2 space rocks hours apart point up the danger

FILE - In this 1953 file photo, trees lie strewn across the Siberian countryside 45 years after a meteorite struck the Earth near Tunguska, Russia. The 1908 explosion is generally estimated to have been about 10 megatons; it leveled some 80 million trees for miles near the impact site. The meteor that streaked across the Russian sky Friday, Feb. 15, 2013, is estimated to be about 10 tons. It exploded with the power of an atomic bomb over the Ural Mountains, about 5,000 kilometers (3,000 miles) west of Tunguska. (AP Photo, File)

FILE - In this 1953 file photo, trees lie strewn across the Siberian countryside 45 years after a meteorite struck the Earth near Tunguska, Russia. The 1908 explosion is generally estimated to have been about 10 megatons; it leveled some 80 million trees for miles near the impact site. The meteor that streaked across the Russian sky Friday, Feb. 15, 2013, is estimated to be about 10 tons. It exploded with the power of an atomic bomb over the Ural Mountains, about 5,000 kilometers (3,000 miles) west of Tunguska. (AP Photo, File)

In this photo provided by Chelyabinsk.ru a meteorite contrail is seen over Chelyabinsk on Friday, Feb. 15, 2013. A meteor streaked across the sky of Russia?s Ural Mountains on Friday morning, causing sharp explosions and reportedly injuring around 100 people, including many hurt by broken glass. (AP Photo/Chelyabinsk.ru)

This image provided by NASA/JPL-Caltech shows a simulation of asteroid 2012 DA14 approaching from the south as it passes through the Earth-moon system on Friday, Feb. 15, 2013. The 150-foot object will pass within 17,000 miles of the Earth. NASA scientists insist there is absolutely no chance of a collision as it passes. (AP Photo/NASA/JPL-Caltech)

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) ? A space rock even bigger than the meteor that exploded like an atom bomb over Russia could drop out of the sky unannounced at any time and wreak havoc on a city. And Hollywood to the contrary, there isn't much the world's scientists and generals can do about it.

But some former astronauts want to give the world a fighting chance.

They're hopeful Friday's cosmic coincidence ? Earth's close brush with a 150-foot asteroid, hours after the 49-foot meteor struck in Russia ? will draw attention to the dangers lurking in outer space and lead to action, such as better detection and tracking of asteroids.

"After today, a lot of people will be paying attention," said Rusty Schweickart, who flew on Apollo 9 in 1969, helped establish the planet-protecting B612 Foundation and has been warning NASA for years to put more muscle and money into a heightened asteroid alert.

Earth is menaced all the time by meteors, which are chunks of asteroids or comets that enter Earth's atmosphere. But many if not most of them are simply too small to detect from afar with the tools now available to astronomers.

The meteor that shattered over the Ural Mountains was estimated to be 20 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima during World War II. It blew out thousands of windows and left more than 1,000 people injured in Chelyabinsk, a city of 1 million. And yet no one saw it coming; it was about the size of a bus.

"This is a tiny asteroid," said astronomer Paul Chodas, who works in NASA's Near-Earth Object program in Pasadena, Calif. "It would be very faint and difficult to detect ? not impossible, but difficult."

As for the three-times-longer asteroid that hurtled by Earth later in the day Friday, passing closer to the planet than some communications satellites, astronomers in Spain did not even discover it until a year ago. That would have been too late for pre-emptive action ? such as the launch of a deflecting spacecraft ? if it had been on a collision course with Earth.

Asteroid 2012 DA14, as it is known, passed harmlessly within 17,150 miles of Earth, zooming by at 17,400 mph, or 5 miles per second.

Scientists believe there are anywhere from 500,000 to 1 million "near-Earth" asteroids comparable in size to DA14 or bigger out there. But less than 1 percent have actually been spotted. Astronomers have catalogued only 9,600 of them, of which nearly 1,300 are bigger than 0.6 miles.

Earth's atmosphere gets hit with 100 tons of junk every day, most of it the size of sand, and most of it burning up before it reaches the ground, according to NASA.

