LIMA, Peru (AP) ? Teenagers throughout Latin America have long looked north for pop music inspiration. Now the East is rising, with a large and enthusiastic cult of fans in some countries following the K-pop music from Korea.
It's a movement especially strong in Peru and Chile, and it goes far beyond Psy and "Gangnam Style."
Some 13,000 fans attended an April concert in Lima by the group Super Junior. Another group, Big Bang, drew 14,000 in November. They've drawn similar crowds in neighboring Chile.
Hundreds of fans such as Araceli Galan gather each week in a downtown park in Lima to dance to the energetic music. Some dress up as Korean comic book characters.
"I've liked K-pop since I was 10," said Galan, now a 16-year-old student at a local university. "I learned everything from the Internet because here in Peru you don't find much on radio or television."
She's amassed a collection of posters, bracelets, T-shirts and records of her favorite, Kim Hyun Joong, who was met by thousands of fans when he arrived at the airport in Peru's capital in February.
"Although you won't believe it, in Peru the K-pop groups are starting to be more popular than Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga or Demi Lovato," said Diana Rodriguez, who is capitalizing on the trend by organizing Korean dance contests throughout Peru.
While there's little hard data on that, there's no questioning the fervor of the fans who turn up at Ramon Castilla Park each Saturday and emulate the dances of K-pop bands.
"We start at 10 in the morning and we stay until 6 in the afternoon," Galan said.
A bus trip away is the small Arenales shopping center where entire floors are dedicated to South Korean music, clothes and food.
"I like the 'sujebi' soup and another dish that combines a sweet and salty flavor that I can't remember the name of," Galan said.
Some try to solve the language problem by having the songs translated into Spanish and posting them on the Internet. "The lyrics are pretty. It's not as eroticized as reggaeton. It's more romantic," said Pamela Diaz, a 26-year-old fan.
"It's made me want to learn Korean," said her 14-year-old sister, Sabrina.
The trend has surprised Peruvian parents, just as the onslaught of rock-and-roll once alarmed an earlier generation.
"My father listens to rock in English; he doesn't like K-pop at all," Galan said. "He tells me, 'Why do you listen to that music if you don't know Korean?' And I tell him that he doesn't know how to speak English either. Music you only need to feel."
The third Iron Man could have been one of two movies. It could have gone on a light and self-referential victory lap of the Ocean?s Thirteen variety. Or it could have decided that after two outings?one great, the other basically good enough?we had enough foundation with the characters to really dig in. Either might have worked, but it tried to be both. And didn't quite pull it off.
Some spoilers ahead, obviously.
Let's just make one thing clear: Iron Man 3 is incredibly entertaining. It knows exactly the beats it wants to hit, and generally, crams in all the raw materials of a genuine action opus. But it never quite builds up to itself. Too many of its parts aren't connected to anything; many plot points seem to have been discarded entirely (there's a whole excursion to Tennessee that leaves you feeling like 20 minutes is missing), while others are brought up, and only returned to once, briefly, as an afterthought, in the final act or epilogue. It has the effect of making the movie seem somehow both too long and in a hurry.
Some of those pacing changes might stem from who's behind the camera; while the first two Iron Man movies were directed by John Favreau, Iron Man 3 has Shane Black at the helm. Black made his name writing action movies like the Lethal Weapon series and Last Action Hero, and his impact can be felt in not just the structure but also the tone. There?s noticeable shift in how the movie?s humor works, even when it?s telling the same jokes as the first two. It?s a different movie, and in more ways than just, ?Shane Black writes haha-funny.?
The plot of this Iron Man will be vaguely familiar to anyone who kept up with the "Extremis" or Ezekiel Stane storylines from the comics; Tony has to face down an international terrorist threat in the form of a group using a highly volatile biological injections to bomb the world.
The charm of the first two Iron Man movies (and the first more than the second) is that they were working on their own schedule. They were action movies, for sure, but part of what made them work is that they were really telling relatively small stories?by superhero standards?on a grand and explode-y scale. Look back at those plots. Not much happens, really, but they moved so methodically from scene to scene that you always knew what was happening, and why. Here, you often get the sense that the action moves from scene to scene because Shane Black wrote a good joke for Tony?s workshop, and hey, shouldn?t we have an early scene in there anyway?
