BAGHDAD ? Iraq's parliament reconvened Tuesday after Sunni-backed lawmakers ended their boycott to protest alleged persecution of Sunni officials, a development that could restore some stability in the war-ravaged country.
Last month the Sunni-backed Iraqiya bloc banned lawmakers and government ministers from parliament and Cabinet sessions after the Shiite-led government issued an arrest warrant against the Sunni Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi on terrorism charges.
The boycott brought government work to a standstill and plunged the country into a political crisis just days after the U.S. completed its military withdrawal in mid-December. The sectarian political fight has been accompanied by a surge in violence, killing more than 200 people this month and raising fears of a civil war.
Iraqiya leaders lifted the parliament ban on Sunday, and most of the bloc's 76 lawmakers attended Tuesday's session. It was devoted to discussing the nation's nearly $100 billion budget, according to Nahida al-Dayini, an Iraqiya lawmaker.
"We hope that this will be a good start to solve the problems in Iraq," said Iraqiya lawmaker Zuhair al-Araji before the parliament session began.
The alliance's nine ministers in the government led by Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki did not attend the weekly Cabinet meeting Tuesday.
Iraqiya leaders accuse al-Maliki of trying to marginalize the Sunni minority and cement his grip on power.
Al-Maliki's security forces have launched a widespread crackdown against Sunnis, detaining hundreds for alleged ties to the deposed Baath Party of Saddam Hussein.
Al-Hashemi, the Sunni vice president, denied the charges of running death squads and fled to the autonomous Kurdish region in Iraq, out of reach of authorities in Baghdad. He is refusing to return for trial in Baghdad.
The twin crises have raised fears of a reprise of a conflict five years ago, when heavily armed Shiite and Sunni militias battled each other and brought the nation to the brink of civil war.
On Monday evening, three Iraqi soldiers were killed when a parked car bomb exploded near a military patrol in Baqouba, a former al-Qaida stronghold, 35 miles (60 kilometers) northeast of Baghdad. Three people, including a soldier, were wounded in the bombing, said Maj. Ghalib al-Karkhi, a police spokesman in Diyala province.
___
Associated Press writer Barbara Surk contributed to this report.
MIAMI ? Newt Gingrich slammed GOP presidential rival Mitt Romney for "carpet-bombing" his record ahead of Tuesday's presidential primary in Florida, trying to cut into the resurgent front-runner's lead in the final 48 hours before the vote.
On the defensive after barrage of attacks from Romney and a political committee that supports him, Gingrich said Romney had lied and the GOP establishment had allowed it.
"I don't know how you debate a person with civility if they're prepared to say things that are just plain factually false," Gingrich said during appearances on Sunday talk shows. "I think the Republican establishment believes it's OK to say and do virtually anything to stop a genuine insurgency from winning because they are very afraid of losing control of the old order."
Despite Romney's effort to turn positive, the Florida contest has become decidedly bitter and personal. Romney and Gingrich have tangled over policy and character since Gingrich's stunning victory over the well-funded Romney in the South Carolina primary Jan. 21.
Showing no signs of letting up, Gingrich objected to a Romney campaign ad that includes a 1997 NBC News report on the House's decision to discipline the then-House speaker for ethics charges.
"It's only when he can mass money to focus on carpet-bombing with negative ads that he gains any traction at all," Gingrich said.
Gingrich acknowledged the possibility that he could lose in Florida and pledged to compete with Romney all the way to the party's national convention this summer.
An NBC/Marist poll showed Romney with support from 42 percent of likely Florida primary voters and Gingrich slipping to 27 percent.
While Romney had spent the past several days sharply attacking Gingrich, he pivoted over the weekend to refocus his criticism on President Barack Obama, calling the Democratic incumbent "detached from reality." The former Massachusetts governor criticized Obama's plan to cut the size of the military and said the administration had a weak foreign policy.
Gingrich's South Carolina momentum has largely evaporated amid the pounding he has sustained from Romney's campaign and the pro-Romney group called Restore Our Future. They have spent some $6.8 million in ads criticizing Gingrich in the Florida campaign's final week.
Gingrich planned to campaign Sunday in central Florida, while Romney scheduled rallies in the south. He was also looking ahead to the Nevada caucuses Feb. 4, airing ads in that state and citing the endorsement Sunday of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Nevada's largest newspaper.
Gingrich collected the weekend endorsement of Herman Cain, a tea party favorite and former presidential hopeful whose White House effort foundered amid sexual harassment allegations.
Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, trailing in Florida by a wide margin, planned to remain in Pennsylvania where his 3-year-old daughter, Bella, was hospitalized, and resume campaigning as soon as possible, according to his campaign. She has a genetic condition caused by the presence of all or part of an extra 18th chromosome.
Texas Rep. Ron Paul has invested little in the Florida race and is looking ahead to Nevada. The libertarian-leaning Paul is focusing more on gathering delegates in caucus states, where it's less expensive to campaign. But securing the nomination only through caucus states is a hard task.
Gingrich appeared on "Fox News Sunday" and ABC's "This Week." Paul was on CNN's "State of the Union."
___
Associated Press writer Philip Elliott in Tampa contributed to this report.
HAVANA (Reuters) ? President Raul Castro defended Cuba's one-party political system as a bulwark against U.S. imperialism and said it would remain as it is in a speech on Sunday to a Communist Party conference.
He also said previously announced plans to put term limits on the country's leaders were not fully official, but could gradually go ahead.
This weekend's conference, which is the first in the party's history, came amid wide-ranging reforms that have given Cubans the right to open small businesses and to buy and sell cars, but have included no promises of significant political change.
Castro held to that line in his speech when he railed against the United States, Cuba's longtime ideological foe, and its political system and said the Caribbean island 90 miles from Florida intended to remain a one-party state.
The Communist Party is the only legal political party in Cuba and, under a national constitution in effect since 1976, the supreme guiding force of the society and the state.
"In Cuba, based on its experience in the long history of the fight for independence and national sovereignty, we defend the one-party system instead of the demagoguery and commercialization of politics," Castro said.
He said permitting additional parties would open the door to U.S. interference. It "would be the equivalent of legalizing a party of imperialism on our soil," Castro said.
