I have a samsung galaxy pocket that is rooted, i tried installing linux ubuntu desktop but it seems that the galaxy pocket does not support loop devices. So the only solution for this would be to compile my own kernel with loop device support for galaxy pocket. If there is anyone with any idea on how i can do this or better yet just install linux ubuntu an easier way please help me out.....thank you :)
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Rumors began to swirl on Friday that UFC men's bantamweight interim champion Renan Barao was injured and out of his UFC 161 main event bout against Eddie Wineland. The UFC confirmed the news today, and promoted Dan Henderson's bout with Rashad Evans to the main event.
Both fighters are former champions who are coming off losses. Evans, who was once the UFC light heavyweight champ, loss to Antonio Rogerio Nogueira and Jon Jones in his last two fights. One-time Strikeforce light heavyweight champion Henderson lost to Lyoto Machida at UFC 157. With their fight happening in just a few weeks, the bout will be three rounds instead of the usual five for main events.
Barao's injury means that both champions of the UFC's men's bantamweight division are now injured. Dominick Cruz hasn't fought since October of 2011 due to knee injuries. If Barao can't return soon, will there be an interim interim belt?
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We're here at CTIA 2013 in Las Vegas, and although the show hasn't officially kicked off yet we had the opportunity to play with two of Otterbox's latest cases for the HTC One. At the middle and high tier of protection from Otterbox, the "Commuter" and "Defender" cases for the One are stylish but extremely functional options. The Commuter is the thinner of the two, with a two piece design that's primarily a rubber wrap-around case with a hard plastic shell that clips onto it. It doesn't add a considerable amount of bulk to the device but does add a serious amount of protection. If the Commuter isn't enough, the Defender will likely cover your device from anything you throw at it. A larger affair, the Defender has an integrated screen protector in the case, as well as extra shock protection. The end result is a case that is a touch thicker than the Commuter but considerably more rugged.
Both cases keep every function and button of the phone unobstructed -- as you would hope -- including the power button IR blaster and all microphone ports. Stick around after the break for a gallery of the two cases wrapped around an HTC One, with the thinner Commuter first then followed by the thicker and more durable Defender.
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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/uymM2-Zt-SY/story01.htm
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It's the quiet in between storms. Both BlackBerry Live and Google I/O 2013 are over, yet #TM13 and more importantly, WWDC 2013 are fast approaching. Tomorrow's a public holiday here in Canada, but I'll be working through it. And there's a bunch of reasons for that. Cue the bullet list...
And some news bites:
Photo: Mobile Nations Tango & Cash by Martin Reisch... Though I have no idea which of us is meant to be which of them...?
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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheIphoneBlog/~3/qV7fTPIxMR8/story01.htm
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WASHINGTON (AP) ? The Internal Revenue Service is feeling the sort of heat that targeted taxpayers feel from the tax agency. It's the sense that a powerful someone is breathing down your neck.
Republicans in Congress are livid with the IRS over its systematic scrutiny of conservative groups during the 2010 and 2012 elections. Democrats agree that something must be done. President Barack Obama also isn't at all happy with the tax collectors.
That kind of commonality in Washington is about as rare as a budget surplus. So expect a bumpy ride for the IRS, unloved in the best of times, as a Justice Department criminal investigation and multiple congressional inquiries try to get to the bottom of it all.
A look at the matter:
IN BRIEF
The central issue is whether IRS agents who determine whether nonprofit organizations have to pay federal income taxes played political favorites or even broke the law when they subjected tea party groups and other conservative organizations to special scrutiny.
Also foremost in the concerns of Congress: Why senior IRS officials, for many months, did not disclose what they had learned about the actions of lower-level employees despite persistent questions from Republican lawmakers and howls from aggrieved organizations.
___
WHY IT MATTERS
The IRS is expected to be pesky, even intimidating, to miscreants, but at all times politically neutral. Nonpartisanship is the coin of its realm, perhaps more so than in any other part of government.
"I will not tolerate this kind of behavior in any agency but especially in the IRS, given the power that it has and the reach that it has into all of our lives," Obama said in ousting the agency's acting chief, Steven T. Miller.
On Thursday, on the eve of House hearings at which Miller has been called to testify, the president named Daniel Werfel, a senior White House budget official, to take charge of the agency temporarily.
IRS actions in the period covering the 2010 congressional elections and the early going of the 2012 presidential campaign have tattered the perception that the agency is clean of political leanings. Whether that was also the reality remains to be discovered.
A report by the Treasury Department's top investigator for tax matters found no evidence that sheer partisanship drove the targeting. But the watchdog disclosed Friday that he is still investigating. His report faulted lax management for not stopping it sooner.
It's a sensitive time for the agency's professionalism to be in doubt because the IRS soon will loom even larger in people's lives. It's to be the enforcer of the individual mandate to carry insurance under Obama's health care law, itself an object of suspicion for many conservatives. To the right, that's insult upon injury from the left.
___
WHAT WOULD MAKE IT MATTER EVEN MORE
Any effort from top levels of the administration or political operatives to manipulate the IRS for campaign purposes would put the scandal in the realm of Nixonian skullduggery.
The public record as it is known does not show interference.
No ties to anyone outside the IRS have been discovered. At the same time, early IRS assurances that high-level people inside the agency did not know what was going on have been contradicted by evidence that the head of the agency's tax-exemption operation and later its deputy commissioner were briefed about it and did not tell Congress.
___
RED-FLAG WORDS
To qualify for exemption from federal income taxes, organizations must show they are not too political in nature to meet the standard. In the cases in question, applications that raised eyebrows were referred to a team of specialists who took a much closer look at a group's operations. That's normal.
But in early 2010, IRS agents in the Determinations Unit began paying special attention to tax-exempt applications from groups associated with the tea party or with certain words or phrases in their materials, according to the IRS inspector general's report. That's not normal.
The red-flag keywords came to include "Patriots," ''Take Back the Country" and "We the People."
That August, agents were given an explicit "be on the lookout" directive for "various local organizations in the Tea Party movement" that are seeking tax-exempt status. Such organizations saw their applications languish except when they were hit with lots of questions, some of which the IRS was not entitled to ask, such as the names of donors.
In June 2011, after the congressional elections, Lois G. Lerner, in charge of overseeing tax-exempt organizations, learned of the flagging and ordered the criteria to be changed right away, the inspector general said. The new guidance was more generic and stripped of any explicit partisan freight. But it did not last.
