সোমবার, ২৮ নভেম্বর, ২০১১

Last chance to save Kyoto deal at climate talks (Reuters)

DURBAN (Reuters) ? Almost 200 nations began global climate talks on Monday with time running out to save the Kyoto Protocol aimed at cutting the greenhouse gas emissions scientists blame for rising sea levels, intense storms, drought and crop failures.

Countries have been at loggerheads for years and hopes are slim of any major progress, despite increasingly dire warnings from climate scientists. Diplomats also wonder whether host South Africa is up to the challenge of brokering the tough negotiations that run until December 9 in Durban.

Poor nations say wealthy countries got rich using coal, oil and gas and they must be allowed to develop their way out of poverty. The developed nations say big developing economies, such as China, India and Brazil, must submit to emissions targets if the world has any chance of halting dangerous climate change.

And the stakes are high.

Two U.N. reports this month said greenhouse gases had reached record levels in the atmosphere and a warming world would likely bring more floods, stronger cyclones and more intense droughts.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said global average temperatures could rise by 3-6 degrees Celsius by the end of the century if governments failed to contain emissions, bringing unprecedented destruction as glaciers melt and sea levels rise.

It said an 80 percent rise in global energy demand was set to raise carbon dioxide (Co2) emissions by 70 percent by 2050 and transport emissions were expected to double, due in part to a surge in demand for cars in developing nations.

The Kyoto Protocol commits most developed nations to legally binding targets to cut emissions of planet-warming greenhouse gases. The talks in Durban are the last chance to set another round of targets before the first stage of the protocol ends in 2012.

"It may seem impossible, but you can get it done," Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, told delegates.

SMALL STEPS

Diplomats hope there will be some progress on funding to help developing countries most at risk from the effects of global warming, particularly in Africa and small island states.

Rich nations have committed to a goal of providing $100 billion a year in climate cash by 2020. But the United States and Saudi Arabia have objected to some aspects of the Green Climate Fund that will help handle it.

There is also a chance that some wealthy nations will pledge deeper emissions cuts.

But the debt crisis hitting the euro zone and the United States makes it unlikely those countries will provide more aid or impose new measures that could hurt their growth prospects.

"Given the current global political and economic situations, renewal of the Kyoto Protocol is highly unlikely," said Jennifer Haverkamp, the international climate programme director for Environmental Defense Fund (EDF). "But that is no excuse for the world to sit back and do nothing."

Any accord depends on China and the United States, the world's top emitters, agreeing to binding action under a wider deal by 2015, something both have resisted for years.

Russia, Japan and Canada say they will not sign up to a second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol unless the biggest emitters do too.

Envoys said there may be a deal struck with a new set of binding targets but only the European Union, New Zealand, Australia, Norway and Switzerland were likely to sign up

The Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) said: "If Durban puts off a legally binding agreement and closes the door on raising mitigation ambition before 2020 many of our small island states will be literally and figuratively doomed."

Despite nations' individual emissions-cut pledges and the Kyoto pact, the United Nations, International Energy Agency and others say they are not enough to prevent the planet heating up beyond 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times, a threshold beyond which scientists say the climate risks becoming unstable.

(Reporting by Jon Herskovitz and Agnieszka Flak; Writing by Janet Lawrence)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/environment/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111128/ts_nm/us_climate_durban

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Small Business Saturday: Small Retailers Fight Back With Deals ...

