[ [ [['Connery is an experienced stuntman', 2]], 'http://yhoo.it/KeQd0p', '[Slideshow: See photos taken on the way down]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['Connery is an experienced stuntman', 7]], ' http://yhoo.it/KpUoHO', '[Slideshow: Death-defying daredevils]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['know that we have confidence in', 3]], 'http://yhoo.it/LqYjAX ', '[Related: The Secret Service guide to Cartagena]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['We picked up this other dog and', 5]], 'http://yhoo.it/JUSxvi', '[Related: 8 common dog fears, how to calm them]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['accused of running a fake hepatitis B', 5]], 'http://bit.ly/JnoJYN', '[Related: Did WH share raid details with filmmakers?]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['accused of running a fake hepatitis B', 3]], 'http://bit.ly/KoKiqJ', '[Factbox: AQAP, al-Qaeda in Yemen]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['have my contacts on or glasses', 3]], 'http://abcn.ws/KTE5AZ', '[Related: Should the murder charge be dropped?]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['have made this nation great as Sarah Palin', 5]], 'http://yhoo.it/JD7nlD', '[Related: Bristol Palin reality show debuts June 19]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['have made this nation great as Sarah Palin', 1]], 'http://bit.ly/JRPFRO', '[Related: McCain adviser who vetted Palin weighs in on VP race]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['A JetBlue flight from New York to Las Vegas', 3]], 'http://yhoo.it/GV9zpj', '[Related: View photos of the JetBlue plane in Amarillo]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['the 28-year-old neighborhood watchman who shot and killed', 15]], 'http://news.yahoo.com/photos/white-house-stays-out-of-teen-s-killing-slideshow/', 'Click image to see more photos', 'http://l.yimg.com/cv/ip/ap/default/120411/martinzimmermen.jpg', '630', ' ', 'AP', ], [ [['He was in shock and still strapped to his seat', 6]], 'http://news.yahoo.com/photos/navy-jet-crashes-in-virginia-slideshow/', 'Click image to see more photos', 'http://l.yimg.com/cv/ip/ap/default/120406/jet_ap.jpg', '630', ' ', 'AP', ], [ [['xxxxxxxxxxxx', 11]], 'http://news.yahoo.com/photos/russian-grannies-win-bid-to-sing-at-eurovision-1331223625-slideshow/', 'Click image to see more photos', 'http://l.yimg.com/a/p/us/news/editorial/1/56/156d92f2760dcd3e75bcd649a8b85fcf.jpeg', '500', ' ', 'AP', ] ]
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The lights at an intersections on Richmond Road are out on Saturday, June 30, 2012 in Staunton, Va. Violent storms swept across the eastern U.S., killing at least nine people and knocking out power to hundreds of thousands on a day that temperatures across the region are expected to reach triple-digits. (AP Photo/The News Leader, Pat Jarrett)
The lights at an intersections on Richmond Road are out on Saturday, June 30, 2012 in Staunton, Va. Violent storms swept across the eastern U.S., killing at least nine people and knocking out power to hundreds of thousands on a day that temperatures across the region are expected to reach triple-digits. (AP Photo/The News Leader, Pat Jarrett)
NEW YORK (AP) ? Netflix, Instagram and Pinterest are using Twitter and Facebook to update subscribers after a Virginia storm caused server outages for hours.
Netflix and Pinterest restored service by Saturday afternoon. Instagram engineers are working to restore service but no data was lost. The three websites are customers of Amazon Inc.'s web services division.
The storm killed six people and knocked out electricity for hundreds of thousands in the Mid-Atlantic region.
Amazon spokeswoman Kay Kinton told The Associated Press in an email that the storm cut power to some of company's operations. Service has been restored for most customers, Kinton said.
Netflix, a video streaming service, tweeted that subscribers should reconnect if they still experienced problems.
The online scrapbook service Pinterest says employees are working on remaining issues that may affect performance.
Palaven is burning. Only strong, brave soldiers can help save the planet. The best of the best. Oh, and watch out for the lasers!
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Forum for completely Out of Character (OOC) discussion, based around whatever is happening In Character (IC). Discuss plans, storylines, and events; Recruit for your roleplaying game, or find a GM for your playergroup. This is the auto-generated OOC topic for the roleplay "Mass Effect: The Fall of Palaven"
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POWER TO THE ROLE PLAYERS: Most Recent Roleplay
i am 33% evil, 33% insane, 33% role player, and 1% other (Note: Insane and Brilliant are the same thing!)
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RolePlayGateway is a site built by a couple roleplayers who wanted to give a little something back to the roleplay community. The site has no intention of earning any profit, and is paid for out of their own pockets.
If you appreciate what they do, feel free to donate your spare change to help feed them on the weekends. After selecting the amount you want to donate from the menu, you can continue by clicking on PayPal logo.
Finally get settled into the last Rdio redesign from just a few months ago? Well, we're afraid you've got a bit more adjusting to do. The streaming music service has now rolled out another sweeping visual overhaul of its website and desktop apps -- one that ditches the former iTunes-like appearance for a far more minimalist look, although all of the key elements remain in the same places as before. Naturally, that brings with it yet another software update for the desktop apps, although there's no word on any changes for its mobile apps just yet.