"These fireballs happen about once a day or so, but we just don't see them because many of them fall over the ocean or in remote areas. This one was an exception," NASA's Jim Green, director of planetary science, said of the meteor in Russia.

A 100- to 130-foot asteroid exploded over Siberia in 1908 and flattened 825 square miles of forest, while the rock that is believed to have wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago was a monster 6 miles across.

The chances of Earth getting hit without warning by one of the big ones are "extremely low, so low that it's ridiculous. But the smaller ones are quite different," Schweickart said. He warned: "If we get hit by one of them, it's most likely we wouldn't have known anything about it before it hit."

Chodas said the meteor strike in Russia is "like Mother Nature is showing us what a small one ? a tiny one, really ? can do."

All this points up the need for more money for tracking of near-Earth objects, according to Schweickart and the former space shuttle and station astronaut who now heads up the B612 Foundation, Ed Lu.

A few years ago, Schweickart and others recommended NASA launch a $250 million-a-year program to survey asteroids and work up a deflection plan. After 10 years of cataloging, the annual price tag could drop to $75 million, they said.

"Unfortunately, NASA never acted on any of our recommendations," he lamented. "So the result of it is that instead of having $250 million a year and working on this actively, NASA now has $20 million. ... It's peanuts."

Congress immediately weighed in on Friday.

"Today's events are a stark reminder of the need to invest in space science," said Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, chairman of the House science, space and technology committee. He called for a hearing in the coming weeks.

Bill Cooke, head of the Meteoroid Environments Office at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., said the space agency takes asteroid threats seriously and has poured money into looking for ways to better spot them. Annual spending on asteroid-detection at NASA has gone from $4 million a few years ago to $20 million now.

"NASA has recognized that asteroids and meteoroids and orbital debris pose a bigger problem than anybody anticipated decades ago," Cooke said.

Schweickart's B612 Foundation ? named after the asteroid in Antoine de Saint-Exupery's "Le Petit Prince" ? has been unwilling to wait on the sidelines and is putting together a privately funded mission to launch an infrared telescope that would orbit the sun to hunt and track asteroids.

Its need cannot be underestimated, Schweickart warned. Real life is unlike movies such as "Armageddon" and "Deep Impact." Scientists will need to know 15, 20 or 30 years in advance of a killer rock's approach to undertake an effective asteroid-deflection campaign, he said, because it would take a long time for the spacecraft to reach the asteroid for a good nudge.

"That's why we want to find them now," he said.

As Chodas observed Friday, "It's like a shooting gallery here."

___

Associated Press writer Alicia Chang in Los Angeles contributed to this story.

___

Online:

NASA: http://www.nasa.gov/topics/solarsystem/features/asteroidflyby.html

B612 Foundation: http://b612foundation.org

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2013-02-15-Meteor%20Menace/id-856bfdcf1ffe455dacebfabae0f174c5

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Burned remains found in California cabin ID'd as fugitive ex-cop Dorner

BIG BEAR LAKE, Calif. -- Officials said Thursday that the burned remains found in a California mountain cabin have been positively identified as fugitive former police officer Christopher Dorner.

Jodi Miller, a spokeswoman for the San Bernardino County sheriff-coroner, said the identification was made through Dorner's dental records.

Miller did not give a cause of death.

The search for Dorner began last week after authorities said he had launched a deadly revenge campaign against the Los Angeles Police Department for his firing, warning that he would bring "warfare" to LAPD officers and their families.

The manhunt brought police to Big Bear Lake, 80 miles east of Los Angeles, where they found Dorner's burned-out pickup truck abandoned. His footprints disappeared on frozen soil and hundreds of officers who searched the area and checked out each building failed to find him.

Five days later, but just a stone's throw from a command post authorities had set up in the massive manhunt, Karen and Jim Reynolds said they came face to face with Dorner inside their cabin-style condo.

The couple said Dorner bound them and put pillowcases on their heads. At one point, he explained that he had been there for days.

"He said `I don't have a problem with you, so I'm not going to hurt you,"' Jim Reynolds said. "I didn't believe him; I thought he was going to kill us."

