PRLog (Press Release) - Mar. 28, 2013 - MASPETH, N.Y. -- Maxsun Group celebrates the recovery and regained success of the restaurant industry with a furniture sale. To encourage further growth in the industry, the New York based commercial furniture superstore is now offering some of its best-selling items on sale.
The Supply Company offers great discounts on a wide range of furniture items, from booths and tables, to patio furniture, bar stools and chairs for their customers who are about to open new restaurants or planning to refurbish existing restaurants.
The furniture supplier is offering its Ladder Back Bar Stool on sale at only $78.00 for restaurants looking to update their bar areas and give them a modern twist. This bar stool comes in standard with black walnut frame finish and a padded seat with vinyl upholstery or with plain wooden seat. Also, this bar stool is available in several frame finishes, such as light walnut, mahogeny, nature wood and black. The Maxsun Group's sale price on this item is indeed a bargain compared with the price of other suppliers of similar bar stool of around $90 to $95. ?
Another best-selling item on sale from Maxsun Group is the square oak wood table sets. A 24X24 inch square table with base included is on sale at price of $110.00. These tables will fit perfectly in any establishment. Whether it's upscale restaurants, small coffee shops or even the family dining room, these oak wood tables bring a warm and elegant characteristic that is only innate in all natural wood products.
Maxsun Group is also offering a variety of metal stack chairs for those looking for a simple and affordable seating option with price starting at only $23. You can assure that these chairs are durable, despite the low price, and are easily stored and stack. The Supply Company doesn't want customers wait too long to receive their orders; that's why the "Quickship Program" was recently launched by the company to make sure that orders will be delivered in only one to two days. ?
To view the complete selection of tables, outdoor furniture, bar stools and chairs that currently on sale, visit http://www.maxsungroup.com or call 718-669-7811 to talk with their customer service representative.
So we'll be at Facebook HQ on Thursday morning to find out about its "New home in Mobile." I've seen countless headlines (mostly rewrites of what probably are controlled leaks) full of possible answers about what we'll see on Thursday morning.
We'll be there, of course, to check it out. Liveblogs are inevitable, but Facebook should be streaming it live, if history repeats.
I don't have answers. But I do have a few questions. Will they be answered on Thursday? Or will we leave California once again asking "Why, Facebook? Why?"
In this March 24, 2013 photo, former Marine Corps Cpl. Marshall Archer, left, a veterans' liaison for the city of Portland, Maine, speaks to a man on a street in Portland. Veterans groups are rallying to fight any proposal to change disability payments as the federal government attempts to address its long-term debt problem. They say they've sacrificed already.AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty
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WASHINGTON -- Veterans groups are rallying to fight any proposal to change disability payments as the federal government attempts to address its long-term debt problem. They say they've sacrificed already.
Government benefits are adjusted according to inflation, and President Barack Obama has endorsed using a slightly different measure of inflation to calculate Social Security benefits. Benefits would still grow but at a slower rate.
Advocates for the nation's 22 million veterans fear that the alternative inflation measure would also apply to disability payments to nearly 4 million veterans as well as pension payments for an additional 500,000 low-income veterans and surviving families.
"I think veterans have already paid their fair share to support this nation," said the American Legion's Louis Celli. "They've paid it in lower wages while serving, they've paid it through their wounds and sacrifices on the battlefield and they're paying it now as they try to recover from those wounds."
Economists generally agree that projected long-term debt increases stemming largely from the growth in federal health care programs pose a threat to the country's economic competitiveness. Addressing the threat means difficult decisions for lawmakers and pain for many constituents in the decades ahead.
But the veterans groups point out that their members bore the burden of a decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan. In the past month, they've held news conferences on Capitol Hill and raised the issue in meetings with lawmakers and their staffs. They'll be closely watching the unveiling of the president's budget next month to see whether he continues to recommend the change.
Obama and others support changing the benefit calculations to a variation of the Consumer Price Index, a measure called "chained CPI." The conventional CPI measures changes in retail prices of a constant marketbasket of goods and services. Chained CPI considers changes in the quantity of goods purchased as well as the prices of those goods. If the price of steak goes up, for example, many consumers will buy more chicken, a cheaper alternative to steak, rather than buying less steak or going without meat.
Supporters argue that chained CPI is a truer indication of inflation because it measures changes in consumer behavior. It also tends to be less than the conventional CPI, which would impact how cost-of-living raises are computed.
Under the current inflation update, monthly disability and pension payments increased 1.7 percent this year. Under chained CPI, those payments would have increased 1.4 percent.
The Congressional Budget Office projects that moving to chained CPI would trim the deficit by nearly $340 billion over the next decade. About two-thirds of the deficit closing would come from less spending and the other third would come from additional revenue because of adjustments that tax brackets would undergo.
Isabel Sawhill, a senior fellow in economic studies at The Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think tank, said she understands why veterans, senior citizens and others have come out against the change, but she believes it's necessary.
"We are in an era where benefits are going to be reduced and revenues are going to rise. There's just no way around that. We're on an unsustainable fiscal course," Sawhill said. "Dealing with it is going to be painful, and the American public has not yet accepted that. As long as every group keeps saying, `I need a carve-out, I need an exception,' this is not going to work."
Sawhill argued that making changes now will actually make it easier for veterans in the long run.
"The longer we wait to make these changes, the worse the hole we'll be in and the more draconian the cuts will have to be," she said.
That's not the way Sen. Bernie Sanders sees it. The chairman of the Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs said he recently warned Obama that every veterans group he knows of has come out strongly against changing the benefit calculations for disability benefits and pensions by using chained CPI.
"I don't believe the American people want to see our budget balanced on the backs of disabled veterans. It's especially absurd for the White House, which has been quite generous in terms of funding for the VA," said Sanders, I-Vt. "Why they now want to do this, I just don't understand."
Sanders succeeded in getting the Senate to approve an amendment last week against changing how the cost-of-living increases are calculated, but the vote was largely symbolic. Lawmakers would still have a decision to make if moving to chained CPI were to be included as part of a bargain on taxes and spending.
Sanders' counterpart on the House side, Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Fla., the chairman of the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs, appears at least open to the idea of going to chained CPI.
"My first priority is ensuring that America's more than 20 million veterans receive the care and benefits they have earned, but with a national debt fast approaching $17 trillion, Washington's fiscal irresponsibility may threaten the very provision of veterans' benefits," Miller said. "Achieving a balanced budget and reducing our national debt will help us keep the promises America has made to those who have worn the uniform, and I am committed to working with Democrats and Republicans to do just that."
