Thursday, March 20, 2014


News Clips For The Day



Life Sentence Sought for Bride Who Pushed Husband Off Cliff – NBC
Reuters
First published March 19 2014, 7:11 PM


Federal prosecutors are seeking a life sentence for a Montana bride who killed her new husband by pushing him off a cliff at Glacier National Park during an argument and after expressing misgivings about their marriage.

The bride, 22-year-old Jordan Graham, struck a deal with prosecutors in December and pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in the high-profile July 7 death of her husband of eight days, Cody Johnson. She is due to be sentenced next week.
The agreement with prosecutors, which came just as closing arguments in her federal murder trial were set to begin, involved the dropping of a first-degree murder count that could have carried a mandatory life sentence.

Prosecutors said that Graham deliberately shoved Johnson, 25, off a rock ledge during a marital dispute while hiking a steep trail at Glacier and then lied to investigators and tried to cover up the crime.

After striking the plea deal, Graham admitted her guilt to U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy, who presided over her trial in Missoula, Montana. She told the judge that her husband had grabbed her hand during the argument and that she "just pushed his hand off and just pushed away."

While a second-degree murder conviction may be punishable by life in prison, it can also result in a lesser sentence of about 20 years behind bars, with possible adjustments for accepting responsibility and other factors.

Federal prosecutors said in a sentencing recommendation filed on Tuesday that a prison term of 24 to 30 years for the second-degree murder count would be insufficient for Graham, whom they described as "extremely dangerous, predatory and an unrepentant murderer."

They argued that the seriousness of Graham's crime, her lack of remorse and the chance she might commit another violent crime warranted a life sentence or no less than 50 years in jail.

"The defendant, despite offering no remorse, has left a mother childless, upended a community and shown no respect for the law during this entire process," wrote Michael Cotter, U.S. Attorney for Montana.

Michael Donahoe, Graham's federal defender, is seeking a 10-year sentence. He said the former nanny had no criminal record before the "tragic event," was unlikely to commit another crime and regretted she had not come forward sooner with the truth.
"She is worthy of punishment and the shame that will no doubt accompany her for the remainder of her life," Donahoe wrote in legal filings. "Defendant has confided to the undersigned that a day does not go by that she doesn't think of her husband and what might have been."




If this event did happen exactly as she described it, it looks like an accident to me. She wasn't trying to push her husband, but to free her hand. It is true that arguments between lovers and spouses can be white hot in intensity, and result in the use of too much force if physical hitting or shoving occurs. Couples often marry for sexual obsession, which is not a gently loving thing, but does occur frequently, especially among the young, and feels like being “in love.” Arguments occur with all married couples, of course, unless one partner is completely dominated by the other or is a very passive personality. Love is not really a “many splendored thing.” It is a mixed bag of sorrow and joy, for most people.




Close Call: Destructive Solar Blasts Narrowly Missed Earth in 2012 – NBC
Laila Kearney, Reuters

Fierce solar blasts that could have badly damaged electrical grids and disabled satellites in space narrowly missed Earth in 2012, U.S. researchers said on Wednesday.

The bursts would have wreaked havoc on the Earth's magnetic field, matching the severity of the 1859 Carrington event, the largest solar magnetic storm ever reported on the planet. That blast knocked out the telegraph system across the United States, according to University of California, Berkeley research physicist Janet Luhmann.
"Had it hit Earth, it probably would have been like the big one in 1859, but the effect today, with our modern technologies, would have been tremendous," Luhmann said in a statement.

Screen grab of video of coronal mass ejection on the sun on July 22, 2012, as captured by NASA's Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory-Ahead (STEREO-A).
A 2013 study estimated that a solar storm like the Carrington Event could take a $2.6 trillion bite out of the current global economy.

Massive bursts of solar wind and magnetic fields, shot into space on July 23, 2012, would have been aimed directly at Earth if they had happened nine days earlier, Luhmann said.

The bursts from the sun, called coronal mass ejections, carried southward magnetic fields and would have clashed with Earth's northward field, causing a shift in electrical currents that could have caused electrical transformers to burst into flames, Luhmann said. The fields also would have interfered with global positioning system satellites.

