This photo shows the glowing green planetary nebula IC 1295 surrounding a dim and dying star. It is located about 3,300 light-years away from Earth.
By Miriam Kramer Space.com
An amazing new photo from a telescope in Chile has captured the most detailed view yet of a green glowing blob 3,300 light-years away from Earth.
The new image, released Wednesday?by the?European Southern Observatory, shows the planetary nebula IC 1295 like it has never been seen before. This picture, which ESO scientists dubbed "ghostly," marks the first time the nebula has been imaged in such unprecedented detail.
"It has the unusual feature of being surrounded by multiple shells that make it resemble a microorganism seen under a microscope, with many layers corresponding to the membranes of a cell," officials from the European Southern Observatory wrote in a statement.
ESO offiials released a?video tour of the nebula as well.?
The formation of a?planetary nebula?marks one of the final chapters in the life of a star like the Earth's sun. Once the yellow star depletes its fuel, it collapses in on itself creating huge shells of gas ? like the green ones that appear in the new photo.
The IC 1295 nebula resides in "the shield" constellation, Scutum, and the bubble-like nebula's greenish tint comes from ionized oxygen particles.
Gas like the ionized oxygen is "belched" out of the nebula because fusion reactions are no longer stable in the dying star's core. This gas expulsion creates the glowing clouds that envelop the bright stars that also populate that part of the sky.
"At the center of the image, you can see the burnt-out remnant of the star?s core as a bright blue-white spot at the heart of the nebula," officials from the ESO wrote. "The central star will become a very faint white dwarf and slowly cool down over many billions of years."
Scientists using ESO's?Very Large Telescope?took the new photo of IC 1295. By combining three different exposures using a red, green and blue filter, the astronomers were able to create the stunning new nebula photo,?showing the object in a new light.
The Very Large Telescope is located in the Atacama Desert in Chile and is the "most productive individual ground-based facility," according to the ESO.
Follow Miriam Kramer?@mirikramer?and?Google+. Follow us?@Spacedotcom,?Facebook?and?Google+. Original article on?Space.com.
?
Copyright 2013 Space.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
JUBA, South Sudan (AP) ? South Sudan's military spokesman says that five United Nations peacekeepers were killed when suspected rebels ambushed a U.N. convoy in a remote, violent state.
Col. Philip Aguer said five others were also killed in the attack. A U.N. official who demanded anonymity because of U.N. rules said seven civilians were also killed in the attack.
A U.N. spokesman, Liam McDowall, confirmed that peacekeepers were killed. He declined to give numbers.
Aguer said the attack took place on a convoy traveling between the South Sudanese towns of Pibor and Bor on Tuesday morning.
Aguer blamed the attack on militants led by David Yau Yau, a rebel leader that South Sudan says is armed by Sudan.
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) ? Tens of thousands of Kenyans and about a dozen African leaders on Tuesday packed a sports stadium to watch the inauguration of Kenya's fourth president, Uhuru Kenyatta.
Kenyatta, 51, the son of Kenya's first president, becomes the second sitting African president to face charges at the International Criminal Court over allegations he helped orchestrate the vicious tribe-on-tribe violence that marred Kenya's 2007 presidential election.
Before the March 4 vote, the top U.S. official for Africa warned of "consequences" if Kenyatta was voted into office. European countries offered similar warnings. But the U.S. ambassador and European ambassadors were in attendance at Tuesday's ceremony, and analysts say they doubt the warnings of consequences will amount to very much.
Kenya is the lynchpin economy for East Africa's economy and the West's most vital security partner. Kenyan troops are helping battle al-Shabab militants inside Somalia, and Kenya hosts a U.S. military base near the Somali border.
Kenyatta ? the son of Jomo Kenyatta ? won the country's March 4 election victory with 50.07 percent of the vote. That win was challenged by outgoing Prime Minister Raila Odinga and civil society groups that complained of myriad anomalies in the voting process, but the Supreme Court upheld Kenyatta's win.
That court process, as well as requests by Odinga for peace, helped Kenya avoid the bloody deaths the country saw for two months in late 2007 and early 2008, when more than 1,000 people died in postelection violence.
Kenyatta has insisted he is innocent on allegations he helped orchestrate the violence and has pledged to cooperate with the ICC. His trial is scheduled to begin in July.
Kenyatta's deputy, William Ruto, faces similar charges at the ICC. His trial is set to begin in May.
Even as thousands cheered the dignitaries arriving at the Nairobi sports stadium, some in the crowd had Kenya's past violence on their mind.
"Kenyatta should put reconciliation as his priority. He must make sure we come as one nation," said Ndungu Kariuki, a 35-year-old engineer who was at the ceremony. "The charges against Uhuru are framed I was affected by the postelection violence and I know what happened. Kenyatta will be free."
DORTMUND, April 8 (Reuters) - Borussia Dortmund central defender Mats Hummels and midfielder Jakub Blaszczykowski have been cleared to play in their Champions League quarter-final return leg against Malaga on Tuesday, coach Juergen Klopp said. Hummels, out since March with an ankle injury, and Blaszczykowski, back after a groin problem, had missed the first leg 0-0 draw in Spain last week. "At the moment it looks good for all of them and they are all with the team in the hotel," Klopp told reporters on Monday, saying Marco Reus and keeper Roman Weidenfeller had also overcome minor knocks. ...
Apr. 8, 2013 ? The search for ways to use megatons of carbon dioxide that may be removed from industrial smokestacks during efforts to curb global warming has led to a process for converting that major greenhouse gas back into the fuel that released it in the first place. Research on the project was a topic in New Orleans on April 8 at the 245th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS).
"It may seem like trying to put the genie back into the bottle," Wojciech Lipi?ski, Dr. Sc.Techn.,said. "But it already has been proven with laboratory scale equipment. The process uses three of the world's most abundant and inexpensive resources. Sunlight is the energy source and carbon dioxide and water are the raw materials."
Lipi?ski also discussed another project that uses inexpensive calcium oxide, made from ordinary limestone, to capture carbon dioxide (CO2) before it leaves the smokestacks of coal-fired electric power stations. The CO2 reacts with calcium oxide, forming calcium carbonate, the same material in blackboard chalk, some calcium dietary supplements and some antacids. The calcium carbonate then goes into a reactor that removes the CO2 and regenerates the calcium oxide for another encounter with CO2.
Both processes use highly concentrated sunlight as the energy source. The test facility built at the University of Minnesota by Lipi?ski and his colleague Jane Davidson, Ph.D., is a high-flux solar simulator consisting of seven 6,500-watt light bulbs and mirrors that focus the light into a spot about 2 inches in diameter. Temperatures in that spot can reach 3,600 degrees Fahrenheit, way beyond the melting point of steel.
In smokestack process, that heat would remove the carbon dioxide from calcium carbonate and regenerate the calcium oxide. In the genie-out-of-the-bottle CO2 process, that heat fosters breakdown of carbon dioxide and water to form carbon monoxide and hydrogen, the two components of "synthesis gas" or "syngas."
