XIAM007 - Making Unique Observations in a Very Cluttered World: 08/01/11

Monday, 1 August 2011

Tepco Says Highest Radiation Yet Is Detected at Fukushima Dai-Ichi - registered more than 10 sieverts an hour -

Tokyo Electric Power Co., operator of Japan’s crippled Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant, said it detected the highest radiation to date at the site.
Geiger counters, used to detect radioactivity, registered more than 10 sieverts an hour, the highest reading the devices are able to record, Junichi Matsumoto, a general manager at the utility, said today. The measurements were taken at the base of the main ventilation stack for reactors No. 1 and No. 2.
The Fukushima plant, about 220 kilometers (137 miles) north of Tokyo, had three reactor meltdowns after the March 11 magnitude-9 earthquake and tsunami knocked out power and backup generators. Radiation leaks displaced 160,000 people and contaminated marine life and agricultural products.
The utility, known as Tepco, tried to vent steam and gas the day after the earthquake as pressure in reactor No. 1 exceeded designed limits. A buildup of hydrogen gas subsequently caused an explosion that blew out part of the reactor building.

Read more -
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-01/tepco-says-highest-radiation-yet-is-detected-at-fukushima-dai-ichi.html

NASA Invites 150 Lucky Twitter Followers To Launch Of Jupiter-Bound Spacecraft -

NASA has invited 150 followers of the agency's Twitter account to a two-day launch Tweetup Aug. 4-5. The event is expected to culminate in the lift off of the Jupiter-bound Juno spacecraft aboard an Atlas V rocket from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

The launch window opens at 11:34 a.m. EDT on Friday, Aug. 5. The spacecraft is expected to arrive at Jupiter in 2016 to investigate the gas giant's interior, atmosphere and aurora. Juno's color camera will provide close-up images of Jupiter, including the first detailed glimpse of the planet's poles.

Attendees represent 28 states, the District of Columbia and five other countries: Canada, Finland, Norway, Spain and the United Kingdom. NASA randomly selected the participants from more than 1,200 online applicants.

Tweetup participants are coming from Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and Washington. They will share their Tweetup experiences with their followers through the social networking site Twitter.

Beginning at 10:30 a.m. on Thursday, Aug. 4, NASA will broadcast a portion of the Tweetup when participants get to talk with Waleed Abdalati, chief scientist at NASA Headquarters; Jim Adams, deputy director, Planetary Science, NASA Headquarters; Scott Bolton, Juno's principal investigator; Steve Levin, Juno project scientist; Juno Science Team members Toby Owen, Fran Bagenal, and Dave Stevenson; Steve Matousek, Juno proposal manager; Jan Chodas, Juno project manager; and Chris Brosious, chief systems engineer for Juno at Lockheed Martin. To watch the broadcast, visit:

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/nasatelevision

Participants also will tour NASA's Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral, including a close-up visit to the launch pad.

Reporters credentialed to cover the launch also may cover the NASA Tweetup at Kennedy's press site. Reporters interested in interviewing Tweetup attendees in advance should contact Stephanie Schierholz at 202-358-1100 orstephanie.schierholz@nasa.gov.

This is the first time NASA has invited Twitter followers to experience the launch of a planetary spacecraft. Previously, NASA invited groups to attend five space shuttle launches: Atlantis' STS-129, STS-132 and STS-135 missions, Discovery's STS-133 mission, and Endeavour's STS-134 mission.

To follow the Tweetup participants on Twitter as they experience the prelaunch events and Juno's liftoff, follow the #NASATweetup hashtag and the list of attendees at:

http://twitter.com/nasatweetup/juno-launch

You can follow the Juno mission on Twitter at:

http://www.twitter.com/NASAJuno

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., manages the mission. For more information about Juno, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/juno

Vice President Joe Biden likened Tea Party Republicans to “terrorists.” -

Sources inside a closed-door meeting of Senate Democrats today said Vice President Joe Biden participated in a bit of name-calling. But not just any name-calling. No, those sources tell Politicothat Biden likened Tea Party Republicans to “terrorists.”

“We have negotiated with terrorists,” angry Rep. Mike Doyle, a Democrat from PA, said, according to sources who were in the room. “This small group of terrorists have made it impossible to spend any money.”

Biden agreed:

Biden, driven by his Democratic allies’ misgivings about the debt-limit deal, responded: “They have acted like terrorists,” according to several sources in the room.