On Thursday, BlackBerry maker Research In Motion Ltd. offered details on layoffs and announced yet another delay in its BlackBerry 10 devices. It also reported disappointing earnings for the latest quarter. On Friday, its stock price fell 19 percent.
RIM faces the most difficult period in its history. RIM, which fathered the ground-breaking BlackBerry in 1999, has hired a team of bankers to help it weigh its options. Those options include partnering with other companies, licensing software and overhauling its business.
Here's a look at recent developments as the company struggles to regain market share lost to Apple's iPhone and devices running Google's Android operating software:
Sept. 15, 2011: RIM reports a sharp drop in net income and revenue in the fiscal second quarter and says it has sold far fewer PlayBook tablet computers than it expected.
Oct. 10: Email and Internet services are disrupted for three days, primarily outside North America. RIM says a crucial link in its infrastructure had failed, and a backup didn't work either. By the third day, other users, including those in the U.S. and Canada, were affected by a backlog of traffic.
Oct. 25: RIM says it is delaying the launch of an upgraded operating system for the PlayBook until February, saying it isn't up to its standards yet. The company also says the new version initially won't have the popular messaging service BlackBerry Messenger. It's the third delay announced since the features were promised in April.
Dec. 2: RIM says it is writing off much of its inventory of PlayBook tablets after it had to sell them at a deep discount. The model originally priced at $500 now costs $200. The company says it's taking a pre-tax charge of $485 million in the just-ended quarter. RIM also says it will sell fewer BlackBerrys in the holiday quarter than in the one that just ended. It also says it won't meet full-year earnings guidance of $5.25 to $6 per share, the third cut in a row.
Dec. 6: RIM says "BlackBerry 10" will be the new name for its next-generation system after the company loses a trademark ruling on its previous name, BBX.
Dec. 15: RIM says new phones deemed critical to the company's future won't be out until late 2012. The company says the BlackBerry 10 phones will need a highly integrated chipset that won't be available until mid-2012, so the company can now expect the new phones to ship late in the year. The company also says BlackBerry sales will fall sharply in the holiday quarter compared with the three months that ended Nov. 26. RIM says it would only ship between 11 million and 12 million BlackBerrys in the fourth quarter, down from 14.1 million in the third quarter.
Jan. 22, 2012: RIM founder Mike Lazaridis and long-time executive Jim Balsillie announce they will step down as co-CEOs. Thorsten Heins, a chief operating officer who joined RIM four years ago from Siemens AG, was named as their replacement. Lazaridis and Balsillie remain on the board.
Feb. 21: RIM finally releases an upgraded operating system for its PlayBook. The free upgrade allows for built-in email, calendar and contacts on the tablet ? features promised within 60 days after the PlayBook's launch last April. The PlayBook had received negative reviews because it launched without an email program and the popular messaging service BlackBerry Messenger. The new version still doesn't include the messaging service.
March 29: RIM says Balsillie has resigned from its board, and two top executives are leaving. RIM also writes down the value of its product inventory again as the company reports a loss of $125 million, its first quarterly loss since fiscal 2005. Heins doesn't rule out a sale, but he says it is not the main direction of the strategic review he's overseeing.
April 26: Newest board member of RIM says a turnaround could take three to five years. Prem Watsa, RIM's third-largest investor, says he sees his investment in the company as a long-term one, adding that RIM's fortunes won't be reversed soon.
May 1: RIM unveils a newly designed smartphone prototype powered by its upcoming BlackBerry 10 system. The prototype BlackBerry has a touchscreen, but no physical keyboard like most BlackBerry models. No update was given on the new system's launch date.
May 2: Company stresses that while the prototype has no physical keyboard, RIM will continue to make some models with one.
May 8: RIM announces hiring of two senior executives from struggling tech companies. Frank Boulben, the new chief marketing officer, comes from LightSquared. Kristian Tear, the new chief operating officer, is from Sony Mobile Communications.
May 29: RIM says it will have an operating loss in the current quarter and significant layoffs this year. The company says it has hired J.P. Morgan and RBC Capital Markets to help evaluate various strategies, including opportunities to partner with other companies and license software.
June 20: RIM says it has started laying off employees as part of a restructuring plan aimed at saving about $1 billion this year.
June 21: Company says the first BlackBerry device running BlackBerry 10 will not have a physical keyboard, only a touch-screen one. Ones with hard keyboards will eventually be made, but the company declines to say when.
Monday: Stock hits lowest level since 2003. Morgan Stanley's Ehud Gelblum says the company is facing a "triple whammy" in the current quarter. Gelblum says RIM's phones are aging, growth in the global smartphone market is slowing, and shipments are likely to decline ahead of the launch of BlackBerry 10 phones.
Thursday: RIM says it's cutting 5,000 jobs, or about 30 percent of its workforce, and delaying the launch of BlackBerry 10 yet again, to the first quarter of next year. It also reported worse results for its latest quarter, which ended June 2, than analysts had expected.
It's surely been a crazy couple of weeks for the folks at Google. The company clearly has more new features than it can shove into a couple of lengthy keynotes -- like functionality for Play that lets users update and uninstall apps by way of the My Android Apps tab in the browser-based version of the store. Check the source link below to begin your cloud-based bidding.
While purchasing real estate may seem involved and complicated, it can be quite rewarding if you understand what is involved. Don?t be afraid, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jL9kv16nH0&feature=youtu.be the tips in this article will help you avoid that.