The event, detected by NASA's STEREO A spacecraft, is the focus of a paper that was released in the journal Nature Communications on Tuesday by Luhmann, China's State Key Laboratory of Space Weather professor Ying Liu and their colleagues.
Although coronal mass injections can happen several times a day during the sun's most active 11-year cycle, the blasts are usually small or weak compared to the 2012 and 1859 events, she said.


Solar storm of 1859
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The solar storm of 1859, also known as the Carrington Event,[1] was a powerful geomagnetic solar storm in 1859 during solar cycle 10. A solar flare or coronal mass ejection hit Earth's magnetosphere and induced the largest known solar storm, which was observed and recorded by Richard C. Carrington.

From August 28, 1859, until September 2, numerous sunspots were observed on the Sun. Just before noon on September 1, the English amateur astronomers Richard Carrington and Richard Hodgson independently made the first observations of a solar flare.[2] It caused a major coronal mass ejection (CME) to travel directly toward Earth, taking 17.6 hours. Such a journey normally takes three to four days. This second CME moved so quickly because the first one had cleared the way of the ambient solar wind plasma.[2

On September 1–2, 1859, the largest recorded geomagnetic storm occurred. Aurorae were seen around the world, even as far south as the Caribbean; those over the Rocky Mountains were so bright that their glow awoke gold miners, who began preparing breakfast because they thought it was morning.[2] People who happened to be awake in the northeastern US could read a newspaper by the aurora's light.[4] The aurora was visible as far from the poles as Cuba and Hawaii.[5]

Telegraph systems all over Europe and North America failed, in some cases giving telegraph operators electric shocks.[6] Telegraph pylons threw sparks.[7] Some telegraph systems continued to send and receive messages despite having been disconnected from their power supplies.[8]

Similar events[edit]
Ice cores contain thin nitrate-rich layers that can be analyzed to reconstruct a history of past events before reliable observations; the data from Greenland ice cores was gathered by Kenneth G. McCracken[11] and others. These show evidence that events of this magnitude—as measured by high-energy proton radiation, not geomagnetic effect—occur approximately once per 500 years, with events at least one-fifth as large occurring several times per century.[12] These similar but much more extreme cosmic ray events however may originate outside the solar system and even outside the galaxy. Less severe storms have occurred in 1921 and 1960, when widespread radio disruption was reported. The March 1989 geomagnetic storm knocked out power across large sections of Quebec.




These events apparently don't kill or injure people, but can wreak havoc with technology. The burst could have interfered with the northern magnetic field, “causing a shift in electrical currents that could have caused electrical transformers to burst into flames, Luhmann said. The fields also would have interfered with global positioning system satellites.” The aurora would probably be seen in Florida, if the 1859 event is typical, and communications might break down. I do remember seeing the Northern Lights in North Carolina around the time period of 1960, when I was a teenager, and they aren't often seen there so I think it must have been this event.




Basketball and the brain: Concussions aren't just a risk in football
By Michelle Castillo CBS News March 20, 2014

Years ago, when Ted Hotaling was playing professional basketball overseas, he went in for a pump fake and fell. He slammed his head on the hard court.

Hotaling was lucky. His coaches and athletic directors held him out and sent him to the hospital after the game, where they discovered he had a concussion. Back then, there weren't stringent concussion protocols, and people didn't know that cumulative hits to the head could cause lasting damage to an athlete's health.

"At the time, concussions weren't on the forefront on a lot of people's mindsets as they are now," recalled Hotaling, who is now the head men's basketball coach at the University of New Haven in Connecticut.

Even now, when most people think of sports that pose concussion risks, they probably think of football, hockey or X Games-style snowboarding and skateboarding -- not basketball.

But in 2010, a study in Pediatrics showed that 375,000 youths are sent to the emergency room each year due to basketball-related injuries. Although the total number of injuries declined over a 10-year period, the report highlighted a 70 percent increase in traumatic brain injuries on the court. Just this past December, a Seton Hall college basketball player was hospitalized for a few days when he was fouled and came down on the left side of his head.