The name comes from its time-tested use -- for more than a century -- in making or synthesizing other products. Syngas can be converted into synthetic hydrocarbons, for instance, gasoline, diesel and jet fuel or aviation kerosene. Jet fuel is already industrially produced in significant quantities from syngas obtained from coal and natural gas. Lipi?ski and his colleagues are developing prototype reactors to demonstrate syngas production from water and captured carbon dioxide in the solar simulator. A full-scale commercial facility would use a field of mirrors to focus sunlight onto a central reactor, similar to the emerging concentrated solar power, or CSP, facilities that now use heat from sunlight to produce electricity.
Lipi?ski noted that the sunlight-to-synfuels technology could be the basis of "carbon-neutral" energy production, in which CO2 is reused, with the same amount released into the air from burning of fossil fuels removed and put back into synfuels. With their similarity in composition to conventional fuels and long history of use, synfuels made with the solar process also would not require a new infrastructure.
Share this story on Facebook, Twitter, and Google:
Other social bookmarking and sharing tools:
Story Source:
The above story is reprinted from materials provided by American Chemical Society, via Newswise.
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: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
NEW YORK (AP) ? Attorneys for J.C Penney and Macy's were back in court Monday to fight over the Martha Stewart brand after a monthlong mediation period went nowhere.
But after the hearing, the real action began. Penney said late Monday, that the company's board of directors has ousted CEO Ron Johnson after only 17 months on the job and rehired Johnson's predecessor, Mike Ullman, 66, who was CEO of the department store chain for seven years until November 2011.
The case, which centers on Macy's claim that Penney's deal to sell Martha Stewart branded-merchandise infringes on its own deal with the domestic diva, was likely just one of the reasons Johnson was shown the door. He also had presided over a price strategy that confused customers and drove them away.
The court-ordered mediation followed nearly three weeks of testimony from witnesses including the domestic diva herself, Penney, Johnson and Macy's CEO Terry Lundgren.
At issue is whether Macy's has the exclusive rights to sell some Martha Stewart branded products such as cookware, bedding and bath products. Macy's sued Martha Stewart Living, arguing that the company breached its long-standing contract when it signed a deal with Penney in December 2011 to open Martha Stewart mini-shops, planned for this spring. It also sued Penney, contending that it had no regard for the contract and that Johnson had set out to steal the business that Macy's had worked hard to develop.
The stakes are high for all three companies involved but particularly for Penney, which is counting on a revamped home area to help it rebound from a disastrous year. The company amassed nearly $1 billion in losses and its revenue dropped about 25 percent as the first year of a transformation plan built around a new pricing strategy failed to resonate with shoppers.
Penney was counting on the overhauled home department as part of its bigger plan to turn Penney stores into mini-malls of sorts. It's in the midst of rolling out 20 shops in its home area featuring products from such designers as Michael Graves and Jonathan Adler. Martha Stewart mini-shops were expected to anchor the home area.
But those plans are in limbo. Penney had ordered goods like towels and cookware from Martha Stewart Living and were planning to name the goods JCP Everyday, to sidestep a conflict. But Macy's is trying to stop the retailer from selling goods covered by Macy's exclusive category even if they don't carry the Martha Stewart moniker.
And to make things more complicated for Penney, Macy's attorneys argued Monday in court that they want to stop Penney from selling plastic tableware like glasses and pitchers that were just starting to be sold on Penney's website.
Penney planned to sell those items from a mini-shop called Martha Celebrations featuring stationery and other paper products. Such products are not part of Macy's exclusive contract.
But Theodore M. Grossman, an attorney representing Macy's, told New York State Supreme Court Justice Jeffrey Oing that the stemware and other tabletop items, even though they're plastic, sill violate the contract because they compete with the Martha Stewart items that Macy's sells.
"The basic shapes and designs are the same," Grossman said.
Penney's attorneys said they needed time to talk to Penney since they were just informed by Macy's attorneys over the weekend.
Penney is aiming at what it believes is a loophole in the agreement between Macy's and Martha Stewart. It's a provision that allows Martha Stewart to sell goods in such categories like bedding in Martha Stewart Living's own stores. Penney and Martha Stewart have argued that since the Macy's contract does not specify that the stores have to be stand-alone, the mini-shops within Penney aren't barred by the exclusivity agreement.
John Tighe, who had been head of Penney's home area and was a key player in working with Martha Stewart Living to develop the contract, testified Monday that he looked over Macy's agreement and was confident that Penney could go ahead. Tighe, who now heads up the chain's men's area, had met Martha Stewart numerous times to get a sense of what she envisioned for the store.
New study finds plant proteins control chronic disease in Toxoplasma infectionsPublic release date: 8-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Anne DeLotto Baier abaier@health.usf.edu 813-974-3303 University of South Florida (USF Health)
University of South Florida-led research sheds light on malaria-related parasite's transition from acute to chronic stage
Tampa, FL (April 8, 2013) -- A new discovery about the malaria-related parasite Toxoplasma gondii -- which can threaten babies, AIDS patients, the elderly and others with weakened immune function -- may help solve the mystery of how this single-celled parasite establishes life-long infections in people.
The study, led by a University of South Florida research team, places the blame squarely on a family of proteins, known as AP2 factors, which evolved from the regulators of flowering in plants.
In findings published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers demonstrate AP2 factors are instrumental in flipping a developmental "switch" that transitions the parasite from a rapidly dividing form destructive to healthy tissue to a chronic stage invisible to the immune system. They identified one factor, AP2IX-9, that appears to restrict development of Toxoplasma cysts that settle quietly in various tissues, most commonly the host's brain.
A better understanding of how the switch mechanism works may eventually lead to ways to block chronic Toxoplasma infections, said study principal investigator Michael White, PhD, professor of global health and molecular medicine at USF Health and a member of the Center of Drug Discovery and Innovation, a Florida Center of Excellence at USF.
White and his colleagues are among the world's leading experts in T. gondii, combining approaches from biochemistry, genetics and structural biology to look for new ways to combat the parasitic disease toxoplasmosis.
No drugs or vaccines currently exist to treat or prevent the chronic stage of the disease. The T. gondii parasites may remain invisible to the immune system for years and then reactivate when immunity wanes, boosting the risk for recurrent disease.
"The evolutionary story of Toxoplasma is fascinating," White said. "We were blown away to find that the AP2 factors controlling how a flower develops and how plants respond to poor soil and water conditions have been adapted to work within an intracellular human parasite."
Ages ago the ancestors of malaria parasites genetically merged with an ancestor of plants, and the primitive plant donated its AP2 factors to the future malaria family.
"Our study showed that, like the AP2 factors help a plant survive a stressful environment, the AP2 factors of T. gondii help the parasite decide when the time is right to grow or when to form a tissue cyst that may lie dormant in people for many years," White said.
