ScienceDaily (Oct. 31, 2012) ? Stanford University scientists have built the first solar cell made entirely of carbon, a promising alternative to the expensive materials used in photovoltaic devices today.
The results are published in the Oct. 31 online edition of the journal ACS Nano.
"Carbon has the potential to deliver high performance at a low cost," said study senior author Zhenan Bao, a professor of chemical engineering at Stanford. "To the best of our knowledge, this is the first demonstration of a working solar cell that has all of the components made of carbon. This study builds on previous work done in our lab."
Unlike rigid silicon solar panels that adorn many rooftops, Stanford's thin film prototype is made of carbon materials that can be coated from solution. "Perhaps in the future we can look at alternative markets where flexible carbon solar cells are coated on the surface of buildings, on windows or on cars to generate electricity," Bao said.
The coating technique also has the potential to reduce manufacturing costs, said Stanford graduate student Michael Vosgueritchian, co-lead author of the study with postdoctoral researcher Marc Ramuz.
"Processing silicon-based solar cells requires a lot of steps," Vosgueritchian explained. "But our entire device can be built using simple coating methods that don't require expensive tools and machines."
Carbon nanomaterials
The Bao group's experimental solar cell consists of a photoactive layer, which absorbs sunlight, sandwiched between two electrodes. In a typical thin film solar cell, the electrodes are made of conductive metals and indium tin oxide (ITO). "Materials like indium are scarce and becoming more expensive as the demand for solar cells, touchscreen panels and other electronic devices grows," Bao said. "Carbon, on the other hand, is low cost and Earth-abundant."
The Bao group's all-carbon solar cell consists of a photoactive layer, which absorbs sunlight, sandwiched between two electrodes.
For the study, Bao and her colleagues replaced the silver and ITO used in conventional electrodes with graphene -- sheets of carbon that are one atom thick -and single-walled carbon nanotubes that are 10,000 times narrower than a human hair. "Carbon nanotubes have extraordinary electrical conductivity and light-absorption properties," Bao said.
For the active layer, the scientists used material made of carbon nanotubes and "buckyballs" -- soccer ball-shaped carbon molecules just one nanometer in diameter. The research team recently filed a patent for the entire device.
"Every component in our solar cell, from top to bottom, is made of carbon materials," Vosgueritchian said. "Other groups have reported making all-carbon solar cells, but they were referring to just the active layer in the middle, not the electrodes."
One drawback of the all-carbon prototype is that it primarily absorbs near-infrared wavelengths of light, contributing to a laboratory efficiency of less than 1 percent -- much lower than commercially available solar cells. "We clearly have a long way to go on efficiency," Bao said. "But with better materials and better processing techniques, we expect that the efficiency will go up quite dramatically."
Improving efficiency
The Stanford team is looking at a variety of ways to improve efficiency. "Roughness can short-circuit the device and make it hard to collect the current," Bao said. "We have to figure out how to make each layer very smooth by stacking the nanomaterials really well."
The researchers are also experimenting with carbon nanomaterials that can absorb more light in a broader range of wavelengths, including the visible spectrum.
"Materials made of carbon are very robust," Bao said. "They remain stable in air temperatures of nearly 1,100 degrees Fahrenheit."
The ability of carbon solar cells to out-perform conventional devices under extreme conditions could overcome the need for greater efficiency, according to Vosgueritchian. "We believe that all-carbon solar cells could be used in extreme environments, such as at high temperatures or at high physical stress," he said. "But obviously we want the highest efficiency possible and are working on ways to improve our device."
"Photovoltaics will definitely be a very important source of power that we will tap into in the future," Bao said. "We have a lot of available sunlight. We've got to figure out some way to use this natural resource that is given to us."
Other authors of the study are Peng Wei of Stanford and Chenggong Wang and Yongli Gao of the University of Rochester Department of Physics and Astronomy. The research was funded by the Global Climate and Energy Project at Stanford and the Air Force Office for Scientific Research.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Stanford University. The original article was written by Mark Shwartz.
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Journal Reference:
Marc P. Ramuz, Michael Vosgueritchian, Peng Wei, Chenggong Wang, Yongli Gao, Yingpeng Wu, Yongsheng Chen, Zhenan Bao. Evaluation of Solution-Processable Carbon-Based Electrodes for All-Carbon Solar Cells. ACS Nano, 2012; 121031083325001 DOI: 10.1021/nn304410w
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[unable to retrieve full-text content]This really is a crucial element of advertising and marketing on the Internet. Cheap Hosting Google can supply large numbers or final results although we style keywords like on line graphics, web development products and services, inexpensive web development, reasonably priced web developers and cheap web hosting. Business people right now knows in selecting a reputable web page design organization because of the help of the Internet. A reputable and trustworthy web page ...