Marshall Archer, 30, a former Marine Corps corporal who served two stints in Iraq, has a unique perspective about the impact of slowing the growth of veterans' benefits. He collects disability payments to compensate him for damaged knees and shoulders as well as post-traumatic stress disorder. He also works as a veterans' liaison for the city of Portland, Maine, helping some 200 low-income veterans find housing.
Archer notes that on a personal level, the reduction in future disability payments would also be accompanied down the road by a smaller Social Security check when he retires. That means he would take a double hit to his income.
"We all volunteered to serve, so we all volunteered to sacrifice," he said. "I don't believe that you should ever ask those who have already volunteered to sacrifice to then sacrifice again."
That said, Archer indicated he would be willing to "chip in" if he believes that everyone is required to give as well.
He said he's more worried about the veterans he's trying to help find a place to sleep. About a third of his clients rely on VA pension payments averaging just over $1,000 a month. He said their VA pension allows them to pay rent, heat their home and buy groceries, but that's about it.
"This policy, if it ever went into effect, would actually place those already in poverty in even more poverty," Archer said.
The changes that would occur by using the slower inflation calculation seem modest at first. For a veteran with no dependents who has a 60 percent disability rating, the use of chained CPI this year would have lowered the veteran's monthly payments by $3 a month. Instead of getting $1,026 a month, the veteran would have received $1,023.
Raymond Kelly, legislative director for Veterans of Foreign Wars, acknowledged that veterans would see little change in their income during the first few years of the change. But even a $36 hit over the course of a year is "huge" for many of the disabled veterans living on the edge, he said.
The amount lost over time becomes more substantial as the years go by. Sanders said that a veteran with a 100 percent disability rating who begins getting payments at age 30 would see their annual payments trimmed by more than $2,300 a year when they turn 55.
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The field of regenerative medicine holds great promise, propelled by greater understanding of how stem cells differentiate themselves into many of the body's different cell types. But clinical applications in the field have been slow to materialize, partially owing to difficulties in replicating the conditions these cells naturally experience.
A team of researchers from the University of Pennsylvania has generated new insight on how a stem cell's environment influences what type of cell a stem cell will become. They have shown that whether human mesenchymal stem cells turn into fat or bone cells depends partially on how well they can "grip" the material they are growing in.
The research was conducted by graduate student Sudhir Khetan and associate professor Jason Burdick, along with professor Christopher Chen, all of the School of Engineering and Applied Science's Department of Bioengineering. Others involved in the study include Murat Guvendiren, Wesley Legant and Daniel Cohen.
Their study was published in the journalNature Materials.
Much research has been done on how stem cells grow on two-dimensional substrates, but comparatively little work has been done in three dimensions. Three-dimensional environments, or matrices, for stems cells have mostly been treated as simple scaffolding, rather than as a signal that influences the cells' development.
Burdick and his colleagues were interested in how these three-dimensional matrices impact mechanotransduction, which is how the cell takes information about its physical environment and translates that to chemical signaling.
"We're trying to understand how material signals can dictate stem cell response," Burdick said. "Rather than considering the material as an inert structure, it's really guiding stem cell fate and differentiation ? what kind of cells they will turn into."
The mesenchymal stem cells the researchers studied are found in bone marrow and can develop into several cell types: osteoblasts, which are found in bone; chondrocytes, which are found in cartilage; and adipocytes, which are found in fat.
The researchers cultured them in water-swollen polymer networks known as hydrogels, which share some similarities with the environments stem cells naturally grow in. These materials are generally soft and flexible ? contact lenses, for example, are a type of hydrogel ? but can vary in density and stiffness depending on the type and quantity of the bonds between the polymers. In this case, the researchers used covalently cross-linked gels, which contain irreversible chemical bonds.
When seeded on top of two-dimensional covalently cross-linked gels, mesenchymal stem cells spread and pulled on the material differently depending on how stiff it was. Critically, the mechanics guide cell fate, or the type of cells they differentiate it into. A softer environment would produce more fat-like cells and a stiffer environment, where the cells can pull on the gel harder, would produce more bone-like cells.
However, when the researchers put mesenchymal stem cells inside three-dimensional hydrogels of varying stiffness, they didn't see these kinds of changes.
"In most covalently cross-linked gels, the cells can't spread into the matrix because they can't degrade the bonds ? they all become fat cells," Burdick said. "That tells us that in 3D covalent gels the cells don't translate the mechanical information the same way they do in a 2D system."
To test this, the researchers changed the chemistry of their hydrogels so that the polymer chains were connected by a peptide that the cells could naturally degrade. They hypothesized that, as the cells spread, they would be able to get a better grip on their surrounding environment and thus be more likely to turn into bone-like cells.
In order to determine how well the cells were pulling on their environment, the researchers used a technique developed by Chen's lab called 3D traction force microscopy. This technique involves seeding the gel with microscopic beads, then tracking their location before and after a cell is removed.
"Because the gel is elastic and will relax back into its original position when you remove the cells," Chen said, "you can quantify how much the cells are pulling on the gel based on how much and which way it springs back after the cell is removed."
The results showed that the stem cells' differentiation into bone-like cells was aided by their ability to better anchor themselves into the growth environment.
"With our original experiment, we observed that the cells essentially didn't pull on the gel. They adhered to it and were viable, but we did not see bead displacement. They couldn't get a grip," Burdick said. "When we put the cells into a gel where they could degrade the bonds, we saw them spread into the matrix and deform it, displacing the beads."
As an additional test, the researchers synthesized another hydrogel. This one had the same covalent bonds that the stem cells could naturally degrade and spread through but also another type of bond that could form when exposed to light. They let the stem cells spread as before, but at the point the cells would begin to differentiate ? about a week after they were first encapsulated ? the researchers further "set" the gel by exposing it to light, forming new bonds the cells couldn't degrade.
"When we introduced these cross-links so they could no longer degrade the matrix, we saw an increase toward fat-like cells, even after letting them spread," Burdick said. "This further supports the idea that continuous degradation is needed for the cells to sense the material properties of their environment and transduce that into differentiation signals."
Burdick and his colleagues see these results as helping develop a better fundamental understanding of how to engineer tissues using stem cells.
"This is a model system for showing how the microenvironment can influence the fate of the cells," Burdick said.
###
University of Pennsylvania: http://www.upenn.edu/pennnews
Thanks to University of Pennsylvania for this article.
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Looking for a way to organize your massive collection of selfies pictures of you and your friends? Trying to break into the music scene with the voice of an angel, more specifically a tone-deaf, 3-pack-a-day angel? Just want to get a feel for the world without ever putting on pants? This week's offering of iPad apps has you covered, whatever your dream may be. More »
Plus, The Host lacks soul, and Temptation wasn't screened -- guess the Tomatometer!