Owners: Linda Lea, Maria Baugh and Pam Nelson Promotion: $5 off a dozen cupcakes (usually $30). Last year, with the same promotion, they saw a 50 percent sales increase on Small Business Saturday. How To Maximize Sales on Small Business Saturday: "It's not too late to start really pushing," Baugh says. "Have signange up in your store, make sure customers have something like a postcard to take with them. Get the word out through social media. Tell everybody, post and tweet and shout it from the rooftops. Train your staff. You have to explain exactly how it works. There's a little bit of educating the customer involved, so make sure your staff can answer questions. We have a bonus plan for staff -- whoever gets the most people to sign a card and come in gets a bonus, which is a big incentive. Offer a popular item as a special -- if you throw in something for the customer, you'll get back so much more." Why Baugh Likes Small Business Saturday: "We're marketing much more aggressively this year. AmEx has provided a lot of tools for small business -- we downloaded a lot of marketing materials and we hired NYU students to walk around and hand out postcards to make sure people know about this promotion. We've been tweeting and posting, doing email blasts. We want to increase sales by more than 50 percent. Our slogan is 'march to a 1,000' -- our goal is to have 1,000 people come in and use their AmEx card that day. "This just really helps give small businesses a leg up. Big box stores by their nature have so many advantages. They actually have marketing budgets and have teams to promote what they're doing. They can sell in volume and do all kinds of things that small businesses can't. They own Black Friday. Then Cyber Monday came along. AmEx was super smart to say 'what about the little guys?' especially in this economy. It has been extremely tough. We started three years ago, in the heart of the recession, and we've worked like dogs and we're doing okay, but a lot of businesses aren't, no matter how hard they work. This will probably be a make or break season for a lot of businesses, and there's no better time to get this support."

Owners: Linda Lea, Maria Baugh and Pam Nelson

Promotion: $5 off a dozen cupcakes (usually $30). Last year, with the same promotion, they saw a 50 percent sales increase on Small Business Saturday.

How To Maximize Sales on Small Business Saturday: "It's not too late to start really pushing," Baugh says. "Have signange up in your store, make sure customers have something like a postcard to take with them. Get the word out through social media. Tell everybody, post and tweet and shout it from the rooftops. Train your staff. You have to explain exactly how it works. There's a little bit of educating the customer involved, so make sure your staff can answer questions. We have a bonus plan for staff -- whoever gets the most people to sign a card and come in gets a bonus, which is a big incentive. Offer a popular item as a special -- if you throw in something for the customer, you'll get back so much more."

Why Baugh Likes Small Business Saturday: "We're marketing much more aggressively this year. AmEx has provided a lot of tools for small business -- we downloaded a lot of marketing materials and we hired NYU students to walk around and hand out postcards to make sure people know about this promotion. We've been tweeting and posting, doing email blasts. We want to increase sales by more than 50 percent. Our slogan is 'march to a 1,000' -- our goal is to have 1,000 people come in and use their AmEx card that day.

"This just really helps give small businesses a leg up. Big box stores by their nature have so many advantages. They actually have marketing budgets and have teams to promote what they're doing. They can sell in volume and do all kinds of things that small businesses can't. They own Black Friday. Then Cyber Monday came along. AmEx was super smart to say 'what about the little guys?' especially in this economy. It has been extremely tough. We started three years ago, in the heart of the recession, and we've worked like dogs and we're doing okay, but a lot of businesses aren't, no matter how hard they work. This will probably be a make or break season for a lot of businesses, and there's no better time to get this support."

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/25/small-business-saturday-small-retailers-fight-back_n_1106149.html

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রবিবার, ২৭ নভেম্বর, ২০১১

Cowgirls play 1st game since death of coaches

(AP) ? Oklahoma State's women's basketball team is set to play its first game since a plane crash killed coach Kurt Budke, assistant coach Miranda Serna and two others.

Budke, Serna, former state Sen. Olin Branstetter and his wife, Paula, died in the crash in Perry County, Ark., on Nov. 17. Reminders of the four are on display throughout Gallagher-Iba Arena before the Cowgirls' game with Coppin State.

In the lobby, at a memorial for 10 men connected with Oklahoma State's men's basketball program who died in a plane crash in Colorado in January 2001, a bouquet of orange and white flowers sits, along with a basketball balloon.

Inside the arena, the Branstetters' two seats are adorned with orange-and-black ribbons.

The Cowgirls are wearing a uniform patch with the number "4'' on it. Coppin State players are wearing orange T-shirts emblazoned with the number "4'' during warmups.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/347875155d53465d95cec892aeb06419/Article_2011-11-26-Coppin%20St-Oklahoma%20St/id-60203a0ab3f444b2a33329d3d1e62cfc

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শনিবার, ২৬ নভেম্বর, ২০১১

Drought puts damper on tree farmers' Christmas (Providence Journal)

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Winnie the Pooh (2011) DvDRip xvid-MAX for free

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শুক্রবার, ২৫ নভেম্বর, ২০১১

Portugal lowered to junk status as big strike hits (AP)

LISBON, Portugal ? Portugal's efforts to climb out of its economic crisis suffered a double setback Thursday as its credit rating was downgraded to junk status and a major strike gave voice to broad public outrage over austerity measures that have squeezed living standards.

