Giffords says farewell to Tucson constituents

U.S. Rep Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., tours the Gabrielle Giffords Family Assistance Center, one of her favorite charities, with her staffer Ron Barber, Monday, Jan. 23, 2012, in Tucson, Ariz. The tour is her last act as a congresswoman in Tucson before her resignation this week. (AP Photo/Matt York, Pool)

U.S. Rep Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., tours the Gabrielle Giffords Family Assistance Center, one of her favorite charities, with her staffer Ron Barber, Monday, Jan. 23, 2012, in Tucson, Ariz. The tour is her last act as a congresswoman in Tucson before her resignation this week. (AP Photo/Matt York, Pool)

U.S. Rep Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., tours the Gabrielle Giffords Family Assistance Center, one of her favorite charities, with her staffer Ron Barber, Monday, Jan. 23, 2012, in Tucson, Ariz. The tour is her last act as a congresswoman in Tucson before her resignation this week. (AP Photo/Matt York, Pool)

U.S. Rep Gabrielle Giffords tours the Gabrielle Giffords Family Assistance Center, one of her favorite charities, with Community Food Bank CEO Bill Carnegie Monday, Jan. 23, 2012, in Tucson, Ariz. The tour is her last act as a congresswoman in Tucson before her resignation this week. (AP Photo/Matt York, Pool)

U.S. Rep Gabrielle Giffords, left, tours the Gabrielle Giffords Family Assistance Center, one of her favorite charities, with Community Food Bank CEO Bill Carnegie Monday, Jan. 23, 2012, in Tucson, Ariz. The tour is her last act as a congresswoman in Tucson before her resignation this week. (AP Photo/Matt York, Pool)

TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) ? On a bittersweet day for Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, the outgoing congresswoman spent her final hours in Tucson as the city's U.S. representative, finishing the meeting she started on the morning she was shot and bidding farewell to constituents who supported her through a long recovery.

It may not be the end, though. The woman whose improbable recovery captivated the nation promised, "I will return."

Giffords spent time Monday at her office with other survivors of the shooting rampage that killed six people and injured 13. She hugged and talked with survivors, including Suzi Hileman, who was shot three times while trying to save her young friend and neighbor, 9-year-old Christina-Taylor Green. The little girl died from a gunshot wound to the chest.

"The last time I did this I had Christina's hand," Hileman said. "It was something that was hanging out there, and now it's not."

Others who met with Giffords included Pat Maisch, who was hailed as a hero for wrestling a gun magazine from the shooter that day, and Daniel Hernandez, Giffords' intern at the time who helped save her life by trying to stop her bleeding until an ambulance arrived.

"It was very touching," said Maisch, who was not hurt in the attack. "I thanked her for her service, wished her well, and she just looked beautiful."

Giffords announced Sunday that she would resign from Congress this week to focus on her recovery. Maisch was sad to think that Giffords would no longer be her congresswoman.

"But I want her to do what's best for her," she said. "She's got to take care of herself."

However, an upbeat Giffords hinted that her departure from public life might be temporary. In a message sent on Twitter, she said: "I will return & we will work together for Arizona & this great country."

In her last act in Tucson as a congresswoman, the Democrat visited one of her favorite charities, the Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona.

The food bank established the Gabrielle Giffords Family Assistance Center with $215,000 it received in the wake of the shooting. Giffords' husband and former astronaut Mark Kelly told people who wanted to help Giffords after the shooting that the best way to do so was to donate to one of her favorite charities.

The center has helped 900 families get on food stamps in the last year and offered guidance to needy families seeking assistance with housing, insurance, clothing and other basic needs.

"It's a wonderful thing that she gets to come here and see the center we built," said Bill Carnegie, the food bank's CEO. "But it's also her exit from Congress. I'm concerned about the future."

Giffords' aides had to yell at TV cameramen and reporters who surrounded the congresswoman as she arrived, telling them to back up. Giffords didn't bat an eye and walked with confidence through the crowd and into the building, where she promptly hugged Carnegie and others.

When she saw the center that is named in her honor, she said "Wow" and "Awesome."

When one woman told Giffords, "I love your new hairstyle," she beamed and responded with "Thank you."

Giffords did not address reporters at the center and planned to head to the airport right after her visit. She was expected in Washington on Tuesday for President Barack Obama's State of the Union address.

In her announcement Sunday, Giffords said that by stepping down, she was doing what is best for Arizona.

"I don't remember much from that horrible day, but I will never forget the trust you placed in me to be your voice," she said in a video posted online.

