.02 billion estimate
• EPS: $0.31 versus $0.20
• Earnings guidance: Sees Q2 EPS $0.23-$0.48 versus expectations of $0.30 EPS

Here's the full outlook for Q2 2013:

Netflix added three million subscribers in the first quarter bringing the total to 36 million.

They say two million of the new subscribers were added to the streaming business in the U.S. alone. This attributed in part to positive reception of the first original series House of Cards. International membership grew by one million.

In all markets Netflix saw growth and improved profits or reduced losses.

In regards to exclusive content and deals with other content providers, Netflix says that, "as we continue to focus on exclusive and curated content, our willingness to pay for non-exclusive, bulk content deals declines."

Netflix shared another interesting fact in its quarterly investor letter relating?to its proprietary series, House of Cards.

The decision to release all 13 episodes of its first original series House of Cards worked in the company's favor.

CEO Reed Hastings wrote in the investor letter that the decision created "enormous media and social buzz, reinforcing our brand attribute of giving consumers completely control over how and when they enjoy their entertainment."

Netflix was widely criticized for its decision to release the entire series at once.?Hastings said, "some investors worried that the House of Cards fans would take advantage of our free?trial, watch the show, and then cancel. However, there was very little free-trial gaming?less than 8,000?people did this? out of millions of free trials in the quarter."

Here's the full investor letter:

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/netflix-earnings-1q-2013-4

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Biological activity alters the ability of sea spray to seed clouds

Apr. 22, 2013 ? Ocean biology alters the chemical composition of sea spray in ways that influence its ability to form clouds over the ocean. That's the conclusion of a team of scientists using a new approach to study tiny atmospheric particles called aerosols that can influence climate by absorbing or reflecting sunlight and seeding clouds. By engineering breaking waves of natural ocean water under purified air in the lab, they were able to isolate and analyze aerosols from the spray and determine how life within the water altered the chemistry of the particles.

"After many decades of attempting to understand how the ocean impacts the atmosphere and clouds above it, it became clear a new approach was needed to investigate the complex ocean-atmosphere system. Moving the chemical complexity of the ocean to the laboratory represented a major advance that will enable many new studies to be performed," said Kimberly Prather, Distinguished Chair in Atmospheric Chemistry at the University of California, San Diego and director of the Center for Aerosol Impacts on Climate and the Environment, who led the team of more than 30 scientists involved in this project. They report their findings in the early, online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the week of April 22.

Tiny air bubbles form in the ocean when waves break, then rise to the surface and burst, releasing gases and aerosols into the atmosphere. Sea spray aerosols come in a wide variety of sizes and shapes with chemical complexity ranging from simple salts to complex biological mixtures to bacterial cells.

For decades, scientists have been studying how the chemical make-up of aerosols affects their ability to take up water, seed clouds, and react in the atmosphere. Because aerosols from other sources overwhelm field measurements, it's been difficult to isolate and study marine aerosols over the actual ocean.

"Once the ocean-atmosphere system was isolated, we could systematically probe how changes in the seawater due to biological activity affect the composition and climate properties of the sea spray aerosol," said Prather, a professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry who holds a joint appointment at Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

They pumped seawater directly from the Pacific Ocean into a specially modified enclosed wave flume in the Hydraulics Laboratory at Scripps Oceanography. By stringently filtering the air within the wave chamber, the team eliminated contamination from other sources allowing them to probe sea spray aerosol directly for the first time right after it was produced by breaking waves.

Over five days, the team systematically altered biological communities within the flume by adding various combinations of cultures of marine bacteria and microscopic marine algae, or phytoplankton. Then, as a hydraulic paddle sent waves breaking over an artificial shoal, instruments positioned along the 33 meter long flume analyzed the chemistry of the seawater, air, and aerosols.

As the seawater changed and bacteria levels increased, the composition of the aerosols changed in ways that reduced their ability to form clouds. In particular, a day after new cultures were added, bacteria levels rose fivefold and cloud-seeding potential fell by about a third. These changes happened even as the concentration of phytoplankton fell, along with levels of chlorophyll-a, the pigment essential to photosynthesis. This is an important finding because current estimates of biological activity in surface waters of the ocean rely on instruments aboard satellites that measure the color of the sea surface, which changes along with levels of chlorophyll-a, an assessment that will miss blooms of other organisms, such as bacteria.