In January 2012, the screening was modified again, this time to watch for references to the Constitution or Bill of Rights, and for "political action type organizations involved in limiting/expanding government."
The Constitution and Bill of Rights are touchstones for liberals, too. But in modern politics, they've been appropriated as rallying cries of conservatives and libertarians. Finally, that May, such flagging ended.
Altogether, specialists reviewed a variety of potentially too-political applications, presumably covering the liberal-conservative spectrum. But fully one-third of the cases were of the tea party-patriot variety. During the height of the flagging, the inspector general says, all applications fitting the conservative-focused criteria went to the specialists while others that should have stirred concern did not.
In short, if you were with the tea party, you were guaranteed a close second look and almost certainly months more of delay. If you were leading a liberal activist group, maybe yes, maybe no.
___
ON THE RECEIVING END
"Dealing with this was like dealing with tax day every day for 2? years," says Laurence Nordvig, executive director of the Richmond Tea Party in Virginia. "Like your worst audit nightmare."
His group applied for tax-exempt status in December 2009 and finally got it in July 2012.
Tom Zawistowski applied for the tax exemption for his group, the Ohio Liberty Coalition, in June 2010 when the flagging was gathering steam. He got it in December 2012, after the presidential election.
The IRS asked him for the identity of the group's members, times and location of group activities, printouts of its website and Facebook pages, contents of speeches and the names and credentials of speakers at forums. He said the IRS also audited his personal finances and his wife's.
"The intent of this was to hurt the ability of tea party groups to function in an election year," he said.
An Associated Press analysis of 93 "tea party" or "patriot" groups found that most were shoestring operations, with only two dozen raising more than $20,000 a year.
___
FIVE-OH WHAT?
If the IRS merely rolled over and played dead when it got an application for a tax exemption, the government would be even more broke than it is and big money would have an even more pernicious grip on campaigns.
The IRS knows better than most that politically driven organizations, out to elect and defeat candidates, can masquerade as "social welfare" or other charitable entities under the tax-exempting articles of Section 501 (c) of the tax code.
Or they can align themselves with one, allowing unlimited donations to be raised and the identities of the contributors to stay secret as long as the nonprofit entities don't go too far in overt politicking.
In recent years, advocacy groups have paired their nonprofit arms with "super" political action committees, moves that took hold after a series of court rulings ? including the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United decision ? loosened the rules on money in politics.
The rulings gave rise to such pairings as the American Crossroads super PAC with its Crossroads GPS nonprofit on behalf of Republicans in the 2012 campaign, and the Priorities USA Action super PAC with its own nonprofit arm, for Obama's benefit.
Section 501 (c) (3) can be the most lucrative financially for organizations because in addition to conferring tax-exempt status, it allows donations to qualifying groups to be tax deductible.
Section 501 (c) (4) doesn't permit tax-deductible donations but gives groups more latitude to lobby and to dabble more directly in political campaigns as long as "social welfare" remains their primary mission. They can also keep their donors secret, a big benefit over more blatantly political super PACs.
It's all complex, squishy and in some ways subjective, so it might not come as a shock that the IRS would look for shortcuts such as political buzzwords and slogans when deciding what a group is really up to. But the record as yet known does not show that the scrutiny cut both ways.
In congressional testimony about the discredited IRS actions, Attorney General Eric Holder said there is good reason to take a skeptical look at some Section 501 applications but "it has to be done in a way that does not depend on the political persuasion of the group."
___
BY THE NUMBERS
The inspector general's office reviewed 296 tax-exempt applications that had been flagged as potentially too political. Of them, 108 were ultimately approved, 28 were withdrawn by the applicant, none had been rejected and 160 were still open in December 2012, some languishing for more than three years.
___
STONEWALLING?
Hearing complaints of IRS harassment from constituents, lawmakers began asking a lot of questions of the agency starting in mid-2011. They got a lot of answers ? just not answers revealing what was going on.
In multiple letters, some as long as 45 pages, as well as in meetings and congressional hearings, senior IRS officials laid out in painstaking detail the process of checking tax-exempt applications but did not disclose what they had come to learn of the flagging.
Miller, for example, was told by staff in May 2012 about the inappropriate screening but did not pass that on in communications with inquiring members of Congress or in his appearance two months later with the House panel most concerned about the reports.
Lois G. Lerner, in charge of overseeing tax-exempt organizations at the IRS, was briefed about the screening a year earlier and ordered an end to explicit tea party-type flagging. But she did not tell lawmakers about that when asked about the constituent complaints.
___
ABOUT THAT SKULLDUGGERY
A number of presidents or their operatives have tried to twist the IRS against "dissidents" or political opponents. Presidents Franklin Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower and John Kennedy are among them.
President Richard Nixon, though, surely takes the cake here.
The Senate Judiciary Committee cited his IRS manipulations, including his pursuit of those on his "enemies list," in the articles of impeachment accusing the president of high crimes and misdemeanors in the Watergate scandal and of actions "subversive of constitutional government."
Article 2, Abuse of Power, said: "He has, acting personally and through his subordinates and agents, endeavored to obtain from the Internal Revenue Service, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, confidential information contained in income tax returns for purposes not authorized by law, and to cause, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, income tax audits or other income tax investigations to be initiated or conducted in a discriminatory manner."
Nixon resigned after it became clear that a Senate impeachment trial would drive him from office.
___
Associated Press writers Stephen Braun and Stephen Ohlemacher contributed to this report.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/money-tangle-irs-tea-party-tempest-144831224.html
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![[ Back to EurekAlert! ]](http://www.eurekalert.org/images/back2e.gif){kind=small}
Public release date: 20-May-2013
Share ] Contact: Mary F. Masson
734-764-2220
University of Michigan Health System
ANN ARBOR, Mich. As high schoolers prepare for final exams, teens nationwide may be tempted to use a "study drug" -- a prescription stimulant or amphetamine -- to gain an academic edge. But a new University of Michigan poll shows only one in 100 parents of teens 13-17 years old believes that their teen has used a study drug.
Study drugs refer to stimulant medications typically prescribed for the treatment of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD); commonly prescribed medicines in this category include Adderall, Concerta, Ritalin, and Vyvanse.
Among parents of teens who have not been prescribed a stimulant medication for ADHD, just 1% said they believe their teen has used a study drug to help study or improve grades, according to the latest University of Michigan Mott Children's Hospital National Poll on Children's Health. However, recent national data from Monitoring the Future indicate that 10% of high school sophomores and 12% of high school seniors say they've used an amphetamine or stimulant medication not prescribed by their doctor.
