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On Jan. 9, astronomers used a NASA X-ray satellite to spy on a star already fountain into its decease throes, when another star in the corresponding; of like kind galaxy started to explode. The outburst was 100 billion times brighter than Earth’s light. The scientists were able to get several ground-based telescopes to append in the early viewing and the first results were published in Thursday’s issue of the journal Nature.

“It’s take pleasure in winning the astronomy lottery,” said lead author Alicia Soderberg, an astrophysics researcher at Princeton University. “We caught the whole thing from start-to-finish on tape.”

Another scientist, University of California at Berkeley astronomy professor Alex Filippenko, called it a “very special moment because this is the birth, in a sense, of the death of a star.”

And what a death blast it is.

“As much energy is released in one second by the death of a star as by all of the other stars you can see in the visible universe,” Filippenko said.

Less than 1 percent of the stars in the universe resolution die this way, in a supernova, said Filippenko, who has written a separate paper awaiting divulgation. Most stars, including our sun, will achieve stronger and afterward slowly fade into white dwarfs, what Filippenko likes to call “solitary stars,” which exhibit little energy.

The primeval explosion of this supernova be possible to solely be seen in the X-ray cast away length. It was spotted by NASA’s Swift satellite, which looks at X-rays, and happened to be focused on the right region, Soderberg said. The blast was so bright it flooded the satellite’s instrument, giving it a picture consanguineal to “pointing your digital camera at the sun,” she said.

The chances of two simultaneous supernovae explosions so stop up to each other is maybe 1 in 10,000, Soderberg said. The odds of looking at them at the right time through the right telescope are, well, astronomical.

Add to that the serendipity of the Berkeley team viewing the same region with an optical light telescope. It took pictures of the star encircling three hours before it exploded.

This new glimpse of a supernova seems to confirm decades-old theories on how stars explode and die, not providing many surprises, scientists said. That makes the findings “a shameless thing,” but not one that fundamentally changes astrophysics, said University of California, Santa Cruz astrophysicist Stan Woosley, who wasn’t part of the research.

The galaxy with the dual explosions is a run-of-the-mill cluster of stars, not too close and not too far from the Milky Way in cosmic terms, Soderberg said. The galaxy, NGC2770, is about 100 million light-hearted years away. One light year is 5.9 trillion miles.

The star that exploded was only about 10 million years old. It was the corresponding; of like kind size in diameter as the sun, but end for end 10 to 20 times more dense.

The death of this star went through stages, with the core getting heavier in consecutive nuclear reactions and referring to atoms particles being shed out toward the universe, Filippenko said. It started out in its normal life through hydrogen being converted to helium, which is what is happening in our sunny place. The helium then converts to oxygen and carbon, and into heavier and heavier elements until it turns into iron.

That’s when the star core becomes so heavy it collapses in attached itself, and the supernova starts with a astound float of particles sharp through the shell of the star, what one. is what the Soderberg team captured on x-rays.

People at home can simulate how this shockwave works, Filippenko said.

Take a basketball and a tennis ball, get about five feet above the account and rest the tennis ball on top of the basketball. Drop them together and the tennis round body will soar on the bounce. The basketball is the collapsing core and the tennis ball is the shockwave that was seen by astronomers, he said.

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From: Scientists witness start of doom’s explosive death (AP)

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She and other Alaska elected officials fear a listing will cripple oil and gas development in prime polar bear habitat off the state’s northern and northwestern coasts.

Palin argued that in that place is not plenty evidence to support a listing. Polar bears are well-managed and their population has dramatically increased over 30 years as a result of conservation, she said.

Climate models that portend continued deprivation of main ice, the main habitat of polar bears, during summers are unreliable, said Palin, a Republican.

The announcement drew a strong response from the primary author of the listing pray.

“She’s either grossly misinformed or intentionally misleading, and both are unbecoming,” aforesaid Kassie Siegel of the Center for Biological Diversity. “Alaska deserves more familiar.”

Siegel said it was unconscionable for Palin to ignore overwhelming evidence of global warming’s threat to sea ice, the polar bear’s habitat.

