Thursday 30 May 2013

Zombie plants? Frozen plants thaw and wake up from 400-year nap

Plants frozen under a Greenland glacier hundreds of years ago are growing again, after rapidly melting glaciers expose them to sunlight and air.

By Liz Fuller-Wright,?Correspondent / May 29, 2013

This moss froze about 500 years ago, when it was covered by an advancing glacier. Now that the glaciers are in retreat, the exposed 'zombie' moss is growing again, in a petri dish in the lab of University of Alberta scientist Catherine La Farge.

Courtesy of the Catherine La Farge / Proceedings of the National Academies of Science

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It's like something out of a zombie movie, or at least Encino Man: What was dead and frozen for hundreds of years suddenly sits up, shakes its head a few times, and goes about its business.

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But this is real, and happening with mosses in Greenland. Once buried under thousands of tons of glacial ice, these mosses are green and growing again.

And not just one or two feisty stragglers: Dr. Catherine La Farge and colleagues from the University of Alberta found between 60 and 144 different species of moss that are spontaneously regrowing after centuries on ice.

Glaciers on Ellesmere Island, off the coast of Greenland, are rapidly retreating, like most glaciers around the world. As they pull back, they are uncovering whole ecosystems of mosses that are starting to wake up and blink in the sunlight.

Scientists saw the newly exposed mosses just a few feet from the edge of Teardrop Glacier on Ellesmere, on land that had been covered by the glacier only a year before. Most of the mosses were black, says La Farge, but they were structurally intact, and some looked suspiciously green.

"As I looked more closely I thought, 'Oh my gosh, what's this? Either this has somehow managed to retain a vestige of its original color, or it's just started to grow again after centuries under the ice,'" she told National Geographic. "The thought of that just blew my mind."

Arctic explorers have noticed these glacial-edge mosses before, but always assumed that they were seeing modern mosses that had blown onto the "dead mats," like squatters moving into a long-abandoned building. ?But when Dr. La Farge's team put the moss under a microscope, they saw that the green branches were growing from 500-year-old stems.

They put blackened moss with potting soil under a grow lamp and held their breath. Six weeks later, they had proof: these ancient mosses, frozen since the Middle Ages, were growing again.

These plants froze between 404 and 615 years ago, according to radiocarbon dating, or between 1398 and 1609, during the early part of the "Little Ice Age" that chilled much of Europe. The last time they saw the sun, English speakers were using words like "verily" and "forsooth."

How is this possible?

Moss has a big advantage helping its resuscitation along: its cells can replicate themselves and grow into anything the plant needs. Mosses are essentially built of stem cells, cloning themselves endlessly, without stamens, pistils, or any of the other trappings of sexual reproduction. But while their cloning abilities are well known, no one expected that they'd be able to grow again ? spontaneously, without help ? after spending centuries trapped under thousands of feet of ice.

The successful resurrection of these newly exposed plants raises interesting questions about the role of mosses in periglacial ecosystems, where glaciers advance and retreat over and over again.

Though easily overlooked because of its unimposing stature, moss is vital to permafrost ecosystems ? without it, animals from mice and rabbits to deer and caribou could starve in the frozen north, where few plants thrive.

At the poles and in mountains around the world, most glaciers are retreating faster than ever in recorded history. Will the newly exposed glacial terrain remain frozen and barren, or will these "zombie" mosses rebuild thriving ecosystems in some of the harshest terrain on the planet?

Glaciers beating a hasty retreat

Most glaciers have been shrinking for decades, but what used to be a slow saunter ? moseying back a few feet each year ? is now a sprint. Since 2007, arctic glaciers have retreated about 13 feet (4.1 m) each year, almost three times as fast as the retreat speed of the 1960s and 1970s. That might not sound like much, given the thousands of square miles these glaciers cover, but the rapid acceleration of the melt has caught the attention of scientists and policymakers.

The good news is that we're finding all sorts of fascinating things under the ice, from zombie mosses to still-bleeding mammoths.

The bad news is that when they these landlocked glaciers melt into the ocean, it raises ocean levels. Since about 10 percent of the world's population lives within a few feet of sea level, that's a lot of people contemplating a water-logged lifestyle.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/science/~3/OWEdfF6QnSg/Zombie-plants-Frozen-plants-thaw-and-wake-up-from-400-year-nap

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Editors say attorney general to change investigations

By Susan Heavey and David Ingram

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder told media editors on Thursday that he would change the way the Justice Department handles investigations that involve reporters and not repeat searches that have raised concerns about freedom of the press, the editors said.

After a meeting that other media outlets boycotted because of its secrecy, the editors who did attend said they were encouraged by officials' expressions of regret, though one said the Justice Department still has a long way to go to understand how journalists work.

"There was a commitment to change the department's guidelines for handling cases such as these and a renewed commitment to support a federal shield law for journalists," said Gerald Seib, Washington bureau chief of The Wall Street Journal.

Despite the meeting's status as "off the record," meaning its contents could not be recorded or reported, three of the five journalists who attended spoke afterward to reporters outside the Justice Department's headquarters.

The talks followed a decision by President Barack Obama's administration to search the email and phone records of Fox News, and the phone records of the Associated Press, as part of investigations into leaks of secret government information.

The seizure of records without advance notice, and an FBI agent's description of Fox News reporter James Rosen as a potential criminal co-conspirator under an espionage law, led to an outcry from journalists and advocates of free speech and prompted new calls for a federal law protecting reporters' work.

That led to a debate in Washington over how the government is balancing the need for national security with privacy rights.

Along with a separate furor over the Internal Revenue Service's targeting of conservative political groups for extra scrutiny, it has stoked fears of excessive government intrusion under Obama.

At Obama's direction, Holder is taking 45 days to review the Justice Department's investigative rules. Many date from before email was in common use and the review is to include meetings with journalists, lawyers and law enforcement officials.

"There were plenty of indications they are unhappy and regretful that it's gotten to this point," Seib said.