Sometimes students without ADHD take someone else's medication, to try to stay awake and alert and try to improve their scores on exams or assignments. Taking study drugs has not been proven to improve students' grades, and it can be very dangerous to their health, says Matthew M. Davis, M.D., M.A.P.P., director of the C.S. Mott Children's Hospital National Poll on Children's Health.
"Taking these medications when they are not prescribed for you can lead to acute exhaustion, abnormal heart rhythms and even confusion and psychosis if the teens get addicted and go into withdrawal," says Davis.
"What we found in this poll is a clear mismatch between what parents believe and what their kids are reporting. But even though parents may not be recognizing these behaviors in their own kids, this poll also showed that one-half of the parents say they are very concerned about this abuse in their communities," Davis says.
White parents were most likely to say they are "very concerned" (54%), compared with black (38%) and Hispanic/Latino (37%) parents.
Despite this concern, only 27 percent of parents polled said they have talked to their teens about using study drugs. Black parents were more likely to have discussed this issue with their teens (41%), compared with white (27%) or Hispanic (17%) parents.
"If we are going to make a dent in this problem, and truly reduce the abuse of these drugs, we need parents, educators, health care professionals and all who interact with teens to be more proactive about discussing the issue," says Davis.
Over three-quarters of parents polled said they support school policies aimed at stopping abuse of study drugs in middle schools and high schools. Overall, 76% of parents said they believe schools should be required to discuss the dangers of ADHD medication abuse.
Another 79% support a policy to require students with a prescription for ADHD medications to keep their pills in a secure location such as the school nurse's officea requirement that would prohibit students from carrying medicines of this nature that could potentially be shared with, or sold to, other students.
"We know teens may be sharing drugs or spreading the word that these medications can give their grades a boost. But the bottom line is that these prescription medications are drugs, and teens who use them without a prescription are taking a serious risk with their health," Davis says.
###
Broadcast-quality video is available on request. See the video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTlcu3WWG1Q&feature=youtu.be
Full report: http://mottnpch.org/reports-surveys/one-ten-teens-using-%E2%80%9Cstudy-drugs%E2%80%9D-are-parents-paying-attention
Resources:
Monitoring the Future Study: http://www.monitoringthefuture.org//pubs/monographs/mtf-overview2012.pdf
NIDA: http://teens.drugabuse.gov/drug-facts/prescription-stimulants
Website: Check out the Poll's new website: MottNPCH.org. You can search and browse over 70 NPCH Reports, suggest topics for future polls, share your opinion in a quick poll, and view information on popular topics. The National Poll on Children's Health team welcomes feedback on the new website, including features you'd like to see added. To share feedback, e-mail NPCH@med.umich.edu.
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/mottnpch
Twitter: @MottNPCH
Purpose/Funding: The C.S. Mott Children's Hospital National Poll on Children's Health based at the Child Health Evaluation and Research Unit at the University of Michigan and funded by the Department of Pediatrics and Communicable Diseases and the University of Michigan Health System is designed to measure major health care issues and trends for U.S. children.
Data Source: This report presents findings from a nationally representative household survey conducted exclusively by GfK Custom Research, LLC GfK Custom Research, LLC (GfK), for C.S. Mott Children's Hospital via a method used in many published studies. The survey was administered in January 2013 to a randomly selected, stratified group of parents with a child age 13-17 (n=710) from GfK's web-enabled KnowledgePanel that closely resembles the U.S. population. The sample was subsequently weighted to reflect population figures from the Census Bureau. The survey completion rate was 57 percent among panel members contacted to participate. The margin of error is 1 to 5 percentage points.
Findings from the U-M C.S. Mott Children's Hospital National Poll on Children's Health do not represent the opinions of the investigators or the opinions of the University of Michigan.
[ | E-mail | Share ] ?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Public release date: 20-May-2013 Share ] Contact: Mary F. Masson
734-764-2220
University of Michigan Health System
ANN ARBOR, Mich. As high schoolers prepare for final exams, teens nationwide may be tempted to use a "study drug" -- a prescription stimulant or amphetamine -- to gain an academic edge. But a new University of Michigan poll shows only one in 100 parents of teens 13-17 years old believes that their teen has used a study drug.
Study drugs refer to stimulant medications typically prescribed for the treatment of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD); commonly prescribed medicines in this category include Adderall, Concerta, Ritalin, and Vyvanse.
Among parents of teens who have not been prescribed a stimulant medication for ADHD, just 1% said they believe their teen has used a study drug to help study or improve grades, according to the latest University of Michigan Mott Children's Hospital National Poll on Children's Health. However, recent national data from Monitoring the Future indicate that 10% of high school sophomores and 12% of high school seniors say they've used an amphetamine or stimulant medication not prescribed by their doctor.
Sometimes students without ADHD take someone else's medication, to try to stay awake and alert and try to improve their scores on exams or assignments. Taking study drugs has not been proven to improve students' grades, and it can be very dangerous to their health, says Matthew M. Davis, M.D., M.A.P.P., director of the C.S. Mott Children's Hospital National Poll on Children's Health.
"Taking these medications when they are not prescribed for you can lead to acute exhaustion, abnormal heart rhythms and even confusion and psychosis if the teens get addicted and go into withdrawal," says Davis.
"What we found in this poll is a clear mismatch between what parents believe and what their kids are reporting. But even though parents may not be recognizing these behaviors in their own kids, this poll also showed that one-half of the parents say they are very concerned about this abuse in their communities," Davis says.
White parents were most likely to say they are "very concerned" (54%), compared with black (38%) and Hispanic/Latino (37%) parents.
Despite this concern, only 27 percent of parents polled said they have talked to their teens about using study drugs. Black parents were more likely to have discussed this issue with their teens (41%), compared with white (27%) or Hispanic (17%) parents.
"If we are going to make a dent in this problem, and truly reduce the abuse of these drugs, we need parents, educators, health care professionals and all who interact with teens to be more proactive about discussing the issue," says Davis.
Over three-quarters of parents polled said they support school policies aimed at stopping abuse of study drugs in middle schools and high schools. Overall, 76% of parents said they believe schools should be required to discuss the dangers of ADHD medication abuse.
Another 79% support a policy to require students with a prescription for ADHD medications to keep their pills in a secure location such as the school nurse's officea requirement that would prohibit students from carrying medicines of this nature that could potentially be shared with, or sold to, other students.