Never one to stop unfurling new smartphones, Huawei's just detailed yet another high-end Android handset. The Honor 2 packs the company's in-house K3V2 1.4GHz quad-core chip, up from the single-core found in the original, alongside 2GB of RAM and 8GB of built-in storage. Around the back, there's the BSI 8-megapixel camera sensor, capable of burst shots and full 1080p video capture, while Huawei has also included a microSD slot for storage expansion. With a 4.5-inch 1,280 x 720 display, there's hefty pixel bump up from the 245 pixels per inch found on the first Honor -- in fact we have a Retina display-matching 326ppi. The Chinese phone maker is also talking up its claims of 72 hours of standby time, which is something we'd certainly like to try out when review samples eventually appear. Pre-orders will start in China later this week, with the Honor 2 priced up at 1,888 yuan -- just over $300.
ScienceDaily (Oct. 29, 2012) ? A team of Duke Medicine researchers has engineered cartilage from induced pluripotent stem cells that were successfully grown and sorted for use in tissue repair and studies into cartilage injury and osteoarthritis. The finding is reported online Oct. 29, 2012, in the journal the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and suggests that induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPSCs, may be a viable source of patient-specific articular cartilage tissue.
"This technique of creating induced pluripotent stem cells -- an achievement honored with this year's Nobel Prize in medicine for Shimya Yamanaka of Kyoto University -- is a way to take adult stem cells and convert them so they have the properties of embryonic stem cells," said Farshid Guilak, PhD, Laszlo Ormandy Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery at Duke and senior author of the study.
"Adult stems cells are limited in what they can do, and embryonic stem cells have ethical issues," Guilak said. "What this research shows in a mouse model is the ability to create an unlimited supply of stem cells that can turn into any type of tissue -- in this case cartilage, which has no ability to regenerate by itself."
Articular cartilage is the shock absorber tissue in joints that makes it possible to walk, climb stairs, jump and perform daily activities without pain. But ordinary wear-and-tear or an injury can diminish its effectiveness and progress to osteoarthritis. Because articular cartilage has a poor capacity for repair, damage and osteoarthritis are leading causes of impairment in older people and often requires joint replacement.
In their study, the Duke researchers, led by Brian O. Diekman, PhD, a post-doctoral associate in orthopaedic surgery, aimed to apply recent technologies that have made iPSCs a promising alternative to other tissue engineering techniques, which use adult stem cells derived from the bone marrow or fat tissue.
One challenge the researchers sought to overcome was developing a uniformly differentiated population of chondrocytes, cells that produce collagen and maintain cartilage, while culling other types of cells that the powerful iPSCs could form.
To achieve that, the researchers induced chondrocyte differentiation in iPSCs derived from adult mouse fibroblasts by treating cultures with a growth medium. They also tailored the cells to express green fluorescent protein only when the cells successfully became chondrocytes. As the iPSCs differentiated, the chondrocyte cells that glowed with the green fluorescent protein were easily identified and sorted from the undesired cells.
The tailored cells also produced greater amounts of cartilage components, including collagen, and showed the characteristic stiffness of native cartilage, suggesting they would work well repairing cartilage defects in the body.
"This was a multi-step approach, with the initial differentiation, then sorting, and then proceeding to make the tissue," Diekman said. "What this shows is that iPSCs can be used to make high quality cartilage, either for replacement tissue or as a way to study disease and potential treatments."
Diekman and Guilak said the next phase of the research will be to use human iPSCs to test the cartilage-growing technique.
"The advantage of this technique is that we can grow a continuous supply of cartilage in a dish," Guilak said. "In addition to cell-based therapies, iPSC technology can also provide patient-specific cell and tissue models that could be used to screen for drugs to treat osteoarthritis, which right now does not have a cure or an effective therapy to inhibit cartilage loss."
In addition to Guilak and Diekman, study authors include Nicolas Christoforou; Vincent P. Willard; Alex Sun; Johannah Sanchez-Adams; and Kam W. Leong.
The National Institutes of Health (AR50245, AR48852, AG15768, AR48182, Training Grant T32AI007217) and the Arthritis Foundation funded the study.
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WASHINGTON (AP) ? Maybe their robes are water repellent.
No matter that the rest of Washington was shut tight to await Hurricane Sandy, it was business as usual Monday at the Supreme Court.
The justices took the bench at the customary start time of 10 o'clock EDT to hear scheduled arguments.