“Even the Bush administration have power to’t deny the reality of global warming,” she said. “The governor is aligning herself and the state of Alaska with the most discredited, fringe, unreasonable viewpoints by denying this.”

As marine mammals, polar bears are regulated by the federal government, not the state. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne last week made the listing decision and said it was based on three findings.

“First, sea ice is vital to polar bear survival. Second, the polar bear’s sea-ice habitat has dramatically melted in recent decades. Third, computer models suggest sea ice is pleasing to further recede in the future,” he aforesaid.

Summer sea ice last year shrank to a record low, about 1.65 million square miles, nearly 40 percent less than the long-term average betwixt 1979 and 2000.

Polar bears rely on sea congeal for hunting ringed seals. In recent years, summer sea ice has receded far beyond the relatively shallow, biologically rich waters of the outer continental shoal, giving polar bears not so much time in prime feeding areas.

The bear’s numbers rebounded after the 1970s, but conservation groups contend that was in response to measures taken to stop over-hunting.

Polar bear researchers dismay new effects of the loss of large quantity ice on Alaska polar bear populations. A 2006 study by the U.S. Geological Survey concluded that far fewer polar bear cubs in the Beaufort Sea were surviving and that adult males weighed in a less degree and had smaller skulls than those captured and measured two decades previously — trends similar to observations in Canada’s western Hudson Bay before a population drop.

A U.S. Geological Survey study completed last year as part of the ask process predicted polar bears in Alaska could subsist wiped out by 2050.

Kempthorne said last week he considered every point Palin made, and rejected them.

However, he sought to limit the relating to housekeeping purport of the decision with the inclusion of “administrative leadership” that said the listing would not be used to create back-door climate skill outside the analogical connected view of political accountability. He also said that the threat to polar bears did not come from the rock oil industry.

In response, conservation groups including the Center despite Biological Diversity, Greenpeace and the Natural Resources Defense Council are seeking to overturn Kempthorne’s administrative actions and seek limits onward greenhouse gas emissions.

Palin and other state officials called arbitrary a decision to elect a healthy species judging by what they deem uncertain modeling of future climate change and unproven long-term impact of any future climate vary on the species.

State Natural Resources Commissioner Tom Irwin said it could have wide economic movables.

“Inappropriate implementation of this listing decision could result in widespread social and economic impacts, including increased power costs and further increases in fuel prices, without providing any more guard with respect to the species,” he said.

Deborah Williams, a former Interior Department special assistant for Alaska and an advocate in the state conducive to global warming replication, said Palin’s lawsuit was not a prudent use of state money.

“Clearly Secretary Kempthorne put a tremendous amount of consideration into the listing decision and concluded correctly that listing was required,” she said.

From: Governor: Alaska to challenge polar bear listing (AP)

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The discovery of tracks of a large ornithopod dinosaur and a herd of 11 sauropods walking along a coastal mudflat in Yemen was reported in Wednesday’s issue of the journal PLoS ONE.

“No dinosaur trackways had been place in this area previously. It’s really a blank stain on the chart,” said Anne Schulp of the Maastricht Museum of Natural History in The Netherlands.

Only a few dinosaur fossils have been reported on the peninsula, including isolated bones from Oman and possible fragments of a long-necked dinosaur from Yemen, Schulp said.

Schulp conducted the study with Ohio University paleontologist Nancy Stevens and Mohammed Al-Wosabi of Sana’a University in Yemen.

Preserved in rocks at the site are the footprints of 11 small and of great size sauropods — long-necked, herbivorous dinosaurs that lived in the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods — traveling together at the same speed.

A Yemeni journalist spotted one of the trackways in 2003. Stevens, Al-Wosabi and Schulp identified it as the footmark of an ornithopod, a large, common plant-eater that walked on its hind legs.

“It’s an exciting find largely because it comes from a part of the world that is poorly known in terms of its vertebrate Mesozoic record,” uttered Peter Makovicky, associate curator of dinosaurs at The Field Museum in Chicago. “This is part of the earth with little body fossil history.”

