Grand Canyon as old as the dinosaurs: Dates for carving of western Grand Canyon pushed back 60 million years

ScienceDaily (Nov. 29, 2012) ? An analysis of mineral grains from the bottom of the western Grand Canyon indicates it was largely carved out by about 70 million years ago -- a time when dinosaurs were around and may have even peeked over the rim, says a study led by the University of Colorado Boulder.

The new research pushes back the conventionally accepted date for the formation of the Grand Canyon in Arizona by more than 60 million years, said CU-Boulder Assistant Professor Rebecca Flowers. The team used a dating method that exploits the radioactive decay of uranium and thorium atoms to helium atoms in a phosphate mineral known as apatite, said Flowers, a faculty member in CU-Boulder's geological sciences department.

The helium atoms were locked in the mineral grains as they cooled and moved closer to the surface during the carving of the Grand Canyon, she said. Temperature variations at shallow levels beneath Earth's surface are influenced by topography, and the thermal history recorded by the apatite grains allowed the team to infer how much time had passed since there was significant natural excavation of the Grand Canyon, Flowers said.

"Our research implies that the Grand Canyon was directly carved to within a few hundred meters of its modern depth by about 70 million years ago," said Flowers. A paper on the subject by Flowers and Professor Kenneth Farley of the California Institute of Technology was published online Nov. 29 in Science magazine.

Flowers said there is significant controversy among scientists over the age and evolution of the Grand Canyon. A variety of data suggest that the Grand Canyon had a complicated history, and the entire modern canyon may not have been carved all at the same time. Different canyon segments may have evolved separately before coalescing into what visitors see today.

In a 2008 study, Flowers and colleagues showed that parts of the eastern section of the Grand Canyon likely developed some 55 million years ago, although the bottom of that ancient canyon was above the height of the current canyon rim at that time before it subsequently eroded to its current depth.

Over a mile deep in places, Arizona's steeply sided Grand Canyon is about 280 miles long and up to 18 miles wide in places. Visited by more than 5 million people annually, the iconic canyon was likely carved in large part by an ancestral waterway of the Colorado River that was flowing in the opposite direction millions of years ago, said Flowers.

"An ancient Grand Canyon has important implications for understanding the evolution of landscapes, topography, hydrology and tectonics in the western U.S. and in mountain belts more generally," said Flowers. The study was funded in part by the National Science Foundation.

Whether helium is retained or lost from the individual apatite crystals is a function of temperatures in the rocks of Earth's crust, she said. When temperatures of the apatite grains are greater than 158 degrees Fahrenheit, no helium is retained in the apatite, while at temperatures below 86 degrees F, all of the helium is retained.

"The main thing this technique allows us to do is detect variations in the thermal structure at shallow levels of the Earth's crust," she said. "Since these variations are in part induced by the topography of the region, we obtained dates that allowed us to constrain the timeframe when the Grand Canyon was incised."

Flowers and Farley took their uranium/thorium/helium dating technique to a more sophisticated level by analyzing the spatial distribution of helium atoms near the margin of individual apatite crystals. "Knowing not just how much helium is present in the grains but also how it is distributed gives us additional information about whether the rocks had a rapid cooling or slow cooling history," said Flowers.

There have been a number of studies in recent years reporting various ages for the Grand Canyon, said Flowers. The most popular theory places the age of the Grand Canyon at 5 million to 6 million years based on the age of gravel washed downstream by the ancestral Colorado River. In contrast, a 2008 study published in Science estimated the age of the Grand Canyon to be some 17 million years old after researchers dated mineral deposits inside of caves carved in the canyon walls.

Paleontologists believe dinosaurs were wiped out when a giant asteroid collided with Earth 65 million years ago, resulting in huge clouds of dust that blocked the sun's rays from reaching Earth's surface, cooling the planet and killing most plants and animals.

Because of the wide numbers of theories, dates and debates regarding the age of the Grand Canyon, geologists have redoubled their efforts, said Flowers. "There has been a resurgence of work on this problem over the past few years because we now have some new techniques that allow us to date rocks that we couldn't date before," she said.

While the dating research for the new study was done at Caltech, Flowers recently set up her own lab at CU-Boulder with the ability to conduct uranium/thorium/helium dating.

"If it were simple, I think we would have solved the problem a long time ago," said Flowers. "But the variety of conflicting information has caused scientists to argue about the age of the Grand Canyon for more than 150 years. I expect that our interpretation that the Grand Canyon formed some 70 million years ago is going to generate a fair amount of controversy, and I hope it will motivate more research to help solve this problem."

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Colorado at Boulder.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. R. M. Flowers and K. A. Farley. Apatite 4He/3He and (U-Th)/He Evidence for an Ancient Grand Canyon. Science, 29 November 2012 DOI: 10.1126/science.1229390

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_science/~3/rgolVWBfup4/121129143301.htm

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On Cliff, Ryan Faces Choice of Two Paths

Fresh from the campaign trail and mulling his options for the future, former vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan will play a pivotal role in negotiations over the fiscal cliff and faces a choice of two paths.

The Wisconsin congressman, known for his zeal for budget cutting, could opt for ideological purity and emerge as a leading voice urging his fellow Republicans to resist tax increases and demand steep cuts in entitlement spending.

Or he could use his role as House Budget Committee chairman to push for the best deal possible for Republicans but then demonstrate bipartisanship by getting behind a compromise.

Either path holds perils for the Republican lawmaker, who became an instant focus of speculation as a potential 2016 White House contender following his failed vice presidential bid. If he insists on too hard a line in the budget talks, he could potentially open a rift with other leaders in his party and get blamed for scuttling a deal. On the other hand, any compromise could leave Ryan open to criticism from the Republican base and vulnerable to a challenger from the right in 2016.

Republican strategist Steve Schmidt said Ryan has an incentive to work toward an agreement.

?The ability to show you've been practical, the ability to show that you've compromised, the ability to show that you have bent the negotiations in your direction and got the best deal that you can, all of those things position you better than pure ideology in the context of a presidential campaign,? said Schmidt, a top adviser to John McCain?s 2008 presidential campaign. ?He has the ability to provide leadership in a situation like this and perhaps this will be his greatest test.?
But Ryan?s own history suggests that he would not cut any deal unless it went far enough toward his top priority: curbing spending on Medicare and other entitlements. When he served on the Simpson-Bowles deficit-reduction commission in 2010, he was one of seven on the 18-member panel who voted against the final proposal because he felt it didn?t do enough to restructure Medicare and thought the proposed increase in tax revenue was too high. The proposal fell three votes short of the ?supermajority? of 14 it would have needed to be sent to Congress for a vote.