The court is an independent branch of government that court spokeswoman Kathy Arberg said does not necessarily follow what the rest of the government is doing. And parking's never a problem ? the justices have spots in the court's underground garage.
The court apparently is making a concession to the weather, nevertheless. A lawyer with a case to argue on Tuesday said he was told the justices would instead hear the case on Thursday.
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While Saturday?s shutout loss was definitely a team effort, Prince Fielder?s struggles are a central reason the Tigers are now just one defeat away from losing the World Series.
Swinging at pitches off the plate, Fielder went 0-for-4 with two strikeouts in Game 3. He grounded into a double play his first time up. Overall, Fielder is 1-for-10 in the World Series, and he?s down to .188 with just one extra-base hits and three RBI in 48 at-bats for the postseason.
This isn?t Fielder?s first go at the postseason, so it shouldn?t be a case of the pressure getting to him. He had three homers and four doubles in 11 games as the Brewers won the NLDS and lost to the Cardinals in the NLCS last year. He also took part in the NLDS in 2008, though he had just one hit in 14 at-bats then (it was a homer).
Still, this is Fielder?s first World Series, and he has been unusually anxious at the plate. He?s seen just 30 pitches in his 11 plate appearances. It?s not like him at all.
That?s not to put it all on Fielder. Miguel Cabrera hasn?t done much, collecting two singles and two walks in three games. The Tigers have just three extra-base hits in the series, and their lone homer was Jhonny Peralta?s meaningless two-run shot in the ninth inning of Game 1, reducing the Giants? lead from seven runs to five.
Having amassed 18 consecutive scoreless innings, the Tigers offense has wasted fine performances from Doug Fister and Anibal Sanchez the last two games. The team should get another good one from Max Scherzer on Sunday, but with ace Matt Cain on the mound for the Giants, one wonders if it will make any real difference.
'I have friends whose family members have been killed,' the president says in MTV News' 'Ask Obama' special about how he will address gun-related crime in his city. By Gil Kaufman, with additional reporting by Sway Calloway
President Barack Obama during "Ask Obama Live" Photo: MTV News
MANCHESTER, England (AP) -Manchester United midfielder Shinji Kagawa will miss three or four weeks with a left knee injury, ruling him out of Premier League matches against Chelsea and Arsenal.
The Japan international, who was the Bundesliga player of the year last season at Borussia Dortmund, picked up the injury on Tuesday in United's Champions League win over Braga.
United manager Alex Ferguson says "I think playing on with the injury did not help the situation for him, even though he did well to play on with it. It's disappointing for him."
Manchester United has four tough games in 10 days. They play at Chelsea twice, including a League Cup match, and then host Arsenal before travelling to Portugal to play Braga.
? 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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Can Red Bulls take advantage?
The New York Red Bulls have much to gain or lose for the playoffs when they take on Philadelphia Union (1:30 p.m. ET Saturday, NBC). Philly's young talent will be playing for the future ? and there's enough talent there for New York to be at risk.
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High Desert Barbecue ? J. D. Tuccille
Genre ? Adventure, Humor
Rating ? PG13
Free until 28 October 2012
Written in a style that might be described as Edward Abbey meets Hunter S. Thompson, conspiracy, arson and ineptitude threaten the desert West, and only a misanthropic hermit, a subversive schoolteacher and an unemployed business writer stand in the way.
Living as a squatter on public land, Rollo has long waged a personal war against the Forest Service, so it's little surprise when rangers burn him out of his latest shack. But when Rollo is subsequently blamed for a disastrous wildfire, he seeks help from his close friend, Scott, an anarchically minded outdoors enthusiast, and Scott's girlfriend Lani, who dislikes Rollo but shares his distaste for authority.?
While investigating a suspicious new forest fire, the trio interrupts a bizarre but vicious gang of environmental terrorists. Chased through the canyon country of northern Arizona, Rollo, Scott and Lani must rely on their wits and skills to survive. Just steps behind, their pursuers compensate for incompetence and sexual eccentricity with fanaticism and official connections. Hanging in the balance is the fate of human habitation throughout the West ? or maybe just peace and quiet in downtown Flagstaff.
How To Find A Job: When There Are No Jobs ? Paul J. Rega
Genre ? Non-Fiction, Self Help
Rating ? G
4.6 (47 reviews)
Free until 28 October 2012
"This book is written by someone who has walked the walk. It is refreshing to read a book by someone who has experienced the same pain as its audience."? Arleen Bradley Career Coaching
Download this bestselling career book by Paul Rega, nationally recognized Executive Recruiter with over twenty-eight years of job hunting and career planning experience. The book rocketed to #1 in Job Hunting, Careers and Resumes and was ranked in the Top 20 at #14 on Amazon. This is a must read for anyone who is looking for a new job or wants to change careers in the worst economy since the Great Depression.
