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Thursday, April 4, 2013

US moves on NKorea aimed at deterring new leader

Two U.S. Air Force F-22 Raptor stealth fighter jets wait to take off during a military exercise at the Osan U.S. Air Base in Pyeongtaek, south of Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, April 3, 2013. North Korea on Wednesday barred South Korean workers from entering a jointly run factory park just over the heavily armed border in the North in the latest sign that Pyongyang's warlike stance toward South Korea and the United States is moving from words to action. (AP Photo/Bae Jung-hyun, Yonhap) KOREA OUT

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, right, shakes hands with South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-Se, at the State Department in Washington, on Tuesday, April 2, 2013. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry speaks at a news conference with South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-Se, not pictured, at the State Department in Washington, on Tuesday, April 2, 2013. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

FILE - In this June 27, 2008 file photo released by China's Xinhua News Agency, the cooling tower of the Yongbyon nuclear complex is demolished in Nyongbyon, also known as Yongbyon, North Korea, in a sign of its commitment to stop making plutonium for atomic bombs. The North's plutonium reactor began operations in 1986 but was shut down as part of international nuclear disarmament talks in 2007 that have since stalled. North Korea vowed Tuesday, April 2, 2013, to restart a nuclear reactor that can make one bomb's worth of plutonium a year, escalating tensions already raised by near daily warlike threats against the United States and South Korea. (AP Photo/Xinhua, Gao Haorong, File) NO SALES

WASHINGTON (AP) ? The parading of U.S. air and naval power within view of the Korean peninsula ? first a few long-range bombers, then stealth fighters, then ships ? is as much about psychological war as real war. The U.S. wants to discourage North Korea's young leader from starting a fight that could escalate to renewed war with South Korea.

Worries in Washington rose Tuesday with North Korea's vow to increase production of nuclear weapons materials. Secretary of State John Kerry called the announced plan "unacceptable" and stressed that the U.S. is ready to defend itself and its allies. But he and other U.S. officials also sought to lower the rhetorical temperature by holding out the prospect of the North's reversing course and resuming nuclear negotiations.

At a joint news conference with visiting South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se, Kerry said the U.S. would proceed "thoughtfully and carefully" and in consultation with South Korea, Japan, China and others.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, in a call late Tuesday to China's defense minister, called the North's development of nuclear weapons a "growing threat" to the U.S. and its allies.

Hagel, citing North Korea's pursuit of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles in his phone conversation with Chang Wanquan, said Washington and Beijing should continue to cooperate on those problems, according to a Pentagon statement describing the call.

Michael Green, an Asia specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said it should be no surprise that North Korea is vowing to restart a long-dormant nuclear reactor and ramp up production of atomic weapons material.

"This is part of their protection racket," Green said in an interview. "I think the end state North Korea would like is that we, the U.S. in particular, but also China, Japan, South Korea, are so rattled by all this that we decide it's just better to cut a deal with them."

Tensions have flared many times in the six decades since a truce halted the 1950-53 Korean War, but the stakes are higher now that a defiant North Korea appears to have moved closer to building a nuclear bomb that could not only threaten the South and other U.S. allies in Asia but possibly, one day, even reach U.S. territory.

That explains, in part, why the U.S. is displaying military muscle to warn the North to hold its fire.

Washington also wants to leave no doubt that it has the South's back, and that Seoul should not act rashly. Nor does the U.S. want South Korea to feel compelled to answer the North's nuclear drive by building its own bomb.

"We are in the business of assuring our South Korean allies that we will help defend them in the face of threats," Pentagon press secretary George Little said, adding, "We are looking for the temperature to be taken down on the Korean peninsula."

Even without nuclear arms, the North poses enough artillery within range of Seoul to devastate large parts of the capital before U.S. and South Korea could fully respond. The U.S. has about 28,500 troops in the South, and it could call on an array of air, ground and naval forces to reinforce the peninsula from elsewhere in Asia and the Pacific.

