In this Saturday, Jan. 28, 2012 photo, a Pakistani chef prepares a traditional dish at Lahore's food park in Pakistan. Archenemies Pakistan and India have competed in a dangerous nuclear arm race, are going head-to-head for the first time in a pair of reality TV shows that pit chefs and musicians from the two countries against each other. (AP Photo/K.M.Chaudary)
In this Saturday, Jan. 28, 2012 photo, a Pakistani chef prepares a traditional dish at Lahore's food park in Pakistan. Archenemies Pakistan and India have competed in a dangerous nuclear arm race, are going head-to-head for the first time in a pair of reality TV shows that pit chefs and musicians from the two countries against each other. (AP Photo/K.M.Chaudary)
In this Saturday, Jan. 28, 2012 photo, Pakistani families enjoy traditional sub-continent dishes at Lahore's food park in Pakistan. Archenemies Pakistan and India have competed in a dangerous nuclear arm race, are going head-to-head for the first time in a pair of reality TV shows that pit chefs and musicians from the two countries against each other. (AP Photo/K.M.Chaudary)
In this Saturday, Jan. 28, 2012 photo, people enjoy traditional sub-continent dishes at Lahore's food park in Pakistan. Archenemies Pakistan and India have competed in a dangerous nuclear arm race, are going head-to-head for the first time in a pair of reality TV shows that pit chefs and musicians from the two countries against each other. (AP Photo/K.M.Chaudary)
ISLAMABAD (AP) ? For decades, archenemies Pakistan and India have engaged in a dangerous nuclear arms race. Now they're also competing in a more cheerful forum. The outcome will be mouthwatering curries and soothing Sufi ballads, not violent conflict.
The fractious neighbors are going head-to-head in a pair of reality TV shows that pit chefs and musicians against each other. Producers hope the contests will help bridge the gulf between two nations that were born from the same womb and have been at each other's throats ever since.
But so far it hasn't completely worked out that way. The top Pakistani chef on the cooking show, which is called Foodistan, quit the contest early. He accused the judges of bias toward India and is threatening to sue. The producers denied the allegations.
Pakistan and India were founded in 1947 following the breakup of the British empire. They have fought three major wars, two of them over the disputed territory of Kashmir.
The TV shows do not try to hide or brush over this painful history. They make light of it.
"Now the world's greatest rivalry is going to get spicier," said co-host Ira Dubey during one of the early episodes of Foodistan, which first aired in India on Jan. 23 and will be shown in Pakistan starting in mid-February.
Her counterpart, Aly Khan, said the aim of the two teams "would be to grind the opposition into chutney, to make them eat humble pie, to dice them, slice them and fry them on their way to culinary glory."
Eight chefs from each country were scheduled for individual and team competitions over 26 one-hour episodes, with the winner authoring the first Foodistan cookbook and receiving a trip to three cities of his or her choice anywhere in the world.
There is significant overlap in the cuisines of both countries, as there is in language, music and culture. Pakistanis and Indians both love curry, kebab and biryani ? a spiced rice dish. But they often use different ingredients, and dishes can also vary from one region to another within the same country.
Pakistani dishes often include beef, which is not eaten by many people in majority Hindu India for religious reasons. India has more vegetarian dishes, and the food is often cooked with ingredients like coconut milk that are rarely found in Pakistan.
Many Pakistanis and Indians have missed out on enjoying the varied tastes of the other country because mutual enmity has made cross-border travel difficult.
"Even though they are neighbors, Indians don't know what Pakistani food is like and vice versa," said Mirza Fahad, a production assistant at India's NDTV, which developed Foodistan. "It was long overdue to get to know each other's foods."
During the first cook-off on the show, filmed in New Delhi, the judges gave four chefs from each side two hours to prepare a biryani, curry, kebab and dessert. Each of the three judges gave the team's meal a score out of 10.
The judges loved the Iranian-inspired fish biryani cooked by the Pakistanis, their chicken kebab stuffed with figs, olives, bread and mango chutney, and their shahi tukda ? a dessert of fried bread soaked in hot milk with spices. They scored 21 out of a possible 30, losing points because a dish of chicken in shalimar curry was a tad chewy.
The Indians ended up winning the first contest by one point with a menu that included chicken tikka with truffle cream, cheese kofta in a tomato and water chestnut curry, lamb biryani and phirni ? a sweet rice pudding that they topped with strawberry granita.
The captain of the Pakistani team, Mohammed Naeem, executive chef at the Park Plaza Hotel in Lahore, alleged the judges didn't have enough knowledge of Pakistani food and were destined from the beginning to pick an Indian to win.
The judges included a British chef, an Indian food critic and a Bollywood actress of Pakistani and French descent.
Another member of the team, Akhtar Rehman, a chef at the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, said concerns about the judges were fairly widespread on the Pakistani side, but Naeem was the only one to quit.
It remains to be seen whether the music competition ? Sur Kshetra, or Musical Battlefield ? also will spark ill will.
The contest, which is being filmed in Dubai, is scheduled to air in Pakistan and India starting in mid-February, said Mohammed Zeeshan Khan, a general manager at Pakistan's Geo TV, which is developing the show.
"Music can unite people across borders and bring them closer together," said Khan.
The competition will include teams of six musicians from each country between the ages of 18 and 27. The teams will be mentored by two well-known pop singers and actors, Pakistani Atif Aslam and Indian Himesh Reshammiya. They will compete across a range of genres, including jazz, pop, rock and qawwali ? traditional Sufi Muslim ballads that are popular in both countries, said Khan.
The grand prize is still being worked out, but Khan said the winner can claim to be "the new musical icon for the subcontinent."
Those of you who seem to be more closely connected to the Maple Leaf than the pine needle might've jumped on the envious side at the news that folks across the border are getting their hands on the LTE Galaxy Note. Envy no more. Via blog post, Rogers has announced that Samsung's "phablet" creation will be surfing through its fresh 4G waves in the upcoming month. Aside from the Rogers branding we expect to see, it'll be hard to distinguish this Note from its AT&T brother, as it'll be identical in the specs department. Based on a page thrown up at Best Buy Canada, it looks as if it'll sell for $249.99 on a three-year contract (with Bell and Telus getting in on the fun, too), with the first of 'em shipping out on Valentine's Day. Desperate to be the first to try and fit this in your pocket? Head on to the source to join the carrier's reservation system.
Is John Blake the next Dark Knight, Robin or someone else entirely? We discuss in The Weekly Rising. By Kevin P. Sullivan
Joseph Gordon-Levitt films a scene of "Dark Knight Rises" Photo: Getty Images
Who the hell is John Blake?
It was the question most of us asked when Joseph Gordon-Levitt joined the cast of "The Dark Knight Rises" last year. The little bit Warner Bros. told us labeled Blake as "a Gotham City beat cop assigned to special duty under the command of Commissioner Gordon." It's not exactly the kind of character description you'd expect from such a big-name actor in one of Christopher Nolan's Batman films.
Such a nondescript character begs the question: Who is he really? We did the same last week with Marion Cotillard's Miranda Tate, and this week, we're taking a deep dive into just who this mysterious man in blue might be.
A short while after Warner Bros. revealed John Blake as a character in "The Dark Knight Rises," hard-core comic book nerds did their due diligence and found the one trace of the name that dates all the way back to 1942. Little Johnny Blake appears in an issue of "Batman," where Joker goes around making the people of Gotham cry, one citizen at a time. Poor Johnny Blake had just received a great report card, but the Joker comes along and snatches it. Now Dad will never believe him!