Paul Rega is president of a retained executive search firm he founded in 1985. His provocative new book strikes a nerve with millions of displaced workers and goes well beyond the principles of job hunting. He introduces a revolutionary new concept in career management and personal development called "Intuitive Personal Assessment." Paul takes his readers on a powerful journey as he tells a gripping story about his own career and the unique challenges he's faced as an executive recruiter.?
The author shares his vast knowledge of career planning and the inner workings of the job search process, citing hundreds of proven and effective job search techniques. He explains how to market your background to a targeted audience, interviewing skills and techniques, network building strategies, how to utilize personal and business contacts, effective use of social media, including LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter, insider tips on working with recruiters, salary and benefits negotiation, how to write a resume, cover and follow-up letters, how to start and succeed in your own business and much more.
Despite the many challenges faced by those suffering as a result of the weak job market, Paul believes that change in one's life can be positive. He explains that, "Change throughout your life is inevitable, and as your life changes so often does your career." His book is an effective guide that will provide you with the necessary tools, skills and inside knowledge from a professional recruiter to help you navigate through difficult economic times and find a new job or change careers.
Fall Asleep! It's Easy?The (miraculous) Kaleidoscope Method ? Elli Yeates
Genre ? Non-fiction, Self Help
Rating ? G
4.9 (8 reviews)
Free until 31 October 2012
Do you need help to sleep? Do you want to know exactly how to fall asleep or how to get back to sleep in the middle of the night? The all new Kaleidoscope Method is explained in this concise and powerful book. The Kaleidoscope Method is simple, natural and free of drugs. You can read this book in an afternoon and use the technique to fall soundly asleep that night. It teaches you in 5 really easy steps how to fall asleep. Once you are confident you can fall asleep at the start of the night or in the middle of the night the anxiety that surrounds sleep soon disappears. How much is a good night's sleep worth? If you are doing without sleep then you will be having a hard time doing anything else properly. A night of peaceful sleep is invaluable. This book teaches you how to set yourself up for a great sleep and then exactly how to go to sleep if it just isn't happening for you. Once you learn the technique you can use it for the rest of your life. So long as you follow some simple guidelines each day that ensure you are not doing anything to prevent sleep then the Kaleidoscope Method will work for you, every time.
Four Corners Dark ? William McNally
Genre ? Horror
Rating ? PG13
4.3 (11 reviews)
Free until 31 October 2012
Imagine a world beyond our own. With Four Corners Dark, William McNally takes readers to the darkest depths of the imagination.
Fans of horror and suspense will find story after story that teeters on the brink between spooky and downright chilling. Terrifying encounters and haunting twists power this collection of works.
In "Engine Eighteen," a group of Mexican immigrants attempt to cross a desert border to begin new lives, but end up paying a price for their old lives. "Return to Nowhere," is the story of a man who has the extraordinary ability to remake his lives and escape his pasts. "The Raven Mocker," a novella, tells the tale of a couple who encounters a dark force along the border between life and death. "The Spinning Wheel," examines the face of fate and the choice given to one man to change it.
My Busy Book ? Moria Butterfield
Genre ? Children
Rating ? G
4.4 (5 reviews)
Free until 28 October 2012
"One day I'll ride a bicycle. I'll tour the jungle, too. There's one more thing. If it's ok...Can I do it all with you?" A charming and lively rhyming story with a difference. Extra finding games and talking games at the back of the book help make the reading experience enjoyable, and encourage your child to take learning steps. A perfect companion for 'My Happy Book' by the same author and illustrator team.
Heal the Sick, Raise the Dead ? Jacob Prytherch
Genre ? Horror
Rating ? PG13
4.8 (5 reviews UK)
Free until 31 October 2012
With the choice between the nightmare known and the nightmare unknown, it is the pull of the journey that drives Guy onwards, surrounded by a strange demonic family: the giant of aggression, the hideous shrinking man and the silent child. Together they travel from their lonely island home into a land of rain and blood, where the last remnants of humanity desperately hold on to the spark of life against a growing flood of the undead, and where either sanity or truth will finally be unravelled.
Heal The Sick, Raise The Dead is the second novel from Jacob Prytherch, author of The Binary Man.
