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Source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323764804578314591857289004.html?mod=rss_about_china
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South African Olympic sprinter Oscar Pistorius appears at the Magistrate Court in Pretoria on Feb. 19. His bail hearing continues Wednesday.
By Tracy Connor, Staff Writer, NBC News
A South African judge will hear more arguments Wednesday before deciding whether Olympic sprinter Oscar Pistorius should be denied bail and sent to a prison where other inmates have complained about ghastly conditions.
A day after prosecutors and the defense presented clashing accounts of how and why Pistorius fatally shot girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp on Valentine's Day, the two sides will spar over where he should spend the months before a trial.
South African legal experts say that after hearing from witnesses, the magistrate will be asked to evaluate the strength of the prosecution's case and consider whether the double-amputee is a flight risk, a danger to anyone, or likely to intimidate witnesses or destroy evidence.
"Personally, my view is he should get bail because he's got a fixed permanent residence, has no previous convictions, and owns assets in the jurisdiction of the court. He's disabled and easily recognizable," said Steve Tuson, a law professor at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg.
But bail could be a tough sell since the judge provisionally entered a charge of premeditated murder after Tuesday's hearing ? where Pistorius claimed he fired into his bathroom in a panic over a possible prowler, while prosecutors alleged he calmly put on his artificial legs before he stalked Steenkamp to the bathroom to kill her.
Unless the magistrate, Desmond Nair, downgrades the charge after Wednesday's hearing, or the defense convinces him there are extraordinary reasons Pistorius should remain free, the trail-blazing runner is headed to lockup.
Since his arrest, Pistorius, 26, has been held at a local police station, but that's unusual and it's expected he would be transferred to Pretoria's central prison to await further proceedings, experts said.
"It's not too pleasant," Marius du Toit, a South African defense lawyer who has also been a prosecutor and magistrate, said of the central prison.
"I've represented people from overseas who were incarcerated in our prisons. One lost 20 kilos because the food and conditions are so bad. He said, 'I've been in prisons all over Europe and I've never seen anything like this.'"
Two weeks before Pistorius' arrest, six inmates from the Pretoria prison petitioned the High Court to improve conditions, painting a grim picture of daily life behind its walls.
Their complaints included up to three inmates in single-person cells, dirty mattresses with no bedding, sweltering heat and poor ventilation, no time outside, rampant drug dealing and violent threats from fellow prisoners,?according to the Pretoria News.
The court has not ruled on the application, which the government planned to oppose, the newspaper said.
Du Toit said that Pistorius' high profile and disability could be grounds for some kind of accommodation if he is sent to prison, but added that officials will be loathe to give him special treatment because the decision to hold him at the police station before the bail hearing was questioned.
If he does wind up behind bars, he could be there for months before a trial and verdict -- which is delivered by a judge since jury trial were done away with in 1969.
Prosecutors and the defense team will be given time to marshal evidence before a trial date is set in stone, Tuson said.
Before the constitutional changes that accompanied the end of the apartheid era in South Africa, prosecutors could keep most of their case under wraps until trial. Now, they have to share all their evidence, Tuson said.
While U.S. trials are often delayed by endless haggling over what evidence is admissible at trial, in South Africa those decisions are made by the judge during the trial.
Tuson said the timeline from charge to verdict normally depends on the complexity of the case, the number of witnesses and how crowded the court docket is. Because the country's judicial system is so clogged, run-of-the-mill cases can face "horrible delays," he said.
Pistorius, however, could be fast-tracked due to the high-profile nature of the case. Tuson predicted the whole thing will be over in six months.
"Because of the media coverage, the state will push for this cases to be held as quickly as possible," du Toit said.
A South African court officially charged superstar runner Oscar Pistorius with killing his unarmed girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp, alleging he shot her three times through a locked bathroom door. NBC's Michelle Kosinski reports.
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Looking to come across the right vacation gift for somebody who has everything? Then think about one particular of these gifts for charity like The Giving Keys, a jewelry for charity.
First, the negative news: Even wealthy men and women are feeling the pinch in this recession ? as well as the poor who are paying for it. Charitable donations are down greater than a third among the wealthiest Americans.
In 2009, almost all ? 98.2 pct ? of US residents having a net worth above $1 million gave to charity. However the volume of their providing dropped substantially from just two years earlier. After adjusting for inflation, average charitable providing by millionaires plummeted 34.9 percent, from $83,000 to $54,000.
?Charitable providing follows the overall economic climate,? says Una Osili, Ph.D., director of study for the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University, which conducted the 2010 Bank of America Merrill Lynch Study of High Net Worth Philanthropy. ?When financial situations improve, charitable giving improves too.?
But average Americans may very well be choosing up the slack. A brand new survey by Christian relief agency Planet Vision claims about half of Americans (51 percent) said they?d be far more likely to offer a charitable gift ? a gift that advantages a charity ? as a vacation present this year.