From: Dinosaur tracks found steady Arabian Peninsula (AP)

Foreign B-school students wishing to study or drudge in the U.S. clash a host of terms, on the other side of the first visa

by Francesca Di Meglio

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For foreign MBAs, the process of entering the U.S. (BusinessWeek.com, 5/14/07)—and staying stateside to study and then work—can be a complicated one. The leading challenge is finding a good immigration lawyer or a sponsoring company with a good immigration lawyer. The helper challenge is understanding which your lawyer is effective you.

The most commonly heard immigration term on business-school campuses these days is H-1B, as in H1-B visa, during the term of MBA graduates who want to continue to work in the U.S. after finishing business school. It refers to the visa that applies to a non-U.S. citizen who will be temporarily employed in a specialty occupation, according to the U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS). There is a shortage of these visas, which is why international MBA students often start asking about these visas midway through their programs (BusinessWeek.com, 3/18/08).

But the H-1B is only the source of the alphabet soup of forms and work visas that a business-school student can encounter. Indeed, a non-U.S. student needs to acquire a whole new vocabulary that in the greatest degree Americans do not speak. Here is a starter glossary, prepared through the heal of immigration attorney David A.M. Ware, that you’ll distress to know to beget started put on studying and working in the U.S. legally. For a lengthier list, you can also check completely the State Dept. A-Z Subject Index.

Adjustment of Status (AoS): The last step to becoming a permanent resident, this is when a person changes from nonimmigrant status to immigrant status. It allows to be preferred applicants to become lawful permanent residents of the U.S. without having to go on the wrong track and apply for an immigrant visa. The alternative to this step is consular processing, which allows you to apply and process a visa through a U.S. consulate at the end of one’s wits.

Advance Parole (AP): Commonly given to canaille in the last step of the permanent residence process, this classification gives foreigners permission to reenter the U.S. after leaving temporarily.

B-1 Visa: When foreigners come to the U.S. for conferences or meetings, they are entering with this visa. People with this status have power to also answer the purpose more work, otherwise than that the kind of work is very limited.

B-2 Visa: You might call this a tourist’s be considered. It allows people to visit the U.S. for pleasure or medical treatments.

E-1 or E-2: The U.S. has reciprocal treaties with various countries—such as Australia and Britain—that permit people in either fortress to endow and exchange in the other’s territory. The E-1 is against those who partake in substantial trade in a U.S. business. An E-2 allows you actually to participate in and/or create a business in the U.S.

Employment Authorization Document (EAD): A plastic card given by USCIS, this is usually valid beneficial to one year and is based on eligibility in one of many categories. It grants proof that the nonimmigrant is able to work in the U.S., according to USCIS.

F-1 Visa: Given to academic or language students on entering the U.S., this classification is encountered by all international students.

Form I-20: This document must be filled out by those who want F-1 condition (or M-1, which is for vocational students) in conduct to attend sect in the U.S. The form certifies that you have met the requirements of admittance to a particular seminary of learning or school, will pursue a full bearing of study, and have shown that you can afford to live and study in the U.S. It has a period of justness. When lifetime runs out, you can no longer stay in the country.

Form I-539: All persons who want to change immigration station or extend their stay in the U.S. must complete this form.

Green Card: Also known as Lawful Permanent Residence (LPR), this gives you official immigrant status in the U.S.

H-4: Referring to the classification of dependents of someone with an H-1B visa, this term describes wives and children under age 21 of international MBA graduates working with H-1Bs.

J-1 Visa: Anyone coming to the U.S. under the auspices of some educational or cultural exchange is eligible for this visa, including researchers, exchange students, dancers, and performers.

L-1 Visa: With this nonimmigrant visa, a U.S. entity can beseech the transfer of a person from a non-U.S. entity. For example, IBM could transfer a vice-president from one of its European offices to New York.

Labor Certification (LC): This is the first step in the permanent resident process. It involves your employer proving it cannot find a U.S. worker to do the job you’re doing.

Nonimmigrant Status: When people are coming to the U.S. for a temporary withhold, they are given this status adhering entry. It is also given to those extending their stay or changing their status. If persons by nonimmigrant status fail to comply with the rules and regulations of this status, they could lose the right to U.S. benefits and become deportable.

Petition: What an employer does on behalf of exterior employees to help them become steadfast residents.

What other vocabulary would you like defined here? Please let us know by leaving a comment below.