While the party will remain unchallenged, Castor said the country's leaders will be limited to two consecutive five-year terms, an idea he first mentioned at a party congress in April.
Castro said the party was still working out the legal measures for term limits, which will require a change to the constitution, but that implementation could begin "gradually, even before the constitution is changed."
He did not explain how that would be done or when it might start.
Term limits would be a break from the past in the Cuba, where Fidel Castro ruled for 49 years after the 1959 revolution and was succeeded by Raul Castro, his younger brother.
They also could help bring new blood into the government, whose current leaders are elderly and have no obvious replacements.
Raul Castro is 80, his vice president Jose Ramon Machado Ventura is 81 and Fidel Castro, now mostly retired but still present behind the scenes, is 85.
There was talk before the conference that the party might impose age limits on leaders and promote new, younger people into the party hierarchy, but there had been no mention of either.
Bert Hoffmann, a Cuba specialist at German Institute of Global Area Studies in Hamburg, said the message of the conference appeared to be "to downplay any expectations that economic reforms might entail political change."
(Additional reporting by Rosa Tania Valdes and Marc Frank)
LOS ANGELES ? When your dinner party guests include Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Kate Winslet and Glenn Close, and the whole affair is televised live, it can take months to plan the menu. That's why the team behind the Screen Actors Guild Awards began putting together the plate for Sunday's ceremony months ago.
It was still summer when show producer Kathy Connell and executive producer and director Jeff Margolis first sat down with chef Suzanne Goin of Los Angeles eatery Lucques with a tall order: Create a meal that is delicious at room temperature, looks beautiful on TV, is easy to eat and appeals to Hollywood tastes. Oh, and no poppy seeds, soups, spicy dishes, or piles of onions or garlic.
"It can't drip, stick in their teeth or be too heavy," Connell said. "We have to appease all palates."
The chef put together a plate of possibilities: slow-roasted salmon with yellow beets, lamb with couscous and spiced cauliflower and roasted root vegetables with quinoa. There was also a chopped chicken salad and another chicken dish with black beans.
To ensure the dishes are both tasty and TV-ready, Connell and Margolis, along with the SAG Awards Committee and the show's florist and art director, dined together at this summertime lunch on tables set to replicate those that will be in the Shrine Exposition Center during the ceremony. The pewter, crushed-silk tablecloths and white lilies you'll see on TV Sunday were also chosen months ago.
The diners discussed the look of the plate, the size of the portions and the vegetarian possibilities.
"We'd like the portions a little larger," Connell told the chef.
"And a little more sauce on the salmon," Margolis added.
Come Sunday, it's up to Goin to prepare 1,200 of the long-planned meals for the A-list audience.
ScienceDaily (Jan. 27, 2012) ? Influenza virus can rapidly evolve from one form to another, complicating the effectiveness of vaccines and anti-viral drugs used to treat it. By first understanding the complex host cell pathways that the flu uses for replication, University of Georgia researchers are finding new strategies for therapies and vaccines, according to a study published in the January issue of the Journal of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology.
The researchers studied RNA interference to determine the host genes influenza uses for virus replication.
All viruses act as parasites by latching onto healthy cells and hijacking the cells' components, essentially turning the cell into a factory that produces copies of the virus. This process begins when influenza binds to sugars found on the surface of host cells in the lung and respiratory tract. Once attached, the virus downloads its genetic information into the nucleus of the cell, and virus replication begins.
"Viruses contain very minimal genetic information and have evolved to parasitize host cell machinery to package and replicate virus cells. Because virus replication is dependent on host cell components, determining the genes needed for this process allows for the development of novel disease intervention strategies that include anti-virals and vaccines," said study co-author Ralph Tripp, a Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar and Chair of Animal Health Vaccine Development in the UGA College of Veterinary Medicine.
"We have the technology today that allows us to target specific genes in human cells and silence those genes to inhibit the production of virus in the cells," he said.
RNA interference, which was first discovered as the mechanism that effects color change in petunia breeding, is now being applied to medical advancements. Using RNAi silencing technologies, Tripp's lab was able to identify key host cell pathways needed by influenza virus for replication.
"We have a very limited toolbox for treating influenza," Tripp said. "There are two medications currently used to treat flu infections, but virus resistance has developed to these drugs. Our studies have identified several novel host genes and associated cell pathways that can be targeted with existing drugs to silence virus replication."
Understanding which genes can be silenced to inhibit growth of viruses opens the medicine cabinet for the repurposing of existing drugs.
Existing anti-viral drugs slow influenza virus replication by preventing the virus from releasing itself from its host cell. These treatments target the virus, which is able to rapidly mutate to avoid drug sensitivity. In contrast, drugs that target host genes work more effectively because host genes rarely change or mutate.
"If we target a host gene, the virus can't adapt," Tripp said. The influenza virus "may look for other host genes in the same pathway to use, which may be many, but we have identified the majority of preferred genes and can target these genes for silencing."
The influenza A virus has eight single RNA strands that code for 11 proteins. Recent studies suggest it may need several dozen host genes to reproduce. Turning off the apex, or signaling, gene can cause the reproduction sequence to stall.
"Through this research we can repurpose previously approved drugs and apply those to influenza treatments, drastically reducing the time from the laboratory to human medicine," said Victoria Meliopoulos, a UGA graduate student and co-author of the study. "We can manipulate the cellular microenvironment to increase the viral yield during vaccine manufacturing."
Meliopoulos said these discoveries can be used to create new anti-viral drugs and develop better vaccines that can be used to treat patients with influenza. This technology also can be used to improve medications for other viruses like hepatitis and polio.
The technology allows the researchers "to establish a comprehensive roadmap of human genes modulated during influenza virus infection to better understand these disease mechanisms and to identify novel targets for anti-influenza therapy," said Lauren Andersen, a UGA graduate student and co-author of the study.
Influenza is the world's leading cause of morbidity and mortality; seasonal viruses affect up to 15 percent of the human population and cause severe illness in 5 million people a year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In the U.S., financial losses caused by seasonal influenza are estimated to exceed $87 billion annually.
