Group items tagged

Recorded by the European Space Agency’s Planck satellite, the image is a heat map of the cosmos as it appeared only 370,000 years after the Big Bang, showing space speckled with faint spots from which galaxies would grow over billions of years.

is in stunning agreement with the general view of the universe that has emerged over the past 20 years, of a cosmos dominated by mysterious dark energy that seems to be pushing space apart and the almost-as-mysterious dark matter that is pulling galaxies together. It also shows a universe that seems to have endured an explosive burp known as inflation, which was the dynamite in the Big Bang.

“The extraordinary quality of Planck’s portrait of the infant universe allows us to peel back its layers to the very foundations, revealing that our blueprint of the cosmos is far from complete.”

A Russian spy ship last seen off the coast of Connecticut was spotted late Wednesday steaming south -- and near the largest naval base in the world, where the U.S. Navy's Atlantic Fleet is located.

U.S. SPIES REPORTEDLY KEEPING INTELLIGENCE FROM TRUMP

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday it was in the interests of both Russia and the United States to restore ties between the two nations' intelligence agencies

var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-121540-1']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })(); Russell Brand on revolution: “We no longer have the luxury of tradition” window.onerror=function(){ return true; } var googletag = googletag || {}; googletag.cmd = googletag.cmd || []; (function() { var gads = document.createElement('script'); gads.async = true; gads.type = 'text/javascript'; var useSSL = 'https:' == document.location.protocol; gads.src = (useSSL ? 'https:' : 'http:') + '//www.googletagservices.com/tag/js/gpt.js'; var node = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; node.parentNode.insertBefore(gads, node); } )(); googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.defineSlot('/5269235/Test_NS_Minister_widesky', [160, 600], 'div-gpt-ad-1357235299034-0').addService(googletag.pubads()); googletag.pubads().enableSingleRequest(); googletag.enableServices(); } ); var loc = document.URL; var n=loc.split("/",4); var str= n[3]; googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.defineSlot('/5269235/NS_Home_Exp_5', [[4, 4], [975, 250]], 'div-gpt-ad-1366822588103-0').addService(googletag.pubads()); googletag.defineSlot('/5269235/NS_Vodafone_Politics_MPU', [300, 250], 'div-gpt-ad-1359018650733-0').addService(googletag.pubads()); googletag.defineSlot('/5269235/Vodafone_Widesky', [160, 600], 'div-gpt-ad-1359372266606-0').addService(googletag.pubads()); googletag.defineSlot('/5269235/Vodafone_NS_Pol_MPU2', [300, 250], 'div-gpt-ad-1359374444737-0').addService(googletag.pubads()); googletag.defineSlot('/5269235/NS_Vodafone_Politics_Leader', [728, 90], 'div-gpt-ad-1359018522590-0').addService(googletag.pubads()); googletag.defineSlot('/5269235/NewStatesman_Bottom_Leader', [728, 90], 'div-gpt-ad-1320926772906-0').addService(googletag.pubads()); googletag.pubads().setTargeting("Section", str);googletag.pubads().setTargeting("Keywords","property news","uk house prices","property development","property ladder","housing market","property market","london property market","uk property market","housing bubble","property market analysis","housing uk","housing market uk","growth charts uk","housing market predictions","property market uk","housing ladder","house market news","housing boom","property boom","uk property market news","housing market trends","the uk housing market","london property boom","property market in uk","news on housing market","the housing market in the uk","uk property boom","housing market in the uk","how is the housing market","property market in the uk","housing market trend","the uk property market","how is housing market","help to buy news","help to buy government","housing uk help to buy","housing market help to buy","property news help to buy","spectator blog help to buy","property boom help to buy","uk property boom help to buy","housing ladde

The right has all the advantages, just as the devil has all the best tunes. Conservatism appeals to our selfishness and fear, our desire and self-interest; they neatly nurture and then harvest the inherent and incubating individualism. I imagine that neurologically the pathway travelled by a fearful or selfish impulse is more expedient and well travelled than the route of the altruistic pang. In simple terms of circuitry I suspect it is easier to connect these selfish inclinations.

This natural, neurological tendency has been overstimulated and acculturated. Materialism and individualism do in moderation make sense.

