Twitter's mobile team has been hard at work turning the functionality dial to maximum for their latest update, Twitter for iPhone 4.3. You can now enjoy the same expanded tweet's in the iPhone app that you get on the Twitter.com website. Here's what the Twitter bog had to say:
Since we introduced expanded Tweets on twitter.com, we?ve added several new partners like MLB and C-SPAN to a diverse and growing list of media sources. Starting today, you can also expand Tweets on Twitter for iPhone and Twitter for Android. When you tap a Tweet linking to a Kickstarter project, for example, you can play its video directly from the Tweet details view in your app. You can also read article summaries when you tap Tweets linking to sources like The Atlantic or play videos or view images when you expand Tweets linking to websites like Etsy and Vimeo. This new experience will roll out gradually to web, iPhone and Android users.
You can also set up per-account notifications so you can make sure you never miss a tweet from specific users -- like breaking news, daily deals, or... the boss. There's a variety of other updates in the Twitter 4.3 as well.
Again, the official Twitter client is intended for the new generation of Twitter users who don't have many followers, seldom if ever DM, and follow tons and tons of celebrities. It's not meant for power Twitter users who've been brought up on a steady diet of Twitterrific, Tweetie (the previous Twitter for iPhone), and Tweetbot.
However, the concern lately is that, rather than let those alternative 3rd party clients serve the original base, Twitter might force them out of the game entirely. And that would be tragedy. (See Matthew Panzarino's post on TNW from last weekend on what it's like to be paranoid when they are out to get you.)
For now Twitter for iPhone remains an excellent Twitter app for new users, or for people who want quick access to metrics like who followed, retweeted, and favorited them, and what's trending on the platform in general.
WASHINGTON (AP) - The fate of Texas' controversial new voter ID law - which requires voters to show photo identification at the polls - is set to be decided this week in a federal court in Washington.
The state, arguing the law will prevent voter fraud, is seeking to persuade a three-judge panel to uphold the statute. The Justice Department and a slew of intervening groups say the law disproportionately affects minority voters, violating the federal Voting Rights Act. They will seek to have it thrown out.
The case will be a test of the Voting Rights Act, passed in 1965, which was designed to protect minorities' rights to vote.
Oh, baby! A young star flaunts its X-ray spots in McNeil's NebulaPublic release date: 3-Jul-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Susan Gawlowicz smguns@rit.edu 585-475-5061 Rochester Institute of Technology
RIT astronomers on team announcing the rapidly spinning protostar
X-ray observations have revealed something curious about the young star that illuminates McNeil's Nebula, a glowing jewel of cosmic dust in the Orion constellation: The object is a protostar rotating once a day, or 30 times faster than the sun. The stellar baby also has distinct birthmarkstwo X-ray-emitting spots, where gas flows from a surrounding disk, fueling the infant star.
The young star, V1647 Orionis, first made news in early 2004, when it erupted and lit up McNeil's Nebula, located 1,300 light years away in a region of active star formation within the constellation of Orion. The initial outburst died down in early 2006, but then V1647 Ori erupted again in 2008, and has since remained bright.
More recently, astronomers combined 11 observations of V1647 Ori from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, the Japan-led Suzaku satellite, and the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton to determine the source of the high-energy emission. The team began monitoring the star shortly after its eruption in 2004 and continued to keep watch through 2010, a period covering both eruptions.
Strong similarities among X-ray light curves captured over this six-year period allowed the lead author on the study, Kenji Hamaguchi, astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, to identify cyclic X-ray variations. Hamaguchi and the rest of the team determined the star is rotating once per day, making V1647 among the youngest stars whose spin has been determined using an X-ray-based technique. Results from the study will appear in the paper "X-raying the Beating Heart of a Newborn Star: Rotational Modulation of High-energy Radiation from V1647 Ori," in the July 20 issue of The Astrophysical Journal.
"The observations give us a look inside the cradle at a very young star," says co-author Joel Kastner, a professor of imaging science and astronomical sciences and technology at Rochester Institute of Technology. "It's as though we're able to see its beating heart. We're actually able to watch it rotate. We caught the star at a point where it is rotating so fast as it gains material that it's barely able to hold itself together. It's rotating at near break-up speed."
The team identified V1647 Ori as a protostar in formation. "Based on infrared studies, we suspect that this protostar is no more than a million years old, and probably much younger," Hamaguchi says.
