Tuileisu Anderson scored eight of her 17 points in a crucial third quarter, then Angelique Williams scored eight of her 18 points in the fourth quarter to secure the victory for the Titans.
Union will face Reynolds of Oregon at the Gresham tournament at 5:30 p.m. Thursday.
The two teams were tied at the half, but the Titans got defensive in the third quarter, holding Maple Ridge to six points.
Union connected on seven 3-pointers in the game.
UNION 47, MAPLE RIDGE (B.C.) 38
UNION (5-2) ? Aman Kaur 0, Jessica Chatman 2, Angelique Williams 18, Tuileisu Anderson 17, Nicole Woodside 2, Molly Petrie 4, Hannah O?Donnell 0, Mykaila Forsyth 3, Cassie Anderson 1. Totals 18 (7) 4-8 47.
MAPLE RIDGE ? Marchard 1, LaMont 3, Orum 22, Severinski 0, Antaya 3, Williams 9. Totals 12 (1) 13-21 38.
Union 10 11 14 12?47
Maple Ridge 11 10 6 11?38
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MADRID (AP) ? Spain's new conservative government is set to unveil its first austerity measures later Friday as it tries to reassure markets that it has a plan to get a grip on its public finances at the same time as kickstarting an economy saddled with sky-high unemployment.
With much of the country on holiday, Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy of the Popular Party was presiding over a Cabinet meeting that will approve the first in what is expected to be a painful series of spending freezes or cuts and other reforms over the next few months.
Rajoy's Popular Party won a sweeping victory in Nov. 20 elections over the Socialists and his government took power only last week. All the ministers have been named but many other senior positions have not even been filled yet.
Like other troubled governments in Europe, Rajoy faces the delicate task of a deficit reduction measures in a country whose economy is expected to sink back into recession. The jobless rate is a staggering 21.5 percent, the highest rate of all 17 countries that use the euro.
Rajoy has said time and time again he is determined to meet Spain's commitment to cut its budget deficit to 4.4 percent of GDP in 2012.
Last week, he said that if the outgoing government's deficit forecast of 6 percent for 2011 was correct ? and he stressed it might be off ? the new government would have to achieve euro16.5 billion ($22 billion) in deficit reduction in 2012.
Fears over Spain's public finances and a banking sector heavily exposed to a real estate bubble that burst in 2008 have caused Spain's borrowing costs to soar amid fears it could end up suffering the same fate as bailed out Greece, Ireland and Portugal.
Spanish media say that just about the only good news expected to come out of Friday's Cabinet meeting is a small cost of living increase for pensioners. In May 2010, then Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero slapped the freeze on under growing international pressure, just as the Greek debt crisis was heating up. The pressure on Spain included a call from President Barack Obama.
The rest of the measures expected Friday will apparently be an early taste of the bitter medicine to come ? a freeze on civil servant wages hiring in most areas, except security forces.
And ministries will be told to tighten their belts, again.
As no budget for 2012 has yet been passed, Rajoy's Cabinet is expected to extend the 2011 spending blueprint into the first quarter of next year as it waits to get final figures on the economy. A full-blown 2012 budget is expected in late March.
On Friday, ministries will reportedly be told how much of the money they originally had earmarked for 2011 they must now refrain from spending.
OMAHA, Neb. ? The Canadian company that wants to build a $7 billion pipeline to tar sands oil across the Plains to refineries near the Gulf of Mexico now has a map of areas to avoid in Nebraska.
Nebraska officials released the map of the Sandhills region Thursday to guide TransCanada's efforts to develop a new route for the proposed Keystone XL pipeline.
TransCanada agreed in November to develop a new route through Nebraska to avoid the environmentally sensitive Sandhills. The entire project remains on hold while a new route is developed and studied.
TransCanada's proposed Keystone XL project is designed to carry oil from Canada across Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas. TransCanada also has proposed connecting it to the Bakken oil field in Montana and North Dakota.
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Last week Mayor Vincent C. Gray welcomed news from District Chief Financial Officer Dr. Natwar Gandhi that projected revenue for fiscal year 2012 has increased by $42.2 million over initial estimates.?He will request the D.C. Council approve a supplemental 2012 budget that will eliminate a corresponding amount of spending pressures in several critical areas.
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?Like recent figures indicating a significant drop in the District?s unemployment rate, this $42.2 million projected revenue increase demonstrates that our city?s economy continues to rebound,??Mayor Gray said.??The emphasis we have placed on economic development and job creation is paying dividends for all of our residents.?