To Black's credit, this doesn't amount to much of a negative. Iron Man 3 is still fun.
The performances are what you expect from the cast by now. Robert Downey Jr. totally, absolutely, symbiotically is Tony Stark, and two hours of him chewing on scenery as the character would be more than enough reason see this movie. The supporting cast is on point, as well; while some scenes that start out with a very ?I?m getting too old for this shit? vibe, Don Cheadle and Gwyneth Paltrow and others actually manage to achieve genuine emotion and affection before the film dips back into schtick.
And oh, what schtick there is. While the first two films largely let Downey quip his way through scenes, this one takes out whole blocks to tell one joke, which itself is often not much more than a riff on jokes from the first two movies. Iron Man 3 is at its best, though, when it?s zipping around, streamlined, sprinkling zingers through its actually fairly compelling plot instead of slamming on the breaks for a punchline.
There?s smart here, too. At the very least, the movie has an intelligent take on the modern movie bad guy. Ben Kingsley as the Mandarin is totally convincing as a global terrorist, but we see so little of him through the first two-thirds of the film that by the time we get real time with Kingsley?who, again, is a delight?he feels secondary. The real shame, though, is that he and Guy Pearce, the other villain, never really has a chance to step into what should be meaty role.
One of the reasons that the first film worked so well was that the actual tension was between Tony Stark and his past, not some random drummed-up bad guy; the actual villain plot was didn't matter nearly as much as Stark's internal struggles. IM2 didn?t pull quite the same trick, but it gave Mickey Rourke plenty of time to do nothing but sit in a room and build his character, to help make us care. Here, despite a clever twist, the villains never seem driven by much more than wanting money or power. That's fine, but it's also stale in a way that Iron Man shouldn't be.
Ultimately, Iron Man 3 amounts to a very good buddy copy movie with excellent?but not awe-inspiring?visuals. The stakes and even the location seem off from what you?re used to from the series. The last scenes from the first movies had plenty of problems, but they were basically everyday conflicts (a corporate power struggle, an old business rivalry) played out on a gigantic and futuristic stage. It gave them meaning, even if the action mostly fell flat. Here, you?ve got a grand plot (Look, it?s the President!), but the principles of the infinitely better staged action are empty suits and faceless superpowered grunts. The movie is much more concerned with its cast as humans than its predecessors, especially in the fight scenes, but somehow loses track of their humanity in the process. Even when it builds to its emotional kicker in the final scene?a riff lifted straight from a Lethal Weapon final act, mind you?Iron Man 3 doesn?t stop to take a beat to let it set in. It?s just right back to robot fights.
That final scene, teased in the trailers with every Iron Man suit in existence showing up on command, serves as a pretty good glance at the film as a whole. Fun, elaborately and expertly choreographed, with all the objectively exciting bits?in this case, all that armor?added to excess, but adding up to something that's ultimately disposable.
May 1 (Reuters) - Post position for Saturday's 139th Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs after Wednesday's draw (listed as barrier, HORSE, jockey, trainer) 1. BLACK ONYX, Joe Bravo, Kelly Breen 2. OXBOW, Gary Stevens, D. Wayne Lukas 3. REVOLUTIONARY, Calvin Borel, Todd Pletcher 4. GOLDEN SOUL, Robby Albarado, Dallas Stewart 5. NORMANDY INVASION, Javier Castellano, Chad Brown 6. MYLUTE, Rosie Napravnik, Tom Amoss 7. GIANT FINISH, Jose Espinoza, Tony Dutrow 8. GOLDENCENTS, Kevin Krigger, Doug O'Neill 9. OVERANALYZE, Rafael Bejarano, Todd Pletcher 10. PALACE MALICE, Mike Smith, Todd Pletcher 11. ...
MADISON, Wis. (AP) ? Travelers contributed $16.8 billion to Wisconsin's economy last year, up 5 percent from the year before, according to a state tourism report released Friday.
The Wisconsin Department of Tourism said direct spending on food, lodging, transportation and other services accounted for $10.4 billion. Lodging was the biggest money-maker in 2012, accounting for 26 percent of tourists' spending. Food and beverages came in second at 25 percent.