In just the past few months, North Korea has taken a series of steps Washington deemed provocative, including an underground nuclear test in February. In December the North Koreans launched a rocket that put a satellite into space and demonstrated mastery of some of the technologies needed to produce a long-range nuclear missile. And several weeks ago, the North threatened to pre-emptively attack the U.S.

Bruce Bennett, a specialist in North Korean affairs for the RAND Corp., said he believes much of the recent taunting from North Korea reflects turmoil among the ruling elite in Pyongyang. He cited unusually high turnover among senior officials during the 15 months that Kim Jong Un ? grandson of the nation's founder ? has been the top leader.

"I think with the purges going on, he's got some instability that is generally not being recognized" outside of North Korea and that may be pushing Kim to take a more confrontational stance, Bennett said in an interview. "He's trying to be blustery to make it appear that he's really in control, he's really strong and he can defeat us."

In response, the Pentagon announced it would beef up missile defenses based on the U.S. West Coast, and it highlighted over a period of days the deployment of B-52 and B-2 bombers, as well as two F-22 stealth fighters, to South Korea as part of an annual U.S.-South Korean exercise called Foal Eagle, which lasts through April.

On Tuesday, officials said the Navy was keeping the USS Decatur, a destroyer armed with missile defense systems, in the vicinity of the Korean peninsula for an unspecified period instead of continuing its journey back to the U.S. after a Mideast deployment. And they said a similar ship, the USS McCain, had been shifted slightly to the waters off the southwest coast of the Korean peninsula as a further precautionary move.

North Korea has been an enigma to most outsiders since it was founded by Kim Il Sung in 1948. The United States has often misjudged the North's political path. After the founding Kim died in 1994, for example, U.S. intelligence officials said they believed his successor son, Kim Jong Il, would be more accommodating to the West.

"Flaky as he may be, (Kim Jong Il) nevertheless ... realizes the only way they're going to extricate themselves from the shambles that their economy is in now is to get outside help," James R. Clapper Jr. told a congressional panel in January 1995. Clapper was director of the Defense Intelligence Agency at the time; today he is President Barack Obama's most senior intelligence adviser as director of national intelligence.

___

AP broadcast correspondent Sagar Meghani contributed to this report.

___

Follow Robert Burns on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/robertburnsAP

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/89ae8247abe8493fae24405546e9a1aa/Article_2013-04-03-US-US-North-Korea/id-413f9ef919db42a4b4368915a1bba2f6

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First data released from the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer

Apr. 3, 2013 ? The first published results from the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS), a major physics experiment operating on the International Space Station, were announced today by the AMS collaboration spokesman, Nobel Laureate Samuel Ting. The result is the most precise measurement to date of the ratio of positrons to electrons in cosmic rays. Measurements of this key ratio may eventually provide the world with our first glimpse into dark matter.

The AMS experiment, developed under the leadership of Professor Ting, with support from the U.S. Department of Energy and fifteen other international partners, is the world's most precise detector of cosmic rays. It was constructed at universities around the world and assembled at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN).

"We are very excited with this first result from AMS," said James Siegrist, DOE Associate Director of Science for High Energy Physics. "We look forward to more important results in the future."

"This result is the first step," said Professor Ting, "the beginning of a series of high precision experimental results from the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer. This shows that a large international particle physics collaboration can work together to do particle physics in space."

The science goals of AMS include the search for dark matter, antimatter, and new physical phenomena. The detector provides high-precision measurements of cosmic ray particle fluxes, their ratios and gamma rays. From the time of its conception in 1994, U.S. support for the AMS experiment has come from DOE's Office of Science, which provided about $50 million in funding over the life of the program.

This first physics result from AMS is based on 18 months of operation, during which time AMS measured 6,800,000 cosmic ray electrons in the energy range of a half-billion to a trillion electron volts, and over 400,000 positrons (positive electrons), the largest number of energetic antimatter particles directly measured from space. The importance of this measurement is that it could eventually provide a "smoking gun" that certain dark matter particles exist and that dark matter particles and antiparticles are annihilating each other in space.

