BLOOMINGTON, Ind. ? Iowa did a lot of things right against Indiana. Defense wasn't one of them.
Freshman Cody Zeller scored a season-high 26 points to help No. 16 Indiana defeat Iowa 103-89 on Sunday night. Indiana scored more than 100 points in a conference game for the first time since defeating Iowa 110-79 on March 12, 1995.
Iowa made 19 of 24 shots in the second half and somehow lost convincingly.
"We shot 80 percent in the second half," Iowa coach Fran McCaffery said. "You go on the road and score 89, you should be in pretty good shape. I was upset by a lot of things that happened on the defensive end of the floor."
Zeller made 11 of 12 shots and had four assists and three steals for the Hoosiers (17-5, 5-5 Big Ten),
"I've watched a lot of film, obviously, and he is as good as any freshman big man I have ever seen," McCaffery said.
It wasn't just the defense on Zeller that failed. Christian Watford scored 15 points, Verdell Jones III had 14 points and nine assists and Victor Oladipo had 12 points and six rebounds for the Hoosiers, who had lost four of five.
"We didn't help the helper enough," Iowa guard Bryce Cartwright said. "We had too many lapses."
Josh Oglesby scored a season-high 24 points and Matt Gatens added 20 for Iowa (11-11, 3-6). The Hawkeyes shot 63 percent from the field, but committed 17 turnovers. Since defeating Michigan, the Hawkeyes have lost at Purdue, at home to Nebraska and at Indiana.
Iowa and Indiana will meet again in Iowa City on Feb. 19.
Indiana was held to a season-low 50 points in a loss at Wisconsin on Thursday night, but had that many by halftime against Iowa. The Hoosiers finished with 20 assists after having four against Wisconsin.
On the rare occasion in which Indiana missed a shot against the Hawkeyes, the Hoosiers often got the rebound. Indiana scored 23 second-chance points on 20 offensive boards.
Indiana's Derek Elston hit three straight shots, including two 3-pointers, in a run that gave the Hoosiers a 26-18 lead with 11:37 left in the first half. Iowa cut the lead to one point on a basket by Aaron White, but the Hoosiers quickly regrouped. Tom Pritchard scored baskets 16 seconds apart in a run that gave Indiana a 44-36 lead.
The Hoosiers led 54-37 at halftime, their second-highest point total in a half this season. Indiana shot 54 percent and grabbed 11 offensive rebounds. Iowa shot 50 percent but committed 10 turnovers in the first half and was outrebounded 24-11.
A powerful one-handed dunk by Zeller gave the Hoosiers a 65-48 lead.
Iowa rallied and cut the deficit to 67-55 on a dunk by Nelsahn Basabe. Zeller took a break with Indiana leading 72-57. A two-handed putback dunk by Pritchard helped the Hoosiers maintain their lead, and Indiana led 81-64 when Zeller returned. His breakaway dunk increased the lead to 85-64.
The Hoosiers scored their 100th point on a free throw by Oladipo with 2:30 remaining.
Iowa might have scored 100 points too with better rebounding and effort on defense.
"It is not coming together right now," Gatens said. "Our defense on ball is bad, our pick-and-roll defense is bad. We couldn't get stops."
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A new University of Colorado Boulder-led study appears to answer contentious questions about the onset and cause of Earth's Little Ice Age, a period of cooling temperatures that began after the Middle Ages and lasted into the late 19th century.
According to the new study, the Little Ice Age began abruptly between A.D. 1275 and 1300, triggered by repeated, explosive volcanism and sustained by a self- perpetuating sea ice-ocean feedback system in the North Atlantic Ocean, according to CU-Boulder Professor Gifford Miller, who led the study. The primary evidence comes from radiocarbon dates from dead vegetation emerging from rapidly melting icecaps on Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic, combined with ice and sediment core data from the poles and Iceland and from sea ice climate model simulations, said Miller.
While scientific estimates regarding the onset of the Little Ice Age range from the 13th century to the 16th century, there is little consensus, said Miller. There is evidence the Little Ice Age affected places as far away as South America and China, although it was particularly evident in northern Europe. Advancing glaciers in mountain valleys destroyed towns, and famous paintings from the period depict people ice skating on the Thames River in London and canals in the Netherlands, waterways that were ice-free in winter before and after the Little Ice Age.
"The dominant way scientists have defined the Little Ice Age is by the expansion of big valley glaciers in the Alps and in Norway," said Miller. "But the time it took for European glaciers to advance far enough to demolish villages would have been long after the onset of the cold period," said Miller, a fellow at CU's Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research.
Most scientists think the Little Ice Age was caused either by decreased summer solar radiation, erupting volcanoes that cooled the planet by ejecting shiny aerosol particles that reflected sunlight back into space, or a combination of both, said Miller.
The new study suggests that the onset of the Little Ice Age was caused by an unusual, 50-year-long episode of four massive tropical volcanic eruptions. Climate models used in the new study showed that the persistence of cold summers following the eruptions is best explained by a sea ice-ocean feedback system originating in the North Atlantic Ocean.
"This is the first time anyone has clearly identified the specific onset of the cold times marking the start of the Little Ice Age," said Miller. "We also have provided an understandable climate feedback system that explains how this cold period could be sustained for a long period of time. If the climate system is hit again and again by cold conditions over a relatively short period -- in this case, from volcanic eruptions -- there appears to be a cumulative cooling effect."
A paper on the subject is being published Jan. 31 in Geophysical Research Letters, a publication of the American Geophysical Union. The paper was authored by scientists and students from CU-Boulder, the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, the University of Iceland, the University of California, Irvine, and the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. The study was funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the Icelandic Science Foundation.
