Friday, January 31, 2014


News Clips For The Day


U.K. nuclear employees ordered to stay home amid increased radiation levels – NBC

By Alexander Smith, NBC News contributor

The United Kingdom's largest nuclear plant ordered thousands of workers to stay at home Friday after recording increased levels of radioactivity, its operator said.
The Sellafield nuclear reprocessing site, in Cumbria, north-west England, told all non-essential employees not to come to work after the elevated levels were picked up by a monitor at the north end of the site.

"Levels of radioactivity detected are above naturally occurring radiation but well below that which would call for any actions to be taken by the workforce on or off the site," said a statement posted on Sellafield's website.

"The site is at normal status and employees and operational plants are continuing to operate as investigations continue. All our facilities have positively confirmed there are no abnormal conditions and are operating normally.”

The plant is on the coast of the Irish Sea about 300 miles northwest of London and employs more than 10,000 staff. Despite the decreased workforce, it said the facility was still operating at full capacity.

Britain's nuclear decommissioning authority told Reuters that it was unclear where the radiation is coming from.

A spokesman for the U.K.’s Department of Energy and Climate Change said it was in constant contact with Sellafield, and that there was no reason to believe the situation was more serious than the operator had claimed, Reuters reported.
Sellafield processes spent fuel and no longer produces power from nuclear. It is undergoing a decommissioning and dismantling program, run by a consortium of British company Amec, French group Areva, and U.S. firm URS. 



As much as I fear nuclear power plants, they remain the most reliable and productive clean energy source. Solar is proving to be good, according to an article a couple of months ago, but it only works when the sun shines clearly. That article did say, though, that the homeowner's rooftop solar panels were producing enough electricity to cover the needs for the house with some to give back to the electric company. The article was on what to charge the homeowner for the power plant's electricity used. The power plant managers were dissatisfied with the amount of reduction in the bill that the solar panels caused, and wanted to charge a higher fee. Business is business, I guess.






Yahoo Mail resets passwords after hackers attack – NBC
Devin Coldewey NBC News


If you're a Yahoo Mail user, you might want to be on the lookout for a password reset notification. Yahoo has announced that it detected a "coordinated effort" to access some email accounts.

In a post to the company's official blog, Yahoo's Jay Rossiter explained that it did not appear that the attackers had breached Yahoo servers to collect information, but rather had logged in to a number of accounts using data collected from "a third party database."

That means that no one actually broke in to Yahoo servers — the attackers were likely using usernames and passwords that were stolen during some other leak of customer data, for example Adobe or LivingSocial.

Yahoo didn't say how many accounts were affected, but it is the second-largest webmail provider in the world, with well over a quarter of a billion accounts, so if it were only a few dozen accounts, it probably wouldn't receive this kind of attention from the security team.

Anyone affected should have received a text or email at a backup address saying their password has been reset. If you didn't have a secondary mode of notification attached to your Yahoo Mail account, try to log in — if your password works, you weren't affected (but should probably change it just in case). If it didn't, you should contact Yahoo and see about getting your access restored.



I have a Yahoo account and I have been receiving alerts supposedly from Yahoo to reset my account information, but when I clicked on the link provided I got a message that the page was unavailable. After a while I started deleting those emails when I saw one. So far, I seem to have email service still, so I think the messages I received are bogus. I wonder if it was connected with these hackers. As long as they don't delete my emails or damage my computer with a virus I'm not too worried. Still, you Yahoo users might want to check your emails.





Utah school district apologizes for seizing kids' lunches for unpaid bills

By M. Alex Johnson and Henry Austin, NBC News

One of Utah's biggest school systems apologized Thursday and told angry parents it was investigating why dozens of elementary school children had their lunches seized and thrown away when they didn't have enough money in their accounts.
"This was a mistake," said Jason Olsen, a spokesman for the Salt Lake School District. "There shouldn't have been food taken away from these students once they went through that line."

The district came under national criticism after as many as 40 kids were given fruit and milk and their real lunches were thrown away Tuesday at Uintah Elementary in Salt Lake City.

"She took my lunch away and said, 'Go get a milk,'" fifth-grader Sophia Isom told NBC station KSL. "I came back and asked, 'What's going on?' Then she handed me an orange. She said, 'You don't have any money in your account, so you can't get lunch.'"
Sophia's mom, Erica Lukes, called the move "traumatic and humiliating" and told the Salt Lake Tribune she was all paid up.