OPENING GAMBIT

James Warren, Washington bureau chief of the New York Daily News, said Holder and his staff seem bound for "an anthropological foray, to find out a little bit more than they seemed to understand about the way we all operate on a daily basis." He called the meeting "an opening gambit."

Others who attended were New Yorker contributor Jane Mayer, Politico Editor-in-Chief John Harris and Martin Baron, executive editor of The Washington Post.

With Holder were Deputy Attorney General James Cole, who authorized the seizure of the Associated Press phone records, and seven staff members, according to a department list.

Several news organizations, including Reuters, CNN, The New York Times and the Associated Press, rejected offers to meet Holder on the "off-the-record" terms.

"We would welcome the opportunity to hear the attorney general's explanation for the Department of Justice's handling of subpoenas to journalists, and his thoughts about improving the protections afforded to media organizations in responding to government investigations, but believe firmly that his comments should be for publication," said Reuters spokeswoman Barb Burg.

Baron said the meeting was a constructive opportunity to share views at the highest levels of the Justice Department.

"We expressed our concerns that reporters felt some fear for doing their jobs - that they were concerned about using their email and concerned about using their office telephones, and that we need to have the freedom to do our jobs," he said.

Representatives of other media companies have been invited to more meetings with Holder on Friday.

NPR executive Kinsey Wilson said a senior news executive and in-house lawyer will go instead of an editor "because we did not feel it was appropriate for our journalists to hold off-the-record discussions with the attorney general on a subject in which we have a direct interest."

Bloomberg News said it would attend. A spokesman for ABC News said it would attend but would "press for that conversation to be put on the record."

Television networks Fox News, CNN, CBS and NBC, as well as online news group The Huffington Post, said they would not attend.

At least two recent leak investigations involved the seizure of media records: one prompted by a Rosen Fox News story that described the thinking of U.S. intelligence officials about North Korea, and one about Associated Press stories that the government said compromised a covert agent helping U.S. forces against al Qaeda in Yemen.

Holder personally authorized the searches of Fox News records, while his deputy, Cole, authorized the search of Associated Press records. Justice Department guidelines allow searches under rare circumstances, usually with notice to the news organization affected.

(Additional reporting by Jennifer Saba in New York and Steve Holland and Laura MacInnis in Washington.; Editing by Howard Goller and Christopher Wilson)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/media-editors-u-attorney-general-change-investigations-013355826.html

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Courteney Cox and David Arquette finalize divorce

LOS ANGELES (AP) ? Court records show Courteney Cox and David Arquette have finalized their divorce.

A Los Angeles judge approved the couple's breakup Tuesday after nearly 14 years of marriage. Details of their divorce settlement are confidential.

Cox and Arquette legally separated on Dec. 31, 2011, about six months before the pair filed for divorce. The couple met while filming "Scream" and announced their split in October 2010.

At the time, they said they were committed to raising their daughter together and remained best friends.

Cox gained widespread fame for her role on the TV comedy "Friends." Arquette was an executive producer of her recent series, "Cougar Town," and has appeared in numerous films, including "Never Been Kissed."

The website for People magazine was first to report Wednesday that the divorce is final.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/courteney-cox-david-arquette-finalize-divorce-222039180.html

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?Big Foot? Silva drives Junior dos Santos crazy at UFC 160 press conference (Video)

You know, getting back to work the day after a holiday can be tough. Perhaps you're tired. Perhaps you were overserved at some point during the weekend. Perhaps you did too many home improvement projects and you need a holiday to recover from the holiday. Cagewriter understands. To wake you up, here's this video of UFC heavyweight Antonio Silva driving fellow heavyweight Junior dos Santos crazy after their UFC 160 fights. He uses the same techniques used in any good sibling fights.

Related coverage on Yahoo! Sports:
? Fan thwarts carjacker after watching UFC 160
? T.J. Grant among the stars at UFC 160
? How Mike Tyson helped T.J. Grant become $50K richer at UFC 160

Source: http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/mma-cagewriter/big-foot-silva-drives-junior-dos-santos-crazy-121518384.html

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Wednesday 29 May 2013

Register for 28th annual Loyola golf outing

Register for 28th annual Loyola golf outing

Make plans now to participate in the 28th Annual Loyola Ramblers Golf Outing. This year?s event will be held on Thursday, August 1 at Harborside International Golf Center in Chicago. The outing provides fans and alums with a round of golf at one of the area?s top courses plus food, drink, and fun, all while supporting Loyola athletics.

Click here for details.

Source: http://blogs.luc.edu/ilweekly/2013/05/28/register-for-28th-annual-loyola-golf-outing/

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The Perils of Real Estate Investing | Visual.ly

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Source: http://visual.ly/perils-real-estate-investing

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This Man Has Collected 200 Years of Beautiful, Odd, and Historic Bikes

You've never seen a bicycle collection so extensive and well-preserved as the one James MacDonald has obtained.

Read more...

    


Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/Bm8fWoflPPk/this-man-has-collected-200-years-of-beautiful-odd-and-509703918

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LG exec says the company won't make the Nexus 5

Korea Times LG working with Google on another Nexus phone

Despite the ladles of praise heaped upon LG's Nexus 4, the company's European VP doesn't believe we'll see the company build the next iteration in the range. During a chat with AllAboutPhones, Kim Wong said that the Nexus 4's success means that the company "does not need such a marketing success again" -- disagreeing with the Korea Times, which said just the opposite at the start of the month. Wong added that whilst the company is still friendly with Google, it won't be entering the stock Android game any time soon, thanks to a desire to bring LG's own skin-friendly experience to users.

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Source: All About Phones (Translated)

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/28/lg-kim-wong-we-wont-make-the-nexus-5/?utm_medium=feed&utm_source=Feed_Classic&utm_campaign=Engadget

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Monday 27 May 2013

EU Mandates Rotation of Credit Rating Agencies for Structured ...

As the SEC considers the best approach to assuring conflict of
interest free credit rating agencies, the Council of the European Union has adopted
a Directive and a Regulation mandating the rotation of credit rating agencies
for the rating of structured financial products. The adoption of the
legislation follows agreement reached with the European Parliament.


