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Source: http://careers.bpwusa.org/jobs/4862770/business-manager
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Wednesday, August 1, 2012
BPW Career Center: Real Estate/Property Management jobs, Site ...
Governor Cuomo signs body piercing bill | GeneseeNow.com
By Robin Humphrey on Jul 31, 2012 with Comments 0
It?s now illegal in New York State for minors to get a body part pierced without permission from a parent or guardian.
Governor Andrew Cuomo signed the law requiring written parental consent for those under 18.
Supporters said 20 percent of body piercings become infected resulting in risk of hepatitis.
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Filed Under: News ? State News
Source: http://geneseenow.com/2012/07/governor-cuomo-signs-body-piercing-bill/
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Monday, June 18, 2012
U.N. observers in Syria suspend patrols
BEIRUT (AP) ? U.N. observers suspended their patrols in Syria on Saturday due to a recent spike in violence, the strongest sign yet that an international peace plan was unraveling despite months of diplomatic efforts to prevent the country from plunging into civil war.
The U.N. observers have been the only working part of a peace plan brokered by international envoy Kofi Annan, which the international community sees as its only hope to stop the bloodshed.
The plan called for the foreign monitors to check compliance with a cease-fire that was supposed to go into effect on April 12, but they have become the most independent witnesses to the carnage on both sides as government and rebel forces have largely ignored the truce.
Maj. Gen. Robert Mood, the U.N. mission chief, said intensifying clashes over the past 10 days were "posing significant risks" to the 300 unarmed observers spread out across the country, and impeding their ability to carry out their mandate.
The observers will not leave the country but will remain in place and cease patrols, Mood said in a taped statement, adding the suspension would be reviewed on a daily basis. Teams have been stationed in some of Syria's most dangerous cities, including Homs and Hama.
"The lack of willingness by the parties to seek a peaceful transition, and the push towards advancing military positions is increasing the losses on both sides," Mood said.
The decision came after weeks of escalating attacks, including reports of several mass killings that have left dozens dead.
The U.S. reiterated its call for the Assad regime to comply with the plan, "including the full implementation of a cease-fire."
Underscoring the dangers, activists reported at least 50 people killed in clashes and shelling in several Syrian cities.
The peace plan's near-collapse has increased pressure on the international community, including President Bashar Assad's staunch allies Russia and China, to find another solution. But there has been little appetite for the type of military intervention that helped oust Libya's Moammar Gadhafi, and several rounds of sanctions have failed to stop the bloodshed.
Najib Ghadbian of the main Syrian opposition group, the Syrian National Council, said the concerns expressed by the U.N. mission could pressure Russia to allow more censure of Assad's regime.
"They are really under pressure to say 'OK, what's next?'" he said. Are they going to continue to sabotage other ideas to protect civilians in Syria?"
Despite fears that violence could significantly worsen without U.N. monitors on the ground, activist Rami Abdul-Rahman of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said their numbers were too small, and the conflict too large, for them to have any use.
"A lot of crimes happened in Syria, and they couldn't do anything," he said. "The situation can't get worse than this: are we afraid that it's a civil war? Well it is a civil war."
The Syrian government, meanwhile, said it had informed Mood it understood the U.N. observers' decision and blamed rebels for the escalation in fighting.
"Armed terrorist groups have conducted, since the signing of the Annan plan, an increase in criminal operations that have targeted, many times, the observers, and threatened their lives," the Syrian foreign ministry said in a statement. Damascus frequently refers to rebels as "terrorists" instead of Syrians seeking reforms.
The opposition, for its part, has blamed the regime for the attacks near the observers.
Last week, a U.N. convoy was blocked and attacked with stones, metal rods and gunfire by an angry crowd as it was trying to head to the town of Haffa in the coastal Latakia region, where troops had been battling rebels for a week.
The observers only managed to enter once government troops had seized the area back from the rebels.
On May 15, a roadside bomb damaged the observers' vehicles shortly after they met with Syrian rebels in the northern town of Khan Sheikoun. A week earlier, a roadside bomb struck a Syrian military truck in the south of the country just seconds after Mood drove by in a convoy.
National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor said the Obama administration was now consulting with allies about "next steps toward a Syrian-led political transition" in compliance with the U.N. resolutions setting up the peace plan. He didn't give further details.
Opposition groups say more than 14,000 civilians and rebels have been killed since the uprising began in March 2011. The initially peaceful protests seeking Assad's ouster have morphed into an armed insurgency as his opponents take up weapons.
Abdul-Rahman, of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, has said more than 3,400 Syrian soldiers and pro-government militiamen have been killed.
The Syrian government has been waging a fierce offensive through towns and villages nationwide for the past week, trying to pound out rebels by shelling urban areas with tanks and attack helicopters. Rebels also have attacked Syrian forces, mostly trying to burn out their tanks.
The Observatory said more than 50 people were killed in clashes and shelling in towns close to Damascus, in the central provinces of Homs and Hama, in the seaside province of Latakia, the northern provinces of Idlib and Deir al-Zour and the southern province of Daraa.