As part of the study, Miller and his colleagues radiocarbon-dated roughly 150 samples of dead plant material with roots intact collected from beneath receding ice margins of ice caps on Baffin Island. There was a large cluster of "kill dates" between A.D. 1275 and 1300, indicating the plants had been frozen and engulfed by ice during a relatively sudden event.
Both low-lying and higher altitude plants all died at roughly the same time, indicating the onset of the Little Ice Age on Baffin Island -- the fifth largest island in the world -- was abrupt. The team saw a second spike in plant kill dates at about A.D. 1450, indicating the quick onset of a second major cooling event.
To broaden the study, the team analyzed sediment cores from a glacial lake linked to the 367-square-mile Langj?kull ice cap in the central highlands of Iceland that reaches nearly a mile high. The annual layers in the cores -- which can be reliably dated by using tephra deposits from known historic volcanic eruptions on Iceland going back more than 1,000 years -- suddenly became thicker in the late 13th century and again in the 15th century due to increased erosion caused by the expansion of the ice cap as the climate cooled, he said.
"That showed us the signal we got from Baffin Island was not just a local signal, it was a North Atlantic signal," said Miller. "This gave us a great deal more confidence that there was a major perturbation to the Northern Hemisphere climate near the end of the 13th century." Average summer temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere did not return to those of the Middle Ages until the 20th century, and the temperatures of the Middle Ages are now exceeded in many areas, he said.
The team used the NCAR-based Community Climate System Model to test the effects of volcanic cooling on Arctic sea ice extent and mass. The model, which simulated various sea ice conditions from about A.D. 1150-1700, showed several large, closely spaced eruptions could have cooled the Northern Hemisphere enough to trigger Arctic sea ice growth.
The models showed sustained cooling from volcanoes would have sent some of the expanding Arctic sea ice down along the eastern coast of Greenland until it eventually melted in the North Atlantic. Since sea ice contains almost no salt, when it melted the surface water became less dense, preventing it from mixing with deeper North Atlantic water. This weakened heat transport back to the Arctic and creating a self-sustaining feedback system on the sea ice long after the effects of the volcanic aerosols subsided, he said.
"Our simulations showed that the volcanic eruptions may have had a profound cooling effect," says NCAR scientist Bette Otto-Bliesner, a co-author of the study. "The eruptions could have triggered a chain reaction, affecting sea ice and ocean currents in a way that lowered temperatures for centuries."
The researchers set the solar radiation at a constant level in the climate models, and Miller said the Little Ice Age likely would have occurred without decreased summer solar radiation at the time. "Estimates of the sun's variability over time are getting smaller, it's now thought by some scientists to have varied little more in the last millennia than during a standard 11-year solar cycle," he said.
One of the primary questions pertaining to the Little Ice Age is how unusual the warming of Earth is today, he said. A previous study led by Miller in 2008 on Baffin Island indicated temperatures today are the warmest in at least 2,000 years.
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University of Colorado at Boulder: http://www.colorado.edu/news
Thanks to University of Colorado at Boulder for this article.
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The Catholic Church is fighting mad with the Obama Administration, and nearly every Catholic sitting in a pew this weekend heard the reasons why.
The Health and Human Services Department recently announced it will require all employers (with few exceptions) to provide health insurance to their employees which includes subsidized contraception, sterilization and coverage for abortion-inducing drugs.
This meant that religious institutions, like Catholic colleges and hospitals, or other Christian institutions would ?be compelled to violate their conscience by cooperating with that which they believe to be wrong. Currently many of these institutions purchase health-insurance plans which do not provide free coverage of these services.?
To give an analogy, it would be like the government mandating that all delis, even Kosher delis, serve pork products and then justifying it by saying that protein is healthy, and many Jews who don't follow Kosher laws and many non-Jews go to those delis. The law wouldn't technically ban Jews from owning delis, but it would effectively ban their ability to run them according to their conscience.?
Well, the Catholic Church isn't lying down and taking this.?
In thousands of parishes this weekend, Catholic priests read a version of the following letter to their congregation denouncing this decision as an attack on their religious freedom. Each bishop personally sent the letter out, and so there were some local variations. Here's the one read in the Phoenix Archdiocese. Here's another from the Bishop of Trenton. ?What follows is from the Bishop of Marquette:
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ:
?
I write to you concerning an alarming and serious matter that negatively impacts?the Church in the United States directly, and that strikes at the fundamental right to?religious liberty for all citizens?of any?faith.?The federal government, which?claims to be??of, by, and for the people,? has just been dealt a heavy blow to almost a quarter of those?people???the Catholic population???and to the millions more who are served by the?Catholic faithful.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced last week that?almost all employers,
including Catholic employers,?will be?forced to offer their?employees? health coverage that includes sterilization, abortion-inducing drugs, and?contraception.?Almost all?health insurers?will be?forced to include those ?services? in the?health policies they?write.?And almost?all individuals will?be?forced?to buy that coverage?as a part of their policies.
In so ruling, the Obama Administration has cast aside the First Amendment to?the Constitution of the United States, denying to Catholics our Nation?s first and most?fundamental freedom, that of religious liberty.?And as?a result, unless?the rule is?overturned, we Catholics will be compelled to either violate our consciences, or to drop?health coverage for our employees (and?suffer the penalties for doing so).?The Obama?Administration?s sole concession was to give our institutions one year to comply.
?
We cannot?we will not?comply with this?unjust law.?People of?faith cannot be?made second class citizens.?We are already joined by our?brothers and sisters of all?faiths and many others of good will in this important effort to regain our religious?freedom.?Our parents and grandparents did?not come to these shores to help build?America?s cities and towns, its infrastructure and institutions, its enterprise and culture,
only to have?their posterity stripped of?their God given?rights.?In generations past, the?Church has always been able to count on the faithful to stand up and protect her sacred?rights and duties.?I hope and?trust she can count?on this generation of Catholics to?do?the same.?Our children?and grandchildren deserve?nothing less.