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V. A. Meliopoulos, L. E. Andersen, K. F. Birrer, K. J. Simpson, J. W. Lowenthal, A. G. D. Bean, J. Stambas, C. R. Stewart, S. M. Tompkins, V. W. van Beusechem, I. Fraser, M. Mhlanga, S. Barichievy, Q. Smith, D. Leake, J. Karpilow, A. Buck, G. Jona, R. A. Tripp. Host gene targets for novel influenza therapies elucidated by high-throughput RNA interference screens. The FASEB Journal, 2012; DOI: 10.1096/fj.11-193466
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"Here Comes the Sun" is my favorite song George Harrison wrote for the Beatles, probably because it reminds me vividly of the day he died. This new guitar solo is finally bringing the song back to life for me. More »
Obama's singing of 'Let's Stay Together' at Apollo Theater last week upped sales of iconic 1972 hit. By Gil Kaufman
Al Green performs at President Obama's Victory Fund 2012 Concert Photo: WireImage
Sure, clean energy, the return of manufacturing, a boost in education spending and saving the domestic car industry are awesome ways to revive the American economy. But another tactic President Obama might consider is more singing.
Because a week after the falsetto singer-in-chief unleashed his version of Al Green's "Let's Stay Together" at an Apollo Theater fundraiser, sales of the good Rev.'s most iconic hit have taken off.
According to Billboard magazine, the viral video of the president singing the first line of the #1 hit from 1972 boosted sales of the song by 490 percent. In fact, the tune had its best week since SoundScan began tracking digital sales in 2003, with 16,000 downloads. The YouTube video of the impromptu recital has been viewed more than 4 million times.
It was likely the second surprise this week for Green, who was present at the Apollo event where Obama acknowledged the soul singer's presence in the room from the stage.
"Those guys didn't think I would do it," Obama laughed while pointing to his staffers at the side of the stage. "I told you I was going to do it. The Sandman did not come out."
Fans also rushed out this week to snatch up music by Etta James, the soul legend who passed on January 20. According to The Hollywood Reporter, James' sales were up 378 percent over the past week. One compilation, The Best of Etta James -- 20th Century Masters: The Millennium Collection, shot up from #162 to #46 on sales of 8,000, giving James her highest chart position ever. For the week ending January 22, James' overall catalog sold 30,000 copies, a significant jump from the previous week, when her collected album sold just over 6,000.
Today, the UK's Royal Society announced its intention to stimulate a "world-class, high-performing education system for science and mathematics". If that's really what it wants, its members will have to give up a 60-year pursuit of a squeaky-clean image for science and scientists.
One of the biggest problems is that, although the subject fascinates elementary-school children, most lose that fascination between the ages of 10 and 14.
This is when adolescents are forming their sense of self. As young people seek to turn themselves into adults, they experiment with risk-taking, rebellion, deception, corner-cutting, questioning morality, coping with failure and suppressing self-doubt. This has strong repercussions for their response to science lessons.
Behind the scenes
Studies have repeatedly shown that teenagers lack interest in school science. Louise Archer, who researches the sociology of education at King's College London, puts it like this: there is "a mismatch between popular representations of science? and the aspirations, ideals and developing identities of young adolescents".
The key phrase here is "popular representations". The science of popular account is essentially a carefully crafted and unrepresentative distortion; as Nobel laureate Peter Medawar put it, "the postures we choose to be seen in when the curtain goes up".
Behind the curtain, scientists are surprisingly colourful. The world-changing ones are, by definition, anti-authoritarian, risk-taking rebels. The history of science is littered with instances of fighting, disregard of authority, dogged determination in the face of scorn and even that staple of teenage rebellion, wilful intoxication. Such behaviour seems to be inseparable from the creative pursuit of a breakthrough.
The problem is, school students only ever hear about the breakthrough itself. The crooked path to success has been whitewashed out of sight. This is not an accident: it is the result of a long-running PR campaign carried out by organisations such as the Royal Society ? the creation of Brand Science, if you will.
Bad rep
It started after the second world war, which made science look terrifying. The atomic bombs that devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the V2 rockets that rained down on London, the experiments carried out in Nazi concentration camps and Japanese prisoner-of-war camps ? and Allied mustard gas experiments on their own soldiers ? enveloped science in a cloud of fear. That was why the geneticist Jacob Bronowski wrote in a 1956 issue of Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: "People hate scientists. There is no use beating about the bush here."
Senior figures reacted by trying to put science in the best possible light wherever it might be on display. That is why UK organisations such as the Royal Society, the Royal Institution and the Wellcome Trust forged links with the national broadcaster, the BBC, in the late 1940s, controlling access to scientists and endorsing only those who would toe the line of Brand Science. Memos to the broadcaster, according to author Timothy Boon, forcefully suggested dropping the "perils and dilemmas angle" in its coverage of the subject, and concentrating on "the great solution wrought by the introduction of the experimental method".
Across the Atlantic, scientists were making similar public promises of the benefits that they would bring. For more than 60 years now, science has striven to be seen as trustworthy, morally upright, objective and dispassionate, and providing a well-defined path from hypothesis to experiment to deduction that will reliably deliver advances and improvements.
Introverts only
The unfortunate spin-off of this PR effort is that it made the subject look dull, inhuman and robotic. Perhaps that's why, when asked to pick out the scientists from a gallery of photographs, children chose the ones that weren't smiling ? although in reality, all the photos were of scientists. Scientists are not perceived as smiley or fun, and the general population certainly does not think of them as creative or dynamic. That might explain why, as a Dutch study revealed in 2008, highly socialised, extrovert students tend to drop science subjects as soon as they can, orienting themselves instead towards more "human" areas of work, such as law, politics and economics.
Reintroducing into school curricula the humanity of science ? with all its flaws, its tales of outrageous behaviour and even more outrageous characters ? would give teens the opportunity to see scientists as role models. With pressing problems such as climate change and energy supply to confront, we must do whatever we can to capture the bold, adventurous, risk-taking minds of tomorrow, rather than settling for the timid ones ? even if that means tarnishing the carefully nurtured public image of Brand Science.
Read more: "Lab brats: Eight great scoundrels of science"
Michael Brooks is a consultant for New Scientist and the author of Free Radicals: The secret anarchy of science
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QUITO, Ecuador ? Ecuador will investigate and act forcefully against any clinics found to be trying to force homosexuals to change their sexual orientation, a Health Ministry official said Thursday.