In 2011, Ryan asked to be left off the supercommittee that was tasked with identifying further savings in the wake of a debt-ceiling agreement. He cited his own budget work and voiced doubts about how much the group could achieve. It did indeed fail, which is why lawmakers and the White House must now use the current lame-duck session of Congress to try to avert the $1.2 trillion in automatic budget cuts known as the sequester set to kick in at the start of next year.

This time, Ryan has more skin in the game. As a member of House leadership, he does not have the option of sitting out the fiscal cliff negotiations. In a change from the debt-ceiling talks, he has joined the daily Republican leadership meetings, alongside Ways and Means chairman Dave Camp, Committee on Energy and Commerce chairman Fred Upton. ?Chairman Ryan is back here because he wants to solve these problems,? said Boehner spokesman Brendan Buck.

House GOP staff, including Austin Smythe, the Budget Committee?s staff director, huddled with White House aides on the Hill last week to begin talking about the broad concepts that will guide negotiations, though no dollar amounts have been set yet. After Thanksgiving, once concepts are nailed down, the principals can begin negotiating.

Ryan has publicly echoed House Speaker John Boehner in signaling openness to revenue increases but not higher tax rates, meaning he might support the closing of tax loopholes or other revenue-raising steps. He was privy to the wording that Boehner used in the public remarks on the fiscal cliff he delivered the day after the election.
?He opposes raising tax rates because doing so would stifle economic growth and cost jobs,? said Conor Sweeney, a Ryan spokesman. He added that Ryan wants to see what the White House?s opening argument will be and whether President Obama will ?offer responsible solutions, identify specific spending cuts, and demonstrate leadership to tackle this pressing challenge.?

Ryan will press ?very, very hard? on long-term entitlement reform, said Bill Hoagland, a former aide to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who has been in touch with Ryan?s staff.

If Ryan can wring concessions from Democrats on entitlements, it could help his presidential ambitions. ?If he's running in two or four years from now he'll be able to say [the deficit was reduced] because of my insistence on entitlement reform,? said Hoagland, who is now a senior vice president at the Bipartisan Policy Center.

Republicans feel confident in pressing for long-term entitlement reform as part of ?grand bargain? negotiations because polling on Medicare during the campaign suggested the issue was not a major liability for Ryan and Republican White House nominee Mitt Romney, despite a barrage of Democratic attacks zeroing in on the Wisconsin congressman?s Medicare plan.

Eric Ueland, Frist?s former chief of staff, said Republicans recognize that Ryan might have to cede some ground in the budget talks because Democrats hold a significant amount of leverage, given that they still control the Senate and that President Obama won his re-election bid. ?What he does and what he?s able to do is judged against the baseline,? said Ueland, now a vice president at the Duberstein Group.

But Ryan?s critics doubt Democrats will be able to negotiate with him. ?Nothing we?ve seen so far under Chairman Ryan suggests that he?s willing and or capable of negotiating bipartisan legislation. Hope springs eternal but I don?t have a lot of it,? said Jim Manley, a former aide to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid who is now at QGA Public Affiars.

Instead of seeing his national stature enhanced, Manley said he hopes Ryan will become an ?afterthought? in the negotiations if he refuses to make any concessions. Alternatively, he could complicate Boehner?s ability to negotiate a deal by presenting a challenge from the right.

But Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former Congressional Budget Office director, predicted Republican House lawmakers would present a united front. ?This is not a case where the administration?s going to divide and conquer,? said Holtz-Eakin, president of the American Action Forum.

Anti-tax activist Grover Norquist disagreed with the notion that the congressman would feel pressure to water down his own principles in order to portray himself as a pragmatic dealmaker. ?He will be both a man who can sell a plan to the rank and file and can sell a no vote to Boehner,? said Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform.

Steven Smith, a political science professor at Washington University in St. Louis, wrote in an email that Ryan might emulate former Democratic Sen. Sam Nunn, a powerful voice on national security issues. In Ryan?s case, he could take a hard line during negotiations and only offer his support for a Boehner-backed deal at the last minute. For Nunn, this offered the appearance that he was careful and principled. But, Smith warned, ?This is not an easy path for a prospective presidential candidate.?

?First, endorsing a moderate solution risks alienating the core of the party,? he wrote, noting that it was unlikely Nunn could have won his party's nomination for president. ?Second, a long-term deal may take budget issues off the agenda and reduce the advantage that Ryan has over the field of candidates. Unfortunately, the alternative path, playing to the right and standing in the way of a Boehner deal with Obama, is not likely to be popular with the general electorate.?

For now, Ryan is keeping his cards close to the vest. Bill Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard and a leader in the effort to get Ryan into presidential politics, professed no knowledge of Ryan?s intentions.

?My strategy is to acknowledge Obama won, cut the best deal you can, and live to fight another day for big tax and entitlement reform,? he wrote in an e-mail.

As for Ryan?s, people will have to wait and see.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/cliff-ryan-faces-choice-two-paths-060010498--politics.html

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CultureStr/ke | Writing Back From Trauma

By KARIN GORSETH

Published By CULTURESTRIKE, November 23, 2012

(Jonathan Kim)

?

A mental health clinician who works with Latino immigrants in Brooklyn, New York, reflects on a client?s struggle to?through the writing process?create meaning from painful past experiences. The second installment of our refugee storytelling series.
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1.

I asked Celia* to tell me her story. The black chair in which she sat was low to the ground and seemed to swallow her. Her dark, wavy hair was tied in a ponytail that grazed the tops of her shoulders; she was small, but curvy. Though it was the middle of winter, she had arrived without a coat, instead wearing layers upon layers of sweaters. She nervously clasped her hands in her lap, her eyes cast downward, answering my questions in a low tone. She only spoke when questioned and chose her words with care, perhaps uncertain of what to say or where to begin. Her demeanor suggested to me years of abuse. Yet I also sensed Celia?s urgency to have her story be known, so that she could initiate the asylum process and be reunited with her two children, who remained in Guatemala. This was, after all, the primary reason she was here: for help processing her asylum claim. As a therapist, my job was to help Celia tell her story.

Celia had been physically, emotionally, and sexually abused by her husband over the course of thirteen years. During her marriage, she had been threatened at gunpoint on numerous occasions, she was made captive in her own home, she was not permitted to visit her family in the next town over, and her husband would use his fists or various objects to beat her head or belly. These were only some of the chilling incidents that made up her story. The key factor that separated her case from many others was that her husband was an official in the police force, and he had used the power of his position to control, kidnap, and keep her captive.