If we're going to speculate, it's safe to assume that Nolan won't surprise everyone with a gritty, realistic take on the whole "stolen report card" story line. There's no hard evidence other than the shared named that Gordon-Levitt's John Blake has anything to do with the unfortunate, terrorized little boy from the comics.
With the source material more or less a dead end, that leaves the vague official character description and two of the Internet's favorite theories. One posits that Blake will be a much more rugged Robin. Another hypothesizes that he will don the Batman cowl after Bruce Wayne dies or retires.
Fans have been quick to cry "Robin!" since "Batman Begins." (What's the Dark Knight without his young ward, after all?) But there is nothing that Nolan has been as adamant about as his conviction to never feature the Boy Wonder in his Batman films. Yet, Robin champions abide, even finding false clues of his presence in the "Dark Knight Rises" trailer. Nolan said he won't include Robin, so there's little reason to suspect him of doing anything else.
More daring theorists guess that Blake will go through the majority of the movie as the beat cop he's described to be but eventually become the new Batman once Wayne is out of the picture, either due to injury or — gulp — death. Supporters of this theory point to Bane's legacy of destroying Batman and Wayne's use of a cane in the trailer.
I find myself not only favoring the second theory, but actively hoping that it comes to fruition. So much of the lead-up to the film has centered on the idea of "the legend." Ra's Al Ghul speaks in the trailer about Wayne becoming more than a man. "The Legend Ends" even adorns the most recent poster, yet the two messages directly contradict each other. If Wayne commits himself to an ideal, he'll become an unstoppable legend, and the entire concept of Batman demands that the legend cannot end. What better way to prove that point than to break Wayne, remove the man and yet have the legend continue?
Gordon-Levitt's inclusion in the cast essentially requires Blake to play a major role, more than any official description would allow him. Bet on Blake being a big part of the film, but what the role may entail will only be answered in July.
What would you like to see from Joseph Gordon-Levitt in "The Dark Knight Rises"? Let me know on Twitter via @KPSull!
Researchers in Japan have now discovered that the arachnids accurately sense distances by comparing a blurry version of an image with a clear one, a method called image defocus.
Jumping spiders, which hunt by pouncing on their prey, gauge distances to their unsuspecting meals in a way that appears to be unique in the animal kingdom, a new study finds.
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The superability boils down to seeing green, the researchers found.
There are several different visual systems that organisms use to accurately and reliably judge distance and depth. Humans, for example, have binocular stereovision. Because?our eyes?are spaced apart, they receive visual information from different angles, which our brains use to automatically triangulate distances. Other animals, such as insects, adjust the focal length of the lenses in their eyes, or move their heads side to side to create an effect called motion parallax ? nearer objects will move across their field of vision more quickly than objects farther away.
However,?jumping spiders?(Hasarius adansoni) lack any kind of focal adjustment system, have eyes that are too close together for binocular stereovision and don?t appear to use motion parallax while hunting. So how are these creatures able to perceive depth?
Researchers in Japan have now discovered that the arachnids accurately sense distances by comparing a blurry version of an image with a clear one, a method called image defocus.
Jumping spiders have four eyes densely packed in a row: two large principal eyes and two small lateral eyes. The spider uses its lateral eyes to sense the motion of an object, such as a fly, which it then zeros in on using its principal eyes, Akihisa Terakita, a biologist at Osaka City University in Japan and lead author of the new study, explained in an email to LiveScience.
Rather than having a single layer of?photoreceptor cells, the retinas in the spider?s principal eyes have four distinct photoreceptor layers. When Terakita and his colleagues took a close look at the spider's principal eyes, they found that the two layers closest to the surface contain ultraviolet-sensitive pigments, whereas the deeper layers contain green-sensitive pigments.
However, because of the layers' respective distances from the lens of the eye, incoming green light is only focused on the deepest layer, while the other green-sensitive retinal layer receives defocused or fuzzy images. The researchers hypothesized that the spiders gauge depth cues from the amount of defocus in this fuzzy layer, which is proportional to the distance an object is to the lens of the eye.
To test this, they placed a spider and three to six?fruit flies?in a cylindrical plastic chamber, housed in a white styrene foam box. They then bathed the bugs in different colored lights: If the defocus of green light is important to the spiders, then they should not be able to accurately judge jumping distance in the absence of green light.
Sure enough, the spiders could easily catch the flies under green light, but consistently underestimated their jumps under red light (which doesn't contain shorter-wavelength light, such as green and blue). The researchers suggest that green light is just right to produce the image defocus necessary to gauge distances, unlike other wavelengths of light.
The team doesn?t know if any other animals employ similar depth-perception techniques, though they think the findings could have important implications for the future design of?visual systems in robots.
"Further investigation of the optics, retinal structure and neural basis of depth perception in jumping spiders may provide biological inspiration for computer vision as well," they write in their study, published in the Jan. 27 issue of the journal Science.
The concept of increasing diversity in science and science communication has worked in my favor. I got minority supplements?to work in?labs?and?travel awards to conferences. I?received fellowships?to report on health issues in minority populations for newspapers. Not bad, for a first generation immigrant.
But until recently, my own ethnicity was not something I discussed openly very often.
I was born in Mexico City, but was convinced from an early age, that I was meant to be American?blond, blue-eyed,?pretty, thin and accent-less. (I?m a brunette and have always struggled with my weight.)? So when my family?moved to Los Angeles?in 1988, I was thrilled.? The stork had?dropped?me?on the wrong side of the border, and eight years later, fate was righting her mistake.
But when I arrived, I quickly realized that?I couldn?t communicate with my new, American?compadres, and when I tried, I felt horribly self-conscious.I felt so?out of place, I shunned speaking Spanish. I felt embarrassed when someone would approach me in my native language and mortified when my mother couldn?t communicate with non-Latino parents.
For years, I saw my heritage as a handicap rather than as a source of pride and strength. I can?t remember when I came out of the Latino closet, but I think it happened when I moved to New York for graduate school.
My first semester there, my mentor was Ivan Hernandez, who?s now an assistant professor at SUNY Downstate. I?d never had a Latino mentor before. He was critical of my work, but patient when I made mistakes. He helped me apply for an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, which I received.
We spoke about science in English, but in Spanish about everything else. These conversations helped me to realize that Latinos could be successful. While I don?t think he?s solely responsible for my awakening?I also credit professors, my friends, salsa dancing and the city itself?I do think he was instrumental in my becoming comfortable with my ethnicity.
While support systems for students like me were available in college, I didn?t feel like they applied to me. I was Latina, but I was also technically a foreigner, so I didn?t feel entirely comfortable in the Latino organization. Nor did I feel comfortable in the foreign students association because I had grown up in this country, and I was too ?American.?? That?s why witnessing the amount of support for minorities in science and science communications at Science Online last week was wonderfully inspiring and reassuring.
Scientific American blogger and scientist Danielle Lee and Alberto Roca (@minoritypostdoc) of MinorityPostdoc.org focused the??Broadening the Participation of?Underrepresented Populations in Online Science Communication & Communities? discussion on broadening the concept of diversity.?? ?Browning up the place,? as Raycelle Burks (@DrRubidium)?put it, isn?t enough.? Diversity means including people from different socioeconomic backgrounds, nationalities, individuals with disabilities, LBGT, Native Americans, Eastern Europeans, etc.? It means?taking into consideration that a single person may?belong to?several of these groups. You can be a poor/rich, brown/light?Latino,?European,?Native American, and/or?LBGT female?scientist?and/or?science communicator.? Diversity means having an open mind and understanding that other people may have a different?but just as valid?worldview.
