Volunteering abroad for a gap year, or during or after college, is, for many, a dream. Or maybe you just want to take a few months or a year off backpacking, making your way from Europe to Asia and beyond. When you?re lining up your Airbnb reservations and getting a new passport, however, it?s easy to forget that travel??
Source: http://rss.news.yahoo.com/rss/weightloss
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This is a recent quote from Nicholas Negroponte in Spain at the IaaC Lecture Series:
"Design school is the future, business school is dead."
The point may be stated in the extreme, but the point to consider is the importance of design in the future of business.
I have heard Nicholas talk about design several times but my thinking on design began with some posts from Frog Design after reading Helmust Esslinger's "A Fine Line" (Esslinger founded Frog Design.) Frog helped me to see the parallels to entrepreneurship in design. I then found the Stanford Design School, which is heavily influenced by the thinking of the design firm IDEO, and began reading about their design processes. Lately I have been reading Karl Ulrich's writings on design. Ulrich is another alumni of MIT (Negroponte) who teaches a Coursera offering on design. He also advocates that design should be part of a general requirements university curriculum, like writing, calculus, etc.
All of this reading lead me to realize that design process is an excellent model for the first part of a two-part process approach to entrepreneurship, which I described in this post a few days ago. I think both Nicholas and Ulrich would agree with this concept that a formal design process is the foundation of entrepreneurship, or at least the foundation to develop the hypothesis to be tested in the market. (For the sake of completeness, let us assume that the design process is used for addressing documented large market opportunities.)
In this post, "How to Survive the End of the Industrial Age", I basically argued that the individual must control their economic destiny in the 21st century and that entrepreneurship is the best solution. Therefore, I believe that business schools, as one means to teach entrepreneurship, must change as follows:
(All of my posts on design are here.)
Image credit: Systemtek
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Hello, friends! Don't be startled. This is, in fact, Gizmodo. It just looks a little different now. And works so much better.
     |
Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/MIO5ZtI4q1k/welcome-to-the-new-gizmodo-481330297
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NEW YORK (AP) ? The New York City medical examiner's office plans to resume searching for human remains two blocks from the World Trade Center after the sudden discovery of an airplane's landing gear.
Medical examiner's spokeswoman Ellen Borakove told The Associated Press on Saturday that the alley behind a mosque site will first be tested as part of a standard health and safety evaluation.
Borakove says sifting for human remains will begin at 8 a.m. Tuesday.
The New York Police Department has declared the alley a crime scene, documenting it with photos and restricting access.
Authorities say the rusted landing gear is believed to be from a Sept. 11 hijacked plane. Police were guarding the area as a crime scene Saturday.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/nyc-officials-seek-human-remains-amid-plane-debris-171255347.html
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Phil Jackson was diagnosed with prostate cancer in March 2011, the former Lakers? coach reveals in his new book. According to the O.C. Register, Jackson revealed the bad news to his team during the playoffs as what sounds like an attempt to motivate. (The story is behind a paywall, but a?Lakers? forum?has the full story.)
Jackson was diagnosed with prostate cancer in March 2011. After doctors assured him the cancer could be controlled by drugs temporarily, Jackson waited until after the season to undergo surgery.
Jackson decided to divulge his situation to his players when he sensed the team was lacking something in the playoffs.
?Shocking,? Pau Gasol said Saturday, remembering Jackson?s disclosure to the team. ?But then you also could understand certain moments of his demeanor, energy and involvement because of what he was going through health-wise. It explained certain things. It was a shock. A difficult moment for the team.?
Gasol said Jackson talked with team captains Kobe Bryant and Derek Fisher privately before telling the whole team in a video session ? but Jackson was left second-guessing the revelation in which he became teary-eyed as he spoke ? the Lakers strangely fading in that series vs. Dallas.
Whatever Jackson?s motivation for telling his team, it sounds like they were understandably shaken by the news. Whenever Jackson told them, the team was done. The Lakers were eliminated from the 2011 Playoffs by the eventual champion Dallas Mavericks in a 4-game sweep. The series ended with a 122-86 blowout in Dallas that featured?Andrew Bynum?s flagrant foul on J.J. Barea.
Gasol allowed that it was different for the team to see Jackson ? ?such a big figure, the physical and spiritual leader of the team? ? as vulnerable.
?As much as I love Phil and I appreciate everything about him,? Gasol said, ?it was difficult to know.?
The good news ? for Jackson at least ? is that he must be feeling pretty good again. People say he is interested in coaching again and there is a rumor about every team in the league making a run at him for various positions.
[OC Register, LakersGround, USA TODAY Sports Images, h/t Herbie]
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The iBuypower Valkyrie CZ-17 ($1,399 list) is a large, purpose-built performance laptop, and there's no doubt that you're carrying a lot of performance hardware with you. It's a true desktop replacement, with upgradable components, space for multiple hard drives, and a huge 1080p screen. If you need a big performance system for not a lot of money, relatively, then consider the Valkyrie a good choice for under $1,500.
Design and Features
The Valkyrie is an unsubtle, unapologetic gaming laptop. As such it is a huge mass of black plastic with lots of lighted accents including the keyboard, lid, speakers, and the system's trackpad. The system measures about 2.5-by-17-by-12 inches (HWD) and tips the scales at 8.56 pounds. This is a beefy system that will strain your back or the airline tray if you deign to travel with the system. This is larger in every dimension compared with the Editors' Choice for entry-level gaming laptops, the MSI GX60 1AC-021US ($1,299 list), but in the grand scheme of things they're both par for the course when it comes to moderately priced enthusiast gaming rigs.
The Valkyrie comes with a full-size backlit keyboard with numeric keypad. Like the MSI GX60, the Valkyrie has a few quirks: The Start button is to the right of the space bar instead of the left, and the placement of the numeric keypad pushes the arrow keys to the left in relation to the return key. Both will make you retrain your muscle memory if you're used to standard desktop keyboards. The Valkyrie has a much shallower trackpad than the MSI GX60, which will make the trackpad easier to use during day-to-day use and with Windows 8 commands. However, the trackpad isn't one of the better ones out there, registering mouse movements while we typed on the keyboard. Most gamers would be more comfortable using a USB 2.0 mouse for gaming sessions and day to day.
The Valkyrie has a decent selection of I/O ports, including two USB 2.0 ports on the right for accessories like mice and three USB 3.0 ports on the left for hard drives. The other ports include a SD card reader, multiple audio jacks, a Kensington lock port, Ethernet (with Killer brand network card), VGA, eSATA, and a HDMI port. It lacks newer ports like Thunderbolt and mini-DisplayPort, but the system has a good collection of current and legacy ports.