You must understand well the terms used in mortgage loans before purchasing a home. Knowing everything you can about monthly mortgage payments and total cost of the loan will minimize all of your confusion.
Have a pre-qualification letter from a reputable lender before beginning your home search. A giant reason is because you need to know if you will get the financing before you get your hopes up. Furthermore, since obtaining a mortgage can take some time, it makes sense to get the ball rolling early.
It is absolutely necessary that you research a home?s neighborhood before you invest in a home. You need to find a neighborhood that meet your needs so that you will be totally satisfied with your home for the long haul. If you do not have a good feel for the neighborhood, then you may have issues in the future.
When you officially decide to purchase a home, don?t forget all the other options that are available. It might take a while to locate the property that fits exactly what you are looking for.
When looking to select the perfect agent to represent you, make sure you inquire how long he or she has lived in your preferred area. If they have only been around for a short while, they are not going to know as much about the roads, community restrictions and neighborhoods as someone else. An agent living in the city or district for ten years, on the other hand, is more likely to have a deep understanding of the area.
When you are ready to make an offer on a home, ask the sellers to consider financial incentives such as help with any closing costs. It is common to ask the seller to ?buy down? the interest rate for a year or two. By adding financial incentives to an offer, the seller is less likely to want to negotiate the price.
Be aware of developments in the pre-foreclosure market. In the event you are able to spend substantial time searching for investment opportunities, you may want to give pre-foreclosure properties a look. Properties in pre-foreclosure have owners who may go into foreclosure proceedings due to delinquent payments. You can contact local lenders to see if they have a list of per-foreclosure properties or you can run an ad which states that you are in the market to buy properties for cash. However you locate the owner of a pre-foreclosure property, you need to figure out how much he or she owes on the mortgage and make an offer a little higher than that amount. If there is a good bit of equity already, you can do well this way.
South Carolina's Eric Hyman has accepted an offer to become Texas A&M's new athletic director, said a person familiar with the move.
The person spoke to The Associated Press Friday on condition of anonymity because neither South Carolina nor Texas A&M has publically announced the move.
The 61-year-old Hyman has spent the past seven years as the Gamecocks' AD and is a former athletic director at TCU.
Texas A&M is officially joining the Southeastern Conference on Sunday after leaving the Big 12 and Hyman's experience in the SEC should help the Aggies make the transition.
During his tenure at South Carolina, the Gamecocks enjoyed an unprecedented level of athletic success. The baseball team under coach Ray Tanner won two national titles and played for a third before falling to Arizona at the College World Series earlier this month.
The football under coach Steve Spurrier reached its first SEC championship game in 2010 then won a program-record 11 games a year later.
The women's basketball team led by Dawn Staley returned to the NCAA tournament for the first time in nine years this past winter.
In one Hyman's final personnel moves, he lured successful Kansas State coach Frank Martin last March to revitalize a last-place basketball team.
Even when Hyman's athletic program made mistakes, he led the department back on top. The NCAA uncovered three major violations including failure to monitor the department because of violations in the football and track programs. However, the NCAA in handing down its final decision complemented Gamecock administrators for the thorough and above-board approach they took during the inquiry.
"They wanted to ask all the hard questions of all the right people," NCAA committee on infractions chairman Britton Banowsky said. "Even went beyond what the NCAA staff was doing. We see that less likely than we see the other approach."
Hyman briefly attended a Board of Trustees meeting and would not discuss Texas A&M. When asked about the job, the close-to-the-vest Hyman answered "You know how I'm going to respond."
University of South Carolina President Harris Pastides would not say Hyman had left.
"He hasn't said anything to me," Pastides said following the board meeting.
Hyman has overseen a revamping of Gamecock athletic facilities. He finished a $35.6 million Carolina Stadium baseball field that has helped that team's national rise. The football arena, Williams-Brice Stadium, has had new weight areas, training rooms and locker rooms complete. A $6.5 million video board is currently being installed in time for this fall. A $30 million tailgate area in what was formerly the state Farmer's Market across the street will also be finished by football season.
Hyman, though, won't get to enjoy the soon to be completed, $11.7 million coach's support building. The athletic department is poised to move out of its crumbling, old facility, nicknamed "The Roundhouse," in July.
Former Texas A&M AD Bill Byrne retired on May 8, a year before his contract would have expired. John Thornton has served as interim athletic director since Byrne's retirement.
The 66-year-old Byrne was hired at Texas A&M in December 2002 and the Aggies also saw unprecedented success and improvements in facilities during his tenure.
The school won 45 Big 12 championships in 13 different sports under his watch. Although he was the athletic director when Texas A&M decided to move to the SEC, he has said he was not involved in the final decision.
"Those are decisions that are made above my pay grade," Byrne said the day he announced his retirement. "My dad was a soldier, my mom was an Army nurse, and you're taught to salute and carry on. That's what we'll do."
Byrne was a vocal critic of the Longhorn TV network Texas and ESPN created, which was one of the factors that pushed A&M to seek a new conference home.
One of his biggest hires came in 2003 in women's basketball coach Gary Blair. Blair built the Aggies into a contender and led them to a national title in 2011.
The improvement in Texas A&M's basketball programs was also helped by the construction of a $26 million basketball practice facility that opened in 2008. The 68,000 square foot facility, which is used by the men and women, has two practice courts, a weight room and a player lounge.