Danielle?s?session?was dubbed the ?diversity? session??the word?was even?its official hashtag?but the conversation about diversity?s role in science and science communication?spilled beyond the 60-minute?discussion.?? It permeated the?entire unconference.
More than 50% of the participants were newbies,?and 60 percent?were women. Students (@PopovichN, @marisfessenden, @tanyalewis314)?mingled with professionals young and old?(@david_dobbs, @carlzimmer, @davemosher, @sarahwebb, @carasantamaria).? Some attendees?were local (@helenchapell, @davidkroll,?@themonti1, @boraZ). Others traveled thousands of miles to attend?(@edyong209, @alokjha, @laurawheelers,?@rojasburke,?@meganmansell, @docfreeride);?some even from beyond the grave (@borazombie).? And Mireya Mayor (@mireyamayor), a?Cuban-American?scientist turned?National Geographic explorer, gave the keynote address.?She reminded everyone that scientists aren?t socially awkward introverts.
Scientists are a diverse lot. Some like doing experiments; others prefer to be a voice for science. But increasingly, they are doing both.
Although, I chose an ?alternative? career?science journalism?I?m happy to see that scientists are becoming more open minded about what it means to be a scientist. I was afraid to make the switch for a very long time, much in the same way I was afraid to publicly admit that I am Latina?and it?s wonderful to see the shift happening.
Thank you Science Online, Bora Zivkovic (@boraZ), Karyn Traphagen (@ktraphagen), David Kroll (@davidkroll), Danielle Lee and Alberto Roca! And here?s to next year!
Photo of Danielle Lee (The Urban Scientist), Alberto Roca (Minority Postdoc), and Daniela Hernandez at the 2011 SACNAS Conference. Photo courtesy of Minority Postdoc.
Daniela is currently a student in the Science Communication program at UC Santa Cruz and an intern at Wired Science. Twitter: @danielaphd.
In a study published in the journal Geology, scientists at the University of Miami (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science suggest that the large changes in the carbon isotopic composition of carbonates which occurred prior to the major climatic event more than 500 million years ago, known as 'Snowball Earth,' are unrelated to worldwide glacial events.
"Our study suggests that the geochemical record documented in rocks prior to the Marinoan glaciation or 'Snowball Earth' are unrelated to the glaciation itself," said UM Rosenstiel professor Peter Swart, a co-author of the study. "Instead the changes in the carbon isotopic ratio are related to alteration by freshwater as sea level fell."
In order to better understand the environmental conditions prior to 'Snowball Earth', the research team analyzed geochemical signatures preserved in carbonate rock cores from similar climactic events that happened more recently ? two million years ago ? during the Pliocene-Pleistocene period.
The team analyzed the ratio of the rare isotope of carbon (13C) to the more abundant carbon isotope (12C) from cores drilled in the Bahamas and the Enewetak Atoll in the Pacific Ocean. The geochemical patterns that were observed in these cores were nearly identical to the pattern seen prior to the Marinoan glaciation, which suggests that the alteration of rocks by water, a process known as diagenesis, is the source of the changes seen during that time period.
Prior to this study, scientists theorized that large changes in the cycling of carbon between the organic and inorganic reservoirs occurred in the atmosphere and oceans, setting the stage for the global glacial event known as 'Snowball Earth'.
"It is widely accepted that changes in the carbon isotopic ratio during the Pliocene-Pleistocene time are the result of alteration of rocks by freshwater," said Swart. "We believe this is also what occurred during the Neoproterozoic. Instead of being related to massive and complicated changes in the carbon cycle, the variations seen in the Neoproterozoic can be explained by simple process which we understand very well."
Scientists acknowledge that multiple sea level fluctuations occurred during the Pliocene-Pleistocene glaciations resulting from water being locked up in glaciers. Similar sea-level changes during the Neoproterozoic caused the variations in the global carbon isotopic signal preserved in the older rocks, not a change in the distribution of carbon as had been widely postulated.
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University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine & Atmospheric Science: http://www.rsmas.miami.edu
Thanks to University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine & Atmospheric Science for this article.
This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.
SAN FRANCISCO ? Bloggers and activists from China, the Middle East and Latin America said Friday they were afraid that new Twitter policies could allow governments to censor messages, stifling free expression.
Thursday's announcement that Twitter had refined its technology to censor messages on a country-by-country basis raised fears that the company's commitment to free speech may be weakening. Twitter is trying to broaden its audience and make more money by expanding around the globe.
"I'm afraid it's a slippery slope of censorship," said social media commentator Jeff Jarvis, interviewed at a gathering of business and government leaders in Davos, Switzerland.
"I understand why Twitter is doing this ? they want to be able to enter more countries and deal with the local laws. But, as Google learned in China, when you become the agent of the censor, there are problems there," he added.
Egyptian activist Mahmoud Salem, who tweets and blogs under the name "Sandmonkey," questioned in a tweet whether Twitter "is selling us out."
Twitter sees the censorship tool as a way to ensure individual messages, or tweets, remain available to as many people as possible while it navigates a gauntlet of different laws around the world.
Before, when Twitter erased a tweet it disappeared throughout the world. Now, a tweet containing content breaking a law in one country can be taken down there and still be seen elsewhere.
Twitter will post a censorship notice whenever a tweet is removed. That's similar to what Internet search leader Google Inc. has been doing for years when a law in a country where its service operates requires a search result to be removed.
Like Google, Twitter also plans to the share the removal requests it receives from governments, companies and individuals at the chillingeffects.org website.
The similarity to Google's policy isn't coincidental. Twitter's general counsel is Alexander Macgillivray, who helped Google draw up its censorship policies while he was working at that company.
"One of our core values as a company is to defend and respect each user's voice," Twitter wrote in a blog post. "We try to keep content up wherever and whenever we can, and we will be transparent with users when we can't. The tweets must continue to flow."
Twitter, which is based in San Francisco, is tweaking its approach now that its nearly 6-year-old service has established itself as one of the world's most powerful megaphones. Daisy chains of tweets already have played instrumental roles in political protests throughout the world, including the Occupy Wall Street movement in the United States and the Arab Spring uprisings in Egypt, Bahrain, Tunisia and Syria.
It's a role that Twitter has embraced, but the company came up with the new filtering technology in recognition that it will likely be forced to censor more tweets as it pursues an ambitious agenda. Among other things, Twitter wants to expand its audience from about 100 million active users now to more than 1 billion.
Reaching that goal will require expanding into more countries, which will mean Twitter will be more likely to have to submit to laws that run counter to the free-expression protections guaranteed under the First Amendment in the U.S.
If Twitter defies a law in a country where it has employees, those people could be arrested. That's one reason Twitter is unlikely to try to enter China, where its service is currently blocked. Google for several years agreed to censor its search results in China to gain better access to the country's vast population, but stopped that practice two years after engaging in a high-profile showdown with Chain's government. Google now routes its Chinese search results through Hong Kong, where the censorship rules are less restrictive.
In China, where activists quickly caught on to Twitter despite it being blocked inside the country, artist and activist Ai Weiwei tweeted Friday: "If Twitter censors, I'll stop tweeting."
