Herschel telescope 'in last year'

18 February 2012 Last updated at 18:11 ET By Jonathan Amos Science correspondent, BBC News, Vancouver

Herschel, Europe's billion-euro space observatory, has entered what is likely to be its last year of operation.

The telescope studies the formation of stars, and has taken some remarkable pictures since its launch in May 2009.

But its detectors require a constant supply of superfluid helium to keep working, and the store of this coolant has now dropped to less than 100kg.

This past week saw Herschel begin what engineers believe will be the final 365 days of its mission life.

"There's quite a bit of uncertainty in all this, of course," said Dr Paul Goldsmith from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, US.

"It could be 11 months, it could be 14 months, and we're naturally hoping for the latter. It's certainly true that we have enough observations proposed to go well past the year if the helium lasts that long," he told BBC News.

Dr Goldsmith has been discussing the observatory's successes during a special seminar here in Vancouver at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

He is the US space agency (Nasa) project scientist on the mission. Although principally a European Space Agency (Esa) venture, Herschel has a 6% contribution from the Americans, who provided some mission-enabling technology for two of the telescope's three instruments.

But in what is an indication of just how well the US has been able to leverage that 6%, it is likely that about a half of the remaining opportunity observations on Herschel will be led by astronomers from American institutions.

"Herschel has been so open," said Margaret Meixner, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland.

"There's been no counting of how much time Europe has had or how much America and Canada have had - it's been about whatever the best science is. I don't think there's ever been a space telescope quite like that."

Herschel was launched in May 2009 and sent to an observing position 1.5 million km from Earth.

Its goal has been to study the processes at play in the formation of stars and the evolution of galaxies. Its detectors pick up the light coming from the frigid clouds of gas and dust that are being warmed by the brilliant newborn stars buried within them.

This is long wavelength light, beyond the detection of our eyes or a telescope like Hubble. It is in the far-infrared.

To pick it up, parts of Herschel's instruments have to be cooled to near absolute zero (-273.15C), and this has been made possible by a store of superchilled helium. The telescope was launched with more than 2,000 litres, and this has been gradually boiling off as operations have progressed.

When it is all gone, the temperature of the instruments and their detectors will rise and the telescope will go blind.

The minimum expectation had been for 3.5 years of observations. The amount of helium still left in Herschel's tank, or cryostat, means this objective should be surpassed easily.

Dr Meixner said Herschel's legacy would be long-lived.

"The thing about the great observatories is that they make huge data archives that live on for decades.

"Herschel, because of its exquisite sensitivity, really is going to be a pathfinder for future projects in this area for at least 30-plus years.

"Facilities just coming online like [the radio telescope] Alma have very small fields of view - people need to know where to point, and they are going to run to the Herschel archive and say 'where do I look?'. It's how they will do their source selection."

Dr Meixner showed the meeting an image she has just acquired using Herschel. It is a view of the Large Magallenic Cloud, a small satellite galaxy to our own Milky Way.

"It's my latest pride and joy," she told BBC News.

"It looks like a fiery image, but what you're seeing there is all the dust emission from that galaxy. It's very knotty and filamentous - it's sort of like the chaos of creation. Those filaments and stuff are where the stars are going to form in that galaxy."

Jonathan.Amos-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk and follow me on Twitter

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/int/news/-/news/science-environment-17087434

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New Jersey Gay Marriage Vetoed: Celebrities, State Voters Sound Off On Chris Christie's Decision

Celebrities like Ryan Adams and Andy Cohen are joining voters and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights advocates in decrying New Jersey Governor Chris Christie's veto of his state's marriage equality bill.

Singer-songwriter Adams took to his Twitter, noting, "Dear Chris Christie, the world is moving on without you. Laterz gangsta." Echoing those sentiments, Cohen was considerably more blunt, tweeting: "Chris Christie: you blew it."

Meanwhile, the New Jersey Assembly Democrats released a video response criticizing the veto, which was posted on Towleroad and other websites.

Christie's veto came a day after the state Assembly passed the bill, and four days after the state Senate had passed it. Christie, a Republican who opposes same-sex marriage, had vowed "very swift action" once the measure reached his desk, according to the Associated Press.

Check out some Twitter responses to Christie's action below:

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/18/new-jersey-gay-marriage-celebrites-react_n_1286433.html

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Friday Illusion: Deceptive motion in Super Mario land

Caitlin Stier, video intern

In this video game clip, it looks like Mario is jumping vertically while an enemy tortoise slides by underneath him. But keep watching when the background stops moving and you'll see that their movement is not quite what it seems.

The animation, developed by cognitive psychologist Sebastiaan Math?t from VU University in Amsterdam, is a variation of a common illusion where our perception of an object's motion is affected by a moving background. In a previous Friday Illusion post, we shared a video that exploits the same brain trick. Can you identify it?