The business model is simple: Treat many patients as quickly as possible. Urgent care is a low-margin, high-volume proposition. At PhysicianOne here, most people are in and out in about 30 minutes. The national average charge runs about $155 per patient visit. Do 30 or 35 exams a day, and the money starts to add up.

Urgent care clinics also have a crucial business advantage over traditional hospital emergency rooms in that they can cherry-pick patients. Most of these centers do not accept Medicaid and turn away the uninsured unless they pay upfront.

While convenience is one factor, so is cost. The average charge to treat acute bronchitis at an urgent care center in 2012 was $122, compared with $814 at an emergency room, according to data on the website of CareFirst Blue Cross Blue Shield, which operates in Maryland, Northern Virginia and the District of Columbia. The price of treating a middle-ear infection was $100 versus nearly $500 in an E.R. Such cost differences matter not only to commercial insurers, but also to consumers with high-deductible health plans.

examined more than a century of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration data across the Lower 48 states: They found that major areas are nearing or have already surpassed the 2-degree Celsius number that's “emerged as a critical threshold for global warming.”

“The potential consequences are daunting. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warns that if Earth heats up by an average of 2 degrees Celsius, virtually all the world’s coral reefs will die; retreating ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica could unleash massive sea level rise; and summertime Arctic sea ice, a shield against further warming, would begin to disappear.”

“Basically … these hot spots are chunks of the future in the present,”

Russian TU-95 Bear bombers were spotted flying about 41 miles off the coast of Alaska on Tuesday

It is unclear if these were the same planes that were intercepted by the F-22s on Monday, but defense officials told CNN that it was a separate violation.

The closest the bombers came was 36 nautical miles off the mainland Alaskan coast

It has been more than two months since Kamala Harris was sworn in as vice president of the United States, a historic moment for the country, as Harris is the first woman and the first woman of color to hold the second highest office in the land. Yet, Harris -- along with her husband, Georgetown Law professor Douglas Emhoff -- is still, ostensibly, living out of suitcases, unable to move into the private residence reserved for the vice president because it's still undergoing renovations.

It's unclear why the renovations are taking so long, said one administration official, but it's a situation that has left Harris increasingly and understandably bothered, according to several people who spoke to CNN about her situation. "She is getting frustrated," said another administration official, noting with each passing day the desire to move in to her designated house -- a stately, turreted mansion two-and-a-half miles from the White House -- grows more intense.

CNN has looked at various government contracts, awarded for myriad issues at the vice president's residence over the last few years, many of which detail intensive foundational work. From recently wrapped projects on a retention pond to a replaced tank system for $164,000 from last September, repairs and upkeep appear constant. There's also an ongoing $3.8 million contract for "plumbing, heating and air-conditioning contractors," according to the contract on the United States government spending website.

A year after the pandemic shut down the country, a growing number of infectious disease experts, epidemiologists, public health officials and others have started to entertain a notion that has long seemed out of reach: The worst of the pandemic may be over for the United States.

No one thinks that's guaranteed by any means. There are many ways the pandemic could resurge. But many say it's becoming increasingly possible that the end may finally be in sight.Even experts who have raised the alarm about the severity of the COVID-19 crisis nonstop for more than a year are optimistic.

Now, to be clear, more than 50,000 people are still getting infected daily with the coronavirus and hundreds are dying. So there's a great deal of sickness and suffering still in store for the country before the pandemic ends.

“To us,” she writes, “reality may appear human-sized, but in truth 95% of all animal species are smaller than the human thumb.”

The matter and life we cannot see are demonstrated with stunning effect. Bacterial cells make up 0.2kg of your body weight; one handful of soil contains more microbes than there are people on Earth; the tiny particles called neutrinos generated by the sun’s nuclear fusion are so small that they can penetrate the Earth, enabling a subterranean observatory to come up with an image of the sun.

In three sections – on biology, society and civilisation – Tong relentlessly focuses on all the things we either do not know, or decide not to pay attention to, as we carry on with our lives

Johnson also demanded a more aggressive strategy for combating violent crime — which was delivered by his new police chief, Eddie Garcia, who took over the department in early 2021. Parts of it involved tactics such as deploying “violence interrupters” to resolve street-level conflicts and guide those who need them to social services, and cleaning up blighted areas, such as trash-filled vacant lots and dilapidated buildings, where crime can breed.

The plan that Garcia developed, working with criminologists at the University of Texas at San Antonio, also refocused policing in Dallas on “hot spots.”

