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Source: http://icanhascheezburger.com/2011/12/20/funny-pictures-cats-in-holiday-sweaters/
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Pell grants would be cut for an estimated 100,000 college students, who take longer than six years to graduate. But the budget compromise in Congress would preserve the Pell grants' maximum $5,550 award. ?
College students taking longer than six years to obtain their undergraduate degree would have their?Pell?grants?cut off next school year under a $1 trillion budget bill passed Friday in the House.
Skip to next paragraphMillions of students each year receive?Pell?grants, which are offered to low-income students and don't have to be paid back.
The bill keeps the maximum?grant?award at $5,550, but seeks to save $11 billion over the next decade in?Pelldollars, in part, by reducing the maximum number of years the?grant?can be received from nine to six.
It's estimated that about 100,000 students would be affected by the change, said Amy Wilkins, the vice president for government affairs and communications at the advocacy group Education Trust. Students who take that long to get a degree typically are either transfer students who don't receive full credit for previous coursework or those working and supporting a family, Wilkins said. Some, she said, will be surprised to learn they may have to come up with thousands of dollars to make up the difference.
"For those 100,000 kids, it's pretty bad," Wilkins said.
The bill also reduces the income level under which a student will automatically be eligible to receive the maximum?Pell?grants?from $30,000 to $23,000. And, it requires recipients to have a high school diploma, GED certificate or complete a homeschooling program to receive a?Pell?grant.
As more low-income students have enrolled in college during a weak economy, spending on?Pell?Grants?has exploded, nearly doubling in just over two years to $34.8 billion. In 2008-2009, according to data collected by the College Board, 6.2 million students received?Pell?Grants?averaging $2,945; in 2010-2011 9.1 million received?grants?averaging $3,828.
In other education areas, popular initiatives for special-needs children and disadvantaged schools were basically frozen in the bill, and Obama's "Race to the Top" initiative, which provides?grants?to winners in exchange for reforms the administration favors, would absorb a more than 20 percent cut.
The bill next goes to the Senate, which was expected to pass it on Saturday.
Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/F6uYhJe0pCg/Pell-grants-fewer-of-them-under-budget-deal
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In this Friday, Dec. 16, 2011 photo, a member of the Iraqi Army waves an Iraqi flag after a ceremony signing over Camp Adder, near Nasiriyah in Iraq, the last United States base in the country, to the Iraqi Air Force. The last U.S. soldiers rolled out of Iraq across the border to neighboring Kuwait at daybreak Sunday, Dec. 18, whooping, fist bumping and hugging each other in a burst of joy and relief. (AP Photo/Lucas Jackson, Pool)
In this Friday, Dec. 16, 2011 photo, a member of the Iraqi Army waves an Iraqi flag after a ceremony signing over Camp Adder, near Nasiriyah in Iraq, the last United States base in the country, to the Iraqi Air Force. The last U.S. soldiers rolled out of Iraq across the border to neighboring Kuwait at daybreak Sunday, Dec. 18, whooping, fist bumping and hugging each other in a burst of joy and relief. (AP Photo/Lucas Jackson, Pool)
BAGHDAD (AP) ? Even as Iraqis celebrated the departure of the last American troops Sunday, the dangers left behind after nearly nine years of war were on full display. Politicians feuded along the country's potentially explosive sectarian lines and the drumbeat of deadly violence went on.
The last U.S. convoy rumbled out of Iraq across the border into Kuwait around sunrise under a shroud of secrecy to prevent attacks on the departing troops. When news reached a waking Iraqi public, there was joy at the end of a presence that many Iraqis resented as a foreign occupation.
In the northern city of Mosul, pastry shop owner Muhannad Adnan said he had a swell of orders for cakes ? up to 110 from the usual 70 or so a day ? as families threw parties at home. Some asked him to ice the cakes with inscriptions of "congratulations for the end of occupation," he said.
But the happiness was shot through with worries over the future.
"Nobody here wants occupation. This withdrawal marks a new stage in Iraq's history," said Karim al-Rubaie, a Shiite shopowner in the southern city of Basra. But, he said, "the politicians who are running this country are just a group of thieves."
"These politicians will lead the country into sedition and civil war. Iraq now is like a weak prey among neighboring beasts."
In the morning, a bomb hidden under a pile of trash exploded on a street of spare car parts stores in a mainly Shiite district of eastern Baghdad, killing two people and wounding four others. It was the latest in the near daily shootings and bombings ? low-level but still deadly ? that continue to bleed the country and that many fear will increase with the Americans gone.
Violence is far lower than it was at the worst of the Iraq War, in 2006 and 2007, when Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias preyed on Iraqis around the country in a vicious sectarian conflict that nearly turned into complete civil war. But those armed groups still remain, and there are deep concerns whether Iraqi security forces are capable of keeping them in check without the help of U.S. troops.
Iraq's military chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Babaker Zebari said Sunday that his troops were up to the task of uprooting militant groups.
"There are only scattered terrorists hiding here and there and we are seeking intelligence information to eliminate them," Zebari said. "We are confident that there will be no danger."
Equally worrying, the resentments and bitterness between the Shiite majority and Sunni minority in this country of 31 million remain unhealed. The fear is that without the hand of American forces, the fragile attempts to get the two sides to work together could collapse and even turn to greater violence.
In an escalation of the rivalry, the main Sunni-backed political bloc on Sunday announced it was boycotting parliament to protest what they called Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's attempts to monopolize government positions ? particularly those overseeing the powerful security forces. The bloc has complained of security forces' recent arrests of Sunnis that it says are "unjustified."
The Iraqiya bloc warned that it could take the further step of pulling its seven ministers out of al-Maliki's coalition government.
"We are against the concentration of security powers in the hands of one person, that is the prime minister," said Sunni lawmaker Hamid al-Mutlaq, a member of the bloc.
In particular, the bloc was angered by the arrest of several bodyguards of Sunni Vice President Tareq al-Hashimi several days ago on suspicion of involvement in terrorist acts. On Sunday, a senior security official said that judges investigating the bodyguards banned al-Hashimi from traveling outside of Iraq ? a step that is likely to further anger the Iraqiya bloc, to which al-Hashimi belongs. The security official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the press.
Sunnis have long feared domination by the country's Shiites, who vaulted to power after the 2003 fall of Saddam Hussein at the hands of the Americans. The rivalry was exacerbated by the years of sectarian killing.
