Homeland security chairman: FBI checking training angle in bombing

WASHINGTON (AP) ? The chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee said Sunday that the FBI is investigating in the United States and overseas to determine whether the suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing received training that helped them carry out the attack.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, is charged with joining with his older brother, Tamerlan, who's now dead, in setting off the shrapnel-packed pressure-cooker bombs. The bombs were triggered by a remote detonator of the kind used in remote-control toys, U.S. officials have said.

U.S. officials investigating the bombings have told The Associated Press that so far there is no evidence to date of a wider plot, including training, direction or funding for the attacks.

A criminal complaint outlining federal charges against Dzhokhar Tsarnaev described him as holding a cellphone in his hand minutes before the first explosion.

The brothers are ethnic Chechens from Russia who came to the United States about a decade ago with their parents.

"I think given the level of sophistication of this device, the fact that the pressure cooker is a signature device that goes back to Pakistan, Afghanistan, leads me to believe ? and the way they handled these devices and the tradecraft ? ... that there was a trainer and the question is where is that trainer or trainers," said Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, on "Fox News Sunday."

"Are they overseas in the Chechen region or are they in the United States?" McCaul said. "In my conversations with the FBI, that's the big question. They've casted a wide net both overseas and in the United States to find out where this person is. But I think the experts all agree that there is someone who did train these two individuals."

Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., a member of the House Intelligence Committee, said he thought it's "probably true" that the attack was not linked to a major group. But, he told CNN's "State of the Union," that there "may have been radicalizing influences" in the U.S. or abroad. "It does look like a lot of radicalization was self-radicalization online, but we don't know the full answers yet."

On ABC's "This Week," moderator George Stephanopoulos raised the question to the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee about FBI suspicions that the brothers had help in getting the bombs together.

"Absolutely, and not only that, but in the self-radicalization process, you still need outside affirmation," responded Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich.

"We still have persons of interest that we're working to find and identify and have conversations with," he added.

At this point in the investigation, however, Sen. Claire McCaskill said there was no evidence that the brothers "were part of a larger organization, that they were, in fact, part of some kind of terror cell or any kind of direction."

The Missouri Democrat, who's on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, told CBS' "Face the Nation" that "it appears, at this point, based on the evidence, that it's the two of them."

Homemade bombs built from pressure cookers have been a frequent weapon of militants in Afghanistan, India and Pakistan. Al-Qaida's branch in Yemen once published an online manual on how to make one.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev was an ardent reader of jihadist websites and extremist propaganda, officials have said. He frequently looked at extremist sites, including Inspire magazine, an English-language online publication produced by al-Qaida's Yemen affiliate.

In recent years, two would-be U.S. attackers reported receiving bomb-making training from foreign groups but failed to set off the explosives.

A Nigerian man was given a mandatory life sentence for trying to blow up a packed jetliner on Christmas Day 2009 with a bomb sewn into his underwear. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab had tried to set off the bomb minutes before the Amsterdam-to-Detroit flight landed.

The device didn't work as planned, but it still produced smoke, flame and panic. He told authorities that he trained in Yemen under the eye of Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical American-born cleric and one of the best-known al-Qaida figures.

A U.S. drone strike in Yemen killed al-Awlaki in 2011.

In 2010, a Pakistani immigrant who tried to detonate a car bomb in New York's Times Square also received a life sentence. Faisal Shazad said the Pakistan Taliban provided him with more than $15,000 and five days of explosives training.

The bomb was made of fireworks fertilizer, propane tanks and gasoline canisters. Explosives experts said the fertilizer wasn't the right grade and the fireworks weren't powerful enough to set off the intended chain reaction.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/lawmaker-fbi-checking-training-angle-bombing-154952300.html

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Rush to help airlines, travelers could crack open U.S. budget door

By David Lawder and Doug Palmer

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Congress got rid of a headache on Friday when it rescued the flying public from flight delays caused by its budget cutting. But in the view of many U.S. lawmakers, the pain is just about to begin.

Members of Congress and groups representing people hit by across-the-board budget cuts, ranging from cancer patients to welfare recipients, say the quick action on air traffic control staffing underscored the importance of being visible to millions of Americans.

"What are we going to do, every time there's a fire we're going to put it out by moving some funds around? That's a shell game," said Representative Gerald Connolly, a Democrat from northern Virginia.

"I'm going to predict that there's going to be more weeping and gnashing of teeth, as sequestration sets in and we're going to continue to approach this on a piecemeal basis," he said.

Next in line for individual funding relief will be advocates for national parks, low-income housing, AIDS funding, meals on wheels and Community Development Block Grants, Connolly said, adding that budget cuts for these and other safety-net services will be felt severely by local communities.

Representatives for some of these other programs said it was the television images of lines in airports and the interviews with angry passengers that led to action, combined with the lobbying power of the travel industry.

"It means we worry about who's going to scream the loudest now," said Chris Hansen, president of the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, which has been lobbying against cuts in federal funding of medical research.

A heavy dose of lobbying from the airline and travel industry preceded the legislation enacted Friday, which permitted the Federal Aviation Administration to move money to avoid the furloughs of air traffic controllers that were causing the delays.

Sequestration - the $109 billion in automatic across-the-board budget cuts enacted by Congress and signed by President Barack Obama - formally took effect in March and barring Congressional action to replace it may continue for a decade.

Some programs won relief from Congress in March, notably the meat and poultry industry, which fought successfully to prevent furloughs of U.S. Department of Agriculture meat inspectors.

But because the furloughs in other programs, such as the FAA, were not immediately implemented, the impact was slow to build.

TRAVEL LOBBY

The travel industry began to accelerate its lobbying effort after it learned early last week from the FAA that as many as 6,700 flights per day could be delayed, potentially reducing capacity at major airports by 30 to 40 percent.

Nicholas Calio, president of Airlines for America, or A4A, the main airlines industry group, worked the phones throughout the week, said Jean Medina, senior vice president for communications at A4A.

"He certainly was in very close contact with a lot of people to make sure they understood what needed to happen," she said.

Its first course of action was to ask the administration for a 30-day delay.

