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Friday, June 1, 2012
NASA's NuSTAR telescope will hunt black holes
The space agency's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array is slated to launch June 13 from Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands.
Artist's concept of NuSTAR on orbit. The mission's launch is now scheduled for no earlier than March 21. NuSTAR has two identical optics modules in order to increase sensitivity. The background is an image of the Galactic center obtained.
NASA
EnlargeAfter months of delay, NASA's newest space telescope is just two weeks away from launching on an ambitious mission to seek out the universe's black holes and investigate their mysterious origins.
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The space agency's?Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array?(NuSTAR) is slated to launch June 13 from Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands. The X-ray space telescope will ride into orbit on a Pegasus XL rocket from Orbital Sciences, which is designed to launch in midair from a rocket-carrying aircraft. The mission has been awaiting launch since March, when NASA delayed its liftoff pending a review of the rocket.
NuSTAR will study?how black holes form?and grow, and how these processes affect their host galaxies, said Fiona Harrison, principal investigator of the NuSTAR mission at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena, Calif.
"It's the very first telescope to focus high-energy X-rays," Harrison told reporters today (May 30) in a news briefing. "This will enable NuSTAR to study some of the hottest, densest and most energetic phenomena in the universe, for example?black holesand explosions of massive stars."
NuSTAR will examine these objects with unprecedented sensitivity by studying light in the high-energy, short-wavelength X-ray range. Images beamed back from NuSTAR will be 10 times sharper than current X-ray observatories in orbit, Harrison said.
"It's opening up a new window on the universe," said Paul Hertz, director of the astrophysics division at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. "Although we are going into this mission with many scientific questions, like all of our NASA missions, we're going to find unexpected things out there that will lead us to questions and answers that we aren't even anticipating at this time." [Gallery: NASA's Black Hole Hunting Space Telescope]
NuSTAR was originally scheduled to launch in March, but was delayed after NASA decided more time was needed to review software on the Pegasus XL rocket.
The delay meant that the mission, which carried an initial price tag of about $165 million, increased by several million dollars, or a few percent, Hertz said. NuSTAR's science missions, however, were not impacted by the extra time required for the rocket's software review.
NuSTAR will examine the innermost regions of black holes, where hot material is accelerated close to the speed of light, boosting emissions into the high-energy X-ray range, Harrison explained.
In these areas, light is bent and severely distorted by the black hole's strong gravity. By studying atoms in the X-ray band as they are drawn into the black hole, researchers will be able to see the effects of a black hole's intense gravity.
These observations will let scientists watch as a black hole feeds and grows, and will offer them a glimpse of the environment surrounding these cosmic giants, said Daniel Stern, NuSTAR project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
But NuSTAR is also designed to study other intriguing phenomena in our galaxy and the universe, Stern added, including the remnants of massive stars that end their lives in?violent supernova explosions, high-speed particle jets, ultra-dense neutron stars, and coronal mass ejections and flares from the sun.
The NuSTAR telescope falls under NASA's Small Explorer mission category, and is led by Caltech and managed by the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
You can follow SPACE.com staff writer Denise Chow on Twitter?@denisechow. Follow SPACE.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter?@Spacedotcom?and on?Facebook.
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Thursday, May 31, 2012
Verdict to be announced in John Edwards trial
Chuck Burton / AP
John Edwards leaves the federal courthouse in Greensboro, N.C., on Thursday.
By NBC News' Michael Austin and Stacey Klein and msnbc.com's Mike Brunker
A jury on Thursday reached a verdict on one count in the campaign finance trial of former presidential candidate John Edwards, but was ordered by the judge to resume deliberations.??
In a confusing turn of events, the jury of eight men and four women told U.S. District Judge Catherine Eagles?on Thursday afternoon that it had reached a verdict. But when?jurors indicated they had reached a unanimous verdict on only one of the?six felony counts against Edwards, Eagles sent them back to the jury room.
The count on which the jury?reached a?verdict involved contributions from?Edwards' contributor Rachel "Bunny" Mellon. The jurors did not indicate what the verdict was.
After deliberations resumed, a court spokesman told members of the media outside the court that no announcement was imminent.?"It's going to be a while," he said. "Stand down. Just relax."?
The charges against Edwards, 58,?arose from about $1 million in donations while he was in the midst of the 2008 race for the Democratic presidential nomination from?two wealthy donors, Fred Baron and?Mellon, a billionnaire banking heiress. The money?was used to support and?hide Edwards' pregnant mistress, Rielle Hunter, from the media.
Prosecutors argued that the donations amounted to violations of federal campaign finance laws; the defense said?the money was a "gift" intended to allow Edwards to hide the affair from his ailing wife, Elizabeth, and the public. Elizabeth Edwards, who had previously been diagnosed with breast cancer, separated from John Edwards in early 2010 and died later that year.