The Rat Who Didn't Like Rats ? Blythe Ayne
Genre ? Children
Rating ? G
4.0 (3 reviews)
Free until 27 October 2012
Reginald is kind-hearted rat who loves everyone ? except ? rats! Believing rats are unlikable, he doesn't realize that he is a rat himself until the beautiful Raquel comes to the "Geese Flying South" party ? and into Reginald's life. She tells him the truth about himself, and he learns that all creatures ? including rats! ? are lovable.
Public health researchers at the University of Sydney found 107 applications on iPhones and Androids with pro-smoking messages, including 36 so-called smoking simulators. Many of the applications may be downloaded for free and target children. At least 6 million users downloaded the 10 Android simulators by February 2012. ?At the same time, the University of Geneva has developed a smartphone application (?Stop-tabac?) to help persons stop smoking.? ?Addictive? Cigarette Smoking Games on Smartphones Target Kids. by Michaeleen Doucleff, NPR, 23 October 2012?
You can do just about anything with your phone these days. Take an electrocardiogram. Confess your sins. Even smoke a cigarette
Yup, you read that correctly. Android and Apple offer apps that let you light and smoke a virtual cigarette. You simply blow into the microphone, or onto the screen, and an image of a cigarette glows red and "burns."
Some apps time how long it takes to puff the whole fag, while others have a virtual ashtray that pops up messages like, "Would be even better with a beer in your hand!"?
Public health researchers at the University of Sydney have found 107 apps on iPhones and Androids with pro-smoking messages, including these so-called smoking simulators.
Many of the apps are free to download and target children or teens by using cartoons, games and celebrities.
The researchers, who describe the apps this week in the journal Tobacco Control, say these games violate the World Health Organization's bans on smoking advertisements. They call for more regulation of the apps' content and distribution.
It has been clear for a while that cigarette ads have a dramatic effect on kids. So much so, that tobacco companies are forbidden from advertising directly to them. In the U.S., the tobacco industry can't sponsor sports teams, give away t-shirts or even advertise on TV.
But now it looks like tobacco companies have found a loophole in these regulations through the smartphone apps.
Besides the simulators, there are also photo galleries of cigarettes for wallpapering your phone, instructions for rolling cigarettes into various shapes and tobacco "shops" where you can build your own cigarettes.
By far, the smoking simulators are the most popular, at least in terms of downloads. The researchers found 36 simulators on the iPhone and 10 on Android. At least 6 million users downloaded the Android simulators by February 2012, accounting for nearly 99 percent of the pro-smoking downloads.?
Another iPhone app, called Puff Puff Pass, depicts a virtual smoking sessions with friends, allowing you to pass a cigar or cigarette around the room. "Addictive gameplay, almost as addictive as smoking for real," the app's description reads at the iPhone Store.
Such interactive games may be worse for kids than billboards and magazine ads, says Barbara Loken, a consumer psychologist at the University of Minnesota. "They increase the involvement or engagement of the participant, even more than advertisements," Loken tells Shots in an email. This "may make the participant even more likely to take up smoking."
Ironically, some of pro-smoking Android apps landed in the Health and Fitness category because they claim to help stop smoking.
But Loken says that an app would have to depict smoking in negative light for it to facilitate quitting. "If anything, [the apps] normalize smoking," Loken says. "Kids are at a stage where their forming their identity. The apps can provide ... a way of making smoking normal among peer groups."
There's plenty of research out there showing how smoking in movies impacts tobacco use in teens, Loken says. Most studies have found that the greater number of movies viewed, the more likely a person will uptake smoking.
A similar effect may occur with these smartphone apps, Loken says. So she thinks they should be restricted, too.
The only regulation right now is a warning of mature content when you download some apps on the iPhone. And, users must enter their birthdays for apps distributed by Marlboro. But for many smoking simulators and games, finding and installing them is as easy for kids as playing Angry Birds.
By Mike Mount, CNN Senior National Security Producer
The Air Force wants to rebuild a ?fence? around Earth to keep the riff-raff out.
Sounds like a Hollywood script to counter aliens or asteroids but it's a real program the military wants to update at an estimated cost of $3.5 billion.
Just don't expect any space cowboys digging post holes and wrangling barbed wire in orbit.
The Space Fence program is a series of radar signals managed by the Air Force since the early 1960's that has been tracking an ever-growing pile of rocket and satellite parts and other man-made fragments that zoom around Earth?s vicinity at thousands of miles per hour.
The military tracks about 20,000 pieces of so-called ?space junk? but the actual size of the problem is ten times larger than that. Pieces that need tracking are as small as a softball to as large as a bus.