"I think it's despicable," she said. "These are young children that shouldn't be punished or humiliated for something the parents obviously need to clear up."
Olsen said that parents had been notified about negative balances Monday and that a child nutrition manager had decided to withhold lunches to deal with the issue. They were thrown away because once food is served to one student it can't be served to another, he said.

That brought a storm of criticism on the elementary school's Facebook page, where scores of people denounced school and district officials as "heartless" and "inhumane."



Every now and then an article is published which points to a situation that is really shocking. The almighty dollar should not interfere with school children, especially such young ones, getting their lunch. Kids need enough healthy food for good brain function, which is why poor children now have programs to pay for their lunches. This was apparently parents who had enough money to pay, though, and the nutrition manager just decided to teach them a lesson. I assume that person will be demoted or fired for this. I do hope the decision to do that didn't go higher up the management chain than this official. It certainly has hit the news in a big way, and the school system is apparently embarrassed. "This was a mistake," said Jason Olsen, a spokesman for the Salt Lake School District. "There shouldn't have been food taken away from these students once they went through that line." You're right, sir – it was a big mistake.






Newer football helmets could slash concussion risks, study suggests – NBC
Linda Carroll NBC News contributor


Newer football helmets could cut concussion risk in half, a new study suggests.
Researchers found a 54 percent difference in concussion risk between two different helmets made by the same company in a large study that included data from 1,833 college football players.

The players in the study wore one of two helmet models made by the Riddell company: the older VSR4 and the newer Revolution. All the helmets had been equipped with sensors that recorded forces, or accelerations, experienced by the players’ heads each time there was a hit.

“No helmet can completely prevent concussions,” said study co-author Stefan Duma, a professor and head of biomedical engineering at Virginia Tech-Wake Forest University. “There’s always a risk. All we are saying is that by effectively adding more padding, it reduces the accelerations, and that reduces concussions.”
Duma and his colleagues scrutinized concussion and accelerometer data collected from 2005 to 2010 from eight college football teams. All the players wore either the Riddell VSR4 or the Riddell Revolution.

During the years of the study there were a total of 322,725 head impacts in players wearing the VSR4 helmets and 27 concussions, which amounted to 8.37 concussions per 100,000 jolts to the head. Among those wearing the Revolution, there were 958,719 head impacts and 37 concussions, which amounted to 3.86 concussions per 100,000 head impacts.

Concussion experts called the study an important first step, but one that needed to be duplicated, since there is another recently published helmet study that found no difference in concussion protection between older and newer versions.
“The newer helmets are about 40 percent thicker, so it’s not a surprise that they would reduce the linear impacts you would record,” said Dr. Robert Cantu, a professor of neurology and neurosurgery at the Boston University School of Medicine and co-director of the Center for the Study of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy. Cantu also serves on the board of trustees as vice president of the National Operating Committee on Standards for Athletic Equipment.

“What is surprising is the degree to which they appear to have found concussion to be reduced,” he added.

Cantu said he was concerned about the small number of concussions that were reported. Numbers were also an issue for David Hovda, a professor of neurosurgery and director of the UCLA Brain Injury Research Center.

There was far less data from the VSR4 wearing players, Hovda pointed out. And if there had been more data, the difference between the two helmets might not have been as sharp. Further, Hovda said, you have to take into account the fact that many, many players weren’t — and still aren’t — reporting concussions.

Ultimately there will just need to be more studies on the topic, said Dr. Douglas Smith, a professor of neurosurgery and director of the Center for Brain Injury and Repair at the University of Pennsylvania Medical Center.

“I would say this is an important study because it instructs us on how to sharpen our focus for future ones,” Smith said. 



This is a major difference, from 8.37 concussions per 100,000 jolts to the head to 3.86 concussions. It's still not truly safe to play football, but this is much better than before. According to Hovda and Smith, however, there wasn't enough data to make a correct determination of the difference between the two helmets, so officials will of course be waiting for further studies. If I find any more articles updating this I will clip them.




Art cache of recluse Huguette Clark revealed, begins world tour before sale

By Bill Dedman
Investigative Reporter, NBC News

NEW YORK — Masterpieces from the art collection of reclusive heiress Huguette Clark, hidden away like their owner for nearly a century, begin a world tour on Friday, stopping in London, Hong Kong, Tokyo and New York. Christie's will auction the works in May and June.