Also opening this week in limited release:
Room 237, a documentary that presents a number of fascinating interpretations of Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, is Certified Fresh at 95 percent.
Blancanieves, a silent take on Snow White set in 1920s Spain, is at 88 percent.
Violeta Went to Heaven, a biopic of Chilean folk singer Violeta Parra, is at 83 percent.
Renoir, a historical drama about the relationship between painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir and his son, director Jean Renoir, is at 79 percent.
Wrong, a dramedy about a man whose life takes a number of strange turns as he looks for his missing dog, is at 77 percent.
The Place Beyond The Pines, starring Ryan Gosling and Bradley Cooper in a drama with three interconnected stories about the fates of two families over the course of 15 years, is at 76 percent (check out director Derek Cianfrance's Five Favorite Films here).
Welcome to the Punch, starring James McAvoy and Mark Strong in a thriller about a detective who uncovers a conspiracy while trailing a master criminal, is at 55 percent.
Mental, starring Toni Collette and Liev Schreiber in a comedy about a woman tasked with taking care of five children when their mother is institutionalized, is at 44 percent.
Family Weekend, starring Kristin Chenoweth and Matthew Modine in a comedy about a a high-achieving teenager who takes her parents hostage to protest their indifference to her life, is at 25 percent (check out Chenoweth's Five Favorite Films here).
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Thursday, March 28th, 2013 By Michael Lombardi, MBA for Profit Confidential
The Consumer Confidence Index tracked by the Conference Board plummeted 14% in March 2013 from the previous month. Of the respondents, 36.2% believed jobs are hard to get and only 9.4% thought there were enough jobs out there in the U.S. economy.
As consumer confidence goes the wrong way, I am seeing consumer spending edge downward. Consider core durable goods orders for February. New orders for manufactured durable goods excluding transportation declined 0.5%. (Source: U.S. Census Bureau, March 26, 2013.) Companies aren?t buying!
And inventories of manufactured durable goods have risen in 16 of the last 17 months?today, they stand at their highest level since 1992. Inventories for durable manufactured goods increased 0.4% in February, after a rise of 0.3% in January. What this tells us is that businesses are selling less.
Businesses may want to add to inventory in times of economic growth, but when consumer confidence is anemic, I doubt that is the case. It?s a chain reaction; if consumers think they will face troubles ahead, they hoard their cash. They shy away from buying, and companies sell less.
As consumer confidence falls, retailers often are the first to see consumer spending pull back. Take Wal-Mart Stores, Inc (NYSE/WMT), for example. Wal-Mart is expecting its same-store sales to be flat in its current quarter. (Source: Reuters, March 12, 2013.) Wal-Mart is considered a low-end retailer offering lower prices to consumers. Sales staying flat are nothing but a warning sign for even weaker consumer spending ahead.
As I have been continuously harping on about in these pages, consumer confidence isn?t present in the U.S. economy. It needs to make a comeback in order for consumer spending to increase. (Consumer spending accounts for about two-thirds of America?s gross domestic product [GDP].)
Dear reader, in the fourth quarter of 2012, U.S. economic growth was so poor that we hardly had any GDP growth. With consumer confidence headed in the wrong direction and consumer spending raising red flags, I will not be surprised to see more troubles ahead for the U.S. economy.
More problems for consumer confidence: the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the real average hourly earnings for all employees in the U.S. economy fell 0.6% in February from January. (Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, March 15, 2013.) How can consumer confidence improve under these conditions?
Michael?s Personal Notes:
As mainstream economists continue to focus on the sovereignty of the smallest nation in the eurozone, Cyprus, my worries are focused on the four main economic hubs in the region.
Germany, the main economic hub in the eurozone, is hinting at an economic slowdown ahead, as the crisis in the region becomes more severe. The Ifo Business Climate Index for Germany edged lower in March. Businesses in the country are pessimistic about the current business environment and future business development. (Source: Ifo Institute for Economic Research, March 2013.)
The Flash Manufacturing Purchasing Managers? Index (PMI) for March showed that Germany is experiencing the slowest growth this year. The Flash PMI dropped to a three-month low to 51 in March, compared to 53.3 in February. (Source: Markit, March 21, 2013.) A reading below 50 indicates contraction in the manufacturing sector.
Similarly, France, the second-biggest economic power in the eurozone, is facing an economic slowdown. The country is faced with high unemployment and an economy that is deteriorating.
Italy, the third-largest producer in the eurozone, is caught in a downward spiral, with its troubles increasing on a daily basis. In January, retail trade in the country decreased 0.5% from December of 2012. Compared to January of 2012, the measure for sales at retail outlets fell three percent. (Source: Italian National Institute of Statistics, March 27, 2013.)
Finally, Spain, the fourth-biggest economy in the eurozone, hasn?t taken any rest from the economic slowdown since the debt crisis began. The central bank of Spain announced the country?s gross domestic product (GDP) will contract by 1.5% in 2013 and unemployment will rise above 27%. (Source: Financial Times, March 26, 2013.)
The Spanish government was forced to get a bailout of 100 billion euros from its eurozone peers when the country?s banks were facing severe liquidity issues. The country has been trying to implement austerity measures, but it?s failing miserably.
Eurozone troubles are here to stay for a long time, as the strongest powers now face their own economic slowdown. And what happens in the eurozone is important to the U.S. economy, because a significant amount of American companies operate in the region. If demand declines in the eurozone and the economic slowdown strengthens, then American companies will suffer.
Dear reader, the ?Cyprus problem? is relatively small compared to the situation in countries like France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. But what has happened in Cyprus with the government effectively taxing bank accounts with more than 100,000 euros in them is very significant?a clear indicator of what could be ahead for France, Italy, and Spain.
What He Said:
?We will wish Greenspan never brought rates down so low as to entice so many consumers to have such big mortgages.? Michael Lombardi in Profit Confidential, April 27, 2004. Michael first started warning about the negative repercussions of Greenspan?s low-interest rate policy when the Federal Reserve first dropped interest rates to one percent in 2004.
Mar. 28, 2013 ? When Charles Babbage prototyped the first computing machine in the 19th century, he imagined using mechanical gears and latches to control information. ENIAC, the first modern computer developed in the 1940s, used vacuum tubes and electricity. Today, computers use transistors made from highly engineered semiconducting materials to carry out their logical operations.
And now a team of Stanford University bioengineers has taken computing beyond mechanics and electronics into the living realm of biology. In a paper to be published March 28 in Science, the team details a biological transistor made from genetic material -- DNA and RNA -- in place of gears or electrons. The team calls its biological transistor the "transcriptor."