After such a long period of abuse, Celia?who had found work at a small Latino restaurant, bussing tables six or even seven days a week, often for more than twelve hours a day?was suffering a tremendous amount of physical pain on a daily basis. I volunteered to escort Celia to her medical appointments, something that most therapists typically don?t do. (At my agency, therapists were encouraged to accompany clients to their medical appointments, since many of them had recently arrived in the United States and did not know how to travel within the city or use public transportation.) Celia additionally required an interpreter and had no other person in her life who she wanted to accompany her. Although it was never quite clear with whom she lived, Celia had family in the local area, though she was cautious to involve them. She was experiencing severe somatic symptoms from the trauma that she had endured, yet even after several medical appointments and examinations, the doctors reported that they could not find a physiological reason for her discomfort or pain. This meant that her physical well-being was dependent on her psychological healing.

2.

Storytelling is a form of therapy often used by mental health clinicians to deal with emotional trauma. Celia?s initial therapy sessions with me involved various assessment tools, such as The Harvard Trauma Questionnaire, to gauge the kind, severity, and intensity of trauma. This questionnaire consisted of several pages of checklists?from stoning, electroshock weapons, and humiliation, to threatening to kill a family member, and falanga (foot whipping)?that measured the magnitude of the traumatic experiences.

Another psychological treatment method commonly used for victims of torture, violence, and war is writing.? It can help a victim organize his or her thoughts and feelings. But for Celia, who had only completed up to the third grade in Guatemala, writing posed a significant challenge. Many clients seeking asylum are completely illiterate or have very little education, which often makes it more frustrating than helpful for them to write down their stories. At times, the clinician may record the client?s story as their client recounts it to them. But I asked Celia how she felt about writing her story on paper to document her experiences and organize her memories, and she agreed in a trusting manner (though I also wondered if this may have been because she was accustomed to doing as she was told when she lived with her husband). I gave Celia a thin journal and asked her to describe her experiences with as much detail as possible. Celia was different than other clients of mine; even from the very beginning, she enjoyed writing.

Celia wrote her experiences in Spanish. Writing helped her release the anger living inside her. She once told me, ?I just hope this anger goes away and I won?t continue to live with it.? Writing stimulated her memory, too. She informed me at one point that, while writing, she recalled memories that she had forgotten. Even so, Celia often could not remember specific dates, times, and the order of things that her abuser did to her. After suffering different kinds of abuse over an extended period of time, it is common that a person will have difficulty recalling the specifics of an event when reflecting back from the present moment. Time lost its relevance when he held a gun to her face or beat her head with the heel of his boot. Writing allowed us to jointly put the series of events of her life in order, offering a chronological rendering of her past experiences. By organizing her memories and experiences in this way, I hoped to bring order to Celia?s thought process and perhaps give her some peace. Celia would write on her own time, bring her writing to our sessions, and we would discuss the events and put them in order together.

She hadn?t always wanted to talk aloud about her experiences; it was often as if her story?or even just talking about her feelings, to me or to her family?was burdensome. Writing gave her an escape, and in turn, a sense of pleasure. During our last session, she asked for her journal back, so I returned it to her. ?Of course!? I thought to myself, ?This is yours.? This was her way of extracting what had pained her for most of her life and setting it aside so she could move forward without it.

For her asylum claim, filed with federal immigration authorities, Celia had to tell her story in a different setting, in a different format. She provided letters from family members who had witnessed the abuse between her and her husband. She had to prove that she was being persecuted on the basis of her gender.?Out of all of the reasons people seek asylum, gender is one of the least common. A gender-based asylum claim is often more difficult to prove than other attempts at asylum. This is true because gender-based violence is recorded on an individual basis, rather than on a group or population basis. With political asylum claims, for example, evidence is available from organizations, government bodies, and news broadcasting stations that record and follow the political state and situation of groups or populations in a country. In contrast, gender-based asylum is examined on the circumstances of an individual?s experiences within their country of origin. Not all asylum seekers are able to provide such evidence to the courts, which is needed to display a level of ?unfounded fear? to return to their country of origin, one of the main criteria for such claims.

3.

Unfounded fear is difficult to prove without a storyline to support it. Victimizers tell their stories by torturing or killing others?their stories are written in the scars left on the bodies of the survivors. In contrast, trauma has a tendency to leave its victims speechless. If violence takes away a victim?s voice, writing can return it. By writing down their feelings, victims of trauma know that even if they?re not speaking out loud, their thoughts are being shared. Writing provides them with a method of proving their story, but it also validates their experiences without judgment or scrutiny.

Celia used her story for self-protection; it had brought her to the United States to live in safety and had protected her from deportation to Guatemala (and her death: if she ever returned to her country of origin, her husband would surely find and kill her).

The act of writing allows survivors to draw meaning and social purpose from their traumas. Some asylum seekers or refugees learn to use their stories as a medium for political advocacy, raising public interest, or international awareness. Not only do these stories encourage personal healing, they supply the ammunition for lobbyists, lawyers, and political activists to raise awareness about the struggles of persecuted peoples.

In Celia?s case, the written word guided her back to a place of strength and confidence so that she could withstand the lengthy and arduous legal process of asylum. She continued providing for herself and complained less of physical discomfort and pain. Recently, after two years, Celia was granted asylum and was able to petition for her children to live with her here in the US. To this day, she and I remain in contact and she continues to share her stories with me as a friend.

*Name has been changed to protect the identity of the person.

Karin Gorseth, LMSW works as a mental health clinician with Latino immigrants in Brooklyn, NY and is a participant in Rethinking Refuge, a group devoted to creative, critical thinking about issues in forced migration. To learn more, contact rethinking.refuge@gmail.com.

TAGS: asylum, families, guatemala, refugees, rethinking refuge

Source: http://culturestrike.net/writing-back-from-trauma

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Three UK to carry LG Nexus 4

British mobile operator Three has confirmed that it'll carry the LG Nexus 4, in a video on its official YouTube channel. One of the first UK networks to carry the Galaxy Nexus, Three lost out to O2 this time around, as an exclusivity deal has meant other UK networks have so far been unable to offer the phone for sale directly.

Three's also trumpeting the Nexus 4's 42Mbps DC-HSDPA capabilities, which its network supports. There's no information on availability or pricing just yet, but as O2's exclusivity deal reportedly lasts just a month, we should see the Nexus 4 in Three stores sooner rather than later.

Update: Three has now published a press release indicating its on and off-contract pricing --

The smartphone will also be available on Pay As You Go for £399.99 plus a top up. All in One 15 costs £15 and gives 30-day access to All-You-Can-Eat data along with 300 any-network minutes and 3,000 texts. Or All in One 25 costs £25 and offers All-You-Can-Eat data, 500 minutes and 3,000 texts and for a 30-day period.