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The supplemental budget Mayor Gray will propose eliminates $42.2 million in spending pressures within three significant agencies:
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Department of Health Care Finance -- $10.2 million
??????????$6.0 million for an increase in inpatient hospital care
??????????$4.2 million to cover a funding shortfall for the D.C. HealthCare Alliance
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Department of General Services -- $10.6 million
??????????$6.5 million for unexpected increases in fixed costs for fuel and water/sewer service for District vehicles and buildings
??????????$4.1 million for adequate maintenance of District facilities ? an amount that historically has been under-budgeted
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D.C. Public Schools -- $21.4 million
??????????$4.5 million to cover congressional reductions in federal payments to DCPS
??????????$10.7 million for increases in food-service contracts
??????????$2.8 million for mandated merit-based salary increases for teachers
??????????$3.4 million for increased personnel costs for non-instructional staff
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?My goal is to be able to go to Wall Street bond-ratings agencies in February and show them that the District of Columbia has a structurally balanced budget with no spending pressures,??Mayor Gray said.??This will be yet more evidence that they should maintain or upgrade the District?s credit ratings.?
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The Gray Administration has made controlling spending pressures a top priority ? including the creation of a special task force that identifies spending pressures and immediately seeks ways to remediate them.?Through these efforts, the administration has kept spending pressures to a lower amount at this point in the fiscal year than any other year in the post-Control Board era.?
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Nonetheless, spending pressures arise in any budget, and the Mayor believes strongly that they must be addressed quickly to protect the District?s fiscal stability. Mayor Gray plans to transmit a supplemental budget proposal to the Council in January and request that it be moved at the Council?s February 7th?legislative meeting.
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Dr. Gandhi?s revenue estimates for future fiscal years also continued to decline based on the impact on the District?s economy of future federal budget cuts that will result from the failure of the congressional budget ?super committee? to reach an agreement. If the mandatory cuts ? known as ?sequestration? ? end up taking effect, Dr. Gandhi estimated, they will contribute significantly to decreases of District revenues of $46.4 million in FY 2013, $92.1 million in FY 2014, and $129.8 million in FY 2015.?
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These decreases will come on top of the reductions to revenue that Dr. Gandhi projected in September 2011 of $52.6 million in FY 2013, $57.7 million in FY 2014, and $38.9 million in FY 2015.?
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The District?s current services funding level budget for FY 2013 is also projected to grow by $53.7 million more than was projected when the FY 2012 budget was approved, driven by growth in Medicaid and fixed costs.? This means the District faces a projected gap of $152.7 million in FY 2013 between baseline expenses and projected revenue.?
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Mayor Gray said the federal government?s failure to come to a budget agreement will, therefore, force especially stark choices on the District government in proposing the FY 2013 budget.
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?A $152.7 million gap would force the District to make incredibly painful cuts on top of the already-difficult choices we had to make in FY 2012 to close a $322.1 million gap,??Mayor Gray said.??Regardless of what happens on the Hill, I will propose a structurally balanced FY 2013 budget for the District of Columbia, in which we spend no more than the revenue we are projected to bring in.? However, I am very concerned that if the federal government does not work to satisfactorily resolve the federal budget impasse, then the economies of the District of Columbia and our neighboring jurisdictions in the Washington metropolitan area will needlessly experience a disproportionate adverse impact.?
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Dr. Gandhi will revise revenue estimates one more time, in late February, before the District?s FY 2013 budget is proposed on March 23, 2012.? If the federal government reaches an agreement prior to the February revenue certification, the revenue decrease from sequestration could be lessened or eliminated altogether.
A magnitude-9 earthquake in Japan, a momentous climate change summit, reports on future global "hyperwarming", and rumblings about some of the first geoengineering field trials all made 2011 a remarkable year for the environmental sciences. Here is our pick of the year.
The megaquake connection: Are huge earthquakes linked? The recent cluster of huge quakes around the Pacific Ocean ? the December 2004 Sumatra quake, the February 2010 Chile quake, and now Sendai ? fuelled speculation that they are seismically linked.
Wind and wave farms could affect Earth's energy balance Witness a howling gale or an ocean storm, and it's hard to believe that humans could make a dent in the awesome natural forces that created them. Yet one physicist says it is a mistake to assume that energy sources like wind and waves are truly renewable.
Last chance to hold Greenland back from tipping point The planet is on course for over 3??C of global warming. That leaves Greenland ? the world's second-largest ice cap ? heading for a point of no return. The suggestion is that Greenland will reach a tipping point in the early 2040s. After that no amount of action on our part can save the ice sheet.
Playing the climate blame game The question of whether climate change is responsible for extreme weather events like the heatwave that set Russia alight in 2010 is one of the hottest topics in climate science. Next year, UK and US climate scientists plan to launch an annual global assessment of whether humans are to blame for the previous year's extreme weather events. Solving the issue could bring closer the day when disaster victims can successfully sue oil and coal companies.
Geoengineering trials get under way Field trials for experiments to engineer the climate have begun. Next year, if they get approval, a team of UK researchers will hoist one end of a 1-kilometre-long hose aloft using a balloon, then attempt to pump water up it and spray it into the atmosphere. If the test succeeds, a larger-scale version could one day pump sulphate aerosols into the stratosphere, creating a sunshade to offset the greenhouse effect.