And therefore, I would?ask of you two?things.?First, as a community of?faith we?must commit ourselves to prayer and fasting that wisdom and justice may prevail, and?religious liberty may be restored.?Without God, we can do?nothing; with God, nothing is?impossible.?Second,?I?would?also recommend?visiting?www.usccb.org/conscience,to?learn more about this severe assault on religious liberty, and how to contact Congress?in support of legislation that would reverse the Obama Administration?s decision.
For many younger football fans, the name ?Joe Namath? doesn?t conjure memories of Broadway Joe or Super Bowl III but a drunken pass at ESPN sideline reporter Suzy Kolber during a December 2003 edition of Sunday Night Football.? His ?I wanna kiss you? moment became the stuff of TV legend, even making its way into an epic auto-tune mash-up from D.J. Steve Porter, who coincidentally now crafts similar projects for the four-letter network.
In an HBO documentary on Namath?s life, which debuted at 9:00 p.m. ET on Saturday, Kolber addresses the incident for the first time.? Without saying ?don?t blame us, we didn?t know Joe was drunk,? she seems to try a little too hard to offer up not-so-subtle excuses for not knowing Joe was drunk, even though perhaps everyone involved should have known, or at least suspected, that Joe was drunk.
Especially once he started talking.
?Joe was escorted onto the field by a number of Jets personnel,? Kolber says of the subject of her eventual interview.? ?And what I recall is that he and I never really had a chance to chat, because he wouldn?t stand still.?
Kolber creates the impression that she didn?t have any opportunity to observe his behavior (Namath admits that he?d been drinking all day and night) until the interview started.? ?When we were really getting to close to when our producer wanted to have him on, I took his arm because I just didn?t want him to walk away,? Kolber says.
And even when the interview began, Kolber explains (with her trademark perky nonchalance) that no one thought anything was amiss as he gave a stumbling, incomprehensible answer to the first question:? ?What impresses you about Chad [Pennington]??
?I believe that anything anyone else has watched Chad play impresses me the same thing impresses them,? Namath said at the time, clumsily and awkwardly.
She attributed his off-kilter behavior to, yes, the weather.? ?When we first started talking and he was slow and deliberate in his speech,? Kolber says, ?what was going through my head was, ?Maybe it?s just really cold.??
But here?s the kicker from Kolber, the thing that made me think for the first time that ESPN adroitly has been able to avoid for more than eight years the question of how they put him on the air in the first place, and why they didn?t kill the interview after his initial rambling response.? ?None of the executives in the truck were alarmed either, because nobody said, ?Stop,?? Kolber says.? ?The direction in my ear was, ?Keep going.??
None of this changes the fact that Namath was at fault for drinking too much and agreeing to go on camera and then acting like a jerk by saying ?I wanna kiss you,? not once but twice.? But I?ve been involved in the TV side of this business long enough now to realize that there are (or at least should be) layers of folks who when trouble pops up can make good decisions in the blink of an eye, or even faster.? Still, until seeing Kolber?s roundabout effort to help ESPN continue to sidestep shrapnel for allowing the ?I wanna kiss you? moment to happen by not ending the interview (or by never doing it in the first place), I never made the connection.? Joe was always the bad guy, and ESPN and Kolber were always without blame of any kind.
After hearing Kolber?s explanation, I?m starting to think that maybe a few tougher questions should have been asked back in late 2003.? It?ll be interesting to see if any of those questions are asked now.
SAN FRANCISCO ? California air regulators passed sweeping auto emission standards Friday that include a mandate to have 1.4 million electric and hybrid vehicles on state roads by 2025.
The California Air Resources Board unanimously approved the new rules that require that one in seven of the new cars sold in the state in 2025 be an electric or other zero-emission vehicle.
The plan also mandates a 75 percent reduction in smog-forming pollutants by 2025, and a 34 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions over roughly the same time.
California's auto emissions standards are influential and often more strict than federal ones. Currently 14 other states have adopted the California rules as their own.
Automakers worked with the board and federal regulators on the greenhouse gas mandates in an effort to create one national standard for those pollutants.
Companies including Ford Motor Corp., Chrysler Group LLC, General Motors Co., Nissan Motor Co. Ltd. and others submitted testimony Thursday in support of the new standards during a meeting of the board.
Industry groups representing auto dealers worried that the new regulations would increase the costs of vehicles for consumers and stifle the industry's growth.
The California New Car Dealers Association and other industry groups representing those who sell cars said the board is overestimating consumer demand for electric vehicles and other so-called "zero-emission vehicles."
Some dealer groups have estimated that $3,200 would be added to the average cost of a car because of the technological changes, and that consumers have been slow to adopt them.
Jonathan Morrison, of the state dealers' association, said car retailers are supportive of new technologies that are accepted by their customers but the acceptance of electric and other vehicles has been slow.
"Consumers do not make purchasing decisions based upon regulatory mandates," he said.
The board's research staff disputes those estimates and says increases in hybrid and other sales continue to rise as more cars hit the market. They argue that fuel cost savings will make up for any vehicle price increase.
"Our research shows a $1,400 to $1,900 car price increase. But over the life of the vehicles, the owners save $6,000 in reduced fuel and maintenance costs," board spokesman David Clegern said.
One of the nation's foremost consumer groups, the Consumers' Union, the policy and advocacy division of Consumer Reports, supported the changes.
The rules will "protect consumers by encouraging the development of cleaner, more efficient cars that save families money, help reduce the American economy's vulnerability to oil price shocks and reduce harmful air pollution," according to a letter from the group.
All Critics (177) | Top Critics (39) | Fresh (172) | Rotten (5)
'The Artist': Michel Hazanavicius's novelty film owes much to Jean Dujardin's irresistible smile
For a movie that is so much about technique, it's surprising how affecting the story is.