Byrne was also proud of a $26 million renovation to the baseball stadium that was completed earlier this year.
Texas A&M developed into a powerhouse in indoor track in Byrne's time at the school and both the men's and women's teams picked up three straight national championships from 2009-11, and the Aggies also saw success in several other sports.
The football team wasn't able to keep pace with the other teams and was 58-54 in Byrne's time at the school. A 27-25 loss to archrival Texas on Thanksgiving capped a disappointing 6-6 regular season that came after the team entered the season with a top-10 ranking.
Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Understanding what's up with the Higgs bosonPublic release date: 28-Jun-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Paul Preuss paul_preuss@lbl.gov 510-486-6249 DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Berkeley Lab scientists, major contributors to the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider, explain what the excitement is about
CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, will hold a seminar early in the morning on July 4 to announce the latest results from ATLAS and CMS, two major experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) that are searching for the Higgs boson. Both experimental teams are working down to the wire to finish analyzing their data, and to determine exactly what can be said about what they've found.
"We do not yet know what will be shown on July 4th," says Ian Hinchliffe, a theoretical physicist in the Physics Division at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), who heads the Lab's participation in the ATLAS experiment. "I have seen many conjectures on the blogs about what will be shown: these are idle speculation. Things are moving very fast this week, and it's an exciting time at CERN. Many years of hard work are coming to fruition."
Last December, not long after the LHC had shut down for the winter, ATLAS and CMS both reported slight excesses over background of two kinds of signals consistent with the expected signature of a Higgs boson. The LHC started running again at a higher energy this spring, and, says Hinchliffe, "In that short time we've already doubled the data. But even if both experiments were to confirm what they saw last year with new data, no one can be certain that it is the Higgs."
Why can't they know? And what's a Higgs boson anyway?
Why particles have mass
A Higgs boson is an excitation a fleeting, grainy representation of the Higgs field, which extends throughout space and gives all other particles their mass.
At the instant of the big bang, everything was the same as everything else, a state of symmetry that lasted no time and was immediately broken. Particles of matter called fermions emerged from the sea of energy (mass and energy being interchangeable), including quarks and electrons that would much later form atoms. Along with them came force-carrying particles called bosons to rule how they all were related. All had different masses sometimes wildly different masses.
Using the concepts of a Higgs field and Higgs boson, the Standard Model explains why quarks, protons, electrons, photons, and a wide-ranging zoo of other particles have the specific masses they do. Oddly, however, the Standard Model can't predict the mass of the Higgs itself. That will only be learned from experiment.
It will be far from simple to know when the Higgs has actually been found. Any particle that packs as much energy as the Higgs lasts only a miniscule fraction of a second before it falls apart into other particles, each with lower energy, and these fall apart into still lower-energy particles, finally leaving a set that ATLAS or CMS can see or infer. According to the Standard Model, the Higgs can decay by half a dozen different patterns of tracks, or channels.
The probability of each path varies. For example, there's a low probability that a Higgs with mass equivalent to 100 billion electron volts (100 GeV) of energy would decay into a pair of W bosons, carriers of the weak interaction. Yet if its mass were 170 GeV, the probability of its decaying by that channel would be very high.
But earlier measurements, including those made last year at the LHC and at Fermilab's Tevatron, have already excluded many possible masses for a Standard Model Higgs. Of the narrowing possibilities, the hints that ATLAS and CMS saw in 2011 were in the neighborhood of 125 or 126 GeV.
The two channels involved, called the two-photon channel and the four-lepton channel for short, are certainly not the most likely decay routes, says Beate Heinemann of Berkeley Lab's Physics Division, who is also a professor in UC Berkeley's Department of Physics. "The probability that a 125-GeV Higgs would decay into two gamma rays is about two tenths of one percent, and the likelihood that it would decay into four muons or electrons is even smaller."
Finding the music in the noise
Background noise is the key. Even though the two-photon and four-lepton channels have a low probability, they are relatively free of noise from particle debris that obscures evidence of other channels. More probable routes for the decay of a Higgs with mass near 125 GeV would be to a bottom quark and antibottom quark, or a pair of W bosons, or a pair of tau particles, but all these are much harder to detect.
Heinemann, recently the Data Preparation Coordinator for ATLAS, says knowing what to look for is crucial. "Bunches of protons cross through each other 20 million times a second inside the ATLAS detector, with an average of 20 collisions at each crossing." Electronic filters automatically cull the events to 100,000 per second of possible interest. Sophisticated software further reduces the cull to a few hundred events per second that are recorded and stored for later study. Says Heinemann, "We try to keep everything anyone can think of that might be interesting."
The products of data reduction are colorful diagrams of spectacular sprays of particles from proton-proton collisions, recorded by the concentric layers of detectors that ATLAS wraps around the beam line. What makes the diagrams so intricate and precise begins in the Inner Detector, largely designed and built at Berkeley Lab, as was much of the filtering and sifting hardware and software.
"The LHC produces far more particles per collision than any accelerator before it. Not confusing them requires finer granularity and finer resolution, which means many more detector elements close to the beam," says Murdock "Gil" Gilchriese, who headed the Berkeley Lab group that worked on the ATLAS Inner Detector.
The very heart of ATLAS is a pixel detector consisting of 80 million tiny silicon rectangles 50 microns (millionths of a meter) wide and 400 microns long, each connected to its own electronics many millions of transistors bathed in the most intense radiation an accelerator has ever produced.