"We know teens may be sharing drugs or spreading the word that these medications can give their grades a boost. But the bottom line is that these prescription medications are drugs, and teens who use them without a prescription are taking a serious risk with their health," Davis says.
###
Broadcast-quality video is available on request. See the video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTlcu3WWG1Q&feature=youtu.be
Full report: http://mottnpch.org/reports-surveys/one-ten-teens-using-%E2%80%9Cstudy-drugs%E2%80%9D-are-parents-paying-attention
Resources:
Monitoring the Future Study: http://www.monitoringthefuture.org//pubs/monographs/mtf-overview2012.pdf
NIDA: http://teens.drugabuse.gov/drug-facts/prescription-stimulants
Website: Check out the Poll's new website: MottNPCH.org. You can search and browse over 70 NPCH Reports, suggest topics for future polls, share your opinion in a quick poll, and view information on popular topics. The National Poll on Children's Health team welcomes feedback on the new website, including features you'd like to see added. To share feedback, e-mail NPCH@med.umich.edu.
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/mottnpch
Twitter: @MottNPCH
Purpose/Funding: The C.S. Mott Children's Hospital National Poll on Children's Health based at the Child Health Evaluation and Research Unit at the University of Michigan and funded by the Department of Pediatrics and Communicable Diseases and the University of Michigan Health System is designed to measure major health care issues and trends for U.S. children.
Data Source: This report presents findings from a nationally representative household survey conducted exclusively by GfK Custom Research, LLC GfK Custom Research, LLC (GfK), for C.S. Mott Children's Hospital via a method used in many published studies. The survey was administered in January 2013 to a randomly selected, stratified group of parents with a child age 13-17 (n=710) from GfK's web-enabled KnowledgePanel that closely resembles the U.S. population. The sample was subsequently weighted to reflect population figures from the Census Bureau. The survey completion rate was 57 percent among panel members contacted to participate. The margin of error is 1 to 5 percentage points.
Findings from the U-M C.S. Mott Children's Hospital National Poll on Children's Health do not represent the opinions of the investigators or the opinions of the University of Michigan.
[ | E-mail | Share ] ?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-05/uomh-oit052013.php
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KAIROUAN, Tunisia (AP) ? Massive numbers of Tunisian police and army surrounded Tunisia's religious center of Kairouan to prevent a conference by a radical Islamist movement that has been implicated in attacks around the country.
Security check points on the roads and patrols inside the city by some 11,000 police and soldiers prevented the ultraconservative Muslim group Ansar al-Shariah from holding its annual conference after authorities declared it a threat "to security and public order."
Police did briefly scuffle with stone throwing young men in downtown and fired tear gas to disperse them.
The leader of Ansar al-Shariah, Seifallah Ben Hassine is wanted for his involvement in a mob attack on the U.S. embassy in September and his followers have been accused of attacking art galleries, police stations and cinemas.
The robust response to the conference by security forces is unprecedented since the 2011 overthrow of President Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali, who presided over a strong police state.
The government, led by the moderate Islamist Ennahda Party, has long been accused by the opposition of being lax with attacks by ultraconservative Muslims, called salafis, on what they deem to be impious in the country.
Ansar al-Shariah's combative rhetoric, however, appears to have united the country against it. In a national dialogue conference involving unions, civil society and political parties Thursday, Ansar al-Shariah was widely condemned.
The spokesman of Ansar al-Shariah, Seifeddine Rais, was detained by authorities Sunday morning and an attempt by members to hold a rally in a lower income Tunisian suburb was also dispersed by tear gas.
Rais on Thursday said that the authorities would bear responsibility for any blood spilled if they tried to ban the conference.
Security has been high around Kairouan since Saturday, with police checking IDs and searching the cars of anyone entering the city.
Residents appeared to welcome the security and handed out roses to patrolling police, offering their encouragement.
Since the overthrow of Ben Ali in an uprising that heralded the region-wide Arab Spring, Tunisia's salafis have become increasingly aggressive about preaching their conservative version of Islam.
Last year's Ansar al-Shariah conference in Kairouan drew some 4,000 attendees and featured sword waving horse riders and martial arts displays, along with a great deal of fiery rhetoric.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/tunisia-security-blocks-salafi-conference-123040029.html
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This citizen journalism image provided by Edlib News Network, ENN, which has been authenticated based on its contents and other AP reporting, shows black smoke rising from what rebels say is a helicopter that was shot down at Abu Dhour military airbase which is besieged by the rebels, in the northern province city of Idlib, Syria, Friday May 17, 2013. Rights activists have found torture devices and other evidence of abuse in government prisons in the first Syrian city to fall to the rebels, Human Rights Watch said in a report Friday. (AP Photo/Edlib News Network ENN)
This citizen journalism image provided by Edlib News Network, ENN, which has been authenticated based on its contents and other AP reporting, shows black smoke rising from what rebels say is a helicopter that was shot down at Abu Dhour military airbase which is besieged by the rebels, in the northern province city of Idlib, Syria, Friday May 17, 2013. Rights activists have found torture devices and other evidence of abuse in government prisons in the first Syrian city to fall to the rebels, Human Rights Watch said in a report Friday. (AP Photo/Edlib News Network ENN)
BEIRUT (AP) ? Gunmen on Saturday abducted the elderly father of Syria's deputy foreign minister, the official's office said, in the latest kidnapping targeting family members of figures in President Bashar Assad's regime.
The father of Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad was seized Saturday in the village of Ghossom in the southern province of Daraa, Mekdad's office said. An official in the office said the man is in his 80s, but he did not know his name.
The abduction was also reported by Beirut-based Al-Mayadeen TV, which has several reporters in Syria and is seen as sympathetic to the regime.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but armed opposition groups in Syria have targeted senior regime officials or members of their families in the past for kidnapping or assassination in the past.
Last year, rebels carried out one of the highest-profile attacks against regime officials to date, detonating a bomb inside a high-level crisis meeting that killed four advisers of Assad, including the defense minister and the president's brother-in-law.
The uprising against Assad erupted in March 2011 and escalated into a civil war that has left tens of thousands dead and several million displaced.
Lack of unity among rebel fighters has characterized the armed conflict from the start, and there were new signs Saturday that infighting is on the rise.
Activists on Saturday reported a wave of mutual kidnappings between rival Islamic militant groups in the northern city of Aleppo after clashes killed at least four rebel fighters.