Although the data do not show a "smoking gun" at this time, this first high-precision (~1% error) measurement of the spectrum has interesting features not seen before that future data may help clarify. With additional data in the coming years, AMS has the potential to shed light on dark matter.

AMS was installed on the Space Station on May 19, 2011 after having been brought into orbit on the last flight of NASA's space shuttle Endeavour under the command of Captain Mark Kelly. Within only hours of its installation on the exterior of the Space Station, AMS became fully operational, and to date has measured over 30 billion cosmic ray events. Working in close cooperation with NASA astronauts and NASA's Johnson Space Center and Marshall Space Flight Center, AMS has maintained a flawless record of performance in the face of a hostile space environment.

Hundreds of scientists, engineers, technicians and students from all over the world have worked together for over 18 years on the AMS collaboration. The collaboration includes scientists from Europe (Finland, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, Romania, Russia, Turkey), Asia (China, Korea, Taiwan), and North America (Mexico and the United States).

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by DOE/US Department of Energy.

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

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

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/PPy6G_a2DgU/130403200308.htm

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Chemistry: Elusive mechanism of widely used click reaction revealed

Apr. 4, 2013 ? Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have illuminated the mechanism at the heart of one of the most useful processes in modern chemistry. A reaction that is robust and easy to perform, it is widely employed to synthesize new pharmaceuticals, biological probes, new materials and other products. But precisely how it works had been unclear since its invention at TSRI more than a decade ago.

"These new findings allow us to exert greater control of the reaction and make it faster and more efficient under the most challenging conditions," said chemist Valery Fokin, an associate professor at TSRI, who was principal investigator for the new study. "The reaction-tracking techniques we developed here also can be applied to the study of other complex processes, both chemical and biological."

The report, which sheds light on the reaction known as copper-catalyzed azide-alkyne cycloaddition (CuAAC), appears on April 4, 2013 in Science Express, the advance online edition of the journal Science, and in the April 18, 2013 issue of the journal.

Classic Click Reaction

Fokin and his laboratory, and the laboratory of K. Barry Sharpless, a Nobel laureate and the W.M. Keck Professor of Chemistry at TSRI, reported the discovery of the CuAAC reaction in 2002. Danish researchers independently reported a similar reaction in the same year. The reaction involves the use of copper compounds to catalyze the linkage of two functional groups, a nitrogen-containing azide and a hydrocarbon alkyne, to make a stable five-membered heterocycle, 1,2,3-triazole. Azides and alkynes are small functional groups that can be easily introduced into a wide variety of structures using chemical or biological methods without interfering with normal biological processes.

The experimental simplicity and reliable performance of CuAAC under virtually all conditions, including in water and in the presence of oxygen, has made it a "go-to" method whenever covalent stitching of small human-made molecules or large biopolymers is needed, exemplified by protein and nucleic acid labeling, in vitro and in vivo imaging, drug synthesis and the forging of complex molecular architectures with surgical precision.

"Despite its many uses, the nature of the copper-containing reactive intermediates that are involved in the catalysis had not been well understood, in large part due to the promiscuous nature of copper, which rapidly engages in dynamic interactions with other molecules," said Fokin.

Previous studies had hinted that in the swirl of short-lived bondings and partings that occur during a given CuAAC reaction, not one but two copper-containing catalytic units -- "copper centers" -- are needed to help build the new triazole structure. To confirm this, Fokin and two of his graduate students, Brady Worrell and Jamal Malik, tried to reproduce key steps of the CuAAC catalytic cycle with either one or two copper atoms available. Analysis of the reaction course by tracking the heat given off by each reaction as well as product yield indicated whether it worked efficiently. "By monitoring the reaction in real time, we showed that both copper atoms are needed and established the involvement of copper-containing intermediates that could not be isolated or directly observed," said Worrell, who was the paper's first author.