The report also said tourism supported about 184,000 Wisconsin jobs last year, or 7.8 percent of employment. Gov. Scott Walker proposed increasing funding to promote tourism by 1.4 percent, or about $500,000, over the next two years.
Most tourists in Wisconsin were from the U.S., according to the report. Local tourism officials said many came from the Midwest during spring and fall seasons.
About 95 percent of more than two million tourists who came to Door County last year were from nearby states such as Minnesota and Illinois, said Jack Moneypenny, CEO of the Door County Visitor Bureau.
Most Door County tourists were middle-aged married couples, Moneypenny said, who came for activities such as hiking, sightseeing, performing and visual arts display ? or simply walking along the state's longest shoreline of more than 300 miles.
Moneypenny said tourists spent almost $290 million in the county last year, increasing 6.6 percent from 2011 and making it seventh in Wisconsin. He said the bureau is beefing up marketing efforts this year, including plans to run three TV ads in Chicago, Milwaukee and Fox Valley areas, a radio commercial in Madison, and continue sending electronic newsletters.
Only 6 percent of visitors came to Wisconsin from other nations, the report said, but Lake Geneva ? a small city in Walworth County ? saw an increase in the number of international guests, said the area's commerce chamber president, George Henerly.
Henerly said many international visitors came straight up Lake Geneva with their relatives in Chicago, who referred them to the pure Midwest experience the area can offer, including boating, picnic at the lake, more than 100 boutique restaurants at downtown, and numerous full-service resorts.
"They would park their cars, get a bike, relax a little bit and then ride on the boats." Henerly said.
Still, Hernely said about 90 percent of the one million visitors came from areas within two hours of driving. They brought in $455 million in direct sales to the Walworth County.
Henerly said the county also saw more young visitors, probably due to its proximity to metropolitan areas. He said they plan to upgrade their parking services in downtown and near the lake in addition to focusing on promotions.
New National Inventors Hall of Fame inductees received vital NSF supportPublic release date: 2-May-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Bobbie Mixon bmixon@nsf.gov 703-292-8070 National Science Foundation
Wireless communication, plasma display and iris recognition helped by National Science Foundation
Today, Andrew Viterbi, Donald Bitzer and John Daugman will be among 17 honorees inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame at the United States Patent and Trademark Office headquarters in Alexandria, Va. The honor and their accomplishments are in part a testimony to the power of funding by the National Science Foundation.
Viterbi, an electrical engineer and cofounder of wireless technology giant Qualcomm, used NSF support to develop an important wireless communication technique and push for its commercialization. Bitzer, his co-inductee, used NSF support to drive the adoption of a novel system of computer-based learning that ultimately led to wide acceptance of plasma displays. Daugman used his NSF support to study basic, theoretical questions involving computer vision that later applied to his invention of iris recognition.
"The technologies created by these highly innovative people are proof positive that NSF is where discoveries begin and that those discoveries often result in useful products and processes that benefit people all over the world," said Pramod Khargonekar, assistant director of NSF's Engineering Directorate, which funded research conducted by Viterbi.
In 1987, Viterbi received the first of two NSF Small Business Innovation Research awards to further develop Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA), a technology used in wireless communication throughout the world. CDMA is a digital technique that allows multiple users to communicate with cell phones, satellites and radios on the same physical channel through the sharing of bandwidth or a band of frequencies.
The award, granted two years after Qualcomm started, and at a time when the company had only 35 employees--it now has more than 16,500 employees in 157 locations worldwide--was a major step in Qualcomm's growth and the eventual acceptance of digital CDMA technology as the commercial standard for cellular telephones. CDMA previously had been used successfully by the military in the early 1950s.
Viterbi, who in 1967 had published research that revolutionized aspects of digital communication, received a second NSF SBIR award in 1989. Together, the two awards totaled more than $265,000. Qualcomm generated $19 billion in revenues in 2012.
Bitzer used his NSF support to broaden use of the first computer system to offer high-quality, computer-based education that was later coupled with plasma display technology. He, along with colleagues at the University of Illinois in the early 1960s, created PLATO, the first computer system to combine graphics and touch-sensitive screens to provide free, computer-assisted instruction to university students and local schools.