Portugal's deepening plight underlined Europe's difficulties in finding a way out of the continent's government debt crisis which has recently shown alarming signs of spreading to bigger nations, most notably Italy.

Like others in the 17-country eurozone, Portugal has embarked on a big austerity program to make its debts sustainable. Earlier this year, Portugal followed Greece and Ireland in taking a bailout to avert bankruptcy.

As in Greece, though, the government's tough medicine, which is required by international creditors in return for the euro78 billion ($104 billion) in bailout money, is unpopular. The strike had a huge turnout, making it possibly the biggest walkout in more than 20 years.

Police detained three demonstrators who scuffled with police outside Parliament after a protest march, Associated Press Television News reported.

"They are trying to destroy the national health service, and salaries haven't gone up since 2004," striking Dr. Pilar Vicente told APTN.

International ratings agency Fitch blamed Portugal's "large fiscal imbalances, high indebtedness across all sectors, and adverse macroeconomic outlook" for its decision to cut the country's rating by one notch to BB+. Rival Moody's already rates Portuguese bonds as junk, but Standard & Poor's rates them one notch above.

Fitch's decision to cut Portugal to a non-investment grade will likely mean it's even more difficult for the country, which is already mired in a deep recession and is witnessing rising levels of unemployment, to return to bond markets by its 2013 goal. That raises the unappetizing prospect that Portugal, like Greece, may need a second bailout.

"Portugal's downgrade goes to show how hard it will be for troubled economies to pull themselves out of the crisis and how long this will take," said Sony Kapoor, managing director of Re-Define, an economic think tank. "The Portuguese downgrade highlights the limits of austerity policies both domestically in Portugal and in the wider euro area."

The 24-hour walkout came as Portugal, one of western Europe's smallest and frailest economies, endures increasing hardship as it tries to get its borrowing levels down.

The strike was called by Portugal's two largest trade union confederations, representing more than 1 million mostly blue-collar workers. Much of the private sector remained open for business, but a huge Volkswagen car plant south of Lisbon, which accounts for 10 percent of Portuguese exports, decided to shut down production for the day because of problems facing its suppliers.

Much of the disruption was centered on the transport sector. Airlines canceled hundreds of international flights, and the airports of Lisbon, Porto and Faro were mostly empty as tens of thousands of workers walked off the job. Commuters had to get to work without regular bus or train services. The Lisbon subway was shut, and police said roads into the capital were more congested than normal.

Few staff were working at government offices, local media reported. Many medical appointments, school classes and court hearings were canceled, while mail deliveries and trash collection were said to be severely disrupted.

An unsustainable debt load and feeble economic growth over the past 10 years pushed Portugal toward bankruptcy earlier this year, forcing it to ask for a financial rescue.

In return for the aid, Portugal agreed to cut its debt burden to a manageable level by 2013. That goal requires it to enact deep spending cuts and hike taxes. Income tax, sales tax, corporate tax and property tax are all being increased. At the same time, welfare entitlements are being curtailed. Falling living standards have stoked outrage at the austerity measures.

"All the sacrifices the Portuguese are making today will prove worthwhile in the future," Parliamentary Affairs Minister Miguel Relvas told reporters.

A key difference from Greece is that the markets have not given up completely on Portugal. Though Portugal's key 10-year borrowing rate in the market stands at a still-exorbitant 12 percent, it's way below the 30 percent or so Greek equivalent. The aim is to eventually get that rate down below the 7 percent threshold that eventually proved to be the trigger for this year's bailout.

The Portuguese government, which came to power in June, has already conceded that its deficit reduction efforts have gone "off track" this year but says one-off measures, such as a 50 percent tax on Christmas bonuses and transferring banks' pension funds to the Treasury, will ensure Portugal achieves its 2011 budget deficit goal of 5.9 percent. That is down from 9.8 percent in 2010.