Let us know your choice by posting the headline in the Comments section below and the first correct answer will receive a New Scientist goodie bag. Good luck!

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Politics| New Kitchen Cabinets Are A Good Way To Boost the Value ...

Lean manufacturing is used a lot; Willard J. Wrigley

Redesigning your cabinets is about the simplest and best solution to change how your kitchen looks. Whenever you go to the kitchen and see your outdated cabinets, it might make you feel down. Especially when you have lived in a dwelling for a long time, the cabinets which were in style when your house was built, no longer are. If you visit someone?s new home and you see the modern design of their kitchen, you might be wishing the same for your own. We have the best selection of industrial hi-performance floor tapes in the industry.lean manufacturing is mostly used in the manufacturing industry and it is very good and highly effective when it comes to Lean Manufacturing.

Installing the right cabinets will not only completely change the look of your kitchen, but uplift, not only your attitude, but the attitude of your whole family. While remodeling all of the kitchen is the best option, if you can?t afford to do it now, changing out the cabinets can be just as effective without taking much time. The most difficult part of getting new cabinets is picking out the ones you like, which will go best with your house. The most appropriate style and the right color helps make all of the difference. You can go to local home improvement stores to see their cabinets or start your search online. The most convenient alternative is going to be to go online since you can look at many places at once without leaving your chair. six sigma is a business management technique which works to improve the overall quality of production output.

When you start finding styles that look good to you, you ought to consider some things. There?ll be styles that are all set to go where you simply decide on the style and color. Because of this approach, you can find cabinets at marked down prices. Should you be on a tight budget, you may wind up saving quite a bit of money. Despite the fact that custom designed cabinets will cost more, you may be able to find companies that will make them at affordable prices. Going this route will guarantee that the style will be exactly what you want and it will fit in your kitchen.

Software programs that can develop your virtual kitchen will allow you to come up with a design that will look good in your actual kitchen. You should be able to test many different designs to see which works and which doesn?t in your kitchen. It?s very easy to modify the design and colors so that you can see what you like the most. This can be a fantastic way to eliminate the options you don?t want. Quite often the way you choose the best kitchen cabinets is to get rid of the ones you know are wrong for your kitchen.

It truly is an excellent investment to redo your cabinets regardless if you choose the ready made cabinets or the custom made cabinets. The value of your home ought to go up should you add nice cabinets to your kitchen.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 16th, 2012 at 2:52 pm and is filed under Politics. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Source: http://apeel-solutionsblog.info/politics/new-kitchen-cabinets-are-a-good-way-to-boost-the-value-of-your-home

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What is Mortgage Refinancing

With mortgage rates falling to record lows this summer and the housing market showing signs of a pulse, refinancing activity is perking up.

Its too bad that so many people are relying on oversimplified advice and bad numbers to decide when to pull the trigger.

The refinancing equation has never been more complicated. While some borrowers are desperate to reduce their monthly payments, others are looking to build equity. Some are even treating their mortgage as an investment vehicle, sinking excess cash into their homes in order to secure a lower rate and cut future payments.

Yet most personal-finance resources these days dont account for situations like these. Even essential factors like tax rates and inflation expectations are often ignored in favor of simplistic calculations.

Many popular Web resources, in fact, are financed by lenders, mortgage brokers or lead generators that connect borrowers with banks. At times, their advice can be downright harmful.

Thats because of the risk involved. Refinancing generally costs 3% to as much as 6% of the outstanding principal of the loan, with banks levying fees on everything from application fees and title searches to appraisal costs and legal expenses. (Mortgage points can add to the total, though they typically help reduce the interest rate and lower overall costs.)

Fees are often murky, too, making comparison shopping difficult. The best way to compare deals is to consult with a housing-counseling agency approved by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Given such costs, you dont want to refinance often. Yet the advice coming from the mortgage world suggests you should be doing it regularly.

One particularly dubious idea gaining prominence is the 1% rule, which used to be the 2% rule when rates were higher. The gist: Refinance when you can knock a full percentage point off your rate.

A lead-generation site called Supermortgages.com says the following in a piece called When to Refinance a Mortgage: Are the current mortgage interest rates at least 1 point less than your existing mortgage interest? If so, refinancing your home mortgage might make sense.

Wells Fargo & Co.s website goes further. In an advice article titled Deciding to Refinance, it writes: If interest rates are 1/2% to 5/8% lower than your current interest rate, it may be a good time to consider a refinance.

Yet people who followed the one-point rule could have refinanced five or six times in the last 15 years, paying so much in fees that the savings would likely be wiped out.

Supermortgage content largely comes from mortgage brokers, lenders and other industry sources, says Andy Shane, a spokesman for parent company SuperMedia Inc.