The Iraqiya bloc narrowly won the most seats in last year's parliamentary election. But its leader Ayad Allawi was unable to become prime minister, outmaneuvered by al-Maliki, who kept the premier's post after cobbling together key support from Shiite parties.
That has left al-Maliki beholden to Shiite factions, including those led by radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, whose militiamen were blamed for sectarian killings during the worst of Iraq's violence. Since forming his new government, al-Maliki has effectively controlled the Interior and Defense Ministries, which oversee the police and military, while conflicts between Sunni and Shiite politicians have delayed the appointment of permanent ministers.
Many on both sides of the sectarian divide also worry that neighboring Shiite-led powerhouse Iran will now increase its influence in their country. Al-Maliki's party and other Shiite blocs have close ties to Tehran. But even some in the Shiite public resent the idea of Iranian domination.
"I am afraid that this occupation will be replaced by indirect occupation by some neighboring countries," said Ali Rahim, a 40-year-old Shiite who works for the Electricity Ministry.
Omar Waadalla Younis, a senior at Mosul University, said at first he was happy to hear the last Americans were gone and thought the city government should hold celebrations in the streets. Then he thought of the possible threat from Iran.
"Now that the Americans have left, Iraq is more vulnerable than before."
___
AP correspondent Bushra Juhi in Baghdad contributed to this report.
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ScienceDaily (Dec. 16, 2011) ? Researchers at the Max-Born-Institute, Berlin, Germany, observed the extremely fast onset of electrical resistance in a semiconductor by following electron motions in real-time.
When you first learned about electric currents, you may have asked how the electrons in a solid material move from the negative to the positive terminal. In principle, they could move ballistically or 'fly' through the solid, without being affected by the atoms or other charges of the material. But this actually never happens under normal conditions because the electrons interact with the vibrating atoms or with impurities. These collisions typically occur within an extremely short time, usually about 100 femtoseconds (10 -13 seconds, or a tenth of a trillionth of a second). So the electron motion along the material, rather than being like running down an empty street, is more like trying to walk through a very dense crowd. Typically, electrons move only with a speed of 1m per hour, they are slower than snails.
Though the electrons collide with something very frequently in the material, these collisions do take a finite time to occur. Just like if you are walking through a crowd, sometimes there are small empty spaces where you can walk a little faster for a short distance. If it were possible to follow the electrons on an extremely fast (femtosecond) time scale, then you would expect to see that when the battery is first turned on, for a very short time, the electrons really do fly unperturbed through the material before they bump into anything. This is exactly what scientists at the Max-Born-Institute in Berlin recently did in a semiconductor material and report in the current issue of the journal Physical Review Letters [volume 107, 256602 (2011)]. Extremely short bursts of terahertz light (1 terahertz = 10 12 Hz, 1 trillion oscillations per second) were used instead of the battery (light has an electric field, just like a battery) to accelerate optically generated free electrons in a piece of gallium arsenide. The accelerated electrons generate another electric field, which, if measured with femtosecond time resolution, indicates exactly what they are doing. The researchers saw that the electrons travelled unperturbed in the direction of the electric field when the battery was first turned on. About 300 femtoseconds later, their velocity slowed down due to collisions.
In the attached movie, we show a cartoon of what is happening in the gallium arsenide crystal. Electrons (blue balls) and holes (red balls) show random thermal motion before the terahertz pulse hits the sample. The electric field (green arrow) accelerates electrons and holes in opposite directions. After onset of scattering this motion is slowed down and results in a heated electron-hole gas, i.e., in faster thermal motion.
The present experiments allowed the researchers to determine which type of collision is mainly responsible for the velocity loss. Interestingly, they found that the main collision partners were not atomic vibrations but positively charged particles called holes. A hole is just a missing electron in the valence band of the semiconductor, which can itself be viewed as a positively charged particle with a mass 6 times higher than the electron. Optical excitation of the semiconductor generates both free electrons and holes which the terahertz bursts, our battery, move in opposite directions. Because the holes have such a large mass, they do not move very fast, but they do get in the way of the electrons, making them slower.
Such a direct understanding of electric friction will be useful in the future for designing more efficient and faster electronics, and perhaps for finding new tricks to reduce electrical resistance.
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SALT LAKE CITY (AP) ? Attorneys for a polygamous family made famous on a reality television show on Friday asked a Utah federal judge not to block their challenge of the state's bigamy law.
Kody Brown and wives Meri, Janelle, Christine and Robyn filed a lawsuit in Salt Lake City's U.S. District Court in July.
The stars of the TLC show "Sister Wives" contend the law is unconstitutional because it violates their right to privacy ? prohibiting them from living together and criminalizing their private sexual relationships.
Under Utah law, people are guilty of bigamy if they have multiple marriage licenses, or if they cohabitate with another consenting adult in a marriage-like relationship. Any couple of any sex living together in an intimate relationship is considered marriage-like under the law, and such a living arrangement would be considered a felony. Any couple of any sex living together in an intimate relationship could be considered guilty of a felony under the law.
Formerly of Lehi, the Browns and their 17 children moved to Nevada in January after police launched a bigamy investigation. The Browns practice polygamy as part of their religious beliefs.
U.S. District Court Judge Clark Waddoups heard oral arguments in the case on Friday in Salt Lake City and took the matter under advisement. It's not clear when he will rule.
For the case to go forward, the judge must decide the Browns have been harmed by the bigamy law.
In court, the Browns' Washington-based attorney, Jonathan Turley, said the family has suffered losses of income and been forced to move out of state because they were under investigation for bigamy.
They've also suffered "reputational harm" because the law labels the Browns' family a "criminal association," and because some Utah County prosecutors have said publicly that it would be easy for authorities bring charges because the Browns have already acknowledged felonies on national TV.
"This family was fearful of arrest ... they still are," Turley said. "It's why they are not here (in court) today."
Assistant Utah Attorney General Jerrold Jensen called the Browns' lawsuit "great TV drama" but said there's no real threat to the family, which has neither been arrested or charged with any crime.
Jensen said it's more likely the Browns were harmed by publicizing their lifestyle on television, not by actions taken by the state.
"The Browns have perceived that they will be prosecuted," Jensen said. "That is a misperception, at least at this point."
Jenson also said the Browns assume that an ongoing investigation by Utah County authorities is related to allegations of bigamy.
"It's over something else," Jensen said.