At CERN, U.S. participation in the ATLAS and CMS experiments alone numbers well over 1,500 people, not to mention significant U.S. contributions to other experiments and the accelerator itself. Fermilab hosts the U.S. participation in CMS, and Brookhaven National Laboratory is the U.S. host for ATLAS.
"About 20 percent of the ATLAS collaboration comes from the U.S.," says Heinemann, "and one of the largest contingents is from Berkeley Lab, many of us in key positions. For example, Kevin Einsweiler, who led the ATLAS pixel project, is currently ATLAS's Physics Coordinator, guiding analysis of the data. Michael Barnett has long held the post of Outreach Coordinator. At any given time we may also have 10 students and 10 postdocs working on ATLAS. There are a lot of us, and much of the time many of us are on the job at CERN."
Whatever news comes out of CERN in the wee hours of the morning on July 4, hints and indications so far are just the beginning of the search to pin down the Higgs and learn its characteristics. The Higgs search commences a long voyage of discovery into a realm of unexplored physics, of supersymmetry, dark matter, miniature black holes, extra dimensions of space and other, unanticipated wonders that defy prediction.
###
For further information contact:
Ian Hinchliffe, head of Berkeley Lab participation in ATLAS, i_hinchliffe@lbl.gov, 510-486-4487
Beate Heinemann, Berkeley Lab staff scientist and professor of physics at UC Berkeley, bheheinemann@lbl.gov, 510-486-7538
Natalie Roe, Director of Berkeley Lab's Physics Division, naroe@lbl.gov, 510-486-6380
More about ATLAS is at http://atlas.ch/
Wikipedia's discussion of the Higgs is at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgs_boson
More about quarks, neutrinos, antimatter, extra dimensions, dark matter, accelerators, detectors, and other fascinating aspects of particle physics can be found in the Particle Adventure at http://www.particleadventure.org/index.html
The U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science and the National Science Foundation provide support for U.S. participation in the Large Hadron Collider and its major experiments. DOE's Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit the Office of Science website at science.energy.gov/.
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory addresses the world's most urgent scientific challenges by advancing sustainable energy, protecting human health, creating new materials, and revealing the origin and fate of the universe. Founded in 1931, Berkeley Lab's scientific expertise has been recognized with 13 Nobel prizes. The University of California manages Berkeley Lab for the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science. For more, visit www.lbl.gov.
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Understanding what's up with the Higgs bosonPublic release date: 28-Jun-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Paul Preuss paul_preuss@lbl.gov 510-486-6249 DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Berkeley Lab scientists, major contributors to the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider, explain what the excitement is about
CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, will hold a seminar early in the morning on July 4 to announce the latest results from ATLAS and CMS, two major experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) that are searching for the Higgs boson. Both experimental teams are working down to the wire to finish analyzing their data, and to determine exactly what can be said about what they've found.
"We do not yet know what will be shown on July 4th," says Ian Hinchliffe, a theoretical physicist in the Physics Division at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), who heads the Lab's participation in the ATLAS experiment. "I have seen many conjectures on the blogs about what will be shown: these are idle speculation. Things are moving very fast this week, and it's an exciting time at CERN. Many years of hard work are coming to fruition."
Last December, not long after the LHC had shut down for the winter, ATLAS and CMS both reported slight excesses over background of two kinds of signals consistent with the expected signature of a Higgs boson. The LHC started running again at a higher energy this spring, and, says Hinchliffe, "In that short time we've already doubled the data. But even if both experiments were to confirm what they saw last year with new data, no one can be certain that it is the Higgs."
Why can't they know? And what's a Higgs boson anyway?
Why particles have mass
A Higgs boson is an excitation a fleeting, grainy representation of the Higgs field, which extends throughout space and gives all other particles their mass.
At the instant of the big bang, everything was the same as everything else, a state of symmetry that lasted no time and was immediately broken. Particles of matter called fermions emerged from the sea of energy (mass and energy being interchangeable), including quarks and electrons that would much later form atoms. Along with them came force-carrying particles called bosons to rule how they all were related. All had different masses sometimes wildly different masses.
Using the concepts of a Higgs field and Higgs boson, the Standard Model explains why quarks, protons, electrons, photons, and a wide-ranging zoo of other particles have the specific masses they do. Oddly, however, the Standard Model can't predict the mass of the Higgs itself. That will only be learned from experiment.
It will be far from simple to know when the Higgs has actually been found. Any particle that packs as much energy as the Higgs lasts only a miniscule fraction of a second before it falls apart into other particles, each with lower energy, and these fall apart into still lower-energy particles, finally leaving a set that ATLAS or CMS can see or infer. According to the Standard Model, the Higgs can decay by half a dozen different patterns of tracks, or channels.
The probability of each path varies. For example, there's a low probability that a Higgs with mass equivalent to 100 billion electron volts (100 GeV) of energy would decay into a pair of W bosons, carriers of the weak interaction. Yet if its mass were 170 GeV, the probability of its decaying by that channel would be very high.
But earlier measurements, including those made last year at the LHC and at Fermilab's Tevatron, have already excluded many possible masses for a Standard Model Higgs. Of the narrowing possibilities, the hints that ATLAS and CMS saw in 2011 were in the neighborhood of 125 or 126 GeV.