When that was denied, the industry group began focusing on a legislative fix that would clear both houses with bipartisan support and be signed into law by Obama.

US Airways Chief Executive Doug Parker, who would head the world's largest airline if his carrier's merger with AMR Corp's American Airlines is approved, said he spent the past week making calls to government officials in his airline's hub markets to express concern about the furloughs.

"What I know is we're doing great disservice to the flying public and to the citizens of the United States and we need for this to get resolved," Parker told Reuters from Arizona earlier this week.

The non-profit U.S. Travel Association said it mounted its own "sequester offensive" in response to the furloughs and began a consumer texting campaign that connected travelers who had been delayed at airports to members of Congress.

The association also asked industry workers to contact their representatives in Congress to explain that the travel delays put their jobs at risk.

"We were in frequent contact with Congress urging them to solve this problem as soon as possible," Erik Hansen, director of domestic policy at the U.S. Travel Association, said on Friday. "We were able to generate hundreds of calls and emails to Congress and we're hoping that helped to move the ball forward," Hansen said.

VISIBILITY

Airlines for America reported about $6.3 million in lobbying expenses in 2012 according to the Center for Responsive Politics; the U.S. Travel Association spent about $1.7 million; US Airways and Delta about $2.8 million each.

While other interest groups have a lobbying presence in the national capital, they are hard pressed to match the visibility of air travel.

Compared to "longer lines at airports," said Cynthia Pellegrini, a vice president at the March of Dimes, which raises funds to improve the health of mothers and babies, "you can't see that a child's belly is emptier because her family couldn't get food assistance."

"We are not as well-heeled as the travel industry," said Deborah Weinstein, executive director of the Coalition on Human Needs, an alliance of social welfare organizations. "But I think as more people learn of this appalling choice," that Congress made on Friday, "they will get as mad as I am."

Senator Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat from Minnesota, home to a major Delta Air Lines hub in Minneapolis, was among the members backing an FAA budget fix on Thursday when the Senate passed it.

She called it a "practical, pragmatic answer to an immediate problem," but acknowledged that it does nothing to get Congress closer to fixing the problems caused by sequestration. More effects of the cuts, demonstrated dramatically to the public, could do that, she added.

She may not have long to wait. Organizations that have been more quietly protesting the budget cuts were rethinking their strategy on Friday in the wake of Congress' action.

"It is inexplicable why proven and effective Meals on Wheels programs get overlooked from exemption from the sequester when both the business and social case exists," said Ellie Hollander, President and CEO of Meals on Wheels Association of America.

"I guess that's because we need to be a different kind of squeaky wheel."

(Additional reporting by Karen Jacobs, Susan Heavy and Karey Van Hall; Editing by Fred Barbash and Tim Dobbyn)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/rush-help-airlines-travelers-could-crack-open-u-235204174.html

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Morocco: Students develop an electric car 100% Moroccan ...

By Youssef El Kaidi

Morocco World News

Fez, April 25, 2013

It took almost a year for a group of young ENSA Agadir students, united under the name Ensacar, to design and manufacture Abchir1 from beginning to end. ?This is a car that does not exceed 50 kilometers per hour. Our goal in this project was not to create a fast sports car but a vehicle that consumes no energy,?? Aniss Addebbous, one of the students who worked on the project was quoted by the Moroccan news outlet Yabiladi as saying. This is not Ensacar?s first automobile design as they have already made two other car models with combustion engines.

The peculiarity of this electric vehicle is that there is not a single central engine placed under the hood; instead; there are two engines installed in two of the four wheels of the car. Rolling the car creates and recycles energy.

Ensacar will present their car, Abchir1, from May 13^th-19^th at the Shell Eco-Marathon in Rotterdam, an annual international competition that pits students from the world?s largest engineering schools who have developed a unique and environmentally-friendly car.

Abchir1 is not the first electric car created by young Moroccans. In 2010, six students from the National School of Applied Sciences of Tetouan presented their cars to the public, before presenting them at the Shell Eco-Marathon.

? Morocco World News. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, rewritten or redistributed

Source: http://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2013/04/88376/morocco-students-develop-an-electric-car-100-moroccan-3/

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Researchers track evolution of Philly's odd accent

In this Tuesday, April 23, 2013 photo, University of Pennsylvania linguistics professor Bill Labov takes part in demonstration highlighting his work, at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. Labov says the Southern-inflected sound of the Philadelphia dialect is moving toward a more Northern accent. Some of Philly's trademark twangy, elongated vowel sounds are becoming less so, though others are getting stronger. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

In this Tuesday, April 23, 2013 photo, University of Pennsylvania linguistics professor Bill Labov takes part in demonstration highlighting his work, at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. Labov says the Southern-inflected sound of the Philadelphia dialect is moving toward a more Northern accent. Some of Philly's trademark twangy, elongated vowel sounds are becoming less so, though others are getting stronger. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

In this Tuesday, April 23, 2013 photo, University of Pennsylvania linguistics professor Bill Labov takes part in demonstration highlighting his work, at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. Labov says the Southern-inflected sound of the Philadelphia dialect is moving toward a more Northern accent. Some of Philly's trademark twangy, elongated vowel sounds are becoming less so, though others are getting stronger. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

In this Tuesday, April 23, 2013 photo, University of Pennsylvania linguistics professor Bill Labov, right, takes part in demonstration highlighting his work, at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. Labov says the Southern-inflected sound of the Philadelphia dialect is moving toward a more Northern accent. Some of Philly's trademark twangy, elongated vowel sounds are becoming less so, though others are getting stronger. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

PHILADELPHIA (AP) ? Will Philly no longer be a place where residents drink wooder and root for the Iggles?

Gid eowt!

A University of Pennsylvania linguistics professor says the Southern-inflected sound of the Philadelphia dialect is moving toward a more Northern accent. Some of Philly's trademark twangy, elongated vowel sounds are becoming less so, though others are getting stronger.

"Certain changes have continued in the same direction over 100 years and everybody's doing it," said Bill Labov, who has studied the Philadelphia accent since 1971 and recorded hundreds of native speakers born between 1888 and 1992 and living in dozens of neighborhoods. "It doesn't make a difference if you come from Port Richmond or Kensington or South Philadelphia."