China's Communist Party remains highly sensitive to any organized challenge to its rule and responded sharply to the Arab Spring, cracking down last year after calls for a "Jasmine Revolution" in China.
Many Chinese find ways around the so-called "Great Firewall" that has blocked social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook.
Nelson Bocaranda, a Venezuelan journalist, radio host and outspoken opponent of President Hugo Chavez, warned that Twitter's decision could prompt a government crackdown on critics' tweets ahead of the Oct. 7 presidential election.
"Twitter has become a weapon to preserve our embattled democracy," said Bocaranda, who has more than 482,000 followers.
Twitter is "an important tool" for Venezuelans to share information as local media resort to self-censorship as means of avoiding conflict with government officials, Bocaranda added.
Salem, the Egyptian activist, added in a tweet on his account: "This is very bad news."
"Is it safe to say that (hash)Twitter is selling us out?" he wrote.
"Clearly there is a huge user backlash against this latest move by Twitter," said blogger Mike Butcher, editor of Tech Crunch Europe.
"It was seen as one of the few platforms that was free of any kind of censorship, heavily used during for example Arab spring and even in Russia lately over protests over the elections. It is, to some extent, something that we could have predicted," Butcher said.
In its Thursday blog post, Twitter said it hadn't yet used its ability to wipe out tweets in an individual country. All the tweets it has previously censored were wiped out throughout the world. Most of those included links to child pornography.
Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt declined to comment on Twitter's action and instead limited his comments to his own company.
"I can assure you we will apply our universally tough principles against censorship on all Google products," he told reporters in Davos.
Google's chief legal officer, David Drummond, said it was a matter of trying to adhere to different local laws.
"I think what they (Twitter officials) are wrestling with is what all of us wrestle with ? and everyone wants to focus on China, but it is actually a global issue ? which is laws in these different countries vary," Drummond said.
"Americans tend to think copyright is a real bad problem, so we have to regulate that on the Internet. In France and Germany, they care about Nazis' issues and so forth," he added. "In China, there are other issues that we call censorship. And so how you respect all the laws or follow all the laws to the extent you think they should be followed while still allowing people to get the content elsewhere?"
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Associated Press writers Christopher Toothaker in Caracas, Venezuela, Angela Charlton in Davos, Switzerland, Cara Anna in New York and Ben Hubbard in Cairo contributed to this story.
>>>finalist for the
rhodes scholarship
. he faced a tough decision. go for the final interview or stay in connecticut the lead his team in the final
rivalry game
. the interview and the game was held on the same day. here is what he said at the time.
>>can you imagine missing it?
>>no. to leave your teammates and lev them to fend for themselves, i wouldn't feel right.
>>he later announced he was withdrawing his name from consideration and was going to play the
big game
instead. the "new york times" said he was no longer under consideration after a fellow student accused him of
sexual assault
. no complaint has been filed. today he is disputing the article. the complaint was filed by a person he had known for many months. i'm joined by education reporter for the new york times. thank you for your time.
>>thanks be p.
>>i went on your website just to read some of the comments that people had regarding the story. it was a mixed bag. it was a lot of concern about some of the details which which you the alleged victim was never identified. it was no
formal complaint
filed. what is some of the reaction you're getting be.
>>the point of his statement doesn't really contradict what's in our article except for one item. he's saying at the time he made his statement withdrawing his candidacy that he was still active. our source is saying no. that's really the only contra contradiction between what he is saying.
>>one of the comments says it's raises a lot of concern. publishing such a stoirp in absence of name, sources or
formal charges
much less convictions here. this is the concern that you're talking about this young man's life, career. he's released a statement. you have sources but none have been identified including this alleged victim here.
>>it's a legitimate concern. obviously, it's a decision that we weighed very carefully. i think had he not been a rhodes candidate, this isn't something we reported on. the impression was left out there. i'm not saying that he necessarily lied about it. the impression was left out there and reported in the national media
over and over
again that he had said, i'm not going to do the interview, so that i can play in the harvard game.
>>in your report, he didn't leave the impression. that was a conclusion made by reporters who covered the story. he, i believe to your point, did not say. he didn't lie. he didn't deceive here.
>>right. his statement was pretty carefully worded. it said i'm going to play in the harvard game. i've withdrawn my application. it didn't say i'm playing because i with draw my application.
>>let me read quickly
yale
's response.
yale
says all schools are prohibited by
federal law
from disclosing the names of students involving in an allegation of misconduct. the applications by students for scholarships and fellowships is confidential.
yale
has a policy in place.
rhodes trust
has no comment. new haven police didn't, no
formal complaint
has been filed. i'll bring it back again, was the times fair to this young man here?
>>i think so. i think that he's a public figure out there in the
public eye
and was a misimpression created about him. again, i think were we not a candidate, we wouldn't have done a story like there.
>>back to the woman who made a complaint with the university wide committee on
sexual misconduct
. this happened back in july. again, with their not being a
criminal charge
here, was there concern by you and the staff who put this story together that with no
formal complaint
here, this may be perceived by people not -- who don't care about football or
yale
, that this young man was not being treated appropriately in the reporting of this story?
>>it was something we considered. we decided it was worth going forward. we make no judgment as to the validity of the allegation. it was made through an informal process that doesn't include any disciplinary penalty, any finding of guilt. that's the nature of that process.
>>thank you very much. i appreciate you coming onto talk about this story. people have beenfired up about this. i think it's great you came onto talk about the reporting here. thank you.
WARSAW, Poland ? Kazimierz Smolen, a 91-year-old Auschwitz survivor who after World War II became director of the memorial site, died Friday on the 67th anniversary of its liberation.
Smolen died in a hospital in Oswiecim, the southern Polish town where Nazi Germany operated Auschwitz-Birkenau during World War II, said Pawel Sawicki, a spokesman for the Auschwitz-Birkenau state museum.
Friday is the anniversary of the camp's 1945 liberation by Soviet troops. Jan. 27 was designated as International Holocaust Remembrance Day by the United Nations in 2005, and was marked with ceremonies across Europe.
Two years after the war ended, Auschwitz-Birkenau became a museum ? and Smolen himself served as its director from 1955-1990. He continued to live in the town after his retirement, often attending the memorial ceremonies marking the camp's liberation.
Sawicki said soon after Smolen's death the news was announced to Holocaust survivors commemorating the anniversary in Oswiecim. They fell silent for a minute in his honor.
Smolen was born on April 19, 1920, in the southern Polish town of Chorzow Stary. He was a Polish Catholic involved in the anti-Nazi resistance who was arrested by the Germans in April 1941 and taken to Auschwitz in one of the early shipments of prisoners there. He left the camp on the last transport of prisoners evacuated by the Germans on Jan. 18, 1945, nine days before its liberation. He later attributed his survival to good health and extreme luck.
He once explained his decision to return to the camp to manage it as a way of honoring those who were killed there.
"Sometimes when I think about it, I feel it may be some kind of sacrifice, some kind of obligation I have for having survived," he said.
In other gestures of remembrance, Norway's Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg apologized for his nation's role in arresting and deporting Jews after it was invaded by Nazi Germany. During the war, 772 Norwegian Jews and Jewish refugees were deported to Germany. Only 34 survived.
He said it's time the nation acknowledges that politicians and other Norwegians took part and expressed "our deep regrets that this could have happened on Norwegian soil." He spoke at a ceremony in Oslo attended by the last surviving Jew in a group of 532 deported from Norway in 1942.