If found guilty of all six counts, Edwards could face up to 30 years in prison and a $1.5 million fine.? Each individual count carries a maximum sentence of 5 years and up to $250,000.
Attorneys for Edwards, a former U.S. senator from North Carolina and the 2004 Democratic vice presidential nominee,?and prosecutors alike painted Edwards as a liar and a bad husband. Where they differed was?whether the scheme to hide his affair amounted to a crime.
The jurors ? eight men and four women, six of them white, five African-American and one Hispanic ? must?decide whether Edwards "knowingly and willfully" violated a 1971 campaign finance law by orchestrating the scheme to support and hide Hunter.
Prosecutors alleged in their closing arguments that Edwards manipulated the campaign finance system to conceal the affair with Hunter, a videographer on his 2008 presidential campaign staff.
He "clearly knew the law and decided to violate it in order to salvage his campaign," Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Higdon said, accusing Edwards of cynically seeking to "keep her quiet" until the election was over "and his wife (had) passed away."
Lead defense attorney Abbe Lowell admitted in his closing arguments that Edwards had committed many "moral wrongs," but he insisted that none of the misdeeds was "a legal one."
"John's conduct is shameful, but it's human," Lowell told the jury.
Letters and other notes from?Mellon appeared to be crucial to the jurors' deliberations ? from their first day of discussions, they requested a stream of exhibits related to the nearly $750,000 she contributed.
Mellon, who is 101 years old, didn't testify during the trial, but her attorney and financial adviser, Alex Forger, offered extensive testimony that Mellon knew that her donations were intended to fund the "Hunter problem" and weren't given as campaign contributions.
A possible turning point came in mid-May, when Judge Eagles barred most of the defense's planned testimony from current and former members of the Federal Election Commission about a federal audit that concluded that the money didn't amount to campaign contributions subject to federal regulation.
Eagles ruled that evidence about the FEC audit was inadmissible because it couldn't be determined exactly what the commission knew or was told at the time.
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After Dewey & LeBoeuf, It's Lawyers v. Lawyers | Top iPad Finance ...
Creditors waiting to know if and when they will get paid by Dewey & LeBoeuf may want to consult the case of Coudert Brothers, the law firm that filed for bankruptcy in 2006. Nearly six years later lawsuits related to its collapse are still wending their way through the courts, with a federal judge ruling on May?24 that former partners may be on the hook for revenue from cases they took with them to their new jobs.
Unwinding Dewey, which filed for protection from creditors on May?28, marking the biggest bankruptcy in the legal business, probably will be even more complex. The product of a 2007 merger between Dewey Ballantine and LeBoeuf, Lamb, Greene & MacRae, the mega-practice at one point had more than 1,300 attorneys spanning 12 countries. The firm, based in New York, fell apart in a matter of weeks this year after ousting its chairman and watching at least 250 of its 304?partners decamp to competing firms. ?I wouldn?t be surprised if the wind down took a minimum of six to seven years,? says Edwin Reeser, a former managing partner for the Los Angeles office of Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal. ?It could take 10.?
With few assets except their bills and partners, law firms? liquidations tend to be drawn out and contentious. ?They don?t have much of anything?other than perhaps some lawsuits?once their moneymakers leave,? says Stephen Lubben, a bankruptcy law professor at Seton Hall University School of Law.
Lawsuits filed by the bankrupt estate can delay the process?especially when the defendants are lawyers. Heller Ehrman, which collapsed in 2008, and Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison, which dissolved in 2003, are still in the process of being unwound. ?Their profession is fighting this stuff, and they?re like professional boxers,? says Chip Bowles, a bankruptcy lawyer with the firm Bingham Greenebaum Doll in Louisville.
In 2008 the administrator in the Coudert bankruptcy sued 10 law firms, claiming they were liable for any profits derived from pending cases the firm?s partners took with them after Coudert dissolved. The firms argued that since Coudert operated on a billable hour model rather than a contingency fee system, the cases ceased to belong to it after it filed bankruptcy. U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon disagreed and denied the firms? motion to dismiss.
Dewey owes bank lenders and bondholders $ 225?million, according to its May?28 filings in bankruptcy court in Manhattan. Outstanding bills to clients in the U.S., carried on the books at $ 255?million, may be collected at the rate of about $ 3?million to $ 7?million a week and may never be paid in full, Dewey said.
If the estate deems that Dewey was technically insolvent as early as 2010?that is, it already lacked enough money to pay debts?roughly 200 ex-partners who had equity in the firm could face $ 500?million or more in demands for compensation clawbacks, as well as an additional $ 50 million in claims for removing unfinished client business, says Reeser. A group of former Dewey partners has retained legal counsel in the event the estate comes after them.
