ATYRAU, Kazakhstan (Reuters) - British Prime Minister David Cameron helped inaugurate the world's costliest oil project in Kazakhstan on Sunday on a trip aimed at sealing business deals but quickly beset by questions over the Central Asian nation's poor human rights record.
Kazakhstan hopes Cameron's visit, the first by a serving British prime minister, will cement its status as a rising economic power and confer a degree of the legitimacy from the West it has long sought.
The visit takes place just days before the nation marks 15 years since the founding of the new Kazakh capital Astana, also the 73rd birthday of President Nursultan Nazarbayev, a national holiday and cause for celebration that has been anticipated for days in state media.
Nazarbayev, a former Communist party apparatchik, has overseen market reforms and maintains wide popularity among the 17-million strong population, but has tolerated no dissent or opposition during his more than two decades in power.
Cameron said he hoped the 30 businessmen accompanying him would sign over 700 million pounds worth of deals during his two-day trip.
"We are in a global race for jobs and investment. This is one of the most rapidly emerging countries in the world," Cameron told reporters on his arrival in the Kazakh oil capital Atyrau.
His office said he aimed to "put British businesses in prime position to secure contracts that the Government believes could total ?85 billion in the coming years".
Cameron is also hoping to persuade Kazakhstan to expand transit rights for British military forces relocating equipment from Afghanistan between now and a planned withdrawal next year. Nazarbayev has already granted overflight rights, but Cameron is looking for land transit rights too.
Cameron and Nazarbayev together opened the Bolashak (Future) oil plant which will process crude that is due to start flowing from the giant Kashagan offshore oilfield in September.
Royal Dutch Shell has a 16.81 percent stake in the facility, which is in the Kazakh segment of the Caspian Sea. Nazarbayev said last week consortium members had so far invested $48 billion, making it the most expensive oil venture in the world.
TEMPTING TARGET
As Britain's trade with the euro zone suffers because of the currency bloc's debt woes, it is looking further afield to forge business links with countries that have enjoyed rapid economic growth in recent years.
With a $200 billion economy, the largest in Central Asia, and deep oil and gas reserves, Kazakhstan is a tempting target. Britain is already among the top three sources of foreign direct investment, according to Kazakh officials.
Since its 1991 independence, officials say British firms have invested about $20 billion in their economy, part of a total $170 billion ploughed into Kazakhstan since then.
But more high profile trade links carry political risks.
New York-based Human Rights Watch said Cameron had a duty to use his trip to denounce human rights abuses.
"We are very concerned about the serious and deteriorating human rights situation there in recent years, including credible allegations of torture, the imprisonment of government critics, (and) tight controls over the media and freedom of expression and association," it said in a letter on Friday.
Answering questions from reporters in Atyrau on Sunday, Cameron said he never put trade and business interests before rights.
"We will raise all the issues, including human rights. That's part of our dialogue and I'll be signing a strategic partnership with Kazakhstan," he said.
"Nothing is off the agenda, including human rights."
Activists most want Cameron to bring up the case of Vladimir Kozlov, a jailed opposition leader, when he meets Nazarbayev.
An outspoken critic of the Kazakh leader, Kozlov was jailed for seven-and-a-half years in October for colluding with a fugitive billionaire in a failed attempt to rally oil workers to bring down the government. Kozlov denied the charges.
Nazarbayev, a former steelworker who now holds the title "The Leader of the Nation", says that he puts stability and rising living standards before hasty political changes in his steppe nation, the world's ninth-largest by area and five times the size of France.
Comparing Kazakhstan to "Asian economic tigers" like South Korea and Singapore, he has said he wants to turn it into "the economic snow leopard of Central Asia".
(Additional reporting by Dmitry Solovyov; in Almaty; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)
Tens of thousands of people have massed in Tahrir Square (Picture: Reuters)
Tens of thousands of people have taken to the streets in an all-out push to force Egypt?s president from office.
Crowds congregated in Cairo?s Tahrir Square and in cities across the country to demand the removal of Mohammed Morsi, who was elected only a year ago.
But thousands of Islamists gathered outside a Cairo mosque in a show of support for the leader ? carrying shields and clubs that they claimed were precautions against possible violence.
One person was killed and more than two dozen injured in fighting between supporters and opponents of Mr Morsi in the Nile city of Beni Suef, south of Cairo, security sources said.
As anti-Morsi protesters gathered, the president?s supporters vowed to defend him (Picture: AP)
Further bloody clashes were feared as tensions rose, with some of Mr Morsi?s followers describing the protesters as infidels and enemies of God.
They say street demonstrations must not be allowed to unseat a president who won a legitimate election after autocrat Hosni Mubarak was ousted from power in 2011.
Mr Morsi and his backers have forced through a constitution they largely wrote and given religious extremists a free hand while failing to address the country?s problems, it is claimed.
?I came here today because Morsi did not accomplish any of the revolution?s goals,? said seafood company manager Suliman Mohammed, one of about 100,000 people in Tahrir Square.
?I don?t need anything for myself, but the needs of the poor were not met.?
A defiant Mr Morsi said he had no plans to step down.
?If we change someone in office who was elected according to constitutional legitimacy, there will soon be people opposing the new president, too,? he said.
?A week or a month later, they will ask him to step down. There is no room for any talk against this constitutional legitimacy.?
BY JOE COWLEY jcowley@suntimes.com June 29, 2013 11:58PM
Los Angeles Lakers center Dwight Howard follows through on a dunk during the second half of their NBA basketball game against the Houston Rockets, Sunday, Nov. 18, 2012, in Los Angeles. The Lakers won 119-108. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)
Come Monday, NBA general managers officially can pick up the phone to call agents, players, relatives of players and anyone else who will help land free agents.
It becomes open season.