"Transcriptors are the key component behind amplifying genetic logic -- akin to the transistor and electronics," said Jerome Bonnet, PhD, a postdoctoral scholar in bioengineering and the paper's lead author.
The creation of the transcriptor allows engineers to compute inside living cells to record, for instance, when cells have been exposed to certain external stimuli or environmental factors, or even to turn on and off cell reproduction as needed.
"Biological computers can be used to study and reprogram living systems, monitor environments and improve cellular therapeutics," said Drew Endy, PhD, assistant professor of bioengineering and the paper's senior author.
The biological computer
In electronics, a transistor controls the flow of electrons along a circuit. Similarly, in biologics, a transcriptor controls the flow of a specific protein, RNA polymerase, as it travels along a strand of DNA.
"We have repurposed a group of natural proteins, called integrases, to realize digital control over the flow of RNA polymerase along DNA, which in turn allowed us to engineer amplifying genetic logic," said Endy.
Using transcriptors, the team has created what are known in electrical engineering as logic gates that can derive true-false answers to virtually any biochemical question that might be posed within a cell.
They refer to their transcriptor-based logic gates as "Boolean Integrase Logic," or "BIL gates" for short.
Transcriptor-based gates alone do not constitute a computer, but they are the third and final component of a biological computer that could operate within individual living cells.
Despite their outward differences, all modern computers, from ENIAC to Apple, share three basic functions: storing, transmitting and performing logical operations on information.
Last year, Endy and his team made news in delivering the other two core components of a fully functional genetic computer. The first was a type of rewritable digital data storage within DNA. They also developed a mechanism for transmitting genetic information from cell to cell, a sort of biological Internet.
It all adds up to creating a computer inside a living cell.
Boole's gold
Digital logic is often referred to as "Boolean logic," after George Boole, the mathematician who proposed the system in 1854. Today, Boolean logic typically takes the form of 1s and 0s within a computer. Answer true, gate open; answer false, gate closed. Open. Closed. On. Off. 1. 0. It's that basic. But it turns out that with just these simple tools and ways of thinking you can accomplish quite a lot.
"AND" and "OR" are just two of the most basic Boolean logic gates. An "AND" gate, for instance, is "true" when both of its inputs are true -- when "a" and "b" are true. An "OR" gate, on the other hand, is true when either or both of its inputs are true.
In a biological setting, the possibilities for logic are as limitless as in electronics, Bonnet explained. "You could test whether a given cell had been exposed to any number of external stimuli -- the presence of glucose and caffeine, for instance. BIL gates would allow you to make that determination and to store that information so you could easily identify those which had been exposed and which had not," he said.
By the same token, you could tell the cell to start or stop reproducing if certain factors were present. And, by coupling BIL gates with the team's biological Internet, it is possible to communicate genetic information from cell to cell to orchestrate the behavior of a group of cells.
"The potential applications are limited only by the imagination of the researcher," said co-author Monica Ortiz, a PhD candidate in bioengineering who demonstrated autonomous cell-to-cell communication of DNA encoding various BIL gates.
Building a transcriptor
To create transcriptors and logic gates, the team used carefully calibrated combinations of enzymes -- the integrases mentioned earlier -- that control the flow of RNA polymerase along strands of DNA. If this were electronics, DNA is the wire and RNA polymerase is the electron.
"The choice of enzymes is important," Bonnet said. "We have been careful to select enzymes that function in bacteria, fungi, plants and animals, so that bio-computers can be engineered within a variety of organisms."
On the technical side, the transcriptor achieves a key similarity between the biological transistor and its semiconducting cousin: signal amplification.
With transcriptors, a very small change in the expression of an integrase can create a very large change in the expression of any two other genes.
To understand the importance of amplification, consider that the transistor was first conceived as a way to replace expensive, inefficient and unreliable vacuum tubes in the amplification of telephone signals for transcontinental phone calls. Electrical signals traveling along wires get weaker the farther they travel, but if you put an amplifier every so often along the way, you can relay the signal across a great distance. The same would hold in biological systems as signals get transmitted among a group of cells.
"It is a concept similar to transistor radios," said Pakpoom Subsoontorn, a PhD candidate in bioengineering and co-author of the study who developed theoretical models to predict the behavior of BIL gates. "Relatively weak radio waves traveling through the air can get amplified into sound."
Public-domain biotechnology
To bring the age of the biological computer to a much speedier reality, Endy and his team have contributed all of BIL gates to the public domain so that others can immediately harness and improve upon the tools.
"Most of biotechnology has not yet been imagined, let alone made true. By freely sharing important basic tools everyone can work better together," Bonnet said.
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Story Source:
The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Stanford University Medical Center. The original article was written by Andrew Myers.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
Jerome Bonnet, Peter Yin, Monica E. Ortiz, Pakpoom Subsoontorn, and Drew Endy. Amplifying Genetic Logic Gates. Science, 28 March 2013 DOI: 10.1126/science.1232758
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Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
Mar 26 (Reuters) - Leading money winners on the 2013 PGATour on Monday (U.S. unless stated): 1. Tiger Woods $3,787,600 2. Brandt Snedeker $2,859,920 3. Matt Kuchar $2,154,500 4. Steve Stricker $1,820,000 5. Phil Mickelson $1,650,260 6. Hunter Mahan $1,553,965 7. John Merrick $1,343,514 8. Dustin Johnson $1,330,507 9. Russell Henley $1,313,280 10. Kevin Streelman $1,310,343 11. Keegan Bradley $1,274,593 12. Charles Howell III $1,256,373 13. Michael Thompson $1,254,669 14. Brian Gay $1,171,721 15. Justin Rose $1,155,550 16. Jason Day $1,115,565 17. Chris Kirk $1,097,053 18. ...
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The Supreme Court met on March 26 to discuss whether it would overturn Proposition 8 and the Defense of Marriage Act, and celebrities took to social media to express their support in allowing marriage equality. On Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, Hollywood's elite followed the Human Rights Campaign's lead and turned their avatars to an image of a pink equal sign set against a red background.
Nearly half of the 2.2 million U.S. troops who served in Iraq and Afghanistan have struggled to readjust to American life in part because the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs have been sluggish in helping those coming home in droves, according to a sweeping report released today.
After examining veteran suicides and unemployment as well as the military?s handling of sex assaults, women in uniform and same-sex family issues, the Institute of Medicine said returning service members deserve ?timely and adequate care,? yet it cited cases in which the DOD and VA are using unproven diagnostic and therapy tools.