Police have not commented on the Reynolds' account, but it renews questions about the thoroughness of a search for a man who authorities declared was armed and extremely dangerous as they hunted him across the Southwest and Mexico.

"They said they went door-to-door but then he's right there under their noses. Makes you wonder if the police even knew what they were doing," resident Shannon Schroepfer said. "He was probably sitting there laughing at them the whole time."

The notion of him holed up just across the street from the command post was shocking to many, but not totally surprising to some experts familiar with the complications of such a manhunt.

"Chilling. That's the only word I could use for that," said Ed Tatosian, a retired SWAT commander for the Sacramento Police Department. "It's not an unfathomable oversight. We're human. It happens. It's chilling (that) it does happen."

Law enforcement officers, who had gathered outside daily for briefings, were stunned by the revelation. One official later looking on Google Earth exclaimed that he'd parked right across the street from the Reynolds' cabin each day.

The Reynolds said Dorner was upstairs in the rental unit Tuesday when they arrived to ready it for vacationers. Dorner, who at the time was being sought for three killings, confronted the Reynolds with a drawn gun, "jumped out and hollered `stay calm,"' Jim Reynolds said during a Wednesday night news conference.

His wife screamed and ran downstairs but Dorner caught her, Reynolds said. The couple said they were taken to a bedroom where he ordered them to lie on a bed and then on the floor. Dorner bound their arms and legs with plastic ties, gagged them with towels and covered their heads with pillowcases.

"I really thought it could be the end," Karen Reynolds said.

The couple believes Dorner had been staying in the cabin at least since Feb. 8, the day after his burned truck was found nearby. Dorner told them he had been watching them by day from inside the cabin as they did work outside. The couple, who live nearby, only entered the unit Tuesday. "He said we are very hard workers," Karen Reynolds said.

After he fled in their purple Nissan Rogue, she managed to call 911 from a cellphone on the coffee table. Police said Dorner later killed a fourth person, a sheriff's deputy, during a standoff, and died inside the burning cabin where he took cover during a blazing shootout.

While authorities have not corroborated the couple's account, it matched early reports from law enforcement officials that a couple had been tied up and their car stolen by a man resembling Dorner. Property records showed the Reynolds as the condo's owners.

The San Bernardino County sheriff has refused to answer questions about how one of the largest manhunts in years could have missed him.

During the search, heavily armed deputies went door to door to search roughly 600 cabins for forced entry. Many of the cabins were boarded-up summer homes.

Authorities said officers looked for signs that someone had forcibly entered the buildings, or that heat was on inside in a cabin that otherwise looked uninhabited.

Helicopters had landed SWAT officers in a lot near the Reynolds' condo, and through the weekend they stood in plain view from the cabin, gearing up in helmets, bulletproof vests, with assault weapons at the ready.

According to the Reynolds, the cabin had cable TV, and a second-story view that would have allowed him to see choppers flying in and out.

Timothy Clemente, a retired FBI SWAT team leader who was part of the search for Atlanta Olympics bomber Eric Rudolph, said searchers had to work methodically. When there's a hot pursuit, they can run after a suspect into a building. But in a manhunt, the search has to slow down. "You can't just kick in every door," he said. Police have to have a reason to enter a building.

Officers would have been approaching each cabin, rock and tree with the prospect that Dorner was behind and waiting with a weapon that could penetrate bulletproof vests. In his manifesto posted online, Dorner, a former Navy reservist, said he had no fear of losing his life and would wage "unconventional and asymmetrical warfare" and warned officers "you will now live the life of the prey."

Even peering through windows can be difficult because officers have to remove a hand from their weapons to shade their eyes. Experts said it is likely officers may have used binoculars to help examine homes from a distance, especially when dealing with a man who had already killed three people, including a police officer.

In many cases, officers didn't even knock on the doors, according to searchers and residents.

"If Chris Dorner's on the other side of the door, what would the response be?" Clemente said. "A .50 caliber round or .223 round straight through that door."