Biden’s office refused to comment to Politico about what was said, citing that the meeting took place in a closed-door session.

The rhetoric wouldn’t be odd for the fiery former Senator from Delaware. As Politico notes, earlier in the day he told Senate Democrats that Republican leaders have “guns to their heads” in trying to negotiate deals.

Principal of a Brooklyn high school had five students moving furniture for her instead of doing schoolwork -

The principal of a Brooklyn high school for new immigrants had five students do hard labor moving furniture for her instead of doing schoolwork -- a daylong field trip from hell that included kids being tossed around in the back of a U-Haul truck, The Post has learned.

It's at least the second time that Altagracia Liciaga, principal of Multicultural HS in Cypress Hills, has been investigated for allegedly outrageous behavior toward her students.

Liciaga had sent the students on the dangerous excursion to a Midtown warehouse to pick up school furniture, with three of the teens sitting in the box truck's dark cargo hold for both legs of the round trip, which each lasted 1½ hours.

While two students sat up front in the cab of the truck with a student aide driving, the other three were forced to ride in back -- including one teen who tied himself down with a scarf to keep from bouncing around like a pinball.

"I thought the trip was very dangerous," said one of the teens, who like most kids at Multicultural HS is a recently arrived Spanish speaker. "In the back, there [were no seat belts] for us. If I had known that ahead of time, I wouldn't have gone."

No permission slips were filled out by parents for the unscheduled trip, teachers said.

The student, who did not want to be identified for fear of retribution, said he stepped up when Liciaga was seeking volunteers because he likes to help out and because he assumed the errand wouldn't take long.

Instead, he and the four other students left the school before 10 a.m. on Dec. 14, hauled more than a dozen heavy cabinets into the truck and returned to the school after 3 p.m.

After they had unloaded all the cargo on the third floor of the school, Liciaga thanked them by giving them tacos.

A city Department of Education spokeswoman told The Post that Liciaga had been reprimanded.

Sea Turtle GPS Shows Ocean-Spanning Leatherback Buffet -

The fact that leatherback turtles swim thousands of miles is driven home beautifully in this new map of their sophisticated, ocean-spanning movements.

Between 2000 and 2007, biologists attached GPS transmitters to 126 leatherbacks nesting in Indonesia, the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea. These individuals represent one of three remaining subpopulations of the endangered turtle, which can reach lengths of 6 feet and weigh more than 2,000 pounds.

The map resulting resulting from the transmissions, published in the July Ecosphere, shows creatures that don’t just drift in instinctive obedience to migratory impulse. The leatherbacks navigated in time with season and temperature and current, visiting eddies and boundaries and blooms. They demonstrated the sophistication and pickiness of a savvy grocery-store shopper, except their store covers a tenth of Earth’s surface.

For scientists, the findings will inform conservation programs and emphasize the need for international-level cooperation. For everyone else, they reinforce just how amazing these creatures are.

US a ‘parasite’ on world economy, says Putin - by accumulating massive debts that threaten the global financial system -

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Monday accused the United States of acting as a “parasite” on the world economy by accumulating massive debts that threaten the global financial system.

“The country is living in debt. It is not living within its means, shifting the weight of responsibility on other countries and in a way acting as a parasite,” Putin told a group of pro-Kremlin youth in central Russia.

He also suggested that Washington may have been flirting with the idea of a default in order to weaken the dollar “and create better conditions for exporting their goods.

“But they had enough common sense and responsibility” to avoid a default, Russia’s former president added.

US President Barack Obama on Sunday announced an 11th hour debt deal that will allow the country to avoid its first default in history while pushing ahead with a painful austerity plan designed to slash Washington’s swelling debt.

The deal was met initially with relief on global financial markets and saw Moscow’s two stock exchanges open the day up about two percent but investors then began to have doubts about the plan and gains were reversed sharply.

Putin has repeatedly criticised the United States’ recent foreign exchange policy and its propensity to cover budget deficits with treasury bills and bonds held by sovereign clients such as China and Russia.

The value of that paper will shrink if US debt is downgraded by a major Western ratings agency and Putin was insistent Monday that the world should be seeking new reserve currencies for trade and savings.

“If the US encounters a systemic malfunction, this affects everyone,” Putin told the Seliger camp gathering. “There should be other reserve currencies.”

Putin added that the debt agreement announced by Obama “was not that great overall because it simply delayed the adoption of a more systemic solution.”