To help protect their players, the University of New Haven men's basketball team is turning to technology. During practice, players wear Triax head sensors that are small enough to be slipped into a headband. The sensors track the g-force of a hit to the head, which can cause jarring movement of the brain inside the skull.
The data is then sent wirelessly in real-time to computer software that compiles the findings. Athletic trainers can then see which player just got hit in the head and how hard the hit was. They can track how hard and how many times that player sustained a head injury during that practice, the season, or even the course of their sports career.

At the end of the season, the University of New Haven will send the data to the Sports Legacy Institute to help further concussion research.

Chris Nowinski, a former athlete himself, co-founded the Sports Legacy Institute with Dr. Robert Cantu, a clinical professor of neurosurgery at Boston University School of Medicine, in order to learn more about concussions and spread awareness about their dangers.

The Sports Legacy Institute is known for its partnership with Boston University to study chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), an Alzheimer's-like brain disease that is diagnosed after death in athletes who experienced repeated concussions and head blows during their athletic careers. The collaboration is sometimes referred to as the CTE Brain Bank.

Nowinski explained that the data collected by the Triax sensors will help medical professionals diagnose concussions and better understand their impact on health. Because the sensors are small and can be worn in virtually every sport, they are looking to collect data on a variety of different activities.
"This will eventually be on everybody's head so we can understand really what are the risks to the brain in these sports," he said.

Nowinski has had personal experience with concussions. He played soccer from kindergarten through eighth grade, before picking up football in high school. He ended up becoming an all-Ivy defensive tackle at Harvard University.
"(I) never had a diagnosed concussion in my entire soccer or football career, although now I know I had them. I just never thought twice about them," he said, speculating that he's suffered at least 10 concussions that he can remember.

After college, he joined the WWE "Tough Enough" reality TV program in 2001, and had his "Monday Night Raw" pro wrestling debut in 2002. In June 2003, he got kicked in the head and forgot what he was doing. He finished the match, but headaches persisted.
"I thought there are guys here wrestling with torn ACLs and fused necks and all sorts of pain, and all I had was this throbbing headache and a little nausea when I get my heart rate up. I thought that feels like the flu and I've wrestled with the flu before, so why can't I wrestle with this?"

It wasn't until five weeks later -- after he fell and injured himself while sleepwalking -- that he realized it was a serious problem.

Even now, 10 years later, "I still can't sprint without getting sick." he said. "Every time I play sports I'm still at 80, 85 percent. I never try to push past that or else it will cost me a couple of days."

He's hoping the head sensors will help make a difference for others.

In addition to gathering data, the sensors also provide an invaluable tool by raising an alert the moment they detect a concussion. Many players admit they would try to stay in the game and downplay their injury otherwise.

A May 2013 survey revealed 53 percent of high school students would continue to play even if they had a headache stemming from a head injury. Just 54 percent said they would "always or sometimes report symptoms of a concussion to their coach."
"As a competitor, as a player and obviously as a coach you want them to get back, but fortunately for us, we have people who are experts in the field who are making the right decisions," Hotaling said. "Now with these sensors, there's much more of an awareness, and we have much more intelligence (to let us know) when they're ready to get back on the floor and in the classroom."

New Haven junior guard Ashanti DePass admits that he never used to worry about concussions. But he was surprised to find out that he was absorbing head blows during practices.

"You don't really realize it's bad, but trainers can step in, and bring you off to the side, and make sure everything is all right before you keep going along in practice and hurt yourself further," he explained.

In Nowinski's opinion, the culture of sports has to change. But in the meantime, he said, wearing a sensor takes the pressure off a player to self-report.
"Somebody on the sideline will be able to recognize through the technology that that person took a hard hit, and take them out, and take that pride issue out of being pulled off the field with an invisible injury," he said. "Because remember, it's easy when you're limping off or you're bleeding to say, 'Oh he's injured.' But if you just walk off the court with nothing, with no blood, no obvious injury, people question you."

The University of New Haven basketball players admitted they weren't crazy about wearing the sensors at first, but soon got used to them.