The director of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Rami Abdul-Rahman, said a coalition of rebel groups known as the Judicial Council had accused another armed opposition faction, the Ghurabaa al-Sham, of plundering factories in Aleppo's industrial neighborhood. Aleppo, Syria's largest city and a former commercial center, is split between rebel and government control.
Any internal fighting between rebels in the city would play into the hands of the regime, which is trying to tarnish the image of the opposition by saying it is dominated by extremists linked to al-Qaida network.
Aleppo, a city of 3 million that was once a bastion of support for President Bashar Assad, has been engulfed in heavy fighting since rebels launched an assault there in July and captured several neighborhoods. Over the past few weeks, regime forces have been pursuing an offensive in the city, mainly focused on pushing the rebels from around the international airport and a nearby military air base.
Abdul-Rahman said tensions among rebel factions have been rising in opposition-held areas, mostly on the eastern side of the city.
The two groups, the Judicial Council and the Ghurabaa al-Sham, clashed on Tuesday near Aleppo in fighting that left four members of the Judicial Council dead, Abldul-Rahman said. He added that the Judicial Council is now holding dozens of members of Ghurabaa al-Sham captive.
Aleppo-based activist Mohammed Saeed said Ghurabaa al-Sham withdrew its fighters from several neighborhoods, including the industrial area.
Saeed said Ghurabaa al-Sham released all Judicial Council members it was holding while the other group refused to set free Ghuarbaa al-Sham members and is still holding them.
"The situation is very tense in Aleppo," said Abdul-Rahman, who relies on a network of activists around the country.
He said that Ghurabaa al-Sham has warned it will bring some of its members from outside the city to fight against the Judicial Council if its members are not freed.
The Judicial Council is an umbrella organization that includes the Tawheed Brigade, Ahrar al-Sham and the al-Qaida-affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra ? one of the most effective forces among the mosaic of rebel brigades fighting to topple Assad in Syria's civil war.
The Observatory also reported that rebels captured several villages late Friday in the central province of Hama after weeks of fighting with government troops. It said the villages were inhabited by members of Assad's minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam.
It said the Alawite villages ? Tleisiyeh, Zaghba, Shaata and Balil ? are all on the eastern side of the central province. The Observatory said residents fled the area captured by rebels.
The uprising against Assad became an outlet for long-suppressed grievances, mostly by poor Sunnis from marginalized areas.
Earlier this month, activists reported that troops and pro-government Alawite gunmen killed more than 100 people in Sunnis areas in the coastal city of Banias and the nearby town of Bayda. The violence in Banias and Bayda bears a close resemblance to two reported mass killings last year in Houla and Qubeir, Sunni villages surrounded by Alawite towns.
Many of the rebels trying to overthrow Assad today say they want to replace his government with an Islamic state.
The Syrian National Coalition, the main umbrella opposition group, said government forces are currently besieging the towns of Halfaya and Aqrab in Hama and have shut down communications in the area.
"Civilians in those areas are now cut off from contact with the outside world, and lives are in extreme danger," the coalition said.
The Observatory and the Local Coordination Committees, another activist group, reported intense clashes around the town of Qusair near the Lebanon border. Syrian opposition groups say members of Lebanon's militant Hezbollah group are taking part in the fighting along with Assad's forces.
___
Aji reported from Damascus, Syria
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Tornado watches are already in effect until late Saturday for parts of Nebraska, Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas. And forecasters say this violent storm system could stretch into the Midwest Sunday. The Weather Channel's Kim Cunningham reports.
By Hasani Gittens, News Editor, NBC News
Middle America should prepare for a stormy start of the week as much of the Plains will be watching the skies for twisters Sunday.
There is an increasing storm and tornado threat from Minnesota, Iowa and Nebraska southward to Kansas, according to Weather Channel meteorologists ? and low pressure in the Plains states will keep things "very unsettled and stormy" as the week goes on.
On Monday, the severe storms threat moves down to North Texas and Oklahoma, through northwest Arkansas, southeast Kansas and Missouri into parts of the Upper Mississippi Valley and Great Lakes, according to the Weather Channel. Large hail and damaging winds are also possible.
By Tuesday the large? system is expected to be moving slowly to the East, from eastern Texas to the southern Great Lakes.
The storms are being generated by a dip in the jet stream combined with moisture moving north from the Gulf of Mexico, Kim Cunningham of The Weather Channel reported on NBC Nightly News (see the video above).
The danger follows a series of tornadoes that struck northern Texas on Wednesday night, leaving six people dead and dozens injured. One of the twisters was preliminarily classified EF-4 by the National Weather Service, meaning it could have had winds up to 200 miles per hour.
Overall, tornadic activity has been slow this May, typically a bad month for twisters, said the Weather Channel?s Tom Moore.
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May 18, 2013 ? Patients with treatment-resistant major depression saw dramatic improvement in their illness after treatment with ketamine, an anesthetic, according to the largest ketamine clinical trial to-date led by researchers from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. The antidepressant benefits of ketamine were seen within 24 hours, whereas traditional antidepressants can take days or weeks to demonstrate a reduction in depression.
The research will be discussed at the American Psychiatric Association meeting on May 20, 2013 at the Moscone Center in San Franscico.
Led by Dan Iosifescu, MD, Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Mount Sinai; Sanjay Mathew, MD, Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Baylor College of Medicine; and James Murrough, MD Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Mount Sinai, the research team evaluated 72 people with treatment-resistant depression -- meaning their depression has failed to respond to two or more medications -- who were administered a single intravenous infusion of ketamine for 40 minutes or an active placebo of midazolam, another type of anesthetic without antidepressant properties. Patients were interviewed after 24 hours and again after seven days. After 24 hours, the response rate was 63.8 percent in the ketamine group compared to 28 percent in the placebo group. The response to ketamine was durable after seven days, with a 45.7 percent response in the ketamine group versus 18.2 percent in the placebo group. Both drugs were well tolerated.
"Using midazolam as an active placebo allowed us to independently assess the antidepressant benefit of ketamine, excluding any anesthetic effects," said Dr. Murrough, who is first author on the new report. "Ketamine continues to show significant promise as a new treatment option for patients with severe and refractory forms of depression."