Huguette Clark was 24 when she purchased this work from Claude Monet's series of "Nymphéas," or "Water Lilies," in 1930 in New York. This 1907 painting remained out of the public eye until now. It is estimated by Christie's to bring $25 million to $35 million at auction on May 6, after it is available for viewing in London, Hong Kong, Tokyo, and New York.

First, on May 6, four Impressionist paintings will be sold at Christie's in Rockefeller Center, including a Monet from his "Water Lilies" series with an estimated value of $25 million to $35 million. This Monet has not been seen in public since the copper heiress bought it in 1930. Her three paintings by Renoir will also be sold: "Girls Playing Battledore and Shuttlecock," "Chrysanthemums," and "Woman with Umbrella." Together the Renoir trio is estimated to be worth $16.5 million to $25.5 million.

Then on June 18, more than 400 objects collected by Clark and her parents will receive their own spotlight at a sale at Christie's. They include paintings by Americans John Singer Sargent ("Girl Fishing at San Vigilio") and William Merritt Chase ("A Water Fountain in Prospect Park"); a Stradivarius violin ("the Kreutzer," c. 1731) and other musical instruments; rare books (a first edition of Baudelaire's "Les fleurs du mal," a Book of Hours from the 16th century with pages bordered in liquid gold, and a first edition of Whitman's "Leaves of Grass"); European furniture and decorative arts; Chinese works of art; and English silver.

Here are the tour dates for public viewing: London, Jan. 30 through Feb. 4; Hong Kong, April 4-9; Tokyo, April 10-12; and in New York selected items will be on view in April. All the Impressionist and Modern art work will be on view May 2-6. All other items will be on view from June 14-17. A catalogue of the collection will be printed this spring.

Renoir's "Girls Playing Battledore and Shuttlecock" has a pre-sale estimated value of $10 million to $15 million. Huguette Clark paid $125,000 for it in the late 1950s. From about 1887, this large work is one of Renoir's most prized, showing five women in a rural landscape.

Huguette Clark on a ship with her father, W.A. Clark, the copper miner and former senator, in the 1910s. The familiy held tickets on the return trip of the Titanic in 1912, though as Huguette explained some 80 years later, "We took another boat."
Huguette (pronounced "oo-GET") Marcelle Clark was the youngest child of former U.S. Sen. William Andrews Clark (1839-1925), one of the copper kings of Montana, a railroad builder, founder of Las Vegas, and one of the richest men of the Gilded Age. Huguette, born in Paris in 1906, was a painter and doll collector who spent her last 20 years living in simple hospital rooms. She attracted the attention of NBC News in 2009 because her fabulous homes in Connecticut, California and New York sat unoccupied but carefully maintained. (See all the stories in the NBC series.)

After Clark died in 2011 at age 104, nineteen relatives challenged her last will and testament, which had cut them out of her $300 million copper fortune. The relatives claimed that she was mentally ill and had been defrauded by her nurse, attorney and accountant. No one was charged with any crime after an investigation by the district attorney's office, but enough questions were raised that the case was settled in September 2013 just after jury selection began. The relatives, who last saw her in 1957 and most of whom never met Clark, will receive $34.5 million. Lawsuits continue as the relatives hope to receive more money from Clark's hospital and doctor. The proceeds from the scheduled sales at Christie's will go back into the estate for distribution under that settlement. (Read a summary of the deal here.)

Though Clark kept much of her art collection under wraps, along with the rest of her life, she was a persistent supporter of the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and lent works to it periodically, including two paintings by Sargent and one of the Renoirs. Most of the art collected by her father went to the Corcoran after his death in 1925, after the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York turned it down.
Not for sale are paintings made by Clark herself. Those will go to a new Bellosguardo Foundation for the arts, to be set up at her summer estate in Santa Barbara, Calif. The foundation received her oceanfront property by that name, worth at least $85 million.

With only about $5 million in cash — an exact amount still to be determined — the foundation will have to choose a mission and figure out how to fund it. It could become a public museum, or the house could be sold to fund the foundation's charitable efforts. The board members will be appointed, probably by this summer, by the New York attorney general; most will be nominated by the mayor of Santa Barbara.
The foundation also will receive Clark's collection of dolls, mostly from France, Germany and Japan, as well as  dollhouses and model Japanese castles she designed, altogether worth an estimated $1.7 million.