"I've never played with a headband before. It was something new. But, once I was told what they were used for," junior guard Jeffery Atkins said. "I put it on, once you put it on and you start playing, you don't really feel it. It's like it's not even there really."

Now, they're grateful they have them.
"I don't ever want to get taken out because of a hit," said DePass. "I would just want to continue playing. But [the sensor] actually helps because being hardheaded in that situation just isn't the best idea."




According to Chris Nowinski “I never had a diagnosed concussion …I know I had them. I just never thought twice about them," he said, speculating that he's suffered at least 10 concussions that he can remember. The sensors could be a concrete way of deciding when a player should go to the hospital, as they immediately detect when a concussion has occurred. I don't see any reason why football couldn't jump on the band wagon and begin using these sensors on all their players. I would feel much better about football if these were to be used.

In Nowinski's opinion, “the culture of sports has to change.” He said that if you show no visible injury, but stop playing “ people question you.” I have heard the famous quotation that winning is “the only thing,” and all coaches want to win, but they are losing the long term battle.




Europe threatens new sanctions against Russia as Moscow charges ahead to annex Crimea
CBS/AP March 20, 2014

KIEV, Ukraine -- Russia faces further sanctions from the European Union on Thursday over its annexation of the Crimean Peninsula as tensions in the region remained high despite the release of a Ukrainian naval commander.

In an address to the German Parliament in Berlin, Chancellor Angela Merkel said the EU was readying further sanctions and that the G-8 forum of leading economies had been suspended indefinitely. Russia holds the presidency of the G-8 and President Vladimir Putin was due to host his counterparts, including President Barack Obama, at a summit in Sochi in June.

"So long as there aren't the political circumstances, like now, for an important format like the G-8, then there is no G-8," Merkel said. "Neither the summit, nor the format."

Earlier this week, the EU and the United States slapped sanctions on certain individuals that were involved in what they say was the unlawful referendum in Crimea over joining Russia. Moscow formally annexed Crimea earlier this week in the wake of the poll. The Black Sea peninsula had been part of Russia for centuries until 1954 when Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev transferred it to Ukraine.

Russian forces effectively took control of Crimea some two weeks ago in the wake of the ouster of Ukraine's pro-Russia president, Viktor Yanukovych, after months of protests and sporadic violence. The crisis erupted late last year after Yanukovych backed out of an association deal with the EU in favor of a promised $15 billion bailout from Russia. That angered Ukrainians from pro-European central and western regions.

CBS News' Elizabeth Palmer reported from the Crimean capital of Sevastopol, however, that the combined pressure from the U.S. and Europe does not appear to be slowing down Russia's rush to annex the Black Sea peninsula.

Thursday and Friday were to see the final formalities were expected to be ratified by the Russian Parliament on Thursday and Friday, meaning the annexation of Crimea will likely be a done deal by the weekend.

Merkel said EU leaders would increase those "level 2" sanctions against Russia when they meet later Thursday in Brussels to widen the list of those whose assets are being frozen and who are banned from traveling.

She also reiterated that if things worsen, the EU is prepared to move to "level 3" measures, which would include economic sanctions.

"The European Council will make it clear today and tomorrow that with a further deterioration of the situation we are always prepared to take level 3 measures, and those will without a doubt include economic sanctions," she said.

Merkel's tough approach came as the commander of Ukraine's navy was freed after being held by Russian forces and local Crimean militia at the navy's headquarters.
Rear Adm. Sergei Haiduk and an unspecified number of civilians were held for hours after the navy's base in Sevastopol was stormed Wednesday. Early reports said the storming was conducted by a self-described local defense force, but Thursday's statement by acting President Oleksandr Turchynov, which confirmed the release, said Russian forces were involved.

Palmer reported that thousands of Ukrainian soldiers are still stranded at their posts, on bases and naval vessels all over Crimea, and they're hoping to avoid the humiliation of being driven out by their new and unexpected enemy, the Russians, with their possessions and their families.

Right now, as their new government in Kiev tries to figure out how to accomplish that, they have nothing to look forward to but uncertainty.

