Odds grow for rain next week, but no "drought-buster"

[ [ [['Connery is an experienced stuntman', 2]], 'http://yhoo.it/KeQd0p', '[Slideshow: See photos taken on the way down]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['Connery is an experienced stuntman', 7]], ' http://yhoo.it/KpUoHO', '[Slideshow: Death-defying daredevils]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['know that we have confidence in', 3]], 'http://yhoo.it/LqYjAX ', '[Related: The Secret Service guide to Cartagena]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['We picked up this other dog and', 5]], 'http://yhoo.it/JUSxvi', '[Related: 8 common dog fears, how to calm them]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['accused of running a fake hepatitis B', 5]], 'http://bit.ly/JnoJYN', '[Related: Did WH share raid details with filmmakers?]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['accused of running a fake hepatitis B', 3]], 'http://bit.ly/KoKiqJ', '[Factbox: AQAP, al-Qaeda in Yemen]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['have my contacts on or glasses', 3]], 'http://abcn.ws/KTE5AZ', '[Related: Should the murder charge be dropped?]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['have made this nation great as Sarah Palin', 5]], 'http://yhoo.it/JD7nlD', '[Related: Bristol Palin reality show debuts June 19]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['have made this nation great as Sarah Palin', 1]], 'http://bit.ly/JRPFRO', '[Related: McCain adviser who vetted Palin weighs in on VP race]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['A JetBlue flight from New York to Las Vegas', 3]], 'http://yhoo.it/GV9zpj', '[Related: View photos of the JetBlue plane in Amarillo]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['the 28-year-old neighborhood watchman who shot and killed', 15]], 'http://news.yahoo.com/photos/white-house-stays-out-of-teen-s-killing-slideshow/', 'Click image to see more photos', 'http://l.yimg.com/cv/ip/ap/default/120411/martinzimmermen.jpg', '630', ' ', 'AP', ], [ [['He was in shock and still strapped to his seat', 6]], 'http://news.yahoo.com/photos/navy-jet-crashes-in-virginia-slideshow/', 'Click image to see more photos', 'http://l.yimg.com/cv/ip/ap/default/120406/jet_ap.jpg', '630', ' ', 'AP', ], [ [['xxxxxxxxxxxx', 11]], 'http://news.yahoo.com/photos/russian-grannies-win-bid-to-sing-at-eurovision-1331223625-slideshow/', 'Click image to see more photos', 'http://l.yimg.com/a/p/us/news/editorial/1/56/156d92f2760dcd3e75bcd649a8b85fcf.jpeg', '500', ' ', 'AP', ] ]

[ [ [['did not go as far his colleague', 8]], '29438204', '0' ], [ [[' the 28-year-old neighborhood watchman who shot and killed', 4]], '28924649', '0' ], [ [['because I know God protects me', 14], ['Brian Snow was at a nearby credit union', 5]], '28811216', '0' ], [ [['The state news agency RIA-Novosti quoted Rosaviatsiya', 6]], '28805461', '0' ], [ [['measure all but certain to fail in the face of bipartisan', 4]], '28771014', '0' ], [ [['matter what you do in this case', 5]], '28759848', '0' ], [ [['presume laws are constitutional', 7]], '28747556', '0' ], [ [['has destroyed 15 to 25 houses', 7]], '28744868', '0' ], [ [['short answer is yes', 7]], '28746030', '0' ], [ [['opportunity to tell the real story', 7]], '28731764', '0' ], [ [['entirely respectable way to put off the searing constitutional controversy', 7]], '28723797', '0' ], [ [['point of my campaign is that big ideas matter', 9]], '28712293', '0' ], [ [['As the standoff dragged into a second day', 7]], '28687424', '0' ], [ [['French police stepped up the search', 17]], '28667224', '0' ], [ [['Seeking to elevate his candidacy back to a general', 8]], '28660934', '0' ], [ [['The tragic story of Trayvon Martin', 4]], '28647343', '0' ], [ [['Karzai will get a chance soon to express', 8]], '28630306', '0' ], [ [['powerful storms stretching', 8]], '28493546', '0' ], [ [['basic norm that death is private', 6]], '28413590', '0' ], [ [['songwriter also saw a surge in sales for her debut album', 6]], '28413590', '1', 'Watch music videos from Whitney Houston ', 'on Yahoo! Music', 'http://music.yahoo.com' ], [ [['keyword', 99999999999999999999999]], 'videoID', '1', 'overwrite-pre-description', 'overwrite-link-string', 'overwrite-link-url' ] ]