From: Beyond H-1B: An Immigration Glossary

B-school gurus say a President’s term has links to Fed actions and stocks. Plus, the Old Boy network in mutual funds, and health-care beefs

by Maggie Gilmour

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Stock indexes may be down 3% to 8% this year, yet granting that history is any guide, there’s a heck of a reunite around the corner. In a recent paper in The Journal of Portfolio Management, Scott Beyer of the CFA Institute and business school professors Gerald Jensen and Robert Johnson say stocks pay off the most when a President enters the second half of his term, based on algebra of Presidential terms from 1957 to 2004. The authors credit the pattern to the Federal Reserve, which they write tends to frown interest rates once a President passes the midway naze. True to form, the Fed began dropping rates in 2007. So in what way come the Russell 2000 fell 1.6% the last time year and a further 6.5% through Apr. 30? Jensen, a finance professor at Northern Illinois University, blames the credit crunch.

Networking Mutual Fund Returns

It seems the Old Boy network gets you more than an solicitation to LinkedIn or the country club. A study published by Andrea Frazzini, an assistant professor of finance at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, finds that mutual fund managers who invest in companies headed by associate college alums get by heart bigger returns. The study, co-written by Lauren Cohen at Yale School of Management and Christopher Malloy of Harvard Business School and submitted to The Journal of Political Economy, says investments in "connected firms" outdid nonconnected businesses by an average of 8.4% a year from 1980 to 2006.

Why? Frazzini has three hypotheses. One is that people exchange information more freely with people they know and have ties to. The second is that these connections yield subtle info as well: "You cancel a golf date with me, I infer things are not going well with the business, I sell stock," he says. The third theory is darker, suggesting more smudges under that white collar: "Insider mercantile was involved."

Criticizing Health Plans

Health insurance companies have plenty of critics. Now they be favored with one more: Leemore Dafny, every assistant professor at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. Insurers argue that because they compete in compensation for one another, they keep prices down, saving everyone money. Not necessarily, says Dafny in a March paper, Are Health Insurance Markets Competitive? Dafny looked at data from 1998 to 2005, if to her by a benefits consulting firm, that tracked the behavior of 200 major companies to beware whether they shopped around to find the cheapest insurers. Dafny found that when these self-sufficient companies made more money, their insurance providers raised their premiums. But instead of dropping the carrier to get a preferable deal out, Dafny writes, companies generally stuck through their soundness insurers and paid more. "Carriers can and do take advantage of a firm’s increased profits and extract higher prices from them," she says.

From: Is a Presidential Rally Coming Up?

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Twenty four people have been discovered dead, mostly in remote Pangasinan province, where villages were found submerged in flood waters and roofs blown off houses by tropical storm Halong.

Some parts of the territory remained without power and connection lines were down four days in the pattern of Halong made landfall.

More than one million people have been assuming by instant floods, landslides and heavy rains with more than 200,000 people still in evacuation centres on Wednesday, the direction said.

Halong has past its prime out of the Philippines and is heading towards Japan.

From: Storm death toll hits 37 in the Philippines: official (AFP)

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"Jason 2 will help originate the first multi-decadal global record for understanding the vital roles of the ocean in climate change," said scientist Lee-Lueng Fu, from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

"Data from the new mission will allow us to continue monitoring global sea-level modify, a field of study at which place current predictive models have a large degree of uncertainty," he added.

Rising sea levels are single of the major consequences of global warming and one of the main indicators of climate make different.

Data from previous missions showed that sea levels have risen on average by 0.3 centimeters since 1993, or two times more than they did in whole of the 20th century, according to marine measurements.

However, 15 years of data is not enough to draw long term conclusions, scientists said, hence the need for the unused three-year mission by Jason 2 due to expatiate from California on June 15.

The Ocean Surface Topography Mission (OSTM)/Jason 2 mission is a firm between the US space intervention NASA, the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration, the French National Center of Space Studies (CNES) and the European satellite operation EUMETSAT.

"People in coastal areas will benefit from improved near-real-time data on ocean conditions, while humbler classes everywhere will kind office from better seasonal predictions resulting from the increased understanding of Earth system processes enabled by these measurements," aforesaid NASA's Michael Freilich, director of the Earth Science Division.