Attempting to face down the unblinking incursion, Ukraine on Wednesday said it would hold joint military exercises with the United States and Britain, signatories, along with Russia, of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum - a document designed to guarantee Ukraine's territorial integrity when it surrendered its share of Soviet nuclear arsenals to Russia after the Soviet Union broke up in 1991.

Just how many retreating troops Ukraine will have to absorb in what amounts to a military surrender of Crimea was unclear. Many servicemen have already switched sides to Russia, but authorities said they were prepared to relocate as many as 25,000 soldiers and their families to the Ukrainian mainland.

With thousands of Ukrainian soldiers and sailors trapped on military bases, surrounded by heavily armed Russian forces and pro-Russia militia, the Kiev government said it was drawing up plans to evacuate its outnumbered troops from Crimea back to the mainland and would seek U.N. support to turn the peninsula into a demilitarized zone.

Humbled but defiant, Ukraine lashed out symbolically at Russia by declaring its intent to leave the Moscow-dominated Commonwealth of Independent States, a loose alliance of 11 former Soviet nations. The last nation to leave the group was Georgia, which fought a brief war with neighboring Russia in 2008 and ended up losing two separatist territories.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is visiting Moscow on Thursday and is to come to Ukraine on Friday.

"We are working out a plan of action so that we can transfer not just servicemen, but first of all, members of their family who are in Crimea, quickly and effectively to mainland Ukraine," said Andriy Parubiy, secretary of Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council.




“Tensions in the region remained high despite the release of a Ukrainian naval commander Rear Adm. Sergei Haiduk …. Merkel announced further sanctions and that the G-8 forum of leading economies had been suspended indefinitely.” She also predicted “Level 2 and level 3” sanctions. Only level 3 contains “economic sanctions.” I think they should already be doing “economic” sanctions, since targeting individuals isn't very effective, apparently.

Ukraine has stated that they will hold joint military exercises with the United States and Britain.” Ukraine plans to ask UN support and turn Crimea into a demilitarized zone. It also is making plans to remove all Ukrainian soldiers and the families from Crimea, as well as leaving the Commonwealth of Independent States alliance with Russia. The article doesn't say what they will do about Ukrainian speaking civilians who are now in Crimea. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is to come to Ukraine tomorrow after visiting Russia today. All of these things represent substantial progress, it seems to me, especially if Crimea is demilitarized.




Woman fakes heart attack, robs Good Samaritan
By Crimesider Staff CBS News March 20, 2014

MOUNT LAUREL, N.J. - A Good Samaritan came across a very "bad Samaritan" when the former tried to help a woman on the side of the road in southern New Jersey.

According to CBS Philly, a Moorestown man - aka the Good Samaritan - saw a woman - aka the bad Samaritan - stopped along Route 38, clutching her chest.

She said she was having a heart attack. He offered to help.

The Good Samaritan told the woman to "please have a seat inside his car...he would call for medical attention to respond...to where they were. When he went to look for his cell phone, she then all of a sudden said that she was fine and she exited his vehicle," says Mount Laurel Police Lieutenant Judy Lynn Schiavone.

A little later on, the man - the Good Samaritan - discovered that the woman took $60 dollars out of his car (making her the bad Samaritan). CBS Philly reports police say they have little to go on, except for a minimal description of the alleged thief - a thin, white woman about 55-years-old (who may be faking a heart attack?)

Lt. Schiavone says she's never heard of a robbery pulled off quite like this one.




I tend not to stop the car and involve myself in anything I see on the side of the road. It is safer to use your cell phone if you have one and call 911, but keep driving. There was a similar news report some years ago about a man who was lying out in the road and when the good Samaritan stopped, he pulled a gun on him. There is only one of me, and I am small. Almost anybody can beat me in a fight. If I stopped, I would probably stay in the car until the police came. If I saw lots of blood or witnessed a hit and run happening, I would probably make an exception.




­
Einstein's Lost Theory Discovered ... And It's Wrong – NPR
by Geoff Brumfiel
March 20, 2014
­
Earlier this week, physicists announced they'd seen evidence of ripples in the fabric of space and time from just moments after the Big Bang. Such ripples were predicted almost a century ago by Albert Einstein.

