US heat wave: Three-digit temperatures recorded across Midwest

US heat wave: Record-breaking temperatures have closed schools and sent people seeking refuge ... at the zoo

By Kevin Murphy,?Reuters / June 29, 2012

As temperatures soar with heat indexes in the 100 degree plus range in the New Orleans Metro area, children and adults find the will to chill by taking in the Cool Zoo water park area at the Audubon Zoo in New Orleans, Wednesday, June 27, 2012.

Eliot Kamenitz,The Times-Picayune/AP

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Temperatures soared?across?the Midwest on Thursday, reaching a blistering 108 degrees Fahrenheit (42 Celsius) in?St. Louis, and possibly causing two deaths in?KansasCity,?Missouri, as a massive?heat?wave pressed eastward from the Rockies.

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In?Kansas?City, where the temperature rose to 105 (40 C), the city health department said two deaths were being investigated to determine if they were?heat-related.

A massive high-pressure system over the Midwest caused triple-digit temperatures in?Chicago?and several other cities. The oppressive?heat?is expected to linger for several days.

The searing?heat?presented a challenge for the?St. Louis?Zoo, which provided misting machines, large fans and cooling stations for visitors and took steps to cool down the animals.

"When it gets hot like this, we like to take a bone and freeze it into a big block of ice then throw it into a pool where the big cats can play with it," said?Jack Grisham, who heads the zoo's animal collection. "We'll freeze bananas and oranges and throw them to the primates as well."

Hill City,?Kansas, which has been the hottest spot in the nation for five days, reached 108 (42 C) Thursday afternoon, the?National Weather Service?said. The thermometer hit 115 (46 C) on Wednesday in the?northwest Kansas?farm community.

"It feels like you have a big old furnace blowing in your face," said?Rayson Brachtenbach, a technician at Elliott Plumbing, Heating, Air Conditioning and Electric in Hill City.

Brachtenbach said the hot weather kept the company busy repairing air conditioning systems.

A city in the Midwest having the nation's high temperature for five days in a row is very unusual, said?Chris Foltz, a weather service meteorologist in?Goodland,?Kansas.

"It's what you expect in the desert of?Nevada?or?California," Foltz said.

Sustained heat

Drought conditions have contributed to the early and sustained?heat?this summer, said?Alex Sosnowski, expert senior meteorologist at AccuWeather.com.

"A lot of these places haven't had a lot of rain, and dry soil contributes to?heat," Sosnowski said, when asked why the high temperatures are being seen so early in the summer. "The sun's energy doesn't go into evaporating moisture, so it heats the ground and that heats the air. It takes a really big rainfall event to bust a drought like this."

Though scattered thunderstorms are expected to dial down the?heat?in the Midwest on Friday, Sosnowski does not see anything that would make much of an impact in dry areas.

The weather conditions have contributed to?Colorado?wildfires that have destroyed hundreds of homes. The?heat?and drought conditions also are damaging crops. U.S. corn prices have soared 17 percent this month as the hot dry weather persists in the main growing area of the Midwest.

Farther to the east, it was 102 (39 C)in?Cincinnati?and 103 (39 C) in?Nashville,?Tennessee.

"It's when you stop sweating and you get goose bumps that you worry," said?Sean Lachendro, one of a trio installing fiber-optic line for?T-Mobile?along a south?Nashville?roadside.

In?Chicago, the high temperature reached 100 degrees (38 C) for the first time in seven years. Summer school was closed Thursday for 10?Chicago?public schools without air conditioning.

In?Indiana, burn bans are in effect in 74 of 92 counties, and 45 counties have restrictions on shooting off fireworks.

With temperatures soaring, officials from?Kansas?to the?Carolinas?asked residents to take steps to stay cool and check on friends and neighbors. In Birmingham,?Alabama, police were checking on the sick and elderly.

"We want to ensure our citizens remain safe during the excessive?heat?outbreak,"?Birmingham PoliceChief A.C. Roper said. (Reporting by Mary Wisniewski, Kevin Murphy, Bruce Olson, Tim Ghianni, Christine Stebbins, Keith Coffman, and Susan Guyett; Editing by David Bailey and Stacey Joyce)

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/science/~3/nEhsxEzmCk8/US-heat-wave-Three-digit-temperatures-recorded-across-Midwest

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Video Conferencing ? A Tech Gift To Global Businesses - Genecast ...

Business leaders are often under intense pressure to be in several places at the same time. They rely on advanced communications technology to maintain contact and control across their organization as they travel. While smart phones and tablets have enhanced the mobile workspace, it is video conferencing that will provide the biggest leap in productivity and biggest reduction in travel. Video can dramatically improve communications accuracy and understanding, and therefore decrease the need to be there in person.