One neat feature is that the WASD keys and arrow keys are outlined in red, since these are the most important keys for many FPS, RPG, and MMO games. It would have been nice if iBuypower had incorporated a way to darken the other keys not in use or light the WASD keys in a different color, like on the Samsung Series 7 Gamer ($1,899). In any case, the system is easy to use in a darkened room, especially if you have a flashy mouse. There's a row of soft-touch keys above the keyboard, which let you eject the DVD drive, turn off the display, put the system into airline mode, toggle the keyboard lighting, open the media player, or activate the cooler boost. Cooler boost will help in a hot room, but the switch seemed to simply make the system louder in our air-conditioned lab.
In addition to the Gigabit Ethernet, the Valkyrie comes with 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi, but no 5GHz bands. The system comes with a DVD burner, though we wish our review unit had the optional Blu-ray drive for 1080p movies. Movies and games displayed smoothly on the system's 17.3-inch 1,920 by 1,080 display. While they're in the same price range, the Valkyrie CZ-17 and MSI GX60 give you a lot more screen real estate than the ultraportable Editors' Choice Maingear Pulse 11 ($1,349) and it's Clevo-chassis brothers, the AVADirect Clevo W110ER ($1129) and former EC Eurocom Monster 1.0 ($1,605). The trio of systems that are built on the Clevo W110ER chassis are limited to a 1,366-by-768 resolution on their 11-inch screens. The Clevo W110ER siblings and the tablet-based Razer Edge Pro ($1,450) are made more for portability, and the MSI GX60 and this Valkyrie CZ-17 are built around their huge screens. At least all of these choices, including the Valkyrie, come with removable or supplemental batteries, bucking the trend to make everything sealed and non-serviceable.
Speaking of serviceability, the Valkyrie CZ-17 comes with a service manual to guide users through CPU, memory, and hard drive upgrades. The system comes with three free slots for up to 32GB of memory total, and you won't have to remove the included 8GB in our test unit. There's even space for a second internal hard drive, which means you can upgrade to a SSD later. Note that if you do open your Valkyrie CZ-17 for service, you will void the one-year warranty.
Performance
However, the biggest disappointment with the system was its 3D gaming scores. While it's smoothly playable at the medium quality settings at 1,366-by-768 resolution, the games we tested (Aliens vs. Predator and Heaven) were just under the 30fps (frames per second) barrier, denoting that you will occasionally see some stuttered frames as we did during testing. The EC for entry-level gaming laptops, the MSI GX60 1AC-02US was 10 frames per second faster on both tests. Those extra 10 FPS yield smoother gameplay. Unfortunately for the iBuypower, that means that the MSI GX60 is a much better gaming platform, even though the Valkyrie topped the MSI GX60 by a good measure on the multimedia and day-to-day performance tests. The MSI simply has a better AMD Radeon HD 7970M GPU, while the iBuypower has a much faster Intel Core i7 CPU. Those are the tradeoffs you need to consider at this price point.
The Valkyrie system has a turbo function key combination (FN-F1), which ran an on screen animation to tell us that it was active. The manual describes it as Over-Clocking. However, when we tried running Aliens vs. Predator again with both the turbo and cooler boost functions active the score on the high quality test only went up by 0.2 FPS. This is a negligible improvement, and as such we'd describe these settings as all show, no go.
The Valkyrie's quad-core processor, large screen, and other battery-draining features kept the system to a scant 2 hours 19 minutes on our battery rundown test. That's not even enough to finish the first of the Lord of the Rings movie, the Fellowship of the Ring. Basically, this means that you really need to keep close to a power outlet when you use the Valkyrie.
The iBuypower Valkyrie CZ-17 is a great multimedia laptop with some gaming prowess. The big problem is that for $100 less, the EC-winning MSI GX60 has much better gaming performance. And, if I'm not mistaken, that's why you would buy a humungous gaming rig over a thin and light ultrabook with excellent multimedia performance. Thus the GX60 holds on to its Editors' Choice award, but consider the Valkyrie if you're going to spend a lot of time in between gaming sessions editing photos, videos, and the like.
BENCHMARK TEST RESULTS
COMPARISON TABLE
Compare the iBuypower Valkyrie CZ-17 with several other laptops side by side.
More laptop reviews:
??? iBuyPower Valkyrie CZ-17
??? Acer Aspire S7-191-6640
??? HP Pavilion TouchSmart 15z-b000 Sleekbook
??? Gigabyte P2742G-CF1
??? Acer Aspire V5-571PG-9814
?? more
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/HOLsWA7h4OU/0,2817,2418233,00.asp
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By Aaron Maasho
ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) - Ethiopian Airlines on Saturday became the world's first carrier to resume flying Boeing Co's 787 Dreamliner passenger jets, landing the first commercial flight since the global fleet was grounded three months ago following incidents of overheating in the batteries providing auxiliary power.
The flight from Addis Ababa to Nairobi was the first since regulators grounded all Dreamliners on January 16 after two lithium-ion battery meltdowns that occurred on two jets with other airlines within two weeks that month.
U.S. regulators approved a new battery design last week, clearing the way for installation and a resumption of Dreamliner flights by airlines around the world.
The battery faults raised fears of a possible mid-air fire, drawing worldwide attention to Boeing and denting the reputation of its flagship plane.
"I wasn't aware that I was going to be on the 787 Dreamliner until on my way to the airport. It was a good service and the flight was pleasant," said Senait Mekonnen, an Ethiopian restaurateur, moments after the plane landed.
The fully booked flight arrived at Nairobi's Jomo Kenyatta International Airport just after 9.30 GMT, with passengers giving the crew a round of applause upon landing.
The grounding of the Dreamliner fleet has cost Boeing an estimated $600 million, halted deliveries of the aircraft and forced some airlines to lease alternative planes.
The Dreamliner cost an estimated $20 billion to develop and represents a quantum leap forward in design, offering a 20 percent reduction in fuel burn and added cabin comforts such as higher humidity, larger windows and modern styling.
But by sparking fears of a dangerous mid-air fire, the battery problems drew worldwide attention to both aircraft safety and the technology behind lithium-ion batteries, which are widely used in laptops, mobile phones, electric cars and other products.