Utah County Attorney Jeff Buhman has not disclosed the nature of their investigation publicly and a message left for him Friday was not immediately returned.
Buhman's office has no stated policy related to the prosecution of polygamists.
On Friday, Jensen said the attorney general's office policy is to only file bigamy charges against a polygamist in connection with other crimes, such as underage marriages, child abuse or welfare fraud. A straight bigamy prosecution hasn't been filed in Utah for more than 50 years, Jensen said.
A check of state court records by The Associated Press, however, found at least two cases.
Bob Foster had three wives when he was arrested and charged with bigamy in 1974. He pleaded no contest and was sentenced to six months in jail. He was released after 21 days and ordered to serve five years of probation. A judge also said Foster was not allowed to live with his families. Foster died from cancer in 2008. He was still married to all three women.
Mark Easterday was arrested and charged with bigamy in 1999. Authorities were alerted to Easterday's multiple marriage as part of a custody battle during his divorce from his first wife. He ultimately pleaded no contest to adultery because the divorce was finalized before the bigamy case went to trial. Easterday was sentenced to probation.
Easterday, who left Utah and is currently married to two women, told The Associated Press he believes the Browns are right to fear a bigamy prosecution.
"I know from experience that they do prosecute," Easterday said. I think they should change the law over the entire country. Why it is that in some places a woman and a woman can be married, but a man can't have another wife?"
Polygamy in Utah and across much of the Intermountain West is a legacy of 19th century Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Mormons abandoned the practice of plural marriage in the 1890s as a condition of Utah's statehood and now excommunicates members found engaging in polygamy.
An estimated 38,000 self-described Mormon fundamentalists continue the practice, believing it brings exaltation in heaven. Most keep their way of life a secret.
Typically, polygamous men are legally married to their first wives and wed subsequent brides only in religious ceremonies. The couples consider themselves "spiritually married."
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LONDON (Reuters) ? Britain's royal family will embark on a global tour next year as part of celebrations to mark Queen Elizabeth's 60th year on the throne, Buckingham Palace announced on Wednesday.
Senior royals will visit every realm where the queen is head of state as well as trips to other major countries in the Commonwealth.
The queen herself will embark on a tour of the United Kingdom, starting in London in March before taking in every region across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland in the next few months.
Heir-to-the-throne Prince Charles and his wife Camilla will visit Australia, Canada, Papua New Guinea and New Zealand, while his son Prince William and his new wife Kate will travel to Malaysia, Singapore, the Solomon Islands and Tuvalu.
William's brother Prince Harry will head to Belize, Jamaica, and the Bahamas.
The main festivities to mark the queen's diamond jubilee will take place over four days next June with a flotilla on the River Thames and a concert at Buckingham Palace.
Earlier this year, the 85-year-old, who acceded to the throne on the death of her father George VI in February 1952, became the second-longest reigning monarch in more than 1,000 years of British history.
(Reporting by Michael Holden, editing by Paul Casciato)
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Analysis: Canada's Kyoto withdrawal began when Bush bolted
OTTAWA (Reuters) ? Canada's widely criticized withdrawal from the Kyoto protocol ends a decade-long saga that began in earnest when former President George W. Bush walked away from the global climate change treaty in 2001. The close links between the two economies, and the fact the United States has a population almost 10 times larger than that of Canada, meant that Ottawa ultimately felt it had to follow Washington's lead and ignore the diplomatic fallout.
Canada energy regulator lax on pipelines: watchdog
CALGARY, Alberta (Reuters) - Canada's energy regulator has failed to make adequate checks to ensure pipeline operators fix safety problems uncovered at their facilities and keep emergency procedures up to date, the country's Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development said on Tuesday. In a report to Parliament that raises serious questions about the safety of moving dangerous goods through pipelines and along highways, Commissioner Scott Vaughan also said the federal environment ministry has been lax in enforcing regulations and slow to deal with shortcomings in training of officers.
Canada household debt swells to record high
OTTAWA (Reuters) - The debt burden on Canadian households rose to a record high in the third quarter as mortgage and consumer credit increased but the net worth of households fell, Statistics Canada said on Tuesday. The ratio of household credit-market debt, which includes mortgages, consumer credit and loans, to disposable income rose to 150.8 percent from 148.5 percent in the second quarter.
Canada, out of Kyoto, must still cut emissions: U.N.
LONDON (Reuters) - Canada still has a legal obligation under United Nations rules to cut its emissions despite the country's pullout from the Kyoto Protocol, the U.N. climate chief said on Tuesday. Christiana Figueres also said the timing of Canada's move, a day after a deal to extend the protocol was clinched at a U.N. summit in South Africa, was regrettable and surprising.
Canada pension deficit understated, think tank says
TORONTO (Reuters) - Canada's unfunded employee pension obligations are C$80 billion ($77.7 billion) more than the federal government has previously revealed, according to a report from a high-profile think tank. The market-friendly C.D. Howe Institute said on Tuesday that liabilities for federal government pension plans total C$227 billion, far more than expected in a recent official update.
Analysis: Canada grain sector wary of Wheat Board battle
WINNIPEG, Manitoba (Reuters) - A wary Canadian grain industry will ease cautiously into signing forward price contracts for the prized 2012 wheat and barley crops, as legal entanglements over Ottawa's plan to end the Wheat Board's marketing monopoly hamper any swift moves into an open market. A Conservative government bill is set to end the Canadian Wheat Board's monopoly on western wheat and barley sales next August. The change would shake up the industry, creating an open market and leaving the CWB a smaller, optional grain buyer.
Government bans veils during citizenship ceremonies
OTTAWA (Reuters) - In a move likely to increase tension with Canada's Muslim minority, the government said on Monday it would bar all women wearing face coverings from taking part in citizenship ceremonies. Immigration Minister Jason Kenney said he had received complaints from citizenship judges and parliamentarians about veiled women taking the oath to formally become Canadian.
Watchdog, Ottawa differ on Canada's budget balance
OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada's budget watchdog sees the federal government's structural balance as at least C$10 billion ($9.71 billion) lower per year than Ottawa estimates, and called for more disclosure of assumptions and methodology used in drafting forecasts. The Parliamentary Budget Officer said the discrepancy was likely caused by different estimates on how the economy is performing at any given time in relation to its potential to grow. Miscalculations can lead to bad policy decisions, it suggested.