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Business-grade video conferencing has made meaningful, face-to-face conversation over vast distances a simple communications transaction, like dialing an internal extension. With high quality audio and HD video every comment, every facial expression is captured to deliver more accurate communication. Importantly, modern video endpoints are easy to use, and with striking design they sit well in the office.? ?

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Whereas video was once the preserve of large corporations, today any business can afford to deploy video throughout all levels of the organization. Video endpoints range from mobile to desktop to office and boardroom units. Video enabled IP phones can be provided to employees at the same cost as a regular phone. Higher level units with large screens and touch-control pads sit easily on manager?s desks, and premium units with multiple screens are located in high-end collaboration rooms. Pervasive video throughout an organization will improve teamwork, collaboration and accelerate decision-making.

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Core video infrastructure can be based on an organization?s own premises, or it be hosted in the cloud and video provided as a subscription based service. There are advantages to both approaches, it all depends on what is right for your organization.

?

Today video conferencing is about easy to use endpoints that are seamlessly part of an employee?s workspace. They are easy to use, integrated with the unified communications network, and deliver a high quality video experience every time. It means you can be in a virtual meeting in Sydney, then San Francisco, all while you?re sitting in your office in Melbourne. ?

?

?

About the Author:

The author is Linked with http://comscentre.com/. Comscentre provide Voice, Data, Unified Communications, hosted videoand Video Call Managed Services. They have invested in building their own national MPLS data network; they are a Cisco Master Managed Services Supplier worldwide, and an accredited NBN Retail Service Provider. They provide equipment finance on a ROI model which means there is little or no upfront outlay on customers' communications and data systems.

Source: http://genecast.com/Advice/video-conferencing-a-tech-gift-to-global-businesses-58581.html

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India's Current Account Deficit At Record High; IIP Statement Shows Increase In Net Liabilities To $248B

India's current account deficit deteriorated to a record high of 4.5 percent of the GDP or $21.7 billion - a level seen for the first time in 20 years - for the quarter ending March 2012, data released by the Reserve Bank of India show. ?

Posing new difficulties for the struggling economy and the government, the current account deficit-difference between imports and exports reached 4.5 percent of the GDP and more than tripled when compared to the 1.3 percent for the same period in the previous year.

The current deficit is worse than that recorded in 1991, at 3 percent, during one of its worst Balance of Payments (BoP) crisis in the recent history. ?

The decline in exports due to low global demand, as an offshoot of the euro zone crisis along with high imports, has led to the current crisis. The high imports of crude and gold weighed heavily in the current account deficit, accounting for more than 45 percent of the total imports during the year.

In the year 2011-2012, the growth in exports slumped to 23.6 percent from the 37.5 percent recorded last year while imports registered a growth rate of 31.1 percent from that of 26.7 percent in the previous year.

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"The stress witnessed in India's Balance of Payments (BoP) in the third quarter continued during the fourth quarter of 2011-12 as well due to large increase in imports," said the RBI in a statement.

Meanwhile, India's external debt at the end of March 2012 was at US$345.8 billion (20.0 percent of GDP), recording an increase of US$39.9 billion or 13.0 percent over that at the end of March 2011, on account of a significant increase in commercial borrowings, short-term trade credits and rupee-denominated non-resident Indian deposits, the RBI said.

The country's long-term debt at US$ 267.6 billion and short-term debt at US$ 78.2 billion accounted for 77.4 percent and 22.6 percent, respectively, of the total external debt as of end-March 2012. The Banking regulator said that India's foreign exchange reserves provided a cover of 85.1 percent to the external debt stock at the end of March 2012 as compared with 99.6 percent cover as at the end of March 2011.

?International Investment Position (IIP) for March 2012

India's net IIP, the difference between an economy's external financial assets and liabilities, showed an increase in the net liabilities to US$244.8 billion at the end of March 2012 from US$204.8 billion at?the end of December 2011.

"This rise in net liabilities by US $ 40.0 billion was mainly on account of US $ 45.5 billion increase in liabilities, partially offset by an increase in assets of US $ 5.5 billion," said the RBI.

The data released from the RBI said that the "international financial liabilities widened by US$ 45.5 billion over the previous quarter to US$ 682.0 billion as at end-March 2012 while direct and portfolio investments in India increased by US$ 15.7 billion and US$ 19.2 billion, respectively."

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Source: http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/358140/20120630/india-s-current-account-deficit-record-high.htm

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Rdio goes minimalist, tries another redesign on for size

Finally get settled into the last Rdio redesign from just a few months ago? Well, we're afraid you've got a bit more adjusting to do. The streaming music service has now rolled out another sweeping visual overhaul of its website and desktop apps -- one that ditches the former iTunes-like appearance for a far more minimalist look, although all of the key elements remain in the same places as before. Naturally, that brings with it yet another software update for the desktop apps, although there's no word on any changes for its mobile apps just yet.