The scrutiny turned from what are often called normal "teething pains" for a new plane into a serious crisis for Boeing. As the plane goes back into service, what caused the fire is still unknown.
The battery that overheated on a parked Japan Airlines 787 in Boston caught fire and burned for more than hour before firefighters put it out. The plane was on the ground and empty. The second incident, which has not officially been termed a fire, occurred during a flight in Japan.
An odor of smoke in the cabin and warnings in the cockpit prompted the All Nippon Airways pilots to make an emergency landing and evacuate the aircraft. Boeing said both incidents showed its safeguards had worked.
CAUSE NOT YET FOUND
After the second incident, airlines were swiftly barred from flying the 250-seat aircraft, which carries a list price of $207 million. The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) launched a full-scale investigation to find the root cause of the Boston fire and examine the process by which the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) approved Boeing's design.
The NTSB has not yet found the cause, and after hearings last week the investigation continues.
The last time an airliner fleet was grounded was more than a generation ago, when the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration banned the McDonnell Douglas DC-10 jet in 1979 after a crash in Chicago killed 273 people.
Boeing spent thousands of hours and millions of dollars redesigning the battery system, drawing on its vast staff of engineers and experts in everything from fighter planes to rockets and satellites.
The changes include a revamped battery less prone to heat build-up, a redesigned charger and a stainless-steel enclosure capable of withstanding an explosion and equipped with a metal exhaust tube to vent fumes and gases outside the jet, if the battery overheats.
International airlines have been slowly putting the Dreamliner back into their schedules. United Airlines, the only U.S. carrier with the jet, said it will begin commercial flights on May 31. All Nippon Airways plans to conduct its first test flight of the revamped 787 on Sunday but has yet to decide when to resume passenger flights.
Ethiopian Airlines previously said its fleet did not suffer any of the technical glitches experienced by other Dreamliner jets, though it withdrew the planes from service to undergo the changes required by the FAA.
(Additional reporting by Alwyn Scott in Seattle and Tim Kelly in Tokyo; Writing by Drazen Jorgic; Editing by Mark Heinrich and Greg Mahlich)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/ethiopian-airlines-flies-first-787-dreamliner-flight-since-081658780.html
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Apr. 26, 2013 ? New research shows that movement of the ring-like molecule pyrrole over a metal surface runs counter to the centuries-old laws of 'classical' physics that govern our everyday world.
Using uniquely sensitive experimental techniques, scientists have found that laws of quantum physics -- believed primarily to influence at only sub-atomic levels -- can actually impact on a molecular level.
Researchers at Cambridge's Chemistry Department and Cavendish Laboratory say they have evidence that, in the case of pyrrole, quantum laws affecting the internal motions of the molecule change the "very nature of the energy landscape" -- making this 'quantum motion' essential to understanding the distribution of the whole molecule.
The study, a collaboration between scientists from Cambridge and Rutgers universities, appeared in the German chemistry journal Angewandte Chemie earlier this month.
A pyrrole molecule's centre consists of a "flat pentagram" of five atoms, four carbon and one nitrogen. Each of these atoms has an additional hydrogen atom attached, sticking out like spokes.
Following experiments performed by Barbara Lechner at the Cavendish Laboratory to determine the energy required for movement of pyrrole across a copper surface, the team discovered a discrepancy that led them down a 'quantum' road to an unusual discovery.
In previous work on simpler molecules, the scientists were able to accurately calculate the 'activation barrier' -- the energy required to loosen a molecule's bond to a surface, allowing movement -- using 'density functional theory', a method that treats the electrons which bind the atoms according to quantum mechanics but, crucially, deals with atomic nuclei using a 'classical' physics approach.
Surprisingly, with pyrrole the predicted 'activation barriers' were way out, with calculations "less than a third of the measured value." After much head scratching, puzzled scientists turned to a purely quantum phenomenon called 'zero-point energy'.
In classical physics, an object losing energy can continue to do so until it can be thought of as sitting perfectly still. In the quantum world, this is never the case: everything always retains some form of residual -- even undetectable -- energy, known as 'zero-point energy'.
While 'zero-point energy' is well known to be associated with motion of the atoms contained in molecules, it was previously believed that such tiny amounts of energy simply don't affect the molecule as a whole to any measurable extent, unless the molecule broke apart.
But now, the researchers have discovered that the "quantum nature" of the molecule's internal motion actually does affect the molecule as a whole as it moves across the surface, defying the 'classical' laws that it's simply too big to feel quantum effects.
'Zero-point energy' moving within a pyrrole molecule is unexpectedly sensitive to the exact site occupied by the molecule on the surface. In moving from one site to another, the 'activation energy' must include a sizeable contribution due to the change in the quantum 'zero-point energy'.
Scientists believe the effect is particularly noticeable in the case of pyrrole because the 'activation energy' needed for diffusion is particularly small, but that many other similar molecules ought to show the same kind of behavior.
"Understanding the nature of molecular diffusion on metal surfaces is of great current interest, due to efforts to manufacture two-dimensional networks of ring-like molecules for use in optical, electronic or spintronic devices," said Dr Stephen Jenkins, who heads up the Surface Science Group in Cambridge's Department of Chemistry.
"The balance between the activation energy and the energy barrier that sticks the molecules to the surface is critical in determining which networks are able to form under different conditions."
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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/matter_energy/physics/~3/RDFpcgJ5_Os/130426115449.htm
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Apr. 25, 2013 ? Sand-dwelling and rock-dwelling cichlids living in East Africa's Lake Malawi share a nearly identical genome, but have very different personalities. The territorial rock-dwellers live in communities where social interactions are important, while the sand-dwellers are itinerant and less aggressive.
Those behavioral differences likely arise from a complex region of the brain known as the telencephalon, which governs communication, emotion, movement and memory in vertebrates -- including humans, where a major portion of the telencephalon is known as the cerebral cortex. A study published this week in the journal Nature Communications shows how the strength and timing of competing molecular signals during brain development has generated natural and presumably adaptive differences in the telencephalon much earlier than scientists had previously believed.
In the study, researchers first identified key differences in gene expression between rock- and sand-dweller brains during development, and then used small molecules to manipulate developmental pathways to mimic natural diversity.
"We have shown that the evolutionary changes in the brains of these fishes occur really early in development," said Todd Streelman, an associate professor in the School of Biology and the Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Biosciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology. "It's generally been thought that early development of the brain must be strongly buffered against change. Our data suggest that rock-dweller brains differ from sand-dweller brains -- before there is a brain."