In a second set of experiments, Worrell, Malik and Fokin introduced a pure isotope of copper -- which differs slightly in mass from the isotope blend found in natural copper -- as one of the two copper centers so that they could track their respective fates during the reaction. "We hypothesized that the two copper centers would have distinct roles, but found unexpectedly that their functions during key steps in the reaction are effectively interchangeable," said Malik.

New Linkages

The research reveals the popular CuAAC reaction in unprecedented detail. In addition to the fundamental insights into the chemistry of copper and its interactions with organic molecules, the techniques will lead to better understanding of many chemical and biological processes involving copper. The current study also enables development of new reactions that exploit weak interactions of copper catalysts with carbon-carbon triple bonds. In fact, based on the new findings, Fokin and his team have begun to devise new reactions in which one copper center can be replaced with a different element, to pursue complementary biocompatible and efficient techniques.

Funding for the study was provided by grants from the National Science Foundation (CHE-0848982) and the National Institute of General Medical Sciences at the National Institutes of Health (GM-087620).

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Scripps Research Institute, via Newswise.

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Journal Reference:

B. T. Worrell, J. A. Malik, and V. V. Fokin. Direct Evidence of a Dinuclear Copper Intermediate in Cu(I)-Catalyzed Azide-Alkyne Cycloadditions. Science, 4 April 2013 DOI: 10.1126/science.1229506

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

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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/matter_energy/biochemistry/~3/K6VG1pKZETo/130404142419.htm

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Alabama Senate passes bill tightening rules for abortion clinics

By Verna Gates

BIRMINGHAM, Ala (Reuters) - The Alabama Senate passed an abortion bill on Tuesday critics say would limit access to the procedure with stricter requirements for clinics that provide it.

The Senate passed the bill on a vote of 22-10, after the House passed a similar bill in February. A committee will reconcile the two bills before the proposed legislation goes to the Alabama Governor, Dr. Robert Bentley, who is expected to sign it into law.

A similar bill in Mississippi is threatening to close the state's lone abortion clinic, as a federal judge ponders its future after the clinic filed a lawsuit. The Alabama bill follows passage of new anti-abortion laws in North Dakota and Arkansas in the past month.

The Alabama bill, called The Women's Health and Safety Act, would mandate that an Alabama-licensed physician be present at every abortion and those doctors would be required to have admitting privileges at local hospitals.

Most clinics hire out-of-town physicians to provide abortion procedures and partner with local doctors who have hospital admitting privileges to provide follow-up care.

Critics say the bill would make it difficult or impossible for the clinics to do business.

"This legislation will make it harder to access health care, which will put women's health in danger," said Planned Parenthood Southeast Vice President of Public Policy Nikema Williams, following the vote to pass the bill.

The bill would also require reporting the name of the baby's father to law enforcement if the abortion is performed on a minor less than 16 years of age.

Alabama has four remaining abortion clinics, since the clinic bombed by Eric Rudolph lost its license to operate on May 18, 2012. Rudolph, who killed two people and injured 150 others in a series of bombings in the late 1990s, is incarcerated in the supermax prison in Florence, Colorado.

State Sen. Harri Anne Smith, an independent and one of Alabama's five women senators, said she opposed abortion but expressed fear that the bill was unconstitutional and would attract a lawsuit.

"Upholding the Constitution is a very serious matter, as is putting life at stake," said Smith. "Women will resort to backroom procedures and taking their own lives."

State Sen. Linda Coleman, a Democrat, cited the relative safety of abortion procedures, with two deaths in Alabama reported last year resulting from procedures.

"And how many fatalities for the unborn child?" retorted the bill's sponsor, Republican state Sen. Scott Beason.

While Beason touted the bill as a safety measure, opponents called it an attempt to limit the rights of women. Two hundred people gathered around the capitol at a mid-day rally to protest the law.

"You don't have any business in my home, in my bedroom or in my body," said Coleman.

Lawmakers voted down a proposed amendment that would have prohibited hospitals from denying admitting privileges to abortion doctors solely because they performed the procedures.