With apologies to comedian Jeff Foxworthy, you might be a Philadelphian if: you say beggle (bagel), wooder (water), tal (towel), beyoodeeful (beautiful), dennis (dentist) or Fit Shtreet (Fifth Street). Your pronunciation of your own hometown might come out more like Philuffya, you call your football team the Iggles, you say "ferry" and "furry" the same way, and "radiator" rhymes with "gladiator."

Technological advances have allowed Labov and his colleagues to turn their decades of field recordings into voice spectrographs ? computer-generated visualizations of the human voice like an EKG ? to track speech variations over time. Regional dialects are cemented by adolescence, so a recording of a 75-year-old Philadelphian made in 1982, for example, should provide a snapshot of what people sounded like around 1925.

The researchers' recent paper in the journal Language, titled "One Hundred Years of Sound Change in Philadelphia," concludes that the city's linguistic character is not disappearing altogether ? but it is changing, with the most dramatic shifts occurring in the mid-20th century. The reasons aren't entirely clear but higher education appears to be a factor, as does simply being aware that certain local inflections are disparaged by outsiders.

"When we came to one of the most important Philadelphia features, of saying 'gow' for 'go,' it got stronger and stronger," Labov said, "until people born around 1950, 1960, when it turned around and it went the other way."

The Philly accent is getting thicker in other ways, however. Younger speakers use sharper "i'' sounds than their parents and grandparents, pronouncing "fight" and "bike" more like "foit" and "boik," and their "a'' sounds are closer to "e'' so words like "eight" and "snake" are closer to "eat" and "sneak."

"Children speak like their peer groups, not their parents," said Penn linguistics doctoral student Josef Fruehwald, so changes tend to occur by generation.

The familiar Philly-ism "wooder" also might be drying up.

"That sound is moving toward 'ah' so instead of 'cawfee' more Philadelphians are saying 'coffee,' 'wooder' becomes 'water,'" Labov said. "As people become aware ... they tend to reverse them. They say, 'Oh we shouldn't talk that way.'"

Not sure if you've heard the Philly patois? Listen to TV commentators Chris Matthews or Jim Cramer and you'll hear it leeowd (loud) and clear. "Jackass" star Bam Margera, who is from nearby West Chester, has it. So does Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his Philly-flecked American English a vestige of his childhood years in suburban Cheltenham.

Philadelphia characters often sound like New Yorkers ? think Rocky Balboa ? perhaps because Philly's nasal twang is tougher for non-natives to mimic. In last year's "Silver Linings Playbook," Robert DeNiro hung out with an uncle of co-star (and suburban Philadelphia native) Bradley Cooper to get the dialect down, though his wife played by Australian actress Jacki Weaver comes closest to nailing it.

The generational shift in the dialect was evident during a recent school event at The Franklin Institute, a science museum. Labov and several graduate assistants conducted hands-on demonstrations including one that asked, "Does Mad Rhyme With Sad?" Most of the youngsters answered yes, as in "mahd" and "sahd," while many adults said no, pronouncing "mad" with what linguists call a "tense a" ? sort of like "meeyad."

"I don't know how they can rhyme," said Betty McGonagle, who was on a field trip with students from the Harbor Baptist Christian Academy in Hainesport, N.J. "You're mad (meeyad), and you're sad (sahd)." For her teenage students, the words rhyme.

Mia Weathers, a freshman at the city's Science Leadership Academy, tried with some difficulty to pronounce "mad" as McGonagle does naturally.

"That is just, wow. That's strange," she said with a laugh.

Now the researchers' goal is answering what Labov calls "the most important and most mysterious" question about language change.

"How is it possible that people in every neighborhood in Philadelphia are moving in the same direction?" he said. "We don't have the answer yet."

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/b2f0ca3a594644ee9e50a8ec4ce2d6de/Article_2013-04-26-No%20More%20Wooder?/id-2dc22c1f807b4a9f90f65fd940ad8c37

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Strong post-holiday season boosts UPS profit

By Sagarika Jaisinghani

(Reuters) - United Parcel Service Inc said it expects the small-package delivery market to grow faster than the U.S. economy in 2013, after reporting a higher quarterly profit on strong post-holiday season demand.

Shares of the world's largest package-delivery company rose 2 percent in early trading after UPS said its growing e-commerce business also lifted first-quarter results.

"Increased focus by traditional retailers on using their brick-and-mortar locations as distribution sites is creating more pickups at retail locations for ultimate residential delivery," Chief Financial Officer Kurt Kuehn said on a post-earnings conference call.

As cost-conscious consumers shift from air express to cheaper but slower modes of shipping, UPS's stronger North American domestic network puts it in a better position than rival FedEx Corp , which focuses more on international air shipments.

FedEx cut its full-year forecast in March after a lower-than-expected quarterly profit and said it would step-up restructuring efforts and cut capacity in Asia.

UPS also said it expected economic uncertainty to continue and that a weak global freight market would offset gains from post-holiday U.S. sales in January. However, the company reaffirmed its full-year earnings forecast of $4.80-$5.06 per share.

The company's daily package volume in the United States grew 4.4 percent in the first quarter, led by UPS Ground, which delivered 531,000 more packages per day.

UPS, like No. 2 package delivery company FedEx, is viewed as an economic bellwether because of the volume of goods it handles.

UPS's international package revenue was flat in the quarter, while sales in the United States rose 3.4 percent. Total revenue rose 2.2 percent to $13.43 billion.

Net income rose to $1.04 billion, or $1.08 per share, in the quarter ended March 31, from $970 million, or $1 per share, a year earlier.

Excluding items, UPS earned $1.04 per share.

Analysts on average expected earnings of $1.01 per share, excluding items, on revenue of $13.46 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

HEALTHCARE BOOST

UPS on Thursday said it would buy Hungarian pharmaceutical logistics company, CEMELOG Zrt, to strengthen its healthcare reach in Europe. It did not disclose the terms of the deal.

"The emerging markets' business-to-consumer (offering) and industry specific solutions like healthcare have enormous potential and UPS continues to invest in them," Chief Executive Scott Davis said.