For humans, the research could lead scientists to look for subtle changes in brain structures earlier in the development process. This could provide a better understanding of how disorders such as autism and schizophrenia could arise during very early brain development.
The research was supported by the National Science Foundation and published online April 23 by the journal.
"We want to understand how the telencephalon evolves by looking at genetics and developmental pathways in closely-related species from natural populations," said Jonathan Sylvester, a postdoctoral researcher in the Georgia Tech School of Biology and lead author of the paper. "Adult cichlids have a tremendous amount of variation within the telencephalon, and we investigated the timing and cause of these differences. Unlike many previous studies in laboratory model organisms that focus on large, qualitative effects from knocking out single genes, we demonstrated that brain diversity evolves through quantitative tuning of multiple pathways."
In examining the fish from embryos to adulthood, the researchers found that the mbuna, or rock-dwellers, tended to exhibit a larger ventral portion of the telencephalon, called the subpallium -- while the sand-dwellers tended to have a larger version of the dorsal structure known as the pallium. These structures seem to have evolved differently over time to meet the behavioral and ecological needs of the fishes. The team showed that early variation in the activity of developmental signals expressed as complementary dorsal-ventral gradients, known technically as "Wingless" and "Hedgehog," are involved in creating those differences during the neural plate stage, as a single sheet of neural tissue folds to form the neural tube.
To specifically manipulate those two pathways, Sylvester removed clutches of between 20 and 40 eggs from brooding female cichlids, which normally incubate fertilized eggs in their mouths. At about 36 to 48 hours after fertilization, groups of eggs were exposed to small-molecule chemicals that either strengthened or weakened the Hedgehog signal, or strengthened or weakened the Wingless signal. The chemical treatment came while the structures that would become the brain were little more than a sheet of cells. After treatment, water containing the chemicals was replaced with fresh water, and the embryos were allowed to continue their development.
"We were able to artificially manipulate these pathways in a way that we think evolution might have worked to shift the process of rock-dweller telencephalon development to sand-dweller development, and vice-versa. Treatment with small molecules allows us incredible temporal and dose precision in manipulating natural development," Sylvester explained. "We then followed the development of the embryos until we were able to measure the anatomical structures -- the size of the pallium and subpallium -- to see that we had transformed one to the other."
The two different brain regions, the dorsal pallium and ventral subpallium, give rise to excitatory and inhibitory neurons in the forebrain. Altering the relative sizes of these regions might change the balance between these neuronal types, ultimately producing behavioral changes in the adult fish.
"Evolution has fine-tuned some of these developmental mechanisms to produce diversity," Streelman said. "In this study, we have figured out which ones."
The researchers studied six different species of East African cichlids, and also worked with collaborators at King's College in London to apply similar techniques in the zebrafish.
As a next step, the researchers would like to follow the embryos through to adulthood to see if the changes seen in embryonic and juvenile brain structures actually do change behavior of adults. It's possible, said Streelman, that later developmental events could compensate for the early differences.
The results could be of interest to scientists investigating human neurological disorders that result from an imbalance between excitatory and inhibitory neurons. Those disorders include autism and schizophrenia. "We think it is particularly interesting that there may be some adaptive variation in the natural proportions of excitatory versus inhibitory neurons in the species we study, correlated with their natural behavioral differences," said Streelman.
In addition to the researchers already mentioned, the study included undergraduate coauthors Constance Rich and Chuyong Yi from Georgia Tech, and Joao Peres and Corinne Houart from King's College in London. Rich is presently in the neuroscience PhD program at the University of Cambridge.
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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/I3zAKn_ACS0/130426115636.htm
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We've been saying for a few months now that Barcelona is shaping up to be an emerging new technology hub in Europe. The ingredients are there: great universities, a young population, affordable living costs and literally a great location and climate. With seed funding on the doorstep in nearby hubs like Madrid and London, you can see a few things starting to happen. It's why we held a meetup there only last year and during Mobile World Congress. Now there is further evidence that this hub can scale. Local companies 3scale and Marfeel have both secured decent venture rounds from international investors, recent news from joining Knok.Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/NrHc_UbIKi8/
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Public release date: 25-Apr-2013
Share ] Contact: Paula Byron
paulabyron@vt.edu
540-526-2027
Virginia Tech
The macroscopic effects of certain nanoparticles on human health have long been clear to the naked eye. What scientists have lacked is the ability to see the detailed movements of individual particles that give rise to those effects.
In a recently published study, scientists at the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute invented a technique for imaging nanoparticle dynamics with atomic resolution as these dynamics occur in a liquid environment. The results will allow, for the first time, the imaging of nanoscale processes, such as the engulfment of nanoparticles into cells.
"We were stunned to see the large-ranged mobility in such small objects," said Deborah Kelly, an assistant professor at the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute. "We now have a system to watch the behaviors of therapeutic nanoparticles at atomic resolution."
Nanoparticles are made of many materials and come in different shapes and sizes. In the new study, Kelly and her colleagues chose to make rod-shaped gold nanoparticles the stars of their new molecular movies. These nanoparticles, roughly the size of a virus, are used to treat various forms of cancer. Once injected, they accumulate in solid tumors. Infrared radiation is then used to heat them and destroy nearby cancerous cells.
To take an up-close look at the gold nanoparticles in action, the researchers made a vacuum-tight microfluidic chamber by pressing two silicon-nitride semiconductor chips together with a 150-nanometer spacer in between. The microchips contained transparent windows so the beam from a transmission electron microscope could pass through to create an atomic-scale image.
Using the new technique, the scientists created two types of visualizations. The first included pictures of individual nanoparticles' atomic structures at 100,000-times magnification the highest resolution images ever taken of nanoparticles in a liquid environment.
The second visualization was a movie captured at 23,000-times magnification that revealed the movements of a group of nanoparticles reacting to an electron beam, which mimics the effects of the infrared radiation used in cancer therapies.
In the movie, the gold nanoparticles can be seen surfing nanoscale tidal waves.
"The nanoparticles behaved like grains of sand being concentrated on a beach by crashing waves," said Kelly. "We think this behavior may be related to why the nanoparticles become concentrated in tumors. Our next experiment will be to insert a cancer cell to study the nanoparticles' therapeutic effects on tumors."
The team is also testing the resolution of the microfluidic system with other reagents and materials, bringing researchers one step closer to viewing live biological mechanisms in action at the highest levels of resolution possible.
