Iraq vet pleads guilty to killing fellow soldiers

JOINT BASE LEWIS-MCCHORD, Wash. (AP) ? An Army sergeant pleaded guilty Monday to killing four other soldiers and a Navy officer in 2009 at mental health clinic in Baghdad during the Iraq War, describing how he gunned down the men and saying he was in a "rage" when he began his rampage.

The plea agreement in a military court at Joint Base Lewis-McChord means Sgt. John Russell will avoid the death sentence. His maximum sentence would be a life term. He testified Monday to persuade Army judge Col. David Conn to accept the agreement. Conn agreed.

Russell ? who is from Sherman, Texas ? went on a shooting spree at the Camp Liberty Combat Stress Center near Baghdad in May 2009. It was one of the worst instances of soldier-on-soldier violence in the Iraq war.

In court, Russell said he was in a "rage" when he opened fire.

"I wanted the pain to stop," he testified in court at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, talking in a husky voice. He read a written statement detailing his memories of the killings.

Russell was nearing the end of his third tour when his behavior changed, members of his unit testified in 2009. They said he became more distant in the days before the May 11, 2009, attack and that he seemed paranoid that his unit was trying to end his career.

On May 8, Russell sought help at a combat stress clinic at Camp Stryker, where his unit was located. On May 10, Russell was referred to the Camp Liberty clinic, where he received counseling and prescription medication.

The following day witnesses saw Russell crying and talking about hurting himself. He went back to the Camp Liberty clinic, where a doctor told him he needed to get help or he would hurt himself. Russell tried to surrender to military police to lock him up so he wouldn't hurt himself or others, witnesses said.

Military prosecutors say Russell left the clinic and later returned with a rifle he took from his unit headquarters and began firing.

Russell said he wanted to hurt a doctor who he thought had earlier encouraged him to commit suicide. He didn't find that doctor, but still carried out the shooting.

Killed in the shooting were Navy Cmdr. Charles Springle, 52, of Wilmington, N.C., and four Army service members: Pfc. Michael Edward Yates Jr., 19, of Federalsburg, Md.; Dr. Matthew Houseal, of Amarillo, Texas; Sgt. Christian E. Bueno-Galdos, 25, of Paterson, N.J.; and Spc. Jacob D. Barton, 20, of Lenox, Mo.

Of the dead, Russell had interacted only with Springle, who tried to help him a couple of days before the attack.

Yates raised a gun at him after Russell killed Springle and Houseal, but Yates dropped the gun and ran.

Yates "ran and I ran after him, and I shot him," Russell said.

Yates' mother, Shawna Van Blargan, joined Springle's wife and son in court. They held each other tightly as Russell talked about killing their family members.

Van Blargan cried out when Russell described killing her son. She left the courtroom.

Russell also remembered finding Barton hiding under a table. Russell shot him in the head.

Bueno-Galdos tried to grab Russell's rifle. Russell testified he shot Bueno-Galdos in the chest, then shot him once more while he lay face down on the ground.

Two evaluations presented during a 2009 hearing said Russell suffered from severe depression with psychotic features and chronic post-traumatic stress disorder. A March 2011 evaluation said the major depression with psychotic features was in partial remission.

The Tacoma News Tribune reported (http://bit.ly/10ue9t1) Russell entered his plea while flanked by his two military defense attorneys and his civilian lawyer.

Some family members of Russell's victims have expressed frustration in news reports that it has taken four years to bring the case to trial.

Russell's pretrial agreement includes a contested portion that remains to be argued in court. He refused to plead guilty to murdering the service members with premeditation. Prosecutors planned to argue that point next month.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/iraq-vet-pleads-guilty-killing-fellow-soldiers-185619348.html

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Big ecosystem changes viewed through the lens of tiny carnivorous plants

Apr. 23, 2013 ? What do a pond or a lake and a carnivorous pitcher plant have in common?

The water-filled pool within a pitcher plant, it turns out, is a tiny ecosystem whose inner workings are similar to those of a full-scale water body.

Whether small carnivorous plant or huge lake, both are subject to the same ecological "tipping points," of concern on Earth Day--and every day, say scientists.

The findings are published in this week's issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

In the paper, ecologists affiliated with the National Science Foundation (NSF) Harvard Forest Long-Term Ecological Research site in Massachusetts offer new insights about how such tipping points happen.

"Human societies, financial markets and ecosystems all may shift abruptly and unpredictably from one, often favored, state to another less desirable one," says Saran Twombly, program director in NSF's Division of Environmental Biology, which funded the research.

"These researchers have looked at the minute ecosystems that thrive in pitcher plant leaves to determine early warning signals and to find ways of predicting and possibly forestalling such 'tipping points.'"

Life in lakes and ponds of all sizes can be disrupted when too many nutrients--such as in fertilizers and pollution--overload the system.

When that happens, these aquatic ecosystems can cross "tipping points" and change drastically. Excess nutrients cause algae to bloom. Bacteria eating the algae use up oxygen in the water. The result is a murky green lake.

