Syrian opposition bloc urges world to protect Homs

BEIRUT (AP) ? Syria's main opposition bloc on Friday urged the international community to take action to protect civilians in the cities of Homs and Daraa that have been targeted by military as part of a government campaign to regain control of the territory it lost to the opposition.

The appeal comes as opposition figures meet in Turkey to elect a new leadership, including an interim government that would try to run rebel-held territories in Syria.

The Syrian National Coalition appealed to the United Nations and Western countries that have supported the opposition in Syria's civil war "to intervene immediately" and provide food and medicine to the besieged, rebel-held areas of the central city of Homs and Daraa in the south, where the uprising against President Bashar Assad's rule began in March 2011.

More than 93,000 people have been killed in the conflict that began as peaceful protests but turned into an armed revolt after opposition supporters took up arms to fight a brutal government crackdown.

The government controls much of Homs, Syria's third largest city, while several neighborhoods in the center are opposition strongholds. Building on its capture of the strategic town of Qusair between the Lebanese border and Homs, the army launched an offensive in the city on Saturday, pounding rebel positions with artillery and airstrikes for five straight days, according to the SNC.

In a statement, the SNC said clashes between rebels and troops flared up again in Friday morning, along with shelling of residential areas of Sheik Miskeen and Jassim in Daraa.

"The areas under attack in Homs have been cut off from the rest of the world and suffer from an urgent shortage of medicine and food," the SNC said, appealing to its Western backers to support rebel units and provide them with more sophisticated weapons.

In Damascus, Syria's state-run SANA news agency said that three people were injured in an overnight mortar attack in the capital's Dweilaa region.

In recent months, rebels fighting in the north have received more powerful weaponry, including anti-tank missiles and surface-to-air missiles, likely supplied by Qatar and Saudi Arabia. The U.S., which has provided opposition fighters with non-lethal aid, said recently it was willing to supply them with arms, but has been reluctant to do so for fear they could end up in the hands of radical Islamic groups that have been the most effective fighting force on the opposition's side.

The Western-backed opposition coalition is primarily composed of exiled politicians with little apparent support from Syrians inside the country, who are trying to survive the third summer of devastating conflict.

SNC acting leader George Sabra and senior opposition figures Louay Safi and Mustafa Sabbagh top the list of candidates for the new leadership that is expected to emerge from the coalition's two-day meeting in Istanbul. However, its members remain deeply divided and previous attempts to unite its ranks and devise a strategy for possible peace talks that the U.S. and Russia have been trying to convene in Geneva this summer have failed.

In Rome, United Nation's food agencies said that Syria's food security situation has significantly deteriorated over the past year, leaving at least 4 million Syrians unable to produce or buy food to survive.

With fighting well in its third year, "crop and livestock production, food availability and access to food have all taken an increasingly heavy toll," according to a report by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Food Program (WFP). Their experts visited Syria in May and June.

Current wheat production is 2.4 million tons, some 40 percent less than the annual average harvest of more than 4 million tons before the crisis and 15 percent lower than the reduced harvest of 2011/2012.

"There is a limited window of opportunity to ensure crisis-affected families do not lose vital sources of food and income," the two U.N. organizations said, and Syria needs to import about 1.5 million tons of wheat for the current season.

The livestock sector "has been seriously depleted by the conflict," the report said, saying that poultry production is down over 50 percent compared with 2011, while sheep and cattle numbers have also significantly declined."

Household food insecurity has increased with massive population displacement in Syria, disruption of agricultural production, unemployment, economic sanctions, currency depreciation and high food and fuel prices, the report said.