###
The study appeared in the April 14 print edition of Chemical Communications in the article "Visualizing Nanoparticle Mobility in Liquid at Atomic Resolution," by Madeline Dukes, an applications scientist at Protochips Inc. in Raleigh, N.C.; Benjamin Jacobs, an applications scientist at Protochips; David Morgan, assistant manager of the Cryo-Transmission Electron Microscopy Facility at Indiana University Bloomington; Harshad Hegde, a computer scientist at the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute; and Kelly, who is also an assistant professor of biological sciences in the College of Science at Virginia Tech.
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Public release date: 25-Apr-2013 Share ] Contact: Paula Byron
paulabyron@vt.edu
540-526-2027
Virginia Tech
The macroscopic effects of certain nanoparticles on human health have long been clear to the naked eye. What scientists have lacked is the ability to see the detailed movements of individual particles that give rise to those effects.
In a recently published study, scientists at the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute invented a technique for imaging nanoparticle dynamics with atomic resolution as these dynamics occur in a liquid environment. The results will allow, for the first time, the imaging of nanoscale processes, such as the engulfment of nanoparticles into cells.
"We were stunned to see the large-ranged mobility in such small objects," said Deborah Kelly, an assistant professor at the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute. "We now have a system to watch the behaviors of therapeutic nanoparticles at atomic resolution."
Nanoparticles are made of many materials and come in different shapes and sizes. In the new study, Kelly and her colleagues chose to make rod-shaped gold nanoparticles the stars of their new molecular movies. These nanoparticles, roughly the size of a virus, are used to treat various forms of cancer. Once injected, they accumulate in solid tumors. Infrared radiation is then used to heat them and destroy nearby cancerous cells.
To take an up-close look at the gold nanoparticles in action, the researchers made a vacuum-tight microfluidic chamber by pressing two silicon-nitride semiconductor chips together with a 150-nanometer spacer in between. The microchips contained transparent windows so the beam from a transmission electron microscope could pass through to create an atomic-scale image.
Using the new technique, the scientists created two types of visualizations. The first included pictures of individual nanoparticles' atomic structures at 100,000-times magnification the highest resolution images ever taken of nanoparticles in a liquid environment.
The second visualization was a movie captured at 23,000-times magnification that revealed the movements of a group of nanoparticles reacting to an electron beam, which mimics the effects of the infrared radiation used in cancer therapies.
In the movie, the gold nanoparticles can be seen surfing nanoscale tidal waves.
"The nanoparticles behaved like grains of sand being concentrated on a beach by crashing waves," said Kelly. "We think this behavior may be related to why the nanoparticles become concentrated in tumors. Our next experiment will be to insert a cancer cell to study the nanoparticles' therapeutic effects on tumors."
The team is also testing the resolution of the microfluidic system with other reagents and materials, bringing researchers one step closer to viewing live biological mechanisms in action at the highest levels of resolution possible.
###
The study appeared in the April 14 print edition of Chemical Communications in the article "Visualizing Nanoparticle Mobility in Liquid at Atomic Resolution," by Madeline Dukes, an applications scientist at Protochips Inc. in Raleigh, N.C.; Benjamin Jacobs, an applications scientist at Protochips; David Morgan, assistant manager of the Cryo-Transmission Electron Microscopy Facility at Indiana University Bloomington; Harshad Hegde, a computer scientist at the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute; and Kelly, who is also an assistant professor of biological sciences in the College of Science at Virginia Tech.
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Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-04/vt-vtc042513.php
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It's the podcast episode you've been waiting a month and a half to hear: the Samsung Galaxy S 4 edition. Now that we've had both in our hands for a considerable amount of time, we're ready to discuss the phone at length, and Joseph Volpe will be joining us for the party. What are its strengths and weaknesses? How does it compare to the Galaxy S III and the HTC One? How many drugs has Myriam ingested in the last 24 hours? We'll do our best to answer these burning questions and more, so listen in at 2PM ET!
Filed under: Announcements, Mobile
Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/GZjmfCyJGpY/
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Three key US allies ? Britain, France, and Israel ? have said Syria has used chemical weapons in its civil war, but the US, wary of intervening in the conflict, is calling the evidence 'inconclusive.'
Secretary of State John Kerry gestures during a news conference at the NATO headquarters in Brussels April 23. Kerry said on Tuesday that NATO needed to consider its role in the Syrian crisis, including how practically prepared it was to respond to a potential chemical weapons threat.
Evan Vucci/Reuters
EnlargeThe US reluctance to join with three key allies ? Britain, France, and now Israel ? in concluding that Syria?s Bashar al-Assad has used chemical weapons in his country?s civil war confirms President Obama?s consistent wariness about US intervention in the two-year-old conflict.
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Beyond that point, however, former officials and analysts are split over why Mr. Obama is so cautious about the issue ? he even refused to answer a reporter?s question on the topic Tuesday ? and what the apparently high bar the administration has set for evidence of chemical weapons use means.
?It?s a hard call as to whether the administration is trying to avoid something, or if they just don?t have the evidence,? says Wayne White, a former State Department official with experience in Middle East intelligence.
Obama has said repeatedly since last August that Syria?s use of chemical weapons is a US ?red line? and would be a ?game changer? for the US. But now some critics say the president?s caution suggests a moving or ?fuzzy? red line.
For some, the president is simply being prudent, especially if the evidence presented so far is ?inconclusive,? as a number of senior administration officials, including Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, have said. Obama, they add, wants to avoid a rush to judgment that turns out to be mistaken ? and which could appear to the world like a repeat of the 2003 US decision to invade Iraq over weapons of mass destruction that didn?t exist.
White House spokesman Jay Carney said Tuesday that the US is being ?extremely deliberate? in investigating and evaluating the reports of chemical weapons use. And on Wednesday in Cairo, Secretary Hagel suggested the US would not be rushed to judgment by allies, saying, ?Suspicions are one thing. Evidence is another.? He then added, ?I think we have to be very careful here before we make any conclusions.?
But for others, the reason Obama is setting the bar high ? in a situation where incontrovertible evidence could remain very difficult to come by ? is because he has no desire to ratchet up US involvement in the Syrian conflict unless forced to.
The danger of this approach, critics say, is that it encourages an increasingly desperate President Assad to test the limits of US reluctance ? perhaps even with limited, hard-to-prove use of some chemical weapons.
And even if some isolated use of chemical weapons is proved, some analysts say, Obama is still unlikely to intervene in Syria in a manner that could tip the scales in the conflict.