"We expect similar deals to come to offset the unsuccessful plan to buy TNT," S&P Capital IQ analyst Jim Corridore said, raising his price target on the stock to $100 from $94.

UPS dropped its $7 billion bid for Dutch delivery firm TNT Express in January after European regulators said they would veto the deal on antitrust concerns.

UPS said it plans to buy back about $4 billion worth of stock this year, about 5 percent of its current market capitalization of nearly $80 billion. It repurchased shares for $1 billion in the first quarter.

The company's shares have gained more than 5 percent in the last 12 months but have underperformed the wider S&P 500 <.spx> index, which has risen 15 percent.

UPS shares were up 2 percent at $84.98 in early trading on Thursday on the New York Stock Exchange.

(Reporting by Sagarika Jaisinghani in Bangalore; Editing by Supriya Kurane)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/ups-profit-rises-7-percent-strong-post-holiday-120835550--sector.html

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Metin Tolan wins 2013 Communicator Award

Public release date: 24-Apr-2013
[ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Marco Finetti
marco.finetti@dfg.de
49-228-885-2230
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft

Dortmund researcher honored for innovative science communication in physics

This press release is available in German.

Experimental physicist Metin Tolan is the winner of this year's Communicator Award, conferred by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) and the Donors' Association for the Promotion of Sciences and Humanities in Germany. The TU Dortmund University scientist was selected in recognition of his diverse and innovative approaches to communicating physics and research findings to the public and the media.

The "Communicator Award Science Award of the Donors' Association" is endowed with 50,000 euros and is the most important prize for science communication awarded in Germany. Established in 2000, the award is bestowed on researchers who have communicated their own scientific findings and their research field to a wide general audience. By recognising outstanding science communicators, the DFG and the Donors' Association aim to promote the increasingly important dialogue between the scientific community and the public while promoting science communication within the research community itself.

The prizewinners are selected by a jury composed of science journalists and experts from the fields of public relations and communications. The jury is chaired by a Vice President of the DFG. A total of 49 researchers working in a broad range of scientific disciplines applied or were nominated for this year's Communicator Award, more than twice the figure for last year. Eleven of these candidates were shortlisted, four of whom were selected for final consideration, with Metin Tolan chosen as the ultimate winner.

The 48-year-old experimental physicist impressed the jury with his original and varied approaches to science communication, such as his series of Saturday morning lectures entitled "Zwischen Brtchen und Borussia Modern Physik fr alle", which has regularly attracted several hundred visitors since 2003, his blog on the physics of football, and his successful books Geschttelt, nicht gerhrt James Bond und die Physik (Shaken, Not Stirred James Bond and Physics) (with Joachim Stolze) and Die Titanic Mit Physik in den Untergang (The Titanic The Physics of Sinking). Tolan makes regular appearances on radio and television as a guest and presenter, and has given over 500 public talks explaining familiar phenomena and puzzles from history, everyday life and film from the viewpoint of a physicist. The jury was particularly impressed by his work with schools; Tolan regularly teaches physics classes at a local school in Dortmund where most of the pupils have a family background outside Germany.

In his various communication endeavours, Tolan frequently draws on his own research work. For example, to explain the sinking of the Titanic he refers to his own research on the properties of steel, or for a scene from a James Bond film where the hero apparently sees through walls, he uses his work on the use of X-rays in materials research.

Metin Tolan was appointed Professor and Chair of Experimental Physics at TU Dortmund University in 2001. Prior to this he held teaching and research posts at the University of Kiel, where he obtained his degree, doctorate and habilitation. His main areas of interest are the use of X-rays to study the interface behaviour of polymers, biomaterials, liquids and other "soft materials" and the use of synchrotron radiation in materials research, for instance at the Dortmund Synchrotron Radiation Centre, which is home to the Delta electron storage ring and of which he is the director. In 2008 he won the TU Dortmund University research prize and in 2010 he was named Professor of the Year for natural sciences and medicine by Unicum Beruf magazine. In 2008 Tolan was appointed a prorector for his university, first for research and then in 2011 for teaching.

He has received DFG funding for several individual projects and as a member of a Research Unit. In 2012 Tolan joined the DFG review board for Experimental Physics of Condensed Matter, becoming one of the researchers chosen by his peers to play an important role in the review and decision-making process of Germany's central self-governing research funding organisation.

Metin Tolan is the fourteenth recipient of the Communicator Award. Previous winners have included mathematicians Albrecht Beutelspacher and Gnter M. Ziegler, marine researcher Gerold Wefer, astrophysicist Harald Lesch, palaeobiologist Friedemann Schrenk, sociologist Jutta Allmendinger, the glaciology working group at the Alfred Wegener Institute, and risk researcher Gerd Gigerenzer. Last year's award went to bee scientist and behavioural biologist Jrgen Tautz.

This year's Communicator Award will be presented on 2 July 2013 at the Annual Meeting of the DFG in Berlin. The prize money is donated by the Donors' Association, which unites more than 3,000 companies and private individuals who are committed to the promotion of science and science communication. Along with the prize money, Metin Tolan will also be presented with a hologram representing the Communicator Award. Created by Cologne-based artist Michael Bleyenberg, the hologram underscores the significance of transparency in science and expresses the importance of looking at things "in the right light". Like the hologram, it is only then that science can truly shine.

###

Further Information

For further information on the Communicator Award and previous award recipients, please see: http://www.dfg.de/en/funded_projects/prizewinners/communicator_award/index.html

For further information from the DFG, please contact:

Marco Finetti, Head of Press and Public Relations, Tel. +49 228 885-2230, Marco.Finetti@dfg.de

For further information from the Donors' Association, please contact:

Moritz Kralemann, Head of Press Relations and Spokesperson, Tel. +49 30 322 982-527, moritz.kralemann@stifterverband.de

---

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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.

Public release date: 24-Apr-2013
[ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Marco Finetti
marco.finetti@dfg.de
49-228-885-2230
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft

Dortmund researcher honored for innovative science communication in physics

This press release is available in German.

Experimental physicist Metin Tolan is the winner of this year's Communicator Award, conferred by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) and the Donors' Association for the Promotion of Sciences and Humanities in Germany. The TU Dortmund University scientist was selected in recognition of his diverse and innovative approaches to communicating physics and research findings to the public and the media.