V1647 Ori presently feeds on gas channeled from a surrounding disk and will likely continue to do sothough not nearly so rapidlyfor millions of years. At that point it will finally be able to generate its own energy by fusing hydrogen into helium in its core like the sun and other mature stars.
Hamaguchi's analysis focused on repetitive behavior found in the data from all three of the X-ray observatories. By combining data, he pieced together a picture showing the daily rotation of two X-ray-emitting spots on V1647 Ori that are thousands of times hotter than the rest of the star.
The hot spots are located at opposite sides of the star, with the southerly one five times brighter than its companion. Each spot is about the diameter of the sun. In comparison, the low density of V1647 Ori bloats the star itself to nearly five times the size of the sun.
"We think these spots are showing us X-ray-emitting regions that are very tightly constrained to a couple positions on the star by magnetic fields," says Kastner, director of the Laboratory for Multiwavelength Astrophysics in RIT's Chester F. Carlson Center for Imaging Science. "For six years, through two different eruptions, we've seen it rotate like this. That means the magnetic field configurationthe overall geometry between the disk and the staris very stable. At the same time, the local disruption of magnetic fields probably generates the X-rays."
"One attractive possibility for driving such high-speed matter involves magnetic fields that are undergoing a continual cycle of shearing and reconnection in mass accretion," says co-author David Weintraub, professor of astronomy at Vanderbilt University.
In this picture, X-ray outbursts result from interplay of the magnetic fields belonging to the star and the disk. The star spins faster than the disk and winds up the magnetic fields until they snap like rubber bands. The pent up energy creates a powerful blast when the tangled magnetic fields fall back into place. The process, called magnetic reconnection, also powers X-ray flares on the sun.
During the outbursts, the star's luminosity varied at optical and infrared wavelengths. The astronomers associated this to changes in the protostar's main energy source, the inflow of matter onto the star. Because changes in the X-ray brightness of V1647 Ori closely followed those in the optical and infrared, the team established that its higher-energy emission is also closely linked to accretion.
"V1647 Ori gave us the first direct evidence that a protostar surges in X-ray activity as its rate of mass accretion rises," says co-author Nicolas Grosso, an astrophysicist of the French National Center for Scientific Research at the Strasbourg Astronomical Observatory.
The finding that an accretion burst could be accompanied a surge of high-energy X-rays during the formation of a young star was originally announced by essentially the same study team, led by Kastner, in a paper published in Nature in 2004. In that paper, the team first argued that X-rays emitted by V1647 Ori were coming from material falling onto the star from a surrounding disk.
Up until then, the more widely accepted mechanism for producing X-rays from protostars was thought to be via coronae that are far more powerful than the sun's, Kastner explains. Signatures in X-ray observations of a handful of stars in formative stages had led to the hunch that accretion might also contribute to or even dominate protostellar X-ray emission. The eruptions of V1647 Ori and a few other young stars that were accompanied by elevated X-ray emission levels have since underscored this connection, Kastner notes.
"The exciting and unexpected thing about our fresh look at the whole set of X-ray data for V1647 Ori is that this is the first time we've seen a star in such an early stage of formation with a regular rotation that you can measure in X-rays," Kastner says.
Kastner and team hope to confirm the X-ray study's findings at infrared wavelengths using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.
###
Additional co-authors on the study include Michael Richmond, professor of physics at RIT; David Principe, a doctoral candidate in RIT's Astrophysical Sciences and Technology program; and William Teets, a recent doctoral recipient in physics and astronomy from Vanderbilt University.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
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.
Oh, baby! A young star flaunts its X-ray spots in McNeil's NebulaPublic release date: 3-Jul-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Susan Gawlowicz smguns@rit.edu 585-475-5061 Rochester Institute of Technology
RIT astronomers on team announcing the rapidly spinning protostar
X-ray observations have revealed something curious about the young star that illuminates McNeil's Nebula, a glowing jewel of cosmic dust in the Orion constellation: The object is a protostar rotating once a day, or 30 times faster than the sun. The stellar baby also has distinct birthmarkstwo X-ray-emitting spots, where gas flows from a surrounding disk, fueling the infant star.
The young star, V1647 Orionis, first made news in early 2004, when it erupted and lit up McNeil's Nebula, located 1,300 light years away in a region of active star formation within the constellation of Orion. The initial outburst died down in early 2006, but then V1647 Ori erupted again in 2008, and has since remained bright.