This was a novel idea at the time, seen as a way of teaching the many new students who were enrolling in U.S. colleges and universities. The increase in enrollment was in part a result of the G.I. Bill, which offered military veterans cash payments for tuition and living expenses to attend college.
Once the computer scientists were convinced that PLATO, more formally known as Programmed Logic for Automated Teaching Operations, would work, Bitzer and colleagues then pursued a belief that it was important for researchers and students to become better trained in the concepts of parallel processing on which the system operated. They submitted a grant proposal to NSF and in 1967 received funding that allowed them to grow the University of Illinois' now highly-regarded Computer-based Education Research Laboratory (CERL), which had been formally established in 1966.
From 1968 through 1974, CERL received 11 awards totaling about $4.5 million, most of them for making PLATO available for use nationally and internationally. Bitzer's NSF awards were funded by the former Office of Computing Activities, which served as a precursor to NSF's Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE).
With NSF support, CERL engaged in development and research of computer-based education that ultimately led to PLATO computer systems comprising several thousand concurrently-connected terminals worldwide on nearly a dozen different networked mainframe computers by the late 1970s.
In 1972, a new display was needed for PLATO because traditional displays flickered and made users eye-weary, had no inherent memory and lacked high brightness and contrast. So Bitzer and his colleagues, Robert Willson and Gene Slottow, incorporated another of their inventions called an orange plasma display--a forerunner of today's plasma televisions.
It was a major innovation that combined memory and bitmapped graphics into one display. Plasma display is also the invention for which Bitzer and his colleagues will be honored by the National Inventors Hall of Fame.
Some 50 years later, PLATO and the materials that NSF helped develop are still in use by educators around the world. The system's longevity shouldn't surprise anyone. After all, PLATO and CERL researchers helped establish important online concepts, such as message boards, e-mail, chat rooms, instant messaging, multi-player games and remote screen sharing, that are highly beneficial to commercial industries.
Physicist John Daugman received an NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award in 1988 that supported his research at Harvard University in computer vision and in neural computing. His research on using biological strategies in computational vision laid the foundation for significant breakthroughs in pattern recognition, particularly iris recognition.
Iris recognition uses mathematical pattern-recognition techniques developed by Daugman to automatically identify individuals based on the complex and random patterns visible, from some distance, in their irises--the colored area that surrounds the pupil of a person's eye.
Daugman's award supported his research on mathematical algorithms for image analysis and encoding using wavelets, which are the basis of all of today's commercially available iris recognition systems.
These systems are used by millions of people in countries around the world for a variety of security and identification purposes. In addition, some national ID systems are based on this technology.
"The impact of these innovations demonstrates the economic and societal benefits of NSF's investments in fundamental research," said NSF Assistant Director for Computer and Information Science and Engineering Farnam Jahanian.
###
-NSF-
[ | 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.
New National Inventors Hall of Fame inductees received vital NSF supportPublic release date: 2-May-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Bobbie Mixon bmixon@nsf.gov 703-292-8070 National Science Foundation
Wireless communication, plasma display and iris recognition helped by National Science Foundation
Today, Andrew Viterbi, Donald Bitzer and John Daugman will be among 17 honorees inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame at the United States Patent and Trademark Office headquarters in Alexandria, Va. The honor and their accomplishments are in part a testimony to the power of funding by the National Science Foundation.
Viterbi, an electrical engineer and cofounder of wireless technology giant Qualcomm, used NSF support to develop an important wireless communication technique and push for its commercialization. Bitzer, his co-inductee, used NSF support to drive the adoption of a novel system of computer-based learning that ultimately led to wide acceptance of plasma displays. Daugman used his NSF support to study basic, theoretical questions involving computer vision that later applied to his invention of iris recognition.
"The technologies created by these highly innovative people are proof positive that NSF is where discoveries begin and that those discoveries often result in useful products and processes that benefit people all over the world," said Pramod Khargonekar, assistant director of NSF's Engineering Directorate, which funded research conducted by Viterbi.