The "Communicator Award Science Award of the Donors' Association" is endowed with 50,000 euros and is the most important prize for science communication awarded in Germany. Established in 2000, the award is bestowed on researchers who have communicated their own scientific findings and their research field to a wide general audience. By recognising outstanding science communicators, the DFG and the Donors' Association aim to promote the increasingly important dialogue between the scientific community and the public while promoting science communication within the research community itself.

The prizewinners are selected by a jury composed of science journalists and experts from the fields of public relations and communications. The jury is chaired by a Vice President of the DFG. A total of 49 researchers working in a broad range of scientific disciplines applied or were nominated for this year's Communicator Award, more than twice the figure for last year. Eleven of these candidates were shortlisted, four of whom were selected for final consideration, with Metin Tolan chosen as the ultimate winner.

The 48-year-old experimental physicist impressed the jury with his original and varied approaches to science communication, such as his series of Saturday morning lectures entitled "Zwischen Brtchen und Borussia Modern Physik fr alle", which has regularly attracted several hundred visitors since 2003, his blog on the physics of football, and his successful books Geschttelt, nicht gerhrt James Bond und die Physik (Shaken, Not Stirred James Bond and Physics) (with Joachim Stolze) and Die Titanic Mit Physik in den Untergang (The Titanic The Physics of Sinking). Tolan makes regular appearances on radio and television as a guest and presenter, and has given over 500 public talks explaining familiar phenomena and puzzles from history, everyday life and film from the viewpoint of a physicist. The jury was particularly impressed by his work with schools; Tolan regularly teaches physics classes at a local school in Dortmund where most of the pupils have a family background outside Germany.

In his various communication endeavours, Tolan frequently draws on his own research work. For example, to explain the sinking of the Titanic he refers to his own research on the properties of steel, or for a scene from a James Bond film where the hero apparently sees through walls, he uses his work on the use of X-rays in materials research.

Metin Tolan was appointed Professor and Chair of Experimental Physics at TU Dortmund University in 2001. Prior to this he held teaching and research posts at the University of Kiel, where he obtained his degree, doctorate and habilitation. His main areas of interest are the use of X-rays to study the interface behaviour of polymers, biomaterials, liquids and other "soft materials" and the use of synchrotron radiation in materials research, for instance at the Dortmund Synchrotron Radiation Centre, which is home to the Delta electron storage ring and of which he is the director. In 2008 he won the TU Dortmund University research prize and in 2010 he was named Professor of the Year for natural sciences and medicine by Unicum Beruf magazine. In 2008 Tolan was appointed a prorector for his university, first for research and then in 2011 for teaching.

He has received DFG funding for several individual projects and as a member of a Research Unit. In 2012 Tolan joined the DFG review board for Experimental Physics of Condensed Matter, becoming one of the researchers chosen by his peers to play an important role in the review and decision-making process of Germany's central self-governing research funding organisation.

Metin Tolan is the fourteenth recipient of the Communicator Award. Previous winners have included mathematicians Albrecht Beutelspacher and Gnter M. Ziegler, marine researcher Gerold Wefer, astrophysicist Harald Lesch, palaeobiologist Friedemann Schrenk, sociologist Jutta Allmendinger, the glaciology working group at the Alfred Wegener Institute, and risk researcher Gerd Gigerenzer. Last year's award went to bee scientist and behavioural biologist Jrgen Tautz.

This year's Communicator Award will be presented on 2 July 2013 at the Annual Meeting of the DFG in Berlin. The prize money is donated by the Donors' Association, which unites more than 3,000 companies and private individuals who are committed to the promotion of science and science communication. Along with the prize money, Metin Tolan will also be presented with a hologram representing the Communicator Award. Created by Cologne-based artist Michael Bleyenberg, the hologram underscores the significance of transparency in science and expresses the importance of looking at things "in the right light". Like the hologram, it is only then that science can truly shine.

###

Further Information

For further information on the Communicator Award and previous award recipients, please see: http://www.dfg.de/en/funded_projects/prizewinners/communicator_award/index.html

For further information from the DFG, please contact:

Marco Finetti, Head of Press and Public Relations, Tel. +49 228 885-2230, Marco.Finetti@dfg.de

For further information from the Donors' Association, please contact:

Moritz Kralemann, Head of Press Relations and Spokesperson, Tel. +49 30 322 982-527, moritz.kralemann@stifterverband.de

---

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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.

Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-04/df-mtw042413.php

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Alibaba pledges to combat fake goods on its shopping portals

By Melanie Lee

HANGZHOU (Reuters) - Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, China's largest e-commerce platform, said it will commit "as many resources necessary" to stop the sale of pirated goods on its Taobao shopping portals, where transactions exceeded $161.7 billion last year.

The company said its incoming chief executive would join a task force to combat piracy on its platforms.

Alibaba has been clamping down on the sale of fake goods, but users of Alibaba's Taobao Marketplace, which is similar to Amazon.com's marketplace, can still find knockoff Chanel bags or Vera Wang dresses. Its Taobao Mall has storefronts where retail brands can sell to consumers.

Industry watchers widely expect Alibaba to seek an initial public offering as early as this year, and intellectual property protection concerns may turn off some potential investors. Addressing the issue now could help the company avoid some uncomfortable questions during an IPO road show.

The company said it will partner with government bureaus and ministries such as China's Ministry of Public Security to fight counterfeiting and intellectual property rights infringement.

"Counterfeits are the narcotics of the marketplace," said Alibaba founder and Chairman Jack Ma, who announced in January that he was stepping down as CEO. "We don't want Alibaba's name to be associated with counterfeiting."

Incoming CEO Jonathan Lu will head the IP task force, which will also include chief risk officer Polo Shao.

"We are committed to put as many resources as necessary to tackle the problem," Shao said in a speech at Alibaba's headquarters in Hangzhou, about an hour from Shanghai by high-speed train.

The task force will cooperate with government bureaus to report stores that infringe on intellectual property rights, to share information and to help trace the source of fake goods.