Debt is also expected to surpass 100 percent of GDP this year and peak at 106 percent in 2013 before retreating.

The austerity drive is hitting the real economy hard. Unemployment is up to 12.4 percent and is forecast to hit 13.4 percent next year. The European Commission predicts the Portuguese economy will contract by 3 percent in 2012 ? the worst performance in the eurozone.

Fitch said the recession is making it more "challenging" for the government to achieve its deficit-reduction plan and will negatively impact bank asset quality. However, Fitch said the center-right government's commitment to the debt-reduction program is "strong."

Portugal has so far witnessed none of the violent demonstrations seen in Greece, though police said three Lisbon tax offices were vandalized Wednesday night.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/eurobiz/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111124/ap_on_re_eu/eu_portugal_financial_crisis

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বৃহস্পতিবার, ২৪ নভেম্বর, ২০১১

Facebook: 6 degrees of separation? More like 4

Rosa Golijan/msnbc.com

By Rosa Golijan

Ever play "The Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" on a dull day? It's a game?in which you trace someone's movie roles in an attempt to connect him or her to actor Kevin Bacon in just six steps. The whole idea is based on the belief that any two individuals in the world are separated by no more than six degrees.

Facebook

When the numbers were crunched in 2008, it was determined that 5.28 hops were necessary to connect pairs of Facebook users on average. In 2011, that number has dropped to 4.74.

Facebook's shaking up that ol' claim a bit,?by suggesting that there's an average of 4.74 "hops" ??or lines ??connecting every person to every other person. That actually means 3.74 "degrees of separation," because there are two hops between you and a friend of a friend, but your common friend represents just one degree of separation.

Oh, yes. It's a very small world after all.

The statistic was discovered when the folks at Facebook collaborated with researchers at the Universit? degli Studi di Milano and analyzed the social network's?721 million active users (who account for more than 10 percent of the global population).?

Using "state-of-the-art algorithms" developed at the university's Laboratory for Web Algorithmics, it was possible to approximate the "number of hops between all pairs of individuals on Facebook."

All that number crunching revealed that "99.6% of all pairs of users are connected by paths with 5 degrees (6 hops)" and "92% are connected by only four degrees (5 hops)." On average, only?4.74 hops were necessary to connect people.

Yes, this statistic means that you theoretically have a friend who is buddies with someone who knows a guy or gal who is friends with Ryan Gosling.

Related stories:

Want more tech news, silly puns, or amusing links? You'll get plenty of all three if you keep up with Rosa Golijan, the writer of this post, by following her on?Twitter, subscribing to her?Facebook?posts, or circling her?on?Google+.

Source: http://digitallife.today.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/11/22/8950195-facebook-6-degrees-of-separation-more-like-4

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'Hugo' depicts dazzling world of early film

Paramount Pictures

In "Hugo," Asa Butterfield and Chloe Grace Moretz play Parisian orphans on the trail of a mystery.

By Gael Fashingbauer Cooper

Those who know a little about the history of early movies will appreciate Martin Scorsese's "Hugo" on deeper levels, but it's a dazzling story even without that background.

Young Hugo (ocean-eyed Asa Butterfield) is a post-World War I?orphan who lives alone in a cavernous Paris train station that's a steampunk dream of gears and spiral staircases, swirls of fog and smoke, monstrous trains and enormous clocks. First his father and then his uncle die, but if he can steal enough food to survive and keep the station's clocks running on time, no one will notice and send him to an orphanage. His nemesis is the sour-faced station inspector (Sacha Baron Cohen, a long way from "Borat"), but his real future lies with a mysterious man (Ben Kingsley)?who runs a toy shop.

Hugo's been stealing parts from the?toy shop?to finish an automaton, an eerie silver automated man his father found in a museum attic. If he can finish it, he believes, he not only won't be so lonely, but he may receive a final message from his lost father. But when the toy-shop owner's goddaughter (Chloe Grace Moretz) befriends him, the two kids discover a mystery involving her godfather and his place in the history of early movies.