Rdio goes minimalist, tries another redesign on for size originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 29 Jun 2012 16:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/hfeu4tzRJVM/

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Colorful light at the end of the tunnel for radiation detection

ScienceDaily (June 29, 2012) ? A team of nanomaterials researchers at Sandia National Laboratories has developed a new technique for radiation detection that could make radiation detection in cargo and baggage more effective and less costly for homeland security inspectors.

Known as spectral shape discrimination (SSD), the method takes advantage of a new class of nanoporous materials known as metal-organic frameworks (MOFs). Researchers discovered that adding a doping agent to an MOF leads to the emission of red and blue light when the MOF interacts with high-energy particles emanated from radiological or nuclear material, enabling more effective detection of neutrons. Neutron detection is currently a costly and technically challenging endeavor due to the difficulty in distinguishing neutrons from ubiquitous background gamma rays.

Initial work on the use of MOFs for radiation detection was internally funded by Sandia's Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) program, but subsequent funding for the project has come from the National Nuclear Security Administration's (NNSA) Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation research office.

"Improving our radiation detection capabilities is crucial to advancing NNSA's nonproliferation mission," said Anne Harrington, NNSA's deputy administrator for Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation. "Preventing the illicit movement of radiological and nuclear materials around the globe supports the president's nuclear security objectives and helps to mitigate the threat of a nuclear terror attack."

The new technology works with plastic scintillators, materials that fluoresce when struck by charged particles or high-energy photons, making it suitable for commercialization by companies who produce plastic and other organic scintillators used in radiation detection devices. Though work remains before it can move into the marketplace, Sandia is currently seeking commercial partners to license the technology.

(See a video clip at www.youtube.com/SandiaLabs that shows Sandia researchers demonstrating and explaining their work.)

Current radiation detection methods are limited in terms of speed and sensitivity, crucial elements for dynamic scenarios, such as border crossings, cargo screenings and nuclear treaty verification. This new technology monitors the color of light emissions, which have the potential to make the screening process easier and more reliable.

"We are approaching the problem from a materials-chemistry perspective," said Sandia materials scientist Mark Allendorf. "Fundamentally, it is easier to monitor the color of light emissions rather than the rate at which that light is emitted. That's the crux of this new approach." Current radiation detection methods use time to discriminate between neutrons and gamma rays, requiring complex and costly electronics.

MOFs and dopants lead to more light

Allendorf and his team have been working with MOFs for more than five years. Early on, they discovered a fluorescent, porous MOF with superb scintillation properties, an important breakthrough and the first new class of scintillators found in decades. The MOF's porosity is a key feature because it allows researchers to add other materials to fine-tune the scintillation.

The MOF's nanoporosity triggered a new idea when team member Patrick Doty read about the use of dopants to increase the efficiency of organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs). These dopants, usually compounds containing heavy metals such as iridium, dramatically increase OLED brightness by "scavenging" the excited-state energy in the device that was not converted to light. This energy represents as much as 75 percent of the possible light output.

Combining MOFs with OLED dopants led to a second breakthrough. By filling MOF pores with dopants, the team created a material that not only produces more light, but light of another color. Doty, a materials scientist working in Sandia's radiation/nuclear detection materials and analysis department, hypothesized that the discovery could be applied to radiation detection.

The trick, Doty said, is to add just the right amount of dopant so that both the scavenged light and fluorescence from the excited MOF itself are emitted. Then the ratio of the intensities at the two wavelengths is a function of the type of high-energy particle interacting with the material. "That's the critical thing," Doty said. "SSD allows one particle type to be distinguished from another on the basis of the color of the emitted light."

Because the ratio of neutrons to gamma rays is so low -- on the order of one neutron to 105 gamma rays -- the threshold at which current detectors can see neutrons is fairly high. Sandia calculations suggest that the threshold for detecting neutrons produced by fissionable material could be lowered substantially using SSD, perhaps improving the "figure of merit" by a factor of 10 compared to the current standards. "In principle, we could quadruple the sensitivity of the gold standard," said Allendorf.

SSD also addresses another radiation detection problem -- active interrogation. Using an active source to create a signal from special nuclear material is an effective means for detection, say Sandia researchers. But current detectors are often overwhelmed by the onslaught of gamma rays. The new materials developed at Sandia can be tuned for improved timing performance at high rates, and the new technology also could be used in radiation detectors for treaty verification.

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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/9th6Ilz75NM/120629115657.htm

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