Split (1)

train · 2.59M rows

text stringlengths 10 37.6k
The survey is sponsored by Dubai's biggest lender, Emirates NBD, and produced by IHS Market.
As you've probably learned in school or through various films and books regarding the "final frontier," space is a dangerous place. Between wandering "extinction level event"-sized asteroids, nearly invisible black holes, and stars exploding all over the place, it's a wonder anything is alive in the big old cosmic soup. And if those things weren't enough, here's something else to worry about: cosmic rays.
In an ideal situation, the sun would be protecting us from potentially harmful cosmic rays by hurtling through space so fast that it created a wake of sorts ahead of itself, physically pushing cosmic clouds, dust, and everything else aside as it went. Unfortunately, our Earth, according to research reported on by New Scientist, isn’t moving fast enough through the galaxy to do that.
It's interesting to note that really, cosmic rays are actually electrically charged particles. As the sun moves through the center of the galaxy, it passes through enormous, galactic clouds of gas and dust that are left in the wake of supernovae (it's plural for supernova, trust me; I didn't know either) that went the same way. Much of this dust and gas charged with electromagnetic radiation.
These irradiated particles are called cosmic rays. Most are common particles we see here on Earth like Helium nuclei or hydrogen protons, with a few wild and crazy things like positrons mixed in. Being immersed in the stuff of the Big Bang has given these common particles a new lease on life as cosmic rays, though.
The best way for the sun to protect us from harmful cosmic rays is to create a shockwave of force as it moves through these clouds of dangerous space gasses. Like a supersonic jet pushes air aside as it flies, the sun could hurtle through the universe at breakneck speed, throwing aside pesky rays like an arrow through water. Unfortunately, our sun is kind of lazy, only moving through its orbit at around 23 kilometers per second; I mean, I think I almost walk that fast, you know?
What this means is there's more of a chance for cosmic rays that are beaming into the galaxy to find their way into our atmosphere and into us. This is bad because that kind of radiation can damage DNA to a significant degree and may have been responsible for early mass extinctions, happening at seemingly regular intervals every 23 million years, according to another report by New Scientist.
Can we speed up the sun's orbit through the Milky Way? It seems unlikely. I'll tell you what; you think of a plan of action to protect us, and I'll work on this tin foil fort.
An Abilene woman was arrested after her husband told police she beat him with a metal broomstock.
A 36-year-old Abilene woman was arrested Wednesday for allegedly beating her husband with a metal broomstick, Abilene police reported.
Police were called to the 600 block of Lexington Avenue shortly after 7 p.m. Wednesday.
The 37-year-old victim told police he was hit three or four times, leaving welps on his arm. He was also cut when his wife allegedly threw a phone at him, according to police reports.
The woman was arrested on an assault family violence charge and taken to the Taylor County Jail.
An 18-year-old woman reported the man she had been dating for three years had been verbally and physically abusing her for the last four days. When she told him to pack his stuff and leave, he allegedly threw her into the bedroom and held the door shut. The suspect released the door when his brother arrived, and the woman was able to get her phone to try to call 9-1-1. The suspect took her phone, but his brother convinced him to give it back. She took the phone and their 8-month-old child and locked herself in the bedroom to call police. The 19-year-old boyfriend was gone by the time police arrived but later was arrested in the 1300 block of Bowie.
Two women were arrested for not scanning all items at a self-checkout stand. The women would scan one item and place several in the bag. They also had unpaid items in their purses.
A 29-year-old woman reported her ex-boyfriend caused more than $1,000 damage to her vehicle by breaking the rear window and denting the sides.
Nothing better sums up Yasser Arafat's predicament these days than the figure of his one-time military deputy, Abu Jihad, telling a visitor why his arms arsenal has dwindled to just one pistol -- a condition set by his Jordanian hosts. Then there is an Arafat political aide, Khalid Hassan, wondering plaintively why the world insists on being so ``humiliating'' in the terms it wants to dictate to the Palestine Liberation Organization.