And from here on, the film unravels an?enthralling class in early cinematic history. Those first filmmakers were just steps away from sideshows and magic acts,?hand-cutting film so that skeletons appear to disappear, and terrifying audiences into believing that a filmed train is going to run them over. Scorsese deftly brings history books to life, so that his modern viewers, sitting in a 2011 venue with?stadium seating, cupholders and 3-D glasses, can imagine a bit of the spell that movies must have cast over those earliest fans.

Is "Hugo" for children? Older ones may not appreciate all the Movie History 101 lessons, but they'll appreciate the story, and might learn a little as well.?And even?adults who think they don't care about the early days of film may find themselves spellbound by this love letter to celluloid.

"Hugo" director Martin Scorsese talks about the story of Hugo Cabret, and how he's always dreamed of doing a 3-D movie.

Related content:

Source: http://entertainment.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/11/23/8953522-magical-hugo-dives-inside-dazzling-world-of-early-movies

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বুধবার, ২৩ নভেম্বর, ২০১১

Koush's Nexus S ICS alpha build now available in ROM Manager

ICS on the Galaxy S

If you're looking to give another early build of Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich a go on the Nexus S and prefer the ROM Manager route, Kouch (a name you should well know and trust) has made available in ROM Manager an early alpha build. It's early yet, and the camcorder and a few other things aren't working 100 percent -- again, alpha build -- but it's something else to play with if you want.

Check it out at the link below, or snag it in ROM Manager.

Source: XDA



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

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Stage collapse victims file suit vs. Sugarland

Country duo Sugarland was named in a lawsuit filed Tuesday by 44 survivors of the Indiana State Fair stage collapse and family members of four people who died, by far the largest claim yet stemming from the tragedy.

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Attorneys representing at least 20 law firms across Indiana, Ohio and Kentucky filed the complaint alleging breach of reasonable care to the victims in Marion Superior Court in Indianapolis.

The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages from Sugarland, producers, stage riggers and others associated with the Aug. 13 show. Stage rigging collapsed into spectators following a wind gust of at least 60 mph, killing seven people and injuring more than 40 others. Sugarland had not yet taken the stage when the collapse occurred.

Sugarland's contract specified the act had the final say on whether to cancel the concert due to weather, plaintiff's attorney Mario Massillamany of Logansport said in a news release.

"Unfortunately, this tragedy could have been prevented if the responsible parties had been concerned about the concertgoers that night," Massillamany said.

The contract reached between Sugarland's agent, Creative Artists Agency, and the Indiana State Fair Committee guaranteed the duo $300,500 to perform, $34,500 for sound, lights and catering, and 85 percent of gross box office receipts over $470,000, Massillamany said.

"This is a devastating tragedy that has impacted hundreds of people," plaintiffs' so-counsel Scott Starr said. "It is critical to help the victims pay the medical bills and other financial expenses that they have incurred from this incident."

The plaintiffs include Lisa Hite of Cass County, who was with her 8-year-old custodial granddaughter in the area immediately in front of the stage called "the Sugar Pit."

"The injuries I sustained have left me unable to provide for my family. The financial and emotional strain this has caused has left a lasting impact on my family," said Hite, who is represented by Starr and Massillamany.

Sugarland's publicist didn't immediately return a call Tuesday seeking comment.

The complaint charges that Sugarland and the other entities owed a duty to provide a safe concert environment and use reasonable care in the direction, set-up and supervision of the concert.

The complaint does not name the fair or the state of Indiana among the defendants. They were named separately in at least 40 tort claims filed with the attorney general's office. Indiana law caps the state's liability for damages from the incident at $5 million.

A separate State Fair Remembrance Fund has paid about $564,000 to 28 people, and the remaining $400,000 in the state-administered fund will be paid out on a prorated basis to people who have already received money, State Fair Commission chairman Andre Lacy said Monday. Fair officials said another 28 people applied for aid but were turned down.

At least two other lawsuits on behalf of other victims of the stage collapse have been filed against Sugarland and other defendants.

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/45410492/ns/today-entertainment/

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Online holiday shopping off to solid start (Reuters)

(Reuters) ? The online holiday shopping season got off to a solid start, according to data released on Tuesday by ComScore Inc.