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/drought-expanding-minimal-relief-seen-123956102--finance.html

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The Laws of Sales Attraction By Drew Stevens | Sales Training Advice

Laws of Sales Attraction

Sales professionals must create magnetic appeal to increase closing efficiency. Our present global environment creates numerous obstacles that polarize sales efforts, form the proliferation of the Internet to advanced media. Ironically, with the intrigue of technological miracles the foundation of sales success exists upon 10 principles. Since the beginning of trade, selling has not changed, nor have these laws. These principles as they have for centuries are the laws that attract numerous clients and create successful selling professionals.

The Law of Preparation

The best selling professionals are always prepared. First, preparation begins with grooming and clothing. Like many, I am repulsed by numerous organizations that partake in casual clothing. To be successful one need look successful. A selling professional cannot attend an appointment in a T- Shirt and jeans. To be successful you need to dress successfully. Statistics for this article with over 1000 representatives illustrate that those dresses professionally closed 87% more business than those that didn?t.

Productive professionals attract more clients when they read information and eventually convert this to client knowledge. The knowledge output provides client value in terms of competitiveness, productivity and even profitability. Value stems from reading newspapers, trade publications and conducting research. When clients determine from the value professionals provide they are more apt to conduct business and moreover, use them repeatidly.

The Law of Selling Methodology

ES Research Group reveals that 90% of all sales training programs conducted for corporations result only in a 90-120 day increase in sales productivity and, as a result, fewer than 20% of companies realize any sustainable productivity gain that lasts beyond 12 months. In the United States alone over four billion dollars is spent per year on training selling professionals with two thirds of that money ear marked for one day training.

To be competitive, selling professionals must be competitive. It appears that taking the time to develop a training program does in fact pay tangible returns. More importantly is providing selling professionals with a methodology they adhere to and more importantly create attraction. The true competitive professional employs a methodology that stems from start to completion.

The Law of Value Proposition

One of the best assets for every selling professional is a value statement. Be mindful, this is not an elevator speech. This pithy statement ends the stereotype and focuses all attention completely on the prospective client. A value proposition is solutions based with all benefits focused on the consumer. Moreover, it denotes brand. A value proposition is nothing more than a benefit statement that offers to the client to improve their condition. Customer value propositions have become one of the most widely used terms in business markets. In 2006 the Harvard Business Review ?Customer Value Propositions in Business Markets? discussed how corporations use them in the branding process.

Value propositions are a powerful marketing tool that are powerful and help gravitate the buyer to your direction. These simple statements enable selling professionals to articulate their company?s position into useful terminology that engages the prospective client.

The Law of Referrals

Proper attraction involves referral acquisition. Professionals abhor asking for referrals! Business is driven by the ability to ask for new business. If clients are happy with your work they will willingly provide others that can need to receive your value. There is a story of an insurance professional that would visit clients and not leave without three new referrals. Even if the client provided one or two, the agent would not leave until he received three or more. Needless to say, the agent retired an extremely wealthy individual.

The Law of the Decision Maker

Sales attraction is discovering the true economic buyer. 67% of selling professionals spend too much time with those that cannot make a decision. Sellers are often duped into the process because they do not ask the proper questions. Good detective work means asking the difficult questions. Detectives enjoy seeing the discomfort of others as they squirm to reply. Selling professionals must be intelligent enough to know about the organization, the competition to conduct and intellectual conversation. Research has found that the title never denotes the economic buyer. 87% of respondents in a research survey stipulated they underestimated the decision maker by virtue of title.