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SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) ? The fishing trip off the rugged north coast of St. Lucia was supposed to last all day, but about four hours into the journey, the boat's electric system crackled and popped.
Dan Suski, a 30-year-old business owner and information technology expert from San Francisco, had been wrestling a 200-pound marlin in rough seas with help from his sister, Kate Suski, a 39-year-old architect from Seattle. It was around noon April 21.
He was still trying to reel in the fish when water rushed into the cabin and flooded the engine room, prompting the captain to radio for help as he yelled out their coordinates.
It would be nearly 14 hours and a long, long swim before what was supposed to be a highlight of their sunny vacation would come to an end.
As the waves pounded the boat they had chartered from the local company "Reel Irie," more water flooded in. The captain threw life preservers to the Suskis.
"He said, 'Jump out! Jump out!'" Kate Suski recalled in a telephone interview Thursday with The Associated Press.
The Suskis obeyed and jumped into the water with the captain and first mate. Less than five minutes later, the boat sank.
The group was at least eight miles (13 kilometers) from shore, and waves more than twice their size tossed them.
"The captain was telling us to stay together, and that help was on its way and that we needed to wait," Kate Suski said.
The group waited for about an hour, but no one came.
"I was saying, 'Let's swim, let's swim. If they're coming, they will find us. We can't just stay here,'" she recalled.
As they began to swim, the Suskis lost sight of the captain and first mate amid the burgeoning swells. Soon after, they also lost sight of land amid the rain.
"We would just see swells and gray," Dan Suski said.
A plane and a helicopter appeared in the distance and hovered over the area, but no one spotted the siblings.
Several hours went by, and the sun began to set.
"There's this very real understanding that the situation is dire," Kate Suski said. "You come face-to-face with understanding your own mortality ... We both processed the possible ways we might die. Would we drown? Be eaten by a shark?"
"Hypothermia?" Dan Suski asked.
"Would our legs cramp up and make it impossible to swim?" the sister continued.
They swam for 12 to 14 hours, talking as they pushed and shivered their way through the ocean. Dan Suski tried to ignore images of the movie "Open Water" that kept popping into his head and its story of a scuba-diving couple left behind by their group and attacked by sharks. His sister said she also couldn't stop thinking about sharks.
"I thought I was going to vomit I was so scared," she said.
When they finally came within 30 feet (9 meters) of land, they realized they couldn't get out of the water.
"There were sheer cliffs coming into the ocean," she said. "We knew we would get crushed."
Dan Suski thought they should try to reach the rocks anyway, but his sister disagreed.
"We won't survive that," she told him.
They swam until they noticed a spit of sand nearby. When they got to land, they collapsed, barely able to walk. It was past midnight, and they didn't notice any homes in the area.
"Dan said the first priority was to stay warm," she recalled.
They hiked inland and lay side by side, pulling up grass and brush to cover themselves and stay warm. Kate Suski had only her bikini on, having shed her sundress to swim better. Dan Suski had gotten rid of his shorts, having recalled a saying when he was a kid that "the best-dressed corpses wear cotton."
They heard a stream nearby but decided to wait until daylight to determine whether the water was safe to drink.
As the sun came up, they began to hike through thick brush, picking up bitter mangoes along the way and stopping to eat green bananas.
"It was probably the best and worst banana I've ever had," Dan Suski recalled.
Some three hours later, they spotted a young farm worker walking with his white dog. He fed them crackers, gave them water and waited until police arrived, the Suskis said.
"We asked if he knew anything about the captain and mate," Kate Suski said. "He said he had seen the news the night before and they hadn't been found at that time. I think we felt a sense of tragedy that we weren't prepared for."
The Suskis were hospitalized and received IV fluids, with doctors concerned they couldn't draw blood from Kate Suski's arm because she was so dehydrated. They also learned that the captain and mate were rescued after spending nearly 23 hours in the water, noting that their relatives called and took care of them after the ordeal.
St. Lucia's tourism minister called it a miracle, and the island's maritime affairs unit is investigating exactly what caused the ship to sink. Marine Police Sgt. Finley Leonce said they have already interviewed the captain, and that police did not suspect foul play or any criminal activity in the sinking of the ship.
A man who answered the phone Thursday at the "Reel Irie" company declined to comment except to say that he's grateful everyone is safe. He said both the captain and first mate were standing next to him but that they weren't ready to talk about the incident.
The brother and sister said they don't blame anyone for the shipwreck.
"We are so grateful to be alive right now," Kate Suski said. "Nothing can sort of puncture that bubble."
Upon returning to their hotel in St. Lucia earlier this week, the Suskis were upgraded to a suite as they recover from cuts on their feet, severe tendonitis in their ankles from swimming and abrasions from the lifejackets.
"It's really been amazing," Dan Suski said. "It's a moving experience for me."
On Saturday, they plan to fly back to the U.S. to meet their father in Miami.
Once a night owl, Kate Suski no longer minds getting up early for flights, or for any other reason.
"Since this ordeal, I've been waking up at dawn every morning," she said. "I've never looked forward to the sunrise so much in my life."
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/us-tourists-survive-ship-sinking-near-st-lucia-193615653.html
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FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) ? Evidence that Europe's economic downturn is weighing more heavily on its strongest member, Germany, has convinced more and more experts that the European Central Bank will cut interest rates soon.
The latest downbeat sign came Wednesday from the closely watched Ifo index of German business confidence. It fell to 104.4 points in April from 106.7 in March, more than the modest dip foreseen by market analysts to 106.2. That follows surveys earlier this week indicating Germany's manufacturing sector is contracting.
The Ifo index remains at a high level, and the institute's survey chief, Kai Carstensen, said it only means that "the German economy is taking a breather."
But outside analysts said there was now enough doubt about Europe's economic recovery for the ECB's 23-member governing council to cut its key rate from the record low of 0.75 percent, either at its May 2 meeting or on June 6, when it will have new staff economic projections to help justify any decision.
The ECB's benchmark, called the refinancing rate, is what it charges to lend to banks. Through them, the rate influences a host of other rates that determine how much it costs businesses and consumers to borrow.
Low rates in theory encourage borrowing to spend and invest, stimulating the economy. A rate cut also can push investors toward buying stocks and other assets, both in anticipation of growth and by making interest-yielding investments less attractive.
Investors prepared for such a move by buying heavily into European stocks. Germany's stock index is up 3 percent in two days, France's almost 4.5 percent.