In 1987, Viterbi received the first of two NSF Small Business Innovation Research awards to further develop Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA), a technology used in wireless communication throughout the world. CDMA is a digital technique that allows multiple users to communicate with cell phones, satellites and radios on the same physical channel through the sharing of bandwidth or a band of frequencies.
The award, granted two years after Qualcomm started, and at a time when the company had only 35 employees--it now has more than 16,500 employees in 157 locations worldwide--was a major step in Qualcomm's growth and the eventual acceptance of digital CDMA technology as the commercial standard for cellular telephones. CDMA previously had been used successfully by the military in the early 1950s.
Viterbi, who in 1967 had published research that revolutionized aspects of digital communication, received a second NSF SBIR award in 1989. Together, the two awards totaled more than $265,000. Qualcomm generated $19 billion in revenues in 2012.
Bitzer used his NSF support to broaden use of the first computer system to offer high-quality, computer-based education that was later coupled with plasma display technology. He, along with colleagues at the University of Illinois in the early 1960s, created PLATO, the first computer system to combine graphics and touch-sensitive screens to provide free, computer-assisted instruction to university students and local schools.
This was a novel idea at the time, seen as a way of teaching the many new students who were enrolling in U.S. colleges and universities. The increase in enrollment was in part a result of the G.I. Bill, which offered military veterans cash payments for tuition and living expenses to attend college.
Once the computer scientists were convinced that PLATO, more formally known as Programmed Logic for Automated Teaching Operations, would work, Bitzer and colleagues then pursued a belief that it was important for researchers and students to become better trained in the concepts of parallel processing on which the system operated. They submitted a grant proposal to NSF and in 1967 received funding that allowed them to grow the University of Illinois' now highly-regarded Computer-based Education Research Laboratory (CERL), which had been formally established in 1966.
From 1968 through 1974, CERL received 11 awards totaling about $4.5 million, most of them for making PLATO available for use nationally and internationally. Bitzer's NSF awards were funded by the former Office of Computing Activities, which served as a precursor to NSF's Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE).
With NSF support, CERL engaged in development and research of computer-based education that ultimately led to PLATO computer systems comprising several thousand concurrently-connected terminals worldwide on nearly a dozen different networked mainframe computers by the late 1970s.
In 1972, a new display was needed for PLATO because traditional displays flickered and made users eye-weary, had no inherent memory and lacked high brightness and contrast. So Bitzer and his colleagues, Robert Willson and Gene Slottow, incorporated another of their inventions called an orange plasma display--a forerunner of today's plasma televisions.
It was a major innovation that combined memory and bitmapped graphics into one display. Plasma display is also the invention for which Bitzer and his colleagues will be honored by the National Inventors Hall of Fame.
Some 50 years later, PLATO and the materials that NSF helped develop are still in use by educators around the world. The system's longevity shouldn't surprise anyone. After all, PLATO and CERL researchers helped establish important online concepts, such as message boards, e-mail, chat rooms, instant messaging, multi-player games and remote screen sharing, that are highly beneficial to commercial industries.
Physicist John Daugman received an NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award in 1988 that supported his research at Harvard University in computer vision and in neural computing. His research on using biological strategies in computational vision laid the foundation for significant breakthroughs in pattern recognition, particularly iris recognition.
Iris recognition uses mathematical pattern-recognition techniques developed by Daugman to automatically identify individuals based on the complex and random patterns visible, from some distance, in their irises--the colored area that surrounds the pupil of a person's eye.
Daugman's award supported his research on mathematical algorithms for image analysis and encoding using wavelets, which are the basis of all of today's commercially available iris recognition systems.
These systems are used by millions of people in countries around the world for a variety of security and identification purposes. In addition, some national ID systems are based on this technology.
"The impact of these innovations demonstrates the economic and societal benefits of NSF's investments in fundamental research," said NSF Assistant Director for Computer and Information Science and Engineering Farnam Jahanian.
###
-NSF-
[ | 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.
SEIBERSDORF, Austria (Reuters) - The self-styled "Sherlock Holmeses" of the U.N. nuclear watchdog, now seeking access to a major Iranian base, say they have the capability to find tiny traces of atomic material at a site even if a country were to try to cover it up.