The Law of Value

There is a wonderful detective show in syndication on television entitled ?Monk?. The analytical detective works vehemently to resolve the case quickly. He eludes numerous hurdles yet in the end as the clich? states, ?he always gets his man?. The same must hold true for selling professionals. True selling professionals endeavor to resolve client issues before the client understands the issue. In a recent interview with over 10,000 clients, they indicate their desire for sales professionals that can speak client language, understand the core issues and get to the heart of the matter expediently. Ask clients provocative questions that get them thinking about legacy, expectations and strategic direction.

The Law of Networking

Truly the best professionals constantly network. Selling professionals by nature require constant engagement with others to comprehend business trends and meet new opportunities. Admittedly, there exist a plethora of networking associations and organizations, choose those close to your location and aligned with your business. Review your local paper for functions that interest you and attend as a guest, but go! If you do not attend, your competitors are.

The Law of Desire

Successful professionals love challenges, are exceptional at overcoming adversity and love what they represent. They are never shy or non-conversant, and you can sense their spirit and their passion when they speak. There is a South African word called unbutu, meaning ?from the spirit.? Successful professionals have an aura of spirit, of love, of passion, of commitment in everything and anything that they do. The more you can create unbutu in your sales presentations and your sales, the more energetic and inspirational you can be to your clients. The passion for assisting others is the fuel that bounds from failure to fortune.

The Law of Faith

There is no better nourishment and attraction then faith. Faith is a component of both passion and love. Faith is the ability to disavow the norms and continue. Thomas Edison did not believe he failed he had faith to succeed. If Henry Ford, and Andrew Carnegie did not have faith our American business system would not be the supreme power it is. And if Abraham Lincoln did not have faith, African Americans would not be free and his name would not be associated with America?s greatest president. In fact, faith was so imperative for Lincoln because his successes did not arrive until after his 40th birthday. Faith is one of the largest key components to the laws of selling attraction.

The Law of Success

I recall a young man that had limited athletic ability. He was reared in a dysfunctional home and loathed by family and friends. After much discovery he found an outlet in track and field. After years of searching he found a tool that displaced the discontent in his life. With much practice he got better and began to appreciate the sport. His success brought about future success. He visualized future success. Within months he became the captain of his team and a four-time school record holder. He also enrolled and graduated from a prominent university. Professionals have to breathe it, become it and yearn for it. Success does not come easy. The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King jr. stated, ?Faith is taking the first step even when you don?t see the whole staircase.? Take the ladder of success one step at a time by seeing each step, living each step and appreciating each step.

These laws are simply a roadmap to creative success. These laws function similar to a GPS system. They become guideposts to recognize and live by. Our spontaneous world leaves little time to reflect, we must act quickly. The best professionals absorb, collate materials and create action. To live by these laws, do not procrastinate, act quickly, your next sale might depend on how you fight or side with the laws!
______________
Drew Stevens works with senior officers (CEO?s, Presidents) and Sales Directors who struggle with their sales teams to meet organizational goals and acquire new clients. Drew helps them to create relationships with economic buyers so that sales people close sales quickly and gain more revenue. To discover how Dr. Drew can assist your organization by visiting his website at StevensConsultingGroup.com

Source: http://www.salestrainingadvice.com/2012/07/the-laws-of-sales-attraction-by-drew-stevens.html

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propulsive probabilist: Writing and Speaking: Horror Screenwriting