ECB President Mario Draghi said in April that the bank remained "ready to act" in case the economic indicators worsened.
In a sign that support for a rate cut may be growing, the head of the German central bank, which has typically been more reluctant to back rate cuts, said last week that a cut could be warranted if economic indicators worsen. Since his comments, they have.
The strength of the German economy is key to the ECB's rate decisions because of its size ? it accounts for 28 percent of the 17-country eurozone's total output. It shrank 0.6 percent in the last three months of 2012.
Germany has been one of the more resilient economies in the eurozone. A slowdown in its economy would make it harder for the region to climb out of recession. The ECB expects the eurozone to contract 0.5 percent for all of this year, with a gradual upturn near year end.
"Resistance to a rate cut will be crumbling," said Christian Schulz, an analyst at Berenberg Bank in London, after the Ifo survey was released.
Analysts at Swiss bank UBS have changed their forecasts and now predict an ECB rate cut on May 2. They had previously expected rates to remain unchanged through the end of next year. Analysts at Royal Bank of Scotland and Nomura also shifted their prediction to a cut to the May meeting.
Other signs of trouble in Europe include unemployment at 12.0 percent, the highest since the euro was introduced in 1999, and auto sales that have fallen for 18 straight months, measured against the same month the year previously.
Analysts say a rate cut might be mostly symbolic and do little to spur lending directly. It could, however, lower the euro's exchange rate, which would help exporters.
Lower rates can push down the euro's exchange rate because they lower the yield on many interest-bearing investments denominated in euros. That reduces demand for the currency.
The ECB has also been looking at unspecified new way to help the economy that go beyond interest rates. Analysts say the ECB might take steps to try to increase bank's willingness to make loans to small and medium size businesses, which provide most of the eurozone's jobs. Ideas that have been floated include loan guarantees from another European Union agency, or permitting banks to bundle loans to small businesses as securities and use them as collateral to get cash loans from the ECB.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/predictions-ecb-rate-cut-grow-growth-fades-114550626--finance.html
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TRIPOLI, Libya (AP) ? Libyan security officials say a car bombing has targeted the French embassy in the Libyan capital, Tripoli.
The officials say an explosives-laden car detonated on Tuesday morning outside the embassy building, causing significant damage. There was no information on casualties or other details.
The two security officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media. They say the motives for the attack ? the first such assault on an embassy in the Libyan capital ? were not immediately clear.
Two years after the country's civil war, Libya is struggling to maintain security, build a unified army and reign in militias, which include rebels who fought to oust the country's longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi in 2011.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/car-bombing-targets-french-embassy-libya-064343045.html
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Foursquare today launched redesigned venue pages to focus on its Explore and Discover functionality, bringing them more in line?with its homepage.?The changes, which come two weeks after the company raised another round of funding and released an updated iOS app, are designed to capitalize on the traffic that Foursquare gets from?Google, which has doubled the site’s traffic over the past year. This is an important play for Foursquare, as it’s competing with Google Local, Yelp and?Facebook,?which today launched its redesign for local business pages. Foursquare’s lead engineer for the web, Mike Singleton, told me that the site now gets over 50 million unique visitors on the web, which is 17 million more than actually use its app. That means that Foursquare is quietly breaking through as a place for information about venues, its most prized asset: People are coming from Google for different reasons, we needed to give them the information they needed at a glance, which was difficult. Since focusing on its Explore functionality, Singleton says that its usage has doubled, especially on the website. The new venue page has all of the information that people need in a quick glance, the pages are more visually appealing, and owners of the venues should be proud to show them off, perhaps by linking to them on their website over competitors like Yelp. Here’s a look at what a venue page looked like before today’s launch: You’ll notice that some of the more attractive content, such as photos, are pushed way down, putting more focus on the map. Additionally, information such as when the venue is open was shoved to the right-hand side, requiring a scroll, as well as someone’s eyes actually finding them. This redesign solves that: The new design is cleaner, and brings all of the information that Google searchers would want to see immediately, such as photos of the venue and a more attractive map. Since some of the people visiting from the web might not be app users, Foursquare wants to give them a better first impression of the service by populating the page with the info that’s needed to make quick decisions, such as whether to actually go to a place for dinner or not. By being able to search through tips, you could find information about a particular meal, rather than continually clicking “next” buttons to scan all tips. Naturally, Foursquare wants this page toSource: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/eKHDLnZcK1o/
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TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) -- Fla. Gov. Rick Scott had maintained for weeks that legislators would "do the right thing" and agree to give every classroom teacher a $2,500 pay raise this year.
State legislative leaders had been just as insistent, saying it was unlikely they would go along with Scott's proposal the way he wanted.
On Sunday, House and Senate budget negotiators settled on setting aside nearly $480 million that can be used to boost teacher pay.
But the proposal will require that some of the money be tied to teacher performance instead of giving out raises to every classroom teacher. Legislators also plan to offer raises to all instructional personnel and not just classroom teachers. This is a move that could also lower the amount offered to each employee.
"I think at the end of the day, regardless of how you look at it, it's going to be used for teacher salary increases," said Rep. Eric Fresen, R-Miami and chairman of the House panel that oversees school spending.
Scott had made the across-the-board teacher pay raise one of his top priorities for the 2013 session. But legislators had signaled their reluctance with the proposal from the start. They maintained that it went against the idea of rewarding teachers based on student performance ? a key element of the merit pay law passed in 2011 and is scheduled to take effect in 2014.
Sen. Bill Galvano, R-Bradenton and chairman of the Senate panel that oversees school spending, brushed aside concerns that school districts may not be able to quickly implement a system to parcel out the $480 million by this fall.
"This is not something new for the districts," Galvano said. "We have been moving to merit-based evaluations for some time now."
Melissa Sellers, a spokeswoman for Scott, contended that lawmakers still have time to change their minds and avoid a confrontation with the governor.
"The governor has priorities. The Legislature has priorities," Sellers said. "There's still enough time left to determine how successful this session will be for all of us."
Legislators have until May 3 to wrap up work on a new $74 billion state budget that would cover state spending from July 1 until June 30, 2014.
This is the first time in several years legislators have had a budget surplus to work with.
And over the weekend they made progress on dozens of spending items ? including sprinkling aside money all through the budget for projects ranging from $50 million for a new statewide multi-use trail to money to renovate historic lighthouse and courthouses.
But several sticking items remain, including whether to raise tuition rates for Florida's college and university students.