Source: Three on YouTube

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/BmDfoxd7UPU/story01.htm

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Video: Blind patient reads words stimulated directly onto the retina

Friday, November 23, 2012

For the very first time researchers have streamed braille patterns directly into a blind patient's retina, allowing him to read four-letter words accurately and quickly with an ocular neuroprosthetic device. The device, the Argus II, has been implanted in over 50 patients, many of who can now see color, movement and objects. It uses a small camera mounted on a pair of glasses, a portable processor to translate the signal from the camera into electrical stimulation, and a microchip with electrodes implanted directly on the retina. The study was authored by researchers at Second Sight, the company who developed the device, and has been published in Frontiers in Neuroprosthetics on the 22nd of November.

"In this clinical test with a single blind patient, we bypassed the camera that is the usual input for the implant and directly stimulated the retina. Instead of feeling the braille on the tips of his fingers, the patient could see the patterns we projected and then read individual letters in less than a second with up to 89% accuracy," explains researcher Thomas Lauritzen, lead author of the paper.

Similar in concept to successful cochlear implants, the visual implant uses a grid of 60 electrodes?attached to the retina?to stimulate patterns directly onto the nerve cells. For this study, the researchers at Second Sight used a computer to stimulate six of these points on the grid to project the braille letters. A series of tests were conducted with single letters as well as words ranging in length from two letters up to four. The patient was shown each letter for half a second and had up to 80% accuracy for short words.

In this video, a patient reads words with the Argus II setup using the camera and not the direct braille stimulation. Credit: Second Sight

"There was no input except the electrode stimulation and the patient recognized the braille letters easily. This proves that the patient has good spatial resolution because he could easily distinguish between signals on different, individual electrodes." says Lauritzen.

According to Silvestro Micera at EPFL's Center for Neuroprosthetics and scientific reviewer for the article, "this study is a proof of concept that points to the importance of clinical experiments involving new neuroprosthetic devices to improve the technology and innovate adaptable solutions."

Primarily for sufferers of the genetic disease Retinitis Pigmentosa (RP), the implant Argus II has been shown to restore limited reading capability of large conventional letters and short words when used with the camera. While reading should improve with future iterations of the Argus II, the current study shows how the Argus II could be adapted to provide an alternative and potentially faster method of text reading with the addition of letter recognition software. This ability to perform image processing in software prior to sending the signal to the implant is a unique advantage of Argus II.

###

Frontiers: http://www.frontiersin.org

Thanks to Frontiers for this article.

This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/125440/Video__Blind_patient_reads_words_stimulated_directly_onto_the_retina

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Wounded American tells of attack by Rome mob

Praxilla Trabattoni / NBC News

California native Nicholas Burnett, 20, stabbed in a pub in Rome where he was on his semester abroad studying at Temple University.

By Praxilla Trabattoni, NBC News

ROME ? An American college student suffered a foot-long stab wound and a punctured lung when a mob of up to 50 masked men armed with knives and baseball bats suddenly charged English soccer fans and others in a piazza in Italian capital Rome, he told NBC News.

Local media initially blamed Thursday's attack on hard core fans or "Ultras" supporting soccer team Lazio ? who played English team Tottenham on Thursday ? but two fans of bitter rivals Roma were among a group of 15 detained for alleged involvement in attack, suggesting a different motive.

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Witnesses told local media that the attackers shouted "Jews, Jews" as they laid siege to the bar in a district popular with tourists in an old quarter of Rome, raising fears of far-right, racist violence, Reuters reported.

Ten people were injured in the attack and 25-year old Ashley Mills, reportedly an English Tottenham supporter, was left in critical condition. Mills was still hospitalized on Friday, the wire service said.

Tried to run
Nicholas Burnett, 20, of Anaheim, Calif., told NBC News he was standing outside the bar with some friends when he saw "40 to 50 storm into the piazza."

At first, he said they looked "just like a bunch of guys wearing costumes," but the seriousness of the situation quickly became clear.

"Some were wearing helmets, others had scarves covering their faces and all of them were carrying weapons, of all sorts. Sticks, bats, wooden planks, some were swinging their thick belts with heavy buckles," Burnett said.

"All of a sudden they started charging towards the bar. I tried to run away from them and one of the guys broke away from the crowd and took a swing at me over the head with what I though was a baseball bat," he said.

"But judging by my wound it was not a baseball bat, but more like a knife. I ran as fast as I could away from them. ... A couple of minutes later, I realized I was bleeding when I touched my back and felt the T-shirt all wet," he added.

Yara Nardi / Reuters

A pub is seen damaged after a fight in downtown Rome on Thursday.

As he fled, he met two students from John Cabot University, who tried to hail a taxi to take him to hospital, but the first driver "refused to take me in his car because I was all bloodied and still bleeding profusely," Burnett said.

Read more World stories from NBC News

Burnett, who is on a semester abroad at Temple University in Rome, where he is studying business and Italian, was stabbed in the upper-right side of his back down to his left side, he told NBC. The stabbing punctured his right lung, he said.

"I had so many?stitches?that when I asked the doctors how many they were, they weren't even able to tell me. They simply said, 'Too many,'" he said.

'Very, very scared'
Burnett said he was initially unable to speak to the police because of the pain, but said he had been getting "great care" from medical staff.

"I would like to tell my friends and family back at home that I am OK," he said. "Although I was very, very scared."

Burnett said the attackers moved in unison like "clockwork."

"I don't know how they organized it so well, but that's what made it so scary ... to see them all coming at once threateningly waving what appeared to be makeshift weapons," he said.

Complete Europe coverage on NBCNews.com

He said the attackers were "hurling anything they could find ...?including chairs, tables, stools, bottles, shards from the broken windowpanes, bottles, glasses," he said.

Rome Mayor Gianni Alemanno has expressed deep concern about the attack and said he hoped the police would quickly track down those responsible.

"We were all just having a drink, we weren't there for the football (soccer). I don't care for football at all and I don?t know anything about it," Burnett said.

NBC News' Ian Johnston and Reuters contributed to this report.

More world stories from NBC News:

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Source: http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/11/23/15387651-us-student-stabbed-in-rome-tells-of-charge-by-mob-of-armed-masked-men?lite

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Lunar Eclipse Darkens Moon Slightly Next Week

Eclipses of the sun and moon go hand in hand, and the November night sky is about to see one.

?If an eclipse of the sun takes place, it will be preceded or followed by an eclipse of the moon. Generally speaking, if the solar eclipse is a total or annular eclipse ? with the new moon appearing to centrally cross in front of the sun's disk ? a lunar eclipse occurring two weeks before or after the eclipse of the sun will be relatively minor, with the moon only skimming the outer part of the Earth's shadow. That's what moon observes will see next week.

There was a total solar eclipse visible from parts of Australia on Nov. 14 local time, and two weeks later, on Wednesday, Nov. 28, it will be the moon?s turn to undergo an eclipse. But as expected, it will be an underwhelming event since the moon will slide through the Earth?s tenuously faint outer shadow (called the penumbra) resulting in a penumbral lunar eclipse.