Toxoplasmosis, the infection caused T. gondii, is commonly associated with the medical advice that pregnant women should avoid contact with litter boxes. That's because infected cats play a big role in spreading the disease. The tiny organism thrives in the guts of cats, producing countless egg-like cells that are passed along in the feces and can live in warm moist soil or water for months.
People can acquire toxoplasmosis several ways, usually by exposure to the feces of cats or other infected animals, by eating undercooked meat of infected animals, or drinking water contaminated with T. gondii.
Up to 30 percent of the world's population is estimated to be infected with the T. gondii parasite.
In some parts of the world, including places where sanitation is poor and eating raw or undercooked meat is customary, nearly 100 percent of people carry the parasite, White said.
Few experience flu-like symptoms because the immune system usually prevents the parasite from causing illness, but for those who are immune deficient the consequences can be severe.
The disease may be deadly in AIDS patients, organ transplant recipients, patients receiving certain types of chemotherapy, and infants born to mothers infected with the parasite during or shortly before pregnancy. Recently, toxoplasmosis has been linked to mental illness, such as schizophrenia and other diseases of dementia, and changes in behavior.
Because it is common, complex and not easily killed with standard disinfection measures, the toxoplasma parasite is a potential weapon for bioterrorists, White added.
###
The USF-led study was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health. White's team worked with researchers at Princeton University, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and Indiana University School of Medicine. Joshua Radke, a PhD student in the USF Health Department of Molecular Medicine, was a first author of the study.
Article citation:
"ApiAP2 transciption factor restricts development of the Toxoplasma tissue cyst;" Joshua B. Radke, Oliver Lucas, Erandi K. DeSilva, YanFen Ma, William J. Sullivan, Jr., Louis M. Weiss, Manuel Llinas, and Michael W. White; Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences; http://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1300059110
USF Health's mission is to envision and implement the future of health. It is the partnership of the USF Health Morsani College of Medicine, the College of Nursing, the College of Public Health, the College of Pharmacy, the School of Biomedical Sciences and the School of Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation Sciences; and the USF Physician's Group. The University of South Florida is a global research university ranked 50th in the nation by the National Science Foundation for both federal and total research expenditures among all U.S. universities. For more information, visit http://www.health.usf.edu
[ | 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.
New study finds plant proteins control chronic disease in Toxoplasma infectionsPublic release date: 8-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Anne DeLotto Baier abaier@health.usf.edu 813-974-3303 University of South Florida (USF Health)
University of South Florida-led research sheds light on malaria-related parasite's transition from acute to chronic stage
Tampa, FL (April 8, 2013) -- A new discovery about the malaria-related parasite Toxoplasma gondii -- which can threaten babies, AIDS patients, the elderly and others with weakened immune function -- may help solve the mystery of how this single-celled parasite establishes life-long infections in people.
The study, led by a University of South Florida research team, places the blame squarely on a family of proteins, known as AP2 factors, which evolved from the regulators of flowering in plants.
In findings published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers demonstrate AP2 factors are instrumental in flipping a developmental "switch" that transitions the parasite from a rapidly dividing form destructive to healthy tissue to a chronic stage invisible to the immune system. They identified one factor, AP2IX-9, that appears to restrict development of Toxoplasma cysts that settle quietly in various tissues, most commonly the host's brain.
A better understanding of how the switch mechanism works may eventually lead to ways to block chronic Toxoplasma infections, said study principal investigator Michael White, PhD, professor of global health and molecular medicine at USF Health and a member of the Center of Drug Discovery and Innovation, a Florida Center of Excellence at USF.
White and his colleagues are among the world's leading experts in T. gondii, combining approaches from biochemistry, genetics and structural biology to look for new ways to combat the parasitic disease toxoplasmosis.
No drugs or vaccines currently exist to treat or prevent the chronic stage of the disease. The T. gondii parasites may remain invisible to the immune system for years and then reactivate when immunity wanes, boosting the risk for recurrent disease.
"The evolutionary story of Toxoplasma is fascinating," White said. "We were blown away to find that the AP2 factors controlling how a flower develops and how plants respond to poor soil and water conditions have been adapted to work within an intracellular human parasite."
Ages ago the ancestors of malaria parasites genetically merged with an ancestor of plants, and the primitive plant donated its AP2 factors to the future malaria family.
"Our study showed that, like the AP2 factors help a plant survive a stressful environment, the AP2 factors of T. gondii help the parasite decide when the time is right to grow or when to form a tissue cyst that may lie dormant in people for many years," White said.
Toxoplasmosis, the infection caused T. gondii, is commonly associated with the medical advice that pregnant women should avoid contact with litter boxes. That's because infected cats play a big role in spreading the disease. The tiny organism thrives in the guts of cats, producing countless egg-like cells that are passed along in the feces and can live in warm moist soil or water for months.
People can acquire toxoplasmosis several ways, usually by exposure to the feces of cats or other infected animals, by eating undercooked meat of infected animals, or drinking water contaminated with T. gondii.
Up to 30 percent of the world's population is estimated to be infected with the T. gondii parasite.
In some parts of the world, including places where sanitation is poor and eating raw or undercooked meat is customary, nearly 100 percent of people carry the parasite, White said.
Few experience flu-like symptoms because the immune system usually prevents the parasite from causing illness, but for those who are immune deficient the consequences can be severe.
The disease may be deadly in AIDS patients, organ transplant recipients, patients receiving certain types of chemotherapy, and infants born to mothers infected with the parasite during or shortly before pregnancy. Recently, toxoplasmosis has been linked to mental illness, such as schizophrenia and other diseases of dementia, and changes in behavior.
Because it is common, complex and not easily killed with standard disinfection measures, the toxoplasma parasite is a potential weapon for bioterrorists, White added.
###
The USF-led study was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health. White's team worked with researchers at Princeton University, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and Indiana University School of Medicine. Joshua Radke, a PhD student in the USF Health Department of Molecular Medicine, was a first author of the study.
Article citation:
"ApiAP2 transciption factor restricts development of the Toxoplasma tissue cyst;" Joshua B. Radke, Oliver Lucas, Erandi K. DeSilva, YanFen Ma, William J. Sullivan, Jr., Louis M. Weiss, Manuel Llinas, and Michael W. White; Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences; http://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1300059110
USF Health's mission is to envision and implement the future of health. It is the partnership of the USF Health Morsani College of Medicine, the College of Nursing, the College of Public Health, the College of Pharmacy, the School of Biomedical Sciences and the School of Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation Sciences; and the USF Physician's Group. The University of South Florida is a global research university ranked 50th in the nation by the National Science Foundation for both federal and total research expenditures among all U.S. universities. For more information, visit http://www.health.usf.edu
[ | 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.
Two days of Iran nuclear talks in Kazakhstan have exposed the depth of division and scale of mismatched expectations between Iran and six world powers, as they spar over ways to limit Iran?s most sensitive nuclear work.