The video showed a close-up of Giffords gazing directly at the camera and speaking in a voice that was both firm and halting.

"I have more work to do on my recovery," the congresswoman said at the end of the two-minute message, appearing to strain to communicate.

C.J. Karamargin, who was Giffords' spokesman until recently, said he can only imagine what she is feeling as she steps down.

"But Gabby would never want to do a job unless she could give everything to it," he said.

"The news of her stepping down was almost more emotional than this time last year because then, she had survived and had a positive prognosis. Now we've got this pause, this comma, in her career ... and she won't be back anytime soon."

Giffords was shot in the head at point-blank range as she was meeting with constituents outside a grocery store. Her recovery progressed to the point that she was able to walk into the House chamber last August to cast a vote.

Giffords' resignation set up a free-for-all in a competitive district.

She could have stayed in office for another year even without seeking re-election, but her decision to resign scrambles the political landscape.

Arizona must hold a special primary and general election to find someone to finish out her remaining months in office. That will probably happen in the spring or early summer. Then voters will elect someone in November for a full two-year term.

Giffords would have been heavily favored to win again.

She was elected to her third term just two months before she was shot, winning by only about 1 percent over a tea party Republican. But she gained immense public support during her recovery.

Among those mentioned as potential candidates were several Republican and Democratic state lawmakers and the name of Giffords' husband, Mark Kelly, although he has publicly quashed such speculation.

A state Democratic party official who met with Giffords on Sunday also suggested that she could return to politics.

Jim Woodbrey, a senior vice chairman of the state party, said Giffords strongly implied at a meeting that she would seek office again someday. He said the decision to resign came after much thought.

"It was Gabby's individual decision, and she was not in any condition to make that decision five months ago," he said. "So I think waiting so that she could make an informed decision on her own was the right thing to do."

___

Associated Press writers Bob Christie and Jacques Billeaud in Phoenix and David Espo in Washington contributed to this story.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/apdefault/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2012-01-23-US-Giffords/id-be6c5f0e8b124b2fa1d34b77213efc12

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Video: Metadynamics technique offers insight into mineral growth and dissolution

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

By using a novel technique to better understand mineral growth and dissolution, researchers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory are improving predictions of mineral reactions and laying the groundwork for applications ranging from keeping oil pipes clear to sequestering radium.

The mineral barite was examined to understand mineral growth and dissolution generally, but also because it is the dominant scale-forming mineral that precipitates in oil pipelines and reservoirs in the North Sea. Oil companies use a variety of compounds to inhibit scale formation, but a better understanding of how barite grows could enable them to be designed more efficiently.

Additionally, barium can trap radium in its crystal structure, so it has the potential to contain the radioactive material.

In a paper featured on this month's cover of the Journal of the American Chemical Society, the ORNL-led team studied barite growth and dissolution using metadynamics, a critical technique that allows researchers to study much slower reactions than what is normally possible.

"When a mineral is growing or dissolving, you have a hard time sorting out which are the important reactions and how they occur because there are many things that could be happening on the surface," said Andrew Stack, ORNL geochemist and lead author on the paper. "We can't determine which of many possible reactions are controlling the rate of growth."

To overcome this hurdle, ORNL Chemical Sciences Division's Stack started with molecular dynamics, which can simulate energies and structures at the atomic level. To model a mineral surface accurately, the researchers need to simulate thousands of atoms. To directly measure a slow reaction with this many atoms during mineral growth or dissolution might take years of supercomputer time. Metadynamics, which builds on molecular dynamics, is a technique to "push" reactions forward so researchers can observe them and measure how fast they are proceeding in a relatively short amount of computer time.

With the help of metadynamics, the team determined that there are multiple intermediate reactions that take place when a barium ion attaches or detaches at the mineral surface, which contradicts the previous assumption that attachment and detachment occurred all in a single reaction.

"Without metadynamics, we would never have been able to see these intermediates nor determine which ones are limiting the overall reaction rate," Stack said.

To run computer simulations of mineral growth, researchers used the Large-scale Atomic/Molecular Massively Parallel Simulator, a molecular dynamics code developed by Sandia National Laboratories. Co-authors on the paper are the Curtin University (Australia) Nanochemistry Research Institute's Paolo Raiteri and Julian Gale.

###

DOE/Oak Ridge National Laboratory: http://www.ornl.gov

Thanks to DOE/Oak Ridge National Laboratory for this article.