Source: http://www.khou.com/news/Burned-remains-IDd-as-fugitive-ex-cop-Dorner--191314801.html

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Anti-abortion activists harness states' health policies

Abortion opponents have found a new way to restrict access to abortion ? by using the authority states have over the new health insurance exchanges, which will be up and running in a year.

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At least 21 states have legislation in place or in the works that will stop health insurance companies from paying for abortions for women. Arkansas governor Mike Beebe signed the latest piece on Monday.

The 2010 Affordable Care Act requires states to set up health insurance marketplaces called exchanges by October of this year. Through exchanges, people who don?t have health insurance through the government or an employer can buy health insurance.

States that set up their own exchanges can set the rules for insurers who take part. States that decline to set up exchanges will rely on the federal government to run them.

?Since the health care law was passed, because there is language in the law that says specifically that states can do this, states have taken it up,? says Gretchen Borchelt, who heads state reproductive health policy at the National Women?s Law Center.

The law was a reminder, Borchelt says. ?They said, ?hey we can do this???

Elizabeth Nash of the Guttmacher Institute, which conducts research into reproductive issues, agreed. ?It really spotlighted the issue for the states,? she said.

Three states ? Kansas, Nebraska and Utah ? passed their own legislation almost as soon as the health reform law was signed in 2010. Their laws ban any insurance company that takes part in the health insurance exchanges from paying for abortion. Other states that have since passed similar bans, meaning no woman can get her abortion covered by health insurance, include: Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Virginia and Wisconsin.

Kentucky has had a law limiting insurance companies from paying for abortions on the books since 1984; Missouri since 1983, North Dakota since 1979.

?Bans like this will take coverage away from women. Women are going to lose benefits they currently have,? Borchelt said. ?We are very, very concerned that women are losing access to these benefits and concerned that politicians are stepping in and interfering with a woman?s ability to make her own health care decisions."

No federal funds
Most of the states allow insurance to pay for abortions with certain exceptions, such as when the mother?s life is at risk, and some in the case of rape or incest.

Federal law already forbids the use of federal funds to pay for abortions. Federal money will be used to subsidize coverage for millions of people expected to sign up on the health insurance exchanges, and so it could not be used to pay for abortions.

?The law maintains current Hyde Amendment restrictions that govern abortion policy, which prohibit federal funds from being used for abortion services (except in cases of rape or incest, or when the life of the woman would be endangered), and extends those restrictions to the newly created health insurance exchanges,? the National Conference of State Legislatures says in a statement on its website.

?The new health reform law also maintains federal ?conscience? protections for health care providers who object to performing abortion or sterilization procedures that conflict with their beliefs.?

Arkansas state senator Cecile Bledsoe, who helped usher through her state?s legislation, has said the states need to provide some structure.

?Without this law, those who are responsible for setting up our health care exchanges will be left without clear guidance from the legislature about how to deal with abortion as they deal with the recently passed federal health care law," Bledsoe told the Associated Press as saying. She did not immediately return requests for comment from NBC News.

Dana Singiser, vice president for public policy at the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said the moves to block coverage on the exchanges were part of a larger anti-abortion strategy that relies on state law. ?Our opponents have not seen much success at the federal level and they are turning to the state legislatures as an alternative strategy,? Singiser said in a telephone interview.

Borchelt said groups like hers that support access to abortion are lobbying in the states that don?t have laws on the books. ?We are certainly working very hard in states that are considering these bans to try and stop them from moving forward,? she said.

Georgia and New Jersey are among states considering measures.

Costs going up
The laws, along with measures that make it more difficult for abortion clinics to operate, requiring multiple visits to providers before a woman may get an abortion or mandating extra examinations such as ultrasounds, are all making it harder for women to get abortions, Borchelt said.

?Sometimes because a woman has to have a waiting period or has to get informed consent, which requires several trips, the procedure is getting pushed back later and later and so the cost of an abortion is going up,? Borchelt said.

Nash said a simple early-term abortion costs about $450, but this cost goes up greatly for a later-term abortion. Women who discover late in pregnancy that a fetus is malformed or whose own lives or health are at stake may have to pay thousands of dollars out of pocket for an abortion in states that ban all insurance coverage, she said.