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Associated Press writer Albert Aji in Damascus, Syria, contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/syrian-opposition-bloc-urges-world-protect-homs-071011936.html

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Sony: PS4 Well Ahead In Preorders, Console Is Most ... - Games Thirst

PS4 has been very well received by the media and gamers alike, as Sony has sort to, and accomplished, the goal of painting the console as one that?s friendly to the gamer and built as a games machine first. And alas, everything Sony has shown proves that to be true ? even down to the specs, with??Fergal Gara, VP and managing director at Sony Computer Entertainment UK and Ireland, confidently stating that PS4 is ?the most powerful console ever conceived?.

It was in an interview with TechRadar that Gara divulged this info, adding that although they?re ahead in numbers now, they plan to keep their heads down and race to the finish, recognizing that the console generation game isn?t a sprint.

The thing I?m most pleased about is the entire design principles about the PS4 are being focused around the gamer first. So how can we create a platform that?s great to develop for and easy to develop for, because that unleashes the creatives and if they can create the best experiences that?s going to lead to satisfaction for gamers.

But secondly to design a piece of technology like that it?s very easy to deliver one or the other, in particular I?m talking about the price and the performance trade off. It?s very hard to deliver both and for me the balance that?s been delivered across those two is outstanding. So it?s great to be going to market with what we believe is the most powerful gaming device ever conceived and certainly ever developed and at a price that feels very acceptable, certainly based on the pre-order volumes that we?re seeing.

We have the most uncompromised memory spec that we could pretty well dream up and if you talk to developers, if you talk to first party, third party developers, you?ll see that that opens up the possibilities for them and it?s about as high spec as they could have ever imagined, 8GB gives them huge headroom to continue developing fantastic games.

PS4 launches holiday season 2013. There?s a rumor claiming that an exact launch date will be revealed at GamesCom in Cologne, Germany this August. We?ll keep you posted.

Source: http://www.gamesthirst.com/2013/07/05/sony-ps4-well-ahead-in-preorders-console-is-most-powerful-ever-made/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=sony-ps4-well-ahead-in-preorders-console-is-most-powerful-ever-made

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Nook's Android app now supports HD magazines on tablets

Next time you fire up the Nook app on your Android tablet, you'll be able to browse HD magazines -- assuming your device has a 1280 x 720 screen. Introduced three months ago on Retina iPads, the feature now jumps to the latest version of the Android app, along with a number of other updates. New magazine titles aside, version 3.4 lets you enlarge book illustrations and adds support for the system's assistive technology for blind and low-vision users. Go wild with screen magnification on Android 4.2 or higher, or listen to the app speak via TalkBack on 4.1. Meanwhile, the Nook app for iOS comes equipped with bug fixes and a better way to organize books in a series. Sure, these updates don't bring a bunch of new major features, but they show that Barnes & Noble isn't likely to ax its mobile apps in the near future like it did the ones for Macs and PCs.

Filed under: Misc

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Source: Nook (Android), (iOS)

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/58bLP0MqQN8/

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How Novice Runners Should Start Training for Maximum Results

Most running novices plot their early runs in terms of distance. "I used to be able to run X distance in high school; I'm going to run that same distance today." Then they spend the next two weeks hobbling around like a broken grandpa. There's a better way.

Read more...

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/tDbHyM07M-4/how-novice-runners-should-start-training-for-maximum-re-655196934

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Where the Most Important Part of Your Battery Comes From

Lithium's kind of a big deal. It powers everything from our gadgets to our cars?really our entire modern world. And that's not changing any time soon; some analysts estimate that demand could grow up to 25% over the next several years. But how does one harness the power of a metal that bursts into flame every time it gets wet? How do you even get it out of the ground?

What is Lithium?

Lithium (Greek for "stone") is the third element on the periodic table, a silvery-white alkali metal that's soft enough to be cut with a table knife. It's also the lightest metal on Earth, as well as the least-dense solid element. It has the equivalent density of a plank of pine wood, and half that of water. It floats in oil (and water too, though that'd end very badly since, you know, alkali go boom), and since it's reactive with moisture in the air, pure lithium is typically stored in anaerobic conditions and covered in either mineral oil, petroleum jelly, or some other such non-reactive liquid.