This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/116982/Video__Metadynamics_technique_offers_insight_into_mineral_growth_and_dissolution

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97% The Artist

The Artist I don't know how to say it, pun intended, but The Artist is by far one of the best movies ever. With no words to describe how amazing this movie is, I will try my best to scribble all the great things that make this, one of the best movies out there. George Valentin (Dujardin) is a silent movie star. However, with the arrival of talking pictures, this famous movie star's life is bound to be changed. The movie essentially touches upon the dichotomy of the old and the new, the clash between traditional vs. advanced, and on top of that a beautiful romance. Honestly, it is merely impossible to describe how good this movie is. It's uniqueness and experimental ideas are breathtaking. Michel Hazanavicius is Godly in this film. He treats every scene with so much care, and every shot in his film is perfect and cannot be changed. Not only due to his originality, but also to his artistic sense, Hazanavicius is able to magically create a movie, that unlike a 3D film, has all dimensions. In his simple, yet complex film, he is able to take a plain and easy story, and turn it into a vivid and intricate movie. He is able to touch upon many themes but in his subtle way. However, what is best about him is that he takes risk; he uses techniques no other director has used before and I very much appreciate that. The story of the film is somehow simple, however it is like a roller coaster with ups and downs that will make you laugh and frown. The movie is able to touch the audience in every way, and with its simplistic lack of words we are able to enjoy the movie in a way we haven't enjoyed movies in a long time. Jean Dujardin, is brilliant; I have never seen him act before, but just from this movie I can honestly say that he deserves every award out there. The role he takes is by far one of the hardest role to take nowadays, and he does it wonderfully. As for the other actors in this movie like Bejo and Goodman they also have their moments.The sound of this movie is fundamental, hence the score has to be perfect, and it is. Every scene has a song that is able to run down your skin and your bones, and touch your heart. The music controls your heart, it can make it go faster and it can make it go slower. The photography of this movie is also mind blowing. In only black and white, this movie develops some of the most beautiful photography ever developed in movie history. The cameras are playful and every image projected gave me goosebumps. Therefore ladies and gentelmen, don't miss out on this movie. This is by far the best film of 2011, with some exceptions, and one of my favorite films of all time. It's uniqueness, simplicity, and beauty makes this movie unforgetable. George Valentin : "With pleasure"

November 1, 2011

Source: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_artist/

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NASA's twin moon probes renamed by children: 'Ebb'

The probes'?new names were offered by fourth grade students in Bozeman, Mont., who were chosen as the winners of NASA's naming contest.

NASA's twin gravity-mapping moon probes received new names Tuesday (Jan. 17), reflecting their mission to study the changing pull of Earth's natural satellite.

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Now to be?called "Ebb" and "Flow,"the tandem Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory (or Grail) spacecraft arrived in lunar orbit over the New Year weekend and were previously referred to simply as?"A"?and?"B". Their new names were offered by fourth grade students in Bozeman, Mont., who were chosen as the winners of NASA's naming contest.

"The 28 students of Ms. Nina DiMauro's class at Emily Dickinson Elementary School have really hit the nail on the head," said Maria Zuber, who as principal investigator leads the Grail probes' mission from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "We were really impressed that the students drew their inspiration by researching Grail and its goal of measuring gravity."

"Ebb and Flow truly capture the spirit and excitement of our mission," Zuber said. NASA announced the new names in a press conference Tuesday.

The terms ebb and flow generally refer to the movement of water, especially in relation to Earth's natural tides that are influenced by the?pull of the moon. The two words also describe the relative motion of the GRAIL probes, which will vary in distance with the moon's gravitational pull.

"While we feel the ebb and flow of our tides, our twins will undergo nearly the same motion as they study our lunar neighbor," said Jim Green, who leads NASA's planetary science division in Washington, DC.

First prize

According to NASA, about 900 classrooms with more than 11,000 students from 45 states ? as well as Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia ? suggested names. The contest was open to U.S. students in kindergarten through 12th grade and began about a month after the probes were launched last September and ran through Nov. 11.

Zuber and former astronaut Sally Ride, the first American woman in space, selected served as the contest's judges.

"With submissions from all over the United States and even some from abroad, there were a lot of great entries to look over," said Ride, who is now president and CEO of Sally Ride Science in San Diego. "This contest generated a great deal of excitement in classrooms across America, and along with it an opportunity to use that excitement to teach science."