But many women already pay out of their own pockets for abortions, even if they have insurance coverage, Nash added. ?They are afraid their employers may find out they had abortions. They are afraid their spouse will find out they had an abortion,? she said.

Abortion rates have been falling in recent years.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says 784,507 legal induced abortions were reported in 2009 from 48 reporting areas. About 22 percent of pregnancies ended in deliberate abortion.

An NBC/Wall Street Journalpollreleased last month found that 70 percent of Americans oppose efforts to overturn Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court ruling that made abortions legal in the United States.

Related:

Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/id/50802838/ns/health-health_care/

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Olympian Pistorius charged with murder

PRETORIA, South Africa (AP) ? Paralympic superstar Oscar Pistorius was charged Thursday with the murder of his girlfriend who was shot inside his home in South Africa, a stunning development in the life of a national hero known as the Blade Runner for his high-tech artificial legs.

Reeva Steenkamp, a model who spoke out on Twitter against rape and abuse of women, was shot four times in the predawn hours in the house, in a gated community in the capital, Pretoria, police said.

Hours later after undergoing police questioning, Pistorius left a police station accompanied by officers. He looked down as photographers snapped pictures, the hood on his gray workout jacket pulled up, covering most of his face. His court hearing was originally scheduled for Thursday afternoon but has been postponed until Friday to give forensic investigators time to carry out their work, said Medupe Simasiku, a spokesman for the prosecution.

South Africans were shocked at the killing. But while Pistorius captured the nation's attention with his Olympic dreams, police said there was a history of problems involving him.

There have "previously been incidents at the home of Mr. Oscar Pistorius," said police spokeswoman Brigadier Denise Beukes. Police in South Africa do not name suspects in crimes until they have appeared in court but Beukes said that the 26-year-old Pistorius was at his home at the time of the death of Steenkamp and "there is no other suspect involved."

"Yes, there are witnesses and there have also been interviews this morning," Beukes told reporters outside the gated complex where Pistorius lived. "We are talking about neighbors and people that heard things that happened earlier in the evening and when the shooting took place."

Pistorius' father, Henke, declined to comment when contacted by The Associated Press, only saying "we all pray for guidance and strength for Oscar and the lady's parents."

Neither Pistorius' agent Peet van Zyl nor coach Ampie Louw could be reached while Pistorius' own cellphone went straight to an answerphone service.

Pistorius' former coach, Andrea Giannini, said he hopes it was "just a tragic accident." Gianni said he believed that Pistorius had been dating Steenkamp for "a few months."

"No matter how bad the situation was, Oscar always stayed calm and positive," Giannini told the AP in Italy. "Whenever he was tired or nervous he was still extremely nice to people. I never saw him violent."

Pistorius owned guns and tweeted a photo of himself at a shooting range in November 2011, bragging about his score.

"Had a 96% headshot over 300m from 50shots! Bam!" he tweeted.

Police said that earlier reports that Steenkamp may have been mistaken for a burglar by Pistorius did not come from the police. Several local media outlets had initially reported that the shooting may have been accidental.

Beukes said there had been previous incidents and "allegations of a domestic nature" at the home of the Olympic star and double-amputee runner, who is one of South Africa's and the world's most famous sportsmen and made history at the London Games last year by being the first double-amputee runner to compete at the Olympics.

"I'm not going to elaborate on it but there have been incidents (at Pistorius' home)," Beukes said.

Capacity Relations, a talent management firm, earlier named model Steenkamp as the victim of the shooting. Police spokeswoman Lt. Col. Katlego Mogale told the AP that officers received a call around 3 a.m. after the shooting.

A 9 mm pistol was recovered and a murder case opened against Pistorius.

Pistorius enjoyed target shooting with his pistol and an online advertisement featuring him for Nike read: "I am a bullet in the chamber." An article in January 2012 in The New York Times Magazine described him talking about how he pulled a pistol to search his home when his alarm went off the night before an interview. At Pistorius' suggestion, he and the journalist went to a nearby target range where they fired at targets with a 9 mm pistol. At one point, Pistorius told the writer: "If you practiced, I think you could be pretty deadly."