"The (federal) response has been slow and has not matched the magnitude of this population's requirements as many cope with a complex set of health, economic, and other challenges," said co-author Dr. George Rutherford. He chairs the IOM?s committee on the assessment of readjustment needs of military personnel, veterans, and their families. The IOM, an independent nonprofit, is the health arm of the National Academy of Sciences.?
"The number of people affected, the influx of returning personnel as the conflicts wind down, and the potential long-term consequences of their service heighten the urgency of putting the appropriate knowledge and resources in place to make re-entry into post-deployment life as easy as possible,? added Rutherford, head of preventive medicine and public health at the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine.
Another 34,000 U.S. service members will be flown home from Afghanistan during the next 12 months. The high suicide toll among veterans (22 per day) has drawn recent Congressional scrutiny as have the elevated veteran-unemployment rate?and access limits to VA mental health care. Congress requested the IOM study.?
Among the recommendations within the 500-plus page report:
DOD and VA must ?boost efforts to reduce the stigma? associated with service members or veterans simply asking for help to deal with mental-health issues or with substance-abuse problems.
The tool DOD uses to assess cognitive function following a head injury ? Automated Neuropsychological Assessment Metrics (ANAM) ? carries ?no clear scientific evidence? to show that it works. That?s key because more than 200,000 U.S. troops have sustained traumatic brain injuries since 2000 ??most non-combat-related. On March 5, Congressional members sent a letter to the chiefs of DOD and VA seeking data to investigate a new theory linking TBIs with the military?s suicide crisis.
One of the VA?s ?first-line treatments for depression? ? Acceptance and Commitment Therapy ? similarly ?lacks sufficient evidence? to show its efficacy.
Research has found that curbing access to lethal weapons prevents suicides, however, ?DOD policy prohibits restricting that individual's access to privately owned weapons? ? even if a service member is known to be at risk for suicide.
DOD and VA should link their databases so that the health records of all service members are available to track their medical conditions from the moment they enter the service through the day any future treatment is eventually rendered by a VA facility.?
"These (recommendations) are meant to be helpful, meant to be more of a roadmap of how to pursue? these issues, Rutherford said. ?These are extraordinary challenges that the systems are facing and they?ve gone to extraordinary efforts to try and work with them.
'Demand is large' ?Yeah, it can all be streamlined. Yeah, (the available help) can be matched better to the demands. Yeah, you can improve this stuff. But they are trying like crazy to make it match the demand,? he added. ?The demand is large, and it?s growing.?
Compared to past post-war generations, a higher percentage of returning Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans are using the VA for their health care ? 56 percent of that population, according to the VA.
"This report provides VA a better understanding of the difficulties some Veterans face as they readjust to home, reconnect with family members, find employment and return to school," read an email from Josh Taylor, a VA spokesman. "Greater collaboration with the Department of Defense (DoD) in the areas of research, treatment and clinical outcomes will further enhance continuity of care as service members transition from active to veteran status."
Pentagon officials will examine the IOM?s suggestions, said Cynthia O. Smith, a DoD spokeswoman.
?DoD appreciates IOM's hard work and will thoughtfully consider the study's key findings and recommendations,? Smith wrote in an email. She added that the agency?s Deployment Health Clinical Center ?will work collectively with the VA to provide a joint response to Congress no later than June 2013.??
The IOM study reports that 44 percent of veterans have had "readjustment difficulties," 48 percent have dealt with "strains on family life," 49 percent have experienced post-traumatic stress, and 32 percent have felt "an occasional loss of interest in daily activities." Those figures were plucked from an earlier Pew Research Center survey.?
"I?m not surprised (by those numbers), talking to my other buddies that have gotten out. I?ve got several buddies that still can?t find jobs but, to be honest with you, I think it's a factor of (their) motivation" to hunt for work, said?Ryan Kriesel, 24, an Army tank operator who served two tours in Iraq. He's now a student at the University of Minnesota. He described his own transition as "pretty smooth."?
When it comes to those younger veterans who report a flagging interest in daily life, Kriesel believes some of that may be due to the loss of the emotional rush that once came with combat.?
"Part of it is being back in the civilian world," he said. "There?s not as much adrenaline going on as when you were overseas, out on combat missions several times a day."
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has named Swedish scientist Ake Sellstrom to head a U.N. investigation into allegations that chemical weapons were used in Syria, Ban's spokesman said on Tuesday.
"He is an accomplished scientist with a solid background in disarmament and international security," U.N. spokesman Martin Nesirky said.
The United Nations said last week it would investigate Syrian allegations that rebels used chemical arms in an attack near the northern city of Aleppo, but Western countries sought a probe of all claims about the use of such arms, including rebel charges that government forces used them.
If an investigation adds credibility to the rebels' claims that the government has used chemical weapons, it would represent another blow to Bashar al-Assad's efforts to retain power. If it turned out the rebels have used them, it could make countries even more reluctant to support the opposition.
It was not immediately clear who else would be on Sellstrom's team. Russia said on Monday that Russian and Chinese experts should be part of the investigation, but Moscow's U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said on Tuesday that Russia would "most likely not" be represented.
Sellstrom was a chief inspector for UNSCOM, the U.N. inspection team that investigated and dismantled Iraq's biological and chemical weapons programs in the 1990s.
Sellstrom also worked with UNMOVIC, the U.N. group that returned to Iraq in 2002 and found no solid evidence that Baghdad had revived its weapons-of-mass-destruction programs before the 2003 U.S.-led invasion as Washington and London alleged at the time.
Nesirky said Sellstrom's investigation would be a technical, not a criminal, investigation, looking at whether chemical weapons were used and not at who may have used them.
U.S. and European officials say there is no evidence of a chemical weapons attack, but the allegations of the rebels are worth taking seriously. If one were to be confirmed, it would be the first use of such weapons in the two-year-old Syrian conflict, which the United Nations says has cost 70,000 lives.
France and Britain wrote to Ban on Thursday to draw his attention to rebel allegations of an attack near Damascus, as well as one in Homs in late December. The rebels blame Syria's government for those incidents as well as the Aleppo attack.
EXPANDING THE INVESTIGATION?
Ban made clear on Thursday that the investigation would initially focus on the Aleppo incident, in which the government and rebels accuse each other of firing a missile laden with chemicals, killing 26 people.
But he has left open the possibility that the investigation could be broadened. In a letter to the Security Council on Friday, Ban said he had asked Britain, France and Syria for further information on the other alleged chemical attacks "with a view to verifying any alleged use of chemical weapons in Syria."
Britain's U.N. Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant told reporters on Tuesday that he has provided Ban's office with "further information" about the alleged chemical attacks in Syria. He declined to provide details.