Gay rights activists in the South American country say four clinics that engaged in coercive practices, three in the capital, have been shut down in recent months but that others still to operate clandestinely.
"Sadly, authorities have not yet taken the corrective measures necessary to regulate the work of clinics that offer 'de-homosexualization' treatment,'" said Efrain Soria, director of Fundacion Equidad, an anti-discrimination group.
Health Ministry official David Troya told The Associated Press the agency will deal firmly and drastically with any clinics that offer such treatments, which have been denounced by critics as abusive.
Newly named Health Minister Carina Vance, who studied at the University of California and has publicly defended gay rights, is hiring someone to work exclusively on the issue, said Troya, an adviser to Vance.
"We are going to take the necessary measures in a firm and drastic manner as regards this subject," he said.
The ministry is "clear and emphatic" that in line with the World Health Organization findings, "homosexuality is not an illness and that as such a cure can't be suggested, so that whoever offers treatments is deceiving people and acting illegally," Troya said.
Paola Concha told the AP that her family sent her in 2006 to a clinic to "cure" her of homosexuality.
"I received physical and verbal aggression during the 18 months I was interned in one of these centers," she said. "Nearly daily they beat me, and many times I was handcuffed to a pipe."
Concha said the women's ward of the clinic where she was held was later closed. She said other women who were "treated" along with her are afraid to go public with their stories.
Troya said the few clinics offering "de-homosexualizion treatment" that were shuttered by authorities were closed not because they offered such services but for other reasons, such as failing to meet sanitary standards.
Soria, the anti-discrimination activist, said complaints had been filed in courts against all of the closed clinics.
He said the clinics running "de-homosexualization" programs camouflage themselves by advertising that they treat such disorders as substance abuse.
I just read and enjoyed Reinventing Discovery: The New Era of Networked Science, a new book by Michael Nielsen, recently reviewed by Bora Zivkovic. The book tells how science is undergoing a revolution where new global online collaborations face off against secretive old-school researchers and profit-hungry journal publishers. It urges scientists to fight for open access and open science?a call to action made more poignant by recent events. For example, this December, Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney and Congressman Darrell Issa introduced a bill into the House of Representatives that would effectively revert the NIH?s Public Access Policy that allows taxpayer-funded research to be freely accessible online. Reinventing Discovery will help you form a strong opinion of this bill.
But though its call to political action is compelling and clear, Reinventing Discovery left me pondering a puzzle. A key obstacle to open science discussed in the book comes from within: from scientists, ourselves. Established, senior scientists?maybe the ones who are not on Facebook yet?are often painted as fearing the open science movement or trying to block it. But ironically, it may be up-and-coming scientists trying to build careers that perennially have good reasons to be secretive, reasons that the age of networking will never negate. I?ll call this puzzle the open science paradox.
As an example of how scientists themselves can be obstacles to open science, Nielsen describes how Galileo carefully concealed his discoveries from his scientific rivals. And Galileo took it devilishly further than that; he sent letters to Kepler, his rival, teasing him with announcements of his findings encoded in anagrams. That way, if someone else (e.g. Kepler) claimed to discover them first, Galileo would be able to prove that he?d beaten him by decoding the anagrams.
Now I have a permanent job, and I?m an open science acolyte. But when I was a postdoc, I felt and acted much more like Galileo in this example. This kind of secretiveness and competitiveness is a way of life for many of the postdocs and other young scientists I know.
Nielsen does not shy away from this problem. He suggests some potential long-term remedies that senior scientists and funding agency staff could push for. For example, maybe we more senior folks could implement new ways of measuring scientific output. When we?re judging a job applicant?s CV, instead of counting publications, we could count citations of his online preprints or downloads of his software.
But I would like to place on the table the likely possibility that this obstacle to open science will stand forever. That?s because I claim that to get a good job in science, you must brand yourself to compete on the job market. And there will always be young scientists striving to get jobs.
Let?s talk about branding for a moment: the art of making an indelible good impression on as many people as you can. To a marketing guru, branding is associated with getting to the market first, being the first name in everyone?s mind. For example, Al Ries and Jack Trout worked in the advertising department of General Electric and wrote a string of classic, best-selling books on marketing and branding together. As Ries and Trout point out in The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing: Violate Them at Your Own Risk!, we all know Charles Lindbergh, but who was the second person to fly solo across the Atlantic? You have to get there first and you have to let everyone know you did it.
Galileo concealed his discoveries, as Nielsen points out, to buy time during which he could capitalize upon them. That?s a branding strategy. It?s just like when Science or Nature place an embargo on a paper so they can have time to work up a press release and carefully time it. It makes a bigger splash if you make the announcement simultaneously via many news outlets with full color graphics and video than if you just go to your local newspaper with a half-baked story. Every MBA knows that you only get one chance to make a first impression, and a bigger splash means a stronger brand.
So maybe we will never create a completely open science environment for ourselves. Maybe attempts to enforce a completely open science environment would only turn into an arms race, with young scientists forced to develop new ways of branding themselves. I believe we will succeed in opening science wider with new policies and legislation and that we will all learn to embrace more networked approaches to problem solving. But the open science paradox stems from a truth that seems likely to be eternal: old scientists remember their first kiss more than their second, and young scientists know it.
Bilayer graphene works as an insulatorPublic release date: 24-Jan-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Iqbal Pittalwala iqbal@ucr.edu 951-827-6050 University of California - Riverside
Research by UC Riverside-led team has potential applications in digital and infrared technologies
RIVERSIDE, Calif. A research team led by physicists at the University of California, Riverside has identified a property of "bilayer graphene" (BLG) that the researchers say is analogous to finding the Higgs boson in particle physics.
Graphene, nature's thinnest elastic material, is a one-atom thick sheet of carbon atoms arranged in a hexagonal lattice. Because of graphene's planar and chicken wire-like structure, sheets of it lend themselves well to stacking.
BLG is formed when two graphene sheets are stacked in a special manner. Like graphene, BLG has high current-carrying capacity, also known as high electron conductivity. The high current-carrying capacity results from the extremely high velocities that electrons can acquire in a graphene sheet.