Asked how often he went target shooting, Pistorius replied: "Just sometimes when I can't sleep."

On Thursday, Mogale said when police arrived at Pistorius' house they found paramedics trying to revive a 30-year-old woman, who had been shot four times. Mogale, who was speaking to the AP from the scene, said the woman died at the house.

Police have still not released the name of the woman, but the publicist for Steenkamp confirmed in a statement that the model was dead.

"We can confirm that Reeva Steenkamp has passed away," Steenkamp's publicist Sarit Tomlinson said. "We are in communication with people on the scene, please wait for official statements, as there is too much speculation at this moment in time. We will provide further information as soon as we are able to provide accurate information as to what transpired.

"Our thoughts and prayers go to the Steenkamp family, who have asked to have their privacy respected during this difficult time, everyone is simply devastated. She was the kindest, sweetest human being; an angel on earth and will be sorely missed."

Tomlinson said Steenkamp, known simply as Reeva, was one of FHM's (formerly For Him Magazine) 100 Sexiest Women in the World for two years running, appeared in countless international and national advertisements and was one of the celebrity contestants on Tropika Island of Treasure, filmed in Jamaica.

On Twitter, she tweeted messages urging women to stand up against rape alongside her excitement about Valentine's Day. "What do you have up your sleeve for your love tomorrow?" she tweeted. "It should be a day of love for everyone."

Mogale and Beukes said the victim's family had not yet identified the body.

Pistorius made history in London last year when he became the first double-amputee track athlete to compete in the Olympic Games, propelling him to the status of an athletics superstar.

Having had both his legs amputated below the knee before his first birthday because of a congenital condition, he campaigned for years to be allowed to compete against able-bodied athletes. Having initially been banned because of his carbon fiber blades ? which critics said gave him an unfair advantage ? he was cleared by sport's highest court in 2008 and allowed to run at the top events.

He competed in the 400 meters and on South Africa's 4x400 relay team at the London Games, making history after having his selection confirmed on South Africa's team at the very last minute. He also retained his Paralympic title in the 400 meters in London.

South Africa's Sports Confederation and Olympic committee released a statement on Thursday saying they had been "inundated" with requests for comment but were not in a position to give out any details of the shooting.

"SASCOC, like the rest of the public, knows no more than what is in the public domain, which is there has been an alleged fatal shooting on the basis of a mistaken identity and an apparent assumption of a burglary," the South African Olympic committee said. "The organization is in no position to comment on the incident other than to say our deepest sympathy and condolences have been expressed to the families of all concerned."

The International Paralympic Committee also said it wouldn't comment in detail apart from offering its condolences to the victim's family.

"This is a police matter, with a formal investigation currently underway," the IPC said. "Therefore it would be inappropriate for the IPC to comment on this incident until the official police process has concluded. The IPC would like to offer its deepest sympathy and condolences to all families involved in this case."

South Africa has some of the world's highest murder rates, with nearly 50 people killed each day in the nation of 50 million. It also has high rates of rape, other assaults, robbery and carjackings.

U.N. statistics show South Africa has the second highest rate of shooting deaths in the world, second only to Colombia.

___

Imray reported from Cape Town, South Africa. Associated Press writer Michelle Faul contributed to this report from Johannesburg.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/olympian-pistorius-charged-murder-121034220--oly.html

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Ten Afghan "civilians" killed in NATO airstrike

KUNAR, Afghanistan (Reuters) - A NATO airstrike killed 10 Afghan civilians, including five children, in eastern Afghanistan on Wednesday, local officials said, a toll that if confirmed is likely to raise tension between President Hamid Karzai's government and U.S.-led NATO forces.

The strike, in the Shigal district of Kunar province, was confirmed by NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), though a spokesman said it could not confirm civilian casualties.

"Foreign forces carried out the attack by themselves without informing us," Kunar Governor Fazlullah Wahidi told Reuters.

Four Taliban fighters were also killed in the strike and five civilians wounded, he said.

The strike occurred in the village of Chawgam and the 10 dead civilians were from two local families, Wahidi said.