Unfortunately for the guys wearing the suits and ties in front offices, that recruiting process has gone on for weeks, months and, in some cases, years among the players themselves. It?s the NBA?s dirty little secret.
Chris Paul technically is a free agent. But all that?s happened under that veil is the point guard recruiting center Dwight Howard and picking out the next coach for the Los Angeles Clippers in Doc Rivers.
There?s your free-agent market.
Teams will spend the next two months getting better, fooling themselves that they have improved or purposely building to lose, hoping to land in the Andrew Wiggins lottery. You know who you are, Boston and Philadelphia.
Either way, let the intrigue begin. Well, pretend as if it?s about to begin.
TOP FREE AGENTS
Centers
1. Dwight Howard (Unrestricted) Welcome to ?The Indecision II,?? starring one of the more heartless big men in the game. Go get ?em, Dwight! Best guess: After saying yes to several teams and backing out, Howard ends up in Houston.
2. Al Jefferson (Unrestricted) The ?Carlos Boozer Consolation Prize?? of this summer?s free-agent class. Best guess: Utah would be smart to keep him, but a team such as San Antonio might sneak in to land the eventual replacement for Tim Duncan. Charlotte also is in play.
3. Andrew Bynum (Unrestricted) Start rolling the dice on bad knees and worse decisions on hairstyles. Best guess: After losing out on Howard, Dallas rolls out a contract full of incentives.
Power Forwards
1. David West (Unrestricted) At age 32, West knows that only a handful of teams are built to challenge the Miami Heat in the East, and his Pacers are one of them. Best guess: West stays put with Indiana.
2. Josh Smith (Unrestricted) Someday Smith will learn that he?s not a shooting guard. Unfortunately, someone will overpay this summer until that lesson is learned. Best guess: Desperate to help Kobe Bryant after losing out on Howard, the Lakers land Smith.
3. Paul Millsap (Unrestricted) The Jazz can?t keep Jefferson and Millsap. Best guess: They pass on Jefferson and keep Millsap.
Small Forwards
1. Andre Iguodala (Early Termination Option) The All-Star and former coach George Karl didn?t see eye-to-eye in Denver, but Karl is out. Best guess: As the playoffs taught Denver, they need a star. Iguodala is the best they have. The Nuggets re-sign him.
2. Andrei Kirilenko (Early Termination Option) Kirilenko put himself back on the map and wants Minnesota to pay him like a top stretch forward. Best guess: He stays put.
3. Kyle Korver (Unrestricted) Korver would love to return to the Bulls, and they would love to have him. Unless he?s willing to take a huge pay cut, it?s not happening. Best guess: Dallas lands the best pure shooter out there.
Shooting Guards
1. Manu Ginobili (Unrestricted) Ginobili looked old, slow and weathered in the playoffs, but he?s an institution in San Antonio. Best guess: Spurs.
2. Monta Ellis (Early Termination Option) Ellis opted out of Milwaukee because he feels as if he should be paid like an elite two-guard. Reality is about to hit him. Best guess: After a disappointing market, Ellis signs with some bad Western Conference team, such as Phoenix or Sacramento, never to be heard from again.
3. Kevin Martin (Unrestricted) Martin?s biggest problem in OKC was he wasn?t James Harden. Best guess: Martin stays in OKC, with a chance to make a run at the Finals.
Point Guards
1. Chris Paul (Unrestricted) Please. His decision was made up before Doc Rivers got on the plane to Los Angeles. Best guess: Clippers.
2. Brandon Jennings (Restricted) Several intriguing teams need scoring from the point-guard spot, with Dallas and Indiana atop that list. Best guess: He?s not going anywhere ? yet. Jennings stays in Milwaukee.
3. Jarrett Jack (Unrestricted) Jack was a huge veteran presence in the backcourt for the Warriors and a player they cannot do without just yet. Best guess: He stays in the Bay with Golden State.
BULLS? FREE-AGENT SHOPPING LIST
1. Marco Belinelli (Unrestricted) They would love to bring Belinelli back, especially with how far he came along defensively and in creating his own shot. Money is an issue, and one that won?t disappear easily. Best guess: Belinelli gets a can?t-say-no offer from a team that needs his scoring, such as Memphis.
2. Martell Webster (Unrestricted) Webster shot a career-high 42.2 percent on threes and would be a good bridge until Tony Snell learns the league. Best guess: Money still could be an issue.
3. Ronnie Brewer (Unrestricted) It has to happen. After watching Nate Robinson and Belinelli walk, the Bulls go back to what they know best ? a defensive-minded player. Best guess: Brewer comes cheap and is a Bull again.
It goes by the name of Hashima, or Gunkanjima ("Battleship Island"), or even "The Dead Island", since it inspired the water-locked cyberterrorist HQ in Skyfall. As you can now see for yourself, courtesy of Google Street View, it's a very a real place off the coast of Japan's Nagasaki Peninsula, and it's even lonelier than its fictional counterpart in the Bond film (which wasn't actually filmed there). There are no tourist offices or giant Oedipus Complexes, as far as we can see, just long stretches of overgrown roads and collapsing apartment blocks that once housed 5,000 people, before they abandoned the island in 1974 following the demise of its coal industry. It took a Google employee two hours to map the place and preserve its crumbling visage for posterity using a special backpack, but don't be surprised if you want to leave it after just a few minutes.
Your secrets are safe with nobody if you haven't planned ahead to pass them along after you've left earth. It's smart to think about how to share vital information after your vital signs have stopped. The security experts at Stack Exchange are here to help.
I want to make sure that after I die, someone gets vital information from me (like the password to my bank account), but I don't want anyone to be able to get that information as long as I'm alive. Once I die, I only want a particular person to be able to get the information. How would I go about that?
See the original question.