The Artist is the most surprising and delightful film of 2011.
A silent movie shot in sumptuous black-and-white, no less. A silent flick made with not a jot of distancing winking, but instead born of a heady affection for a bygone, very bygone, era of filmmaking.
It's a rocket to the moon fueled by unadulterated joy and pure imagination.
Strangely, wonderfully, The Artist feels as bold and innovative a moviegoing experience as James Cameron's bells-and-whistles Avatar did a couple of years ago.
What The Artist says about people who would like to sentimentalize and suspend the film industry in a bell jar is brilliant.
The Artist, as calculated as you know it is, is simply impossible to resist.
'The Artist' is an utterly charming film that earns its audience's support the old-fashioned way.
A warm and comfy dose of old-school charm and smile-inducing entertainment.
Terrific entertainment -- not an academic exercise but an unabashed crowd-pleaser.
'The Artist' offers a unique cinematic experience in an age when extremely loud sound effects attack our eardrums while watching so many current movies.
The Artist delights in an ingeniously straightforward way that exceeds many a modern, technologically advanced, effects-loaded, big-budget blockbuster.
A silent movie that speaks louder and with more power than a dozen films packed with pages and pages of dialogue. Definitely the year's best movie.
Imaginative, gorgeous, witty and even kind of sexy.
A gift that keeps on giving, The Artist is a film that demands your attention at every moment. All senses are glued to the screen and director Michel Hazanavicius delivers with drama, laughter, romance and stellar performances from his cast.
Has the allure of a freshness it may not entirely deserve, but one that makes it go down very smoothly.
Initially, the lack of spoken dialogue is discomfiting. Once you've adjusted to its storytelling conventions, though, you almost forget that this is a silent film.
I'm not sure Hazanavicius' love letter to the cinema is, in fact, the most outstanding movie of last year. But who would deny that it stands out from the motion-picture pack?
In a strange way, it's not unlike The Matrix -- only this time the red pill transports you into the futuristic world of sound, rather than a cynical world of two increasingly abysmal sequels.
Completely fun. Dujardin defies time periods. Bejo is all sparkly effervescence.
Was there ever a guy who could play an old school movie studio mogul like John Goodman? No.
A movie that is so old-fashioned from beginning to end that it's literally a breath of fresh air.
Visually stunning, imaginative, and cleverly scored and choreographed, The Artist is quite simply and quietly, the year's finest film.
Deeper than mere mimicry...
The Artist plays less like an original take on the early sound era than as fan fiction set in the world of Singin' in the Rain.
HIGH FLIER: Budget carrier Norwegian Air Shuttle ASA on Wednesday said it has ordered 222 new aircraft from Boeing and Airbus in separate deals with a combined worth of $127 billion in list prices.
EUROPEAN RECORD: The total order, which includes 122 Boeing 737 aircraft and 100 Airbus A320 planes for delivery starting in 2016, is the largest ever aircraft purchase in Europe, Norwegian Air Shuttle said.
DIVERSIFYING: Norwegian, which had previously only used Boeing planes, said it would benefit from using two aircraft suppliers "in terms of ensuring adequate flight capacity, flexibility and competition between two manufacturers."
According to NASA Spaceflight, NASA managers developing the exploration road map have started to focus on what must be done to fulfill the long term dream of sending humans to Mars and getting them back to Earth.
How does the mission to Mars fit in the exploration road map?
While the more immediate goals of space exploration remain the lunar surface and Earth approaching asteroids, the ultimate destination remains Mars. Indeed, the moon is seen as a practice run for Mars surface operations and asteroid missions as precursors to long duration, deep space missions to Mars.
First, a Mission to Phobos
The road map suggests a precursor mission to take place before the first human landing on Mars would be a voyage to the Martian moon Phobos. This was the target of the recently failed Russian Phobos-Grunt. The Phobos mission would be last 550 to 650 days with 30 to 40 days spent on the vicinity of Mars and Phobos. Doing a Phobos mission in advance of the Mars surface mission would allow for the testing of systems necessary for the latter. Also some good science could be conducted at Phobos, similar to the planned missions to Earth approaching asteroids.
The Mission to Mars
The voyage to Mars would be the most challenging space mission in human history. The Mars mission would require 10 to 15 launches of the Space Launch System (seven if nuclear propulsion is used.)
The first stage would assemble a cargo lander and a hab lander with a propulsion system. This assemblage would be sent to Mars, with the cargo lander touching down on the Martian surface and the hab lander remaining in orbit.
The second stage would assemble a crewed vehicle, known as the Mars Transit Vehicle, consisting of a deep space hab, an Orion spacecraft, and a propulsion unit. The crew of the Mars expedition would launch in a second Orion, dock with the Mars Transit Vehicle, board her, and take her to Mars.
Once in Mars orbit, the crew would board the Orion, take it to the orbiting hab module, then land on Mars near the cargo module. The Orion will return unmanned to the MTV. The crew would assemble a Mars base and proceed to stay on the Martian surface for 500 plus days, using insitu resource utilization and closed loop environmental systems to stretch out their consumables. At the end of their stay, they will ascend in a Mars Ascent Vehicle back to the Mars Transit Vehicle, return to Earth, and splash down in the Orion.
The Bottom Line
While no one can predict what the fiscal environment will be in the 2030s, when the Mars mission is envisioned, it is certain to be challenging and relatively expensive. Sustaining a Mars program politically over several presidencies and Congresses will be as challenging if not more so than all of the technical problems that must be solved before the first footsteps on the Red Planet.
Mark R. Whittington is the author ofChildren of ApolloandThe Last Moonwalker. He has written on space subjects for a variety of periodicals, including The Houston Chronicle, The Washington Post, USA Today, the L.A. Times, and The Weekly Standard.