The two channels involved, called the two-photon channel and the four-lepton channel for short, are certainly not the most likely decay routes, says Beate Heinemann of Berkeley Lab's Physics Division, who is also a professor in UC Berkeley's Department of Physics. "The probability that a 125-GeV Higgs would decay into two gamma rays is about two tenths of one percent, and the likelihood that it would decay into four muons or electrons is even smaller."
Finding the music in the noise
Background noise is the key. Even though the two-photon and four-lepton channels have a low probability, they are relatively free of noise from particle debris that obscures evidence of other channels. More probable routes for the decay of a Higgs with mass near 125 GeV would be to a bottom quark and antibottom quark, or a pair of W bosons, or a pair of tau particles, but all these are much harder to detect.
Heinemann, recently the Data Preparation Coordinator for ATLAS, says knowing what to look for is crucial. "Bunches of protons cross through each other 20 million times a second inside the ATLAS detector, with an average of 20 collisions at each crossing." Electronic filters automatically cull the events to 100,000 per second of possible interest. Sophisticated software further reduces the cull to a few hundred events per second that are recorded and stored for later study. Says Heinemann, "We try to keep everything anyone can think of that might be interesting."
The products of data reduction are colorful diagrams of spectacular sprays of particles from proton-proton collisions, recorded by the concentric layers of detectors that ATLAS wraps around the beam line. What makes the diagrams so intricate and precise begins in the Inner Detector, largely designed and built at Berkeley Lab, as was much of the filtering and sifting hardware and software.
"The LHC produces far more particles per collision than any accelerator before it. Not confusing them requires finer granularity and finer resolution, which means many more detector elements close to the beam," says Murdock "Gil" Gilchriese, who headed the Berkeley Lab group that worked on the ATLAS Inner Detector.
The very heart of ATLAS is a pixel detector consisting of 80 million tiny silicon rectangles 50 microns (millionths of a meter) wide and 400 microns long, each connected to its own electronics many millions of transistors bathed in the most intense radiation an accelerator has ever produced.
At CERN, U.S. participation in the ATLAS and CMS experiments alone numbers well over 1,500 people, not to mention significant U.S. contributions to other experiments and the accelerator itself. Fermilab hosts the U.S. participation in CMS, and Brookhaven National Laboratory is the U.S. host for ATLAS.
"About 20 percent of the ATLAS collaboration comes from the U.S.," says Heinemann, "and one of the largest contingents is from Berkeley Lab, many of us in key positions. For example, Kevin Einsweiler, who led the ATLAS pixel project, is currently ATLAS's Physics Coordinator, guiding analysis of the data. Michael Barnett has long held the post of Outreach Coordinator. At any given time we may also have 10 students and 10 postdocs working on ATLAS. There are a lot of us, and much of the time many of us are on the job at CERN."
Whatever news comes out of CERN in the wee hours of the morning on July 4, hints and indications so far are just the beginning of the search to pin down the Higgs and learn its characteristics. The Higgs search commences a long voyage of discovery into a realm of unexplored physics, of supersymmetry, dark matter, miniature black holes, extra dimensions of space and other, unanticipated wonders that defy prediction.
###
For further information contact:
Ian Hinchliffe, head of Berkeley Lab participation in ATLAS, i_hinchliffe@lbl.gov, 510-486-4487
Beate Heinemann, Berkeley Lab staff scientist and professor of physics at UC Berkeley, bheheinemann@lbl.gov, 510-486-7538
Natalie Roe, Director of Berkeley Lab's Physics Division, naroe@lbl.gov, 510-486-6380
More about ATLAS is at http://atlas.ch/
Wikipedia's discussion of the Higgs is at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgs_boson
More about quarks, neutrinos, antimatter, extra dimensions, dark matter, accelerators, detectors, and other fascinating aspects of particle physics can be found in the Particle Adventure at http://www.particleadventure.org/index.html
The U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science and the National Science Foundation provide support for U.S. participation in the Large Hadron Collider and its major experiments. DOE's Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit the Office of Science website at science.energy.gov/.
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory addresses the world's most urgent scientific challenges by advancing sustainable energy, protecting human health, creating new materials, and revealing the origin and fate of the universe. Founded in 1931, Berkeley Lab's scientific expertise has been recognized with 13 Nobel prizes. The University of California manages Berkeley Lab for the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science. For more, visit www.lbl.gov.
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You can honor those who have served our country this weekend. The ?Salute to Our Veterans and Service Members Parade? takes off at 10 a.m. Saturday.
Veterans from across the state will gather at the Iowa State Capitol for the parade in their honor. The parade will start when four F-16 fighter jets from the 132nd Fighter Wing fly over the capitol. A riderless horse will lead the parade in memory of fallen soldiers.
The parade will head west on Grand Avenue, then north on 2nd Avenue. It will end at Veterans Auditorium. Organizer Col. Bob King says about 100 entries will take part, including veterans groups and businesses like the Budweiser Clydesdales and Wells Fargo stage coach.
Col. King says the Governor?s office worked with the Iowa National Guard and Office of Veterans Affairs to help honor service members with this event. He says, ?Celebrate and honor our veterans of all services, all branches, all conflicts, all periods of peace time, everybody that?s wearing a uniform, whether you?re an Iowan, or a citizen of this country. This is to honor them and to celebrate the service they gave to this country.?