The suggestion that the investigation may go beyond the Aleppo attack has infuriated Russia. Security Council diplomats told Reuters on condition of anonymity that the Russian U.N. mission went so far as to ask Ban to withdraw his Friday letter.
Russia's U.N. mission had no response on Monday when asked to comment on the alleged request that Ban withdraw his letter. Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said on Monday that the Anglo-French call for a broader investigation was an attempt to "delay and possibly derail" the U.N. probe.
Russia has criticized Western and Arab calls for Assad to leave power and, together with China, has blocked three U.N. Security Council resolutions meant to pressure him to end violence. It has also differed with the West over which side was to blame for alleged massacres and other atrocities in Syria.
A member of the Syrian opposition said Sellstrom's investigation would not be hindered by the rebels.
"We can guarantee him (Sellstrom) safe passage in the areas where the incidents took place in northern Syria," Wael Merza, an adviser to the Syrian coalition's new interim Prime Minister Ghassan Hitto, told Reuters on sidelines of an Arab summit in Doha.
Merza said there were at least two known cases where they suspect chemical weapons were used by forces loyal to Assad.
(Additional reporting by Yara Bayoumy in Doha; Editing by Cynthia Osterman and David Brunnstrom)
Russian tycoon found dead: Boris Berezovsky was found in his Surrey, England, home, dead. Cause of death is not known yet. But there is speculation that the once-wealthy Russian tycoon committed suicide.
By David Clark Scott,?Staff writer / March 23, 2013
Boris Berezovsky in 2008 as he arrives at the Royal Courts of Justice in London for his hearing against Roman Abramovich. United Kingdom police have said that Berezovsky has been found dead Saturday March 23, 2013.
AP Photo/Sang Tan, File
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Boris Berezovsky, once a wealthy Russian oligarch, was found dead in his home in Surrey, England.
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The cause of death is unknown at this time. But speculation that Berezovsky committed suicide is rampant, especially in Russian media.
Two things are prompting the speculation. First, a Russian lawyer, Alexander Dobrovinsky, was among the first to announce his death and posted in social media the following, according to RT.com:
?Just got a call from London. Boris Berezovsky committed suicide. He was a difficult man. A move of disparity? Impossible to live poor? A strike of blows? I am afraid no one will get to know now,?
There's no indication of the quality of Dobrovinsky's source. Certainly, British police have not yet made public a cause of death.
The second factor fueling the suicide talk is the very public decline in Berezovsky's wealth. He had lost several court cases and was known to be selling off real estate, a yacht, and art to raise funds. As The Guardian of London reports:
"Berezovsky's death comes only months after he lost a high-profile and personally disastrous court case against fellow Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich. He had accused the Chelsea football club owner of blackmail, breach of trust and breach of contract in relation to a Russian oil company. After the claims were dismissed, he was ordered by the high court to pay ?35m of Abramovich's legal costs.
His financial difficulties were recently further exacerbated after his former mistress Elena Gorbunova, 43, claimed that Berezovsky owed her $8m (?5m) in compensation over the sale of their $40m residence in Surrey."
Just days ago, Berezovsky sold his Andy Warhol limited edition print of Vladimir Lenin, known as "Red Lenin," for just over $200,000, according to the Russian media outlet RIA Novosti.
Berezovsky's political and financial success follows the arc of recent Russian history. In the 1980s, with the political opening and rise of free enterprise, he went from a quiet mathematician to powerful oligarch. His first business foray? - which Russian prosecutors later said was? illegal profit skimming - involved car sales for the state auto giant AvtoVAZ. Berezovsky used his initial wealth to build a media empire that included partial ownership of two national television networks and several respected newspapers.
As his wealth grew, so did his political clout.
In 1996, Berezovsky was among a group of businessmen who helped Boris Yeltsin's career. "It is no secret that Russian businessmen played the decisive role in President Yeltsin's victory," Berezovsky later told Forbes magazine. "It was a battle for our blood interests."
In return, Yeltsin sold to his backers Russian national industries at a fraction of their actual value. By the late 1990s, Berezovsky had an 80 percent ownership share in Sibneft, an oil company.
But as Agence France Presse reports "his most significant political move was the one that inadvertently sealed his fate: helping Yeltsin choose then-secret services chief Vladimir Putin as Russia's second president.
Berezovsky quickly became a key target of Putin's crackdown on the oligarchs' political independence. He fled the country and fired back with his entire media arsenal, painting the new president as a budding dictator."
The Guardian notes that "Berezovsky is been on Moscow's most wanted list since 2001 on charges of fraud, money-laundering and attempted interference in the Russian political process. A Russian court sentenced Berezovsky in absentia for embezzling $2bn from two major state companies."
But in the past year, there are reports that Berezovsky was seeking to return to Russia. The Irish Times reports that he had recently written to Mr. Putin seeking a pardon, according to Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov.
Proponents of gay marriage are hopeful and opponents wary after arguments on Proposition 8 at the Supreme Court Tuesday. But both acknowledge the import.
By Gloria Goodale,?Staff writer / March 26, 2013
Oaklanders watch as a rainbow flag is hoisted above City Hall in Oakland, Calif., on Tuesday in support of the gay community as oral arguments are heard in the US Supreme Court regarding California's Proposition 8 banning same-sex marriage.
Jane Tyska/The Contra Costa Times/AP
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As supporters and opponents of Proposition 8, the controversial California measure banning same-sex marriage, sifted through the arguments made before the Supreme Court Tuesday morning, they could agree on one thing: This is a watershed moment.
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?I can?t believe we have come this far, frankly,? says Nowlin Haltom, a real estate agent in the Los Angeles suburb of Studio City. He married his partner of 15 years in New York two years ago and says he has been in this fight ?for a long time.?
Meanwhile, Tim Wildmon, president of the American Family Association, says the Supreme Court is considering toying with thousands of years of human history. ?There is nothing in the history of the world culture that supports redefining marriage as an institution between a man and a man or a woman and a woman,? he says.
Possible outcomes from Tuesday?s arguments range from the case being dismissed all the way up to a broad ruling on whether or not there is a constitutional right for same-sex couples to marry, says Rebecca Brown, a constitutional law professor at the University of Southern California's Gould School of law.
?They?ve heard all the arguments, now they will go away and sort through them,? she says. A decision is expected by early June.
Mr. Haltom is grateful for the progress that has been made on the issue, noting that when he first came out to his family, ?my father would not speak to me for two years.? The fact that the law is being heard in the nation?s highest court is promising, but there is still much work left to do, says Haltom, a Vietnam veteran.
