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Thursday, January 12, 2012

PFT: Crennel stays with Chiefs, gets 3-year deal

Having played with both Brett Favre and Aaron Rodgers, Packers receiver Greg Jennings says he leans toward Rodgers as the better quarterback.

?They both bring different things to the table, but honestly right now I definitely have to go with . . . Aaron, his body of work at such a young age, his attention to detail, his discipline, I think it?s really second to none ? its un-paralleled,? Jennings told Ian O?Connor on ESPN New York 1050.

It?s easy to see why Jennings would be happier with Rodgers, because he?s catching more passes from Rodgers. In two seasons as one of Favre?s starting receivers, Jennings averaged 49 catches for 776 yards. In four seasons with Rodgers, Jennings has averaged 73 catches for 1,155 yards.

But is it really fair to say Rodgers has a superior body of work to Favre? After all, Favre played 20 seasons, won the MVP award at the end of three of those seasons, and still has about 55,000 more career passing yards than Rodgers.

What Jennings is really saying is that Rodgers is playing at a higher level right now than Favre ever played at, and that?s a reasonable assessment.

?You haven?t really found a QB that has done it the way [Rodgers] has done it,? Jennings said. ?I mean you have the young guys that are coming out and they?re making a huge impact in this game . . . but his attention to detail and his discipline to be perfect or so close to perfect I think that?s really going to separate himself . . . his study habits are . . . they speak volume for themselves.?

And that?s why Jennings is speaking up for Rodgers.

Source: http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2012/01/09/romeo-crennel-agrees-to-three-year-deal-as-chiefs-head-coach/related/

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Jobs picture improves, but there's still a long way to go

The job market is slowly getting better, but unemployment and underemployment remain very high.

Friday?s?jobs data confirmed that labor markets are getting better, but slowly. Payrolls expanded by 200,000, the unemployment rate fell again to 8.5%, weekly hours ticked up from 34.3 to 34.4, and hourly earnings rose by 0.2%.

Skip to next paragraph Donald Marron

Donald B. Marron is director of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. He previously served as a member of the President's Council of Economic Advisers and as acting director of the Congressional Budget Office.

Wednesday, January 11, 2012

STcom: 20 months after Gulf of Mexico oil spill, BP pushes feel-good campaign to persuade Americans on region's recovery http://t.co/BkM2RNR5

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20 months after Gulf of Mexico oil spill, BP pushes feel-good campaign to persuade Americans on region's recovery bit.ly/xvLew3 Il y a environ 3 heures via TweetDeck Retweeted by 3 people

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Source: http://twitter.com/STcom/statuses/156240874832003072

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Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Panasonic debuts HC-V10: Compact, HD camcorder

Panasonic

Panasonic HC-V10 camcorder

By Athima Chansanchai

If taking videos on your smartphone just isn't cutting it for you, Panasonic hopes that its new high-def, compact HC-V10 camcorder will sway you.

Besides shooting in HD, the HC-V10 has a 63x optical zoom lens with a 70x Zoom function, so far away or way, way up close, subjects should be in sharp focus and not a ghostly buzz. The HD videos can be recorded in MP4 format, which Panasonic tells us "offers broad compatibility and high compression for small, easy-to-share files." ?Or, users can choose to record in iFrame format, with easier editing in mind. "With iFrame, the video a user captures with their camera is in the same format used for editing, so it's fast to import and edit with compatible video editing applications."

There's a lot going on with this litte guy, including:

Power O.I.S. (Optical Image Stabilizer), which counters shaking hands and blurry captures. It has an "active" mode optimized to make it easy to take wide-angle and telephoto images and everything in-between.?
"Intelligent Contrast Control prevents blown highlights and blocked shadows, allowing video to retain natural toned images with proper contrast."
And, an intelligent scene selector takes the brainwork out of your tired mind if you want, automatically selecting "the best scene mode to record in based on detected light and objects." ?
As in other digital imaging devices we're seeing at CES, face detection also figures prominently in the HC-V10 and adjust exposure accordingly.?

But, even though users can easily share their videos once they hook up the camcorder to a computer, the emergence of Wi-Fi camcorders (like Samsung's QF20) may be the kind of tipping point that matters. (Or maybe not? You tell us.) We did notice one feature that might come in handy for capturing YouTube viral moments:?