But Mr. Arafat is counting on retaining enough strength to soften such terms.
A key test of his ability to do so began late yesterday, in the form of a summit meeting between Arafat and King Hussein of Jordan.
The talks, in which the King is said to want a newly explicit PLO commitment to negotiated peace with Israel, were not yet over at press time.
Even Arafat's aides, however, have not hidden their concern over the PLO's narrowed policy options.
Arafat's predicament is this: Militarily, his guerrilla organization has no chance of ``liberating Palestine'' from Israeli rule. Indeed, with the PLO's ouster from Lebanon by the Israelis' 1982 invasion, the organization cannot even seriously challenge Israel's security.
Yet the entry price to Mideast diplomacy is an explicit renunciation of ``armed struggle'' -- amounting to public PLO incineration of an aspect of its own charter.
Even then, observers say, Arafat can hope for only a small piece of the action, perhaps choosing Palestinian delegates who will almost surely have to leave PLO credentials at a peace-conference door.
And even if all goes well for the PLO on a path toward peace, Arafat is promised, at most, the watery satisfaction of seeing some kind of Palestinian Arab ``entity'' in ``confederation'' with Jordan.
``A weak PLO is malleable'' and thus ``a good partner'' for negotiating peace, remarked one Jordanian privately on the eve of the Hussein-Arafat talks.
Since the birth of Israel in 1948, the area's indigenous Palestinian Arabs had been subsumed in an angry ``pan-Arab'' nationalism.
Yasser Arafat burst on the Mideast scene after the 1967 Mideast war. With Arab states reeling from Israel's lightning victory in this war, Arafat and his fledgling Al-Fatah guerrillas galvinized a distinctly Palestinian nationialism.
Arafat's Arab headdress and permanent stubble of beard became symbol for a cause, a crusade, if the PLO charter is read literally, to ``liberate Palestine'' and supplant the state of Israel with something ``secular'' and presumably Arab.
At the least, as the years passed and full ``liberation'' came to seem a more dubious option to most Arabs, Arafat's PLO clamored for an ``independent Palestinian state'' on the West Bank of the Jordan river and the Gaza Strip, which Israel had captured from Jordan and Egypt in 1967.
First, Arafat and his cohorts staged raids into Israel from Jordan. But as their forays and Israel's counterstrikes undermined Hussein's rule, the King ousted Arafat and his men in a civil war in 1970.
The PLO recamped in Lebanon.
In 1982, Arafat's increasingly well armed Lebanon organization was shattered by Israeli invasion. His headquarters was forced far eastward to Tunisia in northern Africa. Under tight supervision and largely disarmed, his fighters were scattered among other Arab countries -- including Jordan.
This February King Hussein and Arafat capped months of effort at reconciliation by agreeing jointly to seek a ``confederated'' Palestinian-Jordanian state in the West Bank and Gaza.
But Arafat has resisted tendering some form of recognition of Israel's right to exist or explicit commitment to peaceful coexistence in order to invigorate the Jordan-PLO initiative and win United States pressure on Israel to reciprocate.
Worse, in the Jordanian view, the PLO's murky role in the murder of three Israeli civilians near Cyprus last month and the recent hijacking of the Achille Lauro has battered what progress was already made.
Khalid Hassan, Arafat's political aide, says, in effect, the PLO has no workable alternative to negotiation as a road to even truncated Palestinian statehood.
He sees recent PLO military operations as ineffective.
``King Hussein is our visa to the West'' -- to any kind of role in Mideast talks, Mr. Hassan acknowledges.
But he adds that the PLO, as a ``resistance'' body, cannot rush into the kind of explicit peace declaration being demanded, especially since only hedging assurances of self-determination are offered in return.
Abu Jihad, who now spends time not in bunkers but in strategy sessions, also reflects the changed status of Arafat's PLO. Mr. Jihad explains his own ``military'' role isn't what is used to be.