In Turkey, state television on Thursday broadcast the epic French documentary "Shoah," about the mass murder of Jews under the German Nazi regime. It was the first time the film has been aired on public television in a predominantly Muslim country.
"It is a historical event," filmmaker Claude Lanzmann, 87, said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press from his home in Paris. "It is extremely important that it is being shown in a Muslim country."
Germany's Parliament also gathered Friday for a special sitting to remember the Holocaust.
Prominent survivor and literary critic Marcel Reich-Ranicki recalled how the Nazi SS informed members of the Warsaw ghetto's Jewish council in July 1942 of plans for the inhabitants' "resettlement" to the east.
Reich-Ranicki, 91, recounted how a "deathly silence" was followed by uproar. He said those present "seemed to sense what had happened: that the sentence had been pronounced for the biggest Jewish city in Europe. The death sentence."
The Nazis set up the Warsaw ghetto in November 1940, cramming hundreds of thousands of Jews into inhuman conditions. Most who survived disease and starvation in the ghetto were transported to death camps.
___
Associated Press writers Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey, and Geir Moulson in Berlin contributed to this report.
After raising just shy of $23 million over the past 5 years, Skyfire today announced that they've raised their second biggest round of funding to date. Coming in at $8 million dollars, this Series C round is being funded by Verizon Investments (as in Verizon Communications' venture arm) along with new investments from previous investors Matrix Partners, Trinity Ventures, and Lightspeed Venture Partners.
When it comes to donating to charity?and church, Mitt Romney?is the man to beat.??
The release?this week of?the GOP candidate's?tax records cast a spotlight on his considerable wealth, but it also revealed?the extent of his generosity.
The records show Romney?and his wife, Ann,?contributed $7 million in charity over?the tax years 2010 and 2011, much of it going to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Romney earned $42.5 million during that?period, which means he gave away roughly 16.5 percent of his income. He also paid out $6.2 million in taxes.
On both a percentage and an actual basis, Romney gave away more money than his chief rival for the GOP nomination, Newt Gingrich. He also donated more than President Obama, although the Democrat was not too far behind.
The average person donates 2 to?3 percent of?his or her?income to charity, experts say. For those who earn $10 million or more, the rate is?6.5 percent,?said Joseph J.?Thorndike, director of the Tax History Project at Tax Analysts.
"He's pretty generous, and no one can fault Romney for his level of giving," Thorndike told msnbc.com.
"It's remarkable," added Russell James, director of graduate?studies in charitable planning at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas. ?I have never seen giving at the level Romney is giving at."
A look at others:
Obama and his wife, Michelle, donated $245,000, or 14.4 percent, of their $1.7 million total income to 36 different charities, according to IRS documents.?The Fisher House Foundation, the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund and the Boys and Girls Clubs of America were among the listed charities. It was the president's highest?rate of giving, experts say, adding that?Obama's giving has been?keeping pace with the increase in?earnings from?best-selling books.?In 2005, Obama's?donations jumped to $77,315, 4.7 percent the family's income, and $60,307 (6.1 percent) in 2006. From 2000 through 2004,?however, the then-Illinois senator and his wife?had?donated?about 1 percent of their annual earnings, according to The New York Times and TaxProf Blog.
Vice President Joe?Biden and his wife, Jill,?donated $5,350 (1.3 percent) of their $379,178 adjusted gross income to charity in 2010.
?Ever since Nixon, presidents and their taxes have been in the spotlight,? Thorndike told msnbc.com. ?I?m sure he didn?t know he was going to start the tradition of releasing records, returns that were going to be pored over and read. Since then, there?s also been a strong incentive to not look cheap.?
For the record,?former President?Richard Nixon reported donating $295 to charity and church in 1972, according to the tax project. That's one-tenth of one percent of his annual adjusted income of $268,777 for that year.
Click below to view tax records of the various candidates (pdf):
In this undated photo released by the International Campaign for Tibet (ICT) Wednesday, Jan. 25, 2012, Yonden, the brother of a religious leader in a local monastery in Luhuo in Ganzi prefecture of Sichuan province, southwestern China, is shown. The ICT said three Tibetans, including Yonden, were killed by police in Luhuo, also known as Draggo in Tibetan, Monday, Jan. 23 in a clash between ethnic Tibetans and Chinese security forces. (AP Photo/International Campaign for Tibet) EDITORIAL USE ONLY, NO SALES
In this undated photo released by the International Campaign for Tibet (ICT) Wednesday, Jan. 25, 2012, Yonden, the brother of a religious leader in a local monastery in Luhuo in Ganzi prefecture of Sichuan province, southwestern China, is shown. The ICT said three Tibetans, including Yonden, were killed by police in Luhuo, also known as Draggo in Tibetan, Monday, Jan. 23 in a clash between ethnic Tibetans and Chinese security forces. (AP Photo/International Campaign for Tibet) EDITORIAL USE ONLY, NO SALES
BEIJING (AP) ? Deadly clashes between ethnic Tibetans and Chinese security forces have spread to a second area in southwestern China, the government and an overseas activist group said Wednesday.
The group Free Tibet said two Tibetans were killed and several more were wounded Tuesday when security forces opened fire on a crowd of protesters in Seda county in politically sensitive Ganzi prefecture in Sichuan province. It quoted local sources as saying the area was under a curfew.
According to the Chinese government, a "mob" of people charged a police station in Seda and injured 14 officers, forcing police to open fire on them.
The official Xinhua News Agency said police killed one rioter, injured another and arrested 13.
The spread of violence came after some 30 Tibetans sheltered in a monastery after being wounded when Chinese police fired into a crowd of protesters in neighboring Luhuo county, a Tibetan monk said Tuesday. He said military forces had surrounded the building.
The monk would not give his name out of fear of government retaliation, and the Draggo monastery could no longer be reached by phone Wednesday.
The counties have been tense for some time, and at least 16 Buddhist monks, nuns and other Tibetans have set themselves on fire in protest in the past year. Most have chanted for Tibetan freedom and the return of their spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, who fled to India amid an abortive uprising against Chinese rule in 1959.
Many Tibetans resent Beijing's heavy-handed rule and the large-scale migration of China's ethnic Han majority to the Himalayan region. While China claims Tibet has been under its rule for centuries, many Tibetans say the region was functionally independent for most of that time.
"Chinese forces are responding with lethal force to Tibetans' ever-growing calls for freedom," Free Tibet director Stephanie Brigden said in a statement Wednesday.
A man who answered the telephone at the Seda county government office would not confirm or deny the group's account of Tuesday's violence. He would not give his name.
Later Wednesday, phone lines for Seda police and government offices were constantly busy while calls to many other numbers in the county could not be connected.
Xinhua cited a police officer as saying the mob gathered Tuesday afternoon to storm the Chengguan Police Station and that they attacked police with gasoline bottles, knives and stones.
"They also opened fire at us, injuring 14 police officers," the report quoted the officer as saying.
Chinese authorities have similarly blamed Monday's unrest in Luhuo on a "mob" and said that overseas advocacy groups are twisting the truth about what happened in order to undermine the government. The government says order has been restored there after one Tibetan died and four others were injured. It said five police were wounded.
The International Campaign for Tibet says three were killed on Monday, including the brother of a religious leader in a local monastery.
Independent confirmation of the clashes is difficult due to a heavy security presence and lack of access to outsiders.