Crosby out indefinitely with concussion-like symptoms
(Reuters) - Pittsburgh Penguins captain Sidney Crosby is out indefinitely with concussion-like symptoms and there is no timetable for his return, the National Hockey League's (NHL) biggest drawing card said on Monday. Crosby, who missed the last two games as a precaution, did not practice with his team on Monday and told reporters after that he has had symptoms for the last couple days.
Congress cannot accelerate Keystone decision: State Department
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. State Department warned on Monday that a plan by congressional Republicans to fast track the Canada-to-Texas Keystone XL pipeline decision would violate environmental laws and force it to withhold approval. "Should Congress impose an arbitrary deadline for the permit decision ... the department would be unable to make a determination to issue a permit for this project," the State Department said in a statement.
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PARIS (Reuters) ? The leaders of France and Germany will not leave this week's EU summit until a "powerful" deal is reached to arrest the euro zone debt crisis, Paris said on Wednesday, as latest borrowing figures exposed the stressed state of Europe's banks.
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, on a whistle-stop tour of Europe to lobby for action, voiced confidence in a Franco-German plan to overhaul the European Union's treaty to tighten budget discipline.
"I have a lot of confidence in what the president of France and the minister are doing, working with Germany to build a stronger Europe," Geithner told reporters after talks with French Finance Minister Francois Baroin.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel will lay out their plan at Friday's EU summit to impose mandatory penalties on euro states that exceed deficit targets, with the aim of restoring market trust and preventing the region's debt crisis spiraling out of control.
Figures released on Wednesday showed just how urgently some European banks need help.
Italian banks had to borrow 153.2 billion euros in emergency liquidity from the ECB in November, up from 111.3 billion euros at the end of October, Bank of Italy data showed, another big leap in reliance on the central bank which has almost quadrupled since June, when Italian lenders took 41.3 billion euros.
Euro zone banks took more than $50 billion in the ECB's first dollar funding operation since the world's leading central banks agreed last week to cut their cost, five times the $10 billion forecast in a Reuters poll of money market traders.
And Germany is set to reactivate its bank rescue fund at next week's cabinet meeting even though ministers still differ on whether banks should be forced to accept public capital, a senior government official said.
The ECB's governing council holds a crucial meeting on Thursday, before the EU summit, at which most economists expect it to cut interest rates to 1.0 percent from 1.25 percent, introduce longer-term liquidity tenders for banks and widen the collateral they can use to borrow from it.
Ratings agency Standard & Poor's heightened the sense of crisis this week by warning it could cut credit ratings across the 17-nation currency bloc, including for its EFSF rescue fund, a move that would fundamentally weaken it.
But growing market optimism that euro zone leaders are on track to produce a confidence-boosting package of measures lifted risk appetite on Wednesday, boosting stocks and the euro.
FLY ME TO THE GLOOM
Two days before the summit, new ideas were surfacing about how to boost the euro zone's crisis capabilities. EU officials said leaders may decide to raise the combined lending limit of the temporary EFSF and its successor, the permanent European Stability Mechanism, which France and Germany want introduced a year early, in 2012.
Details of the Franco-German reform proposals were due to be presented on Wednesday in a letter to European Council President Herman Van Rompuy, who will chair the meeting of 27 EU leaders.
"Neither Nicolas Sarkozy nor Angela Merkel will leave the negotiating table of this summit until there is a powerful deal," Baroin told Canal+ television, saying France was fighting hard to keep its top credit rating.
"A lot depends on what happens Friday, ... on how the response given by the heads of states is received," he said.
With much of Europe facing a relapse into recession in the coming months, airlines worldwide face severe losses next year unless Europe's politicians get to grips with the region's debt crisis, the industry's leading trade group warned.
The International Air Transport Association (IATA) shaved its main forecast for industry profits to $3.5 billion for 2012, and said the industry could plunge to an $8.3 billion loss with no region of the world exempt if Europe's debt woes precipitate a new banking crisis.
Geithner was due to meet Sarkozy later on Wednesday before flying to the southern French port of Marseille for talks with incoming Spanish prime minister Mariano Rajoy.
The treasury secretary, whose fourth trip to Europe in as many months speaks of the alarm in Washington at the damage the debt crisis could wreak on the U.S. and world economy, said he was encouraged by moves towards tighter budget rules for EU states. He also stressed the central role in tackling the crisis of the International Monetary Fund and the ECB, which has been reluctant to take decisive steps until governments get to grips with their financial problems.
COST TO GERMANY RISING
Van Rompuy has proposed giving the permanent euro zone rescue mechanism the status of a bank that would allow it to access ECB funding, but Germany has opposed the move, saying it would breach a ban on the ECB financing governments.
A German government source said Germany's net new borrowing could rise beyond the 26.1 billion euros planned for next year if euro zone leaders move forward the permanent European Stability Mechanism to 2012.
ECB President Mario Draghi, who met Geithner on Tuesday in Frankfurt, has signaled that a euro zone "fiscal compact" could encourage the ECB to act more forcefully.
Sarkozy and Merkel want treaty changes to be agreed in March and ratified before the end of 2012. If some countries block treaty change for all 27 EU members, the 17 euro states could proceed with an agreement on their own.
Van Rompuy says tighter budget oversight sought by Paris and Berlin for the euro area could be achieved quickly with only minor tweaks to the EU treaty, which might not require full ratification procedures in many countries.
Rajoy said he would support a new treaty. [ID:nL5E7N62UN]However, some other EU governments, notably Britain, Ireland and the Netherlands, are reluctant to amend the EU charter, either due to eurosceptics at home or because they fear losing possible referendums on ratification. Geithner will travel to Italy late on Wednesday for talks on Thursday with Monti.
(Additional reporting by Valentina Za in Milan, Jan Strupczewski in Brussels, Tim Hepher in Geneva, Richard Hubbard in London, Catherine Bremer in Paris, Andreas Rinke in Berlin, Tim Castle in London; Writing by Daniel Flynn and Paul Taylor; Editing by Janet McBride)
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Angelina Jolie had parental support to help her celebrate the premiere of her directorial debut in New York City Monday night. But it wasn't her sometimes estranged father Jon Voight at her side, it was partner Brad Pitt's parents, Bill and Jane Pitt.
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By msnbc.com staff and NBC News
For at least the sixth time since October, someone has dismembered a cat and left its remains on a golf course on the Florida coast,?authorities said Friday. Each time, the killer has left a grotesque scene that witnesses liken to a horror movie.