From: French-US statellite set despite June launch to track sea levels (AFP)

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Brown has reported he believes scientists seeking to use mixed animal-human embryos for stem cell careful search into diseases of that kind as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s are on a moral mission to improve — and save — millions of lives.

The process involves injecting one empty break or rabbit egg with human DNA. A burst of electricity is then used to trick the egg into dividing regularly, so that it becomes a very early embryo, from which stem cells can be extracted.

Scientists take as far as concerns granted the embryos would not be allowed to unravel for more than 14 days, and are intended to address the shortage of human embryos available notwithstanding stem cell research.

By allowing such mixed embryo experiments, Britain is expected to maintain its reputation as a most important center for stem cell research.

Unlike the United States, where such research is tightly controlled, British scientists say the proceeding environment in the U.K. has led to many firsts, including the world’s first test tube baby and cloned animal.

Legislation in Britain might in like manner influence other European countries where such research is pursued. Chinese laws upon stem cell and embryology research also closely pattern those in Britain.

“I believe that we owe it to ourselves and future generations to present these measures, and in particular, to give our unequivocal backing within the right skeleton of rules and standards, to stem cell research,” Brown wrote Sunday in an op-ed tragedy for The Observer newspaper.

But opponents warn that an easing of laws on creating the embryos could lead to the genetic engineering of human beings.

Legislators voted 336 to 176 against a proposed anathema on research using animal-human embryos and by 286 to 223 against a separate proposal covering a specific type of animal-human embryos.

Human Genetics Alert, a science watchdog in favor of the malediction, claims the laws could lead to the creation of genetically modified “designer babies.”

“Once we start down the road to human genetic modification, it will be very difficult to turn back,” the group warned in a briefing paper for lawmakers.

Opposition Conservative lawmaker Edward Leigh, who tabled every amendment seeking to ban the exercise, declared the technique was a step too far notwithstanding science.

“In many ways we are like children playing with land mines without any concept of the dangers of the technology that we are handling,” he aforesaid in the House of Commons.

Britain’s Human Fertilization and Embryology law, which regulates all stem cell and embryology research, was drafted in 1990. Brown has said it must have existence completely redrawn to take ground of scientific advances.

Debate on other aspects of the bill are to be debated Tuesday. A final vote is expected in the coming weeks.

From: UK lawmakers approve embryo research (AP)

Are you without a summer internship? Here are some alternative ideas for B-school students to round out that résumé

by Alison Damast

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By the end of May, college and graduate students are packing up their dorm rooms and looking ahead to their summer plans. For crowd students, that means an internship to gain work experience and a valuable résumé also. Most have one lined up through winter or early spring.

But the sort of happens admitting that a student’s internship search isn’t working?

That was the case conducive to Rich Winslow, a mechanical engineering student at the University of Florida, who in desperation started a Web site called www.richwinslow.com/help in April after he applied for dozens of internships in his field. "I’ve applied to 50-plus positions since January and had only one callback," he wrote on a Web common forum board, noting he had linked the page to social content Web sites Digg.com and reddit.com. "I’m the first engineer in my family, and not one one, not even extended family, knows anyone in my field."

Career counselors agree that in today’s tight piece of work mart, students may find it harder than in years past to land their dream internship, if any at all. But internship-seekers should not give up hope, even at this point in the school year, says Manny Contomanolis, director of the career-services work at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) and president-elect of the board of the National Association of Colleges & Employers. Even if students can’t find an internship, there are still plenty of options use for them. "It is better to do something, even if it means volunteering or working to earn money, than sitting at to one’s home bemoaning you don’t have a job," Contomanolis says.

Fortunately, in that place is still time to salvage your summer, sans internship. Here are some tips:

1. Revisit the career services office.

Most students looking for internships visit the career services office at their association or university in the fall or at daybreak winter bound don’t always go upper part later in the school year. Career services offices have power to be a helpful resource for landing-place a summer internship, even in late May or early June, RIT’s Contomanolis says. They are usually the first places companies and small businesses proclivity to when making the decision to hire an intern, fair whereas it’s a last-minute hire. In deed, most career services offices still are getting daily internship listings and posting them on their job boards, says Contomanolis. "Things do pop up late," he points out. "One thing students should do is never give up object of trust."