The physicists report online Jan. 22 in Nature Nanotechnology that in investigating BLG's properties they found that when the number of electrons on the BLG sheet is close to 0, the material becomes insulating (that is, it resists flow of electrical current) a finding that has implications for the use of graphene as an electronic material in the semiconductor and electronics industries.
"BLG becomes insulating because its electrons spontaneously organize themselves when their number is small," said Chun Ning (Jeanie) Lau, an associate professor of physics and astronomy and the lead author of the research paper. "Instead of moving around randomly, the electrons move in an orderly fashion. This is called 'spontaneous symmetry breaking' in physics, and is a very important concept since it is the same principle that 'endows' mass for particles in high energy physics."
Lau explained that a typical conductor has a huge number of electrons, which move around randomly, rather like a party with ten thousand guests with no assigned seats at dining tables. If the party only has four guests, however, then the guests will have to interact with each other and sit down at a table. Similarly, when BLG has only a few electrons the interactions cause the electrons to behave in an orderly manner.
New quantum particle
Allan MacDonald, the Sid W. Richardson Foundation Regents Chair in the Department of Physics at The University of Texas at Austin and a coauthor on the research paper, noted that team has measured the mass of a new type of massive quantum particle that can be found only inside BLG crystals.
"The physics which gives these particles their mass is closely analogous to the physics which makes the mass of a proton inside an atomic nucleus very much larger than the mass of the quarks from which it is formed," he said. "Our team's particle is made of electrons, however, not quarks."
MacDonald explained that the experiment the research team conducted was motivated by theoretical work which anticipated that new particles would emerge from the electron sea of a BLG crystal.
"Now that the eagerly anticipated particles have been found, future experiments will help settle an ongoing theoretical debate on their properties," he said.
Practical applications
An important finding of the research team is that the intrinsic "energy gap" in BLG grows with increasing magnetic field.
In solid state physics, an energy gap (or band gap) refers to an energy range in a solid where no electron states can exist. Generally, the size of the energy gap of a material determines whether it is a metal (no gap), semiconductor (small gap) or insulator (large gap). The presence of an energy gap in silicon is critical to the semiconductor industry since, for digital applications, engineers need to turn the device 'on' or conductive, and 'off' or insulating.
Single layer graphene (SLG) is gapless, however, and cannot be completely turned off because regardless of the number of electrons on SLG, it always remains metallic and a conductor.
"This is terribly disadvantageous from an electronics point of view," said Lau, a member of UC Riverside's Center for Nanoscale Science and Engineering. "BLG, on the other hand, can in fact be turned off. Our research is in the initial phase, and, presently, the band gap is still too small for practical applications. What is tremendously exciting though is that this work suggests a promising route trilayer graphene and tetralayer graphene, which are likely to have much larger energy gaps that can be used for digital and infrared technologies. We already have begun working with these materials."
###
Lau and MacDonald were joined in the research by J. Velasco Jr. (the first author of the research paper), L. Jing, W. Bao, Y. Lee, P. Kratz, V. Aji, M. Bockrath, and C. Varma at UCR; R. Stillwell and D. Smirnov at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, Tallahassee, Fla.; and Fan Zhang and J. Jung at The University of Texas at Austin.
The research was supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, Office of Naval Research, FENA Focus Center, and other agencies.
The University of California, Riverside (www.ucr.edu) is a doctoral research university, a living laboratory for groundbreaking exploration of issues critical to Inland Southern California, the state and communities around the world. Reflecting California's diverse culture, UCR's enrollment has exceeded 20,500 students. The campus will open a medical school in 2013 and has reached the heart of the Coachella Valley by way of the UCR Palm Desert Center. The campus has an annual statewide economic impact of more than $1 billion.
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Bilayer graphene works as an insulatorPublic release date: 24-Jan-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Iqbal Pittalwala iqbal@ucr.edu 951-827-6050 University of California - Riverside
Research by UC Riverside-led team has potential applications in digital and infrared technologies
RIVERSIDE, Calif. A research team led by physicists at the University of California, Riverside has identified a property of "bilayer graphene" (BLG) that the researchers say is analogous to finding the Higgs boson in particle physics.
Graphene, nature's thinnest elastic material, is a one-atom thick sheet of carbon atoms arranged in a hexagonal lattice. Because of graphene's planar and chicken wire-like structure, sheets of it lend themselves well to stacking.
BLG is formed when two graphene sheets are stacked in a special manner. Like graphene, BLG has high current-carrying capacity, also known as high electron conductivity. The high current-carrying capacity results from the extremely high velocities that electrons can acquire in a graphene sheet.
The physicists report online Jan. 22 in Nature Nanotechnology that in investigating BLG's properties they found that when the number of electrons on the BLG sheet is close to 0, the material becomes insulating (that is, it resists flow of electrical current) a finding that has implications for the use of graphene as an electronic material in the semiconductor and electronics industries.
"BLG becomes insulating because its electrons spontaneously organize themselves when their number is small," said Chun Ning (Jeanie) Lau, an associate professor of physics and astronomy and the lead author of the research paper. "Instead of moving around randomly, the electrons move in an orderly fashion. This is called 'spontaneous symmetry breaking' in physics, and is a very important concept since it is the same principle that 'endows' mass for particles in high energy physics."
Lau explained that a typical conductor has a huge number of electrons, which move around randomly, rather like a party with ten thousand guests with no assigned seats at dining tables. If the party only has four guests, however, then the guests will have to interact with each other and sit down at a table. Similarly, when BLG has only a few electrons the interactions cause the electrons to behave in an orderly manner.
New quantum particle
Allan MacDonald, the Sid W. Richardson Foundation Regents Chair in the Department of Physics at The University of Texas at Austin and a coauthor on the research paper, noted that team has measured the mass of a new type of massive quantum particle that can be found only inside BLG crystals.
"The physics which gives these particles their mass is closely analogous to the physics which makes the mass of a proton inside an atomic nucleus very much larger than the mass of the quarks from which it is formed," he said. "Our team's particle is made of electrons, however, not quarks."
MacDonald explained that the experiment the research team conducted was motivated by theoretical work which anticipated that new particles would emerge from the electron sea of a BLG crystal.
"Now that the eagerly anticipated particles have been found, future experiments will help settle an ongoing theoretical debate on their properties," he said.