Major depression is caused by a breakdown in communication between nerve cells in the brain, a process that is controlled by chemicals called neurotransmitters. Traditional antidepressants such as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) influence the activity of the neurotransmitters serotonin and noreprenephrine to reduce depression. In these medicines, response is often significantly delayed and up to 60 percent of people do not respond to treatment, according to the U.S Department of Health and Human Services. Ketamine works differently than traditional antidepressants in that it influences the activity of the glutamine neurotransmitter to help restore the dysfunctional communication between nerve cells in the depressed brain, and much more quickly than traditional antidepressants.
Future studies are needed to investigate the longer term safety and efficacy of a course of ketamine in refractory depression. Dr. Murrough recently published a preliminary report in the journal Biological Psychiatry on the safety and efficacy of ketamine given three times weekly for two weeks in patients with treatment-resistant depression.
"We found that ketamine was safe and well tolerated and that patients who demonstrated a rapid antidepressant effect after starting ketamine were able to maintain the response throughout the course of the study," Dr. Murrough said. "Larger placebo-controlled studies will be required to more fully determine the safety and efficacy profile of ketamine in depression."
The potential of ketamine was discovered by Dennis S. Charney, MD, Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Dean of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs of The Mount Sinai Medical Center, in collaboration with John H. Krystal, MD, Chair of the Department of Psychiatry at Yale University.
"Major depression is one of the most prevalent and costly illnesses in the world, and yet currently available treatments fall far short of alleviating this burden," said Dr. Charney. "There is an urgent need for new, fast-acting therapies, and ketamine shows important potential in filling that void."
Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/most_popular/~3/2rOkTOAS-aE/130518153250.htm
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One of the more interesting projects to emerge from Evernote’s 2013 Devcup hackathon is called Postach.io, a new blogging platform which turns your Evernote notebook into a Content Management System. Input Logic, the Vancouver-based company behind the now just four-week old service has already caught the attention of local investors, as well as Evernote, who met with the team to discuss possible monetization ideas. Input Logic was founded two years ago by UI designer Shawn Adrian and programmer Gavin Vickery, with the intention of becoming a software development firm. The company bootstrapped its first app, proposal writing aid QuoteRobot, and has sustained itself with contract work over the past couple of years. The five-person team (3 full-time) has worked for clients including Nest, Michael Kors, ski resort Mt. Washington, and others, doing everything from coding to design. This year, the company stopped doing client work to focus on Postach.io instead. Adrian says that initially, neither he nor Vickery were Evernote users, having “not drank the Kool-Aid,” so to speak. But at the urging of Lance Tracey,?Full Stack partner (now investor, who just funded the company with $200K), they decided to take another look. “We started playing with it, got into it, and said ‘hey, this thing has really come a long way,’” Adrian explains. “And Gavin especially just got fully addicted to it,” he adds. Later on, when the co-founders were collaborating on documentation for a newly redesigned QuoteRobot using Evernote, a thought occurred to them: “wouldn’t it be great if we could just publish it instead?”?Vickery, too, wanted that same functionality for his own blog – he writes all his blog posts in Evernote anyway, why not just publish directly from there? So they decided to build a service that did just that. Having worked on CMS’s in the past, the team built?Postach.io to include nearly everything you would expect from a lightweight blogging system: customizable themes, RSS (Atom) feeds, built-in Disqus commenting, support for multimedia, and more. In fact, anything you can store in Evernote – images, audio, video/YouTube, etc. – will work on Postach.io, too. Currently, the half dozen themes available are?reminiscent?of sites like Svbtle or Medium, favoring clean, minimalistic design and rounded icons. Now the?plan is to extend Postach.io’s feature set even further, with special themes designed for Evernote Food and Hello app users, as well as support for social sharing, wikis, ?and community features designedSource: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/rqkvm8pUnd4/
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In this Wednesday, April 3, 2013, photo, construction is underway in Piscataway, N.J. The private Conference Board issues its April index of leading indicators on Friday, May 17, 2013. (AP Photo/Mel Evans)
In this Wednesday, April 3, 2013, photo, construction is underway in Piscataway, N.J. The private Conference Board issues its April index of leading indicators on Friday, May 17, 2013. (AP Photo/Mel Evans)
WASHINGTON (AP) ? A measure of the U.S. economy's future health rose solidly in April, buoyed by a sharp rise in applications to build homes and a better job market.
The Conference Board said Friday that its index of leading indicators increased 0.6 percent last month to a reading of 95. That followed a 0.2 percent decline in March.
The index is intended to signal economic conditions three to six months out.
Conference Board economist Ken Goldstein said the index is 3.5 percent higher at an annual rate than it was six months ago, suggesting expansion for the economy.
Goldstein said that steady job gains and a recovering housing market are driving the economy and helping offset deep federal spending cuts that threaten growth.
The index is composed of 10 forward-pointing indicators. Strength in April came from the surge in building permits, a drop in applications for unemployment benefits and a rising stock market.
Holding the index back in April: Weaker consumer confidence and a decline in the average hours worked at U.S. factories.
A separate report Friday from showed consumer confidence jumped to near a six-year high in early May. The University of Michigan's consumer sentiment index rose to 83.7, up from 76.4 in April.
Economists attributed the gain to record-high stock prices, cheaper gas and solid employment gains.
"Changes in confidence don't always filter through into changes in spending, but the omens are good," said Amna Asaf, an economist at Capital Economics.
The job market has also improved over the past six months. The economy has added an average of 208,000 jobs a month since November. That's up from only 138,000 a month in the previous six months.
Unemployment has fallen to a four-year low of 7.5 percent.
A rebound in housing, along with a limited supply of homes for sale, has lifted the construction industry.
Construction cooled off in April, as builders broke ground on fewer homes after topping the 1 million mark in March for the first time since 2008. But most of the decline was in apartment construction, which tends to vary sharply from month to month.
The most encouraging sign for the industry last month was that applications for new construction reached a five-year peak. That suggests the housing revival will be sustained.
Builders are benefiting from a sustained rebound in housing that began a year ago. Steady job growth, rock-bottom mortgage rates and rising home values have boosted demand.
The overall economy grew at an annual rate of 2.5 percent in the January-March quarter, up from a rate of just 0.4 percent in the October-December quarter. The fastest expansion in consumer spending in more than two years drove economic growth in the first quarter.
Many economists expect growth is slowing slightly in the current April-June period to around 2 percent. Still, cheaper gas prices helped consumers boost spending at retail businesses last month. Consumer spending accounts for nearly 70 percent of economic activity.
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NEW YORK (AP) ? A deadly new respiratory virus related to SARS has apparently spread from patients to health care workers in eastern Saudi Arabia, health officials said Wednesday.