Gifts that advantage charities
Gifts linked to charities enable you to give a present although helping your (or your recipient?s) preferred worthy bring about. That could mean just generating a cash donation in someone else?s name, but nonprofits are finding inventive to get your money. Listed below are just several examples ?
The Planet Wildlife Fund sells Gift Adoption Cards, which symbolically adopt a polar bear, panda, or less cuddly animal like a chimpanzee. Your gift recipient also gets other goodies, like a plush toy version of that animal and digital versions for their computer?s screensaver and instant messenger icon.
If you want to acquire a tad much less symbolic and a little additional real, you can ?buy? a goat for $50 and an alpaca for $75 from international relief agency Oxfam America. You could even see your gift ?in action.?
The Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund?s Gift4Giving adds its own new twist: You don?t donate for somebody else, you set up a charitable account and they get to choose where the income goes.
If you do not want pals and households obtaining you garments you won?t wear and gadgets you don?t know how to work with, you?ll be able to tell them to donate within your name ? and let them choose from a host of causes. Just like registering to get a wedding, JustGive.org provides the Charity Registry.
What if you?d like to offer an actual gift but have the earnings go to charity as an alternative to a CEO?s bonus? The Charitable Gift Giving Weblog scours the Net seeking for genuine items that donate a minimum of a portion with the cost to an excellent result in. Products consist of a pink breast cancer awareness tie and wines from a winery that donates half its income to charity.
If you are purchasing for a cat or dog lover, shop at the Humane Society?s on the net store, where you can uncover toys and treats for the four-legged friends and pet-related clothing and jewelry for your two-legged close friends.
Quite a few charities have online shops that sell every little thing from calendars to coffee mugs to T-shirts, but some also supply their own exceptional items. For the handyman on your shopping list, home-builder Habitat for Humanity sells a heavy-duty multipurpose utility bag. Individuals for the Ethical Therapy of Animals (PETA) gives a gift box of vegan chocolates ? no dairy. And National Public Radio sells ? radios. Everything from shortwave sets to WiFi radios to field radios. Some are exclusive, which means you cannot find them anywhere else.
?This survey shows that, in the course of uncertain economic instances, Americans continue to prioritize assisting individuals in need,? says Devin Hermanson, who?s national director with the World Vision Gift Catalog, an additional cool thought. ?Americans are determined to reach out with charitable gifts.?
But remember Rule No. 1 with regards to nonprofit donations: Usually examine out a charity before you donate to make sure your cash is helping the bring about and not just going to line the pockets of shady organizations hiding behind a nonprofit banner. Sites like the Far better Organization Bureau, Charity Navigator, and GuideStar Charity Examine might help.
Source: http://blog.horoscopetimes.com/wordpress/?p=176
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Source: http://www.facebook.com/wcybnews5/posts/10151546124563825
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?Protection, in isolation, is a brittle strategy,? the Task Force concluded. ?We cannot protect every potential target against every conceivable attack; we will never eliminate all vulnerabilities.?
This paradigm shift has especially important implications for how the electric power grid. Simply put, in the context of the electric grid, resilience is not reliability.
Reliability refers to the grid?s ability to provide customers with electricity during normal ?blue sky? operations. By contrast, resilience refers to the power grid?s ability to either remain operational during disruptions or ?degrade gracefully when it must.? In other words, the electric grid?s resilience is a measure of how well it can absorb the impact of hurricanes, high winds and severe snow storms. By this standard, the electric grid is spectacularly un-resilient in many of parts of the United States.
Many of the mature enterprise energy management solutions available on the market were designed to promote reliability through protection and prevention.
For example,?Lockheed Martin?s Enterprise Energy Management called SEEView is tailored to the needs of electric grid operators. Per Lockheed?s SEEView brochure:
SEEview seamlessly integrates EMS, DMS, GIS, OMS, AMI, CIS and other systems to help utilities respond quickly to disruptive conditions such as rapidly rising wholesale market prices, the unexpected lack of renewable energy availability, potential emissions violations or electric vehicle recharging hot spots. The ability to monitor all key enterprise systems from a single browser allows utilities to continuously optimize their generation mix, carbon footprint, customer satisfaction and profitability while complying with a growing mix of emissions, security and renewable energy regulations.
The SEEView platform prevents disruptions to the electric power grid. In other words, it seems more focused on protection than resilience. ?In the context of enterprise energy management,?resilience solutions are tailored to the needs of the grid?s customers not the grid?s operators.
Blue Pillar, an?Indianapolis-based enterprise energy software start up, is a case in point.
Founded in 2006, Blue Pillar has pioneered a ?system of subsystems? software platform called the??Digital?Energy?Network,? which provides the grid?s customers rather than the grid?s operators with a clutch of command and control capabilities. ??The Digital Energy Network allows organizations to manage the full spectrum of distributed generation assets as a fleet, which enhances business continuity, reduces enterprise risk and transforms cost centers into profit centers.