Practical applications
An important finding of the research team is that the intrinsic "energy gap" in BLG grows with increasing magnetic field.
In solid state physics, an energy gap (or band gap) refers to an energy range in a solid where no electron states can exist. Generally, the size of the energy gap of a material determines whether it is a metal (no gap), semiconductor (small gap) or insulator (large gap). The presence of an energy gap in silicon is critical to the semiconductor industry since, for digital applications, engineers need to turn the device 'on' or conductive, and 'off' or insulating.
Single layer graphene (SLG) is gapless, however, and cannot be completely turned off because regardless of the number of electrons on SLG, it always remains metallic and a conductor.
"This is terribly disadvantageous from an electronics point of view," said Lau, a member of UC Riverside's Center for Nanoscale Science and Engineering. "BLG, on the other hand, can in fact be turned off. Our research is in the initial phase, and, presently, the band gap is still too small for practical applications. What is tremendously exciting though is that this work suggests a promising route trilayer graphene and tetralayer graphene, which are likely to have much larger energy gaps that can be used for digital and infrared technologies. We already have begun working with these materials."
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Lau and MacDonald were joined in the research by J. Velasco Jr. (the first author of the research paper), L. Jing, W. Bao, Y. Lee, P. Kratz, V. Aji, M. Bockrath, and C. Varma at UCR; R. Stillwell and D. Smirnov at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, Tallahassee, Fla.; and Fan Zhang and J. Jung at The University of Texas at Austin.
The research was supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, Office of Naval Research, FENA Focus Center, and other agencies.
The University of California, Riverside (www.ucr.edu) is a doctoral research university, a living laboratory for groundbreaking exploration of issues critical to Inland Southern California, the state and communities around the world. Reflecting California's diverse culture, UCR's enrollment has exceeded 20,500 students. The campus will open a medical school in 2013 and has reached the heart of the Coachella Valley by way of the UCR Palm Desert Center. The campus has an annual statewide economic impact of more than $1 billion.
A broadcast studio with fiber cable to the AT&T Hollywood hub is available for live or taped interviews. UCR also has ISDN for radio interviews. To learn more, call 951-UCR-NEWS.
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WASHINGTON (AP) ? Republicans took the offensive Tuesday and cast President Barack Obama as the culprit for the economy's persistent frailty, hoping to shift the focus away from his State of the Union address' theme of economic fairness.
As they awaited the president's election season speech to the nation Tuesday night, Republicans in the Capitol and on the campaign trail accused Obama of three years of higher spending, bigger government and tax increases that have left the economy stuck in a ditch.
"If the president wants someone to blame for this economy, he should start with himself," said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. "The fact is, any CEO in America with a record like this after three years on the job would be graciously shown the door."
White House officials argue that the economy has resumed growing and generating new jobs on Obama's watch, though growth has been generally listless and the jobless rate remains at a high 8.5 percent.
One of Obama's themes will be economic fairness, including protecting the middle class and making sure the wealthy pay an equitable share of taxes. Republicans seemed determined to blunt that message and prevent the president from making it the top issue of this year's presidential and congressional elections.
"This election is going to be a referendum on the president's economic policies," which have worsened the economy, said House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio. "The politics of envy, the politics of dividing our country is not what America is all about."
Boehner said nearly 30 House-passed bills aimed at helping the economy have stalled in the Democratic-run Senate, most of them rolling back or blocking environmental, workplace and other regulations. He said he hoped Obama "will extend somewhat of an olive branch" to work with Republicans on boosting the economy.
Despite that plea, Boehner planned a symbolic move to underscore Obama's decision to put off, for now, work on the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline from western Canada to Texas' Gulf Coast. Republicans say the project would create thousands of jobs, a claim opponents say is overstated.
Boehner invited three officials from companies he said would be hurt by the pipeline's rejection to watch the speech in the House chamber as his guests, along with a Nebraska legislator who helped plan a new pipeline route through his state, where environmental concerns have been raised.
Poised to give the GOP's formal, televised response to Obama was Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, who flirted with running for his party's presidential nomination before deciding against it last May.
The first White House budget chief under President George W. Bush, Daniels has portrayed himself as a foe of budget deficits. He has described Obama's fiscal policies as "catastrophic."
Obama was delivering his State of the Union address during a rowdy battle for the GOP presidential nomination that has ended up playing directly into Obama's theme of economic fairness.
That fight has called attention to the wealth of one of the top contenders, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, and the low ? but legal ? effective federal income tax rate of around 15 percent that the multi-millionaire has paid in the past two years. Romney, who is in Florida campaigned for that state's Jan. 31 primary, released his tax documents for that period on Tuesday.
"The president's agenda sounds less like "built to last" and more like doomed to fail," Romney said in remarks prepared for delivery Tuesday in Tampa, Fla.?"What he's proposing is more of the same: more taxes, more spending, and more regulation."
Romney's chief rival so far, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, said in a written statement that the top question about Obama's speech was whether he "will show a willingness to put aside the extremist ideology of the far left and call for a new set of policies that could lead to dramatic private sector job creation and economic growth."
The Republican National Committee was airing a television commercial in North Carolina, Virginia, Michigan and Washington, D.C., blaming Obama for 13 million people out of work and citing the bankruptcy of California energy company Solyndra, which received more than $500 million in federally backed loans.
The ad shows an Obama interview from 2009, in which he said about the faltering economy, "If I don't have this done in three years, then this is going to be a one-term proposition," a reference to his presidency.
The chairman of the House GOP's campaign arm, Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas, also used Obama's speech to reach out to supporters in an email.
"Unlike Democrats, House Republicans are fighting to strengthen our economy and allow small businesses to create jobs for hard working Americans," he wrote.
Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, campaigns at Allstar Building Materials in Ormond Beach, Fla., Sunday, Jan. 22, 2012. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)
Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, campaigns at Allstar Building Materials in Ormond Beach, Fla., Sunday, Jan. 22, 2012. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)
Republican presidential candidate, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, speaks at a campaign rally in Coral Springs, Fla., Sunday, Jan. 22, 2012. (AP Photo/Steve Mitchell)
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) ? Four years after the GOP's rallying cry became "drill, baby, drill," environmental issues have barely registered a blip in this Republican presidential primary.