The House on Sunday backed off its initial six-percent hike and is now asking to raise tuition by four percent. Senate negotiators, however, have been holding firm to keeping tuition rates flat. Scott also wants to keep tuition rates as they are now.
Other items still up in the air: The size and scope of any tax cuts, how much to set aside for economic incentives, state funding for non-profit hospitals and whether to boost funding of Visit Florida, the state's tourism marketing agency.
___
Follow Gary Fineout on Twitter: http://twitter.com/fineout
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/fla-gov-wont-2-500-144650073.html
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An American Airlines plane takes off at LAX International airport in Los Angeles Monday, April 22, 2013. Some fliers headed to Los Angeles International Airport were met with delays yesterday on the first day of staffing cuts for air traffic controllers because of government spending reductions. Budget cuts that kicked in last month forced the FAA to give controllers extra days off. Commercial airline flights moved smoothly throughout most of the country on Sunday, April 21, 2013, the first day air traffic controllers were subject to furloughs resulting from government spending cuts, though some delays appeared in the late evening in and around New York. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)
An American Airlines plane takes off at LAX International airport in Los Angeles Monday, April 22, 2013. Some fliers headed to Los Angeles International Airport were met with delays yesterday on the first day of staffing cuts for air traffic controllers because of government spending reductions. Budget cuts that kicked in last month forced the FAA to give controllers extra days off. Commercial airline flights moved smoothly throughout most of the country on Sunday, April 21, 2013, the first day air traffic controllers were subject to furloughs resulting from government spending cuts, though some delays appeared in the late evening in and around New York. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)
Penny MacDonald was supposed to depart Tampa International Airport on Monday April 22, 2013 at 1:40, but her flight to Toronto had been delayed to 3:10. She passed the time by knitting at the gate. A combination of furloughs of FAA air controllers due to sequestration and bad weather in the northeast caused hiccups in the commercial airline system on Monday. (AP Photo/The Tampa Bay Times, Edmund D. Fountain)
Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kansas listens at left, as Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn. speaks to reporters about Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) spending cuts, Tuesday, April 23, 2013, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
NEW YORK (AP) ? A day after flight delays plagued much of the nation, air travel was smoother Tuesday, but the government warned passengers that the situation could change by the hour as thousands of air-traffic controllers are forced to take furloughs because of budget cuts.
Meanwhile, airlines and members of Congress urged the Federal Aviation Administration to find other ways to reduce spending. Airlines are worried about the long-term costs late flights will have on their budgets and on passengers.
"I just can't imagine this stays in place for an extended period of time. It's just such terrible policy," US Airways CEO Doug Parker said. "We can handle it for a little while, but it can't continue."
The delays are the most visible effect yet of Congress and the White House's failure to agree on a long-term deficit-reduction plan.
Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said no one should be surprised by the problem, noting that he warned about it two months ago.
His solution: Blame Congress for the larger budget cuts that affected all parts of government, including a $600 million hit to the Federal Aviation Administration.
"This has nothing to do with politics," LaHood said. "This is very bad policy that Congress passed, and they should fix it."
Critics of the FAA insist the agency could reduce its budget in other spots that would not inconvenience travelers.
Sens. John D. Rockefeller IV, a West Virginia Democrat, and John Thune, a Republican from South Dakota, sent a letter to LaHood on Monday accusing the FAA of being "slow and disturbingly limited" in response to their questions. They suggested the FAA could divert money from other accounts, such as those devoted to research, commercial space transportation and modernization of the air-traffic control computers.
Others in Congress urged the Obama administration to postpone the furlough for at least 30 days.
In the past five years, the FAA's operating budget has grown by 10.4 percent while the number of domestic commercial flights has fallen 13 percent.
"There's no cause for this. It's a cheap political stunt," said Michael Boyd, an aviation consultant who does work for the major airlines.
The FAA says the numbers aren't so clear cut. In that time, the government has signed a new, more expensive contract with air traffic controllers, added 400 new aviation safety inspectors and beefed up its payroll to deploy a new air traffic-control computer system.
So given the budget cuts, FAA officials say they now have no choice but to furlough all 47,000 agency employees ? including nearly 15,000 controllers ? because salaries make up 70 percent of the agency's budget. Each employee will lose one day of work every two weeks.
Planes will have to take off and land less frequently, so as not to overload the remaining controllers on duty.
About 400 delays piled up Sunday and another 1,200 Monday that were linked to the furloughs. The FAA did not predict the number of delayed flights Tuesday but warned of possible problems in New York, Los Angeles, Dallas and Las Vegas.
Travel has not yet reached the levels the FAA warned about where some airports ? like those in Atlanta or New York or Chicago ? could see delays of more than three hours. Mother Nature has so far cooperated.
"Bad weather would make this much worse," Parker added.
There's also potential that passengers will be scared away by fears over delays. Many families are now planning summer vacations and might choose a driving trip instead.
If the FAA staffing shortage persists into the summer, airlines will also have less flexibility to ease passengers' pain.
For instance, Delta Air Lines canceled about 90 flights Monday because of worries about delays. Just about every passenger was rebooked on another Delta flight within a couple of hours, according to Ed Bastian, Delta's president.
In the busy summer travel months, the airline might not have enough empty seats to accommodate passengers from canceled flights.
Summer also brings thunderstorms, which are the biggest source of airline delays. Unlike snowstorms, which are forecast days in advance, thunderstorms can develop quickly and are unpredictable.
"This is just the beginning of what promises to be a huge economic disruption," the National Air Traffic Controllers Association warned in a statement Tuesday. "This is no way to run the world's safest, most efficient national airspace system. Controllers continue to do their best every day to keep the system running. It's time policymakers show the same amount of effort and dedication."
The federal budget cuts are also eating into the company's bottom line, with defense company employees cutting their flight budgets by 20 percent in the last month.
Unlike Delta, US Airways didn't cancel flights in advance.
"It's really difficult to do because we don't know where the issues are going to be until the issues are there," said the airline's president, Scott Kirby.
US Airways operates a hub at Washington National airport, and government business accounted for 3 percent of its revenue last year. Government revenue dropped 37 percent in March because of the spending cuts and the timing of Easter, Kirby said.
"As long as the sequester stays in place, I expect that government-related demand will continue to be depressed," he said.
___
Associated Press writers Joan Lowy and Jim Abrams in Washington, Tom Krisher in Detroit and Josh Freed in Minneapolis contributed to this report.
___
Scott Mayerowitz can be reached at http://twitter.com/GlobeTrotScott .
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