YANGON (Reuters) ? Business is booming at the Golden Sea employment agency in downtown Yangon, but that doesn't mean Myanmar's long-stagnant economy is improving. Quite the opposite.
"Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand," said manager Kyaw Thura, listing the countries where he helps the young men crowding his one-room office find jobs as laborers and cooks. "If there were opportunities in Myanmar, they would stay here."
Hopes of concrete economic reforms are running high among foreign business people now pouring into Myanmar, which has fanned optimism by pledging democratic reform, freeing political prisoners and setting the stage for an April by-election.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made a landmark visit to the country, formerly known as Burma, two months ago and multilateral lenders such as the Asian Development Bank have taken preliminary steps toward resuming activities there.
Few argue against Myanmar's potential.
As big as France and Britain combined, the resource-rich country sits strategically between India, China and Southeast Asia with ports on the Indian Ocean and Andaman Sea, all of which have made it a coveted energy-security asset for Beijing's western provinces.
Bordering five countries, Myanmar offers multiple avenues of Asian engagement as U.S. President Barack Obama shifts focus from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan toward economic growth and security in the Asia-Pacific region.
But as tourists and investors knock on its door, the number of Burmese flowing in the opposite direction suggests that ordinary people don't expect the end of half a century of isolation to improve the economy anytime soon.
The barriers to progress are formidable: U.S. sanctions, an incoherent exchange rate regime, woeful infrastructure, weak investment laws, a crippled banking system, decades of mismanagement and a shortage of skilled Burmese.
While the European Union on Monday started unwinding sanctions, punitive U.S. measures continue to cut deep into Myanmar's economy, among Asia's most prosperous before a 1962 military coup ushered in a disastrous "Burmese Way to Socialism" that brought sweeping nationalization and global isolation.
U.S. sanctions could begin to come down if Myanmar's by-elections scheduled for April 1, contested by opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, are fair and open, U.S. Senator John McCain told reporters last week in Hanoi.
U.S. sanctions, imposed in response to years of human rights abuses and steadily tightened since 1988, preclude U.S. aid and rule out financial help from International Financial Institutions (IFIs) such as the World Bank, in which the United States is a big shareholder and has veto rights.
That prevents those agencies from training government staff for long-overdue work such as drawing up a national budget or writing environmental regulations.
The World Bank and Asian Development Bank ceased operations in the country in the mid-1980s and are still owed arrears, which have to be repaid before they can come back. And even when they return, their aid will require the government to respect governance standards that have eluded its leaders for decades, including budget transparency.
CURRENCY CONUNDRUM
"There's so much to be done," said Luc de Waegh, head of West Indochina, a Myanmar-focused consultancy.
"You need to rebuild the country, the roads, the infrastructure, the education system, and all this cannot be done with private money."
One of Asia's richest countries early in the 20th century, Myanmar is now one of the world's poorest after half a century of often-brutal rule by military rulers. A third of its estimated 60 million people live on less than a dollar a day.
The International Monetary Fund estimates Myanmar's gross domestic product at just over $50 billion. In contrast, neighboring Thailand, with a population of about 67 million, has GDP of $348 billion.
Among its biggest problems: a currency regime that deters investment and abets kleptocracy.
Officially, one U.S. dollar buys a little over six Myanmar kyats. Unofficially, it's more like 750 kyats.
The unofficial rate, used in most transactions, has jumped from more than 1,000 per dollar in 2009 as foreign money has flowed into the timber, energy and gem sectors. That has hurt a swathe of Burmese, from farmers and manufacturers to traders and employees of foreign firms paid in dollars.
A team of IMF advisers came in November to look at reforming the currency and unifying the rates. A two-week follow-up mission ends on Wednesday.
Myanmar is one of only 17 countries that still have dual exchange rates, and even the IMF has only three experts in the delicate task of unifying them.
The official rate is used for government revenue and for imports by some state-owned enterprises. As a result, state revenue is grossly underestimated and some critics say it is likely vast sums of that money was kept off the books and quietly smuggled out of the country into offshore banks held by cronies of the former junta.
They may also have repatriated the funds to snap up state assets that were sold off during an extremely opaque privatization boom that took place just over a year before the army's transfer of power to the civilian government.
In addition, many state firms effectively enjoy a hidden subsidy and could fail if they were forced to adopt a market rate. A wave of bankruptcies and resultant job losses could bring a backlash against much-needed reforms.
One solution might be to replace implicit subsidies with more transparent, official subsidies, said Jean-Pierre Verbiest, a former country director for the Asian Development Bank in Thailand and now an economic consultant at the Asian Development Bank Institute.
"The exchange rate, the budget, monetary policy, financial sector development -- they are all linked, and these are typically areas where IFIs can contribute and put policies in place," he said.
That is not going to happen until the West drops sanctions.
U.S. sanctions on Myanmar include visa bans on certain officials and business associates, restrictions on financial services, bans on Burmese imports, a ban on new investment and constraints on assistance to the country.
GETTING THE POOR ONSIDE
Another urgent problem is the need for reforms in the agricultural sector, which employs two-thirds of the population and suffers from low productivity and a lack of credit.
"Even on good assumptions, there will be a mess because it's very difficult to handle big changes especially in a country which is very rich but at the same time very poor," said Verbiest, meaning rich in resources and potential but also in terms of state revenue, if properly accounted for.
"So there are going to be people who will benefit much more than others," he added.
Quick reforms in agriculture could help alleviate poverty in the countryside and win support for the reform process. They could include providing credit to farmers who have to rely on money-lenders charging crippling interest rates plus investment in village infrastructure such as roads to markets, said a veteran Myanmar aid worker who asked not to be identified.
"Villagers are still driving ox carts and taking all day to go nine miles. Isolation breeds poverty," she said.
The country also badly needs better education and training.