The body parts of another cat were found Thursday strewn on the 14th fairway of the Port Charlotte Golf Club, the Charlotte County Sheriff's Office said.
The incidents began in October, when cat carcasses were twice found on the course. The sheriff's office got involved after the legs of a third cat were discovered in the middle of the fairway to the first hole on Oct 30.
Then, on Nov. 17, three more cats were found on the greens. Their paws had been cut off and their stomachs were turned inside out. One of the cats' body parts were then placed on the fairway as if the killer was trying to reassemble them.
"I'm almost in disbelief," Patti Page, who lives near the course, told NBC station WBBH of Fort Myers on Friday after the latest incident. "Who could do?such a dreadful thing, and why?"
The Sheriff's Office says it doesn't know, and it asked anyone with information to call it at 941-639-2101.
After the especially gruesome discovery Nov. 17, the Sheriff's Office warned that the cold and methodical approach of the killer ? who leaves no blood behind, indicating that he or she is killing and dismembering the cats elsewhere and taking them specifically to the golf course ? could be capable of much worse.
Bob?Carpenter,?a?spokesman for the Sheriff's Office, cited serial killers like Ted Bundy and said, "Everything that came from those cases was that they started killing animals like this ? killing small pets."
Golf course workers said one of the victims wore a collar with the name "Misty" ? indicating that the cat was indeed someone's pet, WBBH reported.
This article includes reporting from msnbc.com staff and NBC station WBBH of Fort Myers.
More news and feature stories from msnbc.com:
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COMMENTARY | According to the recent employment report released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) 120,000 new jobs were added in November. However, according Reuters, there were also 402,000 new claims for unemployment benefits. So how do you create a drop in the unemployment rate when more people are losing jobs than finding jobs? It's easy. You simply stop counting the 315,000 people who stopped looking.
When Obama assumed office in January 2009, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the labor force stood at 153,716,000 with 142,099,000 employed. Today the BLS says we have a labor force of 153,883,000 with 140,580,000 employed. With the number of potential employees going up and the number of employed Americans going down I would really like to hear the BLS explain how the unemployment number has fallen.
Jim Pethokoukis, a Money a Politics columnist for Reuters, Tweeted that if the United States labor force was the same size as it was when Barack Obama took office in Jan. 2009 the actual U3 unemployment rate would be 11 percent.
"When you see the unemployment rate fall because people drop out of the labor force,"
Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington told Los Angeles
Times, "you can't be too happy about that."
Isn't it curious how, even though the amount of people who stopped looking for work clearly outnumbers the amount of people who found a job, the BLS still felt confident enough to tell us the unemployment rate fell?
It all reminds me of the fuzzy "jobs saved or created" math system used by President Barack Obama in 2009 to promote his unpopular $787 billion economic stimulus package.
According the government website, 640,329 "direct jobs" were "created or saved" as of October 30, 2009.
But in a letter posted by ABC news that was drafted to Earl Devaney, chairman of the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, House Oversight and Government Reform, ranking House Oversight and Government Reform member Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) cited numerous examples that proved that number to be "grossly inaccurate."
Most notable in the new BLS report, the largest increase in new jobs during November - 50,000 of them -- are in the retail industry. Considering our annual foray into the upcoming holiday season I will predict that these gains are temporary and will disappear soon after the holiday shopping season.
Isn't it curious the amount of times the word "unexpectedly" is used when reporting new unemployment numbers?
With today's math, "1 + 1" can be whatever you want it to be.
But considering the fact that job losses consistently exceed the number of jobs found, not to mention the obvious efforts of The Bureau of Labor Statistics to avoid reporting the truth, perhaps when it comes to reporting unemployment numbers it's time to start replacing the word "unexpectedly" with the more accurate word -- "predictably?"
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LONDON ? Julian Assange is making what could be a last throw of the legal dice in his battle to avoid extradition to Sweden over sex crimes allegations.
On Monday the WikiLeaks founder will ask judges to let him take his case to Britain's Supreme Court. If they say no, he could be on a plane to Stockholm within days.
The 40-year-old Australian behind the secret-spilling website has spent almost a year on bail in Britain fighting extradition for questioning over claims of rape and molestation made by two Swedish women. So far, two courts have ruled against him.
For his case to be considered by Britain's Supreme Court, Assange's lawyers must persuade two High Court judges that it raises a question of "general public importance."
According to a website devoted to arguing Assange's case, his lawyers will seek to argue two points ? that the European arrest warrant for Assange is invalid because it was not issued by the correct authority, and that he should not be extradited because he has not been charged with any crime.
Lower courts have already considered and rejected both arguments.
Assange's hearing on Monday will come on the same day as a parliamentary debate on Britain's extradition rules. The House of Commons will debate and vote on demands to change extradition agreements that require Britain to transfer individuals to the U.S. and Europe ? sometimes on insufficient evidence, critics say.
Assange declined to discuss his case, but told The Associated Press he was heartened that lawmakers are tackling the issue of extraditions.
"What we ask for is humble ? the right to not be shipped off to foreign lands without formal charges or the presentation of even the most basic evidence," he told the AP in an email.
A district judge ruled in February that Assange could be extradited, and the High Court upheld that decision last month, saying the alleged offenses amounted to crimes under British law and ruling that the arrest warrant had been properly issued.
If Assange is granted a Supreme Court appeal, his stay in Britain ? where he lives under curfew at an affluent supporter's rural mansion ? is likely to last for many more months.
If he is denied, his legal fight will move to Sweden. Last month Assange replaced his Swedish lawyer with two high-profile attorneys, Per E. Samuelson and Thomas Olsson. Samuelson has a long track-record as a defense lawyer in sex crime cases and has also represented one of the men behind file-sharing website The Pirate Bay.
The allegations against Assange stem from a visit to Sweden in August 2010, shortly after WikiLeaks released secret U.S. files from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Assange became involved with two women, one of whom later accused him of coercion and molestation. The other alleged that he had sex with her as she slept.
Swedish prosecutors have not charged Assange with any crime, but have demanded that he return to Scandinavia to face questions.
He denies wrongdoing and says the sex was consensual. He has insisted the sex crimes investigation is politically motivated by opponents of his organization.
Assange has become a global figure since WikiLeaks began releasing secret government documents, including hundreds of thousands of diplomatic cables from U.S. missions around the world.