Dangerous decade: What follows the Durban climate deal? Not a single tonne of carbon was saved. In the short term, the planet will benefit not one jot. Some are calling it a betrayal of both science and the world's poor. Yet the climate conference in Durban, South Africa, did force major developing nations like China, Brazil and South Africa to accept the principle of future binding targets on their greenhouse gas emissions for the first time.
Gas drilling contaminates drinking water Drilling for shale gas may pose a safety hazard if there are water wells nearby. But the controversial use of "fracking" does not seem to be a safety risk as regards water contamination.
La Ni?a behind worst African drought in 60 years Almost 10 million people in the Horn of Africa faced a humanitarian emergency as the region grappled with its worst drought for 60 years. The main climatic trigger for the droughts was La Ni?a, a cyclical meteorological phenomenon affecting how much rain falls in Africa and elsewhere.
When will the 7 billionth human be born? On 31 October, a newborn baby somewhere in the world became the 7 billionth member of the human race. Or so said the UN ? but behind the UN's patina of certainty may lie outdated and unreliable census data. These inaccuracies make it harder to answer a more important question: is human population set to peak within the next few decades or will it carry on growing beyond that?
Earth's time bombs may have killed the dinosaurs The fate of the dinosaurs may have been sealed half a billion years before life even appeared, by two geological time bombs that still lurk near our planet's core.
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Sometimes the story behind the Blurrycam images are more interesting than the photos themselves. In this case, a member of XDA-Dev purchased an early model of the LG Fantasy -- an upcoming Windows Phone likely to launch early next year -- from a tester in Romania. The only spec given from the lucky buyer so far is a 4-inch IPS display. From outward appearance we're expecting the Fantasy to be a midrange device, but there's no way of telling what kinds of secrets lay beneath yet. Chances are we'll learn more secrets in just a couple weeks at CES.
The nominations are in, and the poll is ready to go! The TUAW Best of 2011 awards are all about you ? the readers ? and what you think is the cream of the crop of Apple or third-party products and software. To vote, select one entry from the top nominations made by readers. We?ll be announcing the winner in just a few days. Vote early and often!
TUAW is asking for your votes for the best iPhone music app of 2011.
There are six nominees in this category. The first, while technically a game, has you dress up pugs in hats to make music (I am not making this up). Pugs Luv Beats (US$2.99) was a surprisingly popular nominee, followed closely by the much more musically-oriented Hexaphone ($2.99). Hexaphone uses simplified musical scales, drum loops, a motion filter, and recording tools for real-time performance and improvisation.
For those who want to wirelessly control music and video between iPhones, iPads and iPod touches, Tango Remote Control Media Player ($4.99) is a powerful tool that captured the imagination of many TUAW readers. Smule?s free Magic Piano was a big hit with readers as well, especially for gamers and those who just dabble in music.
Musicians appreciated Nano Studio ($14.99) enough to launch it into the final voting for the TUAW Best of 2011 award for an iPhone music app, while Spotify (free) captured the final spot in our voting.
And now, let the voting begin! The results will be announced on December 28, 2011.
ScienceDaily (Dec. 23, 2011) ? If all the UK's discarded wrapping paper and Christmas cards were collected and fermented, they could make enough biofuel to run a double-decker bus to the moon and back more than 20 times, according to the researchers behind a new scientific study.
The study, by scientists at Imperial College London, demonstrates that industrial quantities of waste paper could be turned into high grade biofuel, to power motor vehicles, by fermenting the paper using microorganisms. The researchers hope that biofuels made from waste paper could ultimately provide one alternative to fossil fuels like diesel and petrol, in turn reducing the impact of fossil fuels on the environment.
According to some estimates 1.5 billion cards and 83 square kilometres of wrapping paper are thrown away by UK residents over the Christmas period. They currently go to landfill or are recycled in local schemes. This amount of paper could provide 5-12 million litres of biofuel, say the researchers, enough to run a bus for up to 18 million km.
"If one card is assumed to weigh 20g and one square metre of wrapping paper is 10g, then around 38,300 tonnes of extra paper waste will be generated at Christmas time," said study author Dr Richard Murphy from the Department of Life Sciences at Imperial College London. "Our research shows that it would be feasible to build waste paper-to-biofuel processing plants that give energy back as transport fuel."
Co-author and PhD student Lei Wang, also from Imperial's Department of Life Sciences, said: "The fermentation process could even cope with festive paper and card which has been 'contaminated' with the likes of glitter and sellotape. The cellulose molecules in sellotape would be broken down into glucose sugars and then fermented into ethanol fuel, just like the paper itself. Insoluble items like glitter are easy to filter out as part of the process."