In talks later this month, the International Atomic Energy Agency will once again press Tehran to allow its inspectors to visit Iran's sprawling Parchin military complex. That would enable them to bring back swab samples for thorough checks at the IAEA's high-tech laboratory near Vienna.
Western diplomats have accused Iran of trying to cleanse the Parchin site of possible signs of tests relevant for the development of nuclear weapons, casting doubt on whether U.N. investigators would discover anything even if they could go.
Iran says Parchin, located south-east of the capital Tehran, is a conventional army base. It dismisses allegations that it has carried out atomic bomb research and says its disputed nuclear program is for energy and other peaceful aims only.
Experts say that while it may now be difficult to find any evidence, it would still be possible to locate traces of nuclear materials with equipment that can study particles 10,000 times smaller than a grain of sand.
Tell-tale particles could not be removed completely from a facility where uranium was used, said Stephan Vogt, a senior IAEA official, who emphasized that he was speaking generally and not specifically about Iran or Parchin.
"You cannot get rid of them by cleaning, you cannot dilute them to the extent that we will not be able to pick them up. It is just a matter of time," Vogt, who heads the IAEA's Environmental Sample Laboratory, said.
"We won't find it maybe the first time we go there," he said. But, "the more often we go, the higher the probability that we will pick up (traces) in some corner, at some table, in some plumbing".
Former chief IAEA inspector Olli Heinonen said any attempt by Iran to purge Parchin of clues would make the agency's task considerably harder, but "complete sanitization is very difficult to achieve if nuclear materials were actually used".
Like others at the IAEA's Seibersdorf laboratory complex outside the Austrian capital, Vogt was not authorized to discuss Iran, Syria or any other specific cases which have made the agency a key player in international nuclear diplomacy.
But he made clear his confidence in the sophisticated techniques at the scientists' disposal, including a new 3.8 million euro ($5 million) instrument to study tiny particles.
NUCLEAR "SHERLOCK HOLMESES"
Likening the IAEA's investigative work to that of fictional detective Sherlock Holmes, Vogt said: "You are running around, looking for the right spot to sample and then you look for microscopic particles, they can tell you stories."
Installed in a purpose-built building, the Large Geometry Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometer can analyze 100-150 samples per year - up from 30-40 previously - collected around the world by inspectors using small pieces of cotton on surfaces.
"We have a much larger magnifying glass, we see much smaller particles," Vogt said, showing the machine, which occupies a room of its own. It "opens brand new doors into what we can see and what we can interpret."
The Seibersdorf facility gained a more prominent verification role in the 1990s after the first Gulf War when the IAEA was given wider powers to detect undeclared activity following the discovery of Iraq's clandestine nuclear program.
Iraq shut down its nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs under orders from the United Nations. Suspicions that it was not cooperating with investigators were used by the United States and Britain to justify their invasion in 2003.
The IAEA has shown it can find particles even when a country has worked hard to hide them. It picked up tiny traces of enriched uranium at Kalaye Electric in Tehran in 2003, even though Iran had removed equipment and renovated parts of the facility.
The IAEA also uses a network of member states' laboratories to help it study samples taken during its inspections globally.
In order to strengthen its capabilities, it is now modernizing Seibersdorf, housed in an anonymous-looking complex of white, low buildings.
As part of an 81 million euro ($106 million) upgrade, the IAEA is building a new Nuclear Materials Laboratory where uranium and plutonium samples will be checked to make sure that materials that can be used for bombs are fully accounted for.
Hundreds of samples from nuclear reactors and fuel plants are pored over every year by experts dressed in white coats and protective gear in the present 1970s-era building. The vast majority of tests turn up nothing suspicious.
"People working here don't know where the sample comes from. We are not doing politics here. We are only doing technical analysis," said chemistry team leader David Amaraggi.
TUNGSTEN TROUBLE?
But despite the IAEA's insistence that it is a technical organization serving 159 member states, its monitoring of Iran's nuclear program can have geopolitical implications.
It regularly inspects Iran's declared nuclear facilities - including the Natanz and Fordow uranium enrichment sites - but has so far failed to persuade Tehran to enable it to resume a stalled investigation into suspected nuclear weapons research.