He, like Khalid Hassan, says it is neither the time or the place to make the kind of blanket peace-and-recognition statement that the rest of the world seems to want. After all, Jihad argues, the US seems to be drawing closer to Israeli efforts to exclude the PLO from talks.
Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi promised it would release its $320 Mi-Two smartphone in October, and it’s sticking to it, if just barely. The company has revealed that it will release a small batch of 50,000 on October 30th.
The release next Tuesday is likely to be a frenzy, as Xiaomi attracted over one million preorders for its Mi-One S device, a revamped version of its first-generation handset, in August. A 250,000-unit second wave of the hotly-anticipated device is schedule to arrive in China in the middle of November, but supply is likely to be constrained for several months.
The anticipation for the Mi-Two has been building for a couple months now, as the handset was first announced back in August. The phone features a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 quad-core processor, 2GB of RAM and a 4.3-inch 1280×720 display. It also includes an 8-megapixel rear camera and a 2-megapixel front camera.
Xiaomi released its Mi-One S Youth Edition handset for students earlier this week. It sold 350,000 units in just 4 minutes and 15 seconds. An earlier set of 300,000 Mi-One S phones sold out in four minutes.
The plane disappeared during a routine training flight.
Wednesday April 10: A day after the F-35 went missing, its wreckage has been found in the Pacific Ocean. But investigators still do not know what went wrong with the Joint Strike Fighter, and they have not located the pilot. Japanese Defense Minister Takeshi Iwaya said, "We have collected parts from the jet fighter's tail fin so we [believe] it crashed."
Tuesday, April 9: A Japanese F-35A Joint Strike Fighter is reported missing and presumed lost today after a routine training flight over the Pacific Ocean.
The new jet, part of a four-plane formation, took off from Misawa air base but then disappeared 85 miles off the Japanese mainland. A search and rescue operation is under way to recover the pilot.
The incident took place at approximately 7:30 local time, or about an hour after sunset. Along with three other F-35s, the plane took off and flew eastward over the Pacific. The missing fighter did not report any problems or anything unusual before contact was lost.
Japan’s Ministry of Defense reported the jet was part of the 302nd Tactical Fighter Squadron of the Japan Air Self Defense Force, Japan’s air force. The squadron transitioned to new F-35s just this year after decades of operating the Cold War-era F-4EJ Phantom fighter.
The Japan Coast Guard and search and rescue teams from the Air Self Defense Force immediately scrambled ships and aircraft to look for the pilot. Although aircraft could come from all over Japan for this purpose, satellite imagery of Misawa air base shows the facility has a variety of planes that could take part in the search, including Kawasaki T-4 jet trainers, E-2 Hawkeye early warning and control aircraft, and a Gulfstream IV VIP transport.
Flying P-8A’s callsign is wrong.
TIGER44 will take off Misawa soon.
A Japan-based aircraft-watching Twitter account, @kimaguregolf9, reported that a U.S. Navy P-8 Poseidon, call sign TIGER44, is joining the search. The P-8’s submarine detection capabilities, which are designed to pick out small objects on the surface of the ocean such as a submarine snorkel, would be useful for locating aircraft debris.
Within a few hours of the search, @kimaguregolf9 reported that aircraft from the JASDF Air Rescue Wing had detected an oil slick on the water.
it seemed that oil was floating on the sea.
According to Defense News, Japan’s 12 remaining F-35s are temporarily grounded. Japan ordered 42 F-35As in 2012, the version used by the U.S. Air Force. In December 2018, the country signaled its intent to order another 63 F-35As as well as 42 F-35Bs, the vertical takeoff and landing version used by the U.S. Marine Corps.
It’s long been clear that football has a brutal concussion problem. And if you’ve been following the breathless headlines about the new generation of high-tech helmets now on the market, you might think these expensive, tricked-out helmets are the solution.