The Directive and Regulation amend existing legislation on credit
rating agencies in order to reduce investors' over-reliance on external credit
ratings, mitigate the risk of conflicts of interest in credit rating activities
and increase transparency and competition in the sector. Specifically, the
Directive amends current Directives on the activities and supervision of
financial institutions for occupational retirement provisions, on undertakings
of collective investment in transferable securities (UCITS) and on hedge funds
and other alternative investment fund managers (AIFM) in order to reduce the financial
institutions' reliance on external credit ratings when assessing the
creditworthiness of their assets.


The Regulation introduces a mandatory rotation rule obliging
issuers of structured finance products with underlying re-securitized assets
who pay credit rating agencies for their ratings (the issuer pays model) to
switch to a different agency every four years. An outgoing rating agency will
not be allowed to rate re-securitized products of the same issuer for a period
equal to the duration of the expired contract, though not exceeding four years.


Mandatory rotation will not apply to small credit rating
agencies, or to issuers employing at least four credit rating agencies, each
rating more than 10 percent of the total number of outstanding rated structured
finance instruments.

A review clause provides the possibility for mandatory rotation to be extended to other instruments in the future. Mandatory rotation is not a requirement for endorsement by the E.U. of U.S. or other third country credit rating agencies. Due to the complexity of structured finance instruments and their role in contributing to the financial crisis, the Regulation also requires issuers to engage at least two different credit rating agencies for the rating of structured finance instruments.

To mitigate the risk of conflicts of interest, the Regulation also requires CRAs to disclose
publicly if a shareholder with 5 percent or more of the capital or voting rights holds 5 percent or more of a rated entity. And to ensure the diversity and independence of credit ratings and opinions, the regulation prohibits ownership of 5 percent or more of the capital or the voting rights in more than one CRA, unless the agencies concerned belong to the same group.

Source: http://jimhamiltonblog.blogspot.com/2013/05/eu-mandates-rotation-of-credit-rating.html

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Ecuador tries to fix crash satellite

The Ecuadorean Space Agency (EXA) says it will announce later on Monday if it can re-establish contact with its first and only satellite, Pegasus.

Pegasus, a nano-satellite, collided with a cloud of particles from an old Soviet rocket on Thursday.

EXA chief Ronnie Nader said it was still in orbit but was spinning wildly over two axes.

Mr Nader said Pegasus could neither receive nor send signals, but that he held out hopes it could be fixed.

Pegasus, a small cube measuring 10cm (4in) along its edge and weighing just 1.2kg (2.6lb), was launched from the Chinese spaceport of Jiuquan on 25 April 2013.

'Dizzy'

Orbiting the Earth at a height of 650km (404 miles), it transmitted pictures from space while playing recordings of the Ecuadorean national anthem.

Less than a month after its launch, it collided with a particle cloud from an old Tsyklon-3 rocket, which had been in space since 1985.

While EXA scientists were relieved there had been no frontal clash, the satellite's solar panels were damaged in a lateral collision.

EXA announced that Pegasus had "survived" the crash, but that the satellite's antenna had "lost its orientation and the craft is spinning wildly over two of its axes".

The space agency said it was "working tirelessly to stabilise the satellite to regain its signal".

On an EXA Twitter account written in Pegasus's name, the satellite announced it was "dizzy, but still here".

Referring to the Soviet rocket it had collided with, a later tweet read, "you should see what the other one looks like now".

Thousands of Ecuadoreans have gone on social networking sites to express their support for the country's space agency, which is planning to launch a second satellite, named Krysaor, in August.

But some also asked whether the Ecuadorean government had been right in investing $700,000 (?465,000) in Pegasus's launch.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-22678919#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa

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Alpine PT is Once Again the Annual and Exclusive Physical Therapy ...

For the 6th consecutive year, ?Alpine Physical Therapy will?be the exclusive physical therapy sponsor of the?Missoula Marathon.? This prestigious sponsorship puts us face-to-face with runners of all skill levels, giving us opportunities to provide consultation to all participants and to present numerous training seminars for area marathoners.

Our team of 14 therapists provides both pre- and post-race massages for all Missoula Marathoners. In addition, we offer free injury consultations both before and after the race.

We offer a unique service for all runners called?The Runner?s Clinic, which is overseen by expert physical therapist, Kristi Moore, MSPT. Kristi is our sport biomechanics expert associated with high-mileage running.

Participants entering The Runner?s Clinic undergo 2-D video analysis of their stride, along with a comprehensive body and movement examination.? Integrating the 2-D video analysis with the clinical exam provides an exacting assessment for identifying running faults that can contribute to injury and impact performance.? The results of the examination form the basis of specific corrective exercises that you?ll begin learning and doing on day one!? For more information on The Runner?s Clinic, be sure to visit our website by?clicking here.

Gaining knowledge about your injury and what you can do to resolve it puts you ahead of the pack. We invite you to peruse The?Runner?s Clinic?section of our website for information on various injuries common to runners.? Gather additional information by clicking on the Patient Resources section of our website for news and information on these and other conditions runners face.

We have three locations in Missoula.

  • Alpine Physical Therapy, North
    We are located at 2965 Stockyard Road in the North Reserve Business Center, just behind Carino?s.??406-541-2606.
  • Alpine Physical Therapy, South
    We are located in the Peak Health & Wellness Center South on the corner of Highway 93 South and Blue Mountain Road.??406-251-2323.
  • Alpine Physical Therapy, Downtown
    We are also located in the Peak Health & Wellness Center Downtown at 150 E. Spruce, Ste A.??406-549-0064.

All participants of the Missoula Marathon are provided free injury consultations with one of our physical therapists. Call?to schedule a free injury consultation or to schedule for The?Runner?s Clinic.

?