Dr Murphy added: "People should not stop recycling their discarded paper and Christmas cards because at the moment there is no better solution. However, if this technology can be developed further, waste paper might ultimately provide a great, environmentally friendly alternative to fossil fuels. There's more work to do to assess the effectiveness and benefits of the technology, but we think it has significant potential."
In the study, published this month in the Royal Society of Chemistry journal Energy and Environmental Science, the researchers describe how they fermented different types of paper and cardboard in the laboratory to assess how chemically and economically feasible it is to turn them into ethanol fuel. They found that it is not only possible in laboratory experiments but should be economically viable on a large scale as well.
Across the year, around 60 per cent of the UK's waste paper is collected for recycling or other waste management schemes, which equates to around 8 million tonnes. The scientists say that using a well-tested fermentation method and a novel cocktail of efficient and cheap chemical enzymes, their system could be scaled up to the size of existing industrial processing plants and be used to convert 2000 tonnes of waste paper per day into biofuels.
There is already an urgent need for councils to prevent reusable materials like cardboard and paper being sent to landfill sites, saving money and avoiding unnecessary waste, a message echoed by the Mayor of London Boris Johnson in a speech about Recycle for London's Nice Save campaign this week. This new research shows that in addition to recycling, waste materials can be used to generate energy, and some of that can be as valuable vehicle fuel.
High grade ethanol, such as that made in this study, can be (and already is) blended with fossil-based petrol to make a fuel with lower greenhouse gas balance than conventional petrol for cars and vans, and can also be used to power large diesel vehicles like buses and trucks, if modifications are made to their engines. This approach is already used in Brazil, the USA and the EU, among other regions, where ethanol biofuels are being made from sugar cane, grain and other crops. Most of the UK's biofuel is currently imported from abroad.
The authors of this study are now analysing the environmental performance of bioethanol made from waste paper using life cycle assessment (LCA) and comparing it with the conventional transport fuel petrol. LCA is an environmental management tool that evaluates the 'cradle-to-grave' effects of a product for its influence on a range of environmental impact categories, including its ability to contribute to climate change or soil acidification or to cause algal blooms in fresh water.
The math:
Bioethanol predicted from using Christmas waste is 5.2-12 million L, energy content of ethanol is 22 MJ/L
Economy mileage for a diesel bus is 39 L/100km (Wikipedia info)
Diesel energy conte nt is 3 8.6 MJ/L
Bus running needs 15 MJ/km
Bus using bioethanol can run 1.47 km/L
Distance of bus running is 7.6-18 million km
Times travelling to moon (distance is 0.38 million km) is 20-47 times
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Imperial College London.
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Journal Reference:
Lei Wang, Mahdi Sharifzadeh, Richard Templer, Richard J. Murphy. Technology performance and economic feasibility of bioethanol production from various waste papers. Energy & Environmental Science, 2012; DOI: 10.1039/C2EE02935A
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Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
DURBAN, South Africa?I rented a cellphone during my sojourn here to cover the recent climate change negotiations. A local number enabled me to keep in touch with home and office but also, perhaps more importantly, to make appointments on the fly with ever harried international negotiators. The Nokia 2330?which was dubbed, affectionately, my ?hellphone? by a colleague for its generally poor reception and abilities?had clearly lived a useful (and hard) life, most recently in the hands of a smiling white-haired lady of European descent who left her picture on the welcoming screen (so much for data privacy). The phone still listed several of her friends? information as well, a potential goldmine had I been a cybercriminal on the make.
The battered Nokia represents an ever-growing trend in the world of electronics?a second or even third life for gadgets. Such ?recycling? is, in part, what has enabled cellphone technology to leapfrog traditional phone lines in South Africa and elsewhere in the developing world?from cellphone banking to entrepreneurial solar enterprises for cellphone charging. But it has also put millions of people at risk for cybercrime attacks. Even more worrying, ultimately, it?s a major source of toxic pollution.
M.I.T. researchers tracked e-waste on its travels across the U.S. as well as programmed some refurbished laptops to track their own second lives, the results of which can be seen in this video:
?We can now judge for ourselves if our donated computers really find a new home, or if our e-waste is proving harmful,? says David Lee, a programmer for the MIT project.
In fact, e-waste is one of the fastest growing sources of toxic pollution here in Africa and other parts of the world. Ghana, for example, receives shipments of old electronics under the guise of ?donations? that are then dumped in massive yards in the slums of Agbogbloshie in the capital city, Accra. The Ghanian government reports that in 2009 alone, 215,000 metric tons of electronics were imported from the E.U. and U.S., 15 percent of which immediately became trash (unlike my rented cellphone) in places like Agbogbloshie.