That's not to say that you can just dig a hole and pull out a chunk of lithium. No, it's far too corrosive and reactive for that; in fact, lithium never occurs freely in nature. Instead it's always found as a compound, often in pegmatitic minerals, as well as in ocean water, brines, and clays. Problem is, even though lithium is relatively abundant?it is the 33rd most common element?it's very diffuse throughout nature, which means that collecting and concentrating it into a commercially viable form is a massive pain.

How Did We Discover It?

Johan August Arfwedson first isolated lithium from petalite?a crystalline substance?in 1817. Over the next few decades, a number of researchers teased out the basic physical conditions of the metal. By 1855, chemists Robert Bunsen and Augustus Matthiessen had discovered a means of precipitating large amounts of lithium from lithium chloride via electrolysis, which led to small-scale production in 1916 and commercial-scale lithium production by 1923.

Lithium was used in WWII as a high-temperature grease for aircraft engines, thanks to its high melting point and the fact that it's significantly less corrosive than the calcium soaps used previously. Lithium also played a major role in the Cold War. The lithium-6 and lithium-7 ions were used to create tritium, a boosting compound used to increase the efficiency and yield of hydrogen bombs, as well as a solid fusion fuel itself.

From the late 1950s until the mid-1980s, the US was the dominant global lithium producer. Over roughly a quarter century, the US amassed a stockpile of 42,000 tons of lithium hydroxide from production sites in Nevada and North Carolina. America supplied 80% of the global demand for lithium in 1976, and continued its dominance until 1984, when one of the largest deposits on the planet was discovered in Chile (and again in 1997, when mining began on another massive deposit in Argentina).

So, What Do We Do When We Find It?

Turns out, the US only holds a fraction of the massive lithium deposits of Chile and Argentina. They're the two largest producers, in that order, churning out 60 percent of the world's annual supply. Australia and China combine for another 30 percent. The remaining 10 percent accounts for smaller producers like the US and Russia. The US Geological Survey estimates total worldwide lithium reserves at 13 million tons. interestingly, half of that supply is thought to actually reside in Bolivia, along the eastern face of the Andes. Overall, the USGS estimates there's at least 5.4 million tons of lithium in them thar Bolivian hills.

Historically, lithium has either been mined from brines or from hard rock mining. Hard-rock lithium mining is just like other traditional mining operations: Dig a big hole, pull out the rocks you want, send them off for processing. The problem with applying that to lithium is that extracting the substance from solid rock is an incredibly time-, energy-, and cost-intensive ordeal. Since lithium is so diffuse, you've got to pull a lot of rock out of the ground just to get a little bit of of the good stuff.

Instead, far more economically efficient, brine-based extraction methods have been developed. Both Chile and Argentina (as well as China, Russia, and the US's only operating lithium mine in Clayton Valley, Nevada) use the brine pool method. Brine itself is, as Western Lithium explains:

The brines, volcanic in origin, are present in desert areas and occur in playas and salars where lithium has been concentrated by solar evaporation. In the salars (saline desert basins sometimes known as salt lakes or salt flats), the brine is contained at or below the surface and is pumped into large solar evaporation ponds for concentration prior to processing. When the basin surfaces are predominantly composed of silts and clays with some salt incrustation, they are referred to as playas. If the surface is predominantly salt they are called salars. Although the fundamental character of the deposits is similar, there is great variability in size, surface character, stratigraphy, structure, chemistry, infrastructure and solar evaporation rates.

The largest such brine pool resides in the world?s largest salt flat, Bolivia's Salar de Uyuni.