The talks were unprecedented in both their intensity and depth, say officials from both sides, and even included a direct 30- to 40-minute exchange between the top American and top Iranian diplomats across the negotiating table.
Yet instead of narrowing a chasm that has bedeviled five rounds of talks in a year between Iran and the P5+1 group (the US, Russia, China, Britain, France, and Germany), this round appeared to illustrate like never before the magnitude of the diplomatic challenge ahead.
RECOMMENDED: How much do you know about Iran? Take our quiz to find out.
The P5+1 demands that Iran give up enriching uranium to 20 percent ? a few technical steps away from bomb-grade ? and disable one deeply buried facility, in exchange for a partial lifting of crippling sanctions. That proposal would be a first step toward a broader deal to ensure Iran will never make a nuclear bomb.
Iran says it needs to know that final deal will guarantee its ?right? to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes and an end to sanctions; Iranian officials indicated that they counter-proposed exchanging 20 percent enrichment for a lifting of all unilateral sanctions.
MUTUAL MISPERCEPTIONS
That disconnect and ?mutual misperceptions? now risk damaging the diplomatic process, says Ali Vaez, the senior Iran analyst for the International Crisis Group, who spoke to delegates on both sides at the talks in the Kazakh city of Almaty.
?The P5+1 expected instant gratification of its meaningful ? but modest ? offer of sanctions relief, while Iran saw an opportunity to devise a road map toward recognition of its rights to enrichment,? says Mr. Vaez.
Differences now remain ?as wide as the distance between the first step and the end game,? says Vaez. ?Still, there is a real cost in declaring failure and as prospects of a deal narrow, the temptation of more coercive alternatives grows. The ironic end result of years of mutual escalation is that both parties are now loathe to use the leverage they have sacrificed so much to acquire.?
Stern words were exchanged by diplomats in public, as each side sought to portray the other as needing to go home and recalibrate their thinking. No date was set for the next round of talks, but decisions on how to proceed could come within days.
?There may not have been a breakthrough, but there was also not a breakdown,? said a senior US official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
"It is fair to say that Iran is only prepared to take very minimal steps with respect to constraints on its nuclear program while expecting very significant rewards in return [which is] not a realistic basis for progress," said the US official. ?This was such a detailed, such an intense, and such a complex 48 hours, we ourselves are just absorbing all that we heard and all that was discussed ? we all really need to absorb and digest what we?ve heard.?
During the first day of talks, Iranian diplomats announced their need for an agreed framework on the ?dimensions? and ?final outcome? of the process before they could take initial steps, concerned that P5+1 demands could mount ? including a requirement to stop all enrichment ? with only marginal sanctions relief.
The current P5+1 offer, which has been seen by the Monitor, envisions Iran to eventually take unspecified ?additional significant steps? before key sanctions could be lifted.
A Western diplomat said the P5+1 had been ?somewhat puzzled? by the Iranian response.
IRAN'S NEGOTIATOR
Iran?s chief negotiator Saeed Jalili, told the Monitor in an interview after the Almaty talks that Iran had ?always? told the P5+1 that such a framework agreement was necessary to ?foster cooperation.?
?I like to think that we tried our very best to take as many questions as was possible to us,? Mr. Jalili told the Monitor. ?We took a lot of time, taking those questions, providing responses, explaining our positions, our ideas, in great detail. This was so thorough that finally the members of [the P5+1] were asked, ?Do you have any remaining questions?? and nobody had any questions.?
Iran?s concluding statement used several positive phrases. Iran had put forward a ?plan of action? that incorporated the P5+1 proposal, Jalili said, and he mentioned ?forward movement? and that the ?new conditions? of Iran?s initiative were meant to propel talks in a ?constructive fashion.?
It was ?now up to the P5+1 to demonstrate its willingness and sincerity to take proportionate confidence building steps,? said Jalili. ?Creating confidence is a two-way street, and today after many measures taken by the Islamic Republic of Iran to provide additional confidence, now [the P5+1] must work to gain the confidence of the Iranian people.?
He said that enriching uranium up to 20 percent was the ?right of the Iranian people,? but added ? without being specific ? that ?this can be an issue to help create further confidence.?
P5+1 PERSPECTIVE
The P5+1 saw Iran?s diplomatic moves in a very different and dimmer light.
?[Iran] responded to our proposal with some ideas that were a minimal response [that] not only had very, very tiny steps, in our view, but wanted a lot of return for those tiny steps,? said the senior US official. ?The gulf between their current position and ours is quite great.?
Those differences were made clear in the long direct conversation (through interpreters) between Jalili and the head of the American delegation, US Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman. That was one of several, diplomats said, between Jalili and individual P5+1 negotiators.
Still, such unprecedented exchanges do not replace making progress on substantive issues, said the senior US official.
?We do see the world differently,? said the US official. ?We come from different cultures, different backgrounds, and different ways of solving problems. And so it takes a lot of time to understand each other and to understand what each other is saying ? the devil is truly in the details.?
DETAILS OF DISPUTE
Among those details are how to handle Iran?s growing stockpile of 20 percent enriched uranium. Iran says it needs it to fuel a research reactor in Tehran, and has converted some 40 percent of that stockpile into oxide for fuel use ? rendering that portion virtually unusable for further enrichment to bomb-grade levels of 90 percent.
Past fuel swap deals have failed; the current P5+1 proposal would enable Iran to purchase that fuel and medical isotopes.
?What we are insisting on is our right to enrich,? Jalili told the Monitor. ?This is equally true for 5 percent or 20 percent. You know well that 20 percent enriched uranium is used for medical purposes. One million Iranian patients are using these isotopes.?
Jalili added: ?Today the fuel is exclusively used for humanitarian matters, medical purposes, exclusively peaceful purposes.?
Another hurdle was not overcome in Almaty. Several UN Security Council resolutions require Iran to halt all enrichment, at all levels, until it has resolved remaining questions about possible past weapons-related work with the UN?s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
Iranian officials say they reject nuclear weapons as un-Islamic, but also that they will never halt enrichment, which they consider an ?inalienable right,? as a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). That is why Iran says it wants to know now that it will still be able to enrich when the process is over, before any initial steps.
P5+1 officials themselves have variable interpretations, with Russia in the past stating that Iran should have that ?right? to enrich recognized. Moscow called this round of talks in Almaty a ?step forward.?
?What we are talking about is full compliance with the Security Council resolutions and [Iran?s] responsibilities under the NPT,? said the senior US official. ?And we have always said that when they meet [those], then they can see their way to a truly peaceful, civil, nuclear program under the NPT, and all sanctions can be lifted. So there is no mystery here about what the end of the story is.?
That point in some ways returns the current diplomatic process full circle, to the earlier, maximalist proposals laid down by both sides last spring.
?The irony is that the more the two sides understand their respective positions, the more they realize how far apart and entrenched they are,? says Vaez, the ICG Iran analyst.