There workers, including children, extract the precious metals such as copper inside, by hand or by burning the surrounding plastics. Recycling 100,000 cellphones could yield more than $250,000 worth of precious metals?as well as leading to heavy metal poisoning and toxic air pollution, according to United Nations University research. A recent soil sampling at local schools and the produce market in Agbogbloshie found chromium levels more than two times higher than international safety standards and lead levels 12 times higher. Those problems aren?t confined to Ghana either?chemicals used in electronics are routinely found in American blood and urine samples by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, thanks to electronics dumped here. Plus, due to such imports, the U.S. State Department ranks Ghana as one of the top sources of cybercrime, thanks to the personal information often lingering on trashed electronics.
According to the Basel Convention, 400 million metric tons of e-waste are produced globally every year. Americans own some 3 billion electronic gadgets, ranging from cellphones to computers, of which roughly 400 million get replaced every year. As a result, the U.S. alone produces 372 million gadgets? worth of waste, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Some 85 percent of that e-waste?which contains everything from brominated fire retardants that bioaccumulate to the same heavy metals found in Agbogbloshie?is simply dumped in local landfills. A further quarter of a billion gadgets sit in ?storage??corporate warehouses or desk drawers?waiting to join this fast-growing waste stream. Just think of the number of television remote controls used in an average lifetime, or the Zip drive (or even?remember these?floppy disks) moldering in the garage.
Roughly 14 percent of U.S. e-waste is ?recycled,? which too often means shipped to developing countries like Ghana, or otherwise improperly disposed of, according to an April 2011 report ?Tackling High-Tech Trash? by Demos, a non-partisan public policy research and advocacy organization based in New York City. ?Producers in this very profitable industry need to take more responsibility for the disposal costs that, to this point, have been borne largely by local communities and the environment,? Demos program director Lew Day said when the report was released.
One clear solution is to recycle responsibly. Companies like LG Electronics have committed to use only e-Stewards-certified recyclers?the certification standard run by the Basel Action Network that forbids exporting hazardous e-waste, among other criteria. Waste Management and Electronic Recyclers International run e-Stewards?certified recycling centers across the U.S., part of a U.S. electronics recycling industry that collected and processed 3.5 million tons of used electronics in 2010. ?A robust electronics recycling industry in America would create new opportunities to efficiently and profitably address a growing pollution threat,? said EPA administrator Lisa Jackson at an event in Austin, Tex., this past July to announce new federal guidelines for managing e-waste, given that the U.S. government is the single largest consumer of electronics.
On the global front, on October 21, the 178 countries that are party to the Basel Convention agreed to ban all exports of hazardous wastes from developed to developing countries, including e-waste?an agreement expected to take effect in a few years, though the U.S. has not signed on to the international effort. In fact, U.S. federal efforts to cope with e-waste do not include a ban on such export. U.S. policy ?does nothing to prevent e-waste exporting, which squanders our critical metals resources, and poisons children abroad while exporting good recycling jobs from our country,? argues Jim Puckett, director of the Basel Action Network.
Another solution might be to change the business model of the electronics industry, from planned obsolescence to heirloom gadgets. Think a watch that can be handed from father to son, rather than a cellphone that demands to be swapped annually. That may not prove too palatable to major electronics manufacturers, however, which is why, by and large, they support ?responsible recycling? initiatives or have implemented takeback programs like Apple?s or Sony?s, and better design efforts, such as Stanford University?s move to make a laptop that is more recyclable. Ideally, better design would include modular designs that can be upgraded, perhaps as simply as switching a SIM card allows one to swap phone numbers. ?It?s very hard to narrow in on a component to swap,? Lorie Wigle, general manager of Intel?s eco-tech office, told me this past June. ?There?s a consumer problem,? given the appeal of new designs. But just think of the waste (and headache) savings if all rechargeable devices could be charged by one universal charger and transformer, perhaps with a set of adapter plugs.
In order to facilitate recycling, it would also make sense to make it easier for consumers to remove personal data from now-unwanted devices?and to make far more clear the best possible programs for free recycling. That way one little old lady?s discarded cellphone could find a useful second life anywhere in the world, untroubled by the possibility of a toxic or criminal legacy.
Late this summer Evernote, makers of the uber-popular note taking software of the same name, announced that they were buying Skitch, the company that made an (also eponymous) image annotation app for the Mac and Android phones.
Today, Evernote announced that they have brought Skitch to the iPad [iTunes link]. The app is free in the iTunes App Store. The app allows users to draw and annotate on a wide variety of images ? screen shots, maps, photos, the web, and more. It also includes a variety of sharing options. Users can send their work to Evernote (of course), as well as sending as email attachments or posting to Twitter. The app also allows for sharing over AirPlay
Evernote is careful to stress that they have not forgotten iPhone users. They say they have an iPhone app in the works already, but that they wanted to focus on the iPad first, as it seemed a better platform to show off the app?s capabilities.
Skitch is free in the App Store. Take a test drive, then let us know what you think in the comments.
About Shaylin Clark Shaylin Clark is a staff writer for WebProNews. Twitter: @stclark81, Google Plus: +Shaylin Clark
Democrats are ramping up the pressure on House Republicans over their refusal to pass a payroll tax deal ? and some Senate Republicans are not rushing to their colleagues' aid.?