THE TRUTH ABOUT THE DEBT DEAL: It's Pretty Much Meaningless - pushes the most difficult decisions off into the future -

THE TRUTH ABOUT THE DEBT DEAL: It's Pretty Much Meaningless - pushes the most difficult decisions off into the future -
magician

The "historic, bipartisan compromise" reached to raise the debt limit does not end the struggle to reign in the federal deficit — in fact, it pushes the most difficult decisions off into the future.

More surprising, the debt deal actually cuts almost nothing now--it just promises future cuts that may or may not materialize.

There are very few specific cuts in the deal — and the $1 trillion in immediate cuts are almost entirely constituted of caps on future spending. And those caps are not required to be honored by future congresses.

The "real" spending cuts to current programs will come out of a bipartisan committee of Representatives and Senators, which is charged with finding an additional $1.5 trillion in savings from the federal deficit.

But White House and Republican leaders appear split on exactly what the so-called "Super Committee" can do.

In a presentation to his caucus, Speaker of the House John Boehner said it would "be effectively...impossible for [the] Joint Committee to increase taxes," even though it could consider reforming the tax code.

White House officials strongly pushed back on that remark, saying revenue-increasing reform is possible — even though it almost certainly would not be able to get through Congress.

The committee is modeled on "BRAC" or the Base Realignment and Closure Commission, whose recommendations are presented to Congress for a straight up-or-down vote with no amendments allowed. Instead of non-partisan commissioners, each congressional leader will appoint three members of Congress to the committee.

If the Super-Committee can't reach an agreement, or their recommendations cannot pass Congress, deep "real" spending cuts, which are painful to both sides, would take effect. For Democrats, entitlement cuts are at risk, while Republicans would see cuts to defense spending.

Additionally, President Barack Obama has the ability to veto an extension of the Bush tax cuts if he deems the committee's solution insufficiently "balanced."

So, again, other than cuts to federally subsidized student loans to graduate and professional school students, the debt deal actually cuts NOTHING now, and only promises future reductions that may never materialize.

In short, for the past month, Congress has been arguing about little more than an agreement to reach an agreement at some point in the future. Your tax dollars at work.

Bank posts $11.5 billion profit, announces 30,000 job cuts... -

HSBC will shed 30,000 jobs as it retreats from countries where it is struggling to compete, Europe's biggest bank said on Monday after it reported a surprise rise in first-half profit.

Shares in HSBC rose over 4 percent after it unveiled first-half pretax profits of $11.5 billion, up from $11.1 billion a year ago and better than the $10.8 billion average in a Reuters poll of analysts.

The bank also said it had cut 5,000 jobs following restructuring of operations in Latin America, the United States, Britain, France and the Middle East and that it would cut another 25,000 between now and 2013.

"There will be further job cuts," Chief Executive Stuart Gulliver told reporters on a conference call. "There will be something like 25,000 roles eliminated between now and the end of 2013."

The cuts equate to roughly 10 percent of HSBC's total workforce. They come on top of planned reductions in overall headcount in a program of disposals that also forms part of a plan to focus on HSBC's Asian operations.

The bank is reversing a strategy that had been criticized for "planting flags" around the world.

Gulliver's far-reaching plan unveiled three months ago aims to slash costs and he intends to sell, shut or slim down retail banking in 39 countries.

HSBC said on Sunday it would sell 195 U.S. branches to First Niagara Financial for about $1 billion in cash, and close another 13 of the 470 sites it had.

The bank also intends to sell HSBC's U.S. credit card portfolio, which has more than $30 billion in assets, a move which would free up capital. Capital One Financial Corp and Wells Fargo are among the bidders, sources have said.

Another suitor could be Barclays.

HSBC is the first of Britain's big banks to report for the quarter. Rivals are also cutting jobs and shaking up their business model as the euro zone debt crisis has hit fixed income trading revenues hard and tougher regulations are hurting returns for investors.

The bank on Monday highlighted risks to global economic recovery from increased regulation, particularly as governments grapple with sovereign debt crises and try to plug holes in their budgets.