Vilified by U.S. authorities and other governments angry about their secrets being leaked, he has been hailed as a free-speech hero by many around the world.
But his expensive legal troubles ? and moves by U.S. financial companies to block donations to the site ? have taken a financial toll on WikiLeaks, which has been forced to suspend publishing to focus on fundraising. Assange has said the organization needs $3.5 million to keep it going into 2013.
Assange also faces potential legal action in the U.S., where prosecutors are weighing criminal charges, and where he could be dragged into the case of Bradley Manning, a U.S. Army analyst suspected of disclosing secret intelligence to WikiLeaks.
Manning remains in custody at Fort Leavenworth prison in Kansas. A military court hearing to decide whether he will stand trial is due to begin Dec. 16.
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Adele scored six Grammy nominations on Wednesday, including for record, song and album of the year, but the owner of the 2011's best-selling album with "21" wasn't the night's top nominee ? and that wasn't the evening's only surprise.
Kanye West came away with a leading seven nominations, including a bid for song of the year for his all-star song "All of the Lights." However, the album from which it came ? "My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy," heralded by many critics as the best album of 2010 ? was not in the best album category, and all of his other nominations were relegated to the rap fields.
Other notable omissions in the top categories included country phenomenon Taylor Swift and veteran crooner Tony Bennett.
Bruno Mars and the Foo Fighters tied Adele with six nominations each, including in the album of the year category. Lil Wayne had five nods and critical-darling folky act Bon Iver scored four nominations, with two in the prestigious record and song of the year categories. But dubstep star Skrillex may have been the night's biggest surprise, getting five nominations, including a bid for best new artist.
"It feels incredible. Me and these guys, we locked ourselves in the studio not too far from here and worked on this album, especially 'Grenade,'" Mars said after the nominations were announced. "That's the song we worked the hardest on. That's like our trophy right there. Of all the songs we've been fortunate enough to be a part of this year, we were most proud of that one."
Story: List of Grammy nominations in top categories
The nominations were announced after the Recording Academy's fourth annual live concert special, which aired on CBS from the Nokia Theater in Los Angeles. The hour-long event featured key nominees like Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Nicki Minaj and the Band Perry.
Even though Adele didn't get the lion's share of nominations, she got them where it counted: Her "21," the mournful post-breakup album that produced smash hits like the torch ballad "Someone Like You" ? was nominated for album of the year. The searing groove "Rolling in the Deep," which spent seven weeks at No. 1 this past summer, got nominations for both record and song of the year. Only Mars got nominations in all three categories as well.
Other nominees in the record of the year category included Bon Iver's ballad "Holocene"; Mars' ballad "Grenade"; Mumford & Sons' "The Cave"; and Katy Perry's inspirational anthem "Firework." For song of the year, which honors the writers of the tune, contenders included "The Cave," "Grenade" and "Holocene."
The best album category was as noteworthy for who was excluded as it was for who was nominated. Lady Gaga garnered her third straight nod in the category for "Born This Way," while veteran rockers the Foo Fighters were nominated for "Wasting Light," along with Mars' debut album, "Doo-Wops & Hooligans," and Rihanna's steamy dance album "Loud."
Shut out were perceived favorites like 85-year-old Bennett, who became the oldest person to score a No. 1 debut when his "Duets II" album was released earlier this year, and the megawatt collaboration of Jay-Z and West with the heavily hyped "Watch The Throne."
We asked our readers on Facebook to share their thoughts about the six actors who've played super-spy 007 over the years. ...
The biggest snub may have been to Swift, who won in the category in 2010 and was considered by some critics to be a favorite for "Speak Now," which has sold 3.7 million copies. She did get three nominations, however, including for best country album.
(Another blonde diva, Beyonce, merited just two nominations in lesser categories).
Unlike the past two years, which saw Swift and fellow country act Lady Antebellum soar in the general categories, the only country act that got a mainstream nomination was the country sibling act The Band Perry. Best known for their poignant ballad "If I Die Young," they got a nomination for best new artist. Their competition also includes Bon Iver, Jay-Z rap prot?g? J. Cole, Skrillex and rapper-singer Nicki Minaj, who scored four nominations in total.
The 54th Grammys will be held Feb. 12 in Los Angeles. The ceremony will mark the first since the academy shaved its categories from 109 to 78 this year, amid some protest. Some of the more niched categories, like best Zydeco or Cajun music album, were eliminated.
In addition, men and women now compete together in vocal categories for pop, R&B and country, instead of having separate categories for each sex. This year, the category is best pop solo performance and Bruno Mars is the only man nominated for "Grenade." His competition includes Adele for "Someone Like You," Lady Gaga for "You and I," Pink for "(Expletive) Perfect" and Perry for "Firework."
Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Source: http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/45492241/ns/today-entertainment/
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NEW YORK (Reuters) ? Blackstone Group and Bain Capital are preparing a bid for all of Yahoo Inc with Asian partners in a deal that could value the Internet company at about $25 billion, a source familiar with the matter said on Wednesday.
The potential bid by the consortium, which would include China's Alibaba Group and Japan's Softbank Corp, has not yet been finalized, the source and two other people familiar with the matter said.
Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, whose primary interest is in buying back a 40 percent stake owned by Yahoo, is keeping its options open and said it has not decided whether to participate in a bid for all of Yahoo.
"Alibaba Group has not made a decision to be part of a whole company bid for Yahoo," Alibaba Group spokesman, John Spelich, said in an emailed statement on Wednesday.
Yahoo's shares, which closed at $15.71 on the New York Stock Exchange on Wednesday, gained 6.4 percent to $16.72 in after-hours trading, valuing the company at more than $20 billion.
"Alibaba definitely wants to get its stake back from Yahoo, so whatever that can make that happen, they will try for it," said Hong Kong-based JPMorgan analyst, Dick Wei, adding Alibaba may finance the deal by taking on more debt or finding a strategic buyer.
Alibaba, run by its founder and billionaire CEO Jack Ma, has ties with some of the world's most prominent private equity funds and a group of investors including Silver Lake purchased a 5 percent stake worth $1.6 billion in early November.
A bid for Yahoo at more than $20 per share would mean a deal value of about $25 billion based on 1.24 billion shares outstanding, potentially making it the largest leveraged buyout in recent years.
Blackstone, Bain and Softbank declined to comment, while Yahoo representatives were not immediately available to comment.