Don't Trust a Purely Automated Solution - Answered by Adnan
A little more than a year ago, I was in a situation where I feared for my life. I gave this some thought and here's what I did: I made a video recording containing everything I wanted people to know after I die, then I stored the video in a TrueCrypt volume and gave two copies to my two most trusted friends, and the password to my father and my then-girlfriend. I told my dad and my then-girlfriend not to share the password with anybody, and told my trusted friends to share the file only with my dad and my then-girlfriend, and only after I die or after I'm reasonably believed to be dead (due to the nature of the danger, a sudden disappearance was a likely possibility).
The effectiveness of this arrangement comes from my trust in those people?a trust that has been built over many years. I've chosen this arrangement because I couldn't trust a purely automated solution. For example, I set up a Dead Man's Switch message that contained trivial to low-profile information, but at the time, there was a possibility that I'd disappear for weeks or months after which I could still be alive. In that period the Switch would have been activated.
Another solution is to hire a lawyer, draft your will, give him the password, and instruct him to share it only in the case of your death. This way, your password is safe by the power of the law (your lawyer can't breach the confidentiality, and even if he did, the files are with other people). Your lawyer has no access to the information, and your loved ones will get the password after your death.
Google's Inactive Account Manager - Answered by davidwebster48
Google has set up a service called ""Inactive Account Manager" which lets you specify certain trusted people who will get access to your account if it is inactive for a certain amount of time (for example, if you're dead). The inactivity period can be set anywhere from 3-18 months.
Safe Deposit - Answered by petiepooo
I'd suggest using a safe deposit box. There are clear guidelines of who can enter your safe deposit box upon your death and what can be removed under specific conditions. Take an index card, write down a long random password along with instructions on how to use it, all on one side, fold it in half (hiding the password), then write the intended recipient's name and any privacy warnings on the outside. Finally, run the folded card through a laminator. Write a will specifying who your executor should be (they will have access to your safe deposit box by court order), and specify in your will how the password cards should be handled.
Then, for each recipient, either give them the file to be decrypted, or let them know how they can retrieve it. Or specify that in the will or inside of the laminated card. I'd be wary of physical media (eg. a CD-ROM in the safe deposit box), as they're only readable for a few years. Even things like USB flash drives will eventually start losing bits. Plus, the USB standard will eventually be superseded. If you're committed to occasionally verifying the file's integrity and accessibility, then a USB drive in the safe deposit box might work. You may consider storing the encrypted file online, if you can find somewhere with long-term, guaranteed accessibility.
Just don't make it so complicated the recipient can't retrieve it when the time comes. I'd also be wary of asymmetrical encryption (eg. PGP) as it adds unneeded complexity, and keys can have expiration dates. That said, PGP and GnuPG have a symmetrical encryption option if you want to steer clear of WinZip or similar. 7-zip would also be a good choice, as it's free, open, and easily available.
Disagree with the answers above? Find more answers or leave your own at the original post. See more questions like this at IT Security, the Stack Exchange site for questions and answers about protection of assets from threats and vulnerabilities. And of course, feel free to ask a question yourself.
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UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The U.N. Security Council brought Iraq one step closer on Thursday to ending United Nations sanctions imposed on Baghdad more than two decades ago after former President Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait In 1990.
The 15-member council unanimously agreed that the issue of missing Kuwaiti people, property and archives should be dealt with under Chapter 6 of the U.N. Charter - which urges countries to peacefully resolve any conflicts - instead of Chapter 7.
Chapter 7 of the charter allows the Security Council to authorize actions ranging from sanctions to military intervention if states do not abide by council demands.
The move by the council is a significant political boost for Baghdad as it struggles to restore its international standing a decade after a U.S.-led invasion of Iraq toppled Saddam in 2003.
The Security Council resolution recognized "the importance of Iraq achieving international standing equal to that which it held prior to (1990)." U.S.-led troops drove Iraq out of Kuwait in the 1991 Gulf War.
"This is a new beginning for the relations between our two neighborly and brotherly countries," Iraq's Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari told reporters after the vote. "This is an example for other countries also to resolve their disputes and differences through peaceful means."
The only issues linked to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait that remain under Chapter 7 are an arms embargo and Baghdad's payment of $52 billion in compensation to Kuwait, diplomats say. Iraq still owes $11 billion and has said it expects to pay by 2015.
There are still a range of Chapter 7 issues imposed on Baghdad after Saddam's ouster in 2003, diplomats say, including the freeze and return of Saddam-era assets and trade ban on stolen Iraqi cultural property.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has recommended that the U.N. political mission in Iraq should take responsibility for facilitating the search for missing Kuwaitis, or their remains, property and the country's national archives.
(Reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by Doina Chiacu and Vicki Allen)
Low-power Wi-Fi signal tracks movement -- even behind wallsPublic release date: 28-Jun-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Sarah McDonnell s_mcd@mit.edu 617-253-8923 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
'Wi-Vi' is based on a concept similar to radar and sonar imaging
CAMBRIDGE, MA -- The comic-book hero Superman uses his X-ray vision to spot bad guys lurking behind walls and other objects. Now we could all have X-ray vision, thanks to researchers at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.
Researchers have long attempted to build a device capable of seeing people through walls. However, previous efforts to develop such a system have involved the use of expensive and bulky radar technology that uses a part of the electromagnetic spectrum only available to the military.
Now a system being developed by Dina Katabi, a professor in MIT's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and her graduate student Fadel Adib, could give all of us the ability to spot people in different rooms using low-cost Wi-Fi technology. "We wanted to create a device that is low-power, portable and simple enough for anyone to use, to give people the ability to see through walls and closed doors," Katabi says.
The system, called "Wi-Vi," is based on a concept similar to radar and sonar imaging. But in contrast to radar and sonar, it transmits a low-power Wi-Fi signal and uses its reflections to track moving humans. It can do so even if the humans are in closed rooms or hiding behind a wall.