Horror screenwriting requires an aptitude and ability to write creatively and in accordance with horror screenwriting standards. Besides these, an insight into what constitutes horror will be of great help. Also, you must decide whether you want your script to be action-driven or character-driven. The latter is better for horror screenwriting since a horrid character or creature propels the story forward with a more eerie effect. Since the dawn of time, people have enjoyed being scared.
Hollywood is currently realizing the need for producing low-budget movies especially those belonging to the horror category. Screenwriters are being encouraged to take to horror screenwriting, delving deep into the subconscious mind to craft compelling yet strange stories. A few helpful tips to do so include the following:
? Start the script with a bang. The writer should hook the audience within the first ten pages such they want to know what is coming next. Even if the plot is dealing with the old faithful vampires or zombies, give a cool twist to it so that the viewers' senses are engrossed completely without feeling that they 'have seen it before'.
? Use sounds and lights to bring in a haunting effect in horror screenwriting. For example, claustrophobic thunder, lighting, a dark night, loud shrieking, heavy rain, and wolves howling convey a much more frightening affect than a dozen dialogues.
? Wide-eyed spectators move to the edge of the seat by plots about psychopaths or murderers out on the prowl. Anything that cannot be explained by human reasoning provokes a scary sensation in the audience. While undertaking horror screenwriting, maintain the mystery till the very end, and perhaps end on an unforeseeable note, leaving the viewers shuddering to the bones.
? Generally, horror films do not need the support of prominent sub-plots. They only tend to confuse viewers and may even neutralize the horrific atmosphere.
? Place the hero in a tight corner where he cannot escape the terror.
? Whet the audience's dread by first introducing something that turns out to be a farce.
? Several times let the evil attack the hero. This furthers the apprehension of the audience, setting their adrenaline rushing.
Most novices find it beneficial to work with a professional horror screenwriter. This can save a lot of time and effort writing scenes that will not work within your horror script. Even experienced horror writers benefit by working with and gaining advice and tips from other screenwriters.

Source: http://writing-asadeszw.blogspot.com/2012/07/horror-screenwriting.html

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Source: http://propulsive-probabilist.blogspot.com/2012/07/writing-and-speaking-horror.html

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Mobile Cell Phone Reviews | vonagefax - Herrerajerome274's blog

In the competitive? marketplace where communication is inevitable, mobile phones are a mandatory evil. No development and stepping ahead can ever be imagined without cell phones. Although an extensive range of mobile phones are available in the cellphone market in vibrant range and categories, you must select a mobile phones of your choice after reading reviews of experts and professional.

A mobile phone has a number of features, utilities and advantages on the basis of which they are being selected. Being a wise and intelligent user, you must rely on these business reviews of mobile phones to get an idea about the best deals and offers available in the market. If you are crazy to photography and love to have a cellphone with best camera utility, you can have one available in different zooming options and other parameters. In order to become top in the phone segment, every? service provider come forward with some of the best variety of camera phones in several picture modes.

You can therefore buy mobile phones of Nokia, HTC, LG and Samsung if you want to have some of the best of the breed mobile phones in the most affordable price tag possible. Starts from 1 Megapixel to 8 Megapixel, these phones offer best camera clarity with other Zoom and flash features. In the same manner, you can also choose a mobile phone on the basis of its multimedia features like music player. Almost every mobile phone provides innovative and best media players with added utilities. There you can play as many as songs you love to play, download your favorite songs and also send it to your loved ones with the features like bluetooth. When it comes to the quality of the mobile music players, LG tops the chart with its best of the breed music phones with numerous added features and benefits.

If you?re a social network buff, you must go ahead with the mobile phones with social networking utilities like Facebook, Twitter and MySpace. While going ahead with these mobile phones, you must ensure that you purchase a phone with chatting facilities and interfaces to download certain chat applications. If you are still in dilemma to how to choose a mobile phone with al the features and utilities, go ahead with the internet and browse several service providers and online stores where you can have the detail specification about your favorite mobile phones with affordable price tag.

If you are crazy to photography and love to have a cellphone with best camera utility, you can have one available in different zooming options and other parameters. When it comes to the quality of the mobile music players, LG tops the chart with its best of the breed music phones with numerous added features and benefits.

Source: http://www.vonagefax.com/2012/07/15/mobile-cell-phone-reviews/

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Source: http://herrerajerome274.typepad.com/blog/2012/07/mobile-cell-phone-reviews-vonagefax.html

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STOCKS NEWS SINGAPORE-Citi sees more Q2 earnings miss

Citigroup said it expects results of more Singapore

companies, such as Singapore Airlines Ltd, Singapore

Telecommunications Ltd and palm oil giant Wilmar

International Ltd, to miss rather than beat

expectations for the second quarter.