Some research has concluded that a well-designed and properly fitted helmet can reduce the risk of concussion, but no helmet, unless one is invented that can be inserted directly into the skull, can prevent concussion. More padding and new materials might soften the blows, but nothing on the outside of a player’s head can stop a brain from sloshing around and slamming against the skull after a violent hit or bounce on hard turf.
Take the VICIS Zero1, the “multilayered, highly engineered” new helmet now being lauded as the safest in NFL tests. It has fancy polymers and a deformable shell that’s said to absorb shock like a car bumper. It sells for $950. But even a helmet with all that technology didn’t prevent Houston Texans linebacker Brian Cushing from getting a concussion in his opening game last season.
No helmet, unless one is invented that can be inserted directly into the skull, can prevent concussion.
There’s also the important question of how much you can trust helmet safety ratings. Two scientists who analyzed commonly used helmet safety ratings found they were basically meaningless, with no correlation between the ratings and how well they protected athletes. So the duo, Stefan Duma and Steven Rowson, started a safety testing lab at Virginia Tech independent of funding or influence from helmet manufacturers.
Their ratings make clear that getting the best protection a helmet can offer doesn’t have to break the bank. While the Zero1 and a $1,700 Riddell helmet built using 3-D scans of players heads definitely performed among the best in the tests by Duma and Rowson, so did seven other helmets that cost less than $300.
Even the best helmet can’t offer protection unless a player wears it, and one big problem with the new helmets has been convincing players to put them on. Many of the safer helmets are bigger, bulkier and heavier than old-school helmets, and many players have rejected them. L.A.’s Public Enemy No. 1, New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, is among numerous players wearing a helmet that provides so little concussion prevention that it's on a list of helmets banned for next season.
The false sense of security engendered by the new helmets is also a problem. If players and coaches buy into science jargon, heavy marketing and statistical games that suggest new helmets are better at cushioning heads and protecting brains, players could be more willing to continue to use those heads as weapons during tackles.
Yes, it would be wonderful if technology could solve football’s concussion crisis, and there should be more and better research into how to prevent concussion and chronic traumatic encephalopathy with technology. Scientists should continue to develop the best helmets possible and better insulation to soften turf fields. But in the case of protecting players, we don’t need more science. We need more common sense. The NFL, its coaches and medical teams must act more urgently to immediately remove any player suspected of having a concussion. Players, who worry so much about their contracts and spots on rosters, need to leave games when medically necessary to protect their short- and long-term health.
There have been some improvements in recent years. The NFL is adding more “unaffiliated neurotrauma consultants” who aren’t as beholden to teams to help make medical decisions on the field. This season, despite the outcry of many fans, the league prohibited the lowering of helmets to initiate contact in an effort to protect brains. But the league needs to take more action, including putting a stop to “Thursday Night Football” games, which have the highest injury rates because players have had less recovery time.
More than 100 million people will watch this year’s Super Bowl. If you’re going to be one of them, and you care about the players on the team you’re rooting for, then don’t fall for the fantasy notion that fancy new helmets are going to protect their brains. Instead, support changes to the game that will truly protect players.
Usha Lee McFarling, a former science writer at the Los Angeles Times, won a Pulitzer Prize for explanatory journalism in 2007.
Saturn Might Have A New Baby Moon Named Peggy : The Two-Way The Cassini spacecraft spotted a disturbance in the sixth planet's outermost main ring that is thought to be caused by a tiny moon.
It's not like Saturn needs another moon to look after — it's already got 53 officially, with nine more labeled as "provisional" (and those are just the ones we know about). But the tiny, icy object nicknamed "Peggy" could prove hard to resist.
NASA's Cassini spacecraft spotted evidence of Peggy, which is believed to measure just a half-mile across, as its slight gravity was disturbing the edge of Saturn's ring system. The find is reported in the journal Icarus.
"We have not seen anything like this before," astronomer Carl Murray, the lead author, said in a statement.
"We may be looking at the act of birth, where this object is leaving the rings and heading off to be a moon in its own right," says Murray, who named the moon — at least temporarily — after his mother-in-law. (It was her 80th birthday when he made the discovery).