Lawmakers in several states have passed new restrictions on abortion rights in the past two years, including laws approved in the last month in North Dakota and Arkansas that are seen as direct new challenges to the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Roe v. Wade that legalized abortion in 1973.

North Dakota in late March became the first state to approve a ban on most abortions once a fetal heartbeat can be detected, about six weeks into pregnancy, and the first to ban abortions solely because of fetal genetic anomalies.

(Reporting by Verna Gates; Editing by Mary Wisniewski and Todd Eastham)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/alabama-senate-passes-bill-tightening-rules-abortion-clinics-021949816.html

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Wednesday, April 3, 2013

Disney shocks gaming world: LucasArts is no more | The Raw Story

By Stephen C. Webster
Wednesday, April 3, 2013 14:59 EDT

Entertainment giant Disney announced Wednesday that veritable gaming institution LucasArts, a publisher responsible for at least a dozen of the most influential games ever created, is no more.

Sources reportedly told Kotaku?s Jason Schreier that 150 members of the company?s staff were laid off Wednesday morning and the games they were all working on, ?Star Wars: First Assault? and ?Star Wars 1313,? have been canceled.

The company was acquired along with LucasFilm in last year?s $4 billion mega-buyout that made ?Star Wars? creator George Lucas the second largest single shareholder residing in the house of mouse, paving the way for fresh talent to take over the ?Star Wars? franchise and create new films.

While many fans were split over the announcement, anticipation has been building for the next ?Star Wars? film, which is said to feature the actors from the original trilogy in some form or fashion. Speculation has pointed to Disney zeroing in on the expanded ?Star Wars? universe of books for material, some of which features the further adventures of Luke, Han and Princess Leia after the events of ?Return of the Jedi.?

Gamers, however, will not be pleased to hear about the demise of LucasArts, which seemed to be on the comeback after most of its games fell short of critical acclaim over the last 10 years. The studio?s better recent releases included ?Star Wars: The Force Unleashed? and ?The Force Unleashed II,? and those games? follow-up, ?Star Wars 1313,? generated significant buzz at the 2012 E3 trade conference in Los Angeles for its highly realistic graphics and cinematic approach to gameplay.

Despite that seemingly positive trajectory, LucasArts? ?Kinect Star Wars? for Microsoft?s motion-sensing gameplay device, released exactly one year ago as of today, was an abysmal failure and drew widespread mockery from ?Star Wars? fans for its dance-a-long gameplay segments featuring the beloved sci-fi saga?s characters getting jiggy to pop music.

If there?s any cause for a new hope among gamers, it?s that Disney is still keeping the LucasArts brand alive and the company?s own game development studio is no slouch. Although nearly all of Disney Interactive?s games are somehow tied to Disney?s movie properties, recent entries in their ?Kingdom Hearts? and ?Epic Mickey? series won both critics? admiration and gamers? dollars. Ultimately, there?s no reason to believe Disney cannot put adequate development know-how behind future interactive ?Star Wars? properties.
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Photo: Nando Machado / Shutterstock.com.

Source: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/04/03/disney-shocks-gaming-world-lucasarts-is-no-more/

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Thicke's video with nude models gets YouTube ban

NEW YORK (AP) ? Robin Thicke's new music video is too hot for YouTube.

A representative for the R&B crooner said Monday that his unrated video for "Blurred Lines" was banned from the website. The clip features nude models prowling around Thicke and rappers T.I. and Pharrell.

A rep for YouTube didn't immediately respond to an email seeking comment. The video is still playing on the music video website Vevo.

Thicke's unrated clip was released last week and garnered more than 1 million views in days. It became a water cooler topic on the blogs and entertainment websites. The original video was released a week before and has 1.3 million views.

Thicke said in an interview last week that he had sought the approval of his wife, actress Paula Patton, to shoot with nude models.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/thickes-video-nude-models-gets-youtube-ban-201952024.html

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