As their first prize for naming Ebb and Flow, the Dickinson students won the first pick of where to point MoonKam, a small camera on board each of the Grail probes. [Photos From NASA's Moon Gravity Mission]

MoonKam, or Moon Knowledge Acquired by Middle school students, is NASA's first instrument to fly on a planetary mission fully-dedicated to education and public outreach. Managed by Sally Ride Science, MoonKam will provide thousands of fifth- to eighth-grade students the chance to select areas on the lunar surface to be photographed.

Ebbing and flowing

MoonKam will start sending back images once Ebb and Flow begin science operations in March.

Since the?two probes entered lunar orbit?two weeks ago, flight controllers have been refining each spacecraft's orbit to reduce the time they take to circle the moon to just under two hours. At the start of the science phase in two months, Ebb and Flow will be in a near-polar, near-circular orbit with an altitude of about 34 miles (55 kilometers).

During their science mission, the washer-machine size spacecraft will transmit radio signals precisely defining the distance between them. As they fly over areas of greater and lesser gravity caused by visible features such as mountains and craters, as well as masses hidden beneath the lunar surface, the distance between Ebb and Flow will change slightly.

Scientists will use this data to form a high-resolution map of the moon's gravitational field, providing them a better understanding of what is going on below the lunar surface. This information will increase knowledge of how Earth and its rocky neighbors in the inner solar system developed into the diverse worlds they are today.

Continue reading at collectSPACE.com?for the history behind students naming NASA spacecraft.

Follow collectSPACE on?Facebook?and Twitter @collectSPACE?and editor Robert Pearlman @robertpearlman. Copyright 2011?collectSPACE.com. All rights reserved.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/science/~3/1lp_YFHmwkY/NASA-s-twin-moon-probes-renamed-by-children-Ebb-Flow

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Gay "honor killing" movie shakes Turkey up (Reuters)

ISTANBUL (Reuters) ? On a hot summer's day in 2008, 26-year-old physics student Ahmet Yildiz was shot dead when he popped out from his Istanbul apartment to buy ice cream.

The main suspect in the killing, a fugitive still wanted by Turkish police, is Yildiz's father, who could not accept that his only son was in a homosexual relationship.

The case, widely believed to be Turkey's first gay "honor killing", has inspired a movie "Zenne", which opened on January 13 and explores gay sexual identity and prejudice in overwhelmingly Muslim Turkey.

"We had the movie idea in mind right after our dear friend Ahmet was killed," said Caner Alper, writer and co-director of the movie. "His story needed to be told."

Yildiz was born into a wealthy religious family in the ancient city of Sanliurfa, in Turkey's impoverished and conservative southeast, but moved to cosmopolitan Istanbul during his university years, seeking more freedom as a gay man.

In Istanbul, Yildiz started a new life and made new friends; he also began a gay relationship and eventually moved in with his boyfriend, who witnessed Yildiz's murder from the window of their apartment on the Asian side of the city divided by the Bosphorus Strait.

In the movie, Yildiz's character is encouraged to come out of the closet by a male belly dancer, or zenne, and a German photographer who has moved to Istanbul after a personal crisis in Afghanistan, where he accidentally caused the death of several children during a photo shoot. Both are fictional characters.

In real life, Yildiz's coming out as a gay man was seen as an affront in his deeply patriarchal and tribal family, even though his parents adored him, a cousin, Ahmet Kaya, told the Human Rights Foundation of Turkey.

LOOKING FOR A "CURE"

Yildiz's father had urged him to return to their village and to see a doctor and an imam to "cure" him of his homosexuality and get married, but Yildiz refused.

"Ahmet loved his family more than anything else and he was tortured about disappointing them," Kaya was quoted as saying in the foundation's report.

After he was killed, the family did not claim Yildiz's body for a proper Islamic burial -- an indication of the deep shame the family felt and that they had ceased to consider him one of their own. He was buried instead in a "cemetery for the nameless."

"The one scene I wasn't able to distance myself from the character I played as an actor was when Ahmet apologized to his father for being gay on the phone after coming out," Erkan Avci, a young actor who played Yildiz, told Reuters.

"It's such a great tragedy, so cruel and inhumane that anybody has to apologize for who he is."

Avci drew parallels between Ahmet's situation and his own as a Kurd from Diyarbakir province in a country whose Kurdish minority has long complained of discrimination and inequality.

"It would have been immoral for me to turn down this role, as a man who had to apologize for years for being Kurdish," he said.

"Zenne", which won five awards at Turkey's most prestigious film festival, the Antalya Golden Orange, has received a huge amount of attention in mainstream media and is reported to be having reasonable success at the box office.

With a $1 million budget, including financial support from the Dutch embassy, it opened in a luxury movie theatre in one of Istanbul's most fashionable neighborhoods.