"The fuzzy blob on the A ring's edge was imaged by Cassini's narrow-angle camera exactly one year ago, on April 15, 2013.
"Peggy, which is believed to have caused this mess, is too small for Cassini to see directly. But NASA scientists hope to get a closer look in late 2016, when Cassini is scheduled to fly near the A ring."
Murray says: "The theory holds that Saturn long ago had a much more massive ring system capable of giving birth to larger moons."
"As the moons formed near the edge, they depleted the rings and evolved, so the ones that formed earliest are the largest and the farthest out," he says.
"Eventually Peggy may coalesce into a slightly larger moon and move outward, establishing its own orbital path around Saturn. This is how many of Saturn's other moons are thought to have formed much further back in the planet's history. Now, its rings, having been depleted of moon-stuff, can only create tiny objects like Peggy."
"The object is not expected to grow any larger, and may even be falling apart. But the process of its formation and outward movement aids in our understanding of how Saturn's icy moons, including the cloud-wrapped Titan and ocean-holding Enceladus, may have formed in more massive rings long ago. It also provides insight into how Earth and other planets in our solar system may have formed and migrated away from our star, the sun."
Sophomore Jalill Carter pours it on to outkick a Mattituck runner at the finish line.
CHRISTINE GALLAGHER PHOTO The Shelter Island Running Club ocean-side after the East Hampton Bonac 5K for Wellness on May 20.
The Running Club at the Shelter Island School is celebrating its sixth year.
Basketball on Shelter Island is a family affair.
At the final home game against Mattituck for the girls JV basketball team on February 7, both coaches had relatives in the stands. The Mattituck team is coached by Kay Rolle, while Shelter Island is headed by Mike Mundy. Haley Willumsen Rolle and Meagan Mundy Licciardi, Shelter Island Class of 2012, both played basketball for the Blue and Gray.
ELEANOR P. LABROZZI PHOTO Amira Lawrence, returning to the lineup, has been a shot of adrenaline for the Shelter Island varsity volleyball team.
They say it’s never over until it’s over.
What time HW HWH S F EXP depart from HARIDWAR JN Railway Station?
HW HWH S F EXP (12370) departs from HARIDWAR JN Railway Station at 23:50.
How much time HW HWH S F EXP take to reach HOWRAH JN Railway Station?
HW HWH S F EXP reach on day 4 to HOWRAH JN Railway Station. The arrival time of HW HWH S F EXP at HOWRAH JN Railway Station is 03:20.
HW HWH S F EXP covers 1536 km to reach HOWRAH JN Railway Station at average speed of 56 km/hr. HW HWH S F EXP passes through 19 stations.
IT expert and educator discusses how to narrow down computer science skills for relevancy.
Way back in the 1970s, working as a computer programmer was quite prestigious, and if you wanted to get into computer programming, your potential employer would more often than not put you through a batch of aptitude tests in order to determine your suitability: even if you had a degree.
Nowadays, programming is more widespread and you don’t need a degree to be a programmer; it’s no longer mainly for scientists and engineers: students studying the humanities, students studying English as a foreign language, kids studying at schools, people building websites, and a whole host of other folks are learning to program. This non-technical article will give you novices [non-expert instructors] out there some basic guidance in choosing a programming language that is appropriate not only for your students’ needs, but for faculty and staff interested in online basics.
Purpose: What you need to do, will determine what programming language(s) you need to learn. It is of the utmost importance that your purpose is correctly served by the use of an appropriate programming language: choosing the wrong one may result in a program that is wholly unsuitable for your purposes–well as wasted hours of code writing.
The above picture is what adorable chihuahua Bertha used to look like.
When she was given to Muttville Senior Dog Resue in San Francisco after her owner passed away she tipped the scales at 13lb – almost three times the recommended weight for a dog like her.

Subsets and Splits

No community queries yet

The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.