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Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Comic-Con Star Power: Kristen Stewart, Matt Damon And More!

Casts of 'Glee' and 'Vampire Diaries' (and hopefully some surprise guests) will also be on hand in San Diego.
By Kara Warner

Kristen Stewart
Photo: Getty Images

Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1689377/comic-con-kristen-stewart-matt-damon.jhtml

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Engineering technology revealing secrets of Roman coins

ScienceDaily (July 10, 2012) ? Archaeologists and engineers from the University of Southampton are collaborating with the British Museum to examine buried Roman coins using the latest X-ray imaging technology.

Originally designed for the analysis of substantial engineering parts, such as jet turbine blades, the powerful scanning equipment at Southampton's ?-VIS Centre for Computed Tomography is being used to examine Roman coins buried in three archaeological artefacts from three UK hoards.

The centre's equipment can scan inside objects -- rotating 360 degrees whilst taking thousands of 2D images, which are then used to build detailed 3D images. In the case of the coins, the exceptionally high energy/high resolution combination of the Southampton facilities allows them to be examined in intricate detail without the need for physical excavation or cleaning. For those recently scanned at Southampton, it has been possible to use 3D computer visualisation capabilities to read inscriptions and identify depictions of emperors on the faces of the coins -- for example on some, the heads of Claudius II and Tetricus I have been revealed.

University of Southampton archaeologist, Dr Graeme Earl says, "Excavating and cleaning just a single coin can take hours or even days, but this technology gives us the opportunity to examine and identify them quickly and without the need for conservation treatment at this stage. It also has potential for examining many other archaeological objects.

"The University's Archaeological Computing Research Group can then take this one step further -- producing accurate, high resolution CGI visualisations based on scan data. This gives archaeologists and conservators around the world the opportunity to virtually examine, excavate and 'clean' objects."

Dr Roger Bland, Head of Portable Antiquities and Treasure at the British Museum comments, "This scanning technique is already yielding some fascinating results and the possibility of identifying a hoard of coins in a pot, without removing them, is very exciting. Working with archaeologists and engineers at Southampton, it is exciting to be pioneering and exploring the potential of a process which is faster, cheaper and less interventive than excavation."

The three objects examined at Southampton are:

* A cremation urn containing nine coins, dating from AD282, found in the Cotswolds. This item in particular would take months to excavate -- with archaeologists needing to carefully examine bone fragments and remains to extract more information about its past.

* An estimated 30,000 Roman coins discovered in Bath, dating to around AD270 and concreted together in a large block weighing over 100 kilograms (radiograph image only).

* A small pot dating to the 2nd century found in the Selby area of East Riding in Yorkshire.

Director of the University's ?-VIS Centre for Computed Tomography, Professor Ian Sinclair says, "Our centre examines a wide variety of objects from the layup of individual carbon fibres in aircraft wing components, to the delicate roots of growing plants, and now ancient Roman coins. It is our integration of state-of-the-art imaging hardware, world-class computing and image processing expertise, which allows us to break new ground.

"We have recently formed an inter-disciplinary research group for Computationally Intensive Imaging, which brings together a broad spectrum of world-class imaging activities from disciplines across the University -- of which this project is an excellent example."

The University of Southampton and the owners of the artefacts have plans to share the scan data with the public, hopefully through future exhibitions and online.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Southampton, via AlphaGalileo.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/07/120710093520.htm

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Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Rogers pledges LTE coverage to 28 more cities by end of year

Canadian carrier Rogers will be expanding their LTE network to a bunch of new markets before the end of 2012 in the hopes of covering 60% of the Canadian population in 4G-ish goodness. Rogers promises to launch the Sony Xperia Ion sometime this summer to celebrate the expansion. Here's the full list of new coverage areas:

Abbotsford
Ajax
Barrie
Burlington
Cambridge
Edmonton
Guelph
Hamilton
Kelowna
Kingston
Kitchener
London
Moncton
Niagara
Oakville
Oshawa
Pickering
Regina
Saskatoon
Sherbrooke
St. Catherines
Sudbury
Waterloo
Windsor
Winnipeg
Trois-Rivières
Quebec City
Victoria

Rogers kicked off LTE in Canada last fall starting with Ottawa, and has since expanded to Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, Calgary, Halifax, and St. John's. Of course, big-name competitors like TELUS and Bell have also launched their shared LTE network, leaving the little regional guys like WIND and Mobilicity to make do with HSPA+. Data isn't that expensive up here anymore - $35/month for 2 GB isn't that bad at all. Of course, you still have to deal with 3-year contracts to get those rates.

That's a monster of a list of new cities, and combined with the major metropolitan centres already covered, this will put pressure on other carriers to expand. Any Canadians happy to see LTE coming to their town? Any LTE-capable Rogers devices you're itching to get your mitts on?

Source: Rogers RedBoard

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/XC2DySazQMw/story01.htm

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Poll: Majority of Americans Believe Obama Has Changed America?But Only 35% Say For the Better

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Source: http://news.yahoo.com/poll-majority-americans-believe-obama-changed-america-only-025607992.html

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Venezuela's Chavez says "totally free" of cancer, again

By Mario Naranjo and Andrew Cawthorne

CARACAS | Mon Jul 9, 2012 8:00pm EDT

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Monday declared himself fully recovered from cancer and ready to return to the streets for his re-election campaign ahead of an October vote.

"Free, free, totally free," an ebullient Chavez told reporters when asked if he was free of the disease that struck a year ago.

The 57-year-old socialist leader, who has dominated the South American OPEC member since taking power in 1999, was first diagnosed with cancer in the pelvic region in the middle of last year.

He wrongly declared himself cured at the end of 2011 and suffered a recurrence of the disease in February.