More recently, astronomers combined 11 observations of V1647 Ori from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, the Japan-led Suzaku satellite, and the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton to determine the source of the high-energy emission. The team began monitoring the star shortly after its eruption in 2004 and continued to keep watch through 2010, a period covering both eruptions.
Strong similarities among X-ray light curves captured over this six-year period allowed the lead author on the study, Kenji Hamaguchi, astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, to identify cyclic X-ray variations. Hamaguchi and the rest of the team determined the star is rotating once per day, making V1647 among the youngest stars whose spin has been determined using an X-ray-based technique. Results from the study will appear in the paper "X-raying the Beating Heart of a Newborn Star: Rotational Modulation of High-energy Radiation from V1647 Ori," in the July 20 issue of The Astrophysical Journal.
"The observations give us a look inside the cradle at a very young star," says co-author Joel Kastner, a professor of imaging science and astronomical sciences and technology at Rochester Institute of Technology. "It's as though we're able to see its beating heart. We're actually able to watch it rotate. We caught the star at a point where it is rotating so fast as it gains material that it's barely able to hold itself together. It's rotating at near break-up speed."
The team identified V1647 Ori as a protostar in formation. "Based on infrared studies, we suspect that this protostar is no more than a million years old, and probably much younger," Hamaguchi says.
V1647 Ori presently feeds on gas channeled from a surrounding disk and will likely continue to do sothough not nearly so rapidlyfor millions of years. At that point it will finally be able to generate its own energy by fusing hydrogen into helium in its core like the sun and other mature stars.
Hamaguchi's analysis focused on repetitive behavior found in the data from all three of the X-ray observatories. By combining data, he pieced together a picture showing the daily rotation of two X-ray-emitting spots on V1647 Ori that are thousands of times hotter than the rest of the star.
The hot spots are located at opposite sides of the star, with the southerly one five times brighter than its companion. Each spot is about the diameter of the sun. In comparison, the low density of V1647 Ori bloats the star itself to nearly five times the size of the sun.
"We think these spots are showing us X-ray-emitting regions that are very tightly constrained to a couple positions on the star by magnetic fields," says Kastner, director of the Laboratory for Multiwavelength Astrophysics in RIT's Chester F. Carlson Center for Imaging Science. "For six years, through two different eruptions, we've seen it rotate like this. That means the magnetic field configurationthe overall geometry between the disk and the staris very stable. At the same time, the local disruption of magnetic fields probably generates the X-rays."
"One attractive possibility for driving such high-speed matter involves magnetic fields that are undergoing a continual cycle of shearing and reconnection in mass accretion," says co-author David Weintraub, professor of astronomy at Vanderbilt University.
In this picture, X-ray outbursts result from interplay of the magnetic fields belonging to the star and the disk. The star spins faster than the disk and winds up the magnetic fields until they snap like rubber bands. The pent up energy creates a powerful blast when the tangled magnetic fields fall back into place. The process, called magnetic reconnection, also powers X-ray flares on the sun.
During the outbursts, the star's luminosity varied at optical and infrared wavelengths. The astronomers associated this to changes in the protostar's main energy source, the inflow of matter onto the star. Because changes in the X-ray brightness of V1647 Ori closely followed those in the optical and infrared, the team established that its higher-energy emission is also closely linked to accretion.
"V1647 Ori gave us the first direct evidence that a protostar surges in X-ray activity as its rate of mass accretion rises," says co-author Nicolas Grosso, an astrophysicist of the French National Center for Scientific Research at the Strasbourg Astronomical Observatory.
The finding that an accretion burst could be accompanied a surge of high-energy X-rays during the formation of a young star was originally announced by essentially the same study team, led by Kastner, in a paper published in Nature in 2004. In that paper, the team first argued that X-rays emitted by V1647 Ori were coming from material falling onto the star from a surrounding disk.
Up until then, the more widely accepted mechanism for producing X-rays from protostars was thought to be via coronae that are far more powerful than the sun's, Kastner explains. Signatures in X-ray observations of a handful of stars in formative stages had led to the hunch that accretion might also contribute to or even dominate protostellar X-ray emission. The eruptions of V1647 Ori and a few other young stars that were accompanied by elevated X-ray emission levels have since underscored this connection, Kastner notes.