HEAT ON THE BOARD
Although a bid for all of Yahoo is not yet on the table, the latest twist turns up the heat on Yahoo's board, which has received at least two offers for a minority stake in the company according to people familiar with the matter. One offer came from a consortium of Silver Lake and Microsoft Corp, and another from TPG Capital. Silver Lake, Microsoft and TPG have declined to comment.
Meanwhile, private equity firm Thomas H. Lee Partners is interested in buying the U.S. operations of Yahoo, people familiar with the matter told Reuters previously. Providence Equity Partners and Hellman & Friedman are also interested in a potential Yahoo deal. Thomas H. Lee, Providence and Hellman & Friedman have declined to comment on the situation.
Bain and Blackstone have a track record of teaming up for joint investments. In 2008, the two buyout firms, in partnership with NBC Universal, bought the Weather Channel.
In 2006, the private equity firms teamed up for a $6 billion buyout of Michaels Stores Inc, the biggest U.S. arts and crafts retailer.
Internet pioneer Yahoo has seen its growth stagnate in recent years due to competition from Google Inc and Facebook and is currently without a permanent CEO as it tries to regain relevance.
Yahoo's board fired CEO Carol Bartz in September and started a strategic review, which has been complicated by the different agendas of players with a say in the situation, including its Asian partners, co-founders Jerry Yang and David Filo, the board and shareholders.
Yang has been exploring a deal with private equity firms to take the company private, according to sources, in part because that would represent his best chance of remaining involved with the company.
(Additional reporting by Greg Roumeliotis and Soyoung Kim in New York and Melanie Lee in Shanghai; Editing by Steve Orlofsky, Carol Bishopric and Matt Driskill)
Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/internet/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111201/wr_nm/us_yahoo
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Bcience fiction fans know what a 3-D display ought to look like.
The film Forbidden Planet showed them more than half a century ago. On a distant world once inhabited by an advanced alien civilization, human scientist Dr. Morbius discovers a table that can create holographic videos. He calls up a ghostly projection of his daughter that?s smaller than but other?wise identical to the girl herself.
?Aladdin?s lamp in a physics laboratory,? says an awed spacefarer peering over Morbius? shoulder.
Compared with this Krell technology, the magic of today?s 3-D televisions and movie screens are a bit lacking. Just ask moviegoers whose eyes felt strained as they watched Avatar from behind a pair of goofy glasses. Or move your head side to side while playing Nintendo?s latest portable gaming device, the 3DS: You will see that Mario?s world just doesn?t rotate like the real world would.
But a handful of research teams are hoping to create a 3-D experience that?s glasses-free, comfortable and as in-your-face as watching the Super Bowl from the front row at the stadium. By combining existing techniques with a few new tricks, the researchers are finding better ways to fool the brain into thinking the action is right there in the room.
A screen currently under development reveals an object?s sides when you peek around it. And an in-the-works teleconferencing system made of a spinning mirror can conjure up floating faces worthy of the Wizard of Oz. Other approaches bypass the trickery completely and go straight for the tried-and-true 3-D experience of holography: A postcard-sized Princess Leia made her debut earlier this year (SN Online: 1/26/11), and the military recently acquired a prototype table akin to Dr. Morbius?.
?The technology is getting closer to creating something that looks like a sculpture made out of light,? says Gregg Favalora, a veteran 3-D display designer who works for the consulting company Optics for Hire in Arlington, Mass.
Scaling up some of these technologies to make affordable flat screen televisions will take years, if it ever happens. But in the meantime, these new approaches may find their way into niche markets that can benefit from the richer experience 3-D promises.
From both sides now
The human brain has a built-in talent for working out depth from flat images. Even an old-fashioned movie looks somewhat three-dimensional on a normal TV set. Shadows on a bone tossed into the sky in 2001: A Space Odyssey, for example, reveal it to be an honest-to-goodness bone, not a cardboard cutout. And when chariots racing around a hippodrome in Ben-Hur partially block each other from view, the audience knows who?s in the lead.
Today?s commercial 3-D movie screens and televisions make objects leap out at the audience by displaying two overlapping images. Each image captures a different perspective, offset by the space between the eyes. Special glasses filter the pictures ? which often have slightly different colors or light that bends in a different way ? so the left eye sees one image and the right sees another. The brain puts these two scenes together to infer depth. It?s an old trick that dates to the first half of the 19th century, when English scientist Sir Charles Wheatstone used mirrors to redirect side-by-side images, one into each pupil.
Portable gaming devices, cell phones and cameras of today can achieve the same effect without glasses. These technologies slice the two images into ribbons that get stitched together like zebra stripes. Each eye sees a different set of stripes thanks to a barrier with vertical slots. Because the trick requires the eyes to be in just the right spot, it works particularly well for small screens held at a fixed distance.
But, glasses or not, no consumer technology provides a 3-D view that turns like the real world does when you move your head to the side. Moviegoers all share the same point of view, regardless of where they?re sitting ? meaning an important clue normally used to compare object distances is missing.
Douglas Lanman of MIT?s Media Lab and his colleagues are attempting to solve the problem with objects that rotate as a person walks by. Sitting in the lab is a glowing white screen that would look at home illuminating an X-ray of a lung in a doctor?s office. The screen?s light shines through a transparency showing a shimmering butterfly, a jade Chinese dragon, a handful of dice in mid-tumble.
Even at first glance, the colorful 3-D images are captivating. But move your head, and they seem to know that you?re there. Each image turns gracefully because it is made from up to five different images printed on different layers stacked on top of each other. These images add up to reveal a slightly different scene when looked at from different angles, thanks to a mathematical method adapted from CT scanners. While the scanners construct 3-D views by adding together flat X-ray images, Lanman?s display works backward, decomposing 3-D views into flat ones.
?With some clever computation and clever optics, we can display objects that you can actually see around,? he says.
Four LCD screens stacked on top of one another show videos from up to seven viewpoints via the same trick. The display will be presented this month in Hong Kong at a meeting of the Association for Computing Machinery?s Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques.
A second approach out of Lanman?s lab mashes together many pairs of perspectives into a single image on an LCD screen. A pattern on a second overlying screen flickers faster than the eye can see, filtering the image for different viewing angles. A prototype display built out of 22-inch computer monitors calculates the pattern needed for every frame of a video of a car, but the computing power required limits screen size.
?We?re trying to find ways to take these ideas and make them more practical,? says Lanman.