U.S. online spending reached $9.7 billion in the first 20 days of the holiday season, which began in early November, ComScore said. That was up by at least 14 percent from the same period a year earlier, the company added.

Online retailers have entered the most important part of the year, when billions of dollars in sales are up for grabs.

In 2010, U.S. shoppers spent almost $22 billion online between early November and December 10, up 12 percent from the same period a year earlier, ComScore data show.

In the first three weeks of this November, same-store sales generated by ChannelAdvisor's online merchant clients jumped 28 percent from the same period a year earlier.

ChannelAdvisor helps merchants sell more on third-party marketplaces run by e-commerce giants including Amazon.com Inc and eBay Inc.

ChannelAdvisor merchants saw same-store sales jump 65 percent on Amazon.com in the first three weeks of November, versus the same period of 2010.

Merchants on eBay saw a 19 percent increase in same-store sales during the same period, ChannelAdvisor also said.

"All channels firing," ChannelAdvisor Chief Executive Scot Wingo wrote via Twitter on Tuesday.

(Reporting by Alistair Barr, editing by Bernard Orr)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/tech/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111123/wr_nm/us_comscore

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মঙ্গলবার, ২২ নভেম্বর, ২০১১

Freaklabs' FredBoard gives the gift of hackerspace to Mothership HackerMoms

Come this (Black) Friday, it'll officially be the season for gift-giving and general family dysfunction. So, why not warm that tech-tinkering heart while heating up the creative juices of the baby-bound set with a Freaklabs purchase that puts your money to good use? The outfit's got a monster mash FredBoard up for order that splices together an Arduino and breadboard to make your first brush with homegrown modding a relatively painless affair. Oh, and the proceeds are destined for a Mommy-centric hackerspace -- dubbed Mothership HackerMoms -- in San Francisco that does double duty as a day care for little leg-clingers and a lab for their electronics-inclined parents. These ladies-in-programming currently swap house hosting duties, but with the boost from your potential feel-good donations, could snag a proper venue of their own. Feel like getting in the holiday spirit early? Then click on the source below to bring some early cheer to Bay Area baby Mommas.

Freaklabs' FredBoard gives the gift of hackerspace to Mothership HackerMoms originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 21 Nov 2011 19:04:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/bNQU9Bzyq2c/

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সোমবার, ২১ নভেম্বর, ২০১১

1 dead in small plane crash in suburban Chicago (Providence Journal)

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Crosby to return on Monday against Islanders (AP)

PITTSBURGH ? Sid the Kid is back.

Pittsburgh Penguins superstar Sidney Crosby will make his season debut on Monday against the New York Islanders, his first game in nearly a year since being sidelined with concussion-like symptoms.

Crosby hasn't played since taking head shots in consecutive games in January against Washington and Tampa Bay.

The 2007 NHL MVP spent the last 10 months undergoing a painstakingly thorough rehabilitation that left him wondering when ? or even if ? he'd play again and forced the league to take a harsher stance when it comes to policing head hits.

His return ends weeks of speculation that appeared to put the ever-polite Crosby on edge but hardly bothered his teammates. The 24-year-old declined repeated interview requests in recent weeks as the speculation about a possible return date reached a fever pitch.

Crosby missed the remainder of the 2010-11 season after taking a hit from Tampa Bay's Victor Hedman on Jan. 5. The expected brief absence turned into an extended one that rendered him a spectator for Pittsburgh's loss to the Lightning in the opening round of the playoffs.

He vowed to be ready for training camp but spent much of the summer in seclusion in his native Canada, his silence fueling speculation his career may be in jeopardy.

Crosby came forward in September and ? flanked by the two doctors who have overseen his recovery ? said it was "likely" he would be back this season.

He began training camp wearing a white helmet to signify he wasn't to be hit, working feverishly for a month before switching to a black helmet after being cleared for contact on Oct. 13.

Coach Dan Bylsma preached caution, though his teammates did their best to accommodate their captain, jostling with him in practice when given the opportunity.

Crosby only missed one skate since camp began in September, skipping a practice in Los Angeles on Nov. 5 so he could travel back east to visit with his medical team.