Source: http://healthandfitness101.com/?p=3769&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=alpine-pt-is-once-again-the-annual-and-exclusive-physical-therapy-sponsor-of-the-missoula-marathon

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Sunday 26 May 2013

Functional Apple 1 auctioned off for $671.4K, sets new record (updated)

Functional Apple 1 auctioned off for $6714K, sets new Sotheby's record

With $671,400, you could buy roughly 2,040.7 base-model iPad minis before taxes. One unnamed buyer, however, just laid that amount out for a single Apple 1 from 1976. Auctioned through Cologne, Germany-based Auction Team Breker Sotheby's, the price beats out its $640K record from another unit last November. Interestingly, the seller refurbished this latest Apple 1 to working condition, after paying only $40K for it privately. While it doesn't seem to have the original enclosure, we'd be remiss not to mention that the seller also had Steve Wozniak grace the motherboard with his signature. You'll find more info at the source, while we wrap our heads around how this makes last summer's Sotheby's auction price of $374.5K look like a relative steal.

Update: We initially reported that the auction was held through Sotheby's, when it was actually done by Auction Team Breker. We've corrected this in this post.

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Via: MacRumors

Source: NYT Bits

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/huJualp91VY/

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Skagit River bridge collapse: Looking for a temporary fix to get traffic moving

It may be months before the I-5 bridge over the Skagit River near Seattle is repaired. Until then, authorities are considering a temporary?bridge of the type used in Europe during World War II.

By Brad Knickerbocker,?Staff writer / May 25, 2013

Workers inspect a damaged beam on a section of bridge adjacent to a collapsed portion of the I-5 span at the Skagit River in Mount Vernon, Wash. A truck carrying an oversize load struck the four-lane bridge, sending a section of the span and two vehicles into the river.

Elaine Thompson/AP

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The I-5 bridge that got clipped by a truck and fell into the Skagit River in Washington State may have been old, its design officially ?functionally obsolete.? But the temporary fix to get traffic moving again along this busy highway corridor linking Seattle north to Canada may be of a type that?s even older.

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Authorities are considering a ?Bailey Bridge? like the ones used in World War II to get Allied tanks and other military vehicles across rivers in Germany and Italy after D-Day. Such bridges are designed to be portable and temporary, constructed quickly then taken apart to be used elsewhere.

The Washington State Department of Transportation built a 180-foot Bailey Bridge over the Chehalis River in 2007, after a flood washed out a county bridge, the Seattle Times reports.

For highway use, such bridges can clear spans up to 200 feet long, according to Bailey Bridges, Inc. in Fort Payne, Ala. The I-5 bridge over the Skagit River is 160 feet long, so the idea there is feasible.

For such a system to work, however, the existing concrete piers under the bridge?s road surface would have to be sound.

That?s just one of the things state and federal authorities need to investigate as they piece together what happened to send a portion of the bridge plummeting into the river Thursday evening, then figure out a permanent solution.

?Patience is going to be the watchword,? Gov. Jay Inslee said at a press conference Friday.

Gov. Inslee, a former member of Congress who won the governorship last year, says it will cost $15 million to repair the bridge, which averages 71,000 vehicles a day. Meanwhile, other bridges crossing the Skagit have backed up traffic through residential and business areas.

What?s known for sure so far is that a truck with a large load clipped one of the metal trusses that are part of the essential design holding up the bridge. That section of the bridge collapsed immediately, sending a pickup truck and an SUV into the river. No one was killed, and injuries to drivers and passengers were minor.

While the Federal Highway Administration lists the bridge as "functionally obsolete? because it?s an old design, it had not been classified as structurally deficient.

The bridge has a maximum clearance of about 17 feet ? higher than the truck?s load in this case ? but the clearance curves down to 14 feet 5 inches along the sides, where the collision occurred. The tractor-trailer was hauling drilling equipment southbound.

The truck?s owner ? Mullen Trucking in Alberta,?Canada ? had a permit to carry the oversize load on the Interstate 5 highway. The driver has not been cited for any infractions.

It's not rare for trucks to strike bridges in Washington State, the Associated Press reports. The state Department of Transportation lists 21 bridge-strikes involving trucks last year, 24 in 2011, and 14 in 2010.

Officials performed a special inspection six months ago on the bridge that collapsed because there were indications it had been struck by a different vehicle.

A report released Friday said the checkup was done due to "impact damage," and inspectors identified tears, deformations, and gouges on the northbound side of the bridge.

In that Nov. 29, 2012, impact, an overheight truck struck a metal overhead truss on the bridge. An inspection crew determined the bridge to be safe, with only minor repairs required. Those repairs were added to an existing list of bridge maintenance items to be completed at a future date.

The collapse of the bridge north of Seattle highlights recent calls by President Obama and state officials to repair the nation?s infrastructure.

?Regardless of how this happened, the collapse of the Skagit River Bridge in Washington State is a timely reminder of our nation?s need to invest in critical infrastructure upgrades,? Ed Rendell, Co-Chair of Building America?s Future and former Governor of Pennsylvania, said in a statement. ?Our nation?s bridges, roads and highways are deteriorating before our eyes, and today?s incident was a call to action,?

?According to our report??Falling Apart and Falling Behind,? America currently has more than 69,000 structurally deficient bridges, many of which haven?t been updated in decades,? Mr. Rendell said. ?If the US wants to remain competitive in the global economy and provide safe, efficient transportation systems for our nation, then I urge state and local officials to act now and find creative ways to fund these projects, so that future collapses and accidents can be avoided.?

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/xeoBcTNKKdg/Skagit-River-bridge-collapse-Looking-for-a-temporary-fix-to-get-traffic-moving

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Chinese PM meets German chancellor amid trade row

BERLIN (AP) -- Chinese Premier Li Keqiang met with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Sunday amid a looming trade spat between Asia's economic giant and the European Union.

The leaders were expected to discuss economic issues and human rights but also international topics such as Iran's nuclear program and the civil war in Syria, German officials said before the meeting in Berlin.

During a visit to Switzerland on Saturday, Li criticized the EU for pursuing anti-dumping cases against Chinese solar power and telecommunications equipment manufacturers that he warned will hurt both sides.