"There's a real vacuum in capacity," the aid worker said, noting there were thousands of Burmese engineers in Singapore but engineering talent was hard to find inside Myanmar.
The brain drain has hurt the public sector, too: Myanmar lacks the technocrats that helped Indonesia, for example, move from a military dictatorship to a thriving democracy.
Much of the country's intellectual talent fled in 1988, mostly to Europe and the United States, after the army brutally crushed a student-led revolt. The government has so far made no official move to encourage them to return.
"We need 30-somethings who have MBAs and analytical skills. You're not going to find that in the generals, even if there's political will," the aid worker said.
"People have had beaten into them not to take the initiative, not to be creative, not to be innovative. In that respect I think IFIs can help. Training needs to happen on a massive scale."
(Editing by Andrew R.C. Marshall, Jason Szep and Mark Bendeich)
Contact: Michael Mullaney mullam@rpi.edu 518-276-6161 Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Engineers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Rice University discover how the extreme thinness of graphene enables near-perfect wetting transparency
Troy, N.Y. Graphene is the thinnest material known to science. The nanomaterial is so thin, in fact, water often doesn't even know it's there.
Engineering researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Rice University coated pieces of gold, copper, and silicon with a single layer of graphene, and then placed a drop of water on the coated surfaces. Surprisingly, the layer of graphene proved to have virtually no impact on the manner in which water spreads on the surfaces.
Results of the study were published Sunday in the journal Nature Materials. The findings could help inform a new generation of graphene-based flexible electronic devices. Additionally, the research suggests a new type of heat pipe that uses graphene-coated copper to cool computer chips.
The discovery stemmed from a cross-university collaboration led by Rensselaer Professor Nikhil Koratkar and Rice Professor Pulickel Ajayan.
"We coated several different surfaces with graphene, and then put a drop of water on them to see what would happen. What we saw was a big surprisenothing changed. The graphene was completely transparent to the water," said Koratkar, a faculty member in the Department of Mechanical, Aerospace, and Nuclear Engineering and the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Rensselaer. "The single layer of graphene was so thin that it did not significantly disrupt the non-bonding van der Waals forces that control the interaction of water with the solid surface. It's an exciting discovery, and is another example of the unique and extraordinary characteristics of graphene."
Results of the study are detailed in the Nature Materials paper "Wetting transparency of graphene." See the paper online at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/NMAT3228
Essentially an isolated layer of the graphite found commonly in our pencils or the charcoal we burn on our barbeques, graphene is single layer of carbon atoms arranged like a nanoscale chicken-wire fence. Graphene is known to have excellent mechanical properties. The material is strong and tough and because of its flexibility can evenly coat nearly any surface. Many researchers and technology leaders see graphene as an enabling material that could greatly advance the advent of flexible, paper-thin devices and displays. Used as a coating for such devices, the graphene would certainly come into contact with moisture. Understanding how graphene interacts with moisture was the impetus behind this new study.
The spreading of water on a solid surface is called wetting. Calculating wettability involves placing a drop of water on a surface, and then measuring the angle at which the droplet meets the surface. The droplet will ball up and have a high contact angle on a hydrophobic surface. Inversely, the droplet will spread out and have a low contact angle on a hydrophilic surface.
The contact angle of gold is about 77 degrees. Koratkar and Ajayan found that after coating a gold surface with a single layer of graphene, the contact angle became about 78 degrees. Similarly, the contact angle of silicon rose from roughly 32 degrees to roughly 33 degrees, and copper increased from around 85 degrees to around 86 degrees, after adding a layer of graphene.
These results surprised the researchers. Graphene is impermeable, as the tiny spaces between its linked carbon atoms are too small for water, or a single proton, or anything else to fit through. Because of this, one would expect that water would not act as if it were on gold, silicon, or copper, since the graphene coating prevents the water from directly contacting these surfaces. But the research findings clearly show how the water is able to sense the presence of the underlying surface, and spreads on those surfaces as if the graphene were not present at all.
As the researchers increased the number of layers of graphene, however, it became less transparent to the water and the contact angles jumped significantly. After adding six layers of graphene, the water no longer saw the gold, copper, or silicon and instead behaved as if it was sitting on graphite.
The reason for this perplexing behavior is subtle. Water forms chemical or hydrogen bonds with certain surfaces, while the attraction of water to other surfaces is dictated by non-bonding interactions called van der Waals forces. These non-bonding forces are not unlike a nanoscale version of gravity, Koratkar said. Similar to how gravity dictates the interaction between the Earth and sun, van der Waals forces dictate the interaction between atoms and molecules.
In the case of gold, copper, silicon, and other materials, the van der Waals forces between the surface and water droplet determine the attraction of water to the surface and dictate how water spreads on the solid surface. In general, these forces have a range of at least several nanometers. Because of the long range, these forces are not disrupted by the presence of a single-atom-thick layer of graphene between the surface and the water. In other words, the van der Waals forces are able to "look through" ultra-thin graphene coatings, Koratkar said.
If you continue to add additional layers of graphene, however, the van der Waals forces increasingly "see" the carbon coating on top of the material instead of the underlying surface material. After stacking six layers of graphene, the separation between the graphene and the surface is sufficiently large to ensure that the van der Waals forces can now no longer sense the presence of the underlying surface and instead only see the graphene coating. On surfaces where water forms hydrogen bonds with the surface, the wetting transparency effect described above does not hold because such chemical bonds cannot form through the graphene layer.
Along with conducting physical experiments, the researchers verified their findings with molecular dynamics modeling as well as classical theoretical modeling.
"We found that van der Waals forces are not disrupted by graphene. This effect is an artifact of the extreme thinness of graphenewhich is only about 0.3 nanometers thick," Koratkar said. "Nothing can rival the thinness of graphene. Because of this, graphene is the ideal material for wetting angle transparency."