The findings demonstrate the value of the center's novel approach for sorting through the interdependent factors governing the effects of the ocean and sea spray on climate.

Co-authors from UC San Diego include Timothy Bertram, Douglas Collins, Luis Cuadra-Rodriguez, Timothy Guasco, Matthew Ruppel, Olivia Ryder, Nathan Schoepp and Defeng Zhao from the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry; Grant Deane, Dale Stokes, Lihini Aluwihare, Brian Palenik, Farooq Azam, Gregory Roberts, Lynn Russell, Craig Corriga, Michelle Kim, William Lambert, Robin Modini and Byron Evans Pedler from Scripps Institution of Oceanography; and Mario Molina, who holds a joint appointment. Additional co-authors include scientists from the University of Iowa, Colorado State University, California Institute of Technology, University of the Pacific, UC Davis, Northwestern University and Centre National de Recherches M?t?orologiques. The National Science Foundation's Center for Chemical Innovation supports the Center for Aerosol Impacts on Climate and the Environment (CHE 1038028).

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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_environment/~3/7PP7BJTxfvc/130422154921.htm

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Bombing Suspect to Be Tried as Civilian (ABC News)

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Global shares edge up, but set for worst week since June

Ahead of the U.S. restart, gains by top European shares had extended to 0.8 percent as London's FTSE <.ftse>, Frankfurt's DAX <.gdaxi> and the Paris CAC-40 <.fchi> bounced 0.6, 0.5 and 1.3 percent respectively.

MSCI's world share index <.miwd00000pus>, which tracks around 9000 stocks in 45 countries, was up 0.3 percent, but a run of heavy losses earlier in the week left it down 2.6 percent since Monday and facing its heaviest weekly fall since June.

"The weaker Chinese data has combined with the numbers from the U.S. and it has been translated by people as that the global economy is actually at a much weaker stage than has been price in," said Daiwa Securities economist Tobias Blattner.

"I think the correction could continue if we get a snap election in Italy, but if you ignore the political risk I think we are going to go into a phase of muddling through where shares stay roughly where they are, but with a lot of volatility."

The chance of that sudden Italian election appeared to rise earlier in the day after Italy's centre-left Democratic Party (PD) backed former Prime Minister Romano Prodi to become the country's new president.

Differences between the main parties mean his nomination is likely to snuff out the slim chances of an alliance government being formed in Rome and lead to re-run of February's inconclusive election, possibly within weeks.

Bond investors were unfazed by the uncertainty, however. Italian government bonds rose slightly, while German bonds, which have edged higher during this week's sell off in riskier assets, dipped back 22 ticks to 146.05.

YEN FALLS

In the currency market, the yen fell back to 99.20 yen to the dollar after Japan said the Group of 20, which is meeting in Washington, had accepted that the Bank of Japan's sweeping monetary expansion is aimed at beating deflation rather than competitively weakening the yen.

Finance leaders at the meeting are set to debate specific targets for reigning in debt levels as well as the potential dangers from the latest round of aggressive easing of monetary policy from the world's biggest central banks.

In an interview with Reuters as the gathering got underway, EU Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn said the euro zone would slow its budgetary belt-tightening to help reinvigorate economic growth.

A number of top countries, including the United States, have called for this from the bloc and the message helped support the euro as it climbed 0.3 percent to just below $1.31.

The currency has largely held its ground this week despite comments from the Bundesbank which have bolstered expectations of a cut in European Central Bank interest rates next month.

Finland's central bank governor Erkki Liikanen added to the debate among economists on whether the ECB should go even further and, like other top advanced economy central banks, heavily buy bonds and other assets to help boost growth.

Asked by a Finnish economic magazine if the bank could use unconventional means to boost the euro zone economy and step in to buy corporate bonds, Liikanen said: "One has always to be ready to explore new options. Our task is to work through money markets.

COMMODITIES MIXED

The prospect of lower global growth, and with it weaker demand for goods used in industrial production, has weighed particularly heavily on commodity markets this week.