?I am certainly hopeful that the court will go all the way and make the biggest statement,? he says. But ?something more narrow is probably likely.?
He worries about his own relationship. At the moment, his husband would not be allowed to collect Haltom's Social Security check when Haltom dies. Prior to his current marriage, he was married to a woman with whom he has a grown daughter. ?My ex-wife is entitled to claim my benefit check,? he adds.
But Haltom says he is braced for any outcome and will continue his work regardless. There is much work left to do with the next generation of activists, he notes.
A Prop. 8 rally held at Los Angeles City Hall on Sunday drew no more than 350 supporters, he says. ?In a city of this size, don?t you think we should have gotten a better showing than that??
Mr. Wildmon suggests that a broad Supreme Court ruling in support of same-sex marriage would fly in the face of the clear majority opinion in America. Though polls now show that more than 50 percent of Americans support same-sex marriage, he notes that 31 states have created legislation defining marriage as being only between a man and a woman.
Some indications from the court Tuesday suggest that it might be wary of making a broad ruling, says Paul Linton, special counsel at The Thomas More Society, a national anti-abortion and anti-gay marriage advocacy group in Chicago. For example, Justice Anthony Kennedy said the plaintiffs were asking the court to head into ?uncharted waters.?
?I would be very concerned about the negative impact that [a broad] decision would have not just in California but across the entire nation,? Mr. Linton says.
He suggests that such a decision could lead to some states calling for a constitutional amendment, meaning Congress might have to convene a convention.
?It has never been used in our history? since the original Constitutional Convention of 1789, he notes. But if two-thirds of the states demanded it, he adds, it could happen.
DAKAR, Senegal (AP) ? A rebel leader whose fighters seized the capital of Central African Republic over the weekend has taken to the airwaves to make his first declaration, announcing he has dissolved the country's constitution and will stay in power for three years, according to excerpts from the broadcast carried on French radio.
Michel Djotodia, one of the leaders of the Seleka rebel coalition, said late Monday that he plans to stay in power until 2016, the length of time left in the term of the president he and his soldiers overthrew.
Ousted President Francois Bozize fled the presidential palace over the weekend, resurfacing Monday in the neighboring nation of Cameroon, where the government issued a statement saying he had sought "temporary exile" on their soil.
The Seleka rebel leader justified his coup d'etat, saying Bozize had veered into dictatorship during his 10 years in power.
"Through us, it was the entire population of Central African Republic that rose up as a single man against the president," Djotodia said, according to Radio France Internationale.
"To this effect, we have decided to guide the destiny of the people of the Central African Republic during this transitional period of three years, in keeping with the spirit of the accords signed in Libreville in January 11, 2013 ... As a result, I have decided that it is, therefore, necessary to dissolve the constitution of Dec. 27, 2004, as well as the parliament and the government," he said.
Meanwhile, French forces protecting Bangui's main airport opened fire on three cars that were speeding toward a security checkpoint, said the French Defense Ministry.
The cars, carrying Indian and Chadian citizens, continued despite warning shots. Two Indian citizens were killed, and the wounded Indian and Chadian passengers were taken for medical care, the defense minister said in the statement Monday.
France is investigating into the shooting, the statement said.
Pillaging, meanwhile, continued in the capital, Bangui, days after the Seleka rebels took the city. The rebels' advance started last week when they pushed past Damara, a town 75 kilometers (47 miles) to the northeast, which had marked the line of control drawn by regional forces in January, following an accord signed in Libreville, the capital of neighboring Gabon.
The rebels broke that accord last week, claiming that Bozize's government had failed to make good on a series of promises, including sending back the South African troops guarding the capital. The South African troops came under an onslaught of fire from the Seleka rebels, who shot and killed 13 South African soldiers over the weekend, in their fight to take the capital.
Seleka is a loose coalition of fighters, many of whom fought in previous rebellions. They joined forces last fall, beginning their advance toward the capital in December.
The developments mirrored a similar rebellion in eastern Congo by the M23 rebels, who took the provincial capital of Goma, pressing the government which then agreed to enter into talks with them. Seleka seemed to be taking a page from the Congolese rebels' playbook as they advanced to less than 100 kilometers (60 miles) from the capital.
The Seleka fighters benefited from the growing dissatisfaction with Bozize, who came to power in 2003, at the helm of a column of a different rebel group which also invaded the capital and toppled the former leader.
Bozize is accused of growing cronyism, and in the last election in 2011, around 20 of Bozize's family members and close associates including former mistresses, won posts in the government, according to Louisa Lombard, a postdoctoral fellow in geography at the University of California, Berkeley.
"There was the sense that governing was being carried out by a tighter and tighter circle of people around Bozize," says Lombard, who has been travelling to Central African Republic for the past 10 years for research.
"And although all sorts of technocratic procedures were in place to make the government more inclusive, it was in fact less and less inclusive. The more technocratic people got sidelined. Those who held positions of power did not have much education, much background in their chosen field. There was a disregard for any kind of merit in governing."
Lombard cautions, however, that the Seleka coalition is very loosely held together. Already on Monday, a different rebel leader, 26-year-old Nelson N'Djadder who is based in Paris, said that he does not recognize Djotodia as their new president.
"Seleka is a very heterogeneous group. That is something we noticed since the beginning, when it first emerged," said Lombard. "Holding it together will be a big problem."
___
Lori Hinnant contributed to this report from Paris.
___
Rukmini Callimachi can be reached at www.twitter.com/rcallimachi
Measuring the magnetism of antimatterPublic release date: 25-Mar-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Peter Reuell preuell@fas.harvard.edu 617-496-8070 Harvard University
Researchers measure antiprotons more accurately than ever before
In a breakthrough that could one day yield important clues about the nature of matter itself, a team of Harvard scientists have succeeding in measuring the magnetic charge of single particles of matter and antimatter more accurately than ever before.
As described in a March 25 paper in Physical Review Letters, the ATRAP team, led by Gerald Gabrielse, the George Vasmer Leverett Professor of Physics, and including post-doctoral fellows Stephan Ettenauer and Eric Tardiff and graduate students Jack DiSciacca, Mason Marshall, Kathryn Marable and Rita Kalra was able to capture individual protons and antiprotons in a "trap" created by electric and magnetic fields. By precisely measuring the oscillations of each particle, the team was able to measure the magnetism of a proton more than 1,000 times more accurately than an antiproton had been measured before. Similar tests with antiprotons produced a 680-fold increase in accuracy in the size of the magnet in an antiproton.
"That is a spectacular jump in precision for any fundamental quality," Gabrielse said, of the antiproton measurements. "That's a leap that we don't often see in physics, at least not in a single step."