"Moreover, graphene is strong and flexible, and it does not easily crack or break apart," he said. "Additionally, it is easy to coat a surface with graphene using chemical vapor deposition, and it is relatively uncomplicated to deposit uniform and homogeneous graphene coatings over large areas. Finally, graphene is chemically inert, which means a graphene coating will not oxidize away. No single material system can provide all of the above attributes that graphene is able to offer."
A practical application of this new discovery is to coat copper surfaces used in dehumidifiers. Because of its exposure to water, copper in dehumidifier systems oxidizes, which in turn decreases its ability to transfer heat and makes the entire device less efficient. Coating the copper with graphene prevents oxidation, the researchers said, and the operation of the device is unaffected because graphene does not change the way water interacts with copper. This same concept may be applied to improve the ability of heat pipes to dissipate heat from computer chips, Koratkar said.
"It's an interesting idea. The graphene doesn't cause any significant change to the wettability of copper, and at the same time it passivates the copper surface and prevents it from oxidizing," he said.
###
Along with Koratkar and Ajayan, co-authors of the paper are Yunfeng Shi, assistant professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Rensselaer; Rensselaer mechanical engineering graduate students Javad Rafiee, Abhay Thomas, and Fazel Yavari; Rensselaer physics graduate student Xi Mi; and Rice mechanical and materials engineering graduate student Hemtej Gullapalli.
This research was supported in part by the Advanced Energy Consortium (AEC); the National Science Foundation (NSF); and the Office of Naval Research (ONR) graphene Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI).
For more information on Koratkar's graphene research at Rensselaer, visit:
Contact
Michael Mullaney
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Troy, NY
518-276-6161
mullam@rpi.edu
www.rpi.edu/news
Visit the Rensselaer research and discovery blog: http://approach.rpi.edu
Follow us on Twitter: www.twitter.com/RPInews
[ | E-mail | Share ]
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Contact: Michael Mullaney mullam@rpi.edu 518-276-6161 Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Engineers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Rice University discover how the extreme thinness of graphene enables near-perfect wetting transparency
Troy, N.Y. Graphene is the thinnest material known to science. The nanomaterial is so thin, in fact, water often doesn't even know it's there.
Engineering researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Rice University coated pieces of gold, copper, and silicon with a single layer of graphene, and then placed a drop of water on the coated surfaces. Surprisingly, the layer of graphene proved to have virtually no impact on the manner in which water spreads on the surfaces.
Results of the study were published Sunday in the journal Nature Materials. The findings could help inform a new generation of graphene-based flexible electronic devices. Additionally, the research suggests a new type of heat pipe that uses graphene-coated copper to cool computer chips.
The discovery stemmed from a cross-university collaboration led by Rensselaer Professor Nikhil Koratkar and Rice Professor Pulickel Ajayan.
"We coated several different surfaces with graphene, and then put a drop of water on them to see what would happen. What we saw was a big surprisenothing changed. The graphene was completely transparent to the water," said Koratkar, a faculty member in the Department of Mechanical, Aerospace, and Nuclear Engineering and the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Rensselaer. "The single layer of graphene was so thin that it did not significantly disrupt the non-bonding van der Waals forces that control the interaction of water with the solid surface. It's an exciting discovery, and is another example of the unique and extraordinary characteristics of graphene."
Results of the study are detailed in the Nature Materials paper "Wetting transparency of graphene." See the paper online at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/NMAT3228
Essentially an isolated layer of the graphite found commonly in our pencils or the charcoal we burn on our barbeques, graphene is single layer of carbon atoms arranged like a nanoscale chicken-wire fence. Graphene is known to have excellent mechanical properties. The material is strong and tough and because of its flexibility can evenly coat nearly any surface. Many researchers and technology leaders see graphene as an enabling material that could greatly advance the advent of flexible, paper-thin devices and displays. Used as a coating for such devices, the graphene would certainly come into contact with moisture. Understanding how graphene interacts with moisture was the impetus behind this new study.
The spreading of water on a solid surface is called wetting. Calculating wettability involves placing a drop of water on a surface, and then measuring the angle at which the droplet meets the surface. The droplet will ball up and have a high contact angle on a hydrophobic surface. Inversely, the droplet will spread out and have a low contact angle on a hydrophilic surface.
The contact angle of gold is about 77 degrees. Koratkar and Ajayan found that after coating a gold surface with a single layer of graphene, the contact angle became about 78 degrees. Similarly, the contact angle of silicon rose from roughly 32 degrees to roughly 33 degrees, and copper increased from around 85 degrees to around 86 degrees, after adding a layer of graphene.
These results surprised the researchers. Graphene is impermeable, as the tiny spaces between its linked carbon atoms are too small for water, or a single proton, or anything else to fit through. Because of this, one would expect that water would not act as if it were on gold, silicon, or copper, since the graphene coating prevents the water from directly contacting these surfaces. But the research findings clearly show how the water is able to sense the presence of the underlying surface, and spreads on those surfaces as if the graphene were not present at all.
As the researchers increased the number of layers of graphene, however, it became less transparent to the water and the contact angles jumped significantly. After adding six layers of graphene, the water no longer saw the gold, copper, or silicon and instead behaved as if it was sitting on graphite.
The reason for this perplexing behavior is subtle. Water forms chemical or hydrogen bonds with certain surfaces, while the attraction of water to other surfaces is dictated by non-bonding interactions called van der Waals forces. These non-bonding forces are not unlike a nanoscale version of gravity, Koratkar said. Similar to how gravity dictates the interaction between the Earth and sun, van der Waals forces dictate the interaction between atoms and molecules.