The Ministry of Health in Saudi Arabia told world health officials that two health care workers became ill this month after being exposed to patients with the virus. One is critically ill.
Since September 2012, the World Health Organization has been informed of 40 confirmed cases of the virus, and 20 of the patients have died. The deaths occurred in Britain, Germany, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan.
Experts have suggested calling the new virus MERS, for Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, but officials have not signed off on that yet.
Experts are watching carefully for signs that the deadly virus can spread from person-to-person. Health officials say the virus has likely already spread between people in some circumstances, including hospital patients in France.
The new virus has caused severe respiratory disease in patients, some of them needing mechanical ventilators to help them breathe.
One of the Saudi health care workers is a 45-year-old man who is in critical condition. The other is a 43-year-old woman in stable condition. No other details about their jobs or where they work were released. Health workers were previously infected in a cluster in Jordan, though that was before the new coronavirus had been identified and before any special measures were taken to prevent its spread. That is not the case in Saudi Arabia and officials worry any new spread to health workers could suggest the virus is becoming more transmissible to people.
The new virus has been compared to SARS, an unusual pneumonia that first surfaced in China in late 2002 and erupted into a deadly international outbreak in early 2003. Spread of the virus in hospitals was a key development in the epidemic.
Ultimately, more than 8,000 cases were reported in about 30 countries, including eight people in the United States. The global tally included 774 deaths.
The SARS outbreak was declared contained by the summer of 2003, thanks to such measures as quarantines, hospital isolation of suspected cases, travel restrictions and the screening of airline passengers.
The WHO is currently not recommending any travel restrictions or special screening at airports or border crossings. Officials worry it will flare into an outbreak as big or worse. The new virus and SARS are both coronaviruses, a germ family that includes some cold viruses.
The new virus is distinct from SARS, but health officials worry it has potential to flare into a SARS-like international outbreak. But many questions remain about how it is spread, where it originated, and how deadly it truly is.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/saudi-health-workers-sickened-sars-virus-220220325.html
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Bob Woodward compared Benghazi to Watergate during a Friday morning appearance on MSNBC?s ?Morning Joe.?
The famous Washington Post reporter and former antagonist of President Richard Nixon said the US government?s editing of talking points used by public officials in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks in Benghazi, Libya, is ?a very serious issue.?
?I would not dismiss Benghazi,? Mr. Woodward said.
Woodward?s own main talking point was that he believed there are similarities between the process used to produce the Benghazi talking points and Nixon?s release of edited transcripts of the White House tapes.
RECOMMENDED: War with Iran? 5 ways events overseas could shape Obama's second term.
Citing the lengthy e-mail chain detailing the production of the talking points, released by the Obama administration earlier this week, the Watergate press hero said that in the wake of the Libyan tragedy ?everyone in the government is saying, ?Oh, let?s not tell the public that terrorists were involved, people connected to Al Qaeda. Let?s not tell the public that there were warnings.? ?
Forty years ago, Nixon went line by line through his tape transcripts and made his own edits.
?He personally went through them and said, ?Let?s not tell this, let?s not show this,? ? said Woodward on ?Morning Joe."
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Nixon, of course, was trying to deflate the increasing public and congressional pressure for him to release the tapes themselves. He wasn?t successful. The tapes revealed the extent of his involvement with the Watergate break-in and subsequent cover up.
As to Benghazi, Woodward concluded that the edits ?show the hydraulic pressure that was in the system not to tell the truth.?
Is Woodward right to make this comparison? After all, he is the media?s official arbiter of all things Watergate, and his words here carry special weight.
Well, it?s certainly possible that he?s hit upon the reason the talking points got changed around. But having read the 100 pages of e-mails on the editing process ourselves, we?d say it?s also possible that he?s jumping to conclusions. For at least some of the officials involved in the process, the reason to take out references to terrorists and Al Qaeda was not to hide the truth, but because they did not know what the truth was.
For instance, early in the editing process Stephen Preston, the CIA?s general counsel, e-mailed talking-point participants that ?in light of the criminal investigation, we are not to generate statements with statements as to who did this, etc. ? even internally, not to mention for public release.?
And the scrubbed ?warnings? Woodward referred to were fairly vague references to past CIA internal statements. The Post journalist may be right that the public should have heard about them. State Department officials, though, were transparently annoyed that the spy agency was trying to cover its rear end at their expense.
Look, things don?t have to be as bad as Watergate to be important malfeasance. Political scientist Jonathan Bernstein made that point earlier this week on his A Plain Blog About Politics.
But loosely comparing current scandals with Watergate is to forget the full extent of the Nixon-era scandal, wrote Mr. Bernstein in a post titled, ?You Call That a Cover-Up??
In Watergate the cover-up was essentially personally directed by the president, overseen by the White House chief of staff, and run by the White House counsel, Bernstein writes. They concocted a false story, destroyed important evidence, and raised hush money used to attempt to buy the silence of underlings who were facing jail time.
Oh, and the president of the United States ordered the CIA to falsely tell the FBI that national security was involved in the Watergate mess, so the FBI needed to pull back its investigation.
By the way, the Watergate hearings began 40 years ago on this date. Bernstein has been writing a fascinating series of pieces outlining the unfolding of the Watergate scandal day by day, as if it were occurring in real time. You can read that to catch up on the bad old days and decide if today compares.
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Source: http://news.yahoo.com/bob-woodward-compares-benghazi-watergate-153412076.html
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May 15, 2013 ? A comprehensive analysis of peer-reviewed articles on the topic of global warming and climate change has revealed an overwhelming consensus among scientists that recent warming is human-caused.
The study is the most comprehensive yet and identified 4000 summaries, otherwise known as abstracts, from papers published in the past 21 years that stated a position on the cause of recent global warming -- 97 per cent of these endorsed the consensus that we are seeing human-made, or anthropogenic, global warming (AGW)
Led by John Cook at the University of Queensland, the study has been published 16 May, in IOP Publishing's journal Environmental Research Letters.
The study went one step further, asking the authors of these papers to rate their entire paper using the same criteria. Over 2000 papers were rated and among those that discussed the cause of recent global warming, 97 per cent endorsed the consensus that it is caused by humans.
The findings are in stark contrast to the public's position on global warming; a 2012 poll* revealed that more than half of Americans either disagree, or are unaware, that scientists overwhelmingly agree that Earth is warming because of human activity.