Clark's jewelry collection was sold at Christie's in 2012, bringing $18 million to provide cash to keep her estate running during the dispute. Her three apartments on Fifth Avenue sold for a total of $54.8 million. Her Connecticut home, unoccupied since she bought it in 1951, remains on the market at $15.9 million.

Bill Dedman is the co-author of the New York Times bestseller "Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune." The co-author is Paul Clark Newell Jr., Huguette Clark's cousin, who was not involved in the legal contest for her estate.

Paintings made by the shy artist Huguette Clark will not be sold at auction, but will go to the new Bellosguardo Foundation for the arts, at her California home. This self-portrait is from the late 1920s.




One painting shown in the news article, which is said to have been painted by Clark herself, looks like a very good professional quality work to me. She was more than just a wealthy collector. She also, the article said, designed model Japanese castles and collected dolls. Shy and reclusive, she spent her last 20 years in a hospital room. She apparently willed most of her money to her nurse and doctor, along with her lawyer. The book by Bill Dedman and Paul Clark Newell, Jr. is one that I would like to read, which may be available at my public library. I don't want to have to buy it – art books are prohibitively expensive.







'Devil frog' sported anti-dinosaur body armor, scientists say – NBC
Tia Ghose LiveScience


A new computer model for Beelzebufo ampinga's skeleton incorporates fossil specimens marked in dark blue. The scale bar at lower right marks roughly an inch in length.

An ancient, predatory creature known as the devil frog may have looked even scarier than previously thought.
The monster frog, Beelzebufo ampinga, lived during the Cretaceous Period in what is now Africa, and sported spiky flanges protruding from the back of its skull and platelike armor down its back, almost like a turtle shell.

"We knew it was big; we knew it was almost certainly predatory," said study co-author Susan Evans, a paleontologist at the University College London. "What the new material has shown us is that it was even more heavily armored than we imagined."
The massive frog's spiked body armor may have helped it fend off the dinosaurs and crocodiles that prowled during that time. [See Photos of the Devil Frog and Other Freaky Frogs]

Elusive lineage
The researchers first discovered a few bone fragments from a mystery frog in Madagascar in 1998, but it wasn't until 2008 that they had enough pieces to identify the species, which they dubbed the devil frog, or Beelzebufo ampinga. The massive frog lived between 70 million and 65 million years ago.
When the team analyzed the frog's morphology, they found that physically, it fit in with a family of horned frogs called the Ceratophryidae, which are now found only in South America.

But to reach Madagascar from South America, the frogs would have needed to hop along a passageway, possibly through Antarctica, that linked the two landmasses. But that route was submerged underwater by 112 million years ago, Evans said.
That would mean that devil frogs must have diverged from their South American cousins prior to that submergence, pushing back the origin of Ceratophryidae by more than 40 million years, Evans said.

More specimens
Over the course of the next five years, the team found several more bone fragments of Beelzebufo ampinga. In the new study, they combined all of the fragments to do a much more complete reconstruction of the devil frog.

The new analysis confirms the frog's lineage in the Ceratophryidae family. It also downgrades the amphibian's size — instead of being the biggest frog that ever lived, it may be closer to the size of an African bullfrog, which grows to about 10 inches (25.4 centimeters) across.

Even so, the analysis reveals that the devil frog was even fiercer-looking than previously thought. Past studies had suggested it had a huge, globular head as well as sharp teeth and short back legs. But the spiky flanges and the plates embedded in its skin were a surprising discovery.

The frogs may have hunted like African bullfrogs, hiding before pouncing on a small mammal.

It's not clear what the frogs used the body armor for, but one possibility is that the sculptured bones may have been an adaptation to a dry environment that allowed the frogs to burrow underground, where they were less likely to bake in the hot sun, Evans said.

But the armor may also have been protection.
"There were an awful lot of things roaming around that would have liked a bite out of a big, juicy frog," such as dinosaurs, crocodiles and even strange mammals that once lived on the Gondwana supercontinent, Evans told LiveScience.



A common bull frog is in that range of size, which is of course found all over the American south as well as apparently in Africa. A closely related species is in South America, according to this article, so I assume they must have teeth, too. Most frogs don't have teeth, I don't think, but they are all predators in that they at least eat insects. Eating small mammals is another matter. They must be able to open their mouths very widely. The South American horned frog mentioned in the article is also colored brightly rather than green and the frog grows directly from its egg without a tadpole stage in between. See the article referenced in the news clip at http://www.livescience.com/12881-ria-110211.html for more details on the South American frog.