The United States, which will host Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping at the White House next month, has expressed grave concern at the reported violence.
U.S. Special Coordinator for Tibetan Issues Maria Otero urged Beijing to address "counterproductive policies" in Tibetan areas that have created tensions and threatened Tibetans' religious, cultural and linguistic identity.
U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said Washington has always been clear with China about its concerns for the human rights of Tibetans and others. She said the U.S. would be "just as clear" when Xi visits next month.
British Foreign Minister Jeremy Browne said the U.K. also was concerned. "I urge the Chinese government to exercise restraint, to release full details of the incidents, and to work to resolve the underlying grievances," his statement said.
___
Associated Press writer Matthew Pennington in Washington contributed to this report.
____
Gillian Wong can be reached on http://twitter.com/gillianwong
Contact: Christa Stratton cstratton@geosociety.org Geological Society of America
Boulder, Colo., USA - New Geosphere research posted online ahead of print interprets the EoceneEarly Miocene paleotopography of Nevada, examines the origin of the Colorado Mineral Belt, compares mountain building processes in Alaska, uncovers more about the dynamic Antarctic ice from the AND-1B borehole, and more.
Highlights are provided below. Representatives of the media may obtain complimentary copies of Geosphere articles by contacting Christa Stratton at the address above. Abstracts for these and other Geosphere papers are available at http://geosphere.gsapubs.org/ .
Please discuss articles of interest with the authors before publishing stories on their work, and please make reference to Geosphere in articles published. Contact Christa Stratton for additional information or assistance.
Non-media requests for articles may be directed to GSA Sales and Service, gsaservice@geosociety.org.
EoceneEarly Miocene paleotopography of the Sierra NevadaGreat BasinNevadaplano based on widespread ash-flow tuffs and paleovalleys Christopher D. Henry et al., University of Nevada, Reno. Posted online 23 Jan. 2012; doi: 10.1130/GES00727.1
In as study by Henry et al., as much as 3000 km3 of the tuff of Campbell Creek erupted 28.9 million years ago from a supervolcano about 35 km in diameter in central Nevada. The tuff flowed down paleovalleys as much as 280 km to the west, into the western foothills of the Sierra Nevada, and 300 km to the northeast, to what is now the Ruby Mountains. The distribution of the tuff of Campbell Creek and other widespread ash-flow tuffs demonstrate that the Sierra Nevada was a lower, western ramp to a higher plateau in what is now central Nevada, that a north-south "paleo-continental divide" existed through central-eastern Nevada, and that the characteristic basin-and-range topography of Nevada did not exist until after 29 million years ago. The plateau and paleodivide connected northward at least into Idaho and southward into northern Sonora, Mexico.
Origin of the Colorado Mineral Belt Charles E. Chapin, New Mexico Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources (retired). Posted online 12 Jan. 2012; doi: 10.1130/GES00694.1
Ogden Tweto stated the puzzle of the Colorado mineral belt succinctly in 1975: "The problem is not so much why or how magmas were generated, but why magmatic activity took the pattern it didthat is, of a rather sharply defined belt diagonal to all major tectonic elements in an extensive region that elsewhere is nearly devoid of contemporaneous igneous rocks." The Colorado mineral belt is a 500-km-long, 25-km-wide belt of igneous intrusions and mining districts that trends northeastward from the Four Corners area on the Colorado Plateau to the eastern edge of the Rocky Mountains near Boulder, Colorado. In plate tectonics terms, the mineral belt is located within a 1200-km-wide gap in the volcanic chain that marked the western edge of North America during the Laramide orogeny (approximately 80 to 40 million years ago). As the North American plate moved southwestward, the Farallon oceanic plate was subducted beneath it on a northeastward trajectory. Observations that major differences in volcanism, sedimentation, and trends of mountain ranges occur on opposite sides of the Colorado mineral belt led Chapin to suspect that the mineral belt was located above a segment boundary in the subhorizontally subducted Farallon plate. Coincidence in timing of the beginning of magmatism along the mineral belt (75 million years ago) with accelerated FarallonNorth American convergence and major tectonic deformation of the Rocky Mountain area added credence to the plate tectonic interpretation. As the thicker lithosphere of the North American plate rapidly overrode the underlying Farallon plate, tensional stresses dilated the segment boundary, allowing fluids and magmas to rise into the crust of the Rocky Mountain region, thus forming the Colorado mineral belt.
Miocene magmatism in the Bodie Hills volcanic field, California and Nevada: A long-lived eruptive center in the southern segment of the ancestral Cascades arc David A. John et al., USGS. Posted online 23 Jan. 2012; doi: 10.1130/GES00674.1
The Miocene Bodie Hills volcanic field is a >700-square-kilometer eruptive center of subduction-related magmatism in the southern segment of the ancestral Cascades arc north of Mono Lake. It consists of about 20 major eruptive units, including four relatively mafic composition (basaltic andesite-andesite) stratovolcanoes emplaced along the margins of the field, and numerous, more centrally located intermediate to silicic composition (dacite-rhyolite) flow dome complexes. Volcanism was episodic with two peak periods of eruptive activity: an early period at about 14.7 to 12.9 million years ago that mostly formed stratovolcanoes, and a later period between about 9.2 to 8.0 million years ago dominated by large dome fields. Following an approximately 2-million-year hiatus in magmatic activity, post-subduction volcanic rocks of the Pliocene-Pleistocene (about 3.6 to 0.1 million years ago) Aurora volcanic field were deposited on the east side the Bodie Hills volcanic field. Geophysical data from John et al. suggest that many of the Miocene volcanoes have shallow plutonic roots that extend to depths ?2 km below the surface, and much of the Bodie Hills may be underlain by low-density plutons likely related to Miocene volcanism. Numerous hydrothermal systems were operative in the Bodie Hills during the Miocene volcanism, including systems that formed large gold-silver vein deposits in the Bodie and Aurora mining districts. Economically important mineral deposits in the Bodie Hills are temporally related to dome complexes. Rock compositions and volcanic center landforms in the Bodie Hills are broadly similar to these features in other parts of the southern part of the ancestral arc south of Lake Tahoe (approximately latitude 39 to 39.5N); dome fields among less abundant stratovolcanoes are common, intermediate compositions (andesite-dacite) are abundant, and mafic compositions (basalts) are scarce. The scarcity of mafic volcanic rocks is likely a consequence of thick crust that prevented ascent of mantle-derived basalt magmas. Farther north along the Miocene arc between Lake Tahoe and southern Oregon, the crust was thinner, basalt melts rose directly to the surface, and ancestral arc eruptions formed mafic shield volcanoes.
Structural relationships in the eastern syntaxis of the St. Elias orogen, Alaska James B. Chapman et al., SandRidge Energy. Posted online 23 Jan. 2012; doi: 10.1130/GES00677.1
Not all mountains are created in the same way. Chapman et al. examine an intersection between two mountain chains in southern Alaska. One set of mountains formed as a result of strike-slip faulting, and the other formed from contractional faults in a head-on collision of tectonic plates. By examining the fault surfaces involved within this intersection and studying the rocks that were folded and offset by these faults, we can unravel the history of these mountain chains and understand how they formed. In this instance, the mountains that formed by strike-slip faults were built first. These mountains formed several million years ago as a small tectonic plate was sliding northward along the west coast of North America. As this mountain chain pushed further north toward Alaska, the geometry of the plate boundary changed and the small tectonic plate could no longer easily slide northward. As a result, a new mountain chain began to form that involved different types and orientations of faults. This new mountain chain is the second type of mountains that formed from contraction. Chapman et al. can demonstrate how the new mountain system overprinted the older one and make an estimate of how long ago this process started to occur. Combining these age estimates with additional studies of the degree of faulting in the mountain chains provides important rates on faulting.