Col. King says they?ll have plenty of water stops along the way to help people stay cool.
BEIRUT (AP) ? Government troops rained tank and artillery shells down on a rebellious suburb of the Syrian capital of Damascus Friday, killing at least 43 people over two days, opposition groups and activists said.
The barrage is part of a fierce government offensive aimed at regaining control of parts of Damascus suburbs where rebels operate, particularly Douma, a sprawling suburb that has been a hotbed of dissent against President Bashar Assad's regime.
A local activist who spoke on condition of anonymity for security reasons said the shelling was "relentless" throughout Thursday, and exploding shells killed people in their homes.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 41 people died in all-day shelling of Douma Thursday, including three children and five members of a single family. At least two more were killed Friday morning.
"They (government troops) are trying to bring Douma under control, but they are being met by fierce resistance," said Rami Abdul-Rahman, the group's director. He said most of the dead were civilians.
The Local Coordination Committees network said 59 people were killed in Thursday's shelling of Damascus suburbs, most of them in Douma. The difference in tolls illustrated the difficulty of verifying information coming out of tightly controlled Syria, where journalists and human rights groups are either banned or severely restricted.
Amateur videos posted by activists online showed bloodied bodies lying on blankets in a room and others shrouded in white sheets and placed on stretchers. "A new massacre by Bashar Assad," cried a man holding a dead girl in a pink blouse, a large gash on her face.
The violence around the capital's suburbs mirrored fighting across many parts of Syria that killed dozens of other people Thursday, according to the groups.
Activists say more than 14,000 people have been killed since the uprising began in March 2011.
Much of the violence that has gripped Syria has been sanctioned by the government to crush dissent. But rebel fighters are launching increasingly deadly attacks on regime targets, and several huge suicide bombings this year suggest al-Qaida or other extremists are joining the battle. A bomb blast rocked central Damascus on Thursday near a busy market and the country's main justice complex, wounding at least three people and sending a cloud of black smoke into the air.
The latest carnage came as world powers show new urgency to resolve the crisis, which so far has resisted international efforts.
World powers will meet Saturday in Geneva for talks on Syria, but few observers expect a breakthrough. Syria has the protection of Russia, a veto-wielding member of the U.N. Security Council, and has so far been impervious to international pressure.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Moscow will not endorse a call on Assad to give up power.
"We are not supporting and will not support any external meddling," he said. "External players must not dictate ... to Syrians, but, first of all, must commit to influencing all the sides in Syria to stop the violence."
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Thursday it was "very clear" that all the participants at the Geneva meeting ? including Russia ? are on board with a transition plan created by international envoy Kofi Annan. His plan calls for the formation of a national unity government that would oversee the drafting of a new constitution and elections.
Clinton told reporters that the invitations to Saturday's meeting in Geneva made clear that representatives "were coming on the basis of (Annan's) transition plan."
Lavrov said it was "obvious that a transitional period is needed to overcome the Syrian crisis," but insisted the major powers in Geneva must focus on convincing the opposition groups to soften their demands.
Diplomatic hopes have rested on Russia to agree to a plan that would end the Assad family dynasty, which has ruled Syria for more than four decades. Russia is Syria's most important ally, protector and supplier of arms.
There are few options besides keeping up diplomatic pressure, as an international military intervention is all but ruled out in the near future. Few countries are willing to get deeply involved in such an explosive conflict, and Russia and China have pledged to veto any international attempt to intervene militarily.
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We know online retailers are battling with real-time consumer demands, negative online reviews and shopping cart abandonment from busy consumers. Plus, we add in the demands of integrating social media and plates start overflowing. The challenges are real and the solutions aren?t always easy. So the Social Media Explorer team is happy to bring you a useful and informative webinar to give you insights right from some of the industry?s leading experts.
Hear how expert online retailers are dealing with:
Tips to decrease shopping cart abandonment
How to integrate social media into the online shopping experience
Ways to use social sharing to drive new business
Tips to balance the needs of real-time consumer demands and business objectives
How to adjust to consumer demands for online purchase behaviors
Ways to maximize customer service experiences
Register Now
Wednesday, July 11, 2012 1 p.m. ET/10 a.m. PT
Our panel of experts offer decades of experience in handling all of these issues and have successfully turned challenges like these into opportunities to grow their online retail businesses driving millions in revenue. Jason Falls will host a fireside chat with?Barry Litwin, former VP of Global Commerce for Office Depot; Brad Butler, COO of Halloween Express and Jeff Mason, VP of Marketing for Velaro to get the inside scoop.
Hear how Barry Litwin grew the online retail business for Office Depot to a $4.1 million web business that was ranked #5 by Internet Retailer.
Imagine having to do 90% of your revenues in less than 2 months! Brad Butler will explain how Halloween Express drives sales in a highly seasonal business without adding a second Halloween to the calendar!
Want a little variety in your online retail diet? Jeff Mason has worked with hundreds of online retailers to implement chat solutions and can tell you exactly what the leaders are doing right and what the losers are doing wrong.