Still, P5+1 diplomats said they had never seen such an open exchange with Iran.
Catherine Ashton, the European Union foreign policy chief who leads negotiations on behalf of the P5+1, stated that the two sides remained ?far apart on the substance? of the talks, but added: ?For the first time that I?ve seen, [there was] a real back and forth between us, where we are able to discuss details, to pose questions, and to get answers directly.?
* Follow Scott Peterson on Twitter at @peterson__scott
RECOMMENDED: How much do you know about Iran? Take our quiz to find out.
An 89-year-old woman who spent two days locked in her car trunk thinking she'd never be found has a message for her teen captors.
"You got to be kind to other people if you want somebody to be kind to you," Margaret Smith said.
The 4-foot-11 octangenerian's story began with an act of kindness on March 18.
Smith had stopped at the Chicken Man Convenience Store in Milford, Del., for a Butter Pecan ice cream cone when two teenage girls approached her and asked for a ride across town.
"I decided not to, then I said, 'Well, a good deed,'" Smith said.
After driving around for a while, Smith said the girls snatched her car keys and stuffed her in the trunk of her Buick.
"The way they drove off flying, I didn't think nobody would ever find me," she said. "I just had to pray about and hope that I'd be found."
Smith spent the next two days crammed in the trunk, without food, water and her blood pressure medication. She said the only time the girls opened the trunk was to rob her of the cash she was carrying.
"I was very tired, cold, hungry, scared," Smith said. "I didn't know what to expect."
After spending 48 hours locked in her trunk, Smith's kidnappers inexplicably decided to dump her in a remote cemetery.
"I was crawling through the cemetery on hands and knees," Smith said. "Nothing but a pair of stockings on, no jacket...Finally somebody found me. I don't know who."
Smith was taken to a local hospital, where her family, who had reported her missing, received a call that she was safe.
Delaware State Police found Smith's car days later and arrested and charged five teenagers inside. All are believed to have some involvement in the kidnapping, robbery and theft, ABC News' Philadelphia affiliate WPVI reported.
Four of the teens, ranging in age from 14 to 17, are being charged as adults, while a fifth faces receiving stolen property and conspiracy charges as a minor.
JERUSALEM -- A weekend cyberattack campaign targeting Israeli government websites failed to cause serious disruption, officials said Sunday. The attacks followed warnings in the name of the hacking group Anonymous that it was launching a massive attack.
Yitzhak Ben Yisrael, of the government's National Cyber Bureau, said hackers had mostly failed to shut down key sites.
"So far it is as was expected, there is hardly any real damage," Ben Yisrael said. "Anonymous doesn't have the skills to damage the country's vital infrastructure. And if that was its intention, then it wouldn't have announced the attack ahead of time. It wants to create noise in the media about issues that are close to its heart," he said.
Posters using the name of the hacking group Anonymous had warned they would launch a massive attack on Israeli sites in a strike they called (hash)OpIsrael starting April 7.
Israel's Bureau of Statistics was down on Sunday morning but it was unclear if it was hacked. Media said the sites of the Defense and Education Ministry as well as banks had come under attack the night before but they were mostly repelled.
Israeli sites reported brief cyberattacks on the stock market website and the Finance Ministry website Saturday night. But the two institutions denied the reports.
Israeli media said small businesses had been targeted, and some websites' homepages were replaced by anti-Israel slogans. In retaliation, Israeli activists hacked sites of radical Islamist groups and splashed them with pro-Israel messages, media said.
Shlomi Dolev, an expert on network security and cryptography at Ben Gurion University, said attacks of this kind will likely become more common. "It is a good test for our defense systems and we will know better how to deal with more serious threats in the future," he said.
Dolev said Anonymous had declared on its forums that the main assault would be in the evening. Hackers have had little success in their attempts to take over and change Israeli sites so far and are planning "denial of service" attacks where sites are overwhelmed and communications are hindered.
He said Israel is well prepared to deal with the attacks. "This is a real battle. It is good training for our experts," he said.
Hackers have tried before to topple Israeli sites.
In January last year, a hacker network that claimed to be based in Saudi Arabia paralyzed the websites of Israel's stock exchange and national airline and claimed to have published details of thousands of Israeli credit cards.
A concerted effort to cripple Israeli websites during November fighting in Gaza failed to cause serious disruption. Israel said at the time that protesters barraged Israel with more than 60 million hacking attempts.
An official of the militant Hamas movement that rules the Gaza Strip praised the current attack. "God bless the minds and the efforts of the soldiers of the electronic battle," Ihab Al- Ghussian, Gaza's chief government spokesman, wrote on his official Facebook page.
Related:
North Korea Twitter, Flickr accounts hacked by Anonymous
Anonymous claims it stole 15,000 user records from North Korea site
? 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
RIYADH (Reuters) - Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, the movement's North African arm, said French statements that its forces had killed the group's leader in the Sahara were "blatant fallacy", a monitoring website said on Saturday.
AQIM, as the group is known, did not name the leader but it appeared to be referring to Abdelhamid Abou Zeid, whose death in Mali in February was confirmed by Paris "with certainty" on March 23.
The militant group, which attacked a gas plant in Algeria in January, denied the death in a statement published on Friday on Islamist internet forums, SITE, a U.S.-based intelligence monitoring website, reported.
The statement threatened "dark days" for France in north and west Africa.
French forces launched a ground and air campaign in Mali on January 11 against Islamist forces who carved out an enclave in the country's northern mountains, saying they posed an international threat.
Paris said in a statement last month: "The president of the French Republic confirms with certainty the death of Abdelhamid Abou Zeid after an offensive by the French army."
However, AQIM said the French statement was motivated by the government's low poll ratings.
"This is a blatant fallacy by the French President Hollande, who has low popularity and whose party is mired in financial and moral scandals, in order to delude the French and global public about the achievement of a field victory that restores to them their lost confidence, domestically and abroad," it said.
The fate of Abou Zeid and another al Qaeda commander, Mokhtar Belmokhtar, presumed mastermind of the Algerian attack in which more than 60 people were killed, has been murky since Chad, which is fighting alongside France in Mali, reported their deaths in March.
Algerian Ennahar TV, which is well connected with Algeria's security services, said late last month a new commander, Djamel Okacha, had been named to replace Abou Zeid.
An Algerian security source said Okacha, also known as Yahia Abu El Hamam, joined AQIM in northern Mali in 2004.
However, the AQIM statement monitored by SITE said Hamam had not been installed to replace Abou Zeid, but had in fact replaced another leader, Nabil Abu Alqamah, who it said died in a traffic accident last year.
It said he had been installed "eight months ago, and nearly five months before the French invasion of northern Mali", according to the monitoring.