"The exciting and unexpected thing about our fresh look at the whole set of X-ray data for V1647 Ori is that this is the first time we've seen a star in such an early stage of formation with a regular rotation that you can measure in X-rays," Kastner says.
Kastner and team hope to confirm the X-ray study's findings at infrared wavelengths using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.
###
Additional co-authors on the study include Michael Richmond, professor of physics at RIT; David Principe, a doctoral candidate in RIT's Astrophysical Sciences and Technology program; and William Teets, a recent doctoral recipient in physics and astronomy from Vanderbilt University.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
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.
FILE- In this July 29, 2010, file photo, a worker monitors water in Talmadge Creek in Marshall Township, Mich., near the Kalamazoo River as oil from a ruptured pipeline, owned by Enbridge Inc., is attempted to be trapped by booms. On Monday, July 2, 2012, federal regulators proposed a $3.7 million civil penalty against the Canadian owner of the ruptured pipeline which dumped more than 800 million gallons of oil into the river. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya, File)
FILE- In this July 29, 2010, file photo, a worker monitors water in Talmadge Creek in Marshall Township, Mich., near the Kalamazoo River as oil from a ruptured pipeline, owned by Enbridge Inc., is attempted to be trapped by booms. On Monday, July 2, 2012, federal regulators proposed a $3.7 million civil penalty against the Canadian owner of the ruptured pipeline which dumped more than 800 million gallons of oil into the river. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya, File)
TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. (AP) ? Federal regulators proposed a $3.7 million civil penalty Monday against the Canadian owner of a pipeline that ruptured in 2010, dumping more than 800,000 gallons of oil into a southwestern Michigan river.
The U.S. Department of Transportation's Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration said the penalty against Enbridge Inc. would be the largest it has imposed. In a letter to the company, the agency listed 24 violations of hazardous liquid pipeline regulations, including failure to fix corrosion problems in the damaged pipe joint discovered as far back as 2004.
It also said the company had failed to detect the rupture for 17 hours after it happened during a scheduled shutdown July 25, 2010. Instead, Enbridge personnel twice restarted the line despite receiving multiple alarms and "indications of abnormal operating conditions" in its control center.
More than 680,000 gallons of crude was injected into the pipe during that period, "causing the total spill volume to greatly exceed Enbridge's worst case discharge scenario for this location," said the letter signed by David Barrett, director of PHMSA's central region office. The oil leaked into the Kalamazoo River and a tributary creek.
"We will hold pipeline operators accountable if they do not follow proper safety procedures to protect the environment and local communities," U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said.
Enbridge, based in Calgary, Alberta, has 30 days to respond. It could accept the agency's findings and pay the penalty or request a hearing before an administrative judge.
The company said it was cooperating with investigators and would not provide detailed comment until analyzing the agency's letter.
"Enbridge appreciates the hard work and due diligence that PHMSA has put into this investigation," said Stephen Wuori, president for liquid pipelines. He said the company had improved its control center operations and training since the Michigan spill.
The National Transportation Safety Board is expected to issue a report next week on what caused the rupture in the 30-inch pipeline extending from Griffith, Ind., to Sarnia, Ontario.
Barrett's letter said the break happened on the day Enbridge was conducting the latest in a series of inspections, using a tool that was left inside the line until after it was restarted more than two months later.
Enbridge's control center in Edmonton, Alberta, was undertaking what was supposed to be a 10-hour shutdown of the pipe when the failure occurred around 6 p.m. EDT, setting off alarms, Barrett's letter said. Instead of implementing procedures for dealing with emergencies and suspected leaks, operators left the line idle.
Around 4 a.m. on July 26, 2010, a different crew restarted the line and soon received alarms and troubling messages: Pressure at the Marshall pumping station wasn't rising as expected and there was a significant imbalance between the volume of oil being pumped into the line and the volume it was delivering.
Still, personnel took no emergency actions and kept the oil flowing for an hour, sending more than 439,000 gallons of heavy crude into the pipe. After evaluating the situation they again started the line. Despite receiving more alarms, they injected nearly 243,000 additional gallons over a half-hour before shutting it down again.
"By this time the prospects of a suspected leak had been openly discussed by various ... personnel, yet the Enbridge procedures for a suspected leak were not executed," Barrett said.
At 11:18 a.m., nearly 17 hours after the failure, a natural gas worker with Consumers Energy notified Enbridge that oil had been spotted in a creek near Marshall. Only then did the control center close remotely operated valves, isolating a 3-mile-long stretch of line that including the rupture.