As a Wi-Fi signal is transmitted at a wall, a portion of the signal penetrates through it, reflecting off any humans on the other side. However, only a tiny fraction of the signal makes it through to the other room, with the rest being reflected by the wall, or by other objects. "So we had to come up with a technology that could cancel out all these other reflections, and keep only those from the moving human body," Katabi says.
Motion detector
To do this, the system uses two transmit antennas and a single receiver. The two antennas transmit almost identical signals, except that the signal from the second receiver is the inverse of the first. As a result, the two signals interfere with each other in such a way as to cancel each other out. Since any static objects that the signals hit including the wall create identical reflections, they too are cancelled out by this nulling effect.
In this way, only those reflections that change between the two signals, such as those from a moving object, arrive back at the receiver, Adib says. "So, if the person moves behind the wall, all reflections from static objects are cancelled out, and the only thing registered by the device is the moving human."
Once the system has cancelled out all of the reflections from static objects, it can then concentrate on tracking the person as he or she moves around the room. Most previous attempts to track moving targets through walls have done so using an array of spaced antennas, which each capture the signal reflected off a person moving through the environment. But this would be too expensive and bulky for use in a handheld device.
So instead Wi-Vi uses just one receiver. As the person moves through the room, his or her distance from the receiver changes, meaning the time it takes for the reflected signal to make its way back to the receiver changes too. The system then uses this information to calculate where the person is at any one time.
Possible uses in disaster recovery, personal safety, gaming
Wi-Vi, being presented at the Sigcomm conference in Hong Kong in August, could be used to help search-and-rescue teams to find survivors trapped in rubble after an earthquake, say, or to allow police officers to identify the number and movement of criminals within a building to avoid walking into an ambush.
It could also be used as a personal safety device, Katabi says: "If you are walking at night and you have the feeling that someone is following you, then you could use it to check if there is someone behind the fence or behind a corner."
The device can also detect gestures or movements by a person standing behind a wall, such as a wave of the arm, Katabi says. This would allow it to be used as a gesture-based interface for controlling lighting or appliances within the home, such as turning off the lights in another room with a wave of the arm.
Unlike today's interactive gaming devices, where users must stay in front of the console and its camera at all times, users could still interact with the system while in another room, for example. This could open up the possibility of more complex and interesting games, Katabi says.
###
Written by Helen Knight, MIT News Office
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Low-power Wi-Fi signal tracks movement -- even behind wallsPublic release date: 28-Jun-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Sarah McDonnell s_mcd@mit.edu 617-253-8923 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
'Wi-Vi' is based on a concept similar to radar and sonar imaging
CAMBRIDGE, MA -- The comic-book hero Superman uses his X-ray vision to spot bad guys lurking behind walls and other objects. Now we could all have X-ray vision, thanks to researchers at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.
Researchers have long attempted to build a device capable of seeing people through walls. However, previous efforts to develop such a system have involved the use of expensive and bulky radar technology that uses a part of the electromagnetic spectrum only available to the military.
Now a system being developed by Dina Katabi, a professor in MIT's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and her graduate student Fadel Adib, could give all of us the ability to spot people in different rooms using low-cost Wi-Fi technology. "We wanted to create a device that is low-power, portable and simple enough for anyone to use, to give people the ability to see through walls and closed doors," Katabi says.
The system, called "Wi-Vi," is based on a concept similar to radar and sonar imaging. But in contrast to radar and sonar, it transmits a low-power Wi-Fi signal and uses its reflections to track moving humans. It can do so even if the humans are in closed rooms or hiding behind a wall.
As a Wi-Fi signal is transmitted at a wall, a portion of the signal penetrates through it, reflecting off any humans on the other side. However, only a tiny fraction of the signal makes it through to the other room, with the rest being reflected by the wall, or by other objects. "So we had to come up with a technology that could cancel out all these other reflections, and keep only those from the moving human body," Katabi says.
Motion detector
To do this, the system uses two transmit antennas and a single receiver. The two antennas transmit almost identical signals, except that the signal from the second receiver is the inverse of the first. As a result, the two signals interfere with each other in such a way as to cancel each other out. Since any static objects that the signals hit including the wall create identical reflections, they too are cancelled out by this nulling effect.
In this way, only those reflections that change between the two signals, such as those from a moving object, arrive back at the receiver, Adib says. "So, if the person moves behind the wall, all reflections from static objects are cancelled out, and the only thing registered by the device is the moving human."
Once the system has cancelled out all of the reflections from static objects, it can then concentrate on tracking the person as he or she moves around the room. Most previous attempts to track moving targets through walls have done so using an array of spaced antennas, which each capture the signal reflected off a person moving through the environment. But this would be too expensive and bulky for use in a handheld device.
So instead Wi-Vi uses just one receiver. As the person moves through the room, his or her distance from the receiver changes, meaning the time it takes for the reflected signal to make its way back to the receiver changes too. The system then uses this information to calculate where the person is at any one time.
Possible uses in disaster recovery, personal safety, gaming
Wi-Vi, being presented at the Sigcomm conference in Hong Kong in August, could be used to help search-and-rescue teams to find survivors trapped in rubble after an earthquake, say, or to allow police officers to identify the number and movement of criminals within a building to avoid walking into an ambush.
It could also be used as a personal safety device, Katabi says: "If you are walking at night and you have the feeling that someone is following you, then you could use it to check if there is someone behind the fence or behind a corner."
The device can also detect gestures or movements by a person standing behind a wall, such as a wave of the arm, Katabi says. This would allow it to be used as a gesture-based interface for controlling lighting or appliances within the home, such as turning off the lights in another room with a wave of the arm.
Unlike today's interactive gaming devices, where users must stay in front of the console and its camera at all times, users could still interact with the system while in another room, for example. This could open up the possibility of more complex and interesting games, Katabi says.