But after three operations in a year and repeated cycles of treatment in Cuba and Venezuela, Chavez is once again declaring himself fully fit at a crucial time when his health is the main wild card before the October 7 presidential vote.

Despite his optimism, doctors say it is impossible to be sure someone is completely cured of cancer until at least a couple of years have passed since the last recurrence.

Perceptions of Chavez's ability to campaign for the election, and govern afterwards, may play a decisive role in what could be one of Venezuela's tightest elections of recent times.

The former soldier is leading most opinion polls by double digits, but one recent survey put him neck-and-neck with opposition candidate Henrique Capriles and as many as a third of voters remain undecided.

"OFFENSIVE BEGINS"

At a more than four-hour news conference that offered more evidence of Chavez's increasing energy levels, he promised to begin campaigning on the streets with a series of caravans around the nation from Thursday.

"Now is when I'm stepping into the action. Our offensive begins right now!" said Chavez, who disappeared for long periods during treatment over the last year but has been back dominating Venezuela's airwaves in recent weeks.

"Chavez is back in the street, the Bolivarian hurricane!" he added, referring to his idol and Venezuela's independence hero, Simon Bolivar.

Chavez has tested the waters in the last month with two carefully staged appearances riding through crowds in open-topped trucks. On both occasions, he whipped up crowds by waving and blowing kisses, but did not actually walk on the streets.

Capriles, a 39-year-old, center-left former governor, has been criss-crossing Venezuela on a "house-by-house" tour in a show of youth and energy that the opposition has been using to contrast with the ailing Chavez.

The president, though, who was famous for his whirlwind on-the-street campaigning of the past, appears to be recovering his energy levels.

"Every day, I feel in better physical condition and I strongly believe ... it is not going to be a determining factor in this campaign," he told reporters. "I'm a veteran of 100 battles and I feel in great moral, spiritual and physical conditions for this fight that is starting."

CHAVEZ'S "BLAH-BLAH"

Capriles held a news conference minutes after Chavez wound up, mocking his verbose style and longevity in office in a newly combative style he hopes will win votes.

"We're tired of the blah-blah, of the offensive language ... The pitcher looks tired," Capriles said, using the baseball imagery often employed by the sports-loving president.

It is not only rhetoric that is heating up on both sides.

Police intervened over the weekend to block a Capriles campaign stop in a Caracas slum after his and Chavez's supporters confronted each other in the street.

Underlining fears of violence in the deeply polarized nation of 29 million people, stones and bottles were thrown, with several people said to be injured during the fracas on Saturday.

The stakes are big not only for Venezuela, which has the largest oil reserves in the world, but also for the wider region.

Political allies from Cuba to Bolivia depend on Chavez's oil-financed largesse. Washington, too, is watching quietly to see if its fiercest critic in Latin America wins an election that would potentially extend his rule to 20 years.

(Additional reporting by Brian Ellsworth, Diego Ore, Eyanir Chinea and Silene Ramirez; Editing by Kieran Murray and Cynthia Osterman)

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/10/us-venezuela-election-chavez-idUSBRE8681CQ20120710?feedType=RSS&feedName=worldNews

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Monday, July 9, 2012

TMG drops after judges recommend halt to land deal

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/tmg-drops-judges-recommend-halt-land-deal-090015107--sector.html

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Oil Price Climbs 2% as Norwegian Strike Looms

The price of oil climbed about 2 percent Monday as striking oil workers in Norway forced the industry to prepare for a historic shutdown in the North Sea.

Norway's oil fields, which produce more than 3.8 million barrels of oil and natural gas per day, could shut down after 6 p.m. EDT if the industry doesn't resolve a dispute over employee retirement benefits. Workers have been on strike since June 24, and the country's oil industry said a lockout would begin at midnight.

Many analysts and traders expect the Norwegian government to intervene at the last minute and keep the oil and gas flowing. Government-owned Statoil ASA expects to lose $85.5 million per day if the strike continues.

"Right now everyone's pricing in the possibility that there could be some oil supply off the market," due to the strike, said Gene McGillian, a broker and oil analyst at Tradition Energy.

But financial pressures should force both sides to find common ground, independent analyst and trader Stephen Schork said. "There's a lot of skepticism about this strike," Schork said. "This isn't Libya" where rebels forced oil fields to close for several months last year. He noted that the pension dispute is a far less serious matter.

The Norwegian Oil Industry Association said the country has never experienced a total shutdown of its oil fields. A lockout would affect about 6,500 workers.

Any production stoppage would seriously crimp European oil supplies, cutting off a major source of crude as the European Union officially begins an embargo of Iranian oil. Norway exports most of its crude to the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, France and Germany. American refineries also buy a small amount of oil from Norway.

Benchmark U.S. crude rose $1.54 to end the day at $85.99 per barrel in New York. Brent crude, which comes from the North Sea and sets the price for oil imported into the U.S., added $2.13 to finish at $100.32 per barrel in London.

Statoil shares were flat, down 4 cents to $23.23 in afternoon trading.

Meanwhile, gasoline pump prices rose 2.4 cents over the weekend to a national average of $3.38 per gallon, according to AAA, Wright Express and Oil Price Information Service. A gallon of regular has risen by an average of nearly 6 cents since last week, but it's still about 23 cents cheaper than the same time last year.

In other futures trading, heating oil rose 4 cents to end at $2.75 per gallon and wholesale gasoline rose by 4 cents to finish at $2.76 per gallon. Natural gas rose 11 cents to finish at $2.88 per 1,000 cubic feet.

Source: http://www.moneynews.com/Markets/oil-climbs-norwegian-strike/2012/07/09/id/444814

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