His teammates stressed there was no need for Crosby to rush, and the Penguins have been one of the league's top teams through the season's first six weeks.

Pittsburgh entered Friday atop the Eastern Conference behind the crisp goaltending of Marc-Andre Fleury and a dynamic offense led by Evgeni Malkin and James Neal.

Yet the Penguins understand they're not the same without Crosby.

"We know what he means to this team, this city," defenseman Kris Letang said. "He's a special player."

One that spent months dealing with "fogginess" that at times made it difficult for him to drive or watch television. He also endured painful migraines and likened the recovery process to a roller coaster.

The ride appears to be finally pulling into the station, sending Crosby out into the great unknown.

For all the steps he's taken during his recovery, the real test will come when he gets hit for the first time at full speed. Though the nature of the game may be changing thanks in part to Crosby's ordeal.

New discipline czar Brendan Shanahan, only three years removed from his playing days, has been suspending players for taking unnecessary head shots at opponents. It's a movement Crosby embraces.

"A guy's got to be responsible with his stick, why shouldn't he be responsible with the rest of his body when he's going to hit someone?" Crosby said. "Whether it's accidental or not accidental, you've got to be responsible out there."

He hasn't backed down during practice, often being one of the last to leave the ice before heading to the dressing room.

The Penguins have raved about Crosby's intensity during even the more informal skates. While he's looked perfectly fine to the naked eye, Crosby wouldn't allow himself to come back until he was at full strength.

"Maybe I can get by with 90 percent, maybe I couldn't but I'm not going to roll the dice with that," Crosby said in September.

When he finally glides onto the ice in his No. 87 jersey, Crosby will put to rest speculation his career was over. His teammates, who did their best to give Crosby distance over the summer, never doubted he would return.

"I figured he was getting enough of it from everywhere else," teammate Jordan Staal said. "All that matters to us really is that he's healthy. All that stuff you thought you heard, I didn't pay any attention to it."

How quickly it takes Crosby to get back to his pre-injury level is uncertain.

He was playing arguably the best hockey of his brilliant career before getting hurt, leading the league in goals and points as the Penguins steamrolled through the first three months of the season.

The team soldiered to a fourth-place finish in the Eastern Conference despite missing Crosby, Malkin and Staal. The magic disappeared in the playoffs as the Penguins lost in seven games.

Crosby's comeback pushes a team considered a Stanley Cup contender into a Stanley Cup favorite. Yet after months and months of rumors and worry, Crosby's return is cause enough for celebration.

"We know how badly he wants to play," teammate Matt Cooke said. "We want it too, because it means that he's healthy, and that's all you ever really want for him."

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/sports/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111120/ap_on_sp_ho_ne/hkn_penguins_crosby

today show smokin joe conrad murray verdict tappan zee bridge philadelphia eagles jessica chastain jessica chastain

রবিবার, ২০ নভেম্বর, ২০১১

Building A Better Toilet

Copyright ? 2011 National Public Radio?. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.

IRA FLATOW, HOST:

This is SCIENCE FRIDAY. I'm Ira Flatow. Tomorrow is World Toilet Day, and if you have a toilet, that's a cause for celebration, because more than a third of the world's population does not. For 2.6 billion people, going to the bathroom is, well, there is no bathroom to go to. People don't have access to the sanitation and sewer systems that we take for granted here. Without a place to go, people defecate into ditches, waste gets dumped into waterways and diseases spread.

The sponsors of World Toilet Day are trying to change that by bringing attention to the problem. And one sponsor, the Gates Foundation, is challenging engineers to build a better toilet, giving them money to do it. It's called the Reinvent the Toilet Challenge. Frank Rijsberman is director of water sanitation and hygiene at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in Seattle. Dr. Rijsberman is here with us. Welcome to SCIENCE FRIDAY.

FRANK RIJSBERMAN: Thank you. Good morning, Ira.

FLATOW: Good afternoon to you. Rose George is author of "The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World Of Human Waste And Why It Matters." She joins us from the BBC in Leeds. Welcome to SCIENCE FRIDAY.

ROSE GEORGE: Thank you.