In this case, he says, the author is a freelance writer with a law degree and a background in real estate who used a mortgage calculator and determined that a one- to two-point cut in rates made a pretty significant difference in monthly payments compared with closing costs.

Wells Fargo spokesman Jason Menke says the banks website has a wide range of information available to help borrowers. The rate difference cited is just a point where a borrower may want to consider looking into a refinance, he says.

The 1% rule could translate into big business if it catches on. About 71% of outstanding fixed-rate mortgages guaranteed by Fannie Mae or other government-sponsored entities are at least a point above current rates, according to Walter Schmidt, senior vice president at FTN Financial Capital Markets in Chicago.

Source: http://whatismortgagerefinancing.com/refinancing-3/

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A Few Of The Benefits Of Local Search Engine Marketing | Ascent ...

Google typically changes its lookup algorithms, and the latest modifications provide the Internet buzzing about local search engine marketing information. Consequently, consumers are offered much attention considering that what they consider and what they need matters relating to local search promotion. At this time customers spend a whole lot of their time local search engine marketing online all this is where they find sellers or agencies. By way of example, if you owned a neighborhood pizza shop on Chicago, you would want yuor web blog to show up for any search of ?Chicago pizza?.

If you?ve ever wanted anything on Search engine, you?ve seen the particular organic listings. A third than it is dominated by local search engines like google. A high level auto dealer inside Denver area, this is the region just be marketing to from the beginning. Employing traditional advertising including billboards, newspapers, and even commercials will not be only expensive, but possibly a lesser amount of effective than internet website marketing. Because this continues, the chances of obtaining a high rank browsing engines are also big.

It will be recommended that you mark your physical location about the globe using Yahoo and google Maps, as well. Its sleek and research-based process might help provide focus to a existing marketing marketing campaign, as well as have more customers in people doors. Focusing for the local segment belonging to the market can be highly best for your business, even though there?s a lot of marketing methods. Dependent upon what your small business does, you may now be capable of do business using purchasers and distributors in any the main world, the nature with the company may in no way lend itself to the current enterprize model. The price in the product plays an exceptionally big part inside deciding process but given that the consumer believes as ease having making the invest in a company them to found online.

Make sure you provide your regional consumer with specific information. If you intend to improve your companies listing and google engine, you pay for performance SEO must follow some guidelines to get best local search engine marketing strategy. If you aren?t going to utilizing local search engine marketing to advertise your internet business now, you?re falling guiding. Local checklist marketing also allow individuals to conveniently find their own business needs despite the fact that still being productive with other activities. Eventually, web developers should be sure a site has minimum lots of very effective outbound back-links.

It helps the company to directly do prospects in nearby proximity. That is without a doubt after reading many articles online regarding this. When someone in where you live searches for ?pizza?, a list involving local companies is definitely displayed in yahoo. Once you will have attracted them to check out what you?ll have to offer, they wont hesitate to have a sale.

Prospects at the moment use engines like google additional typically than through use the telephone book of this local telephone course. Just remember when you?re not getting those people local customers business then a competition is. They?re paid ads popping from the performance internet marketing right panel of one?s Facebook page. Techniques for example short videos whilst others allow business homeowners to communicate to help you prospective clients about their services. Rankings is everything instead of before has due to sight, out of intellect been more applied. Since this plan makes information small for consumers for you to digest and for search engines like google to rank, there is no chance for every business to skip this once at a lifetime opportunity to advertise their business and everything that accompany it.

Guest post by Barsalou Y. Kenyetta Stvictor

Source: http://www.ascent-systems.com/a-few-of-the-benefits-of-local-search-engine-marketing/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=a-few-of-the-benefits-of-local-search-engine-marketing

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Obama stresses economic roles with China's expected new leader

President Obama welcomes China's VP

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• NEW: Xi to meet congressional leaders and speak at the Chamber of Commerce
• President Obama raises human rights concerns with China's vice president
• Xi is expected to become the next Chinese president
• Xi is on a five-day visit to the United States

Washington (CNN) -- President Barack Obama welcomed China's presumptive next leader at the White House Tuesday but also set a firm tone for future relations between the two world powers.

The meeting with Obama highlighted a day of top-level Washington diplomacy for Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping, who also met with Vice President Joe Biden and spoke at the State Department.

On Wednesday, Xi will meet with congressional leaders on Capitol Hill and deliver a major policy address at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce as he continues his five-day visit.

At the Oval Office meeting Tuesday, Obama said that with China's meteoric rise as an economic powerhouse came a responsibility to ensure balanced trade flows, referring to China's trade surpluses.

The president also raised the delicate issue of human rights as a critical area of concern for the United States.