Ironically, the litigation that prolongs a bankruptcy doesn?t always bring in much money. The Coudert estate doesn?t expect to pay unsecured creditors more than 39? on the dollar. Says Reeser: ?Dewey is essentially a zero-asset bankruptcy for the unsecured. There is nothing there for them to get.?
The bottom line: Law firm bankruptcies are long and messy. Lawsuits relating to Dewey & LeBoeuf?s collapse will take years to resolve.
With Stephen Joyce
BusinessWeek.com ? Top News
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Lady Gaga Wants A Fake Rolex, Thailand Wants An Apology
As Gaga brings her Born This Way Ball to Bangkok, Thailand's government is enraged over her plans to buy fake goods.
By Brendan Dempsey
Lady Gaga
Photo: Getty Images
Lady Gaga apparently wants to go shopping in preparation for her next concert in Bangkok — for a fake Rolex.
At least that's what she told her 24 million Twitter followers upon her arrival in Bangkok on Wednesday (May 30). "I just landed in Bangkok baby! Ready for 50,000 screaming Thai monsters. I wanna get lost in a lady market and buy fake Rolex."
The tweet sparked instantaneous uproar on various social media and web forums, as many local residents felt the comment was insulting, abrasive and generally damaging to the reputation of Thailand. Gaga has yet to apologize for the tweet.
I just landed in Bangkok baby! Ready for 50,000 screaming Thai monsters. I wanna get lost in a lady market and buy fake Rolex.
— Lady Gaga (@ladygaga) May 23, 2012
The Commerce Ministry of Thailand is in a long-standing battle with piracy, and members of the government feel that this message directly undermines their efforts. An official at the ministry's Intellectual Property Department recently told Reuters that: "Lady Gaga is a representative of the U.S. and the U.S. puts pressure on smaller countries to promote the protection of intellectual property," adding that "she should tell her fans that they shouldn't use fake goods."
The controversial message has also been addressed by members of Thailand's music industry. Thai DJ Suharit Siamwalla responded by tweeting: "We are more civilized than you think," then added that he now plans to boycott Gaga's show on Friday.
It seems that Mother Monster just can't seem to stay out of trouble as her Born This Way Ball makes its way across Asia. The Thailand controversy comes almost immediately after she had to cancel a show in Indonesia, and then responded to various Islamic threats surrounding that show.
Not all fans have taken umbrage with Gaga's latest comments. Throngs of fans awaited her arrival to the hotel, and people are already camped outside Rajamangala stadium in hopes of being one of the lucky "monsters" who get to meet the pop star.
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Green Rehabbing for the Brand New Green Real Estate Investor ...
Listed below are 2 great ways to start Greenhabbing when brand new to investing!
Hey there Green Real Estate Investors and welcome back to the Greenhabbing 101 blog. Today, let?s cover Green Rehabbing for the Brand New Green Real Estate Investor?
So you are brand new to real estate investing and getting hit from all angles with new education on the hottest strategy in real estate, etc. and really just trying to focus on 1 or 2 strategies at most and start bringing in some money.?
Greenhabbing is a great strategy for new investors because:
- If you are a wholesaler, you can use Greenhabbing to train your rehabbers how to create higher profits on all of their flip projects that you wholesale to them.? This will make you more valuable to these rehabbers which means you will be able to do more deals and make more on them.
- If you are looking to make money in real estate but scared to really dive in head first, you can become an eco-consultant and teach investors how to Greenhab their deals to create higher profits.? Once you learn Greenhabbing yourself, you can charge whatever you desire when consulting investors on how to create higher profits through our Green Real Estate Investing Strategies
These are 2 great ways that you can start using Greenhabbing right away when starting out as a brand new real estate investor.? The 2 strategies above do not require money out of pocket so it?s great for new investors to start building up capital without a ton of risk.
Of course you can use Greenhabbing to fix and flip and buy and hold but these strategies require more time, capital and knowledge so it?s not always the best strategy to start with when brand new to real estate investing.? Learn our Greenhabbing secrets early and use them to your advantage so you can stand out from your competition in your local real estate market.
If you are brand new to real estate investing and looking to cut through all of the clutter of what?s out there and start greenhabbing, email: Ryan@InTheNowInvestments.com and request a 30 minute strategy call regarding our Green Real Estate Investing strategies and which one would work best for you.
Ryan and In The Now Investments has been able to assist over 100 investors/homeowners with decreasing their utility bills and increasing the value of their home/rehab project.
**I hope we have provided value for you through this post. Please click the ?Like? button on the sidebar here to share it with others and stay tuned for our next value-packed blog!
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