A spokesman for ISAF, Major Adam Wojack, said he was aware of an incident which "matched" the report from Kunar, but he could not confirm casualty numbers.

"We take all allegations of civilian casualties seriously and we are currently assessing the incident to determine more facts," Wojack said.

ISAF regularly states that it has reduced civilian casualties in recent years, and that the insurgents are now responsible for 84 per cent of all such deaths and injuries.

The airstrike came within hours of U.S. President Barack Obama's declaration that he would be withdrawing half the U.S. troops in Afghanistan - 34,000 - by the end of this year.

That would be followed by further troop withdrawals next year which would lead to the end of the U.S. war in Afghanistan, he said.

(Reporting by Mohammad Anwar; Writing by Mirwais Harooni, Dylan Welch; Editing by Nick Macfie)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/ten-afghan-civilians-killed-nato-airstrike-074923151.html

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Team creates MRI for the nanoscale: Level comparable to an atomic force microscope

Feb. 13, 2013 ? Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) reveals details of living tissues, diseased organs and tumors inside the body without x-rays or surgery. What if the same technology could peer down to the level of atoms? Doctors could make visual diagnoses of a person's molecules -- examining damage on a strand of DNA, watching molecules misfold, or identifying a cancer cell by the proteins on its surface.

Now Dr. Carlos Meriles, associate professor of physics at The City College of New York, and an international team of researchers at the University of Stuttgart and elsewhere have opened the door for nanoscale MRI. They used tiny defects in diamonds to sense the magnetic resonance of molecules. They reported their results in the Feb. 1 issue of Science.

"It is bringing MRI to a level comparable to an atomic force microscope," said Professor Meriles, referring to the device that traces the contours of atoms or tugs on a molecule to measure its strength. A nanoscale MRI could display how a molecule moves without touching it.

"Standard MRI typically gets to a resolution of 100 microns," about the width of a human hair, said Professor Meriles. "With extraordinary effort," he said, "it can get down to about 10 microns" -- the width of a couple of blood cells. Nanoscale MRI would have a resolution 1,000 to 10,000 times better.

To try to pick up magnetic resonance on such a small scale, the team took advantage of the spin of protons in an atom, a property usually used to investigate quantum computing. In particular, they used minute imperfections in diamonds.

Diamonds are crystals made up almost entirely of carbon atoms. When a nitrogen atom lodges next to a spot where a carbon atom is missing, however, it creates a defect known as a nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center.

"These imperfections turn out to have a spin -- like a little compass -- and have some remarkable properties," noted Professor Meriles. In the last few years, researchers realized that these NV centers could serve as very sensitive sensors. They can pick up the magnetic resonance of nearby atoms in a cell, for example. But unlike the atoms in a cell, the NVs shine when a light is directed at them, signaling what their spin is. If you illuminate it with green light it flashes red back.

"It is a form of what is called optically detected magnetic resonance," he said. Like a hiker flashing Morse code on a hillside, the sensor "sends back flashes to say it is alive and well."

"The NV can also be thought of as an atomic magnet. You can manipulate the spin of that atomic magnet just like you do with MRI by applying a radio frequency or radio pulses," Professor Meriles explained. The NV responds. Shine a green light at it when the spin is pointing up and it will respond with brighter red light. A down spin gives a dimmer red light.

Professor Mireles has written on the theoretical underpinnings of the work and proposed the the project to the team, led by Professor J?rg Wrachtrup -- a physicist at the University of Stuttgart in Germany -- with the assistance of postdoctoral researcher Friedemann Reinhard and collaborators from the University of Bochum and the University of Science and Technology of China. Professor Wrachtrup heads a leading group studying such defects.

In the lab, graduate student Tobias Staudacher -- the first author in this work -- used NVs that had been created just below the diamond's surface by bombarding it with nitrogen atoms. The team detected magnetic resonance within a film of organic material applied to the surface, just as one might examine a thin film of cells or tissue.

"Ultimately," said Professor Meriles, "One will use a nitrogen-vacancy mounted on the tip of an atomic force microscope -- or an array of NVs distributed on the diamond surface -- to allow a scanning view of a cell, for example, to probe nuclear spins with a resolution down to a nanometer or perhaps better."