Regardless of size, the debris is a danger to manned space flight, such as the International Space Station, and unmanned operations, like the hundreds of satellites circling the planet at any one time.
Those satellites bring in television, run GPS and carry cell service, so the everyday and commercial stakes of managing the problem are high. The military also operates communications and other satellites.
The Air Force alerts NASA and private satellite companies about any ?space junk? threatening to collide with one of their spacecraft.
"As every collision creates more and more objects, the problem only gets worse over time, it won't get better over time," says Scott Spence, director of Raytheon's Space Fence Program.
Like an old ranch fence, the Air Force Space Fence is worn out and needs to be ?restrung? before something slips through.
Defense contractors Raytheon and Lockheed Martin are competing for a $3.5 billion contract to come up with an improved system that can identify more and smaller pieces. An announcement on a new contract is expected at year?s end.
"The fence will have greater sensitivity, allowing it to detect, track and measure and object the size of a softball orbiting more than 1,200 miles in space," according to an Air Force information sheet about what it expects.
Improved capabilities will also allow the military to receive evidence of satellite break-ups, collisions and unexpected satellite maneuvers, the Air Force said.
The Air Force said it plans on putting up to two radar systems in the United States and in the Marshall Islands in the South Pacific to better track debris.
The Air Force expects construction to begin at the end of 2013 and have a completed system up and running in 2017.
But what about the overall problem of what to do with the debris? It seems as if the technology is not there yet.
"Space has a lot of challenges. The physics of overcoming how much space you want to cover if you want to clean up the debris around the Earth is a daunting one," Spence said.
"If you can prevent a collision from occurring by having better fidelity of what's up there and you can prevent 4,000 objects from being created from a collision when a satellite collides, that's more cost effective to do than trying to clean up the 4,000 objects after the fact," he added.
Like any good fence, Space Fence makes for good neighbors if you can keep track of them.
BNY Mellon has named Marina Lewin head of sales for its Asset Servicing business in the Americas.
Lewin will report to Samir Pandiri, CEO of Americas Asset Servicing & Alternative Investment Services. She will be based in New York, managing teams in several U.S. cities, as well as Dublin, London and Hong Kong.
In addition to her new role, Lewin will continue to lead global sales for the company's Alternative Investment Services (AIS) group. BNY Mellon brought together its two investment services businesses ? global custody and hedge fund administration ? earlier this year.
'Our AIS business has more than doubled its assets under administration the last four years, with Marina a major force behind that growth', said Pandiri. 'As institutional investors continue to make alternatives a larger core of their portfolios, we'll see a sharing in the kinds of services we can offer clients on both sides. Services like prime custody also point to the growing need among hedge fund managers for wider custodial capabilities.
'Plan sponsors and hedge fund managers alike are dealing with issues around transparency, new regulations, risk management, and operational efficiency. Marina brings strong leadership skills that will help us integrate the solutions we deliver to all our investment services clients and reach new ones as the industry evolves', Pandiri added.
Lewin has been with BNY Mellon since 2000. Before joining BNY Mellon she was with JPMorgan and Deutsche Bank and has held a variety of roles in the securities industry, including in operations management, product management, and product development. She's also had extensive experience leading major business integration projects.
BNY Mellon is a leading administrator of alternative assets, including single manager hedge funds, funds of hedge funds, and private equity, with more than $525 billion of alternative assets under administration and custody and an extensive global presence. BNY Mellon also offers a wide range of cash management, foreign exchange, collateral management, corporate trust, and wealth management services to the alternative investment industry.
It's true that the Navy is smaller today than it was in 1917, but the US warship count was smaller still in the Bush 2 administration. However, the US still rules the waves in terms of naval firepower.
By Peter Grier,?Staff writer / October 24, 2012
The USS Enterprise (CVN 65) moves through the Suez Canal for the last time in this Oct.12 photograph, released on Oct.15. The 51-year-old aircraft carrier is to be retired in December, reducing the Navy's 11-carrier fleet to 10.
Stephen Wolff/US Navy photo/handout/Reuters
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Is the US Navy now smaller than at any time since 1917? That?s what Mitt Romney charged during the final presidential debate on Monday night. The former Massachusetts governor vowed that if elected president he?d rebuild America?s declining maritime power.
Skip to next paragraph Peter Grier
Washington Editor
Peter Grier is The Christian Science Monitor's Washington editor. In this capacity, he helps direct coverage for the paper on most news events in the nation's capital.
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?The Navy said they needed 313 ships to carry out their mission. We?re now down to 285.... I want to make sure that we have the ships that are required by our Navy,? Mr. Romney said.