(Reporting by Angus McDowall; Editing by Alison Williams)
Jurassic Park was awesome. Jurassic Park in 3D is awesome layered on awesome. And the tech behind the scenes? You can probably see where this is going. More »
ALMATY, Kazakhstan (AP) ? Talks seeking to find common ground between Iran and a group of six nations over concerns that Tehran's nuclear program might be used to make weapons appeared to run into trouble shortly after they began Friday.
A Western diplomat privy to the talks said Iran's response to the offer from the group fell short of what the six wanted and instead amounted to a "reworking" of proposals it made last year at negotiations that broke up in disagreement. He said the two sides remained a "long way apart on substance" as the talks adjourned Friday.
The diplomat demanded anonymity in exchange for discussing the confidential talks taking place Friday and Saturday in the Kazakh commercial capital, Almaty.
Iran is demanding international recognition of its right to advanced nuclear technology, but other countries are concerned that the Islamic Republic wants to use that expertise to make atomic arms.
Russia's Interfax news agency cited Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov, the head of his country's Almaty delegation, as saying the six won't be able to determine whether they can bridge differences with Iran until the two sides meet again Saturday.
In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said Iran has yet to meet the group's demands, but that the six hope for progress on Saturday.
"The talks have been substantive, but we don't yet have any progress to report," Nuland told reporters in Washington. "What we are looking for is a clear and concrete response to the proposal that we put forward in February."
She said there is no plan for the U.S. and Iran to meet bilaterally during the talks, she said.
Comments by representatives of the sides laid out starkly different visions of what each sought from the other.
The six insist Iran cut back on its highest grade uranium enrichment production and stockpile, fearing Tehran will divert it from making nuclear fuel to form the material used in the core of nuclear warhead. They say Iran must make that move ? and make it first ? to build confidence that its nuclear program is peaceful.
Iranian negotiator Ali Bagheri challenged the six countries on that point, telling reporters "what is being referred to as confidence-building measures are actions that both sides ... need to take" simultaneously.
He gave no specifics, but the comment could be an allusion to Iranian demands of sweeping sanctions relief instead of the offer from the six offering only a limited lifting of sanctions.
Iran also wants any nuclear concessions it makes to have specific limits instead of leading to others. Alluding to that demand, Bagheri said his country wanted to nail down "the start of the process, the dimensions of the process and the final outcome of the process."
And he described any would-be nuclear deal as only "part of a comprehensive process," suggesting Iran was holding to its earlier demands of a broader deal also addressing security issues. He later qualified that, saying Iran had resubmitted a streamlined version of that earlier plan.
Still, such views were unlikely to sit well with the six ? the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany.
At the talks in the Kazakh city of Almaty they are asking Tehran only to greatly limit its production and stockpiling of uranium enriched to 20 percent, which is just a technical step away from weapons-grade uranium. That would keep Iran's supply below the amount needed for further processing into a weapon.
But the group views that only as a first step in a process. Iran is operating more than 10,000 centrifuges. While most are enriching below 20 percent, this material, too, could be turned into weapons-grade uranium, although with greater effort than is the case for the 20-percent stockpile.
Tehran also is only a few years away from completing a reactor that will produce plutonium, another pathway to nuclear arms.
The U.N. Security Council has demanded a stop to both that effort and all enrichment in a series of resolutions since 2006. Iran denies any interest in atomic arms, insists its enrichment program serves only peaceful needs, says it has a right to enrich under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, and describes U.N. Security Council demands as illegal.
Ahead of the meeting, an EU official speaking for the six world powers said Friday the onus was on Iran to engage on the six-nation offer, which foresees lifting sanctions on Iran's gold and petrochemical trade but maintaining penalties crippling Iran's oil sales and economy.
"The core issue here is the international community concern of the very strong indications that Iran is developing technology that could be used for military purposes," said Michael Mann, spokesman for EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, the formal convener of the talks.
"There are suspicions of an enrichment program that could have military uses," he said. "The confidence building has to come from Iran because it is Iran that is developing its nuclear program."
The meetings Friday and Saturday are at best expected to achieve enough progress for agreement to hold another round of talks. But after 10 years of inconclusive negotiations, even an agreement to keep talking would give both sides short-term gains.
It would leave the international community with some breathing space in its efforts to stem Iran's nuclear advance. For Tehran, continued negotiations are insurance that neither Israel nor the United States will feel the need to act on threats to move from diplomacy to other means to deal with Iran.
Israel says Iran is only a few months away from the threshold of having material to turn into a bomb and has vowed to use all means to prevent it from reaching that point. The United States has not said what its "red line" is, but that it will not tolerate an Iran armed with nuclear weapons.
Any strike on Iran could provoke fierce retaliation directly from Iran and through its Middle East proxies in Syria, Lebanon and Palestine, raising the specter of a larger Middle East conflict.
____
AP correspondent Bradley Klapper contributed from Washington.
WASHINGTON (AP) ? North Korea is widely recognized as being years away from perfecting the technology to back up its bold threats of a pre-emptive strike on America. But some nuclear experts say it might have the know-how to fire a nuclear-tipped missile at South Korea and Japan, which host U.S. military bases.
No one can tell with any certainty how much technological progress North Korea has made, aside from perhaps a few people close to its secretive leadership. And, if true, it is unlikely that Pyongyang would launch such an attack, because the retaliation would be devastating.
The North's third nuclear test on Feb. 12, which prompted the toughest U.N. Security Council sanctions yet against Pyongyang, is presumed to have advanced its ability to miniaturize a nuclear device. And experts say it's easier to design a nuclear warhead that works on a shorter-range missile than one for an intercontinental missile that could target the U.S.
The assessment of David Albright at the Institute for Science and International Security think-tank is that North Korea has the capability to mount a warhead on its Nodong missile, which has a range of 800 miles (1,280 kilometers) and could hit in South Korea and most of Japan. But he cautioned in his analysis, published after the latest nuclear test, that it is an uncertain estimate, and the warhead's reliability remains unclear.
He contends that the experience of Pakistan could serve as precedent. Pakistan bought the Nodong from North Korea after its first flight test in 1993, then adapted and produced it for its own use. Pakistan, which conducted its first nuclear test in 1998, is said to have taken less than 10 years to miniaturize a warhead before that test, Albright said.
North Korea also obtained technology from the trafficking network of A.Q. Khan, a disgraced pioneer of Pakistan's nuclear program, acquiring centrifuges for enriching uranium. According to the Congressional Research Service, Khan may also have supplied a Chinese-origin nuclear weapon design he provided to Libya and Iran, which could have helped the North in developing a warhead for a ballistic missile.
But Siegfried Hecker at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation, who has visited North Korea seven times and been granted unusual access to its nuclear facilities, is skeptical the North has advanced that far in miniaturization of a nuclear device.
"Nobody outside of a small elite in North Korea knows ? and even they don't know for sure," he said in an e-mailed response to questions from The Associated Press. "I agree that we cannot rule it out for one of their shorter-range missiles, but we simply don't know."