###
Written by Helen Knight, MIT News Office
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Global Thermostat's pilot plant in Menlo Park, Calif., pulls carbon dioxide from the surrounding air. The next challenge is to find uses for the captured gas.
Courtesy of Global Thermostat
Global Thermostat's pilot plant in Menlo Park, Calif., pulls carbon dioxide from the surrounding air. The next challenge is to find uses for the captured gas.
Courtesy of Global Thermostat
Every year, people add 30 billion tons of carbon dioxide to the air, mostly by burning fossil fuels. That's contributing to climate change. A few scientists have been dreaming about ways to pull some of that CO2 out of the air, but face stiff skepticism and major hurdles. This is the story of one scientist who's pressing ahead.
Peter Eisenberger is a distinguished professor of earth and environmental sciences at Columbia University. Earlier in his career, he ran the university's famed Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and founded Columbia's Earth Institute. He was never one of those scientists who tinkered into the night on inventions. But he realized he didn't need to be.
"If you looked at knowledge as a commodity, we had generated this enormous amount of knowledge and we hadn't even begun to think of the many ways we could apply it," Eisenberger says. He decided he'd settle on a problem he wanted to solve and then dive into the pool of knowledge for existing technologies that could help him.
He started looking for a way to pull carbon dioxide right out of the air. "And it turned out the best device already exists," he says. "It's called a monolith. That is the same type of instrument that's in the catalytic converter in your car. It cleans up your exhaust."
Eisenberger's monoliths grab carbon dioxide from the air and release it again when you heat them up.
He teamed up with a colleague at Columbia, Graciela Chichilnisky, and formed a company to develop the idea. Global Thermostat got seed money from Edgar Bronfman, Jr. ? CEO of Warner Music Group and the former CEO of Seagram's, his family's business.
The company has built two pilot plants at SRI International in Menlo Park, Calif. But of course there are big issues to solve: What do you do with the carbon dioxide once you've captured it, and how do you make money?
"If they don't tell you you're crazy, you're not doing something worthwhile," says Peter Eisenberger, co-founder of Global Thermostat, a firm that's building a device to pull carbon dioxide from the air.
Chris Schmauch/Global Thermostat
"So we then we looked for ways to monetize CO2 and found that lots of people wanted to use CO2 as a feedstock to make a valuable product," Eisenberger says.
Growers pipe carbon dioxide into greenhouses. Oil companies pump it underground to help them squeeze out more oil. Soda companies use it to put bubbles in their drinks. These are mostly small-scale applications.
Maybe someday Eisenberger could get paid to clean up the atmosphere by sucking out the CO2 and burying it underground, though there's no market for that now.
But using carbon dioxide to make fuel could someday be big. So Eisenberger's first project involves using CO2 to feed algae that churn out biofuel.
"Our first demonstration plant is being erected right now down in Daphne, Alabama, with an algae company called Algae Systems, which sits on Mobile Bay," Eisenberger says. "They'll be floating their algae in plastic bags on the top of the water. We'll be piping in CO2 that we pull out of the air, and the sun will do the rest."
Of course, this one project will have zero effect on how much carbon dioxide is in the earth's atmosphere. But Eisenberger has much grander ambitions.
"I believe we have something that's economically viable, so our company will be successful," he says. "But I'm really in this because I want to contribute to a long term solution that the world needs."
Eisenberger says if he can open the door to capturing carbon dioxide from the air ? and make the process cheap enough ? someday we could actually slow down, or possibly even reverse, the buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Robert Socolow at Princeton University started hearing a buzz about this technology a few years back.
"It's catchy," Socolow admits. "It's attractive conceptually that one could basically pour carbon dioxide into the atmosphere for the next several decades and pull it out later and everything would be fine." But the appeal of the idea also worried him ? people might use the mere prospect of this technology as an excuse not to act.
So Socolow spearheaded a critique of the technique, on behalf of the American Physical Society.
Socolow's panel concluded that the technology would be hopelessly expensive, costing $600 for every ton of carbon dioxide it drew out of the air. And the scale would also be huge. In order to capture the emissions would waft into the air from a single coal-fired power plant, you'd need to build a structure 20 miles long and 30 feet high. "It's like the Great Wall of China," Socolow says.
The committee concluded that it would make a lot more sense to cut down on emissions first ? make our cars, homes and factories more efficient. Panel members also said it makes much more sense to capture carbon dioxide directly from smokestacks, where it's concentrated, instead of from the air.
Socolow says, maybe someday we'll have our emissions under control, and then we might need to remove some of the carbon dioxide that's already in the air with a capture technology. But, in his view, that's a long way away. "I locate it in the 22nd century," he says. In other words, this might be a good project for Eisenberger's great-great-great grandchildren.
Researchers currently working on carbon dioxide capture technologies say the American Physical Society critique has made it much harder for them to raise money. Klaus Lackner at Columbia University says he was turned down for a government grant. David Keith at Harvard and the University of Calgary says he struggled to get funding for his small company.
"It's a very powerful report from a very credible group of people, and it may well help to kill us and other efforts," Keith says.
Proponents of air-capture technologies say some of the panel's conclusions are just plain wrong ? especially the estimated cost of $600 per ton.
"We have had third party reports, independent people, evaluating our technology, and it's under $50 a ton," Eisenberger says. He hasn't actually demonstrated that cost yet, and he agrees that nobody should take his word for it. But he's stopped arguing with his critics.
"I'm just going to go do it," he says. "And doing it or not ? that's the answer."
Pursuing a big idea takes some hard-headedness and thick skin.
"If they don't tell you you're crazy, you're not doing something worthwhile," Eisenberger says. "Because what you do when you innovate is you disturb the existing order."
Fortunately, this won't be an academic argument forever. "That's the beauty of science. The people that take the time to come into the lab and see it working and do their own evaluation of the cost and the performance, they know it's not crazy."