That's likely to change as the race turns to Florida.
The candidates' positions on environmental regulation, global warming as well as clean air and water are all but certain to get attention ahead of the Jan. 31 primary in a state where the twin issues of offshore oil drilling and Everglades restoration are considered mandatory topics for discussion.
"It's almost like eating fried cheese in Iowa," said Jerry Karnas of the Everglades Foundation. Drilling has long been banned off Florida's coasts because of fears that a spill would foul its beaches, wrecking the tourism industry, while the federal and state governments are spending billions to clean the Everglades.
Though most expect the candidates to express support for Everglades restoration ? as Mitt Romney did in his 2008 campaign ? environmentalists are noting a further rightward shift overall among the GOP field. The candidates have called for fewer environmental regulations, questioned whether global warming is a hoax and criticized the agency that implements and enforces clean air and water regulations.
"A cycle ago, there were people who actually believed in solving some of these problems," said Navin Nayak of the League of Conservation Voters. "Now we're faced with a slate that doesn't even believe in basic science."
The candidates, of course, dispute such a characterization. But their stances have generally grown more conservative. And even when they haven't, they often offer positions that aren't in line with conservationists.
?Romney heralded the passage of stricter limits on carbon emissions in 2005 when he was governor of Massachusetts but last year said it was a mistake. He previously agreed with the scientific consensus on global warming and humans' contribution to it but now says "we don't know what's causing climate change."
?Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich supported tougher environmental regulation early in his congressional career and appeared in a 2008 TV spot with then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi pleading for action on climate change. Now he's says appearing with the San Francisco liberal was "the dumbest thing I've done in the last couple of years" and is calling for lifting restrictions on offshore drilling and branding the Environmental Protection Agency a "job killer" that must be replaced.
?Texas Rep. Ron Paul said during his 2008 campaign that "human activity probably does play a role" in global warming. Now he calls the science on manmade global warming a "hoax."
?Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum shows fewer signs of a shift on such issues. He has called for more drilling, including in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and doubts research that points to a human role in global warming, calling it "junk science."
An analysis by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics found about $2.8 million in campaign donations were made by those in the energy and natural resources sector, according to Federal Elections Commission data, with about 84 percent of it going to Republicans.
Meantime, the EPA, which is responsible for policing environmental rules, has been singled out for Republican criticism this campaign season. Paul has called for its outright elimination as part of his plan to drastically curtail the federal government. Romney has said it's "out of control." Santorum has railed against the EPA's limits on mercury from coal-fired power plants. And Gingrich has called for overhauling the EPA, saying it should be converted to an "environmental solutions agency."
Nayak says: "There's no doubt that this kind of slate of presidential candidates is one of the most regressive and most closely tied to polluters that we've seen at least in decades."
Some Republican presidents and nominees have been strong environmentalists. Teddy Roosevelt was seen as a role model to environmentalists, using his presidency to establish wildlife refuges, preserve forests, and conserve water. Richard Nixon helped create the EPA that has been vilified by his successors on the campaign trail today. And the last Republican nominee, Sen. John McCain, was the chief co-sponsor of a bill that sought mandatory caps on greenhouse gas emissions.
Michelle Pautz, a political science professor at the University of Dayton who focuses on environmental policy, said the current slate of Republicans may not be giving much reason to applaud their environmental stances, but it may not matter much overall with the economy taking center stage.
"The bottom line is both with the GOP primary and looking to Obama and the general election, the green vote is a non-issue," Pautz said. "There are too many other issues crowding out the environmental ones."
But Tony Cani, the national political director for the Sierra Club, said taking what he calls "extreme" views on the environment won't play well come Nov. 6.
"They're going to be hurt with young voters, women, families, Latino voters," Cani said.
Jim DiPeso, of Republicans for Environmental Protection, said he hopes to see a shift as Election Day draws closer, but that the state of politics right now has made ecological issues untouchable.
"A lot of the more pragmatic mainstream Republicans just are trying to steer clear of the issue because it's become so politically fraught," he said.
The Associated Press reports two people have died in Alabama due to a fast-moving line of severe storms. Officials have seen damage patterns that are concurrent with an EF2 tornado, although that has not been determined by National Weather Service officials at this point. If a tornado did touch down, it is a rare weather phenomenon in January for the U.S.
Tornadoes don't normally form in the winter, yet over the past three years winter time severe storms have made headlines.
Data
The National Weather Service's Storm Prediction Center states an average of 17 tornadoes struck the U.S. in January over the past three years. There were six in 2009, 30 in 2010 and 16 in 2011. Preliminary data in 2012 indicate there have been 13 possible tornadoes this year as of Jan. 17. No deaths have been reported in the previous three years until the streak was broken this year.
Outbreak of 2008
Fox News reported in early January 2008 that eight people died due to severe storms that struck the Midwest. Heavy flooding swept away three people in Indiana when five inches of rain melted snow that contributed to the massive flooding. A tornado in central Arkansas killed one resident and a separate tornado killed two people in Missouri.
An EF3 tornado hit northern Illinois, the first tornado to hit Illinois in January since 1950. The storm track of the 2008 tornado was 13.2 miles long and about 100 yards wide.
Wisconsin also had a tornado spawned by the same storm system that struck Illinois. It was the first January tornado in Wisconsin since 1967. Two tornadoes formed in southeast Wisconsin as a stationary front helped produce a lot of moisture.
Why January Tornadoes?
If the weather is right, temperatures can rise across the contiguous 48 states in January. South winds and sunny skies are usually needed for such conditions to form ahead of colder temperatures coming from the north and west.
In the 2008 outbreak, tornado warnings and severe weather happened across portions of eight states. Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Wisconsin, Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana and Oklahoma. Cities in several northern states such as New Jersey and New York ahead of the storm front moving through those areas. Cities that had severe weather also saw record high temperatures.
In 2010, a tornado passed over Huntsville, Ala. Southern states are more likely to see winter time tornadoes as temperatures are higher in places like Louisiana, Alabama and Florida. Sometimes warm winds and weather systems in the Gulf of Mexico and tropical Atlantic Ocean can blow up into the U.S. mainland and increase temperatures. Then colder air comes from Canada to cause a sudden temperature drop that can form tornadoes.