Indeed, students can and should continue looking for internships into late May and early June, says Kenneth Keeley, executive adviser of the Career Opportunities Center at Carnegie Mellon’s Tepper School of Business: "We think the internship place of traffic stays alive at least into June 1 or the first or second week of June."

2. Volunteer at a nonprofit.

Nonprofits can’t always produce to pay for an intern but are frequently looking for extra help. Volunteering over the summer, even for just 10 or 15 hours a week, can provide a résumé-worthy actual feeling, says Diane Crist, director of the career development center at the University of St. Thomas’ Opus College of Business in St. Paul, Minn. The experience may also allow the student to demonstrate some initiative and organizational savvy, qualities that will appeal to future employers, Crist notes.

For model, on the supposition that a student is working for an environmental nonprofit, she can organize a project that gathers a form into groups of rabble to unimpaired up a local stream. "Anything like that will certainly help to embellish their résumé," Crist says.

From: The Last-Minute Résumé Filler

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Explorer Ferdinand Magellan encountered fair weather on Nov. 28, 1520, after days of battle through the rough waters south of South America. From there his passage across the Pacific Ocean may have been eased by the calming effects of El Nino, researchers speculate in a new get by heart.

When an El Nino occurs, the waters of the Equatorial Pacific become warmer than normal, creating rising air that changes zephyr and weather patterns. The effects can be worldwide, including drought in the western Pacific and more rain in Peru and the west coast of South America.

Tree ring data designate that an El Nino was occurring in 1519 and 1520 and may even have begun in 1518.

After passing through the strait later named for him, Magellan sailed north along the South American coast and then turned northwest, crossing the terrestrial equator and eventually arriving at the Philippines, where he was killed in a battle with natives.

Magellan was seeking the so-called spice islands, now part of Indonesia, and his course took him north of that goal.

But the route may have been dictated by mild conditions and favorable winds during an El Nino, anthropologists Scott M. Fitzpatrick of North Carolina State University and Richard Callaghan of the University of Calgary, Canada, propose in a new study of his commit an offence.

Their research is summarized in Friday’s edition of the journal Science and is scheduled to subsist published in abounding in the August edition of the Journal of Pacific History.

They were studying timely exploration trips and were struck by the deed that Magellan sailed unusually far north, Fitzpatrick explained in a telephone parley.

“We had not considered El Nino until afterward, at the time that we were trying to account for why the winds were so calm when he came into the Pacific,” he said. “We knew it was unusual.”

The researchers used a computer to design be tortuous and weather conditions across the Pacific during an El Nino and for this reason compared that to Magellan’s route.

Magellan’s journals show that many of the crew had died or were pining with scurvey, so he may simply have chosen to sail with the existing winds and currents, reducing the number of crew needed to operate his ships, Fitzgerald said.

“It could have been an adept maneuver,” the researchers wrote, allowing him to move west along the past of least resistance.

In his writings, Magellan said he chose the northerly route because of reports of a scarcity of food in the spice islands. This also could be accurate, Callaghan and Fitzpatrick say, of the same kind with El Nino terms often end in want of rain in that territory.

Magellan had admitted correspondence from a friend in the taste islands before setting out and so may have known about a famine there, Fitzgerald said. But that cannot be determined for certain, because the correspondence was destroyed in the great Lisbon earthquake of 1755.

While the actual reasons for Magellan’s choice of route remain uncertain, El Nino conditions “may have been largely responsible for structuring the route and extent of what many consider the universe’s greatest voyage,” the researchers wrote.

The mistake, in fact, may be the earliest record of an El Nino, Fitzpatrick before-mentioned.

Sir Francis Drake encountered mild terms in the Strait of Magellan when he sailed through in 1578, moreover he then faced months of Pacific storms that scattered his ships, sinking one. Captain James Cook seems also to have benefited from El Nino terms centered on 1769 during his Pacific examination. Science:

Journal of Pacific History:

From: El Nino may have helped Magellan cross the Pacific (AP)