In December, the United States dropped Taobao from its annual list of the world's most "notorious markets" for sales of pirated and counterfeit goods because the company had "undertaken notable efforts" to clean up its shopping sites.

In September, Taobao Marketplace signed a pact with the Motion Picture Association (MPA), an affiliate of the Motion Picture Association of America, to curb the sale of counterfeit and copyright-infringing products on the platform.

Alibaba Group said in December the value of transactions on its Taobao platforms exceeded 1 trillion yuan ($161.74 billion)for the first time in January-November last year.

"The protection of IPR and fighting against counterfeit goods, if we don't do it well, will be something I'll regret," Ma said.

In 2012, Alibaba said it provided information to law enforcement officers involving 72 brands, and 170 million yuan worth of merchandise was taken down from its shopping sites.

($1 = 6.1826 Chinese yuan)

(Reporting by Melanie Lee; Editing by Emily Kaiser)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/alibaba-pledges-combat-fake-goods-shopping-portals-102128498--sector.html

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Thailand bans film about Thai-Cambodian border row

BANGKOK (AP) ? Thailand's film censors have banned a documentary about the country's long-running border dispute with neighboring Cambodia as a threat to national security, the filmmaker said Wednesday.

"Boundary" tells the story of the Thai-Cambodian conflict through accounts of an ex-soldier who lives near the border, as well as villagers from the two countries. It also touches on other conflicts in Thailand, including the 9-year-old insurgency in the south and the political divisiveness that led to a deadly military crackdown on protesters in 2010.

Director Nontawat Numbenchapol said the Culture Ministry's film screening office informed him that the movie's content "is a threat to national security and international relations." He said he will appeal the ban.

The border dispute has its roots in a 1962 International Court of Justice ruling that the 1,000-year-old Preah Vihear temple stands in Cambodia. Thailand's government argues that definitive boundaries have never been drawn in the area around the World Heritage-listed site.

The dispute has become a rallying point for many Thai nationalists, who don't recognize the court's ruling and say the area, including the temple, belongs to Thailand and they have pressured politicians to keep pressing the issue.

The Thai and Cambodian armies have repeatedly clashed in the disputed area in recent years, including in April 2011, when 17 soldiers and a civilian were killed and thousands near the temple were displaced.

In 2011, the court in The Hague created a demilitarized zone around the temple but troops were not withdrawn until a year later.

The court is currently hearing testimony from both sides after they asked it to clarify its original ruling.

According to Nontawat, the film and video screening subcommittee said some of the claims in the documentary, including accounts from the Cambodian side, were "groundless."

The censors also said some information presented in the film was still being deliberated by the court and had yet to be formally resolved.

Nontawat said he was stunned by the decision.

"I made this movie to create the space for people living near the border to speak their mind," he said. "Now I have to work harder not only to let people know about the border issue, but also about freedom of expression."

Thailand's censors target a wide range of political and social issues. They blur out cigarettes and alcohol on television and crack down on any perceived criticism of the monarchy.

Last year, the film board banned a Thai adaptation of Shakespeare's "Macbeth," saying it has content that causes divisiveness among the people. In 2011, the board also banned a movie called "Insects in the Backyard" about a transgender father struggling to raise two children, citing scenes it deemed immoral and pornographic.

"In the U.S., a movie like 'Bowling for Columbine,' which boldly criticized the president, can still be shown. It sparked constructive arguments and made the country more developed," Nontawat said. "In Thailand, the more you censor things, the more you make the country more outdated."

"Boundary" premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival in February and received financial support from international movie funds.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/thailand-bans-film-thai-cambodian-border-row-040350874.html

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US teens doing better than public realizes: survey

WASHINGTON (AP) ? American teenagers aren't doing as poorly on international science tests as adults think. Despite the misconception, people don't think the subject should get greater emphasis in schools, a survey released Monday found.

More Americans than not wrongly think that U.S. 15-year-olds rank near the bottom on international science tests, according to a Pew Research Center for the People and the Press poll. U.S. students actually rank in the middle among developed countries.

Even so, Americans are more likely to pick math or language skills over science when they are asked which subject they think deserves greater attention.

Among adults, there is wide variety in what they know about science and technology, the survey also found. For instance, two-thirds of those surveyed correctly said rust is an example of a chemical reaction and 77 percent correctly said the continents have been moving for millions of years and will continue to shift.

Yet only 47 percent correctly said electrons are smaller than atoms. Protons, neutrons and electrons are parts of atoms.

Education advocates have long warned that U.S. students need more science education if they are to keep pace with international peers. That perhaps has yielded the impression that the nation's students don't stack up to other nations on international tests.

About 35 percent of those surveyed by Pew correctly said U.S. 15-year-olds are about in the middle and 7 percent incorrectly said Americans ranked among the top nations. Yet the plurality ? 44 percent ? wrongly said American teens were ranked at the bottom of other developed nations.

International tests find U.S. scores aren't measurably different from the average of all other nations. Among the 33 countries measured in the 2009 Program for International Student Assessment, 12 had higher scores and nine had lower scores. Another 12 had scores that weren't that much different than Americans' scores.

The survey also asked participants an open-ended question about which single subject they thought deserved greater emphasis in elementary and secondary schools. Some 30 percent suggested math and arithmetic. Another 19 percent said English, grammar, writing and reading.

Science was the top choice for just 11 percent of participants. Among those who picked science, though, there was a partisan divide. Some 17 percent of Democrats said science should receive more attention, while 7 percent of Republicans agreed.

Republicans, however, were more likely to favor math and arithmetic than Democrats. Some 35 percent of Republicans picked math skills as the subject they thought deserved more attention while 24 percent of Democrats agreed.

Americans with college degrees were more likely than others to underestimate the students' international rankings. Those college graduates were also more likely to answer their own questions about science and technology correctly.

For instance, 76 percent of college graduates correctly identified carbon dioxide as the gas that most scientists blame for climate change. Just 55 percent of those with some college courses got the answer right, and that number reached 49 percent among adults who did not attend college.

Pew's poll was conducted March 7-10 and used landline and cellular telephone interviews with 1,006 adults. Results for the full sample have a margin of error of plus or minus 3.7 percentage points. It is larger for subgroups.