Singapore's economy contracted 1.1 percent in the second

quarter on a seasonally adjusted and annualised basis, the

government said last Friday, confirming economic activity is

declining after a robust start to the year.

Among the expected misses, Citi said SIA was struggling with

weak passenger yields, especially in its long-haul segment,

while SingTel may be dragged by foreign exchange losses at its

Indian affiliate Bharti Airtel.

Wilmar was under pressure from weak oilseeds margin trends,

while Olam International Ltd's reduced cotton sourcing

volumes are likely to weigh on profit contribution from its

industrial segment, Citi said.

Companies expected to beat forecast include rig and property

conglomerate Keppel Corp Ltd on stronger property

contribution and Yangzijiang Shipbuilding (Holdings) Ltd

on higher revenue and margins.

Weaker rupiah, volume growth and downstream exposure may

help cushion impact of higher labour and fertiliser costs for

palm oil firm Golden Agri-Resources Ltd, Citi said.

1249 (0449 GMT)

(Reporting by Eveline Danubrata in Singapore;

eveline.danubratathomsonreuters.com)

************************************************************

11:38 STOCKS NEWS SINGAPORE-AsiaMedic jumps on Myanmar plan

Shares of AsiaMedic Ltd jumped as much as 16

percent, extending gains from the previous week, on traders'

interest in the Singapore healthcare firm's plan to expand in

Myanmar.

On Monday, AsiaMedic shares were up 8.1 percent at S$0.093

on volume of 14.3 million shares, 4.4 times the average full-day

volume traded over the past 30 days. The stock had more than

doubled last week.

The company said last week it had been engaging in

discussions with prospective business partners to expand its

business in Singapore and Myanmar.

Separately, AsiaMedic also announced that it had signed

agreements to set up a post-natal confinement centre and a

medical centre in Shanghai, China.

1129 (0329 GMT)

(Reporting by Eveline Danubrata in Singapore;

eveline.danubratathomsonreuters.com)

************************************************************

10:38 STOCKS NEWS SINGAPORE-CIMB raises target on SPH

CIMB Research raised its target price on Singapore Press

Holdings Ltd to S$4.40 from S$4.19 to factor in

stronger property earnings, valuations and lower capital

expenditure, and maintained its outperform rating.

Shares of the media and property company fell 0.5 percent to

S$4.00 on Monday. They have gained more than 8 percent so far

this year.

SPH reported a 13 percent fall in third-quarter net profit

from a year earlier mainly due to a drop in investment income.

But CIMB said the company's underlying performance was "fairly

intact", with recurring profit from media and property up 2.2

percent year-on-year.

SPH's property business delivered a 13 percent rise in

rental income from a year earlier, mainly due to a fully

operational Clementi Mall, while its Paragon mall posted

stronger rental reversions, CIMB said.

With recurring profit as the key determinant for dividends,

SPH is expected to repeat dividend per share of 24 Singapore

cents for the full year, CIMB said, adding that the company's

balance sheet is still strong.

1024 (0224 GMT)

(Reporting by Eveline Danubrata in Singapore;

eveline.danubratathomsonreuters.com)

************************************************************

10:03 STOCKS NEWS SINGAPORE-OCBC starts hospitality REITs

with overweight

OCBC Investment Research initiated coverage of Singapore's

hospitality real estate investment trust sector with an

'overweight' rating, and said it preferred CDL Hospitality

Trusts to Ascott Residence Trust.

CDL units were up 0.8 percent at S$1.94 on Monday and have

risen nearly 25 percent so far this year. Ascott units were flat

at S$1.185 and have gained nearly 23 percent since the start of

the year.

Singapore's buoyant hotel industry has been the key driver

for CDL, whose six hotels in the city-state accounted for 77

percent of its 2011 fiscal year gross revenue, OCBC said. It has

a 'buy' rating and a S$2.04 target price on CDL.

OCBC estimated that for 2012-2015, the demand for hotel

rooms in Singapore will grow at 6.4 percent per annum,

outstripping the hotel rooms supply growth projected at 3.7

percent per annum over the same period.