Easier on the eyes
But Lanman?s screens face a problem that?s universal among 3-D displays already on the market. Their beauty stirs conflict in the eyes of the beholder.
When you look at something close to you, your eyes naturally swivel inward. At the same time, the thickness of the eyes? lenses changes to focus light bouncing off the object. These two mechanical tweaks (called vergence and accommodation) are coordinated by the brain to provide a proper sensation of depth.
When you watch a 3-D movie on a flat screen, though, this synchronization goes haywire. The eyes aim where the image appears to be, but the lenses adjust to the distance of the screen. Cross your eyes and you?ll feel the disconcerting effects of this conflict: a blurry image, eyestrain and sometimes headaches.
?No one knows exactly how many people experience this discomfort,? says Martin Banks, a vision scientist at the University of California, Berkeley. ?All we can say is that it?s enough that we?re paying attention to it.?
The farther an object appears to pop out in front of or behind the screen, the more likely that the image will stress out the eyes. Every screen has a ?zone of comfort? that depends on its size and distance from the audience, Banks? team reported in January in Burlingame, Calif., at the Stereoscopic Displays and Applications meeting.
One way to ease this stress is to show multiple viewpoints of a scene to each eye simultaneously. Seeing two different views can create the illusion that the light comes from a spot in front of the screen, tricking the lenses into making adjustments that match the swivel of the eyes.
At the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, Paul Debevec has figured out a way to pack hundreds of different viewing angles together to eliminate eyestrain. He?s ditching flat screens in favor of a rapidly flickering projector. It bounces images off a pair of aluminum plates jointed together like an A-frame tent, a double-sided mirror of sorts that spins 900 times per minute.
At one instant, the mirror shoots one image at an observer?s right eye. A split second later, the mirror has spun a bit and can target the left eye with a different image, creating the illusion of 3-D. The mirror and projector are synchronized so every viewer sees different pairs of images depending on that person?s point of view.
During a demo of the device, Debevec films someone and sends the video data to a faraway projector. The person?s face materializes within the whirl of the mirror. The depth of the display, limited to a few inches by the size of the aluminum plate, makes the face look like a mask rather than a full bust.
?It?s not really in full 3-D,? Debevec says. ?It?s more like high relief.?
Debevec hopes to develop the device into a teleconferencing system that is comfortable on the eye and accommodates a moving viewer.
Holovision
For full 3-D that really gets inside your head ? images that rotate every which way, leap out of the screen as far as you?d like and take it easy on the eyes ? there?s nothing that beats the realism that a hologram can provide.
?The holographic display is the closest to how human beings see around themselves,? says Nasser Peyghambarian, a physicist at the University of Arizona in Tucson. ?It?s the Holy Grail of all displays.?
From comic books to credit cards, people have been playing around with still holograms for decades. These images are the children of lasers, born when two beams interfere with each other while striking a light-sensitive material. This coupling imprints a fringe pattern that, when illuminated, bends light to create an object in exquisite detail.
Peyghambarian, like many before him, hopes to give life to these still images. He?s creating a new kind of holographic plastic that can be rapidly imprinted, erased and imprinted again.
His first prototype, a transparent plastic screen slightly larger than a playing card, updated only once every two seconds, a far cry from movies? 24 to 30 frames per second. Since reporting on the device last year in Nature (SN: 12/4/10, p. 8), he has increased the size to a foot on each side, but still hasn?t achieved the 10 frames per second he is shooting for.
At MIT, engineer Michael Bove has used mostly inexpensive, off-the-shelf parts to make small holographic videos that update 15 times per second. He is in talks with the electronics industry about developing a television that might cost no more than a few hundred dollars to build. Currently, though, the display is fuzzy and in just one color.
For any holographic display, the bottle?neck is the sheer amount of data going into each image. Increase the size of the image, the number of colors, how often it refreshes or how steep an angle it can be seen from, and the required processing power explodes, quickly reaching unmanageable proportions.
The largest holographic video display to date, measuring 6 feet diagonally, belongs to the military. For five years, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, funded the development of a tabletop display that projects videos up to a foot high, visible from angles greater than 45 degrees above the table.
?People looking at these images do what we call the ?holodance,? ? says Mark Lucente, a consultant based in Austin, Texas, and former researcher at Zebra Imaging, the company that built the device. ?They start to move their heads to the side, up and down, the same as if someone?s showing you a sculpture.?
Achieving the effect requires the equivalent of 27 high-end computer work stations crunching 10 gigabytes of holographic data per second. Instead of lasers writing on plastic, the hologram pattern is generated by modulators that turn the data into light and an array of tiny devices that shape the direction and intensity of the light as it emerges from the table.
In August, the first prototype was installed at the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio. Darrel Hopper, a researcher at the lab, will test whether the display helps people make sense of complicated scenes ? from skies filled with planes to aerial views of tanks on the ground.
?The volume of inherently 3-D data sets we use has grown exponentially and will continue to do so,? Hopper says. ?We need people to be able to interact with this data as if it were a true 3-D object.?
Seeing clearly
Whether any of these new 3-D displays will make the transition into the home remains to be seen. Other technologies developed over the years have come and gone, such as a colorful device developed by the now-defunct Actuality Systems that looked like a glowing crystal ball.
?The market for these technologies wasn?t big enough,? says Nick Holliman, who studies 3-D displays at Durham University in England.
He thinks that new glasses-free approaches will be adopted first by specialized groups. Beyond the military, car designers and oil companies are interested in 3-D displays. Hospitals may also be a natural fit.
Several electronics companies are backing the development of glasses-free television sets. Philips has created a display that exploits lenses to scatter different views of a scene around a room. And Toshiba has unrolled a prototype of a 55-inch device that will cost $10,000 or more. But the screens, marketed to businesses and advertisers, offer viewers only nine different perspectives.
Ultimately, the introduction of new 3-D technologies into the home may be stymied by a problem that even the cleverest engineer can?t solve: ?There hasn?t been a huge wave of 3-D content yet into the marketplace,? says Stephen Baker, vice president of industry analysis for NPD Group, a market research company headquartered in Port Washington, N.Y.
Realistic 3-D television displays won?t be worth much if there?s nothing to watch. In the end, moviemakers must choose to film in three dimensions and network sports producers need to decide that basketball games really do look better with a little depth.
Source: http://www.sciencenews.org/view/feature/id/336554/title/Out_of_the_Box
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