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by City College of New York.

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1. T. Staudacher, F. Shi, S. Pezzagna, J. Meijer, J. Du, C. A. Meriles, F. Reinhard, J. Wrachtrup. Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy on a (5-Nanometer)3 Sample Volume. Science, 2013; 339 (6119): 561 DOI: 10.1126/science.1231675

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Marco Rubio's water swigs divert public's attention from GOP response to Obama

WASHINGTON -- Republicans dismissed President Barack Obama's State of the Union address as nothing more than big government spending and more tax increases. But a brief sip of water may have gotten more immediate attention than any policy ideas.

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio's mid-speech swig from a small Poland Spring water bottle during his GOP response generated instant reaction in social media circles and on cable television, even as Republicans offered fresh appeals on the economy and promises to rein in federal spending.

Rubio appeared to wipe away sweat during his rebuttal from the Speaker's conference room in the U.S. Capitol. At one point he stretched out his left hand, grabbed a small plastic water bottle and took a brief swig of water. As the water break gained notice online, Rubio sent a photo of the bottle from his Twitter account.

On ABC's "Good Morning America" Wednesday, Rubio explained: "I needed water. What are you going to do? God has a funny way of reminding us we're human."

In his GOP address, Rubio urged Obama to "abandon his obsession with raising taxes" and said the president had shifted the nation away from free-market economic principles that had helped middle-class families achieve prosperity.

"Presidents in both parties -- from John F. Kennedy to Ronald Reagan -- have known that our free-enterprise economy is the source of our middle-class prosperity. But President Obama? He believes it's the cause of our problems," Rubio said.

Kentucky

Sen. Rand Paul, in a separate tea party response, said both parties had failed voters by driving up trillion-dollar deficits. "Washington acts in a way that your family never could -- they spend money they do not have, they borrow from future generations, and then they blame each other for never fixing the problem," Paul said.

Republicans sought to characterize Obama as overly reliant on government, even as the president made his case to the nation that he could generate new jobs without raising the federal deficit. Defending his policies against GOP critics, Obama said the nation needed a "smarter government" instead of a bigger one and pledged to boost the minimum wage and increase federal spending to fix roads and bridges.

Both Obama's address to Congress and the Republican responses around the Capitol sought to position each party as the champion of average Americans in a nation still grappling with high unemployment and a slow economic recovery. Republicans noted that the nation's jobless rate ticked up to 7.9 percent in January and the economy shrank at an annual rate of 0.1 percent in the final months of 2012.

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said Obama offered the American people "little more than more of the same 'stimulus' policies that have failed to fix our economy and put Americans back to work. We cannot grow the middle class and foster job creation by growing government and raising taxes."

Ohio Sen. Rob Portman accused Obama of promoting "the same big-government policies that have failed to get our economy up and running again."

Paul, a tea party favorite, said both parties had been guilty of "protecting their sacred cows" and engaging in "backroom deals in which everyone up here wins but every taxpayer loses." He said he would propose to balance the budget in five years and urged lawmakers to return to their duty of passing budgets. If not, Paul said, voters should "sweep the place clean. Limit their terms and send them home."

Rubio, a rising star in the Republican party and a potential 2016 presidential contender, pointed to his Miami roots to address Obama's frequent portrayal of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney -- and his party -- as only caring about the wealthiest Americans. Rubio said he still lived in the "same working-class neighborhood I grew up in" and his neighbors "aren't millionaires" but retirees, workers and immigrants.

"His favorite attack of all is that those who don't agree with him -- that we only care about rich people," Rubio said.

Rubio pre-recorded his speech in Spanish for Spanish-language networks, a nod to Republicans who have said that they must do more to address their deficit with Hispanic voters. Obama won 71 percent of Hispanics last year against Romney, prompting concerns about the party's ability to compete with Democrats in future elections.

Source: http://www.twincities.com/politics/ci_22580700/marco-rubios-water-break-dilutes-republican-response-obama?source=rss_viewed

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