In a tenth round of talks since early 2012, an IAEA team led by chief inspector Herman Nackaerts will meet Iranian officials in Vienna on May 15 to try to end the deadlock.
The IAEA's priority is to visit Parchin, where it believes Iran built a steel chamber for explosives tests more than a decade ago, possibly using non-nuclear materials like the metal tungsten as substitutes for uranium.
Citing satellite imagery, Western diplomats have said that Iran appeared to be rebuilding the specific part of Parchin the IAEA wants to see, after earlier razing smaller buildings and removing soil. Iran denies it has anything to hide.
IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano says the U.N. agency still wants to inspect Parchin, even though it fears that the suspected clean-up will have seriously undermined its ability for "effective verification" at the site.
Robert Kelley, a former IAEA inspector in Iraq, said there would be a good chance to discover particles of man-modified uranium if such tests were conducted at Parchin, but if substitutes were used they would be harder to find.
"Environmental sampling is thousands of times less sensitive for detecting non-radioactive things like tungsten," Kelley said.
($1 = 0.7634 euros)
(Additional reporting by Mark Heinrich in London; Editing by Peter Graff)
May 1 (Reuters) - Post position for Saturday's 139th Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs after Wednesday's draw (listed as barrier, HORSE, jockey, trainer) 1. BLACK ONYX, Joe Bravo, Kelly Breen 2. OXBOW, Gary Stevens, D. Wayne Lukas 3. REVOLUTIONARY, Calvin Borel, Todd Pletcher 4. GOLDEN SOUL, Robby Albarado, Dallas Stewart 5. NORMANDY INVASION, Javier Castellano, Chad Brown 6. MYLUTE, Rosie Napravnik, Tom Amoss 7. GIANT FINISH, Jose Espinoza, Tony Dutrow 8. GOLDENCENTS, Kevin Krigger, Doug O'Neill 9. OVERANALYZE, Rafael Bejarano, Todd Pletcher 10. PALACE MALICE, Mike Smith, Todd Pletcher 11. ...
Apr. 30, 2013 ? As planets age they become darker and cooler. Saturn however is much brighter than expected for a planet of its age -- a question that has puzzled scientists since the late sixties. New research published in the journal Nature Geoscience has revealed how Saturn keeps itself looking young and hot.
Researchers from the University of Exeter and the Ecole Normale Sup?rieure de Lyon found that layers of gas, generated by physical instability deep within the giant planet, prevent heat from escaping and have resulted in Saturn failing to cool down at the expected rate.
Professor Gilles Chabrier from Physics & Astronomy at the University of Exeter said: "Scientists have been wondering for years if Saturn was using an additional source of energy to look so bright but instead our calculations show that Saturn appears young because it can't cool down. Instead of heat being transported throughout the planet by large scale (convective) motions, as previously thought, it must be partly transferred by diffusion across different layers of gas inside Saturn. These separate layers effectively insulate the planet and prevent heat from radiating out efficiently. This keeps Saturn warm and bright."
Characterised by its distinctive rings, Saturn is one of the largest planets in our Solar System, second only in size to massive Jupiter. It is primarily made of hydrogen and helium and its excessive brightness has previously been attributed to helium rains, the result of helium failing to mix with Saturn's hydrogen rich atmosphere.
Layered convection, like that recently discovered in Saturn, has been observed in Earth's oceans where warm, salty water lies beneath cool and less salty water. The denser, salty water prevents vertical currents forming between the different layers and so heat cannot be transported efficiently upwards.
These findings suggest that the interior structure, composition and thermal evolution of giant planets in our Solar System, and beyond, may be much more complex than previously thought.
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Journal Reference:
J?r?my Leconte, Gilles Chabrier. Layered convection as the origin of Saturn?s luminosity anomaly. Nature Geoscience, 2013; 6 (5): 347 DOI: 10.1038/ngeo1791
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Yesterday, Viddy filed a regulatory document with the US Securities and Exchange Comission that seemed to indicate that the Los Angeles-based video sharing startup had raised $2.85 million in new funds. While cash infusions are always good things, that particular amount would be a big step down for Viddy in comparison to its frothy past -- just a year ago, the company closed on a $30 million round at a reported $370 million valuation.
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