This final event of 2012 occurs when the moon is at apogee ? its farthest point in its orbit from Earth.? So this will also be the smallest full moon of 2012. The moon will be in the constellation Taurus positioned 6 degrees northwest of Aldebaran and about 8 degrees west of brilliant Jupiter. (Your closed fist held out at arm's length covers about 10 degrees of the sky.)

Underwhelming lunar eclipse

The moon first touches the penumbra at 7:15 a.m. EST (1215 GMT).

Theoretically, people living near and along the spine of the Appalachian mountain chain could have a chance to see the start of the lunar eclipse (from their point of view, the moon sets while the sun rises). But in practice it will be quite impossible for them to observe this, since most of the penumbra is such a light shadow that it makes no visible difference to the brightness of the moon.?

In general, at least 70 percent of the moon's diameter needs to be immersed in the penumbra before the average (casual) observer starts to notice any subtle darkening effect. In Wednesday's case, the magnitude of the eclipse is relatively large and approaches 92-percent complete. [Lunar Eclipses Explained (Infographic)]

So toward the middle of the eclipse people living within the Mountain Time zone may see the northern rim of the moon experience the slightly thicker duskiness of the inner penumbra at 7:34 a.m. MST (1434 GMT) before it disappears below the west-northwest horizon.

Farther west, for those within the Pacific Time zone where the local time will be 6:34 a.m. PST, the moon will appear a little higher and the twilight sky a bit darker, perhaps enabling sharp-eyed viewers to better see a "stain" on the moon. The northern limb of the moon should then be noticeably dimmer than the southern limb.

Observers living in Alaska (5:34 a.m. in Anchorage) or Hawaii (4:34 a.m. for Honolulul) will see the slightly dimmed moon shining high in the west-northwest in a dark sky.???

The last vestige of faint penumbral shading should disappear about 45 minutes later ? just as the moon is getting ready to set along the West Coast.

In the lunar eclipse timetable graphic accompanying this guide, if the moon has already set, then that particular event is listed as "Not visible" for your time zone.

View from the moon

An astronaut on the moon during this time might see an eclipse of the sun, but it would all depend on where on the moon our hypothetical moonwalker is located. From the crater Clavius, near the moon's lower limb, no eclipse takes place as that part of the moon remains completely untouched by the penumbra.?

In contrast, near the moon's upper limb, from Mare Frigoris ("Sea of Cold"), the Earth will appear to cover nearly nine-tenths of the sun's diameter; consequently, the brilliant solar illumination of the surrounding lunar landscape will turn somewhat more somber. And this is precisely what we're trying to see from here on the Earth when we concentrate our gaze toward the upper rim of the moon.?

If you snap a photo of the dim penumbral lunar eclipse of 2012 on Nov. 28 and would like to share it with SPACE.com for a story or gallery, send images, comments and viewing location information to managing editor Tariq Malik at: tmalik@space.com.

Joe Rao serves as an instructor and guest lecturer at New York's Hayden Planetarium. He writes about astronomy for The New York Times and other publications, and he is also an on-camera meteorologist for News 12 Westchester, New York.?Follow SPACE.com on Twitter?@Spacedotcom. We're also on?Facebook?&?Google+.?

Copyright 2012 SPACE.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/lunar-eclipse-darkens-moon-slightly-next-week-134252257.html

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Holiday shopping marathon starts as consumer sentiment remains shaky

(Reuters) - Forget that Turkey trot. Thanksgiving is now the start of the annual holiday shopping endurance race, as more stores open on Thursday's national holiday to seek a bigger share of spending that is expected to grow slowly this season.

Target Corp has joined Wal-Mart and Gap Inc in being open at least part of the day, and some retailers will be open throughout the day, a trend that began to take hold in 2011.

Traditionally, retailers enticed shoppers with "doorbuster" deals early Friday morning. Then they shifted to midnight following Thanksgiving.

Now Walmart's U.S. discount stores, which will already be open during the day, will offer some "Black Friday" deals at 8 p.m. and special deals on some electronics at 10 p.m. Target has moved its opening from midnight to 9 p.m. on Thursday and Toys R Us is opening at 8 p.m.

Other retailers, like J.C. Penney Co Inc are holding out and will not open until Friday morning, so shoppers trying to get all the deals will need a lot of stamina.

"The retailers are taking what was a very plannable sport that was four or five hours where you can get things done and turned it into a marathon," Trutina Financial Chief Investment Officer Patty Edwards said. "I think the retailers have diluted the sport."

The stakes are high for U.S. retailers, which can earn more than a third of their annual sales in the holiday season. Investors hope holiday sales will help retail stocks cap a strong year. The Standard & Poor's retail index is up almost 27 percent this year, compared with a 10.6 percent increase for the broader S&P 500.

The National Retail Federation, an industry trade group, forecast a 4.1 percent increase in retail sales during the November-December holiday period this year, down from the 5.6 percent increase seen in 2011.

Consumers heading into the holiday shopping season remain worried about high unemployment and possible tax increases and government spending cuts in 2013.

According to a Reuters/Ipsos poll, two-thirds of shoppers said they were planning to spend the same amount as last year or were unsure about spending plans, while 21 percent plan to spend less and 11 percent plan to spend more.

On Wednesday, The Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan's final reading on consumer sentiment fell from its initial reading earlier in the month.

One element in favor of retailers this year is the calendar, as there are two more days between Thanksgiving and Christmas than last year and Christmas falls on a Tuesday instead of a Sunday, giving shoppers an extra full weekend before Christmas.

Lazard Capital Markets analyst Jennifer Davis estimated the additional two days will benefit December comparable sales by 3 percent to 4 percent.

But "the extra weekend before Christmas this year will likely amplify the post Black Friday lull and result in even more back-end loaded sales," she said in a note to clients.

Cooler weather could boost apparel sales from last year, when unseasonably warm weather left many stores stuck with winter clothes they had to sell at drastic discounts.

But analysts and economists also said superstorm Sandy, which lashed the densely populated East Coast in late October, could cut into how much shoppers can spend on the holidays.

While the holiday season is important for all retailers, two will be under especially close watch this year - J.C. Penney and Best Buy Co Inc.

J.C. Penney is in the middle of a radical transformation under CEO Ron Johnson, who is trying to turn 700 of the retailer's stores into collections of boutiques by 2015.

But while some of the new shops in its stores have been performing well, overall the retailer has turned customers off with its plan to eliminate coupons and most sales. Friday will be the company's only sales event of the year.

"I think eventually it will work. It is going to be a lot of pain until it works," Edwards said.

At Best Buy, new chief executive Hubert Joly is trying to devise a plan to stem falling sales and stave off cutthroat competition from the likes of Walmart and Amazon.com. At the same time, the company's largest shareholder and founder, Richard Schulze, is trying to put together a bid to take Best Buy private.