President Obama replied with sarcasm, saying that the comparison wasn?t apt because the US has ships called submarines, which sail underwater, and aircraft carriers, upon which planes can land. We?ll get to this qualitative judgment in a moment, but first let?s look at the numbers. Is Romney right?
Yes, partly. In December of 1916 the US Navy consisted of 245 ships, according to Naval History and Heritage Command data. That?s certainly fewer than it has today. But that year also saw the passage of the Naval Act of 1916, meant to help counter Germany?s strength afloat. By the middle of 1917, the US had 342 active warships. By 1918, it had 774.
But Romney didn?t just say the Navy was smaller now than in 1916. He implied that it was at a historical nadir ? his exact words were ?smaller now than any time since 1917." That further implication isn?t correct.
In 2007, during the administration of George W. Bush, the Navy bottomed out at 278 total active warships. The Naval History and Heritage Command chart notes that this number represents the service?s low since the 19th century.
It?s crept up a bit since then to the current 285 level.
What about strength, though? That?s a calculation that involves more than just numbers. It?s true that today?s warships are far more powerful than those of 1916, as Obama pointed out, but so are those of our adversaries. How does the US stand in regards to the naval forces of the rest of the world, and how has that changed over the years?
That?s a question that Florida State political scientists Brian Crisher and Mark Souva have attempted to answer. Their methodology involves toting up the number of each nation?s actual warships, figuring out their firepower, and comparing that to the total firepower of the rest of the world.
According to their calculations, in 1916 the US controlled about one-third of the world?s naval power. That sounds impressive, but it still placed the US behind Germany, which had roughly 19 percent, and Britain, which then had 34 percent of international naval strength.
The picture is much different today. The US controls about 50 percent of world naval power, according to Professors Crisher and Souva. No other nation even comes close. Russia is in second place, with a comparable figure of 11 percent.
There is the further question of coverage ? the world is large, and projecting power around the world requires sheer fleet numbers, no matter the capabilities of each ship. The Romney campaign has accused President of undermining the US in this regard by proposing the premature retirement of the carrier USS Enterprise and six Ticonderoga-class cruisers to save money.
Thus the Romney campaign?s national security white paper says that if elected the former Massachusetts governor ?will put our Navy on the path to increase its shipbuilding rate from nine per year to approximately fifteen per year.?
Study: Flame retardant 'Firemaster 550' is an endocrine disruptorPublic release date: 24-Oct-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Matt Shipman matt_shipman@ncsu.edu 919-515-6386 North Carolina State University
The flame-retardant mixture known as "Firemaster 550" is an endocrine disruptor that causes extreme weight gain, early onset of puberty and cardiovascular health effects in lab animals, according to a new study spearheaded by researchers from North Carolina State University and Duke University.
Firemaster 550 is made up of four principal component chemicals and is used in polyurethane foam in a wide variety of products, ranging from mattresses to infant nursing pillows. The flame-retardant mixture was developed by Chemtura Corp., and was first identified by the research community in 2008. It was developed to replace a class of fire retardants being phased out of use because of concerns regarding their safety. This new study represents the first public data on whether Firemaster 550 has potential health effects.
In this pilot study, pregnant lab rats were assigned to three groups: a control group, which was not exposed to Firemaster 550; a "low-dose" group, which ingested 100 micrograms of Firemaster 550 once per day throughout pregnancy and nursing; and a "high-dose" group, which ingested 1,000 micrograms on the same schedule. These environmentally relevant doses are lower than the doses used in industry-funded studies. Researchers then evaluated the physiological outcomes of the exposure in both the mothers (called dams) and the offspring (called pups).
Importantly, the researchers detected TBB, one of Firemaster 550's component chemicals, in the fat of all the exposed dams and offspring, but none of the unexposed animals. This means the flame retardant is capable of crossing the placenta during pregnancy, reaching infants via breast milk, or both.
Because flame retardants that have been phased out are known to disrupt thyroid function, and Firemaster 550 includes chemicals with structural similarities, the researchers looked at circulating thyroid hormone levels in dams at the end of the nursing period. The high-dose dams had much higher thyroid hormone levels than the control group, while low-dose dams had marginally higher thyroid hormone levels. This is significant because thyroid hormones influence brain development during pregnancy, as well as a host of other biological functions, such as metabolism.
Researchers also found extremely rapid weight gain in the offspring. By the time they were weaned from nursing, high-dose male pups were 60 percent heavier than the control group and high-dose female pups were 31 percent heavier than the control group.
The increased weight in female pups contributed to the early onset of puberty. The control group hit puberty at 33 days old, while the high-dose group hit puberty at 29 days.