In the case of gold, copper, silicon, and other materials, the van der Waals forces between the surface and water droplet determine the attraction of water to the surface and dictate how water spreads on the solid surface. In general, these forces have a range of at least several nanometers. Because of the long range, these forces are not disrupted by the presence of a single-atom-thick layer of graphene between the surface and the water. In other words, the van der Waals forces are able to "look through" ultra-thin graphene coatings, Koratkar said.
If you continue to add additional layers of graphene, however, the van der Waals forces increasingly "see" the carbon coating on top of the material instead of the underlying surface material. After stacking six layers of graphene, the separation between the graphene and the surface is sufficiently large to ensure that the van der Waals forces can now no longer sense the presence of the underlying surface and instead only see the graphene coating. On surfaces where water forms hydrogen bonds with the surface, the wetting transparency effect described above does not hold because such chemical bonds cannot form through the graphene layer.
Along with conducting physical experiments, the researchers verified their findings with molecular dynamics modeling as well as classical theoretical modeling.
"We found that van der Waals forces are not disrupted by graphene. This effect is an artifact of the extreme thinness of graphenewhich is only about 0.3 nanometers thick," Koratkar said. "Nothing can rival the thinness of graphene. Because of this, graphene is the ideal material for wetting angle transparency."
"Moreover, graphene is strong and flexible, and it does not easily crack or break apart," he said. "Additionally, it is easy to coat a surface with graphene using chemical vapor deposition, and it is relatively uncomplicated to deposit uniform and homogeneous graphene coatings over large areas. Finally, graphene is chemically inert, which means a graphene coating will not oxidize away. No single material system can provide all of the above attributes that graphene is able to offer."
A practical application of this new discovery is to coat copper surfaces used in dehumidifiers. Because of its exposure to water, copper in dehumidifier systems oxidizes, which in turn decreases its ability to transfer heat and makes the entire device less efficient. Coating the copper with graphene prevents oxidation, the researchers said, and the operation of the device is unaffected because graphene does not change the way water interacts with copper. This same concept may be applied to improve the ability of heat pipes to dissipate heat from computer chips, Koratkar said.
"It's an interesting idea. The graphene doesn't cause any significant change to the wettability of copper, and at the same time it passivates the copper surface and prevents it from oxidizing," he said.
###
Along with Koratkar and Ajayan, co-authors of the paper are Yunfeng Shi, assistant professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Rensselaer; Rensselaer mechanical engineering graduate students Javad Rafiee, Abhay Thomas, and Fazel Yavari; Rensselaer physics graduate student Xi Mi; and Rice mechanical and materials engineering graduate student Hemtej Gullapalli.
This research was supported in part by the Advanced Energy Consortium (AEC); the National Science Foundation (NSF); and the Office of Naval Research (ONR) graphene Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI).
For more information on Koratkar's graphene research at Rensselaer, visit:
Contact
Michael Mullaney
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Troy, NY
518-276-6161
mullam@rpi.edu
www.rpi.edu/news
Visit the Rensselaer research and discovery blog: http://approach.rpi.edu
Follow us on Twitter: www.twitter.com/RPInews
[ | 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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The ship's captain Francesco Schettino has been placed under house arrest, accused of causing the accident by sailing too close to the rocky shore and then abandoning ship before the evacuation was complete.
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On Thursday, SkyTG24 broadcast a tape of what was described as a conversation between coastguard officials and the bridge of the Concordia which appeared to show ship's officers telling authorities they had suffered only a blackout more than 30 minutes after the impact.
Italian media also devoted considerable attention to a female Moldovan crew member who was on board but not on duty. Several reports said she had been seen on the bridge with Schettino.
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"Was she a guest of the captain? And why was she not registered? Was she working without a contract?"
In an interview with a Moldovan television station, the woman, 25 year-old Domnica Cemortan, recounted how she had survived the ordeal by thinking of her daughter and praised Schettino's "extraordinary" handling of the situation.
"Many of my colleagues have the right to be angry, because now they have no work, they have to go home, they have children, debts to pay, all sorts of problems," she told JurnalTV.
"Yet we all support the captain, because he has done something extraordinary: he has saved the lives of over three thousand people."
In a statement, Costa said she had embarked normally on January 13 in Civitavecchia and was properly registered.
SEARCH RESUMES
After interrupting the search on Wednesday when rescuers feared the vast liner was shifting on its resting place, crews resumed their search at first light on Thursday. They expect to blast three holes in the hull at about 20 meters depth.
An expected worsening of weather conditions in the next few days has added extra pressure on the diving teams to complete their search of the vessel.
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"It's important to continue our search. Family members find it important to have the body of the loved one they've lost because it gives them closure. We understand this," said Dilda.
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LITTLE HOPE
The judge who placed Schettino under house arrest said he had shown "incredible carelessness" and "a total inability to manage the successive phases of the emergency," only sounding the alarm 30 to 40 minutes after the initial impact.
He had abandoned the ship and remained on shore in a state of "complete inertia" for more than an hour, "watching the ship sink," according to the ruling.
"No serious attempt was made by the captain to return even close to the ship in the immediate aftermath of abandoning the Costa Concordia."
According to Schettino's lawyer, the captain has admitted bringing the ship too close to shore but he denies bearing sole responsibility for the accident and says other factors may have played a role.
The ship foundered after striking a rock as dinner was being served on Friday night. The owners say the captain swung inshore to "take a bow" to the islanders, who included a retired Italian admiral. Investigators say it was within 150 meters of shore.
Most of the passengers and crew survived despite hours of chaos and confusion after the collision. The alarm was raised not by an SOS from the ship but mobile phone calls from passengers on board to Italian police on the mainland.
(Additional reporting by Radu Marinas in Bucharest, Silvia Ognibene in Grosseto; Editing by Jon Boyle)
The Catholic Church is fighting mad with the Obama Administration, and nearly every Catholic sitting in a pew this weekend heard the reasons why.
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Public release date: 23-Jan-2012
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