The Pre-Rec function allows users to capture three seconds of video prior to pressing the Record button.? When the camcorder is aimed at a subject in advance, it will continuously record three seconds of video to an internal buffer memory; when the record button is pressed, the three seconds immediately prior are added to the beginning of the clip being recorded.??

Pricing and availability aren't posted yet by the company, but when it does come out, color choices will be?black, silver and red.??

More stories from CES:

Check out Technolog on?Facebook, and on Twitter, follow?Athima Chansanchai, who is also trying to keep her head above water in the?Google+?stream.

Source: http://gadgetbox.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/01/10/10087630-panasonic-debuts-hc-v10-compact-hd-camcorder

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Monday, January 9, 2012

A real-life 'Avatar'? Search begins for moons that could support life.

With scientists already looking for Earth-size planets orbiting in distant stars' habitable zones, a new project is using similar techniques to look for moons, too.?

How many planets discovered by NASA's Kepler mission might have moons?

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That's a question a team of astronomers is trying to answer, and if they find any, what tales those moons might tell.

Distant moons could yield insights into the formation and evolution of planetary systems unlike our own. In addition, they could also host environments hospitable for life, even if the planets they orbit don't.

Finding so-called exomoons is a daunting task. But as Kepler searches for Earth-size planets orbiting at Earth-like distances around sun-like stars, the Hunt for Exomoons with Kepler (HEK) aims to use similar techniques to find a new trove of celestial objects.

Even within our solar system moons may offer the potential for life. Jupiter's moon Europa and Saturn's moon Enceladus, for instance, have piqued interest because evidence indicates they have liquid water ? a key ingredient for life ? beneath their ice surfaces. Another Saturnian moon, Titan, does not appear habitable but is fascinating in its own right, with rain, lakes, and rivers of liquid hydrocarbons.?

Yet these moons fall far outside the sun's habitable zone ? the place where, if a planet has a sufficient atmosphere, the amount of starlight it gets is "just right" to allow water to exist as liquid, ice, and gas at or near the surface.

During its search for planets inside their stars? habitable zones, Kepler could also find evidence of moons worthy of further study.

The HEK team is looking for moons with more heft than any in our solar system ? at least 10 percent of Earth's mass. By contrast, the largest moon in the solar system, Jupiter's satellite Ganymede, has about 2.5 percent of Earth's mass.

The project, which began in earnest about four months ago, already has yielded objects the team wants to examine in more detail, according to David Kipping, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass.

These objects "were really easy to spot; they just stuck out like sore thumbs," Dr. Kipping says. "We have about four or five top, top candidates which we are looking at very closely."

But where planet-hunters have experience in identifying a planet's signature, he cautions, the same can't be said for moon hunters. It may be a year or so before the team will know whether or not it has found its first moon.

Kepler finds planets by staring at roughly 150,000 stars simultaneously for subtle changes in brightness when a planet eclipses its sun.

Kipping's team is hunting for moons in much the same way. In principle, a large moon can betray its presence as it eclipses part of the star, or even as it transits its planet as the planet crosses in front of the star.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/Tqyzpzn0zlQ/A-real-life-Avatar-Search-begins-for-moons-that-could-support-life.

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11 dead after hot air balloon crash in New Zealand (AP)

WELLINGTON, New Zealand ? A hot air balloon crashed and killed all 11 people aboard near a rural New Zealand town some 94 miles (150 kilometers) north of the capital, Wellington, officials said Saturday.

Police confirmed "multiple deaths" when the balloon crashed, with two people leaping from the burning basket. Neither survived the fall, near show grounds north of the township of Carterton.

A Wellington police district commander, Superintendent Mike Rusbatch, said it appeared the balloon struck power lines that set a fire on board, causing the balloon to crash in farmland in clear, bright early morning conditions with minimal wind. The region is well known for its hot air ballooning.

There were five couples on board from the Wellington region, and the pilot.

Rusbatch said two people jumped from the basket before it hit the ground, but they did not survive. A number of the bodies had been badly burned.