"Thanks to A.Q. Khan, they almost certainly have designs for such a device that could fit on some of their short- or medium-range missiles," said Hecker, who last visited the North in November 2010. "But it is a long way from having a design and having confidence that you can put a warhead on a missile and have it survive the thermal and mechanical stresses during launch and along its entire trajectory."
The differing opinions underscore a fundamental problem in assessing a country as isolated as North Korea, particularly its weapons programs: solid proof is very hard to come by.
For example, the international community remains largely in the dark about the latest underground nuclear test. Although it caused a magnitude 5.1 tremor, no gases escaped and experts say there was no way to evaluate whether a plutonium or uranium device was detonated. That information would help reveal whether North Korea has managed to produce highly enriched uranium, giving it a new source of fissile material, and help determine the type and sophistication of the North's warhead design.
The guessing game about the North's nuclear weapons program dates back decades. Albright says that in the early 1990s, the CIA estimated that North Korea had a "first-generation" design for a plutonium device that was likely to be deployed on the Nodong missile ? although it's not clear what information that estimate was based on.
"Given that twenty years has passed since the deployment of the Nodong, an assessment that North Korea successfully developed a warhead able to be delivered by that missile is reasonable," Albright wrote.
According to Nick Hansen, a retired intelligence expert who closely monitors developments in the North's weapons programs, the Nodong missile was first flight-tested in 1993. Pakistan claims to have re-engineered the missile and successfully tested it, although doubts apparently persist about its reliability.
Whether North Korea has also figured out how to wed the missile with a nuclear warhead has major ramifications not just for South Korea and Japan, but for the U.S. itself, which counts those nations as its principal allies in Asia and retains 80,000 troops in the two countries.
U.S. intelligence appears to have vacillated in its assessments of North Korea's capabilities.
In April 2005, Lowell Jacoby, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that North Korea had the capability to arm a missile with a nuclear device. Pentagon officials, however, later backtracked.
According to the Congressional Research Service, a report from the same intelligence agency to Congress in August 2007 said that "North Korea has short and medium-range missiles that could be fitted with nuclear weapons, but we do not know whether it has in fact done so."
In an interview Friday in Germany, Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the U.S. does not know whether North Korea has "weaponized" its nuclear capability.
Still, Washington is taking North Korea's nuclear threats seriously.
The bellicose rhetoric follows not just the nuclear test in February, but the launch in December of a long-range North Korean rocket that could potentially hit the continental U.S. According to South Korean officials, North Korea has moved at least one missile with "considerable range" to its east coast ? possibly the untested Musudan missile, believed to have a range of 1,800 miles (3,000 kilometers).
This week, the U.S. said two of the Navy's missile-defense ships were positioned closer to the Korean peninsula, and a land-based system is being deployed for the Pacific territory of Guam. The Pentagon last month announced longer-term plans to beef up its U.S.-based missile defenses.
South Korea is separated from North Korea and its huge standing army by a heavily militarized frontier, and the countries remain in an official state of war, as the Korean War ended in 1953 without a peace treaty. Even without nuclear arms, the North positions enough artillery within range of Seoul to devastate large parts of the capital before the much-better-equipped U.S. and South Korea could fully respond.
And Japan has been starkly aware of the threat since North Korea's 1998 test of the medium-range Taepodong missile that overflew its territory.
Yet in the latest standoff, much of the international attention has been on the North's potential threat to the U.S., a more distant prospect than its capabilities to strike its own neighbors. Experts say the North could hit South Korea with chemical weapons, and might also be able to use a Scud missile to carry a nuclear warhead.
Darryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, acknowledges the North might be able to put a warhead on a Nodong missile, but he sees it as unlikely. He says the North's nuclear threats are less worthy of attention than the prospects of a miscalculation leading to a conventional war.
"North Korea understands that a serious attack on South Korea or other U.S. interests is going to be met with overwhelming force," he said. "It would be near suicidal for the regime."
____
Associated Press writers Foster Klug in Seoul, South Korea, and Robert Burns in Stuttgart, Germany, contributed to this report.
You want an inconvenient truth? Here?s one: Despite the exponential growth of solar energy over the past 13 years, the global production of photovoltaic panels has consumed more electricity than the panels themselves generate, according to a new Stanford University study.
As recently as 2008, the photovoltaic (PV) industry used 75% more energy than it generated (paywall), found the paper published in the journal Environmental Science and Geology.?
Such figures, of course, could prove highly problematic for an industry whose existence is predicated on reducing greenhouse gas emissions by supplying carbon-free electricity.
Now for the good news. There?s more than a 50% chance that the industry reached a tipping point last year and is now producing more electricity than it consumes. By 2020, it should have paid back all the power it consumed since 2000, according to the analysis conducted by Stanford researchers Michael Dale and Sally Benson. ?Developing new technologies with lower energy requirements will allow us to grow the industry at a faster rate,? Benson said in statement.
The solar industry?s energy deficit was a natural consequence of the rapid expansion of photovoltaic power in the first decade of the 21st century. Installed worldwide solar capacity grew on an average of 40% a year, expanding from 1,200 megawatts in 2000 to 22,900 megawatts in 2010.?
By 2012, the cumulative amount of electricity generated by those hundreds of millions of solar panels probably began outstripping the energy embedded in their production. As long as the panels continue to function for their 25-year-life span, that energy surplus will continue to accumulate.?
The University of Rhode Island (URI) was locked down today after a student reported seeing a gunman, but police found no gunman or gun.
By Erika Niedowski,?Associated Press / April 4, 2013
URI President David Dooley (l.) and Rhode Island State Police Capt. Frank Castellone (r.) address the media after the school ordered a lockdown of the campus in South Kingstown, R.I., Thursday, April 4.
Stew Milne / AP
Enlarge
The University of Rhode Island was under lockdown for about 2? hours Thursday after reports of someone with a gun on its rural South Kingstown campus, but police found no gunman, weapon, or danger at any time.
Click Here for your FREE 30 DAYS of The Christian Science Monitor Weekly Digital Edition
Rhode Island State Police Capt. Frank Castellone said state police received calls at 11:22 a.m. reporting a person with a gun in Chafee Hall, a high-rise building that houses several academic departments and classrooms. According to police, a professor believed she heard someone in her lecture hall say, "I'm a good guy and I have a gun."
"At that point things got crazy in the classroom," Castellone said.
By early afternoon, calm had returned. But classes were canceled for the rest of the day.
A toy Nerf gun was found inside a backpack that belonged to a student, police said, though they said they didn't know if it had any connection to the incident.
Police were considering a possible connection to an on-campus game run by a sanctioned student group called "Humans Vs. Zombies." Its website describes it as a game of tag that involves foam dart blasters but notes that "realistic looking weaponry" is prohibited.
Group president Ryan Cabral told The Associated Press he talked to players who were in the building at the time and he also reached out to campus police to answer any questions they had.
He insisted the game, which he said is played at hundreds of college campuses, had no connection to Thursday's scare. He said it was scheduled to end Friday, but was postponed until later in the semester.