Lithostratigraphy from downhole logs in Hole AND-1B, Antarctica Trevor Williams et al., Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. Posted online 23 Jan. 2012; doi: 10.1130/GES00655.1
The ANDRILL McMurdo Ice Shelf (MIS) project drilled a 1285-meter-deep borehole containing a remarkable record of Antarctic glacial history. It shows that the West Antarctic ice sheet retreated and advanced about 38 times over the last 6 million years, with consequent sea level changes modeled to reach 3 to 7 m higher than today. This history of dynamic ice comes from the alternating sedimentary rock types: diatomite, formed from open-water plankton, and diamict, made of clays, sands, and gravel from under past ice sheets. There are other rock types, like mudstones and sandstones, and gradations between them all. Williams et al. describe how physical properties help to distinguish themproperties such as magnetic susceptibility, natural gamma radiation, potassium content, and electrical resistivity all have characteristic signatures in the different rock types. They can be used to describe features such as the increased clay content at the top of the diamicts and the base of the diatomites, and thus describe the transition from ice-covered to ice-retreated conditions. The properties measured in place by downhole logging tools represent the only information for the few intervals unrecovered by coring, and we interpret lithology for those intervals. In this way, we help to tell the story of dynamic Antarctic ice from the AND-1B borehole.
Crustal structure and signatures of recent tectonism as influenced by ancient terranes in the western United States Hersh Gilbert, Purdue University. Posted online 23 Jan. 2012; doi: 10.1130/GES00720.1
The western portion of North America has experienced a long history of deformation and is now characterized by diverse topography. Observations from data recently collected by the EarthScope USArray provide the first uniform seismic data set designed to investigate this region. Results presented here by Gilbert indicate that the crust varies in thickness across the western United States and exhibits distinct structures within the Basin and Range, Snake River Plain, the Sierra Nevada, and the active Cascade volcanic arc. These distinct features illustrate that recent tectonic processes have affected the structure of the crust. Additional trends in crustal characteristics align with the boundaries between the terranes that accreted together to form North America. The preservation of these ancient features suggests that they influenced subsequent deformation.
LaDiCaoz and LiDARimagerMATLAB GUIs for LiDAR data handling and lateral displacement measurement Olaf Zielke and J Ramon Arrowsmith, Arizona State University. Posted online 23 Jan. 2012; doi: 10.1130/GES00686.1
This software contribution publication provides Matlab GUIs (graphical user interfaces) for LiDAR (light detection and ranging) data handling and lateral displacement measurement. In recent years, digital elevation models (DEMs) generated from high-resolution LiDAR data have become a powerful tool for many scientific disciplines that investigate earth surface related processes such as tectonic geomorphology, hydrology, vegetation dynamics, or civil engineering. For example, they can be used in tectono-geomorphic studies to identify and measure geomorphic features such as fluvial channels that are laterally displaced as they cross an active fault zone. Such offset data may be used to reconstruct the earthquake history along a given fault (e.g., the San Andreas Fault, California). However, the high resolution and thus large volume of LiDAR data makes their analysis somewhat cumbersome. Here, Zielke and Arrowsmith provide Matlab GUIs that enable fast and uncomplicated LiDAR data visualization and processing as well as offset measurements. Key features of the provided GUIs include (A) analysis of large (>108 data points) DEMs on standard desktop PCs, (B) automated generation of *.kmz files from LiDAR-derived DEMs for import into GoogleEarth, and (C) slicing and lateral back-slipping of the DEM to assess offset measurement reliability.
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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.
Contact: Christa Stratton cstratton@geosociety.org Geological Society of America
Boulder, Colo., USA - New Geosphere research posted online ahead of print interprets the EoceneEarly Miocene paleotopography of Nevada, examines the origin of the Colorado Mineral Belt, compares mountain building processes in Alaska, uncovers more about the dynamic Antarctic ice from the AND-1B borehole, and more.
Highlights are provided below. Representatives of the media may obtain complimentary copies of Geosphere articles by contacting Christa Stratton at the address above. Abstracts for these and other Geosphere papers are available at http://geosphere.gsapubs.org/ .
Please discuss articles of interest with the authors before publishing stories on their work, and please make reference to Geosphere in articles published. Contact Christa Stratton for additional information or assistance.
Non-media requests for articles may be directed to GSA Sales and Service, gsaservice@geosociety.org.
EoceneEarly Miocene paleotopography of the Sierra NevadaGreat BasinNevadaplano based on widespread ash-flow tuffs and paleovalleys Christopher D. Henry et al., University of Nevada, Reno. Posted online 23 Jan. 2012; doi: 10.1130/GES00727.1
In as study by Henry et al., as much as 3000 km3 of the tuff of Campbell Creek erupted 28.9 million years ago from a supervolcano about 35 km in diameter in central Nevada. The tuff flowed down paleovalleys as much as 280 km to the west, into the western foothills of the Sierra Nevada, and 300 km to the northeast, to what is now the Ruby Mountains. The distribution of the tuff of Campbell Creek and other widespread ash-flow tuffs demonstrate that the Sierra Nevada was a lower, western ramp to a higher plateau in what is now central Nevada, that a north-south "paleo-continental divide" existed through central-eastern Nevada, and that the characteristic basin-and-range topography of Nevada did not exist until after 29 million years ago. The plateau and paleodivide connected northward at least into Idaho and southward into northern Sonora, Mexico.
Origin of the Colorado Mineral Belt Charles E. Chapin, New Mexico Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources (retired). Posted online 12 Jan. 2012; doi: 10.1130/GES00694.1
Ogden Tweto stated the puzzle of the Colorado mineral belt succinctly in 1975: "The problem is not so much why or how magmas were generated, but why magmatic activity took the pattern it didthat is, of a rather sharply defined belt diagonal to all major tectonic elements in an extensive region that elsewhere is nearly devoid of contemporaneous igneous rocks." The Colorado mineral belt is a 500-km-long, 25-km-wide belt of igneous intrusions and mining districts that trends northeastward from the Four Corners area on the Colorado Plateau to the eastern edge of the Rocky Mountains near Boulder, Colorado. In plate tectonics terms, the mineral belt is located within a 1200-km-wide gap in the volcanic chain that marked the western edge of North America during the Laramide orogeny (approximately 80 to 40 million years ago). As the North American plate moved southwestward, the Farallon oceanic plate was subducted beneath it on a northeastward trajectory. Observations that major differences in volcanism, sedimentation, and trends of mountain ranges occur on opposite sides of the Colorado mineral belt led Chapin to suspect that the mineral belt was located above a segment boundary in the subhorizontally subducted Farallon plate. Coincidence in timing of the beginning of magmatism along the mineral belt (75 million years ago) with accelerated FarallonNorth American convergence and major tectonic deformation of the Rocky Mountain area added credence to the plate tectonic interpretation. As the thicker lithosphere of the North American plate rapidly overrode the underlying Farallon plate, tensional stresses dilated the segment boundary, allowing fluids and magmas to rise into the crust of the Rocky Mountain region, thus forming the Colorado mineral belt.