"The cases over these two types of products will hurt Chinese industries, business and jobs, and also damage the vital interests of European users and consumers," China's official Xinhua News Agency quoted him as saying. "We express firm opposition."

The EU Commission, the 27-nation bloc's executive arm, accuses China of pricing its solar panels and mobile telecom devices too cheaply, thereby flooding the European market, distorting competition and hurting European manufacturers. Brussels has therefore proposed imposing an average 47 percent special duty on Chinese solar panels, and it is continuing to look into the telecommunication sector.

Germany, Europe's biggest economy, has indicated that it hopes for a negotiated solution in those cases rather than having the EU impose anti-dumping duties, which could provoke China to impose retaliatory tariffs.

Merkel's spokesman, Steffen Seibert, said Friday the trade issue will certainly be part of the Chancellor's talks with Li.

"Between Europe and China, we must try to find amicable and fair agreements and joint approaches that both sides can live with," Seibert said.

Germany's powerful industrial lobby groups also oppose the discussed EU anti-dumping measures against China, fearing an escalating trade war that would dent the countries' buoying business ties.

China is the world's largest producer of solar panels, and more than half of its output is exported to Europe, totaling 21 billion euros in 2011.

The global solar panel market is suffering from overcapacity, which has led to stiff competition that has forced several European manufacturers out of business.

China rejects the EU's price-dumping allegations, but the problem is no novelty for Beijing. The U.S. last year imposed punitive tariffs on solar panel imports after finding that China's government was subsidizing companies that were flooding the U.S. market.

The EU, the world's largest economy, is China's second-biggest business partner after the U.S., with a trade volume of about 430 billion euros in 2012.

Following Li's arrival at Berlin's Chancellery, Merkel and her Chinese counterpart met with students from both countries before holding closed-door talks. Later Sunday, they were set to have a dinner at a government guest house outside the capital.

Li, who took office in March, visited Switzerland on Friday. In Zurich, he signed China's first free-trade agreement with a major Western economy that had been negotiated over the past years.

Germany is the only EU member nation on Li's trip.

On Monday, he will meet other officials and business leaders. He also is scheduled to meet Merkel's challenger in September's national elections, the Social Democrats' candidate Peer Steinbrueck.

___

Follow Juergen Baetz on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/jbaetz

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/chinese-pm-meets-german-chancellor-120142668.html

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Federal agency accepts Nevada hospital's plan to curb patient-dumping

By Ronnie Cohen

(Reuters) - Federal authorities approved a Nevada hospital's proposal on Friday for correcting deficiencies that led to newly discharged psychiatric patients being bused out of state without adequate plans for continued care.

The U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services also said it would conduct unannounced inspections of Rawson-Neal Psychiatric Hospital in Las Vegas to ensure that procedures are in place and working to prevent further instances of so-called patient dumping.

Officials at the state-licensed hospital said they have increased oversight of discharge planning to guarantee patients released to other states are enrolled in appropriate after-care programs when they arrive. The hospital also has enlisted chaperones to accompany newly discharged patients on Greyhound Bus rides.

Rawson-Neal came under fire after the Sacramento Bee newspaper reported the hospital gave one-way bus tickets to as many as 1,500 newly released patients for destinations in 47 other states in the past five years. About one-third were sent to neighboring California, the bulk of them arriving in Los Angeles.

Nevada health officials later acknowledged the hospital shipped 10 newly discharged patients out of state without documenting adequate aftercare plans for food, housing, medication and treatment. They said two employees were fired and three others faced disciplinary action.

The U.S. Health and Human Services Department agency warned the hospital in April that it was in violation of Medicare rules governing discharge of patients and gave the facility until May 6 to come up with a remedy.

"We'll continue to inspect the hospital until we're convinced that it's in full compliance with Medicare rules that protect the health and safety of patients," said Jack Cheevers, spokesman for the Medicare and Medicaid Centers. "If the hospital fails to comply, it could lose its federal funding."

Also this week, Rawson-Neal released a hospital-commissioned report that confirmed a lack of follow-up care for some patients bused out of state as well as for some patients released within the Las Vegas area.

The independent report, prepared by a psychiatry professor and a clinical psychologist who spent a week in the facility, commends the hospital staff as "competent, compassionate, respectful and dedicated." But it said the unit was constantly filled to capacity and, as a result, staff members felt pressure to move patients out.

The report also concluded the 190-bed facility was severely understaffed.

Nevada health officials said they already had corrected some of the problems the report cited and were working to correct the remainder.

In one patient-dumping case cited by federal inspectors in March, a psychotic man who entered the hospital hearing voices and talking about worms in his head was put on a bus out of town the same day. The discharge was signed by a staff psychiatrist, and the man was sent to Sacramento, where he knew no one, with little more than cans of nutritional supplements and a three-day supply of medication, the report said.

(Editing by Steve Gorman and Bill Trott)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/federal-agency-accepts-nevada-hospitals-plan-curb-patient-005912997.html

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Saturday 25 May 2013

Terry McAuliffe?s brother goes from conservative activist to Democrat

Left to right: Joseph McAuliffe, Bill Clinton and Terry McAuliffe. (Facebook.com)

Terry McAuliffe, a Democratic operative embroiled in a tight race to become Virginia's next governor, knows a thing or two about conservatives like his Republican opponent, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli.

That's in part because his older brother, Joseph McAuliffe, spent two decades as a Republican activist who worked for the evangelical leader Pat Robertson's presidential campaign, helped found a Christian political group in Florida, and was even arrested in the late 1980s while demonstrating at an abortion clinic.

Born into an Irish-Catholic family in the 1950s in Syracuse, N.Y., the McAuliffe brothers, Terry, 56 and Joseph, 62, both grew up to pursue a political career, but on opposite sides of the ideological spectrum. Joseph spent the late 1970s and '80s working for conservatives, while Terry skyrocketed through the ranks of the Democratic Party.