"We believe we know who the victims were," he told the news Web site "Stuff," adding, "this is a significant event. A tragedy for those involved and their families."

Witnesses told local media of seeing 32-foot (10-meter) high flames rising from the balloon's basket before it plummeted to the ground.

Bevan Lambeth said the basket was on fire "and the power lines were holding the basket down, but it was still about 50 meters (165 feet) in the air. Then the whole basket started to go up in flames," as the balloon broke clear of the electric lines.

"I saw ... (it) then go straight up in the air and the flames just engulfed the whole balloon and it crashed to the ground. When it came down it came down really quickly ... after it was released from the lines," he told TVOne News.

Local resident David McKinlay was "watering the garden and heard a noise, the noise of the gas to raise the balloon. I looked over and I couldn't believe it ? one side of the basket was on fire."

"It was just above the trees when I first saw it ... it looked like he (the pilot) tried to raise it a bit higher ... all of a sudden there was just 10 meters of flames," he said.

The dark blue and maroon striped balloon was about 500 feet (150 meters) in the air and dropped quickly, turning to "just a sheer flame as it hit the ground," where "there was a big bang," he said.

Rosalee Thurston was in a car with her husband and daughter when they saw "a puff of smoke in the sky and then flames as the balloon fell to the earth," she told TVOne News.

New Zealand Transport Accident Investigation Commission manager Peter Northcote said the commission had opened an inquiry into the crash, with investigators already on the scene.

The Commission conducts safety-focused investigations to explain the causes of an accident and help reduce the likelihood of similar events.

Local media reported the fatal balloon crash as the worst aviation crash in New Zealand since the Nov. 28, 1979 Erebus disaster, when an Air New Zealand DC-8 airliner on a scenic flight slammed into Mount Erebus in Antarctica, killing all 257 on board.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/oceania/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120106/ap_on_re_as/as_new_zealand_balloon_crash

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Thursday, January 5, 2012

William Carey, donated millions to education, dies (AP)

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. ? William Polk Carey, an entrepreneur who founded a New York-based investment management firm bearing his name and donated millions of dollars to help found business schools at universities in Maryland and Arizona, has died at 81, his firm said Monday.

The board of that firm, W.P. Carey & Co., issued a statement that the Baltimore native and corporate finance pioneer died Monday at a West Palm Beach, Fla., hospital, surrounded by family and friends.

Carey gave $30 million in April to the University of Maryland law school, reports noted. He also made a $50 million bequest in 2006 to Johns Hopkins University to found the Carey School of Business at that Maryland university. And in 2003, the business leader and philanthropist also gave $50 million to Arizona State University in 2003 to found its W.P. Carey School of Business.

At the time of his death, Carey was chairman of W.P. Carey & Co., which manages a global investment portfolio totaling about $11.8 billion, according to the company statement. It added that associates mourned the death of "the cultural leader of our company."

Carey was a leader in the field of corporate finance for nearly 60 years, the statement said, noting he found innovative ways to provide needed capital to hundreds of companies through the firm he founded. It said he specifically led the way in developing a sale-leaseback investment strategy for commercial real estate that has kept his company in the forefront of leaders in that industry.

Carey went on in 1988 to establish the W.P. Carey Foundation to support educational causes and donated generously in later years.

The Baltimore Sun ( http://bsun.md/tnH1yq) reports that the $30 million given to the University of Maryland's school of law was the largest gift in that school's history. It also said other Baltimore schools, among other educational causes, were recipients of his generosity, including the Baltimore School for the Arts.

"Bill was not only an insightful businessman, but a wonderful brother and a good citizen," his brother, Francis Carey, said in a statement published by that paper. "He always felt grateful that he was raised in a family committed to public service, and he worked passionately to uphold that tradition."

Arizona State University also issued a statement mourning the death of Carey, saying one of the nation's most prominent real estate investors and the major donor behind its school of business was a "visionary" who helped propel its business school to prominence.

"Through his general investment in ASU almost a decade ago, the school that bears his name has become world-class and will continue to educate future business leaders for many generations to come," said the statement posted on the university's web site. It said that was the second-largest gift ever to a U.S. business school at that time.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/obits/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120103/ap_on_re_us/us_obit_carey

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