They divided the city into 101,000 “microgrids” — areas roughly the size of two football fields side-by-side — and discovered that crime was heavily concentrated in relatively few — an apartment complex here or a nightclub parking lot there. Just 50 of these hot spots accounted for almost 10 percent of violent street crime in Dallas.

the Obama team also consciously built his reelection on a narrative designed to be as inspiring as the one that lifted him to victory in 2008, albeit in a different way. This year’s narrative turned on the sheer range and scale of obstacles Obama faced — the story of a leader who perseveres relentlessly in the face of extraordinary conditions to improve the future of the middle class.

Obama’s original victory was improbable enough. But consider the extraordinary hurdles he overcame to win reelection.

Obama guru David Axelrod is a believer in the centrality of storytelling to politics — he has been described as “the keeper of Obama’s narrative.” Faced with terrible economic conditions and an implacable opposition, Obama’s brain trust knew Obama would only survive if he ran a scorched earth campaign designed to tear apart his opponent. But the Obama team also married this to an uplifting narrative about Obama that appropriated the very economic and political obstacles he faced.

To assess the validity of this study, the research and analysis team graded their past work on global trends, an effort undertaken every four years since 1996. Past studies, they found, had underestimated the speed with which changes arrived on the global scene.

The risk of conflict within a state — like a civil war or an insurgency — is expected to decline in Latin America, but will remain high in sub-Saharan Africa, in parts of the Middle East and South Asia, as well as in some Asia-Pacific island hot spots, the study warns.

“the health of the global economy increasingly will be linked to how well the developing world does — more so than the traditional West.” In addition to China, the developing nations that “will become especially important to the global economy” include India, Brazil, Colombia, Indonesia, Nigeria, South Africa and Turkey.

The monied wing of the Republican Party suffers from what political scientists call a “resource curse” — the same “paradox of plenty” that blocks the advancement of oil-rich countries in the Middle East and elsewhere. Too much cash flowing from big donors to super PACs and tax-exempt organizations is the Republican curse.

Reading about some conservative organizations and Republican campaigns these days, one is reminded of Eric Hoffer’s remark, “Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.” It may be that major parts of American conservatism have become such a racket that a kind of refounding of the movement as a cause is necessary.

I asked Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia how parties can change direction after defeat. Sabato responded by e-mail:The hardest thing for a party to do is to make painful choices that require a break-up within the old coalition in order to create a new, more competitive coalition. Usually, only repeated losses —being hit over the head with a two-by-four — will motivate a party to try something truly different.

The Only Cure for OCD Is Expensive, Elusive, and Scary

She can’t resist picking up litter whenever she spots it; the other day she cleaned up the entire parking lot of her apartment complex. Each night, she must place her phone in an exact spot on the nightstand in order to fall asleep.

Since then, a succession of therapists have failed to help her. They’ve told her, “I don't really know how to treat this,” she said. Or, they talked to her about the possible source of her troubles.

Scientists have spent decades examining all the factors that can influence the rise of the seas, and their research is finally leading to answers. And the more the scientists learn, the more they perceive an enormous risk for the United States.

Much of the population and economy of the country is concentrated on the East Coast, which the accumulating scientific evidence suggests will be a global hot spot for a rising sea level over the coming century.

Because of their importance to navigation, they have been measured for the better part of two centuries. While the record is not perfect, scientists say it leaves no doubt that the world’s oceans are rising. The best calculation suggests that from 1880 to 2009, the global average sea level rose a little over eight inches.

Russia’s decision to cancel a longstanding high school exchange program with the United States has had one result that the Kremlin may not have anticipated: more slots open for students from Ukraine.

one of its students sought asylum in the United States on the grounds that he would face persecution at home because he is gay.

. Ukraine currently has 204 exchange students in the program, and the decision will expand that number to more than 300

Their assuredness is as bold as the company behind the school: IMG, the global sports management conglomerate that has helped propel the competitive leap that high school football has made beyond the traditional community team.

convention is being challenged by a more professional model at the highest levels as top players urgently pursue college scholarships, training becomes more specialized, big business opens its wallet, school choice expands, and schools seek to market themselves through sports, some for financial survival.

Increasingly, prep football talent is being consolidated on powerful public, private, parochial, charter and magnet school teams. And recruiting to those schools is widespread in one guise or another.