If the researchers pursuing this technology can really make it inexpensive to draw carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, Eisenberger says it could be a game-changer.
We could start producing fuels with the carbon dioxide that's already in the air, instead of unearthing more fossil fuels. This won't happen quickly, though.
"The energy infrastructure of the world is $55 trillion," Eisenberger says. So a technology to replace that is "not like a new Google app."
Still, human societies have made such transitions before. "They just don't happen in a day," Eisenberger says. "But they happen."
There's certainly no guarantee that capturing carbon dioxide from the air would ever become a big enough enterprise to make a difference to Earth's climate. But it won't even be put to the test unless people like Eisenberger give it a try.
LONDON (Reuters) - The government promised on Thursday to upgrade roads and carry out what it said was the biggest rail investment in more than 100 years in a strategy to get the economy growing while keeping spending tight.
A day after Chancellor George Osborne announced the latest round of budget cuts, his deputy, Danny Alexander, detailed 100 billion pounds in capital investment plans, calling them "the most comprehensive, ambitious and long-lasting" ever.
Britain's economy is still struggling to generate growth to help narrow one of Europe's biggest budget deficits. Living standards suffered their biggest drop in a generation at the start of 2013, data showed on Thursday.
Alexander said 28 billion pounds would be spent by the government on improving roads from 2014 to 2020 - including enough cash to resurface 21,000 miles - and that it would support 30 billion pounds in rail investments.
A long-awaited announcement of a guaranteed electricity price for renewable energy investors was aimed at making investments in technologies such as wind power and biomass more attractive and less risky to private operators.
The government also announced a guarantee to help build a new nuclear power station at Hinkley Point in the south-west of England, for which French utility group EDF won planning permission in March.
The overall spending plan put some flesh on the bones of 300 billion pounds in capital spending commitments set out until 2020. Thursday's announcement was not a new injection of cash; the significance was in the details of where it would be spent.
The Conservative party, which dominates the ruling coalition, wants to persuade voters it is not just focused on spending cuts as it prepares for the 2015 general election. Its tough austerity drive has been criticised by the International Monetary Fund while two of the three main credit rating agencies have downgraded Britain's prized triple-A status.
Leading economic think-tank the Institute for Fiscal Studies said the capital spending plans showed net public sector investment falling as a percentage of gross domestic product, from 1.6 percent in 2014/15 to 1.5 percent in 2015/16 and dropping further thereafter.
"We are hardly entering a new era of massive infrastructure investment," said IFS Director Paul Johnson.
The government's plans also accounted for 15 billion pounds income from the sale of assets such as its portfolio of student loans as well as unused land and property.
PRIVATE INVESTMENT
Much of Thursday's announcement was aimed at drawing in private sector investment, a key tenet of Conservative plans to get maximum economic benefit out of scarce public cash.
But it did not clear up doubts about how quickly Britain could start to get new projects up and running.
"The construction industry and the broader economy will be disappointed in today's announcement as we will only see an economic boost when the shovels hit the ground on these projects," said Nick Prior, head of infrastructure at business advisory firm Deloitte.
The opposition Labour party, which has called for more short-term spending to revive the economy but has been wary about committing itself to increased borrowing, said no investment had been brought forward to 2013 or 2014.
"When is the government going to pull its finger out and actually start to build some of these things?" said Chris Leslie, a Labour spokesman for economic issues.
The government also promised an injection of 3 billion pounds into building new affordable housing - enough, it said, for 165,000 new homes - along with a 12-year rent guarantee to encourage private housing associations to build new projects.
Alexander said 16 billion pounds from 2015 onwards had been earmarked for rail expenditure, including the government's flagship high-speed rail project, designed to improve links between London, the Midlands and the north of the country.
On Wednesday, Britain's transport secretary said the cost of the rail project had risen by almost 10 billion pounds, highlighting the pitfalls of long-term capital projects.
(Additional reporting by William Schomberg and Rosalba O'Brien Editing by Jeremy Gaunt)
HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) ? Texas marked a solemn moment in criminal justice Wednesday evening, executing its 500th inmate since it resumed carrying out capital punishment in 1982.
Kimberly McCarthy, who was put to death for the murder of her 71-year-old neighbor, was also the first woman executed in the U.S. in nearly three years.
McCarthy, 52, was executed for the 1997 robbery, beating and fatal stabbing of retired college psychology professor Dorothy Booth. Booth had agreed to give McCarthy a cup of sugar before she was attacked with a butcher knife and candelabra at her home in Lancaster, about 15 miles south of Dallas. Authorities say McCarthy cut off Booth's finger to remove her wedding ring.
It was among three slayings linked to McCarthy, a former nursing home therapist who became addicted to crack cocaine.
She was pronounced dead at 6:37 p.m. CDT, 20 minutes after Texas prison officials began administering a single lethal dose of pentobarbital.
In her final statement, McCarthy did not mention her status as the 500th inmate to be executed or acknowledge Booth or her family.
"This is not a loss. This is a win. You know where I'm going. I'm going home to be with Jesus. Keep the faith. I love you all," she said, while looking toward her witnesses ? her attorney, her spiritual adviser and her ex-husband, New Black Panther Party founder Aaron Michaels.
As the drug started to take effect, McCarthy said, "God is great," before closing her eyes. She took hard, raspy, loud breaths for several seconds before becoming quiet. Then, her chest moved up and down for another minute before she stopped breathing.
Friends and family of Booth told reporters after the execution that they were not conscious that Texas had carried out its 500th execution since 1982. They said their only focus was on Booth's brutal murder.
Five-hundred is "just a number. It doesn't really mean very much," said Randall Browning, who was Booth's godson. "'We're just thinking about the justice that was promised to us by the state of Texas."
Donna Aldred, Booth's daughter, reading a statement to reporters, said that her mother "was an incredible person who was taken before her time."