Gays are normally depicted in Turkish movies as colorful and exaggerated secondary characters who add a comic element - hardly the main character of a story.

"Zenne" tackles head-on such sensitive issues as gay society, prejudice and equal rights for Turkey's lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community.

"'Zenne' is a very special film for us. It brings to the screen some of the important issues for the LGBT cause such as hate crimes, the complications for gay men to forego the mandatory military service and coming out," said Umut Guner, spokesman for the Ankara-based Kaos GL, a LGBT group.

PREJUDICE

The film has not been welcomed in conservative circles.

Islamist daily Vakit called it "homosexual propaganda" by a gay lobby bent on "legitimizing perversion through their so-called art."

Despite being the only suspect, Yildiz's father is still at large and is being tried in absentia.

Friends and activists, who have attended some of the hearings wearing masks bearing Yildiz's portrait, say the authorities lack the will to find the perpetrator.

Alper and Mehmet Binay, co-directors of the movie and together as a gay couple for 14 years, said they heard their friend Yildiz receive death threats from his family over the phone.

Yildiz filed an official complaint but failed to receive any protection, they said.

"Honor killings," or crimes carried out against mostly women and young girls seen to have tainted the family's name, are not uncommon in Turkey, particularly in poor and rural areas.

The European Union, which Turkey wants to join, has repeatedly urged Ankara to take a tougher stance against such crimes.

MILITARY PRACTICES

Turkey is often held as an example in the Middle East for marrying Islam and democracy, but Turkish gay activists say Ankara's human rights record is far from perfect.

One practice particularly abhorred by rights groups is the method by which gay men can be exempted from the required 16-month military service: they have to prove their homosexuality in medical tests and are compelled to provide photos of them having sex with other men.

In the movie, two characters undergoing one such examination are forced to wear make-up and dress in women's clothes, while doctors perform anal examinations.

According to Article 17 of the health regulations of the Turkish Armed Forces, homosexuality is considered a "psychosexual deviance."

"Turkey is going through a democratization process, and the army needs to enter this phase, too," said Binay.

"We don't live in a dream world and we don't expect it to happen all of a sudden in such a deep-seated institution, but at least they could stop the humiliating practices against gay men."

Turkish rights groups reported 24 killings of gay and transsexual individuals in the last two years. In most cases, courts reduced the sentences or the perpetrators were not found.

In a report last year, Amnesty International urged Ankara to draw up laws preventing discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation and to punish perpetrators of homophobic attacks.

The EU in a separate report also last year said lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender persons in Turkey "continued to suffer discrimination, intimidation and violent crimes".

LGBT activists say they get little sympathy from the AK Party, in power for a decade, which has its roots in political Islam and is known for its socially conservative stance.

Selma Aliye Kavaf, Turkey's former Women and Family Affairs Minister, made waves in 2010 when she said homosexuality was "a biological disorder, a disease that needs to be treated".

The current interior minister accused an outlawed armed organization with "engaging in every kind of immorality, including homosexuality".

Director Binay said he hoped the movie would help to change views both among government officials and the wider society, but believed that would not happen overnight.

"These movies will be made in Turkey as long as those from different identities refuse to learn to live together."

(Editing by Ibon Villelabeitia and Sonya Hepinstall)

(The following story corrects name of newspaper in paragraph 22)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/movies/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120120/en_nm/us_turkey_movie_gays

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Obama hosts ambassadors and mayors; meets with Geithner (Star Tribune)

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Johnny Depp, Vanessa Paradis near split: report (Reuters)

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) ? Johnny Depp's 14-year romance with French actress and singer Vanessa Paradis has hit the rocks, People magazine claimed on Wednesday, and the couple are living largely separate lives.

In a cover story for this week's issue of People called "Love Gone Wrong", the celebrity magazine quoted several unnamed sources as saying the pair's relationship is nearing an end.

The "Pirates of the Caribbean" star, 48, and Paradis, 39, never married but have been together since 1998 and have two children. They divide their time between France and the United States.

People magazine noted that the pair have not appeared on the red carpet together for more than a year, missing both the Cannes film festival in May 2011 and the Golden Globe Awards in Beverly Hills on Sunday, where Depp was a presenter.

"According to multiple sources....(they) are all but officially finished," People said.

Depp's representatives did not return calls for comment on the People story, which hits newsstands on Friday.

(Reporting By Jill Serjeant; Editing by Bob Tourtellotte)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/movies/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120118/film_nm/us_johnnydepp

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