Despite Joseph's resume as a right-wing activist, he wasn't always a conservative Republican, and he has since disavowed many of his former views. (More on that later.)

In an interview with Yahoo News, Joseph said that before becoming a Republican, he was a self-described hippie who lived in communes and went to Woodstock. As a young man, Joseph was "very much left of the Democratic Party," he said.

That would all change in the 1970s, when a conversion experience to Christianity took him politically rightward.

One issue in particular delivered the elder McAuliffe brother firmly into the Republican camp: abortion. In 1973, the Supreme Court's ruling in Roe v. Wade granted women the right to terminate their pregnancies through the first 12 weeks of gestation, a decision that helped ignite a conservative political movement that eventually brought millions of Christians into the Republican Party. Joseph was one of them.

"It really was a bellwether issue that took people like myself," Joseph told Yahoo News. "There were a number of people who were former counterculture types who were even left of left so to speak, but shifted to the right."

A new man, Joseph became a minister and moved to Tampa, Fla., where he helped start a church. In the era of Ronald Reagan, Joseph became deeply involved in Republican politics. He was invited to join then-Vice President George H.W. Bush's presidential campaign in 1987, but took a job as a deputy state campaign manager for Robertson's presidential run.

While Joseph toiled on the campaign trail in 1988 for one of the most conservative candidates in the GOP primary, his younger brother, Terry, was busy fundraising for Dick Gephardt, a top House Democrat and one of the most liberal presidential hopefuls at the time.

After Robertson dropped out of the race, Joseph joined other Robertson campaign workers to create United Christians of Florida, a political action committee that provides issue-based voter guides for Christians in the state. Joseph went on to work for Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network for two years, where, like Terry, he specialized in courting high-dollar donors.

During the Clinton years, however, Joseph became disenchanted with the Republican Party. He began to question the conservative opposition to the welfare state and came to realize that he could no longer reconcile right-wing views on issues like food stamps and health care for the poor with his faith.

"I kind of got burned out on some of my experiences I had gone through with the Republican Party," Joseph told Yahoo News. "I'd find myself sitting in Republican meetings where they would be talking about the problems with welfare and food stamps, and I thought, Jeez, these people really don't know what they're talking about."

When he looks back on his years with Robertson and the Christian Broadcasting Network, Joseph said he had hoped that Robertson, who has a long record of making inflammatory statements about Muslims, gays and the cause of natural disasters, had abandoned hot-button political issues to focus exclusively on ministry.

"I wish and recommended for Pat to take that course," he said.

In the 1990s, Joseph began to dabble in Democratic politics through his brother. During Bill Clinton's re-election campaign, Terry, who served as Clinton's co-chairman, brought Joseph to a fundraiser for the president. Terry gave a short speech to the group about his brother, according to a 2001 Tampa Tribune article, and praised him for his principled commitment to pro-life policies, even though the two disagreed on the issue.

"I was probably the only pro-life person in the room," Joseph would later tell the Tampa Tribune. Clinton, he said, led the room in applause for him after Terry's talk.

Joseph's political shift was complete when, on Nov. 6, 1996, while still a registered Republican, Joseph cast his ballot to send Bill Clinton back to the White House.

Over time, even his staunch opposition to abortion would change. Joseph told Yahoo News this week that while he still would not personally advise a woman to have an abortion, he no longer thinks the government should ban the procedure.

"I describe myself as being very pro-life and very pro-choice. I'm very comfortable being a strong advocate for the unborn and at the same time being a strong advocate of women having a right to make decisions for their own bodies," Joseph told Yahoo News. "I think we need to give individuals the freedom to make that choice."

Abortion, of course, remains a contentious issue to this day, and the debate over its legality has made its way into Terry's campaign for governor. As a candidate in the race for governor, Terry has criticized Cuccinelli, his Republican opponent, for his anti-abortion views. On that issue and others, Terry McAuliffe and Virginia state party members regularly label Cuccinelli an "extremist."

Unlike his younger brother, Joseph declines to use the word to describe those with different views.

"I don't like the word 'extremist' in almost any regard," Joseph told Yahoo News. "Adolf Hitler was an extremist. Joseph Stalin. I try to reserve words like that for people that really?I think this is a sensitive, delicate, personal issue, and I wish there was more civility and humility surrounding the discussion.

"The idea of me getting arrested is not something I'm proud of. There are just some things we just don't know," Joseph said. "To me all religious discussions, all social issues, if you will, should be shrouded in humility and prefaced by words like 'maybe' and 'perhaps.' But we tend to be so dogmatic and so absolutely final about things that we really don't know what we're talking about, including God."

These days, Joseph is far less political than Terry. He still focuses on his ministry while teaching history at the University of South Florida and is the coordinator of the university's Osher Lifelong Learning Institute.

Joseph lives in South Florida with his wife of nearly 40 years, Kay. They have four children, one of whom, Marisa, lives in Washington and works for Hillary Clinton.

"I try not to keep politics as a front-burner issue in my life," Joseph said. "Sometimes politics can get in the way of people."

Still, he's been following his brother's race closely, and it's not always easy given the scrutiny his brother often faces in the media.

Joseph said he winced when he saw the dustup over excerpts from Terry's books that made Terry appear as though he didn't care about his family. In his 2008 memoir, "What a Party!," Terry described the time he went to a Washington Post party while his wife was in labor with their first child. In another section of the book, he wrote about how he stopped to meet with a Democratic donor while on the way home from the hospital with his newborn son.

Terry was just trying to be funny, Joseph said.

"Terry's not the comedian of the family," he told Yahoo News. "I think some of his book was actually a failed attempt at humor that didn't really work. In fact it probably backfired on him."

Later this summer, Joseph plans to travel to Virginia to help his little brother on the campaign trail.

"I think he'll really surprise people at how good he'll be," Joseph said.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/terry-mcauliffe-brother-once-abortion-clinic-protesting-conservative-100850620.html

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Top Bosnia Court Orders Release of President, Charged with Graft (Voice Of America)

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Visa, Mastercard ask U.S. court to declare card fees are lawful

By Jessica Dye

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Visa Inc and MasterCard Inc, opening another front in an eight-year battle over credit card fees paid by retailers, on Friday asked a federal judge to declare that the fees do not violate antitrust law.