After a year of clashes on Capitol Hill over trillion-dollar deficits, 40 is suddenly the biggest number in congressional politics, as Democrats and House Republicans clash over a payroll-tax cut and other measures set to expire on Jan. 1.
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Forty dollars is the average drop that some 160 million Americans will see in their paychecks, if Congress doesn?t act.
A White House call for responses to what a $40 tax hike means to families produced thousands of tweets in just 24 hours. Replies included: ?nearly a tank of gas,? ?feeding my family for three nights,? ?two months of vet care,? ?co-pay for prescription drugs,? and ?default on my mortgage, so I can feed my son.?
With just 10 days before the payroll tax ?holiday? and other measures expire, the cost to American families of gridlock as usual on Capitol Hill is immediate and personal. Democrats and the White House are counting on public outrage to force Speaker John Boehner ? and the tea-party backed conservatives who pushed GOP leaders to take on this fight ? to cave.
?The average Republican House member is going to hear from their constituents, and the pressure to come back and pass our bill is just going to increase,? said Sen. Charles Schumer (D) of New York in a conference call with reporters on Wednesday.
?If it?s really a one-year deal you want, so do we,? he added. ?We will be the first ones on a plane to work out a one-year deal but on one condition: First pass the Senate?s two-month agreement, then we can negotiate right away and maybe have the whole thing done by New Years.?
In a bid to dramatize the impasse, House Democratic whip Steny Hoyer and Rep. Chris van Hollen (D) of Maryland took to the House floor in a bid to pass the Senate bill by unanimous consent. They were gaveled down at the start of a pro forma session that only lasted a few minutes.
?The House Republican leadership never even allowed a vote on the bipartisan Senate bill,? says Mr. Van Hollen, the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee. ?The reason they didn?t allow a vote was that they knew it would pass on a bipartisan vote.?
The payroll tax impasse began on Tuesday, as House Republicans rejected a Senate bill that would have extended the payroll tax and other expiring provisions for two months, on a party-line vote, 229 to 193. The Senate bill, which passed 89 to 10, also extended expiring federal benefits for jobless workers and blocked a 27.4 percent drop in payments to doctors serving Medicare patients, set to take hold on Jan. 1.
Before Christian Bale got his groove on in Newsies, and before Steven Spielberg gave him a giant shot in Empire of the Sun, the charismatic young kid was doing commercial work. Here he is rocking out in rad '80s clothing for a Pac-Man cereal commercial. Back then when you were as popular as Pac-Man, you were rewarded with your own cereal and totally awesome TV spot. Who ever thought the kid in this commercial would grow up to be Batman?
Check it out below, and let us know which current fad deserves its own cereal ...
? A man who admitted to planting a bomb along a Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade route was sentenced Tuesday to 32 years in prison, the maximum punishment as negotiated under a plea deal that he tried to withdraw and then later denounced.
"I am not guilty of the acts that I am accused of and that I plead guilty to," Kevin Harpham said before U.S. District Judge Justin Quackenbush handed down the sentence. He agreed to the deal in September to avoid a possible life sentence, Harpham said.
The statement prompted the judge to impose the higher end of the possible prison sentence, which was negotiated in the plea bargain as between 27 and 32 years. "I am distressed that you appear not the least bit apologetic," Quackenbush said.
Harpham, who has extensive ties to white supremacists, blamed the judge for not giving his defense team enough time. The 37-year-old said he did not intend to injure people with the bomb he placed in downtown Spokane prior to the January parade.
Rather, he intended for the shrapnel to hit the side of a building as a show of protest against the multiculturalism celebrated by the parade, he said.
"I was making a statement that there are people out there who don't agree with these ideas," Harpham said. He likened himself to a Christian protesting gay marriage, "but a bit more dangerous or extreme."
The judge said he was perplexed because Harpham had been honorably discharged from the Army and had no criminal record. Quackenbush wondered whether a "shrill and caustic and vitriolic" culture fueled by talk media was partially to blame.
Just before Harpham was scheduled to be sentenced, his lawyer tried unsuccessfully to withdraw his guilty plea by noting that a newly hired defense expert questioned whether the explosive device in question met the legal definition of a bomb.
Harpham said he intended to seek an appeal, which he has 14 days to file.
Federal prosecutors said it was important that a long sentence be imposed in the case.
"Acts of hate like this one have no place in our country in 2011," said Thomas Perez, assistant attorney general for the civil rights division in Washington.
The pipe bomb was loaded with lead fishing weights coated in rat poison, which can inhibit blood clotting in wounds, officials have said. The bomb was discovered and disabled before it could explode.
The Jan. 17 parade drew a crowd of about 2,000. It was forced onto an alternative route after the bomb was found. Harpham walked in the parade and took pictures of black children and of a Jewish man who was wearing a yarmulke, prosecutors have said.