"We've tried to emphasize that because of China's extraordinary development over the last two decades, that with expanding power and prosperity also comes increased responsibilities," Obama said while sitting next to Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping in the Oval Office.

"We want to work with China to make sure everyone is working by the same rules of the road when it comes to the world economic system," he added.

For his part, Xi said the main purpose of his visit was to work to strengthen U.S.-Chinese relations and build a "cooperative partnership based on mutual respect and mutual interests."

Iowa farm town gets ready for important visitor

The trip is an opportunity for Xi, who is expected to be the Asian giant's next Communist Party leader and president, to burnish his credentials. President Hu Jintao undertook a similar visit 10 years ago as he was being groomed for the top job.

It also gave U.S. officials chance to size up Xi. His meeting with Obama lasted almost 90 minutes, which was longer than planned, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters.

According to Carney, Obama said the meeting ran long "because of the importance of the relationship and cooperation in dealing with the range of challenges that" the two countries face.

In welcoming Xi earlier, Vice President Joe Biden said the United States and China had one of the most important bilateral relationships in the world. But the two countries, he said, were not always going to see eye to eye.

"We saw this in the recent U.N Security Council debate about Syria where we strongly disagreed with China and Russia's veto of a resolution against the unconscionable violence being perpetrated by the Assad regime," Biden said.

Xi, who is expected to become the leader of China's ruling Communist Party later this year, said he looked forward to in-depth and candid talks.

He also said he hoped to engage with a broad section of the American people.

But beneath the carefully choreographed presentation of the high-profile meetings lies a range of contentious issues on which Xi has little incentive to give ground, including trade and China's growing military presence.

"I think he's going to be tough with a smile on his face," said James McGregor, senior counselor for the communications firm APCO Worldwide in China. "He's gonna appear to be a very friendly man. But he has to be tough because he's still talking to an audience back here."

The subject of Xi's trip and what it portends for U.S.-Chinese relations in the coming years has received heavy coverage in state-run media in China.

"The U.S. has never met a competitor like China before," the Global Times, an English-language newspaper run by the Communist Party, said in an editorial published Monday that noted China's global clout in manufacturing and exports.

The Obama administration, under pressure from stubbornly high unemployment figures in an election year, has already taken steps concerning China's role in global trade.

Obama mentioned China by name when he announced in his State of the Union address last month that he was creating a trade enforcement unit to bring cases against other countries. There is also persistent tension over China's efforts to control the level of its currency, the renminbi, which U.S. officials say makes it undervalued.

Carney told reporters Tuesday that the currency issue is routinely raised in any meeting with Chinese leaders.

Xi, 58, is very well versed in these issues, according to Jon Huntsman, the former Republican presidential hopeful who was U.S. ambassador to China between 2009 and 2011.

"He's gone out of his way in recent years to bone up economics and trade, knowing full well that these are the issues that are going to determine whether or not the United States and China are able to get through the years to come," Huntsman said.

Chinese officials are aware of U.S. concerns, but Xi and other leaders face the challenge of keeping China's hundreds of millions of workers content as economic growth starts to ease from the torrid levels of recent years.

Policy makers in Beijing are grappling with how to tackle rapidly rising prices and the widening gap between rich and poor.

"I want a job," said Xie Yingling, an unemployed welder in the coastal province of Fujian, where Xi used to be governor. "Our local economy is just bad. I find even a bowl of noodles too expensive here."

Xi's engagements in the United States began Monday with a dinner in Washington attended by former U.S. secretaries of state Henry Kissinger and Madeleine Albright.

He was given a less cordial welcome by activists advocating Tibetan independence, who started unfurling a banner on Arlington Memorial Bridge in Washington Monday afternoon. The activists were detained by the police before being released.

On Tuesday, several hundred protesters chanting for a free Tibet gathered the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Xi and Biden met with business leaders. Calling for Tibetan freedom, the protesters waved flags, carried signs and voiced their message through a bull horn.

Beijing has been struggling in recent weeks to contain unrest among ethnic Tibetans in the southwestern province of Sichuan. It has sent additional security forces to the region after Tibetan protesters set themselves on fire and clashed with police to express frustration with Chinese rule.

After Washington, Xi will travel Wednesday to Iowa, a state he first visited as a local official in the 1980s.

He is visiting the United States amid the rhetoric and political uncertainty of presidential election campaigning. But upheaval is also under way in China through the leadership transition that is set to result in Xi's taking charge later this year.

With about 70% of the country's top 200 officials expected to be swapped out during the process, Huntsman said Xi is "stepping into the forefront of China's political leadership structure at a time of enormous change."

CNN's Jethro Mullen, Tom Cohen, Stan Grant, Greg Seaby and Moni Basu contributed to this report.

Source: http://edition.cnn.com/2012/02/14/world/asia/china-us-vp-visit/index.html

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