Investors in U.S.-based funds pulled a record $2.7 billion out of commodities and precious metals funds over the last week, Thomson Reuters Lipper data show.

Oil? fell below $100 a barrel for the first time since July earlier this week. It was 0.8 percent higher at 99.85 as U.S. trading started but like a broad range of commodities was set for its third drop in as many weeks.

Copper, a gauge for manufacturing and China-related growth, was down 1.5 percent at $6,977 a tonne having broken below $7,000 for the first time since late 2011 on Thursday.

But it has been gold that has grabbed many of the headlines. It suffered its biggest daily drop in dollar terms on record on Monday as Cyprus's forced plans to sell gold and the recent shift in funds' behavior towards the precious metal spooked investors, but it has since clawed back some of that ground.

As buyers continued to filter back into the market, spot gold was holding above $1,400 an ounce but the brutal sell-off at the start of the week left it heading for a fourth week of losses.

"This (stabilization) gives us some confidence that as panic selling passes, prices can rebound by $100-150 an ounce and trade in the $1,400-$1,550 range over the next 3-6 months," said Mark Pervan, global head of commodity strategy at ANZ, referring to a pickup in physical gold sales in India and China.

(Reporting by Marc Jones; editing by Philippa Fletcher)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/global-growth-worries-cap-asian-share-prices-002632669--finance.html

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Astronomers discover massive star factory in early universe

Thursday, April 18, 2013

Smaller begets bigger.

Such is often the case for galaxies, at least: the first galaxies were small, then eventually merged together to form the behemoths we see in the present universe.

Those smaller galaxies produced stars at a modest rate; only later?when the universe was a couple of billion years old?did the vast majority of larger galaxies begin to form and accumulate enough gas and dust to become prolific star factories. Indeed, astronomers have observed that these star factories?called starburst galaxies?became prevalent a couple of billion years after the Big Bang.

But now a team of astronomers, which includes several from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), has discovered a dust-filled, massive galaxy churning out stars when the cosmos was a mere 880 million years old?making it the earliest starburst galaxy ever observed.

The galaxy is about as massive as our Milky Way, but produces stars at a rate 2,000 times greater, which is a rate as high as any galaxy in the universe. Generating the mass equivalent of 2,900 suns per year, the galaxy is especially prodigious?prompting the team to call it a "maximum-starburst" galaxy.

"Massive, intense starburst galaxies are expected to only appear at later cosmic times," says Dominik Riechers, who led the research while a senior research fellow at Caltech. "Yet, we have discovered this colossal starburst just 880 million years after the Big Bang, when the universe was at little more than 6 percent of its current age." Now an assistant professor at Cornell, Riechers is the first author of the paper describing the findings in the April 18 issue of the journal Nature.

While the discovery of this single galaxy isn't enough to overturn current theories of galaxy formation, finding more galaxies like this one could challenge those theories, the astronomers say. At the very least, theories will have to be modified to explain how this galaxy, dubbed HFLS3, formed, Riechers says.

"This galaxy is just one spectacular example, but it's telling us that extremely vigorous star formation was possible early in the universe," says Jamie Bock, professor of physics at Caltech and a coauthor of the paper.

The astronomers found HFLS3 chock full of molecules such as carbon monoxide, ammonia, hydroxide, and even water. Because most of the elements in the universe?other than hydrogen and helium?are fused in the nuclear furnaces of stars, such a rich and diverse chemical composition is indicative of active star formation. And indeed, Bock says, the chemical composition of HFLS3 is similar to those of other known starburst galaxies that existed later in cosmic history.

Last month, a Caltech-led team of astronomers?a few of whom are also authors on this newer work?discovered dozens of similar galaxies that were producing stars as early as 1.5 billion years after the Big Bang. But none of them existed as early as HFLS3, which has been studied in much greater detail.

Those previous observations were made possible by gravitational lensing, in which large foreground galaxies act as cosmic magnifying glasses, bending the light of the starburst galaxies and making their detection easier. HFLS3, however, is only weakly lensed, if at all. The fact that it was detectable without the help of lensing means that it is intrinsically a bright galaxy in far-infrared light?nearly 30 trillion times as luminous as the sun and 2,000 times more luminous than the Milky Way.