The survey was conducted with Smithsonian Magazine for an upcoming edition focusing on science, technology, engineering and mathematics education.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/b2f0ca3a594644ee9e50a8ec4ce2d6de/Article_2013-04-22-US-Science-Skills/id-f04c0ab54d1a42729245bf00d8ff4b6a

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Josh Thomson, Matt Brown and Myles Jury headline UFC on Fox 7?s Three Stars

UFC on Fox 7 had knockouts, more knockouts, and even a proposal. But whose performance stood above the rest? With so many great performances, it was hard to pick just three.

No. 1 star -- Josh Thomson: After years in Strikeforce, Thomson was eager to prove that he belonged in the elite of the UFC's stacked lightweight division. He did that by TKOing Nate Diaz, which is the first time Diaz was knocked out in his career.

[Related: Winners and losers from UFC on Fox 7]

No. 2 star -- Matt Brown: If Dante Alighieri was alive and an MMA fan, he would add a 10th circle of hell -- facing Matt Brown. He was aggressive and relentless in his win over Jordan Mein. Even after body shots appeared to weaken him, Brown came back to win with a TKO in the second round. Brown is now hoping for a title shot. After five overwhelming wins, who can say he shouldn't get one?

No. 3 star -- Myles Jury: In his third UFC bout, Jury pasted Ramsey Nijem in the second round. He's yet to lose, and of his 12 wins, only one has gone to the judges. At just 24 years old, it's likely we're going to hear more from Jury. His next fight should be a considerable step up in competition in the UFC's lightweight division.

Who were your Three Stars? Speak up in the comments, on Facebook or on Twitter.

Related UFC video on Yahoo! Sports

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? Big contracts and big losses for Los Angeles baseball
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Source: http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/mma-cagewriter/josh-thomson-matt-brown-myles-jury-headline-ufc-134801496--mma.html

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For Developers, Google Glass Looks To Be A Fascinating But Slightly Limited Platform

Last week, Google finally released the developer guides and other necessary documents that will allow developers to write apps for Glass. In some respects, the so-called Mirror API may have been a disappointment to developers who were expecting to run full-blown augmented-reality apps, but even in its current form, it will allow developers to create new experiences for their new and existing apps that just weren’t possible before. One thing many developers may not have realized before Google published these documents is that the API is essentially an old-school RESTful service. The only way to interact with Glass is through the cloud. The only apps you can build – at least for now – are web-based, and despite the fact that Glass runs Android, you can’t run any services directly on the hardware. Google may have made this choice for a number of reasons. It ensures that Glass’ battery life is reasonable (Google says it should last a full day, assuming you don’t record a lot of video), but this also means that if a service goes haywire and sends out a fresh cat picture to users every second, it can intervene and cut that service’s access off. Depending on how you look at this, that’s either a good or a bad thing, but Google is clearly interested in keeping some control over what’s happening on Glass for now. The way the API works, however, also means there are things you can’t quite do with Glass yet that are possible on any modern smartphone. You can’t write a real augmented-reality app, for example. It also doesn’t look as if you could easily stream audio or video from the device to your own services (though you can obviously use Hangouts on Glass). Because the platform is essentially web-based, you are also limited to HTML and CSS when it comes to styling your apps, and Google would prefer it if you didn’t write any custom CSS and just stuck with its own templates. For the most part, though, developers will be able to approximate the experience Google shared in its first Glass demo video last year. Assuming you have an Android phone, you will be able to create location-enabled apps. Users can send images to your service (so you could build a service that manipulates or analyzes these images in the cloud and then sends the results back to the user) and

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/MsH3Nxac2zA/

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Boston Marathon bombing moves from solidarity to partisan politics

Partisanship was absent in the days following the Boston Marathon bombing. Now, political issues are entering into the discussion, including gun control, immigration, and national security.

By Brad Knickerbocker,?Staff writer / April 20, 2013

Runners pause during a moment of silence for those injured and killed in the Boston Marathon bombings before the start of the Salt Lake City marathon on Saturday,.

Melissa Majchrzak/AP

Enlarge

Democrats and Republicans declared a truce of sorts Saturday ? at least in their respective weekend radio addresses, both of which focused on the Boston Marathon bombing. Usually those venues are used to attempt to score political points on things like the economy, immigration, and gun control.

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"Through days that would test even the sturdiest of souls, Boston's spirit remains undaunted ? America's spirit remains undimmed," President Obama said in his regular weekly address. "Our faith in each other, our love for this country, our common creed that cuts across whatever superficial differences we may have ? that's what makes us strong."

"I have no doubt the city of Boston and its surrounding communities will continue to respond in the same proud and heroic way that they have thus far, and their fellow Americans will be right there with them every step of the way,? Obama said just hours after the second alleged attacker had been captured, ending a day of violent confrontations in which the first alleged attacker was killed in a shootout with police.

Speaking on behalf of the GOP, US Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, echoed the same theme.

"We will stand strong, we will stand united, and we will stand together for Boston,"?Sen. Scott said. ?The greatness of America is not seen during times of prosperity, but is crystallized by how we respond to challenges."

"The leaders of this country will do everything in our power to bring justice for the families and the communities impacted," he said. "Our freedom is our most precious possession ? any effort to take it away will only strengthen our determination."

Through the long, dark week that ended with the capture of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in Watertown, Mass. Friday evening, the nation?s political leaders had hung together in their support of stunned Bostonians and the law enforcement agencies, medical personnel, and just plain citizens who worked heroically to respond, then as federal, state, and local officials scrambled to find the perpetrators and prevent any other attack that might have been planned.

Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor who had been soundly defeated in the presidential election by Obama, praised the President?s speech at a memorial service in Boston honoring the victims of the multiple blasts that killed three people and injured more than 170 ? a terrorist attack that brought a lock-down of Boston and surrounding towns.

?I thought the president gave a superb address to the people of this city and the state and the nation,? Mr. Romney said on CNN. ?It was an inspiring day.?

But any event can be turned to political purposes, and the Boston Marathon bombing is no exception.