CBO Scores "Bipartisan" Plan At Half Of S&P Required Savings; Only 2% Of Total Cuts To Take Place Before Obama Reelection -

It was only a week ago that S&P said anything under $4 trillion in deficit cuts would be an automatic downgrade for the US. So according to the CBO's just released score of the bipartisan budget, the S&P will have to cut its rating of the US in half, since the total budget cuts will be just over 50% of what S&P demanded previously. And here's the funny part: of the $917 billion in known cuts (the other $1.2 billion is factored but not even the CBO has any clue what it will look like), a whopping 2% in cuts will take places before the Obama election. 2%! This whole charade is there only to make sure the president is reelected. Oh, and of course to make sure S&P does not downgrade the US. Which is where we get back to the fun. THE FUN. Because as it turns out, that whole $4 trillion thing.... S&P was only kidding. "It appears that the perception Standard & Poor's seemed to harbour, that the U.S. needed to find a $4trn sized package in order to keep its triple A rating, is unfounded. Two credit research reports published today point to the testimony given by S&P president Deven Sharma to the Congressional House Financial Services subcommittee on Wednesday, where he seems to believe his firm has been misquoted in media reports." There you go: to S&P $2.1 trillion (of which $1.2 trillion may never even materialize) will end up being just as good, if not better than $4 trillion. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how a rating agency regains credibility and stuff.

The only chart from the CBO that matters:

Indian man has hysterectomy after doctors find uterus -

The Indian man, identified as Ryalu, was admitted to a hospital near Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, after complaining of severe stomach pains.

Doctors suspected a normal hernia, but when they carried out an exploratory operation they were shocked to discover it had been caused by a female uterus, ovaries, Fallopian tubes, a cervix and underdeveloped vaginal tissue.

Dr Pramod Kumar Shrivastava, a surgeon at the Chhindwara district hospital said the patient had external male organs, was fit from working in the fields, and lived a normal life.

"Usually the contents of the Hernia Sac are abdomen organs like large intestines and small intestines but when we operated on the patient we were surprised to find female reproductive organs. We have removed the organs through a hysterectomy and repaired the hernia.

"The sac contained quite developed uterus, both the ovaries, Fallopian tubes, cervix and a tissue which is undeveloped but apparently looks like vaginal tissue," he explained.

Men build small flying spy drone that cracks Wi-Fi and cell data -

Men build small flying spy drone that cracks Wi-Fi and cell data -

WASP_drone-wi-fi

The safety of Wi-Fi networks may be in danger from small threats flying above us. An airplane hobby shop owner and an ex-Air Force official team up to create a drone that cracks into Wi-Fi and cell phones.

Built by Mike Tassey and Richard Perkins, the Wireless Aerial Surveillance Platform (otherwise known as the WASP) is a flying drone that has a 6-foot wingspan, a 6-foot length and weighs in at 14 pounds. The small form factor of the unmanned aerial vehicle allows it to drop under radar and is often mistaken for a large bird. It was built from an Army target drone and converted to run on electric batteries rather than gasoline. It can also be loaded with GPS information and fly a predetermined course without need for an operator. Taking off and landing have to be done manually with the help of a mounted HD camera, though. However, the most interesting aspect of the drone is that it can crack Wi-Fi networks and GSM networks as well as collect the data from them.

It can accomplish this feat with a Linux computer on-board that’s no bigger than a deck of cards. The computer accesses 32GB of storage to house all that stolen data. It uses a variety of networking hacking tools including the BackTrack toolset, as well as a 340-million-word dictionary to guess passwords. In order to access cell phone data, the WASP impersonates AT&T and T-Mobile cell phone towers and fools phones into connecting to one of the eleven antennas on-board. The drone can then record conversations to the storage card, and avoids dropping the call due to the 4G T-mobile card routing communications through VoIP.

Amazingly, this was accomplished without breaking a single FCC regulation. The drone relies on the frequency band used for Ham radios to operate. Not wanting to get into legal trouble with AT&T and T-Mobile, they tested the technology in isolated areas to avoid recording phone conversations other than their own. The duo will discuss how to build the WASP at the DEFCON 19 hacking conference starting Thursday in Las Vegas.

NJ Transit Bus Idles for 5 Hours With Dead Driver -

Officials are trying to determine why a NJ Transit bus with a dead driver inside idled for nearly five hours at the Port Authority terminal in New York.

Thomas Truex was found slumped in a passenger seat hours after he dropped off his last passengers Thursday morning.

The bus was parked near a curb where drivers routinely stop for a bathroom or coffee break.

Port Authority Spokesman Steve Coleman told The Record newspaper officials probably need to take a look at coordination to make sure anything out of the ordinary is checked out.

Officials began looking for Truex, who drove a bus for 26 years, after he failed to return to the Meadowlands garage at 3 p.m.

His death is not considered suspicious.