Part of Asus's Pro Art monitor line geared towards professional designers and photographers, the PA246Q ($499 list) finds the sweet spot between ultra-expensive high-end IPS monitors, such as the NEC MultiSync PA241W ($1,049 list, 4 stars), and more affordable IPS models, like the LG IPS236V ($259.99 list, 4 stars). This wide gamut display delivers rich, well saturated colors and wide viewing angles, and offers just about every connection option you'll ever need. Its grayscale performance is good but not great, however, and it doesn't have an auto-rotate feature.
The PA246Q uses a P-IPS (Professional In-Plane Switching) panel, a relatively new addition to the IPS family of panels that is capable of displaying 1.07 billion colors. The 24-inch panel has a native resolution of 1,920-by-1,200 with a 16:10 aspect ratio and uses CCFL (Cold Cathode Fluorescent Lamps) for backlighting rather than LEDs. As such, the matte black cabinet measures a hefty 3 inches deep at its thickest point. The bezels (also matte black) are etched with ruler-like lines that are purely cosmetic and serve no practical purpose.
The cabinet is perched atop a stand with a telescoping arm that provides every adjustment you'll need to achieve the ideal viewing perspective. Adjustments include 25-degrees of tilt, 3.9-inches of height, 120-degrees of swivel, and 90-degrees of pivot so you can switch from landscape to portrait mode. Unlike the NEC PA241W, the Asus PA246Q doesn't automatically change the image orientation when you pivot the panel; you'll have to go into your graphics control panel and change it manually.
When it comes to connectivity options, the PA246Q is as good as it gets. At the rear of the cabinet are DisplayPort, HDMI, DVI, and VGA video inputs as well as an upstream USB port and an earphone jack. On the left side are two downstream USB ports and a card reader slot that supports a multitude of media card formats including MS/HSMS/MSPRO/MS DUO, SD/Mini SD, MMC/RS-MMC, NAND Flash, and xD. The USB ports and card reader are conveniently located so you don't have to reach around the back of the monitor to plug in devices.
There are seven small function buttons on the lower bezel, including the power switch, that serve as hot keys for brightness and contrast adjustments and are also used to navigate through the on-screen settings menu system. One button is designated as the QuickFit button which when pressed overlays a series of grid patterns and paper and photo sizes to help you layout diagrams and view photos in real size on the screen. Grids can be displayed in centimeters or inches and you can fit pages to A4 or standard letter size. Photos can be sized using 2x2, 3x5, 4x6, 8x10, and 5x7 templates. There's also a button for selecting one of five picture preset modes, including Standard, sRGB (compatible with the sRGB color space), Adobe RGB (compatible with the Adobe RGB color space), Scenery (vivid, highly saturated colors), and Theater (warmer colors). A user mode lets you save your own custom color and luminance settings. Lastly, there's a button that lets you toggle through the various input sources.
The PA246Q offers a generous selection of picture settings. Along with the basic brightness, contrast, color temperature, saturation, and hue adjustments, users can change gamma settings and fine tune color settings with six-axis (red, green, blue, cyan, magenta, yellow) hue and saturation adjustments as well as RGB gain and RGB black level offset adjustments. Image adjustments include sharpness, focus, position, and ASCR (Asus Smart Contrast Ratio), and you can set up a picture in picture window if you want to view images from two different input sources.
The PA246Q not only offers a generous feature set, it delivers great picture quality. Colors were rich and well saturated, transitioning evenly from dark to light on the DisplayMate Color Scales test. Grayscale performance was also very good but not quite as accurate as what you get with ultra high-end monitors such as NEC's PA301W. The PA246Q reproduced light grays without a problem on the 64-Step Grayscale test but had some trouble at the low end of the scale; the darkest shade of gray was crushed and appeared black. Still, it definitely exceeded my expectations considering its sub-$500 price tag. Small text was sharp and legible down to 5.3 points (the smallest font available on the DisplayMate Scaled Fonts test).
As is the case with most IPS monitors the PA246Q offers stellar viewing angles. Color fidelity remained true when viewed from an extreme side angle as well as from the top and bottom. The screen darkens slightly when viewed from the very top looking down but not to the point that it degrades the overall image quality. The panel's 6-millisecond gray to gray pixel response does a reasonably good job of displaying moving images without a lot of ghosting or blurring, but I did notice an occasional motion artifact during my Far Cry 2 gaming test. Chances are, hardcore gamers will seek out a monitor with a faster response time anyway.
The CCFL backlit PA246Q used an average of 73 watts of power during my testing, which is relatively high compared to similar sized LED backlit monitors. In comparison, the Lenovo LS2421p ($219.99 direct, 4 stars) used only 16 watts of power, as did the Gateway FHX2402L ($229.99 list, 3 stars). The HP LA2405wg ($379 direct, 3.5 stars) used 41 watts, and the Asus ML248H ($209.99 list, 3.5 stars) used 23 watts.