Texas has carried out nearly 40 percent of the more than 1,300 executions in the U.S. since the Supreme Court allowed capital punishment to resume in 1976. The state's standing stems from its size as the nation's second-most populous state as well as its tradition of tough justice for killers.
Texas prison officials said that for them, it was just another execution. "We simply carried out the court's order," said Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokesman Jason Clark.
With increased debate in recent years over wrongful convictions, some states have halted the practice entirely. However, 32 states have the death penalty on the books. Though Texas still carries out executions, lawmakers have provided more sentencing options for juries and courts have narrowed the cases for which death can be sought.
In a statement, Maurie Levin, McCarthy's attorney, said "500 is 500 too many. I look forward to the day when we recognize that this pointless and barbaric practice, imposed almost exclusively on those who are poor and disproportionately on people of color, has no place in a civilized society."
Outside the prison, about 40 protesters gathered, carrying signs saying "Death Penalty: Racist and Anti-Poor," ''Stop All Executions Now" and "Stop Killing to Stop Killings." As the hour for the execution approached, protesters began chanting and sang the old Negro spiritual "Wade in the Water."
In recent years, Texas executions have generally drawn fewer than 10 protesters. A handful of counter-demonstrators who support the death penalty gathered in another area outside the prison Wednesday.
Executions of women are infrequent. McCarthy was the 13th woman put to death in the U.S. and the fourth in Texas, the nation's busiest death penalty state, since the Supreme Court in 1976 allowed capital punishment to resume. In that same period, more than 1,300 male inmates have been executed nationwide, 496 of them in Texas. Virginia is a distant second, nearly 400 executions behind.
Levin, had asked the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals to halt the punishment, arguing black jurors were improperly excluded from McCarthy's trial by Dallas County prosecutors. McCarthy is black; her victim white. All but one of her 12 jurors were white. The court denied McCarthy's appeals, ruling her claims should have been raised previously.
Prosecutors said McCarthy stole Booth's Mercedes and drove to Dallas, pawned the woman's wedding ring she removed from the severed finger for $200 and went to a crack house to buy cocaine. Evidence also showed she used Booth's credit cards at a liquor store.
McCarthy blamed the crime on two drug dealers, but there was no evidence either existed.
Her ex-husband, Michaels, testified on her behalf. They had separated before Booth's slaying.
DNA evidence also tied McCarthy to the December 1988 slayings of 81-year-old Maggie Harding and 85-year-old Jettie Lucas. Harding was stabbed and beaten with a meat tenderizer, while Lucas was beaten with both sides of a claw hammer and stabbed.
McCarthy, who denied any involvement in the attacks, was indicted but not tried for those slayings.
In January, McCarthy was just hours away from being put to death when a Dallas judge delayed her execution.
McCarthy was the eighth Texas prisoner executed this year. She was among 10 women on death row in Texas, but the only one with an execution date. Seven male Texas prisoners have executions scheduled in the coming months.
___
Follow Juan A. Lozano at http://www.twitter.com/juanlozano70.
___
Associated Press videographer John L. Mone contributed to this report.
Rally outside the Supreme Court building (Chris Moody/Yahoo News)
For many who had waited hours outside the Supreme Court on Wednesday to hear the outcome of two cases on the future of same-sex marriage, the first news arrived from a man who sprinted from the court building and stripped off his shirt to reveal a pink tank top.
The sight of the colorful undershirt was a signal: The highest court in the land had struck down key parts of the Defense of Marriage Act.
Those closest to the steps of the court who knew what the the pink shirt meant cheered and spread the word. Squinting in the sun, demonstrators farther away craned sweaty necks to see what was going on, while others pecked at smartphones for answers.
In all, thousands had gathered along the sidewalk in front of the steps of the courthouse, where they stood for hours beneath a blazing June sun in Washington, D.C., to hear how the justices would rule on DOMA and on the constitutionality of a state ban on same-sex marriage in California. Although polls show the nation at large is split on the issue, virtually all who brought signs to hold in front of the courthouse supported extending marriage rights to gay couples.
Capitol Hill staffers drenched in sweat beneath full business suits wandered through the crowds with activists and newlywed gay men and women, who held up pictures of their weddings. Some Catholics, Mormons and conservative activists who support redefining marriage also claimed spots near the steps.
The scene, however, was far different from the raucous demonstrations in March when the court heard oral arguments for both cases and thousands of anti-gay-marriage demonstrators marched on Washington. Today, only one man was spotted standing in opposition near the courthouse.
PETA activists in front of the Supreme Court (Chris Moody/Yahoo News)
In the moments after word spread about the DOMA ruling, many in the crowd were skeptical. (Ironically, those outside the courthouse are often some of the last people after the cases to hear the outcomes. It's hot. It's crowded. Cellphone service is slow. When word spreads like a game of telephone, it's not always accurate.) Americans who follow the Supreme Court's rulings had been burned by bad information before, and they didn't want to be fooled again. After the botched reporting last year about the Supreme Court's ruling on the federal health care law, there was a clear hesitancy to spread false information. On Wednesday, activists with smartphones were cautious before tweeting wrong information or posting a note of celebration on Facebook.
Throughout the crowd, small circles formed like pods around men and women who pulled up the text of the ruling on their phones. The designated readers sounded out each word carefully, taking time to assess the majority opinion for subtle and possibly confusing statements. Law school graduates in the crowd helped explain what the ruling meant.
It wasn't long before a phrase rippled through the crowd.
"DOMA is dead!" people yelled. "DOMA is dead!"
A demonstrator holding a sign depicting the Supreme Court justices (Chris Moody/Yahoo News)
But as the sun beat down on the wilting demonstrators, the celebration quickly quieted in anticipation of the court's decision on Proposition 8.
Near the northern corner of the steps, a group from the Gay Men's Chorus of Washington huddled beneath an umbrella to block the sun.