Outlining specific regulatory violations, Barrett said Enbridge inspections in 2004 had turned up corrosion problems along the weld seam of the pipe joint that eventually would fail. In 2005, "crack-like anomalies" were found on the same joint. No repairs were made. The agency assessed the largest portion of the penalty ? $1 million ? for that alleged failure.
Most of the other violations drew $100,000 penalties.
Despite the largest fine ever levied by PHMSA, the $3.7 million total is much less than what companies have paid out for other large spills. Officials have yet to determine the fine against BP PLC for Clean Water Act violations from the Gulf of Mexico spill, but they could range from $5.4 billion to $21.1 billion.
Anthony Swift, attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, said the pipeline agency lacks authority to impose meaningful punishment.
"With projects this big, a fine of less than $4 million becomes a minimal cost of doing business rather than a real motivator to follow safety standards," Swift said.
Enbridge has estimated it cleanup costs at about $700 million.
ScienceDaily (July 2, 2012) ? Researchers have identified genetic markers that may influence whether a person finishes high school and goes on to college, according to a national longitudinal study of thousands of young Americans.
The study is in the July issue of Developmental Psychology, a publication of the American Psychological Association.
"Being able to show that specific genes are related in any way to academic achievement is a big step forward in understanding the developmental pathways among young people," said the study's lead author, Kevin Beaver, PhD, a professor at the College of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Florida State University.
The three genes identified in the study -- DAT1, DRD2 and DRD4 -- have been linked to behaviors such as attention regulation, motivation, violence, cognitive skills and intelligence, according to the study. Previous research has explored the genetic underpinnings of intelligence but virtually none has examined genes that potentially contribute to educational attainment in community samples, said Beaver.
He and his colleagues analyzed data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, also known as Add Health. Add Health is a four-wave study of a nationally representative sample of American youths who were enrolled in middle or high school in 1994 and 1995. The study continued until 2008, when most of the respondents were between the ages of 24 and 32. The participants completed surveys, provided DNA samples and were interviewed, along with their parents. The sample used for this analysis consisted of 1,674 respondents.
The genes identified in this research are known as dopamine transporter and receptor genes. Every person has the genes DAT1, DRD2 and DRD4, but what is of interest are molecular differences within the genes, known as alleles, according to Beaver. Subjects who possessed certain alleles within these genes achieved the highest levels of education, according to the findings.
Dopamine transporter genes assist in the production of proteins that regulate levels of the neurotransmitter dopamine in the brain, while dopamine receptor genes are involved in neurotransmission. Previous research has shown that dopamine levels play a role in regulating impulsive behavior, attention and intelligence.
The presence of the alleles alone did not guarantee higher levels of education, the study found. Having a lower IQ was more strongly associated with lower levels of education. Also, living in poverty and essentially "running with a bad crowd" resulted in lower levels of education despite the genetic effects.
Even though the genetic variants were found to be associated with educational levels, having a specific allele does not determine whether someone will graduate from high school or earn a college degree, according to Beaver. Rather, these genes work in a probabilistic way, with the presence of certain alleles simply increasing or decreasing the likelihood of educational outcomes, he said. "No one gene is going to say, 'Sally will graduate from high school' or 'Johnny will earn a college degree,'" he said. "These genetic effects operate indirectly, through memory, violent tendencies and impulsivity, which are all known predictors of how well a kid will succeed in school. If we can keep moving forward and identify more genetic markers for educational achievement, we can begin to truly understand how genetics play a role in how we live and succeed in life."
Share this story on Facebook, Twitter, and Google:
Other social bookmarking and sharing tools:
Story Source:
The above story is reprinted from materials provided by American Psychological Association (APA).
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
Kevin M. Beaver, John Paul Wright, Matt DeLisi, Michael G. Vaughn. Dopaminergic polymorphisms and educational achievement: Results from a longitudinal sample of americans.. Developmental Psychology, 2011; DOI: 10.1037/a0026313
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
![[ Back to EurekAlert! ]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_tuaGC82-OO5S4X3kHcmCkZ_NUvatwIqls3CEl5PksrP8mam3WM2-ZVQyo9b0zHrhlrap_HoW7Dt3YkTbYDKNA_rMeW8g_T-PZkgIBr2_g=s0-d){kind=small}
Public release date: 3-Jul-2012
Share ] 