The lawsuit seeks to give the card companies legal ammunition against some retailers who are trying to opt out a proposed settlement under which they would receive a share of $7.2 billion in cash and fee discounts from the card companies.

The complaint filed Friday in Brooklyn federal court by the credit card giants and a number of banks that issue their cards asks U.S. District Judge John Gleeson to declare that interchange, or swipe, fees are lawful and pro-competitive.

On Thursday, Target Corp and other retailers, including JC Penney and Kohl's, broke away from the pact. The retailers filed a lawsuit in Manhattan federal court against the credit card companies alleging past antitrust violations and seeking damages.

The proposed settlement would end eight years of litigation by merchants who accused Visa and Mastercard of inflating swipe fees.

Friday's complaint was brought against retailers and trade groups who were named plaintiffs in the swipe fee litigation, but later opted out. If Gleeson rules that the swipe fees do not violate antitrust law, it could prevent them from pursuing separate damage actions.

It could also affect the ability of other retailers who opt out to seek damages over swipe fees.

"A declaration in plaintiffs' favor against the defendants is necessary to prevent the continuation of endless, wasteful litigation between defendants and plaintiffs," the complaint on Friday said.

The motion from the card companies is the latest volley in a fierce legal fight over the settlement, which Gleeson preliminarily approved in November. If granted final approval, it would be the largest private antitrust settlement in U.S. history.

On Tuesday, Wal-Mart and 18 other major retailers said they would opt out of receiving damages from the proposed settlement and consider separate legal action. They say the pact offers inadequate compensation for the billions of dollars they pay each year in interchange fees and forces them to sign broad litigation releases that could shield Visa and Mastercard from future lawsuits over antitrust violations.

May 28 is the deadline for nearly 8 million merchants to decide whether to opt out of receiving monetary damages from the settlement.

Visa and Mastercard, as well as lawyers for merchants that support the deal, have said they are confident the settlement will be approved.

"Enough is enough - this battle needs to be put to bed," Trish Wexler, a spokeswoman for the Electronic Payments Coalition, a trade group representing the payment card industry, said Friday in a statement responding to the filing.

If merchants that account for 25 percent or more of credit-card volume opt out of receiving damages, Visa and Mastercard have the option of terminating the proposed settlement.

A lawyer representing some of the merchants and trade groups that have opted out of the settlement, Jeff Shinder, declined to immediately comment on the filing.

(Reporting by Jessica Dye; Editing by David Gregorio)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/visa-mastercard-ask-u-court-declare-card-fees-214008923.html

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Heinrich Rohrer dies at 79; a father of nanotechnology

The electron microscope revolutionized biology in the 1930s by providing magnifications thousands of times higher than that of light microscopes, allowing scientists to discern the inner workings of cells for the first time.

But it was not nearly as helpful for materials scientists such as the ones constructing electronic circuits, who were more interested in surfaces. Exploring the details of those circuits required a completely new technology, the scanning tunneling microscope, which would provide images of individual atoms on surfaces.

Many scientists thought such a feat impossible. In 1979, however, physicists Heinrich Rohrer and Gerd Binnig of the IBM Research Laboratory in Zurich, Switzerland, patented such a device and forever changed the electronics industry. For their invention, they received the 1986 Nobel Prize in physics, an award they shared with physicist Ernst Ruska, who designed the first electron microscope.

Rohrer and Binning were known as the fathers of nanotechnology ? the construction and manipulation of extremely small objects ? because their device could be used to move atoms around on a surface.

Rohrer died of natural causes May 16 at his home in Wollerau, Switzerland, according to IBM. He was 79.

"The invention of the scanning tunneling microscope was a seminal moment in the history of science and information technology," John E. Kelly III, director of research at IBM, said in a statement. "This invention gave scientists the ability to image, measure and manipulate atoms for the first time, and opened new avenues for information technology that we are still pursuing today."

The pair's invention relies on a quantum-mechanical phenomenon known as tunneling, so called because the electrons pass through a supposedly impenetrable barrier, such as a vacuum. The phenomenon is the basis of scanning tunneling microscopy.

In tunneling, the tip of an electrically charged wire, for example, emits electrons in waves that roughly resemble the shape of a fountain. When two such devices are brought closely together, the overlapping waves partially merge and electrons flow through the gap, creating a small current.

Their device uses a stylus not unlike the needle of a record player. It is much smaller, however, converging to a point only one atom in diameter. In a high vacuum, the needle is brought close to the surface to be examined and a small electric charge applied, producing a current. The strength of the current depends on the distance between the point and the surface.

As the stylus is scanned back and forth across the surface ? much like the electron beam of a cathode ray tube in a television ? the current varies with the height of the surface. A computer moves the stylus up and down to keep the current constant. The record of those movements, converted into two dimensions, provides an image of the surface. The entire process relies on the current produced by tunneling.

The pair's first experiment on a gold crystal produced an image of rows of precisely spaced atoms and broad terraces separated by steps one atom in height.

The movement of the stylus is very sensitive to any vibrations in the external environment. Rohrer had faced such difficulties before: In his graduate work on superconductors, he performed most of his experiments in the dead of night to minimize the city's man-made vibrations. In their first experiments, the pair used powerful magnets set on a heavy stone table set on inflated rubber tires to shield the device.

Their first useful device had a heavy permanent magnet floating in a pool of superconducting lead. Within a couple of years, however, they had a device that, without the vacuum chamber, could fit in the palm of the hand. By 1987, they had reduced it to the size of a fingertip.

The stylus could also be used to push and pull individual atoms around on the surface. In 1990, Rohrer and Binnig produced the well-known image of the letters IBM formed from xenon atoms on a nickel crystal.