"I don't know why I'm not more emotional," one of the singers said to the group. "It must be because it's so damn hot right now." They seemed to concur.
When the court finally released its ruling?determining that those who challenged a lower court ruling overturning Proposition 8 did not have standing?activists in the crowd returned to their phones to parse the information. It was the same drill as the last ruling: Initial excitement. Skepticism. Circle up. Digest the ruling. Cheer.
The ruling wasn't exactly what many of them wanted?a national declaration legalizing gay marriage across the country?but both of the decisions combined was good enough. For them, it was a victory.
"I feel ecstatic," said Oscar Soto, a man from Reston, Va. "This is a big victory. This is a huge, huge victory. No one's disappointed today."
As demonstrators walked away from the courthouse, smiling, cheering and hugging one another, the Gay Men's Chorus gathered near the steps, and a conductor led them in the national anthem.
(Reuters) - Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe left for a medical check-up in Singapore on Tuesday, his spokesman said, a month before an election in which the 89-year-old is looking to extend his 33 years in power.
Africa's oldest leader - who denies reports he has received treatment for prostate cancer - will return at the weekend after a routine visit to an eye specialist, his spokesman George Charamba said in a statement.
Mugabe has said he has cataracts but no other major health problems and regularly dismisses media allegations that his health is deteriorating as wishful thinking by his enemies.
He has often gone to Singapore for medical check-ups and passed through the southeast Asian city state during a trip to Japan three weeks ago.
Mugabe's main political rival Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai has called for a delay of at least two weeks to the vote, currently scheduled for July 31.
Tsvangirai has appealed to the 15-nation Southern African Development Community (SADC) to prod Mugabe into delaying the poll to allow media and security reforms designed to prevent a repeat of the bloodshed that marred a 2008 vote.
Mugabe says the date is in line with a Constitutional Court order and accuses his political rivals of seeking to delay elections because they fear defeat, a charge dismissed by Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).
The MDC says reforms to restrictive media and security laws are essential for a credible vote, and accuses Mugabe of using violence to win previous elections.
Besides the quarrel over reforms and the election date, Finance Minister Tendai Biti from Tsvangirai's party also says the southern African state does not yet have the $132 million needed to fund the election.
Mugabe has been in power since independence from Britain in 1980.
His critics accuse him of ruining one of Africa's most promising economies with policies such as the seizure of white-owned farms to resettle landless blacks and forcing foreign-owned firms to sell majority stakes to locals.
(Reporting By Cris Chinaka; Editing by Ed Cropley and Andrew Heavens)
Wondering how AOL's RSS client will rank as a Google Readerreplacement? Today's the day we find out, as the doors to the AOL Reader beta have officially swung open. Feedly's been absorbing Google's castaways for weeks now, and Digg's is only two days away from launching its own freemium RSS client -- but we couldn't resist getting an early taste of what our parent company (Disclaimer alert!) is cooking. Join us after the break for all the details about this latest entrant in the field of feed readers.
Scientists are harnessing the power of motion-based gaming technology to drive cyborg cockroaches on autopilot, envisioning a future where the intrepid insects could be wired to survey a disaster zone.
Researchers at North Carolina State University previously showed that they could steer roaches by remote control with a lightweight chip fixed to the critters. Now they're demonstrating that they can send the insects along a digitally plotted path with the help of Microsoft's Kinect, the motion-sensing system that allows people to play Xbox games without a controller.
More sophisticated roach reconnaissance could be life-saving in disaster areas that are too dangerous for humans to enter. The same technology that allows Kinect to scan a room could help roach rescuers map the inside of a collapsed building, the researchers say. Roaches could also be equipped with microphones to detect survivors, or even small speakers to allow two-way communication between remote rescue crews and people who are trapped. [See Video of Cockroaches on Autopilot]
"We want to build on this program, incorporating mapping and radio frequency techniques that will allow us to use a small group of cockroaches to explore and map disaster sites," Alper Bozkurt, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at NC State, said in a statement. "The autopilot program would control the roaches, sending them on the most efficient routes to provide rescuers with a comprehensive view of the situation."
Bozkurt and his colleagues figured out how to manipulate Madagascar hissing cockroaches by wiring the creatures' antennae and cerci, the sensory organs on the insect's abdomen that cause it to scurry away from danger. Electrical signals that stimulate the cerci send the roaches running, while charges sent to the antennae control the insects' direction.
The team incorporated Kinect into their own electronic interface to automatically steer and track the movements of the insect along a charted path. A video of one of the cyborg roaches shows it lurching from point to point along a curved route.
Researchers elsewhere have been creating technologically enhanced roaches with other power sources. Scientists at Case Western Reserve University last year demonstrated how the insects could be outfitted with an implantable biofuel cell that converts sugar into electricity, used to power sensors on the insect or manipulate it remotely.
Remote-controlled cockroaches are also making their way outside of university labs. For a donation of $100, a project on Kickstarter called RoboRoach promises the tools to create "the world's first commercially available cyborg" controlled by a smartphone.
The NC State team is presenting their work on July 4 at the annual conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society in Osaka, Japan.
Follow Megan Gannon on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on LiveScience.com.
Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
There's no denying that MediaTek is becoming mainstream these days, to the point that even Sony finally decided to join the party. The manufacturer's first attempt in this space is the Xperia C (S39h), a 5-inch qHD phone with dual-SIM capability (WCDMA and GSM) destined for China Unicom, and it'll come in either black, white or purple. Like many flagship devices from Chinese brands these days, the device packs a quad-core MediaTek MT6589 SoC, along with an 8-megapixel camera -- Exmor R, specifically -- with voice shutter function. On top of the hardware, users in China will also have access to 3 million tracks from local music content provider Duomi. There's no price or date just yet, so we'll be keeping an eye out for further announcements.
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Public release date: 28-Jun-2013
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