Miocene magmatism in the Bodie Hills volcanic field, California and Nevada: A long-lived eruptive center in the southern segment of the ancestral Cascades arc David A. John et al., USGS. Posted online 23 Jan. 2012; doi: 10.1130/GES00674.1
The Miocene Bodie Hills volcanic field is a >700-square-kilometer eruptive center of subduction-related magmatism in the southern segment of the ancestral Cascades arc north of Mono Lake. It consists of about 20 major eruptive units, including four relatively mafic composition (basaltic andesite-andesite) stratovolcanoes emplaced along the margins of the field, and numerous, more centrally located intermediate to silicic composition (dacite-rhyolite) flow dome complexes. Volcanism was episodic with two peak periods of eruptive activity: an early period at about 14.7 to 12.9 million years ago that mostly formed stratovolcanoes, and a later period between about 9.2 to 8.0 million years ago dominated by large dome fields. Following an approximately 2-million-year hiatus in magmatic activity, post-subduction volcanic rocks of the Pliocene-Pleistocene (about 3.6 to 0.1 million years ago) Aurora volcanic field were deposited on the east side the Bodie Hills volcanic field. Geophysical data from John et al. suggest that many of the Miocene volcanoes have shallow plutonic roots that extend to depths ?2 km below the surface, and much of the Bodie Hills may be underlain by low-density plutons likely related to Miocene volcanism. Numerous hydrothermal systems were operative in the Bodie Hills during the Miocene volcanism, including systems that formed large gold-silver vein deposits in the Bodie and Aurora mining districts. Economically important mineral deposits in the Bodie Hills are temporally related to dome complexes. Rock compositions and volcanic center landforms in the Bodie Hills are broadly similar to these features in other parts of the southern part of the ancestral arc south of Lake Tahoe (approximately latitude 39 to 39.5N); dome fields among less abundant stratovolcanoes are common, intermediate compositions (andesite-dacite) are abundant, and mafic compositions (basalts) are scarce. The scarcity of mafic volcanic rocks is likely a consequence of thick crust that prevented ascent of mantle-derived basalt magmas. Farther north along the Miocene arc between Lake Tahoe and southern Oregon, the crust was thinner, basalt melts rose directly to the surface, and ancestral arc eruptions formed mafic shield volcanoes.
Structural relationships in the eastern syntaxis of the St. Elias orogen, Alaska James B. Chapman et al., SandRidge Energy. Posted online 23 Jan. 2012; doi: 10.1130/GES00677.1
Not all mountains are created in the same way. Chapman et al. examine an intersection between two mountain chains in southern Alaska. One set of mountains formed as a result of strike-slip faulting, and the other formed from contractional faults in a head-on collision of tectonic plates. By examining the fault surfaces involved within this intersection and studying the rocks that were folded and offset by these faults, we can unravel the history of these mountain chains and understand how they formed. In this instance, the mountains that formed by strike-slip faults were built first. These mountains formed several million years ago as a small tectonic plate was sliding northward along the west coast of North America. As this mountain chain pushed further north toward Alaska, the geometry of the plate boundary changed and the small tectonic plate could no longer easily slide northward. As a result, a new mountain chain began to form that involved different types and orientations of faults. This new mountain chain is the second type of mountains that formed from contraction. Chapman et al. can demonstrate how the new mountain system overprinted the older one and make an estimate of how long ago this process started to occur. Combining these age estimates with additional studies of the degree of faulting in the mountain chains provides important rates on faulting.
Lithostratigraphy from downhole logs in Hole AND-1B, Antarctica Trevor Williams et al., Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. Posted online 23 Jan. 2012; doi: 10.1130/GES00655.1
The ANDRILL McMurdo Ice Shelf (MIS) project drilled a 1285-meter-deep borehole containing a remarkable record of Antarctic glacial history. It shows that the West Antarctic ice sheet retreated and advanced about 38 times over the last 6 million years, with consequent sea level changes modeled to reach 3 to 7 m higher than today. This history of dynamic ice comes from the alternating sedimentary rock types: diatomite, formed from open-water plankton, and diamict, made of clays, sands, and gravel from under past ice sheets. There are other rock types, like mudstones and sandstones, and gradations between them all. Williams et al. describe how physical properties help to distinguish themproperties such as magnetic susceptibility, natural gamma radiation, potassium content, and electrical resistivity all have characteristic signatures in the different rock types. They can be used to describe features such as the increased clay content at the top of the diamicts and the base of the diatomites, and thus describe the transition from ice-covered to ice-retreated conditions. The properties measured in place by downhole logging tools represent the only information for the few intervals unrecovered by coring, and we interpret lithology for those intervals. In this way, we help to tell the story of dynamic Antarctic ice from the AND-1B borehole.
Crustal structure and signatures of recent tectonism as influenced by ancient terranes in the western United States Hersh Gilbert, Purdue University. Posted online 23 Jan. 2012; doi: 10.1130/GES00720.1
The western portion of North America has experienced a long history of deformation and is now characterized by diverse topography. Observations from data recently collected by the EarthScope USArray provide the first uniform seismic data set designed to investigate this region. Results presented here by Gilbert indicate that the crust varies in thickness across the western United States and exhibits distinct structures within the Basin and Range, Snake River Plain, the Sierra Nevada, and the active Cascade volcanic arc. These distinct features illustrate that recent tectonic processes have affected the structure of the crust. Additional trends in crustal characteristics align with the boundaries between the terranes that accreted together to form North America. The preservation of these ancient features suggests that they influenced subsequent deformation.
LaDiCaoz and LiDARimagerMATLAB GUIs for LiDAR data handling and lateral displacement measurement Olaf Zielke and J Ramon Arrowsmith, Arizona State University. Posted online 23 Jan. 2012; doi: 10.1130/GES00686.1
This software contribution publication provides Matlab GUIs (graphical user interfaces) for LiDAR (light detection and ranging) data handling and lateral displacement measurement. In recent years, digital elevation models (DEMs) generated from high-resolution LiDAR data have become a powerful tool for many scientific disciplines that investigate earth surface related processes such as tectonic geomorphology, hydrology, vegetation dynamics, or civil engineering. For example, they can be used in tectono-geomorphic studies to identify and measure geomorphic features such as fluvial channels that are laterally displaced as they cross an active fault zone. Such offset data may be used to reconstruct the earthquake history along a given fault (e.g., the San Andreas Fault, California). However, the high resolution and thus large volume of LiDAR data makes their analysis somewhat cumbersome. Here, Zielke and Arrowsmith provide Matlab GUIs that enable fast and uncomplicated LiDAR data visualization and processing as well as offset measurements. Key features of the provided GUIs include (A) analysis of large (>108 data points) DEMs on standard desktop PCs, (B) automated generation of *.kmz files from LiDAR-derived DEMs for import into GoogleEarth, and (C) slicing and lateral back-slipping of the DEM to assess offset measurement reliability.
###
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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.
After raising just shy of $23 million over the past 5 years, Skyfire today announced that they've raised their second biggest round of funding to date. Coming in at $8 million dollars, this Series C round is being funded by Verizon Investments (as in Verizon Communications' venture arm) along with new investments from previous investors Matrix Partners, Trinity Ventures, and Lightspeed Venture Partners.![[ Back to EurekAlert! ]](http://www.eurekalert.org/images/back2e.gif){kind=small}
Public release date: 25-Jan-2012
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