Those included 12 people, including a man, his wife and child, who died during overnight government shelling in the Damascus suburb of Douma and seven killed by a mortar shell that ripped apart a bakery in Homs, according to Abdul-Rahman.
The Observatory said that the bodies of 11 people including one woman had been discovered in the capital's suburb of Saqba. It said some of them were "butchered." A video posted online showed a group of lifeless men crammed into a room with stab wounds, blood still spilling from one of them. The LCC reported 13 victims and provided the names of nine, saying some were "slaughtered with knives."
Rebels appeared to kill an accused regime collaborator in an amateur video that was uploaded Saturday, repeatedly shooting his lifeless body.
There was no way of verifying government or activist claims because Syria does not allow reporters work independently. With U.N. observers now grounded, not even partial, independent confirmation of the deaths was available.
Syria's state news agency also said their forces killed a top al-Qaeda fighter on Saturday. They accused Walid Ahmed al-Ayish of organizing suicide car bombings in Damascus over the past few months.
___
Associated Press writer Albert Aji in Damascus contributed to this report.
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Sunday, June 17, 2012
Ancient warming greened Antarctica, study finds
ScienceDaily (June 17, 2012) ? A new university-led study with NASA participation finds ancient Antarctica was much warmer and wetter than previously suspected. The climate was suitable to support substantial vegetation -- including stunted trees -- along the edges of the frozen continent.
The team of scientists involved in the study, published online June 17 in Nature Geoscience, was led by Sarah J. Feakins of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, and included researchers from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.
By examining plant leaf wax remnants in sediment core samples taken from beneath the Ross Ice Shelf, the research team found summer temperatures along the Antarctic coast 15 to 20 million years ago were 20 degrees Fahrenheit (11 degrees Celsius) warmer than today, with temperatures reaching as high as 45 degrees Fahrenheit (7 degrees Celsius). Precipitation levels also were found to be several times higher than today.
"The ultimate goal of the study was to better understand what the future of climate change may look like," said Feakins, an assistant professor of Earth sciences at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. "Just as history has a lot to teach us about the future, so does past climate. This record shows us how much warmer and wetter it can get around the Antarctic ice sheet as the climate system heats up. This is some of the first evidence of just how much warmer it was."
Scientists began to suspect that high-latitude temperatures during the middle Miocene epoch were warmer than previously believed when co-author Sophie Warny, assistant professor at LSU, discovered large quantities of pollen and algae in sediment cores taken around Antarctica. Fossils of plant life in Antarctica are difficult to come by because the movement of the massive ice sheets covering the landmass grinds and scrapes away the evidence.
"Marine sediment cores are ideal to look for clues of past vegetation, as the fossils deposited are protected from ice sheet advances, but these are technically very difficult to acquire in the Antarctic and require international collaboration," said Warny.
Tipped off by the tiny pollen samples, Feakins opted to look at the remnants of leaf wax taken from sediment cores for clues. Leaf wax acts as a record of climate change by documenting the hydrogen isotope ratios of the water the plant took up while it was alive.
"Ice cores can only go back about one million years," Feakins said. "Sediment cores allow us to go into 'deep time.'"
Based upon a model originally developed to analyze hydrogen isotope ratios in atmospheric water vapor data from NASA's Aura spacecraft, co-author and JPL scientist Jung-Eun Lee created experiments to find out just how much warmer and wetter climate may have been.
"When the planet heats up, the biggest changes are seen toward the poles," Lee said. "The southward movement of rain bands associated with a warmer climate in the high-latitude southern hemisphere made the margins of Antarctica less like a polar desert, and more like present-day Iceland."
The peak of this Antarctic greening occurred during the middle Miocene period, between 16.4 and 15.7 million years ago. This was well after the age of the dinosaurs, which became extinct 64 million years ago. During the Miocene epoch, mostly modern-looking animals roamed Earth, such as three-toed horses, deer, camel and various species of apes. Modern humans did not appear until 200,000 years ago.
Warm conditions during the middle Miocene are thought to be associated with carbon dioxide levels of around 400 to 600 parts per million (ppm). In 2012, carbon dioxide levels have climbed to 393 ppm, the highest they've been in the past several million years. At the current rate of increase, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are on track to reach middle Miocene levels by the end of this century.
High carbon dioxide levels during the middle Miocene epoch have been documented in other studies through multiple lines of evidence, including the number of microscopic pores on the surface of plant leaves and geochemical evidence from soils and marine organisms. While none of these 'proxies' is as reliable as the bubbles of gas trapped in ice cores, they are the best evidence available this far back in time. While scientists do not yet know precisely why carbon dioxide was at these levels during the middle Miocene, high carbon dioxide, together with the global warmth documented from many parts of the world and now also from the Antarctic region, appear to coincide during this period in Earth's history.
This research was funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation with additional support from NASA. The California Institute of Technology in Pasadena manages JPL for NASA.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
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Unmanned Air Force space plane lands in Calif.