When the grid is up, the Network turns ideal energy assets into revenue-generating assets by managing run-times to reduce peak demand and enabling cost-effective participation in various regulatory and competitive programs and markets ? e.g., demand response. ? ?When the grid is down, the Network?enhances customers? ability to ride through temporary power disruptions and prolonged blackouts.
Blue Pillar has deployed its network platform on 50 sites encompassing over 1,050 endpoints, representing over 150 megawatts of capacity in major demand response markets. According to Pike Research, Blue Pillar ?is focused first on [immediate ROI] mission-critical healthcare campus infrastructure to capture greater value from existing on-site generation by selling [demand response] services to grid operators and utilities.?
The Center for American Progress recently predicted that a constellation of emerging trends would converge around the concept of networked energy and, the process,?create a fundamentally new engineering model for managing energy. ?In?The Networked Energy Web, CAP authors,?Bracken Hendricks and Adam James, described these converging trends like so:
Today we stand at the cusp of the next major transformation?one that connects the ongoing technology innovations in telecommunications and information technology with the emergence of intelligent, efficient, and cleaner energy networks. Three core technologies are rapidly converging, unlocking new productivity gains in our energy system that come from modern information technology-enabled networks. First, distributed energy generation is enabling efficient, decentralized energy production close to the point of use by consumers, integrating energy generation more fully into our homes, offices, and factories. Second, this trend coincides with new potential for improved energy efficiency in buildings, which substitutes better use of information for the wasteful use of energy and dramatically reduces the need for electricity production. Finally, both of these changes are being enabled through the integration of smart grid technology in the power transmission and distribution grid, which moves not only electrons but also information effectively through our energy networks.
Like Blue Pillar, PowerSecure, a Wake Forest, NC-based veteran of the energy services industry, is?also jockeying for position in the networked energy space. ?PowerSecure?s Interactive Distributed Generation platform is custom-engineered to?monetize on-site power assets efficiently through proprietary operating algorithms that optimized run times ? think?peak shaving and demand response capacity products.
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Senator Marco Rubio of Florida is in the Middle East.
He's on a weeklong trip to Israel and Jordan.
The Republican lawmaker is expecting to meet with Israeli and Palestinian leaders.
He's planning to speak with the Israeli leaders about the peace process with Palestinians and Egypt.
Rubio will also meet with King Abdullah in Jordan.
This trip comes days after he delivered the Republican response to President Barack Obama's State of the Union address on Tuesday.
Rubio serves on the Senate Intelligence and Foreign Relations committees.
He said his wife would accompany him on the trip but not at taxpayer expense.
Source: http://www.wtvy.com/news/headlines/Florida-Senator-Marco-Rubio-to-Visit-Jordan-Israel-191633161.html
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Feb. 16, 2013 ? Rats can't usually see infrared light, but they have "touched" it in a Duke University lab.
The rats sensed the light as a sensation of touch after Duke neurobiologist Miguel Nicolelis and his team fitted the animals with an infrared detector wired to electrodes implanted in the part of the mammalian brain that processes information related to the sense of touch.
One of the main flaws of current human, brain-controlled prosthetics is that patients cannot sense the texture of what they touch, Nicolelis said. His goal is to give quadriplegics not only the ability to move their limbs again, but also to sense the texture of objects placed in their hands or experience the nuances of the terrain under their feet.
His lab studies how to connect brain cells with external electrodes for brain-machine interfaces and neural prosthetics in human patients and non-human primates, giving them the ability to control limbs, both real and virtual, using only their minds. He and his team have shown that monkeys, without moving any part of their real bodies, could use their electrical brain activity to guide the virtual hands of an avatar to touch virtual objects and recognize their simulated textures.
His latest study, published Feb. 12 in Nature Communications, shows that the rats' cortexes respond both to the simulated sense of touch created by the infrared light sensors and to whisker touch, as if the cortex is dividing itself evenly so that the brain cells process both types of information.
This plasticity of the brain counters the current "optogenetic" approach to brain stimulation, which suggests that a particular neuronal cell type should be stimulated to generate a desired neurological function. Instead, stimulating a broader range of cell types might help a cortical region adapt to new sensory sources, Nicolelis said.
His team recently documented the firing patterns of nearly 2,000 individual, interconnected neurons in monkeys. Recording the electrical activity from thousands of neurons at once is important for improving the accuracy and performance of neuroprosthetic devices, he said.
This brain-machine interface work is all part of an international effort called the Walk Again Project to build a whole-body exoskeleton that could help paralyzed people regain motor and sensory abilities using brain activity to control the apparatus. He and his collaborators expect to first use the exoskeleton in the opening ceremony of the FIFA Soccer World Cup in June 2014.
Nicolelis said infrared sensing might be built into such an exoskeleton so patients wearing the suit could have sensory information about where their limbs are and how objects feel when they touch them.
Nicolelis is a professor of neurobiology, biomedical engineering and psychology and neuroscience at Duke University. He is also founder of Duke's Center for Neuroengineering. He earned his M.D. from the University of Sao Paulo Medical School and his Ph.D. from the Institute of Biomedical Science at the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil.
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