"They haven't been very price savvy, haven't really known how out of whack they've been or if they've known, they haven't really responded to it," Liz Ebert Director, Advisory at KPMG, LLP, said.

(Additional reporting by Nivedita Bhattacharjee in Chicago and Phil Wahba in New York; Editing by David Gregorio)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/holiday-shopping-marathon-starts-consumer-sentiment-shaky-060417650--finance.html

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Scientists: Galapagos tortoise can be revived

LIMA, Peru (AP) ? Lonesome George, the late reptile prince of the Galapagos Islands, may be dead, but scientists now say he may not be the last giant tortoise of his species after all.

Researchers say they may be able to resurrect the Pinta Island subspecies by launching a cross-breeding program with 17 other tortoises found to contain genetic material similar to that of Lonesome George, who died June 24 at the Pacific Ocean archipelago off Ecuador's coast after repeated failed efforts to reproduce.

Edwin Naula, director of the Galapagos National Park, said in a telephone interview on Thursday that the probability is high it can be accomplished.

"It would be the first time that a species was recovered after having been declared extinct," Naula said.

But it won't happen overnight.

"This is going to take about 100 to 150 years," Naula added.

Scientists took DNA samples from 1,600 tortoises on Wolf volcano, and found the Pinta variety in 17, though their overall genetic makeup varied.

Through cross-breeding, "100 percent pure species" can be achieved, said Naula, a biologist.

He said the 17 tortoises were being transferred from Isabela island, where the volcano is located, to the park's breeding center at Santa Cruz, the main island on the archipelago whose unique flora and fauna helped inspire Charles Darwin's work on evolution. The results are to be published in the journal Biological Conservation, the park said.

The study on Wolf volcano was conducted by Yale University and the Galapagos park with financial help from the Galapagos Conservancy.

In a news release, the park said scientists speculate that giant tortoises from Pinta island might have arrived at Wolf volcano after being taken off by whaling ships for food and later cast overboard.

At least 14 species of giant tortoise originally inhabited the islands' 620 miles (1,000 kilometers) off Ecuador's coast and 10 survive.

A visit to Lonesome George became de rigueur for celebrities and common folk alike among the 180,000 people who annually visit the Galapagos.

Before humans arrived, the islands were home to tens of thousands of giant tortoises. The number fell to about 3,000 in 1974, but the recovery program run by the national park and the Charles Darwin Foundation has succeeded in increasing the overall population to 20,000.

Lonesome George's age at death was not known, but scientists believed he was about 100, not especially old for a giant tortoise.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/scientists-galapagos-tortoise-revived-210419762.html

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Festicket Aims To Make Attending Music Festivals As Easy As Booking A Package Holiday

Festicket is a new UK startup targeting music festival goers, a market in Europe which, by some estimates, is worth ?12 billion. Users browse the curated directory of music festivals and with 'one-click' can book a festival package -- tickets, transport and accommodation -- therefore taking away a lot of the pain associated with attending festivals and, potentially, opening up the festival market to an even wider audience.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/H7SdYNxpm2M/

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Lead Generation ? Getting New Business | Northern Ireland business

By Colly Graham salesxcellence

Business?s often live with the hope that if they build it, customers will come. But in today?s economy, it takes a lot more than hope to get people to purchase your products or services. New business-building practices are a must if you want to expand.

In a perfect world,?you would have an unlimited budget to market your business in order to find new customers and increase sales. You could buy lots of online and offline advertising, run promotions to build traffic in store and online, and launch a proactive public relations campaign to increase your product or brand?s visibility and awareness. But this isn?t a perfect world. Most SMEs do not have a fully-fledged marketing department and need to rely on the sales people to generate new business leads.

In another life as a sales manager, we ran sales training session on Monday mornings and the most requests were, ?Colly, helps us close more sales!? My retort was ?How many sales did you open last week?? The sheepish reply was usually less than three or four, so the problem with sales people is not necessarily closing sales but opening sales ? prospecting for new business

As with all aspects of business you need a strategy and a plan to prospect and generate quality new business leads. Where does one start?

The two analogies that spring to mind when I look at lead generation is fishing and detective work. Firstly if you are going fishing you would want to know what fish you want to catch, and where you need to go to fish for them and finally in our fishing analogy you would need to use the right bait to catch them. And in detective work you everyone is a suspect however you need clues to reveal the real suspects.

Before you can find new customers and increase sales, you need to understand who your customer is, what value proposition you offer to customers, and what your competition is currently offering in the market and where there are gaps for a new entrant.

The first place to start is to define your ideal customer ? what does your ideal customer look like?? Here are the steps to identify your ideal prospect:-
Step 1 Identify Your Best Customers
List your best customers. People you have sold to, not prospects. Use your definition of best, you set the criteria. Start with your single best customer first then number two and so on.
Step 2 List Your Best Customers Characteristics
List the characteristics that are common to and unique to the best customers you have identified. For Example: Industry, Size, Turnover, Defined need for your Product or Service, Committed to Quality, Win/Win Relationship.
Step 3 Create Your Ideal Customers Profile
Define the standards against which your customers should be measured. Study the list of characteristics; these are your ideal prospects.

Where will you find the ideal prospect?? In Sales 2.0 the internet and social media plays a major part in finding your prospects. For B2C Facebook is one place to build your ?tribe.? Tribe is a word from the title of a well-received book by Seth Godin who describes a tribe as follows; ?The world has always been orga?ni?sed into tri?bes, groups of peo?ple who want to (need to) con?nect with each other, with a lea?der and with a move?ment. ?The pro?ducts, ser?vi?ces and ideas that are gai?ning currency fas?ter than ever are ones that are built on a tribe.?

One place to build a tribe for B2C Facebook is one place to build your tribe, whilst for B2B business LinkedIn is the place. There is not space in this article to discuss all aspects of Facebook and LinkedIn, my friend Bill McCartney delivers excellent workshops how to use both these Social Medias to build a following.

Having discovered your ideal prospect and having built a list of new prospects the time has come to engage with them and make a face to face appointment. However before you reach that stage you need to warm up the cold call through lead nurturing.

Lead nurturing is a process by which leads are tracked and developed into sales-qualified leads, though content delivery via direct mail, email, blogs, YouTube, webinars etc., it is a process of building brand awareness, nurturing the prospect to become ?ready and worthy of a salesperson?s time. Research reveals that it takes five to six touches to warm ?up the cold prospect and in doing so you will need to deliver your value proposition. I plan in a future article to write on how you can easily build a value proposition and a business building prompter to engage with your prospects.

Let me finish with this adage, ?a salesperson with no prospects has no prospects!?