The Foote Mineral company used to operate a lithium brine pool in Silver Peak, Nevada and provides this deeper look as to how lithium is extracted:

The Foote Mineral Company is recovering lithium from solar evaporated saline brines at Silver Peak, Nevada. The brines are pumped from beneath a playa surface inside a closed basin. The playa deposits consists of mixtures of clays, silts, sands, and evaporites, many of which are saturated with saline brines down to known depths of 600 feet. Brines are probably present below this depth, for gravity studies have indicated the unconsolidated sediments reach depths of 1500 feet. The genesis of the Silver Peak deposit is apparently related to volcanic activity and the area is characterized by hot springs, cinder cones, and lava deposits. The brine pumped from wells contains 300 ppm of lithium and 10-15 wt. % of other dissolved solids. The playa surface is well suited for solar evaporation. The brines are pumped into a series of solar evaporation ponds and after they reach saturation a series of salts are precipitated. The sequence of salts precipitated is NaCl, a mixture of NaC1 and glaserite (KNa(SO4 )2 ), and then these two plus Ka As a consequence of the evaporation, the lithium concentration is increased to approximately 5000 ppm. The effective evaporation season at Silver Peak begins in April and commonly continues through October. It is necessary to accumulate sufficient brine by October to operate the processing plant through the winter months. Lithium is recovered from the brine by precipitating lithium carbonate.

Just four companies?Talison Lithium, Rockwood Holdings, Sociedad Quimica y Minera de Chile, and FMC?account for 95 percent of worldwide lithium production and all use the industry standard method of precipitating pure lithium from molten lithium chloride (LiCl) using electrolysis. This process is of course performed in an air and water free environment to avoid a reaction.

Where Do the Batteries Come In?

In the video above, Leyden Energy offers us a view inside their li-ion battery plant and a behind the scenes tour of its production facility.

The Science Channel's How It's Made series also walks us through a more general form of the battery production process in the clip above.

Meeting Demand

We've got roughly 900 million vehicles on the road worldwide, and not enough lithium reserves to replace very many of them with battery-powered alternatives. "Since a vehicle battery requires 100 times as much lithium carbonate as its laptop equivalent, the green-car revolution could make lithium one of the planet's most strategic commodities," says Mary Ann Wright of Johnson Controls-Saft, a lithium-ion battery producer.

"To make just 60 million plug-in hybrid vehicles a year containing a small lithium-ion battery would require 420,000 tons of lithium carbonate - or six times the current global production annually," William Tahil, research director at Meridian International Research, told Barrons. "But in reality, you want a decent-sized battery, so it's more likely you'd have to increase global production tenfold. And this excludes the demand for lithium in portable electronics."

To span that supply shortage, numerous alternative sources for lithium have been explored. One promising system is to use the brine pulled up by geothermal pumps. A cadre of seven geothermal plants in the Salton Sea have been able to pull about 16,000 tons of lithium (as well as a fair amount of zinc) from their pipes annually. It's simply a matter of filtering the dissolved minerals from the water.

[Wikipedia - NBC News - Daily Mail - Rodinal Lithium - Salt Institute - BC Institute of Technology - About - Resilience - Western Lithium - Hardrock mining image: Kamzara / Shutterstock, salt pile image: Vladimir Melnik / Shutterstock, all other images: AP Images]

Source: http://gizmodo.com/where-the-most-important-part-of-your-battery-comes-fro-586442784

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TSA Is Instagramming the Crazy Stuff It Confiscates at Checkpoints

What is Instagram for if not bragging oh so subtly about the stuff you're doing. It's true for rich kids on fancy vacations, and apparently, it's true for the Transportation Safety Administration, which has been posting images of the absurd stuff passengers are trying to carry on planes every day.

Since June 27th, the TSA has posted 10 gauzy, filter-soaked shots of handguns, concealed knives, fireworks, and even an (inert) hand grenade?all of which were confiscated from passengers trying to board flights. It's proof in sepia and tan that the TSA is doing its job by keeping the skies safe.