People in the classroom at the time, a physiology class taught by lecturer Barbara Van Sciver, had differing accounts of what happened.
Student Tori Danielson said she was sitting in the back of the auditorium with several hundred students when a commotion started toward the front of the class.
"All of a sudden, we heard someone yell, 'You're a nice guy! You're a nice guy!' and sounding scared," she said, adding that people started to move away from the area where the person was shouting. "Everybody started running and screaming out of the room, and our professor told us all to run. And everybody just ran out."
"I didn't hear anybody say that there was a weapon, and I didn't see if there was. I was too far away," she added.
Another student, junior Kayla Gilmore, said she was also at the back sitting near one of the doors into the upper part of the auditorium.
"I heard a guy banging, and he said 'Let me in. Let me in. I have a gun," she said. "It must have been locked because he couldn't get in."
She said people froze when the banging began, then ducked under their chairs before the teacher told them to run. They left through doors in the lower part of the auditorium, she said.
Van Sciver did not immediately return phone or email messages seeking comment.
Law enforcement officers and police dogs entered Chafee Hall and searched it room by room. At least three people received minor injuries in the rush to exit the building,?URI?Police Chief Stephen Baker said.
Gov. Lincoln Chafee said in a statement the state will review how the situation was handled.?URI?President David Dooley said the university, which has 13,000 undergraduates, also would review whether students took the lockdown seriously; many were walking around campus while the situation was going on despite being ordered to stay inside.
Michael Wharton and Robert Ferrante were on their way to an animal science class at Chafee Hall when they saw people streaming out of the building. Wharton, an 18-year-old freshman, said he heard someone yell, "Go, go! He's got a gun."
The two roommates then ran back to their dorm room.
"It was chaos," Ferrante, a 19-year-old freshman, said.
Paige Comstock, a 19-year-old sophomore, was on the second floor of the building in a journalism class at the time. She said some of her classmates said they heard screams, then an alarm went off and a voice came over the loudspeaker warning of an emergency in the building.
"We didn't know if it was a drill," she said, but then the department head told them to leave immediately.
As she was going out, Comstock said she saw more than a dozen police officers rushing into the building.
Classes were set to resume Friday.
___
Associated Press writer Michelle R. Smith contributed to this report from Providence.
UT Arlington motor skills research nets good news for middle-agedPublic release date: 5-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Traci Peterson tpeterso@uta.edu 817-521-5494 University of Texas at Arlington
People in their 20s don't have much on their middle-aged counterparts when it comes to some fine motor movements, researchers from UT Arlington have found.
In a simple finger-tapping exercise, study participants' speed declined only slightly with age until a marked drop in ability with participants in their mid-60s.
Priscila Caola, an assistant professor of kinesiology at The University of Texas at Arlington, hopes the new work will help clinicians identify abnormal loss of function in their patients. Though motor ability in older adults has been studied widely, not a lot of research has focused on when deficits begin, she said.
The journal Brain and Cognition will include the study in its June 2013 issue. It is already available online.
"We have this so-called age decline, everybody knows that. I wanted to see if that was a gradual process," Caola said. "It's good news really because I didn't see differences between the young and middle-aged people."
Caola's co-authors on the paper are Jerroed Roberson, a senior kinesiology major at UT Arlington, and Carl Gabbard, a professor in the Texas A&M University Department of Health and Kinesiology.
The researchers based their work on the idea that before movements are made, the brain makes a mental plan. They used an evaluation process called chronometry that compares the time of test participants' imagined movements to actual movements. Study participants 99 people ranging in age from 18 to 93 were asked to imagine and perform a series of increasingly difficult, ordered finger movements. They were divided into three age groups 18-32, 40-63 and 65-93 and the results were analyzed.
"What we found is that there is a significant drop-off after the age of 64," Roberson said. "So if you see a drop-off in ability before that, then it could be a signal that there might be something wrong with that person and they might need further evaluation."
The researchers also noted that the speed of imagined movements and executed actions tended to be closely associated within each group. That also could be useful knowledge for clinicians, the study said.
"The important message here is that clinicians should be aware that healthy older adults are slower than younger adults, but are able to create relatively accurate internal models for action," the study said.
###
Caola is a member of UT Arlington Center for Health Living and Longevity. She has published previous research on the links between movement representation and motor ability in children.
The University of Texas at Arlington is a comprehensive research institution with more than 33,800 student and 2,200 faculty members in the heart of North Texas. For more information, please visit http://www.uta.edu.
[ | 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.
UT Arlington motor skills research nets good news for middle-agedPublic release date: 5-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Traci Peterson tpeterso@uta.edu 817-521-5494 University of Texas at Arlington
People in their 20s don't have much on their middle-aged counterparts when it comes to some fine motor movements, researchers from UT Arlington have found.
In a simple finger-tapping exercise, study participants' speed declined only slightly with age until a marked drop in ability with participants in their mid-60s.
Priscila Caola, an assistant professor of kinesiology at The University of Texas at Arlington, hopes the new work will help clinicians identify abnormal loss of function in their patients. Though motor ability in older adults has been studied widely, not a lot of research has focused on when deficits begin, she said.
The journal Brain and Cognition will include the study in its June 2013 issue. It is already available online.
"We have this so-called age decline, everybody knows that. I wanted to see if that was a gradual process," Caola said. "It's good news really because I didn't see differences between the young and middle-aged people."
Caola's co-authors on the paper are Jerroed Roberson, a senior kinesiology major at UT Arlington, and Carl Gabbard, a professor in the Texas A&M University Department of Health and Kinesiology.
The researchers based their work on the idea that before movements are made, the brain makes a mental plan. They used an evaluation process called chronometry that compares the time of test participants' imagined movements to actual movements. Study participants 99 people ranging in age from 18 to 93 were asked to imagine and perform a series of increasingly difficult, ordered finger movements. They were divided into three age groups 18-32, 40-63 and 65-93 and the results were analyzed.
"What we found is that there is a significant drop-off after the age of 64," Roberson said. "So if you see a drop-off in ability before that, then it could be a signal that there might be something wrong with that person and they might need further evaluation."
The researchers also noted that the speed of imagined movements and executed actions tended to be closely associated within each group. That also could be useful knowledge for clinicians, the study said.
"The important message here is that clinicians should be aware that healthy older adults are slower than younger adults, but are able to create relatively accurate internal models for action," the study said.
###
Caola is a member of UT Arlington Center for Health Living and Longevity. She has published previous research on the links between movement representation and motor ability in children.
The University of Texas at Arlington is a comprehensive research institution with more than 33,800 student and 2,200 faculty members in the heart of North Texas. For more information, please visit http://www.uta.edu.
[ | 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.
![[ Back to EurekAlert! ]](http://www.eurekalert.org/images/back2e.gif){kind=small}
Public release date: 8-Apr-2013
Share ] 