Einstein's theory of relativity is arguably the 20th century's greatest idea. But not everything he did was right: Some newly uncovered work from the brilliant physicist was wrong. Really, really wrong.

Cormac O'Raifeartaigh, a physicist at the Waterford Institute of Technology in Ireland, and his collaborators turned up the lost theory. Last year O'Raifeartaigh was going through a huge digital archive of Einstein manuscripts kept by the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

"We were looking through these drafts, one by one," O'Raifeartaigh says, "and one afternoon in late August, the more I looked at a particular draft, the more I got this queer feeling that this is not what everybody thinks it is."
- Cormac O'Raifeartaigh

What everyone thought it was, was the draft of a paper published in 1931; it started out the same way. But as O'Raifeartaigh read on, he realized he was gazing at something else.

"It's a bit like finding a play; you're looking through a draft version of Beckett's play Waiting for Godot," he says, "and then you suddenly realize halfway through, 'Wait a minute, there's no Godot in this play at all.' "

This newly discovered theory was one that Einstein hadn't published and that nobody knew about. It was trying to solve a big problem of the day. An astronomer named Edwin Hubble had just observed that everything in the universe is moving outward.
Today we know that the universe started in a Big Bang and is still growing. But when Einstein was working on this idea, most people still believed the universe was static and unchanging.

"This is pre-Big Bang," O'Raifeartaigh says. "That's the fascinating thing about it."
Faced with evidence that the universe was growing, Einstein apparently wanted to figure out why it wasn't filling up with empty space. His proposed solution is in this newly discovered paper. As the universe expanded, he suggested, new matter showed up to fill the gaps. New stars and galaxies would just pop up, according to Einstein's model, so that even as the universe grew, it would look the same.

Just to be clear, this theory is totally wrong. But for a little while Einstein thought it was right. The numbers made sense, because he had made a mathematical mistake. In the middle of a complicated calculation, he wrote a minus sign where he should have written a plus.

Einstein screwed up his equations all the time, it turns out.

"About 20 percent of Einstein's papers contain various mistakes of various degrees," says Mario Livio, an astrophysicist at the Space Telescope Science Institute.
And Einstein is not alone. Livio wrote a book, Brilliant Blunders, all about some big mistakes made by great scientists.

"You try to think in unconventional ways, and when you do that, guess what: Sometimes you encounter mistakes," Livio says.

Darwin got evolution right, but his ideas on how individual traits were inherited turned out to be way off. And then there's the chemist Linus Pauling, winner of a Nobel Prize: "His model for DNA had almost everything that you can think of wrong with it," says Livio. "It had three strands instead of two, it was built inside out, and it basically violated some basic rules of chemistry."

In fact, Einstein wasn't even alone with this particular wrongheaded theory; the model was developed independently 20 years later by Thomas Gold, Hermann Bondi and the famed astronomer Fred Hoyle. Hoyle stuck by his version until his death in 2001 — even though cosmic microwave radiation detected in the 1960s suggested the universe actually had come from a Big Bang.

Einstein eventually found his mathematical error. He crossed it out and realized his idea wouldn't work. Cormac O'Raifeartaigh says it looks like Einstein set it aside. Maybe he forgot about it.

"He doesn't burn the manuscript, and he doesn't use it as a shopping list, which he often did," O'Raifeartaigh says. "He keeps it. But it's true, he never, ever refers to the model again."

Today the manuscript lives on as a reminder that to be great, you don't always have to be right. (But it does help to be right most of the time.)




This book would be full of interesting things, if the science isn't too far above my head to understand. It's a great idea for a research project. Details about Einstein's life like the statement that Einstein often used his discarded theory papers for shopping lists would make it interesting. I wonder if Einstein wrote an autobiography. I was told by my ex-husband who was a physics major in college that Einstein's wife rebuked him for bringing home a messy suitcase after trips. He responded by not changing his clothes during his trip. He also had an affair, I heard. Maybe that was his final revenge.