Asus includes VGA, DVI, DisplayPort, and USB cables in the box, but not an HDMI cable. The monitor comes with a three year warranty that includes a guarantee of zero bright dot pixels as well as Asus's Rapid Replacement service which covers the cost of shipping during the warranty period.
The Asus PA246Q is an affordable pro-grade monitor that for the most part, performs like a more expensive model. With a feature set that includes four different video inputs, a USB hub, a highly adjustable stand, and a built-in card reader, this is one of the more versatile monitors around, and its IPS panel delivers stunning color reproduction. Despite its power hungry backlighting and lack of an auto-rotate mechanism, the PA246Q is one of the best deals around and earns our Editors' Choice for mid-range desktop displays.
COMPARISON TABLE Compare the Asus PA246Q with several other monitors side by side.
More monitor reviews: ??? Asus PA246Q ??? Sony PlayStation 3D Display ??? Lenovo LS2421p Wide ??? Viewsonic VX2753mh ??? AOC e2243FW ?? more
Rebecca Black isn't the only one who's got a lock on Friday. Although The Engadget Podcast may not have reached the zeitgeist zenith she did, we'd like to think we have more staying power. Join us...for the long run.
Host: Brian Heater, Dana Wollman, Darren Murph Producer:Trent Wolbe Music: Nightcall
[iTunes] Subscribe to the Podcast directly in iTunes (enhanced AAC). [RSS MP3] Add the Engadget Podcast feed (in MP3) to your RSS aggregator and have the show delivered automatically. [RSS AAC] Add the Engadget Podcast feed (in enhanced AAC) to your RSS aggregator. [Zune] Subscribe to the Podcast directly in the Zune Marketplace
You heard right -- Google itself has just affirmed on its own social networking branch that Android 4.0 will begin to hit GSM / UMTS (sorry, Sprint users!) Nexus S devices over the coming month, with the luckiest few to get it today. Outside of that, there's no more specific time table to be had, but if you're able to suck it down in the coming hours, definitely sound off on the improvements in comments below.
The National Institutes of Health has halted all new funding for studies using chimpanzees, humans' closest evolutionary relatives, as scientific models for humans. More »
Google recently concluded the promotion it was running on the Android Market. In honor of the Market's 10 billionth download, it was putting 10 apps on sale for almost free -- 10 cents -- every day for 10 days.
Giving away free samples is a staple of supermarket sales tactics. But what about for an app market like Google's, where the "samples" aren't store merchandise that's already bought and paid for, but new apps that are minted at will? Is it good for app developers to be paid only 7 cents (70 percent of the sale price) for each download? And what about developers participating in Amazon's "Free app of the day" promo, where the apps don't cost anything?
When high sales figures are a headache
To buy the apps people first have to visit their pages, on the Android Market website or the app on their Android smartphones (or the Amazon equivalent for both). And with developers' contact information easily accessible through their listings -- some developers even list their phone number with their apps -- that's a lot of people who can suddenly contact you. Especially if they have a problem with your app.
"Rotten to the core"
That's how indie developer ShiftyJelly, creators of the PocketCasts app for Android and iOS, described the Amazon Appstore after participating in its free app promotion. Amazon's terms said that developers would be paid 20 percent of the cost of the app for each download, but the email they received said that they'd be paid nothing, and an Amazon.com representative confirmed that that would be the case for them.
In exchange for the "highly valuable placements" of ShiftyJelly's app on the Amazon Appstore front page, the developers got "about 300 emails a day to answer over the space of a few weeks, that left us tired and burnt out." Moreover, they had to upgrade their hardware to handle the server load from people using their weather-forecasting app, and Amazon discounted it later on without their permission (and wouldn't let them remove it).
On the other hand
According to Liam Spradlin of Android Police, at least one developer said the Google promotion "went better than expected." They needed to sell 30 copies at 10 cents to beat their normal $2.99 price, but sales of their Android game, Fieldrunners, were about 70 times their normal rate. One of the developers behind another app, Paper Camera, told Android Police that "sales rates jumped nearly one thousand-fold" during the promo.
Neither set of developers mentioned an increased load of support emails, and Liam said it was "unclear" whether or not the temporary promotion would increase the apps' sales in the long run. Unlike with the Amazon promo, however, they did make money from Google's sale.
Jared Spurbeck is an open-source software enthusiast, who uses an Android phone and an Ubuntu laptop PC. He has been writing about technology and electronics since 2008.
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The nominations are in, and the poll is ready to go! The TUAW Best of 2011 awards are all about you ? the readers ? and what you think is the cream of the crop of Apple or third-party products and software. To vote, select one entry from the top nominations made by readers. We?ll be announcing the winner in just a few days. Vote early and often!