Because the galaxy is enshrouded in dust, it's very faint in visible light. The galaxy's stars, however, heat up the dust, causing it to radiate in infrared wavelengths. The astronomers were able to find HFLS3 as they sifted through data taken by the European Space Agency's Herschel Space Observatory, which studies the infrared universe. The data was part of the Herschel Multi-tiered Extragalactic Survey (HerMES), an effort co-coordinated by Bock to observe a large patch of the sky (roughly 1,300 times the size of the moon) with Herschel.

Amid the thousands of galaxies detected in the survey, HFLS3 appeared as just a faint dot?but a particularly red one. That caught the attention of Darren Dowell, a visiting associate at Caltech who was analyzing the HerMES data. The object's redness meant that its light was being substantially stretched toward longer (and redder) wavelengths by the expansion of the universe. The more distant an object, the more its light is stretched, and so a very red source would be very far away. The only other possibility would be that?because cooler objects emit light at longer wavelengths?the object might be unusually cold; the astronomers' analysis, however, ruled out that possibility. Because it takes the light billions of years to travel across space, seeing such a distant object is equivalent to looking deep into the past. "We were hoping to find a massive starburst galaxy at vast distances, but we did not expect that one would even exist that early in the universe," Riechers says.

To study HFLS3 further, the astronomers zoomed in with several other telescopes. Using the Combined Array for Research in Millimeter-Wave Astronomy (CARMA)?a series of telescope dishes that Caltech helps operate in the Inyo Mountains of California?as well as the Z-Spec instrument on the Caltech Submillimeter Observatory on Mauna Kea in Hawaii, the team was able to study the chemical composition of the galaxy in detail?in particular, the presence of water and carbon monoxide?and measure its distance. The researchers also used the 10-meter telescope at the W. M. Keck Observatory on Mauna Kea to determine to what extent HFLS3 was gravitationally lensed.

This galaxy is the first such object in the HerMES survey to be analyzed in detail. This type of galaxy is rare, the astronomers say, but to determine just how rare, they will pursue more follow-up studies to see if they can find more of them lurking in the HerMES data. These results also hint at what may soon be discovered with larger infrared observatories, such as the new Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile and the planned Cerro Chajnantor Atacama Telescope (CCAT), of which Caltech is a partner institution.

The title of the Nature paper is "A Dust-Obscured Massive Maximum-Starburst Galaxy at a Redshift of 6.34." In addition to Riechers, Bock, and Dowell, the other Caltech authors of the paper are visiting associates in physics Matt Bradford, Asantha Cooray, and Hien Nguyen; postdoctoral scholars Carrie Bridge, Attila Kovacs, Joaquin Vieira, Marco Viero, and Michael Zemcov; staff research scientist Eric Murphy; and Jonas Zmuidzinas, the Merle Kingsley Professor of Physics and the Chief Technologist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). There are a total of 64 authors. Bock, Dowell, and Nguyen helped build the Spectral and Photometric Imaging Receiver (SPIRE) instrument on Herschel.

Herschel is a European Space Agency cornerstone mission, with science instruments provided by consortia of European institutes and with important participation by NASA. NASA's Herschel Project Office is based at JPL in Pasadena, California. JPL contributed mission-enabling technology for two of Herschel's three science instruments. The NASA Herschel Science Center, part of the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at Caltech in Pasadena, supports the U.S. astronomical community. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

The W. M. Keck Observatory operates the largest, most scientifically productive telescopes on Earth. The two 10-meter optical/infrared telescopes on the summit of Mauna Kea on the island of Hawaii feature a suite of advanced instruments including imagers, multi-object spectrographs, high-resolution spectrographs, integral-field spectroscopy and a world-leading laser guide-star adaptive optics system. The observatory is operated by a private 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization and is a scientific partnership of the California Institute of Technology, the University of California, and NASA.

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California Institute of Technology: http://www.caltech.edu

Thanks to California Institute of Technology for this article.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/127799/Astronomers_discover_massive_star_factory_in_early_universe

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