Barry Litwin ? Retail E-Commerce Executive and Thought Leader
Barry is a frequent internet industry speaker, and a seasoned e-commerce and mobile executive having led e-commerce for several large scale retail and multi-channel companies. He was VP, Global E-Commerce for Office Depot?s $4.1M web business, ranked #5 by Internet Retailer, where he oversaw strategic planning, on-line merchandising, functional innovation, site usability and design, and web analytics. He was also responsible for mobile strategy and omni-channel experience initiatives. Previously, he was with $1.2B Premier Farnell, as the SVP, E-Commerce and Marketing for the North American Newark Electronics brand. He led digital marketing, e-commerce development, and multi-channel marketing. Barry was general manager for Block & Company, Inc., a $100M multi-channel distributor of money handling products to financial and gaming customers, and has also held senior leadership roles in sales and direct marketing at Office Max and Archibald Candy Company.
Brad Butler Jr. ? Internet Entrepreneur, Chief Operating Officer ASADART E-Commerce Specialty Shops
Since 2005 Brad has been the driving force behind the online presence of one of the country?s largest Halloween retailers, Halloween Express. Under Brad?s leadership HalloweenExpress.com has established itself as a dominant online player in the highly competitive Halloween seasonal business. Brad is directly responsible for the day-to-day management of the company?s ecommerce operations which among other things includes direct control over all marketing, SEO and social media marketing efforts. Additionally, Brad is the managing partner of Habco Services Group which provides online marketing consulting services to select companies. Prior to jumping into the online marketing arena, Brad was the founder, President and CEO of one of the largest telecommunications service bureaus in the country with nearly 500 employees.
Jeff Mason ? Technology Entrepreneur, Vice President of Marketing for Velaro, Inc.
With more than?20 years of technology marketing experience,?Jeff Mason is the Vice President of Marketing for Velaro,?a leading provider of live chat software. He and his team have worked with countless online retailers to improve customer service, decrease shopping cart abandon rates, and drive more revenues with the implementation of their software. Velaro believes live chat software is the solution for extending social conversations to a corporate website. Jeff was also Vice President of Marketing for Social Solutions, he co-founded Artifact Software, and was ?a member of Sequoia Software?s executive management team. When Sequoia was acquired by Citrix, Jeff served on the company?s management team and established Citrix Solutions Marketing Group. Throughout his career, Jeff has shown a passion for leveraging technology to improve customer experiences while driving revenue. He provides a unique perspective on where online retailers are missing the opportunity to engage their website visitors.
Register Now
Wednesday, July 11, 2012 1 p.m. ET/10 a.m. PT
And if you have questions you?d like to ask ahead of time, dive into the comments and file them. We?ll review before the webinar and try to get them answered!
Apple is losing one of its engineering big wigs. The company just announced that Bob Mansfield will retire.
Mansfield has been with Apple since 1999 and led hardware engineering for the iPhone, iPod, and the Mac. But his biggest accomplishment was probably the iPad. It was his baby since inception. The iPad has been called an engineering marvel.
Dan Riccio, Apple?s vice president of iPad Hardware Engineering, will take?Mansfield's place. Apple will probably be in pretty good hands. Riccio has been known as Mansfield's right-hand man and he's had just as long a history with the company. He joined Apple in 1998.
With the exit of Mansfield we can't help noting that the post-Steve-Jobs era of Apple is upon us.
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Public release date: 28-Jun-2012
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Barry is a frequent internet industry speaker, and a seasoned e-commerce and mobile executive having led e-commerce for several large scale retail and multi-channel companies. He was VP, Global E-Commerce for Office Depot?s $4.1M web business, ranked #5 by Internet Retailer, where he oversaw strategic planning, on-line merchandising, functional innovation, site usability and design, and web analytics. He was also responsible for mobile strategy and omni-channel experience initiatives. Previously, he was with $1.2B Premier Farnell, as the SVP, E-Commerce and Marketing for the North American Newark Electronics brand. He led digital marketing, e-commerce development, and multi-channel marketing. Barry was general manager for Block & Company, Inc., a $100M multi-channel distributor of money handling products to financial and gaming customers, and has also held senior leadership roles in sales and direct marketing at Office Max and Archibald Candy Company.
Since 2005 Brad has been the driving force behind the online presence of one of the country?s largest Halloween retailers, Halloween Express. Under Brad?s leadership HalloweenExpress.com has established itself as a dominant online player in the highly competitive Halloween seasonal business. Brad is directly responsible for the day-to-day management of the company?s ecommerce operations which among other things includes direct control over all marketing, SEO and social media marketing efforts. Additionally, Brad is the managing partner of Habco Services Group which provides online marketing consulting services to select companies. Prior to jumping into the online marketing arena, Brad was the founder, President and CEO of one of the largest telecommunications service bureaus in the country with nearly 500 employees.
With more than?20 years of technology marketing experience,?Jeff Mason is the Vice President of Marketing for Velaro,?a leading provider of live chat software. He and his team have worked with countless online retailers to improve customer service, decrease shopping cart abandon rates, and drive more revenues with the implementation of their software. Velaro believes live chat software is the solution for extending social conversations to a corporate website. Jeff was also Vice President of Marketing for Social Solutions, he co-founded Artifact Software, and was ?a member of Sequoia Software?s executive management team. When Sequoia was acquired by Citrix, Jeff served on the company?s management team and established Citrix Solutions Marketing Group. Throughout his career, Jeff has shown a passion for leveraging technology to improve customer experiences while driving revenue. He provides a unique perspective on where online retailers are missing the opportunity to engage their website visitors.