High-dose female pups also had difficulty regulating their glucose levels as adults. High-dose males had thickened walls in the left ventricle of the heart, suggestive of cardiovascular disease.
"This study indicates that Firemaster 550 is an endocrine disruptor, and that raises a lot of important questions," says Dr. Heather Patisaul, an assistant professor of biology at NC State and lead author of a paper describing the work. "This was a small-scale study. We need to continue this work with a larger sample size and look at a broader range of potential effects related to obesity, thyroid hormone function and metabolic syndrome. We also want to determine which of the component chemicals in Firemaster 550 are responsible for the various effects."
###
The paper, "Accumulation and Endocrine Disrupting Effects of the Flame Retardant Mixture Firemaster 550 in Rats: An Exploratory Assessment," is published online in the Journal of Biochemical and Molecular Toxicology. Co-authors include NC State undergraduate Natalie Mabrey; NC State research technician Katherine McCaffrey; Heather Stapleton and Simon Roberts of Duke University; Robin Gear and Scott Belcher of the University of Cincinnati; and Joe Braun of Brown University. The research was funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.
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Study: Flame retardant 'Firemaster 550' is an endocrine disruptorPublic release date: 24-Oct-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Matt Shipman matt_shipman@ncsu.edu 919-515-6386 North Carolina State University
The flame-retardant mixture known as "Firemaster 550" is an endocrine disruptor that causes extreme weight gain, early onset of puberty and cardiovascular health effects in lab animals, according to a new study spearheaded by researchers from North Carolina State University and Duke University.
Firemaster 550 is made up of four principal component chemicals and is used in polyurethane foam in a wide variety of products, ranging from mattresses to infant nursing pillows. The flame-retardant mixture was developed by Chemtura Corp., and was first identified by the research community in 2008. It was developed to replace a class of fire retardants being phased out of use because of concerns regarding their safety. This new study represents the first public data on whether Firemaster 550 has potential health effects.
In this pilot study, pregnant lab rats were assigned to three groups: a control group, which was not exposed to Firemaster 550; a "low-dose" group, which ingested 100 micrograms of Firemaster 550 once per day throughout pregnancy and nursing; and a "high-dose" group, which ingested 1,000 micrograms on the same schedule. These environmentally relevant doses are lower than the doses used in industry-funded studies. Researchers then evaluated the physiological outcomes of the exposure in both the mothers (called dams) and the offspring (called pups).
Importantly, the researchers detected TBB, one of Firemaster 550's component chemicals, in the fat of all the exposed dams and offspring, but none of the unexposed animals. This means the flame retardant is capable of crossing the placenta during pregnancy, reaching infants via breast milk, or both.
Because flame retardants that have been phased out are known to disrupt thyroid function, and Firemaster 550 includes chemicals with structural similarities, the researchers looked at circulating thyroid hormone levels in dams at the end of the nursing period. The high-dose dams had much higher thyroid hormone levels than the control group, while low-dose dams had marginally higher thyroid hormone levels. This is significant because thyroid hormones influence brain development during pregnancy, as well as a host of other biological functions, such as metabolism.
Researchers also found extremely rapid weight gain in the offspring. By the time they were weaned from nursing, high-dose male pups were 60 percent heavier than the control group and high-dose female pups were 31 percent heavier than the control group.
The increased weight in female pups contributed to the early onset of puberty. The control group hit puberty at 33 days old, while the high-dose group hit puberty at 29 days.
High-dose female pups also had difficulty regulating their glucose levels as adults. High-dose males had thickened walls in the left ventricle of the heart, suggestive of cardiovascular disease.
"This study indicates that Firemaster 550 is an endocrine disruptor, and that raises a lot of important questions," says Dr. Heather Patisaul, an assistant professor of biology at NC State and lead author of a paper describing the work. "This was a small-scale study. We need to continue this work with a larger sample size and look at a broader range of potential effects related to obesity, thyroid hormone function and metabolic syndrome. We also want to determine which of the component chemicals in Firemaster 550 are responsible for the various effects."
###
The paper, "Accumulation and Endocrine Disrupting Effects of the Flame Retardant Mixture Firemaster 550 in Rats: An Exploratory Assessment," is published online in the Journal of Biochemical and Molecular Toxicology. Co-authors include NC State undergraduate Natalie Mabrey; NC State research technician Katherine McCaffrey; Heather Stapleton and Simon Roberts of Duke University; Robin Gear and Scott Belcher of the University of Cincinnati; and Joe Braun of Brown University. The research was funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
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Public release date: 24-Oct-2012
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