Colly Graham is recognised as leading international sales trainer, look out for his three half-day workshops on Lead Generation and Lead Nurturing, call Colly on 0800 328 0702

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Source: http://www.businessfirstonline.co.uk/?p=10466&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=lead-generation-getting-new-business

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Tuareg rebels battle Islamists for north Mali town

BAMAKO (Reuters) - Islamist gunmen fought Tuareg separatist rebels on Monday in a battle for control of the town of Menaka in Mali's northern desert, close to the border with Niger, both sides said.

The renewed fighting came as African leaders put the finishing touches to an international intervention plan to retake Mali's north from a patchwork of armed groups who the West suspects of providing a platform for militant attacks.

"The fighting started early this morning and it is ongoing," said Moussa Ag Acharatoumane, a France-based spokesman for the independence-seeking MNLA Tuareg group.

"We have not given up on Menaka," he added.

A spokesman for al Qaeda-linked Islamist group MUJWA said its fighters had already seized control of the town, about 100 km (60 miles) from the Niger border, in clashes that had left many MNLA fighters "dead, wounded, and imprisoned".

Neither side could give details on casualties.

The MNLA declared an independent Tuareg homeland in April after routing government troops in the wake of a March coup, but it has since lost control of the zone to Islamists and criminal networks.

MNLA and MUJWA had also clashed on Friday, their first bout of fighting in several months, since MUJWA ousted the MNLA from the regional capital Gao in June.

INTERNATIONAL FORCE

African leaders will this month seek a U.N. mandate to dispatch a mainly West African force of some 4,000 to Mali tasked with rebuilding its army and then backing operations to win back the occupied desert zones.

EU foreign ministers gave basic approval on Monday to send 250 military trainers to help build Malian soldiers up to operational capacity. But, like the United States and former colonial power France, which is the keenest of Western nations for military action, Brussels has ruled out a combat role.

European leaders are growing increasingly anxious that Mali could turn into a platform for militant attacks - even in Europe. France, Spain, Italy and Belgium have indicated willingness to take part in the mission, an EU official said.

Britain and Germany might also participate, though this would depend on finding sufficient French-speaking personnel, diplomats said. Finland and Canada - a non-EU country - have also registered interest, the EU official said.

Foreign ministers asked for the plan to be formally agreed at an EU summit on December 13-14, a statement said.

The international military operation is due to be led by Mali's own military but will not be ready until some time next year.

MUJWA has warned that any such intervention would trigger an Iraq-style quagmire in the West African state.

West African mediator Burkina Faso has also been holding talks with MNLA representatives and members of Ansar Dine, another al Qaeda-linked Islamist group occupying parts of Mali's north, as it seeks to open dialogue with some of the rebels.

Groups that come to a negotiated deal would be spared from the planned African offensive but MUJWA and AQIM - al Qaeda's North African wing which it operates alongside - are not being considered for talks.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/tuareg-rebels-battle-islamists-north-mali-town-051712541.html

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Small business retail spending slows | Long Island Business News

by David Winzelberg
Long Island Business News Published: November 19, 2012
Tags: growth rate, MasterCard Advisors, Retail, sales rate, Small Business, Wells Fargo

2:43 pm Mon, November 19, 2012 This was the slowest year-over-year growth rate for smaller retailers in 2012, falling below the growth rate of total U.S. retail sales by one percentage point.

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Source: http://libn.com/2012/11/19/small-business-retail-spending-slows/

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Were dinosaurs destined to be big? Testing Cope's rule

ScienceDaily (Nov. 2, 2012) ? In the evolutionary long run, small critters tend to evolve into bigger beasts -- at least according to the idea attributed to paleontologist Edward Cope, now known as Cope's Rule. Using the latest advanced statistical modeling methods, a new test of this rule as it applies dinosaurs shows that Cope was right -- sometimes.

"For a long time, dinosaurs were thought to be the example of Cope's Rule," says Gene Hunt, curator in the Department of Paleobiology at the National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) in Washington, D.C. Other groups, particularly mammals, also provide plenty of classic examples of the rule, Hunt says.

To see if Cope's rule really applies to dinosaurs, Hunt and colleagues Richard FitzJohn of the University of British Columbia and Matthew Carrano of the NMNH used dinosaur thigh bones (aka femurs) as proxies for animal size. They then used that femur data in their statistical model to look for two things: directional trends in size over time and whether there were any detectable upper limits for body size.

"What we did then was explore how constant a rule is this Cope's Rule trend within dinosaurs," said Hunt. They looked across the "family tree" of dinosaurs and found that some groups, or clades, of dinosaurs do indeed trend larger over time, following Cope's Rule. Ceratopsids and hadrosaurs, for instance, show more increases in size than decreases over time, according to Hunt. Although birds evolved from theropod dinosaurs, the team excluded them from the study because of the evolutionary pressure birds faced to lighten up and get smaller so they could fly better.

As for the upper limits to size, the results were sometimes yes, sometimes no. The four-legged sauropods (i.e., long-necked, small-headed herbivores) and ornithopod (i.e., iguanodons, ceratopsids) clades showed no indication of upper limits to how large they could evolve. And indeed, these groups contain the largest land animals that ever lived.

Theropods, which include the famous Tyrannosaurus rex, on the other hand, did show what appears to be an upper limit on body size. This may not be particularly surprising, says Hunt, because theropods were bipedal, and there are physical limits to how massive you can get while still being able to move around on two legs.

Hunt, FitzJohn, and Carrano will be presenting the results of their study on Nov. 4, at the annual meeting of The Geological Society of America in Charlotte, North Carolina, USA.

As for why Cope's Rule works at all, that is not very well understood, says Hunt. "It does happen sometimes, but not always," he added. The traditional idea that somehow "bigger is better" because a bigger animal is less likely to be preyed upon is na?ve, Hunt says. After all, even the biggest animals start out small enough to be preyed upon and spend a long, vulnerable, time getting gigantic.

Abstract: https://gsa.confex.com/gsa/2012AM/webprogram/Paper211594.html

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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_science/~3/E9OaeYbM7nc/121102151954.htm

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'Man With The Iron Fists': The Reviews Are In!

Critics praise RZA for his 'anything-goes' kung-fu flick, but many wonder if it will realize crossover success like its predecessors.
By Kara Warner

RZA in "The Man With The Iron Fists"
Photo: Universal Pictures

Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1696634/man-with-the-iron-fists-reviews.jhtml

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Sandy may cost $50B as storm continues path

Wall Street remained shuttered Tuesday as post-tropical storm Sandy battered New York City for the second straight day.

The New York Stock Exchange, Nasdaq and CME exchanges remained closed while officials tested contingency plans and backup systems, hoping to ensure trading can resume as normal later in the week.