It said CDL has stronger potential growth profile and a

gearing of 25.6 percent, lower than Ascott's 39.2 percent. OCBC

expects CDL to make an acquisition within the next one year,

either in Singapore or potentially higher-yielding markets

abroad.

For Ascott, OCBC said despite the economic problems in

Europe, income from the trust's assets in the region is

"reasonably resilient", underpinned by its master leases and

management contracts.

OCBC has a 'buy' recommendation and S$1.23 target price on

Ascott.

0954 (0154 GMT)

(Reporting by Eveline Danubrata in Singapore;

eveline.danubratathomsonreuters.com)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/stocks-news-singapore-citi-sees-more-q2-earnings-045152085--sector.html

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Can Technology Turn Real Estate Deals Into Just Another Shopping ...

Just as Groupon brings shoppers local deals on restaurants and spa services, an upstart service analyzes housing inventory to alert homebuyers about bargain properties. Is real estate ready for more of this kind of tech-based disruption?

The housing market is bouncing back, but to homebuyers that trend translates into more competition for bargain properties. Speed is often a decisive factor in such deals. Yet housing search engines from industry leaders Trulia, Zillow?and Realtor.com don?t focus on identifying best buys ? when a property?s cost-per-square-foot is below average in that zip code. And they don?t do much in the way of real-time alerts.

Speed and Analysis

Enter SpotProperty, which analyzes the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) housing inventory in large markets and assigns a ?DealScore? to each listing. Each property?s DealScore is based on a number of important factors in comparison to other properties for sale and recently sold nearby. Daily deals are emailed to in-market homebuyers or investors.

?This is the next generation of real estate tools. It actually does the thinking for you,? claims SpotProperty co-founder Henry Shao. The deals SpotProperty highlights are priced at 10% - 20% below the current market value, he adds, which could potentially save homebuyers thousands on their down payment and annual payments.

?

?

A Different Business Model

While SpotProperty may resemble ?daily deal? sites like Groupon, it does not operate the same way. Home sellers don?t lower their listing price to become SpotProperty?s deal of the day - most likely they don?t even know the new service exists, much less cut a deal with it. Instead, like traditional real estate listings engines, SpotProperty is compensated when a homebuyer clicks through to contact a local realtor to learn more or view the property. Realtors pay a fee for that valuable lead whether or not they close the deal.

SpotProperty is part of Movoto Real Estate, a service founded in 2005 that helps connect buyers to realtors and provides buyers with research about neighborhoods and market trends.

By using online tools to inject speed and automated price analysis into the real estate process, SpotProperty offers yet another sign that no business is immune to the disruptive power of the Internet. But SpotProperty?s free service, which launched last Wednesday in 60 large U.S. markets, is still far too small to do much damage to the large listing search engines. And by working with existing realtors, its not terribly challenging to them, either.

More to Buying a Home Than Just Price

While SpotProperty may help find homes priced at below-market rates, for average homebuyers price and value are just part of the equation. There?s still the matter of choosing where to live, for example.

To satisfy that need, homebuyers are increasingly looking at lifestyle search engines from services such as Walk Score and Neighborhood Scout that rank neighborhoods by access to great schools and public transportation, or walking distance to shops and restaurants.

A mobile real estate app able to spot great deals in desirable neighborhoods could really shake up the entrenched players in the real estate industry.

?

Lead image courtesy of Shutterstock.

Source: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/can-technology-turn-real-estate-deals-into-just-another-shopping-app.php

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Hubble unmasks ghost galaxies

ScienceDaily (July 10, 2012) ? Astronomers have used the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope to study some of the smallest and faintest galaxies in our cosmic neighbourhood. These galaxies are fossils of the early Universe: they have barely changed for 13 billion years. The discovery could help explain the so-called "missing satellite" problem, where only a handful of satellite galaxies have been found around the Milky Way, against the thousands that are predicted by theories.

Astronomers have puzzled over why some extremely faint dwarf galaxies spotted in our Milky Way galaxy's backyard contain so few stars. The galaxies are thought to be some of the tiniest, oldest, and most pristine galaxies in the Universe. They have been discovered over the past decade by astronomers using automated computer techniques to search through the images of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. But an international team of astronomers needed the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope to help solve the mystery of why these galaxies are starved of stars, and why so few of them have been found.