"The first step to preventing tipping points is understanding what causes them," says Aaron Ellison, an ecologist at Harvard Forest and co-author of the paper. "For that, you need an experiment where you can demonstrate cause-and-effect."

Ellison and other scientists demonstrated how to reliably trigger a tipping point.

They continually added a set amount of organic matter--comparable to decomposing algae in a lake--to a small aquatic ecosystem: the tiny confines of a pitcher plant, a carnivorous plant native to eastern North America.

Each pitcher-shaped leaf holds about a quarter of an ounce of rainwater. Inside is a complex, multi-level food web of fly larvae and bacteria.

"The pitcher plant is its own little ecosystem," says Jennie Sirota, a researcher at North Dakota State University and lead author of the paper.

Similar to lake ecosystems, oxygen levels inside the water of a pitcher plant are controlled by photosynthesis and the behavior of resident organisms--in this case, mostly bacteria.

Ellison says that conducting an experiment with bacteria is like fast-forwarding through a video.

"A bacterial generation is 20 minutes, maybe an hour," he says. "In contrast, fish in a lake have generation times of a year or more.

"We would need to study a lake for 100 years to get the same information we can get from a pitcher plant in less than a week."

The same mathematical models, Ellison and colleagues discovered, can be used to describe a pitcher plant or a lake ecosystem.

To approximate an overload of nutrients in pitcher-plant water, the team fed set amounts of ground-up wasps to the plants.

"That's equivalent to a 200-pound person eating one or two McDonald's quarter-pounders every day for four days," says Ellison.

In pitcher plants with enough added wasps, an ecosystem tipping point reliably occurred about 45 hours after the start of feeding.

The scientists now have a way of creating tipping points. Their next step will be to identify the early warning signs.

"Tipping points may be easy to prevent," says Ellison, "if we know what to look for."

Other authors of the paper are Benjamin Baiser of Harvard Forest and Nicholas Gotelli of the University of Vermont.

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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/Jm0LPU17tNQ/130423153919.htm

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Sequestration Flight Delays Not Hitting Airline ... - Yahoo! Finance

Starting Sunday the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) was forced to cut spending by 10% as a result of forced sequestration cuts. According to Reuters the cuts have already resulted in delays of more than an hour in New York with more delays to come at other hub airports.

This sounds exactly like any other Monday in the last 20 years of air travel. Regardless, FAA authorities swear these delays are different and the direct result of the sequester.

From an investment perspective, the question is whether or not the scorching hot stocks of the major airlines can withstand a service slowdown, even it isn't their fault (this time). Yahoo! Finance senior columnist Mike Santoli says the sector could hit an air pocket if the delays cause business travelers to consider alternatives to flying.

"The story with the airline stocks is pricing power," Santoli says in the attached video. The industry has reduced capacity on travel routes and has seen massive merger activity. That makes for more crowded flights and fewer alternatives for travelers who don't want to share an armrest. Historically these stocks are "not a great buy and hold business," understates Santoli, suggesting a pullback in the sector should be expected.

Entering afternoon trading on Monday, the delays are shorter than expected and the stocks aren't getting hit. United Continental (UAL) is down less than 1% and Delta (DAL) is actually having a nice rally. Both stocks are up about 30% already in 2013, suggesting trimming some profits is in order with or without delays driving away demand.

The mess has to flower beyond what people were expecting for the delays to hit the sector in Santoli's estimates. Expectations for smooth, on-time travel are generally extremely low. Until it's possible to definitively distinguish between a sequestration-based delay and business as usual, it's unlikely FAA cutbacks are going to be a catalyst for the stocks in either direction.

Source: http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/breakout/sequestration-flight-delays-not-hitting-airline-stocks-yet-182430221.html

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Nicaragua nabs most-wanted U.S. child porn suspect

MANAGUA, Nicaragua (AP) ? Police in Nicaragua have detained a former U.S. school teacher who was on the FBI's 10 most-wanted fugitives as a suspect in a child pornography investigation, authorities confirmed Monday.

Eric Justin Toth was detained Saturday in Esteli, a city near Nicaragua's border with Honduras, and will be immediately deported to the United States, said National Police chief Aminta Granera.

"Toth will be deported immediately because he was in our country illegally," Granera said at a news conference in Managua, the capital.

She said Toth entered Nicaragua with a false passport and also had a fake driver's license and credit cards.

Toth was being handed over to FBI agents present at the news conference and they planned to take him to the U.S. in a special plane, Granera said.

A thin and nervous-looking Toth dressed in cream-colored shirt and pants was briefly presented to journalists and photographers who took his picture, but he wasn't allowed to talk and was quickly taken away.

Granera said Toth first entered Nicaragua on Oct. 24, 2012, and left on Jan. 27. He returned on Feb. 12 and that's when Nicaraguan police began keeping a close watch, she said.

"He was captured in a house in the Panama Soberana neighborhood in Esteli, even though he resisted," Granera said.