Such measurements, Gabrielse said, could one day help scientists answer a question that seems more suited for the philosophy classroom than the physics lab why are we here?
"One of the great mysteries in physics is why our universe is made of matter," he said. "According to our theories, the same amount of matter and antimatter was produced during the Big Bang. When matter and antimatter meet, they are annihilated. As the universe cools down, the big mystery is: Why didn't all the matter find the antimatter and annihilate all of both? There's a lot of matter and no antimatter left, and we don't know why."
Making precise measurements of protons and antiprotons, Gabrielse explained, could begin to answer those questions by potentially shedding new light on whether the CPT (Charge conjugation, Parity transformation, Time reversal) theorem is correct. An outgrowth of the standard model of particle physics, CPT states that the protons and antiprotons should be virtually identical with the same magnitude of charge and mass yet should have opposite charges.
Though earlier experiments, which measured the charge-to-mass ratio of protons and antiprotons, verified the predictions of CPT, Gabrielse said further investigation is needed because the standard model does not account for all forces, such as gravity, in the universe.
"What we wanted to do with these experiments was to say, 'Let's take a simple system a single proton and a single antiproton and let's compare their predicted relationships, and see if our predictions are correct," Gabrielse said. "Ultimately, whatever we learn might give us some insight into how to explain this mystery."
While researchers were able to capture and measure protons with relative ease, antiprotons are only produced by high-energy collisions that take place at the extensive tunnels of the CERN laboratory in Geneva, Gabrielse said, leaving researchers facing a difficult choice.
"Last year, we published a report showing that we could measure a proton much more accurately than ever before," Gabrielese said. "Once we had done that, however, we had to make a decision did we want to take the risk of moving our people and our entire apparatus crates and crates of electronics and a very delicate trap apparatus to CERN and try to do the same thing with antiprotons? Antiprotons would only be available till mid-December and then not again for a year and a half.
"We decided to give it a shot, and by George, we pulled it off," he continued. "Ultimately, we argued that we should attempt it, because even if we failed, that failure would teach us something." In what Gabrielse described as a "gutsy" choice, graduate student Jack DiSciacca agreed to use this attempt to conclude his thesis research, and new graduate students Marshall and Marable signed on to help.
Though their results still fit within the predictions made by the standard model, Gabrielse said being able to more accurately measure the characteristics of both matter and antimatter may yet help shed new light on how the universe works.
"What's also very exciting about this breakthrough is that it now prepares us to continue down this road," he said. "I'm confident that, given this start, we're going to be able to increase the accuracy of these measurements by another factor of 1,000, or even 10,000."
###
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Measuring the magnetism of antimatterPublic release date: 25-Mar-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Peter Reuell preuell@fas.harvard.edu 617-496-8070 Harvard University
Researchers measure antiprotons more accurately than ever before
In a breakthrough that could one day yield important clues about the nature of matter itself, a team of Harvard scientists have succeeding in measuring the magnetic charge of single particles of matter and antimatter more accurately than ever before.
As described in a March 25 paper in Physical Review Letters, the ATRAP team, led by Gerald Gabrielse, the George Vasmer Leverett Professor of Physics, and including post-doctoral fellows Stephan Ettenauer and Eric Tardiff and graduate students Jack DiSciacca, Mason Marshall, Kathryn Marable and Rita Kalra was able to capture individual protons and antiprotons in a "trap" created by electric and magnetic fields. By precisely measuring the oscillations of each particle, the team was able to measure the magnetism of a proton more than 1,000 times more accurately than an antiproton had been measured before. Similar tests with antiprotons produced a 680-fold increase in accuracy in the size of the magnet in an antiproton.
"That is a spectacular jump in precision for any fundamental quality," Gabrielse said, of the antiproton measurements. "That's a leap that we don't often see in physics, at least not in a single step."
Such measurements, Gabrielse said, could one day help scientists answer a question that seems more suited for the philosophy classroom than the physics lab why are we here?
"One of the great mysteries in physics is why our universe is made of matter," he said. "According to our theories, the same amount of matter and antimatter was produced during the Big Bang. When matter and antimatter meet, they are annihilated. As the universe cools down, the big mystery is: Why didn't all the matter find the antimatter and annihilate all of both? There's a lot of matter and no antimatter left, and we don't know why."
Making precise measurements of protons and antiprotons, Gabrielse explained, could begin to answer those questions by potentially shedding new light on whether the CPT (Charge conjugation, Parity transformation, Time reversal) theorem is correct. An outgrowth of the standard model of particle physics, CPT states that the protons and antiprotons should be virtually identical with the same magnitude of charge and mass yet should have opposite charges.
Though earlier experiments, which measured the charge-to-mass ratio of protons and antiprotons, verified the predictions of CPT, Gabrielse said further investigation is needed because the standard model does not account for all forces, such as gravity, in the universe.
"What we wanted to do with these experiments was to say, 'Let's take a simple system a single proton and a single antiproton and let's compare their predicted relationships, and see if our predictions are correct," Gabrielse said. "Ultimately, whatever we learn might give us some insight into how to explain this mystery."
While researchers were able to capture and measure protons with relative ease, antiprotons are only produced by high-energy collisions that take place at the extensive tunnels of the CERN laboratory in Geneva, Gabrielse said, leaving researchers facing a difficult choice.
"Last year, we published a report showing that we could measure a proton much more accurately than ever before," Gabrielese said. "Once we had done that, however, we had to make a decision did we want to take the risk of moving our people and our entire apparatus crates and crates of electronics and a very delicate trap apparatus to CERN and try to do the same thing with antiprotons? Antiprotons would only be available till mid-December and then not again for a year and a half.
"We decided to give it a shot, and by George, we pulled it off," he continued. "Ultimately, we argued that we should attempt it, because even if we failed, that failure would teach us something." In what Gabrielse described as a "gutsy" choice, graduate student Jack DiSciacca agreed to use this attempt to conclude his thesis research, and new graduate students Marshall and Marable signed on to help.
Though their results still fit within the predictions made by the standard model, Gabrielse said being able to more accurately measure the characteristics of both matter and antimatter may yet help shed new light on how the universe works.
"What's also very exciting about this breakthrough is that it now prepares us to continue down this road," he said. "I'm confident that, given this start, we're going to be able to increase the accuracy of these measurements by another factor of 1,000, or even 10,000."
###
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
The Consumer Confidence Index tracked by the Conference Board plummeted 14% in March 2013 from the previous month. Of the respondents, 36.2% believed jobs are hard to get and only 9.4% thought there were enough jobs out there in the U.S. economy.
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Public release date: 25-Mar-2013
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