Hubble views of three of these small galaxies, the Hercules, Leo IV and Ursa Major dwarf galaxies, reveal that they all started forming stars more than 13 billion years ago -- and then abruptly stopped -- all in the first billion years after the Universe was born in the Big Bang. In fact, the extreme age of their stars is similar to Messier 92, the oldest known globular cluster [1] in the Milky Way.

"These galaxies are all ancient and they're all the same age, so you know something came down like a guillotine and turned off the star formation at the same time in these galaxies," said Tom Brown of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, USA, the study's leader. "The most likely explanation is a process called reionisation."

The relic galaxies are evidence for a transitional phase in the early Universe that shut down star-making factories in tiny galaxies. This phase seems to coincide with the time when the first stars burned off a fog of cold hydrogen, a process called reionisation. In this period, which began in the first billion years after the Big Bang, radiation from the first stars knocked electrons off primeval hydrogen atoms, ionising the Universe's cool hydrogen gas. [2]

The same radiation that sparked universal reionisation also appears to have squelched star-making activities in dwarf galaxies, such as those in Brown's study. The small irregular galaxies were born about 100 million years before reionisation began and had just started to churn out stars at that time. Roughly 2000 light-years wide, these galaxies are the lightweight cousins of the more luminous and higher-mass star-making dwarf galaxies near our Milky Way. Unlike their higher-mass relatives, the puny galaxies were not massive enough to shield themselves from the harsh ultraviolet light. What little gas they had was stripped away as the flood of ultraviolet light rushed through them. Their gas supply depleted, the galaxies could not make new stars.

The discovery could help explain the so-called "missing satellite problem," where only a few dozen dwarf galaxies have been observed around the Milky Way while the computer simulations predict that thousands should exist. One possible explanation for the low number discovered to date is that there has been very little, or even no star formation in the smallest of these dwarf galaxies, leaving them virtually invisible.

The Sloan survey recently uncovered more than a dozen of these galaxies in our cosmic neighbourhood. These have very few stars -- only a few hundred or thousand -- but a great deal of dark matter, the underlying scaffolding upon which galaxies are built. Normal dwarf galaxies near the Milky Way contain 10 times more dark matter than the ordinary matter that makes up gas and stars, while in these so-called ultra-faint dwarf galaxies, dark matter outweighs ordinary matter by at least a factor of 100. Astronomers think the rest of the sky should contain dozens more of these ultra-faint dwarf galaxies with few stars, and the evidence for squelched star formation in the smallest of these dwarfs suggests that there may be still thousands more with essentially no stars at all.

"By measuring the star formation histories of the observed dwarfs, Hubble has supported the theoretical explanation for the paucity of such objects, according to which star formation in the smaller clumps would be shut down by reionisation," said Jason Tumlinson of the Space Telescope Science Institute, a member of the research team.

The results are published in the 1 July issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

[1] Globular clusters are tightly-bound spherical collections of up to a few hundred thousand stars. They are known to contain some of the most ancient stars in the Universe. In addition, globular clusters are known to have formed in single events, so all the stars in them have the same age.

[2] The period of reionisation is also the limit for how far telescopes can see: the process is what rendered the Universe's hydrogen gas transparent to ultraviolet light.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by ESA/Hubble Information Centre.

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

---

Journal Reference:

1. Thomas M. Brown, Jason Tumlinson, Marla Geha, Evan N. Kirby, Don A. VandenBerg, Ricardo R. Mu?oz, Jason S. Kalirai, Joshua D. Simon, Roberto J. Avila, Puragra Guhathakurta, Alvio Renzini, Henry C. Ferguson. the Primeval Populations of the Ultra-Faint Dwarf Galaxies. The Astrophysical Journal, 2012; 753 (1): L21 DOI: 10.1088/2041-8205/753/1/L21

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

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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/cwNdoviaXqg/120710133102.htm

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