Large parts of Manhattan were flooded by late Monday and early Tuesday. Water cascaded over several seawalls in lower Manhattan and a highway close to the island's east side was flooded.

CNN and other U.S. media reported early Monday morning that the trading floor of the NYSE was under a metre of water.

But a spokesman for the exchange confirmed to CBC News that those reports were untrue. "[That] report was totally wrong," Ray Pellechia said. "No water at all in [the] building or surrounding streets."

By Tuesday afternoon, officials at NYSE had confirmed the exchange is on track to open Wednesday, but defended their initial caution in the matter. "It's a monumental event, and we take it very seriously," said Larry Leibowitz, NYSE's chief operating officer. "It's not a hyped-up drama."

At a Duane Reade drugstore a block or so away from the NYSE building, there were signs of life. One man was buying candles, scented, and asking for extra matches, as another walked out clutching a 12-pack of beer.

Airlines cancelled thousands of flights and stranded travellers, businesses face countless lost man-hours and lost sales, while insurers brace for billions in payouts.

All in all, the storm will likely end up causing about $20 billion in property damages and $10 billion to $30 billion more in lost business, according to IHS Global Insight, a forecasting firm.

That would cause a 0.6 percentage point hit to America's GDP this quarter, and top last year's $15.8 billion tally for Hurricane Irene. CoreLogic, a private data provider, estimates there are 284,000 homes worth about $88 billion in the hurricane's path, and about 7 million more have already lost power at some point.

If so, Hurricane Sandy would be among the 10 most costly hurricanes in U.S. history. But it would still be far below the worst ? Hurricane Katrina, which cost $108 billion and caused 1,200 deaths in 2005.

"Assuming the storm simply disrupts things for a few days and it doesn't do significant damage to infrastructure, then I don't think it will have a significant national impact," Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics, said Monday.

Experts also note that while natural disasters often hit the economy in the short term, the rebuilding dollars that follow often stimulate the economy to come back stronger than it was before.

"Whatever the magnitude of the economic drag in the near-term, it should prove temporary and result in a rebound in activity in future months," Toronto-Dominion bank economist Beata Caranci said.

Regardless, the storm is likely to make its presence felt in the coming months as more economic indicators trickle out.

"If Florida's hurricane Andrew was any indication, housing related indicators should show significant weakness in the next two to three months," Caranci said.

While some people will be prevented from working due to the damage, others will be required to work longer hours due to emergency and clean-up responses, as well as a potential shifting of production to other regions in the U.S., the bank notes.

"It will remain to be seen how long disruptions to electricity and infrastructure persist, as this could have a larger impact on small businesses, which are more sensitive to extended disruptions," TD said.

Here are some more ways the world's largest economy is being affected by the storm:

Air travel in the Northeast is all but stopped for at least two days. Airlines cancelled more than 10,000 flights for Monday and Tuesday from Washington to Boston. The disruptions spread across the nation and overseas, stranding passengers from Hong Kong to Europe. Carriers could suffer a short-term hit to earnings as they spend more to shuffle crews and planes. The airline cancellations have already surpassed those from Hurricane Irene last August and are on par with those from a major snowstorm that socked the East Coast early last year.

Three nuclear plants were shut down as a precaution, and authorities dispatched monitors to examine 11 others for signs of stress. The Salem Unit 1 in southern Delaware, Nine Mile Point and Indian Point 3 in N.Y. were all shuttered. The fear is that Sandy could disrupt the flow of water that the plants need to intake to stay cool, but as of yet there's no evidence that's happening.

The nation's major retailers are expected to lose billions of dollars, and the losses could extend into the crucial holiday shopping season. Sales at department stores, clothing chains, jewellers and other sellers of non-essential goods are expected to suffer the most. "Retail sales could have a distorted pattern, with sales up for emergency supplies, food and construction materials, but weakness for many other discretionary items," Caranci noted.

Power outages and disruptions in major East Coast cities "may take a toll on demand unlike anything we have seen before," Phil Flynn, a senior market analyst for Price Futures Group, wrote in a report. Some of the biggest oil refineries in the Northeast were closed, and others were running at reduced capacity. As businesses closed and drivers stayed home, demand for gasoline was expected to fall.

The cost to insurers is expected to rival the insured damage from Hurricane Irene last year. Damage from Irene cost insurers roughly $5 billion, according to Sterne, Agee & Leach Research. Because the storm is hitting a highly populous region, with "one of the highest concentrations of wealth in the world," the damages are likely to run into the billions, say analysts at Morgan Stanley.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/nyse-shuttered-2nd-day-sandy-pounds-away-144417162--finance.html

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The Pat Files: Priorities

As usual, I'm going to blog about some annoying thing I've seen on my Facebook newsfeed, make elaborate comments on it like I always do and give my twopence worth about what I feel about it like anyone gives a damn. Oh well, I just like to get things off my chest and this is the only safe and legal way for me to do so regardless of whether anyone actually reads my blog or not.

So, I've been seeing these happy couples celebrating their anniversaries with their partners by declaring them on Facebook and all their friends wishing them long and prosperous lives together. Not that I have a problem with that, except for the fact that these so-called anniversaries are actually month-aversaries where they make a huge deal of being together after three months. Three bloody months. Like that's some huge accomplishment. What?!

Someone once told me, why count? There's no point to it. Come to think about it, we never celebrate any of our other relationships. We don't hug our friends and go "this day ten years ago, we became friends" and neither do we celebrate the anniversaries of relationships far more important to us like our parents. I'm not talking about Mother's or Father's Day where the whole world celebrates them in unison but I'm talking about the actual day you built your personal relationship with them. No-brainer alert that that day would be your birthday but you celebrate your birthday as the day you came into this world and not the day you became your parent's son or daughter.

So, think about it. We don't keep tabs on these relationships because you know they are going to last and will be there to follow you through every walk of your life. You know they aren't going anywhere so there is no need to count. The moment you put a timeframe on something, it's as if you are anticipating the fate that it has an expiration date and you are under pressure to see how long you can withhold it before it burns out.? If love is really supposed to be as fun and easy as they say, why put it under such pressure like this? Why tie it down to a ticking timebomb that goes under the guise of anniversaries?

And no, I don't believe in celebrating anniversaries because every day you are with the person you love should be cherished, not just on the day you met them. They shouldn't be celebrated because they shouldn't be regarded as accomplishments for being loyal to someone for any given period of time. It's nothing to be proud of. If it is indeed like any other relationship, it should be natural and effortless and just there.

Who knew I secretly had a hopeless romantic in me, aye? But no, seriously. This is about as practical as I can get when it comes to relationships.

I thank a very special friend for imparting this wisdom onto me :)

Source: http://patsychong.blogspot.com/2012/10/priorities.html

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