As Forbes points out, TSA is no stranger to using the Internet to get the message out about it successes. The agency has been blogging weekly updates about its dominion over the checkpoint line since 2008. Let's just hope all that social media communication isn't distracting agents from the all important task of taking dangerous implements away from air travelers in the first place. [TSA Instagram via Forbes]

Source: http://gizmodo.com/tsa-is-instagramming-the-crazy-stuff-it-confiscates-at-651017621

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2 win National High School Musical Theater Awards

NEW YORK (AP) ? A teenager from Connecticut who sang songs from popular Broadway hits like "Newsies" and another from California who nailed the sassy tune "Raunchy" from the musical "110 in the Shade" won top honors Monday night at the National High School Musical Theater Awards.

Sarah Lynn Marion, from Fullerton, Calif., was named best actress and Taylor Varga from Newtown, Conn., got the best actor crown at the fifth annual "Glee"-like competition, nicknamed the Jimmy Awards after theater owner James Nederlander.

Both top winners will receive a $10,000 scholarship award, capping a months-long winnowing process that began with 50,000 students from 1,000 schools and ended at the Minskoff Theatre, the long-term home of "The Lion King." This year's contestants come from 20 states.

Marion, who studies at Huntington Beach High School for the Performing Arts and had sung a segment from "Hello, Dolly," absolutely nailed the song "Raunchy," with the appropriate lyric, "Gonna make them other gals turn green."

In her acceptance speech, she thanked her teachers, her parents, her four siblings, her friends and all fellow contestants. "And my first grade teacher who gave me my first role as Jack's mother in 'Jack and the Beanstalk,'" she said.

Varga, who attends Newtown High School, was one of two J. Pierrepont Finches from "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying" and delivered a touching "Santa Fe" from "Newsies" for his solo. "I'm a little lost for words," he said, before thanking his family and friends who made the trip from Connecticut.

The 62 teens who made it to New York ? 31 girls and 31 boys ? got a five-day theatrical boot camp at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, complete with scrambling to learn an opening and closing group number, intense advice on their solo songs, plus a field trip to watch "Annie" on Broadway and dinner at famed theater-district hangout Sardi's.

All 62 performed snippets of the songs that they had sung at regional competitions as part of seven large medleys and then seven finalists ? three boys and four girls ? were asked to sing solos. The final winners were picked from the last seven.

All had to switch from black dresses for the ladies and dark suits for the men at the top of the show into their character costumes for their medleys and then back again. Their performances were backed by a nine-piece orchestra.

The five runners-up, who each receive $2,500, were: Martha Hellerman from Madison, Wis.; Eva Maria Noblezada from Charlotte, N.C.; Jillian Caillouette from Norwich, Conn.; Michael Burrell from Mission Viejo, Calif.; and Austin Crute from Atlanta.

There was a fair amount of overlapping of roles, with two Belles from "Beauty and the Beast," two Miss Adelaides from "Guys and Dolls" and a memorable set of five Bakers from "Into the Woods," who were all thrown on stage to duke it out together.

The irreverent show "Avenue Q" had two representatives, complete with puppets, and there was a tap dancing Billy Crocker from "Anything Goes" and a gun-toting Annie Oakley in "Annie Get Your Gun." Shows ranged from "Chicago" to "Sweeney Todd" to "Les Miserables" and "In the Heights."

During their visit, the teens were tutored one-on-one by theater pros Leslie Odom Jr., Liz Callaway, Michael McElroy and Telly Leung. The judges Monday night included Tony-winning director Scott Ellis, Tony nominee Montego Glover and casting professional Bernie Telsey. One judge was overheard summing up the judging process with one word: "brutal." The hosts were Laura Osnes and Santino Fontana, who co-star in "Rodgers + Hammerstein's Cinderella."

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Online:

http://www.nhsmta.com

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Mark Kennedy can be reached at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/4e67281c3f754d0696fbfdee0f3f1469/Article_2013-07-02-High%20School%20Theater%20Awards/id-88c4467eff8149eab4b4b4050caf2e12

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