Heinrich Rohrer was born June 6, 1933, in the farming community of Buchs, Switzerland. His family moved to Zurich when he was 13, dramatically expanding his horizons. He had a lifelong interest in classical languages and natural sciences but studied physics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in 1951 and received his doctorate in 1960.

After he married Rose-Marie Egger the next year, Rohrer accepted a fellowship at Rutgers University in New Jersey. For many years, the couple took extended camping trips across the U.S. with their two daughters.

In late 1963, he joined the newly formed IBM Research Laboratory. Except for a mid-1970s sabbatical at UC Santa Barbara, he stayed with IBM until 1997. Binnig still conducts research for IBM in Zurich.

Rohrer later accepted research posts in Japan and Spain, where he continued to focus on nanotechnology.

He is survived by his wife; daughters Doris and Ellen; and two grandchildren.

news.obits@latimes.com

Source: http://feeds.latimes.com/~r/latimes/news/science/~3/bVW13BCVaH4/la-me-0524-heinrich-rohrer-20130524,0,6312102.story

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Friday 24 May 2013

Magnetic fingerprints of superfluid helium-3

Thursday, May 23, 2013

With their SQUIDs, low-temperature specialists of the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) have made it possible for the magnetic moments of atoms of the rare isotope 3He (helium-3) to be measured with extreme sensitivity. With the aid of these sensors, highly sensitive nuclear resonance spectrometers were developed which have now provided deep insights into the state of matter at extremely low temperatures. In concrete terms, the international research group from London, Ithaca (USA), and PTB's Berlin Institute confined the helium-3 as extremely thin ? quasi two-dimensional ? liquid film. With their extremely precise measuring instruments, they were then able to measure the properties of the superfluid more exactly than ever before. In this way, they have made an important step towards understanding the unique quantum liquid helium-3 and its superfluid properties. The results have been published in the current edition of the magazine "Science".

PTB's SQUIDs are outstanding worldwide. The superconducting quantum interference devices are the most precise measuring instruments available to detect extremely weak magnetic signals. They are already used routinely, e.g. in biomedical measurements, to examine the magnetic fields of the human brain or heart. What is even more topical is their use together with other superconducting detectors to measure radiation with extreme sensitivity or to detect even single photons (see also Nature 497, 227?230, 9 May 2013). And the third application is that of the current study: Since the mid-90s, PTB's SQUIDs have played a central role in the cooperation between scientists of the Royal Holloway University of London and PTB's cryogenic sensor group. This has led to particularly sensitive nuclear resonance spectrometers for experiments at ultra-low temperatures in order to gain ever deeper insights into the state of matter at these extreme conditions. Among other things, the scientists aim at investigating helium-3 ? a unique quantum liquid.

Helium-3 is the much rarer sister of helium-4 which you need, e.g., to bring the coils of a magnetic resonance tomograph to working temperature. For this purpose, they must become superconducting, which is only possible with the temperature of the liquid helium-4 being -269 ?C (4 K), i.e. approximately 4 ?C above absolute zero. If you want to get even closer towards absolute zero, you will need helium-3. Its natural abundance is 10,000 times lower than helium-4 and, therefore, helium-3 is synthesized in nuclear reactors. Only by means of a mixture of the two helium isotopes and a sophisticated magnetic cooling technique can matter be cooled down to a few millionths of a kelvin above absolute zero and experiments can then be carried out with these materials.

It is evident that the scientists have a great interest in getting to know their unique cooling liquid as well as possible. Helium-4 and helium-3 are fascinating substances as they become superfluid at very low temperatures and can thus flow without frictional resistance. However, the superfluids of the two isotopes vary significantly from a quantum-mechanical point of view, as helium-4 atoms are bosons, whereas helium-3 atoms are fermions. In the latter, superfluidity develops through the formation of pairs of helium-3 atoms via magnetic interaction. These magnetic properties thus decisively determine the properties of the superfluid.

Physicists of the low-temperature laboratory of the Royal Holloway University of London in cooperation with Cornell University of Ithaca, USA are dealing with the detailed investigation of these superfluids under extreme conditions. It gets really exciting for the physicists if you confine the liquid under pressure at extremely low temperatures below one thousandth of a degree above absolute zero in thin cavities which are only several hundred nanometres thick (i.e. 50 to 100 times thinner than a human hair). Then the behaviour of the helium-3 atoms, or of the pairs which make up the superfluid, will be strongly influenced by this movement restriction in one dimension. Especially the surface scattering of the particles in the cavity has a great influence on their properties, similar to a football which ? shot at a smooth or rough wall ? will bounce off more or less predictably. The conditions in this ultracold liquid lamella ? the physicists hope ? will enable the detection and investigation of excitations that behave like so-called Majorana fermions (particles being their own antiparticle).

The challenging problem for these kinds of experiments is the measurement of the properties of the extremely thin helium-3 liquid lamella. As the interactions of the magnetic moments of the helium-3 atomic nuclei play a decisive role, so-called nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy ? a measurement technique similar to magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) for medical diagnostics ? is applied. Magnetic resonance spectra are characteristic fingerprints of the state of the helium-3 atoms from which information about the properties of the liquid can be obtained. It is just that magnetic resonance spectroscopy of helium-3 deals with much weaker signals and extreme temperature ranges than medical MRI. Extremely sensitive magnetic field sensors which operate reliably at ultra-low temperatures are needed. Here, the SQUIDs, which have been developed by PTB's physicists and engineers for more than two decades, came into play. PTB's SQUID sensor technology was implemented at the Royal Holloway University of London into the experimental set-up which was finally used to measure the properties of helium-3 liquid lamellas. The results achieved are an important step to understanding this unique quantum liquid. The groups of scientists are already working on improved sensor arrangements which, in future, will be used to examine helium-3 liquid lamellas with spatial resolution. The work was one of a number of research activities funded by the EU within the framework of the "European Microkelvin Collaboration".

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Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB): http://www.ptb.de/

Thanks to Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) for this article.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/128371/Magnetic_fingerprints_of_superfluid_helium__

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