FILE - This undated file image provided by the U.S. Air Force shows the X-37B spacecraft. The unmanned Air Force space plane steered itself to a landing early Saturday, June 16, 2012, at a California military base, capping a 15-month clandestine mission. (AP Photo/U.S. Air Force, File)
FILE - This undated file image provided by the U.S. Air Force shows the X-37B spacecraft. The unmanned Air Force space plane steered itself to a landing early Saturday, June 16, 2012, at a California military base, capping a 15-month clandestine mission. (AP Photo/U.S. Air Force, File)
FILE - This Feb. 8, 2011 file image provided by the U.S. Air Force shows the X-37B during encapsulation within the United Launch Alliance Atlas V 5-meter fairing in Titusville, Fla. The unmanned Air Force space plane steered itself to a landing early Saturday, June 16, 2012, at a California military base, capping a 15-month clandestine mission. (AP Photo/US Air Force, File)
LOS ANGELES (AP) ? An unmanned Air Force space plane steered itself to a landing early Saturday at a California military base, capping a 15-month clandestine mission.
The spacecraft, which was launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida in March 2011, conducted in-orbit experiments during the mission, officials said. It was the second such autonomous landing at the Vandenberg Air Force Base, 130 miles northwest of Los Angeles. In 2010, an identical unmanned spacecraft returned to Earth after seven months and 91 million miles in orbit.
The latest homecoming was set in motion when the stubby-winged robotic X-37B fired its engine to slip out of orbit, then pierced through the atmosphere and glided down the runway like an airplane.
"With the retirement of the Space Shuttle fleet, the X-37B OTV program brings a singular capability to space technology development," said Lt. Col. Tom McIntyre, the X-37B's program manager. "The return capability allows the Air Force to test new technologies without the same risk commitment faced by other programs. We're proud of the entire team's successful efforts to bring this mission to an outstanding conclusion."
With the second X-37B on the ground, the Air Force planned to launch the first one again in the fall. An exact date has not been set.
The twin X-37B vehicles are part of a military program testing robotically controlled reusable spacecraft technologies. Though the Air Force has emphasized the goal is to test the space plane itself, there's a classified payload on board ? a detail that has led to much speculation about the mission's ultimate purpose.
Some amateur trackers think the craft carried an experimental spy satellite sensor judging by its low orbit and inclination, suggesting reconnaissance or intelligence gathering rather than communications.
Harvard astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell, who runs Jonathan's Space Report, which tracks the world's space launches and satellites, said it's possible it was testing some form of new imaging.
The latest X-37B was boosted into orbit atop an Atlas 5 rocket. It was designed to stay aloft for nine months, but the Air Force wanted to test its endurance. After determining the space plane was performing well, the military decided in December to extend the mission.
Little has been said publicly about the second X-37B flight and operations. At a budget hearing before the Senate Armed Services subcommittee in March, William Shelton, head of the Air Force Space Command, made a passing mention.
That the second X-37B has stayed longer in space than the first shows "the flexibility of this unique system," he told lawmakers.
Defense analysts are divided over its usefulness.
Joan Johnson-Freese, professor of national security affairs at the Naval War College, said such a craft could give the U.S. "eyes" over conflict regions faster than a satellite.
"Having a vehicle with a broad range of capabilities that can get into space quickly is a very good thing," she said.
Yousaf Butt, a nuclear physicist and scientific consultant for the Federation of American Scientists, thinks the capabilities of the X-37B could be done more cheaply with a disposable spacecraft.
"I believe one of the reasons that the mission is still around is institutional inertia," he said.
The arc of the X-37 program spans back to 1999 and has changed hands several times. Originally a NASA project, the space agency in 2004 transferred it to the Pentagon's research and development arm, DARPA, and then to the secretive Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been poured into development, but the current total spent remains a secret.
Built by Boeing Government Space Systems, a unit of the company's satellite manufacturing area, the 11,000-pound space plane stands 9 1/2 feet tall and is just over 29 feet long, with a wingspan of less than 15 feet. It possesses two angled tail fins rather than a single vertical stabilizer. Once in orbit, it has solar panels that unfurl to charge batteries for electrical power.
McDowell of the Jonathan's Space Report sees a downside. He noted it'll be tough for the Air Force to send up such planes on short notice if it has to rely on the Atlas V rocket, which requires lengthy preparations.
"The requirement to go on Atlas V is a problem; they may need to look at a new launch vehicle that would be ready to go more quickly," he said.
___
Online:
X-37B fact sheet: http://www.af.mil/information/factsheets/factsheet.asp?fsID=16639
Vandenberg AFB: http://www.vandenberg.af.mil
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Family Law - FindLaw Answers
stotlesdad?said...
Does my son have the right to decide his custodial parent now that he is older?
NO, he's the subject of the custody/visitation/child support matter, not a party to it.? At 15, he can express a preference to the court but the court is not bound by what he wants and doesn't have to give it any consideration.? Likewise, he cannot decide whether or not he visits according to the court ordered visitation schedule.? It's not up to him.? If it's your day, he goes whether he likes it not and mom must turn him over to you whether she likes it or not.hallmark grammy winners obama budget woolly mammoth belize resorts nikki minaj grammy performance shel silverstein