With news that brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev had an arsenal that included pistols and a rifle as well as home-made bombs, gun control was sure to come up.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/3VS-KXo1Yv0/Boston-Marathon-bombing-moves-from-solidarity-to-partisan-politics

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Video: Newtown families: We're not giving up (cbsnews)

Share With Friends: | | Politics - Top Stories Stories, News Feeds and News via Feedzilla.

Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/300554968?client_source=feed&format=rss

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Win The Stock Market With Crowdsourced Advice From New App Robinhood

Most people are too scared to seriously play the stock market. Few amateurs know enough to confidently invest on their own. Luckily, free iOS app Robinhood launches today to put crowdsourced finance wisdom in your pocket. Track stocks, view advice on what to buy or sell from other users, share your predictions, and build a reputation. Robinhood could turn a new generation into investors.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/9OcQv3yM1vo/

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Facebook Messenger VOIP calling expands outside of Canada

Completely free VOIP calls between Facebook users now available around the world

Unlike when it enabled the new Chat Heads feature with an update via the Play Store, Facebook has silently pushed out a feature to its Messenger app today to enable free VOIP calling. If you'll recall back to the beginning of March, the same happened to iOS users and Android users in Canada, but now we're looking at expanded availability in the U.S. and several more countries as well. The calls are of course completely free, and work between two Facebook users over data rather than the carrier's voice networks.

To check and see if you have the option available, tap into an ongoing chat and hit the "i" button in the top right corner. You should then see a simple "Free Call" button. It isn't the most elegant solution, but as a first release we're not going to complain much. Are you seeing the feature enabled in your own Messenger app? Let us know in the comments below.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/7ABwHFu0YXw/story01.htm

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Elisa Donovan?s Blog: Parenting Is Not an Elective Sport

"When Charlie and I made the choice to bring a child into the world, we were also inherently agreeing to the responsibility to actually introduce her to it," she writes.

Source: http://feeds.celebritybabies.com/~r/celebrity-babies/~3/Xuc7hRtx5zk/

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Antares rocket's maiden launch aborted when data cable drops off

Steve Helber / AP

The Antares rocket is illuminated by lights on Tuesday night, waiting for launch from a Virginia spaceport.

By Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News

Orbital Sciences Corp. postponed the maiden launch of its Antares rocket on Wednesday when an umbilical data cable was disconnected prematurely from the launch vehicle's second stage.

The launch abort came at about 4:48 p.m. ET, just minutes before the Antares was due to lift off from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport on Wallops Island, Va. Orbital said the 5 p.m. ET liftoff would be rescheduled for Friday at the earliest.

"We are still examining all of the data, but it appears that the issue is fairly straightforward," Frank Culbertson, Orbital?s executive vice president and mission director for the Antares test flight, said in a company statement. "With this being the first launch of the new system from a new launch facility we have taken prudent steps to ensure a safe and successful outcome. Today, our scrub procedures were exercised and worked as planned.? We are looking forward to a successful launch on Friday."

Imagery posted to the independent NASASpaceFlight.com website showed a tower on the launch pad twisting in a motion that could have dislodged the data cord from its connector.

Orbital is giving the Antares rocket its first in-flight test in preparation for trips to the International Space Station later this year. This time around, the rocket is carrying merely a dummy payload, along with some secondary satellites that are to be deployed in orbit. But if the practice run is successful, Orbital could start providing a second line of made-in-the-USA commercial vehicles for resupplying the space station.

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The Virginia-based company is following in the footsteps of California-based SpaceX, which began cargo runs to the space station last year.

Orbital and SpaceX have received hundreds of millions of dollars from NASA to develop their transports, as part of the space agency's strategy to replace the space shuttle fleet. The shuttles were retired in 2011 to make way for a new generation of spaceships capable of going beyond Earth orbit. NASA wants private companies to take over the role of getting cargo?? and eventually astronauts as well?? to low Earth orbit.

Orbital won NASA's contract for the Antares rocket and the Cygnus cargo capsule in 2008.

A simulated Cygnus payload is to be lofted into orbit during a 10-minute ascent, and is expected to remain in orbit for several weeks before plunging to its fiery doom in Earth's atmosphere. Four tiny satellites are to be deployed from the simulator, including three smartphone-equipped PhoneSats for NASA (Alexander, Graham, and Bell) and the commercial Dove-1 remote-sensing nanosatellite. The main point of the mission, however, is to check whether Antares is ready to send cargo to the space station.

"This is a big event for the Eastern Shore, for Wallops and for everybody in the surrounding area, but also, I think, for the country," Frank Culbertson, executive vice president and general manager of Orbital's Advanced Program Group, said during Tuesday's pre-launch briefing.

He cautioned journalists not to expect a perfect test flight. "That first word is 'test,' so if things don't go exactly as planned, we will learn what we need to learn and press on," he said.

If the test is successful, another Antares is due to send a real Cygnus capsule to the space station as early as this June. And if that demonstration flight succeeds, Orbital could proceed with a series of eight resupply flights to the station under the terms of a $1.9 billion contract with NASA. SpaceX is already two flights into its own 12-mission, $1.6 billion resupply contract.

Phil McAlister, NASA's director of commercial spaceflight development, said Orbital would play an important role in providing "assured cargo access" to the space station. The idea is that if SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule are grounded for technical reasons, Orbital's Antares and Cygnus would serve as a backup?? and vice versa. That wasn't the case during the space shuttle program, when NASA's only Plan B was to rely on other countries' spaceships.

"We are in such a better situation today, and [it's] about to be even better with the debut of this new capability," McAlister said.

NASA is following a similar approach for the development of U.S.-made spaceships for crew transport. Three companies?? SpaceX, the Boeing Co. and Sierra Nevada Corp.?? are splitting more than a billion dollars of NASA's money during the current phase of work. NASA expects commercial crew transports to start flying to the space station by 2017.?

Correction for 6:55 p.m. ET April 17: I've cleaned up a couple of errors, including the date when Orbital won NASA's nod in the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program (2008, not 2007) and the SpaceX contract amount under NASA's Commercial Resupply Services program ($1.6 billion, not $1.6 million).

More about the Antares rocket:

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Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's?Facebook page, following?@b0yle on Twitter?and adding the?Cosmic Log page?to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out?"The Case for Pluto,"?my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

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