In the U.S., it's perfectly normal to sleep with your dog or cat, but huge cultural battles are being fought over whether it's odd, or even detrimental, to sleep with your baby. In much of the developing world, people think just the opposite, says anthropologist Carol Worthman.?
iStockphoto.com
Emory anthropologist Carol Worthman first began thinking about the cultures of sleep while traveling across Kenya in 1979 as a postdoctoral fellow. She was headed to the coast in an old, classic train with wooden slats that rolled down over the windows. The cheap ticket section was so packed for the overnight journey that mothers and children shared bunks in the women?s section.
?Children were crying. It was really noisy and I couldn?t get comfortable. I didn?t sleep much at all,? Worthman says.
The locals, however, took it in stride. ?In the morning, everyone around me got up looking bright and beaming,? Worthman says. ?I thought, ?They don?t sleep like Westerners do.??
iStockphoto.com
Nearly two decades later, Worthman was asked by a pediatrician to sum up what anthropologists know about sleep. She thought about it and had to respond, ?Not much.? While most waking moments of human activity were well-documented, their sleeping ones were largely ignored by anthropologists.
?When people go to sleep is when we can finally write up our notes,? Worthman jokes.
But the realization that her field had overlooked one-third of human life spurred her to work on the first analytic framework for comparative studies of human sleep behavior in 1998.
iStockphoto.com
She pored over the literature, and interviewed field researchers about their observations of the ecology of sleep from across continents, cultures and climates in the developing world. From foragers to farmers, islanders to mountain dwellers, patterns of sleep behavior began to emerge.
?I was startled,? Worthman says. ?You learn just how weird our sleeping habits are in the United States.?
For instance, many Americans consider it odd, and perhaps detrimental, to sleep with a newborn baby. And yet it?s perfectly normal to sleep with a dog or cat.
?In much of the developing world, people think just the opposite,? Worthman says. ?It?s pretty much universal that babies don?t sleep alone. They either lie right next to their mothers, or nearby on a mat, or in a cradle or a sling.?
Putting a baby in a separate room to sleep would be viewed as tantamount to child abuse in many cultures, Worthman says.
Credit: iStockphoto.com
For much of human history, humans have slept in family groups, with one ear cocked for danger. They were comforted by the sounds of their livestock shuffling, their babies breathing and the crackle of a smoky fire to ward off bugs and larger predators. ?Sleeping like a log? is not so desirable if you could roll into the fire, or miss the sound of an approaching predator.
Worthman?s work has shown that rural, and even some urban, communities of the developing world have markedly different sleeping patterns than the typical American. ?You can actually quantitatively show that culture drives human sleep behavior,? she says.
Building on her decades of research, Worthman is about to launch the first quantitative study of a pre-electric sleep culture, a major experiment set to begin soon in rural Vietnam. Click here to read more about the study.
It?s only relatively recently that electricity, larger homes, box springs, non-allergenic mattresses and climate-controlled interiors have altered our sleep environments. This rapid shift leads Worthman to wonder if modern sleep practices have set us up for chronic problems such as insomnia, sleep apnea and parental anxiety over a newborn?s sleep patterns.
Photo by Klaus Roesch
For instance, in many cultures, people tend to take more naps and have less rigid expectations for sleeping straight through the night. Some evidence indicates that in pre-gaslight Europe, it was not uncommon for people to have an early evening sleep, then wake up later in the night for a while, before returning to a deeper sleep state.
Modern-day insomniacs may actually be the more normal ones, Worthman notes. ?In our culture, we have this very fixed idea that you should lie down and go out like a light,? she says. ?One of the problems with insomnia is that people become very anxious about it. If they relaxed, went with the flow, and perhaps took a nap during the day, maybe it would help.?
LOS ANGELES ? "The Artist" followed its Golden Globe win by taking top honors at the Producers Guild Awards on Saturday, as the silent film continues its unlikely run toward Oscar night.
Producer Thomas Langmann received the award handed out at the Beverly Hilton by the Producers Guild of America, as "The Artist" beat out George Clooney's family drama and another Oscar favorite, "The Descendants."
"The Artist" won best musical or comedy at Sunday's Golden Globes and "The Descendants" won best drama along with a best actor nod for Clooney, making the movies likely rivals for Best Picture at the Academy Awards.
The other nominees in the movie category were "War Horse," "The Help," "Bridesmaids," "Hugo," "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo," "Midnight in Paris," "Moneyball" and another Clooney movie, "The Ides of March."
Along with honors from other Hollywood professional groups such as actors, directors and writers guilds, the producer prizes have become part of the preseason sorting out contenders for the Oscars, whose nominations come out Jan. 24.
HBO's saga of mobsters in Prohibition-era Atlantic City "Boardwalk Empire" won the producers' award for television drama series, keeping AMC's "Mad Men" from winning its fourth straight PGA Award.
A team of seven producers including Martin Scorcese received the award for "Boardwalk Empire," which also beat out Showtime's "Dexter," CBS's "The Good Wife," and another HBO series, "Game of Thrones."
The ABC sitcom "Modern Family" took the award for best comedy series for the second straight year, beating "30 Rock," "The Big Bang Theory," "Glee," and "Parks and Recreation."
Other winners at the PGA awards include PBS's "Downton Abbey" for long-form television, "The Adventures of Tintin" for animated film, "Beats, Rhymes & Life" for movie documentary and "The Colbert Report" for talk and live entertainment shows.
I just read and enjoyed Reinventing Discovery: The New Era of Networked Science, a new book by Michael Nielsen, recently reviewed by Bora Zivkovic. The book tells how science is undergoing a revolution where new global online collaborations face off against secretive old-school researchers and profit-hungry journal publishers. It urges scientists to fight for open access and open science?a call to action made more poignant by recent events. For example, this December, Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney and Congressman Darrell Issa introduced a bill into the House of Representatives that would effectively revert the NIH?s Public Access Policy that allows taxpayer-funded research to be freely accessible online. Reinventing Discovery will help you form a strong opinion of this bill.![[ Back to EurekAlert! ]](http://www.eurekalert.org/images/back2e.gif){kind=small}
Public release date: 24-Jan-2012
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