John Cook said: "Our findings prove that there is a strong scientific agreement about the cause of climate change, despite public perceptions to the contrary.
"There is a gaping chasm between the actual consensus and the public perception. It's staggering given the evidence for consensus that less than half of the general public think scientists agree that humans are causing global warming.
"This is significant because when people understand that scientists agree on global warming, they're more likely to support policies that take action on it."
In March 2012, the researchers used the ISI Web of Science database to search for peer-reviewed academic articles published between 1991 and 2011 using two topic searches: "global warming" and "global climate change."
After limiting the selection to peer-reviewed climate science, the study considered 11 994 papers written by 29 083 authors in 1980 different scientific journals.
The abstracts from these papers were randomly distributed between a team of 24 volunteers recruited through the "myth-busting" website? skepticalscience.com, who used set criteria to determine the level to which the abstracts endorsed that humans are the primary cause of global warming. Each abstract was analyzed by two independent, anonymous raters.
From the 11,994 papers, 32.6 per cent endorsed AGW, 66.4 per cent stated no position on AGW, 0.7 per cent rejected AGW and in 0.3 per cent of papers, the authors said the cause of global warming was uncertain.
Co-author of the study Mark Richardson, from the University of Reading, said: "We want our scientists to answer questions for us, and there are lots of exciting questions in climate science. One of them is: are we causing global warming? We found over 4000 studies written by 10 000 scientists that stated a position on this, and 97 per cent said that recent warming is mostly man made."
*http://www.pewresearch.org/2013/04/02/climate-change-key-data-points-from-pew-research/
Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/LZYOoMnialg/130515203048.htm
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May 15, 2013 ? New hardware could lead to wireless devices that identify and exploit unused transmission frequencies, using radio spectrum much more efficiently.
The way in which radio spectrum is currently allocated to different wireless technologies can lead to gross inefficiencies. In some regions, for instance, the frequencies used by cellphones can be desperately congested, while large swaths of the broadcast-television spectrum stand idle.
One solution to that problem is the 15-year-old idea of "cognitive radio," in which wireless devices would scan their environments for vacant frequencies and use these for transmissions. Different proposals for cognitive radio place different emphases on hardware and software, but the chief component of many hardware approaches is a bank of filters that can isolate any frequency in a wide band.
Researchers at MIT's Microsystems Technology Laboratory (MTL) have developed a new method for manufacturing such filters that should improve their performance while enabling 14 times as many of them to be crammed on a single chip. That's a vital consideration in handheld devices where space is tight. But just as important, the new method uses techniques already common in the production of signal-processing chips, so it should be easy for manufacturers to adopt.
There are two main approaches to hardware-based radio-signal filtration: one is to perform the filtration electronically; the other is to convert the radio signal to an acoustic signal -- a physical vibration -- and then convert it back to an electrical signal. In work to be presented in June at the International Conference on Solid-State Sensors, Actuators and Microsystems, Dana Weinstein, the Steve and Renee Finn Career Development Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and Laura Popa, a graduate student in physics, adopted the second approach.
Resonant ideas
Both types of filtration use devices called resonators, and acoustic resonators have a couple of clear advantages over electronic ones. One is that their filtration is more precise.
"If I pluck a guitar string -- that's the easiest resonator to think of -- it's going to resonate at some frequency, and it's going to die down due to losses," Weinstein explains. "That loss is related to, basically, energy leaked away from that resonance mode into all other frequencies. Less loss means better frequency selectivity, and mechanical acoustic resonators have less loss than electrical resonators."
Acoustic resonators' other advantage is that, in principle, they can be packed more densely than electrical-filtration circuits. "Acoustic wavelengths are much smaller than electromagnetic wavelengths," Weinstein says. "So for a given frequency, my mechanical resonator is going to be much smaller."
But in practice, the number of acoustic resonators in a filtration bank has been limited. The heart of any device that converts electrical signals to mechanical vibrations, or vice versa, is a capacitor, which can be thought of as two parallel metal plates separated by a small distance.
"The capacitors change the impedance" -- a measure of the ease with which a wave propagates -- "that the antenna sees, so you may have unwanted reflections back into the antenna," Weinstein says. "Each capacitor from each filter is going to affect the antenna, and that's no good. It means I can only have so many filters, and therefore so many frequencies that I can separate my signal into."
Another problem with acoustic resonators is that turning them on or off -- a necessary step in the isolation of a particular transmission frequency -- requires giving each resonator its own electrical switch. Traditionally, an incoming radio-frequency signal has had to pass through that switch before reaching the resonator, suffering some loss of quality in the process.
Switching channels
Weinstein and Popa solve both these problems at a stroke. Moreover, they do it by adapting a technology already common in wireless devices: a gallium nitride transistor.
Almost all commercial transistors use semiconductors: materials, like gallium nitride, that can be switched between a conductive and a nonconductive state by the application of a voltage. In Weinstein and Popa's new resonator, the lower "plate" of the capacitor is in fact a gallium nitride channel in its conductive state.
Switching that channel to its nonconductive state is like removing the lower plate of the capacitor, which drastically reduces the capacitors' effect on the quality of the radio signal. In experiments, the MTL researchers found that their resonators had only one-fourteenth the "capacitive load" of conventional resonators. "The radio can now afford to have 14 times as many filters attached to the antenna," Weinstein says, "so we can span more frequencies."
Switching the channel to its nonconductive state also turns the resonator off, so the researchers' new design requires no additional switch in the path of the incoming signal, improving signal quality.
Finally, the new resonator uses only materials already found in the gallium arsenide transistors common in wireless devices, so mass-producing it should require no major modifications of existing manufacturing processes.
Commercial adoption of cognitive radio has been slow for a number of reasons. "Part of it is being able to get the frequency-agile components and do it in a cost-effective manner," says Thomas Kazior, a principal engineering fellow at Raytheon. "Plus the size constraint: Filters tend to be big to begin with, and banks of tunable filters just make things even bigger."
The MTL researchers' work could help with both problems, Kazior says. "We're talking about making filters that are directly integrated onto, say, a receiver chip, because the little resonator devices are literally the size of a transistor," he says. "These are all on a tiny scale."
"They can help with the cost problem because these resonator-type structures almost come for free," Kazior adds. "Building them is part of the semiconductor fabrication process, using pretty much the existing fabrication steps that you're using to build the transistor and the rest of the circuits. You just may need to add one, or two at the most, additional steps -- out of 100 or more steps."
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