Toth taught third grade at Beauvoir, a private elementary school on the grounds of the Washington National Cathedral. He was escorted off campus in June 2008 after another teacher reported finding sexually explicit photographs on a school camera in Toth's possession. He had not been seen since he lost his job.

In a statement, the school commended the work of U.S. authorities.

"We commend the work of the Office of the U.S. Attorney and the FBI for their ongoing efforts to apprehend Mr. Toth. They have been tenacious and resolute in their quest to bring this case to justice," it said.

Toth was added to the FBI's most-wanted list in April 2012 for allegedly possessing and producing child pornography, giving him notoriety normally reserved for people sought in connection with violent crimes or terrorism.

Osama bin Laden and purported Boston mobster James "Whitey" Bulger have both been featured on that list, but the FBI said it put Toth on because there were no reliable clues as to his whereabouts and because his Internet skills and alleged penchant for grooming children made him especially dangerous.

Authorities found Toth's car at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport in August 2008 with a note suggesting he'd committed suicide in a nearby lake. But no body was found.

The FBI, which had been offering a $100,000 reward for information leading to Toth's arrest, said he was believed to have traveled to Virginia, Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin and Minnesota. It said Toth is originally from Hammond, Indiana, and is a graduate of Purdue University.

Toth is thought to have lived in Arizona in 2009.

The bureau had said that Toth might have been advertising as a tutor or a male nanny and using the alias of David Bussone.

___

Associated Press writer Eric Tucker in Washington contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/nicaragua-nabs-us-most-wanted-child-porn-suspect-205230175.html

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Germanium is now laser compatible

Apr. 22, 2013 ? Good news for the computer industry: a team of researchers has managed to make germanium suitable for lasers. This could enable microprocessor components to communicate using light in future, which will make the computers of the future faster and more efficient.

Researchers from ETH Zurich, the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) and the Politecnico di Milano have jointly developed a manufacturing technique to render the semiconductor germanium laser-compatible through high tensile strain. In their paper recently published in Nature Photonics, they reveal how they can generate the necessary tensile strain efficiently. The scientists demonstrate that they can use their method to effectively alter the optical properties of germanium, which is unsuitable for lasers as such: "With a strain of three per cent, the material emits around twenty-five times more photons than in a relaxed state," explains Martin S?ess, a doctoral student at the Laboratory for Nanometallurgy headed by Ralph Spolenak and the EMEZ at ETH Zurich. "That's enough to build lasers with," adds his colleague Richard Geiger, a doctoral student at the Laboratory for Micro- and Nanotechnology at the PSI and the Institute for Quantum Electronics at ETH Zurich under J?r?me Faist.

High tension through microbridges

In order to bring the germanium into a laser-compatible, stretched form with the new method, the researchers use the slight tension generated in germanium when it evaporates on silicon, strengthening this prestrain with so-called microbridges: they score exposed germanium strips, which remain attached to the silicon layer at both ends, in the middle on both sides. The two halves of the strip thus remain connected solely by an extremely narrow bridge, which is precisely where, for physical reasons, the strain of the germanium grows so intense that it becomes laser-compatible.

"The tensile strain exerted on the germanium is comparable to the force exerted on a pencil as two lorries pull upon it in opposite directions," says Hans Sigg, the project manager at the PSI, explaining the feat on a micrometre scale in everyday proportions. The material properties change because the individual atoms move apart a little through the expansion of the material, which enables the electrons to reach energy levels that are favourable for the generation of light particles, so-called photons.

Germanium laser for the computer of the future

The interdisciplinary research team's method could increase the performance of future computer generations considerably. After all, in order to improve computer performance, computer chips have constantly been made smaller and more densely packed. However, this approach will eventually hit a brick wall in the foreseeable future. "In order to increase performance and speed further, the individual components need to be linked more closely and communicate with each other more efficiently," explains S?ess. This requires new transmission paths that are faster than today, where the signals are still transmitted via electricity and copper cables.

"The way to go in future is light," says Geiger. In order to be able to use this to transfer data, however, first of all light sources are needed that are so small as to fit onto a chip and react well to silicon, the base material of all computer chips. Silicon itself is not suitable for the construction of laser light, which is also the reason why it is so important for the researchers to make germanium laser-compatible: "Germanium is perfectly compatible with silicon and already used in the computer industry in the production of silicon chips," explains Geiger. If it is possible to build tiny lasers out of germanium using the new method, a system change is within reach. "We're on the right track," says S?ess. The international team of researchers is currently in the process of actually constructing a germanium laser with the new method.

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Journal Reference:

1. M. J. S?ess, R. Geiger, R. A. Minamisawa, G. Schiefler, J. Frigerio, D. Chrastina, G. Isella, R. Spolenak, J. Faist, H. Sigg. Analysis of enhanced light emission from highly strained germanium microbridges. Nature Photonics, 2013; DOI: 10.1038/nphoton.2013.67

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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_technology/~3/WlYRr6S78nA/130422101151.htm

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