FLATOW: Dr. Jim McHale is vice president of engineering at American Standard Brands in Piscataway, New Jersey. You know they make all those bathroom fixtures, including that famous toilet that seems to swallow everything up on YouTube. Thank you for being with us today, Jim.

JIM MCHALE: Thank you, Ira.

FLATOW: Let's talk a bit, Dr. Rijsberman. Tell us about World Toilet Day and what the point of it is.

RIJSBERMAN: Well, World Toilet Day tries to bring across the same point you just made, that an astonishing third of the world population does not have access to flush toilets. Yes, flush toilets have saved more lives than any other invention, but at the same time, lack of them still causes an incredible number of death among young children from diarrhea.

FLATOW: With two and a half billion people, that's a big number. How do you even get your arms around it? How do you tackle that problem?

RIJSBERMAN: With great difficulty. A lot of people are trying that, in fact, and we are doing things. It's not as if we have to reinvent the toilet before we can start working on that problem, but yes, we do think that particularly for people who live in slums in developing countries, in very high density, low income areas, we don't really have a toilet that works for poor people.

FLATOW: So you're looking for, actually - you said we don't have to reinvent the toilet, but you are actually asking people.

RIJSBERMAN: Yes, we are asking people to come up with a toilet that does not flush, you know, clean water down an expensive set of pipes to get into a waste water treatment plant where we're spending even more energy and money to get that waste out again. We'd love for people to have what we sometimes call the cell phone of sanitation, an aspirational product that actually recovers resources from waste. There's a lot of energy in human waste. There is nutrients there, and we'd love to find a way to reuse those directly without relying on flushing your waste down the drain with clean drinking water.

FLATOW: So you're looking for some really creative engineering and giving money to engineers to design a better toilet.

RIJSBERMAN: Yes, indeed.

FLATOW: And how long is the contest going to go on for?

RIJSBERMAN: Well, within a year we'd love for people to show that their crazy ideas have some value and then next year August we hope to have a big fair where people demonstrate all those prototypes. And then we'll have more money to take the best ideas forward into toilets that people can actually use.

FLATOW: Mm-hmm. And so how do you apply for - if you're an engineer and you have a crazy idea, how do you get a grant from you folks?

RIJSBERMAN: Well, we had several open contests and Daniel Yeh that you are going to talk to later was one of the hundreds of people who sent us those ideas and then we have those reviewed by external experts and we funded a bunch of these, about 26 in April and another 31 that were published just last week.

FLATOW: Let me bring out Dr. Yeh. Dr. Daniel Yeh is an engineer who was working on one of those toilets. Welcome to SCIENCE FRIDAY.

DANIEL YEH: Hello, Ira. Great to be here.

FLATOW: Thank you very much. Can you give us an idea what your idea is?

YEH: Okay. Well, I guess, to start, I need to talk about how we currently treat waste. Typically, in municipal waste water systems, you know, we use what's called activated flush(ph) , which is a rather energy intensive way to get rid of the organic material, namely in waste. As Frank said earlier, this is energy intensive and also does not recover energy. So we'd like to do it differently. We'd like to do it using (unintelligible) organisms, which are naturally present.

And through the (unintelligible) organisms, you can reroute the organic content or the electrons that are embedded in the organic material into methane. And then, along with that waste, there's nitrogen phosphorus, like Frank mentioned, so the trick now is to have you get to the nitrogen phosphorus in the water safely, and we will be doing this in conjunction with a membrane, an ultra-filtration membrane.

FLATOW: So the idea is not to just dump the waste. It's to, more or less, recycle it back into something else.

YEH: It absolutely is. Because if you look at waste, what's waste to us is actually food for microorganisms. And when you really come down to it, it's nothing more than carbon nitrogen phosphorus. But it's just the fact that there's pathogens in there. There's also a social stigma attached to it, so we need to find ways to overcome those.

FLATOW: And how much time do you think it will take you to come up with a working idea here?

YEH: We have already built it in the lab and we call that a NEW generator, which means nutrients, energy and water, NEW generator. We have a working prototype in the lab and what we're doing now through the Gates Foundation Grant is to move that into the field for a field demonstration and to ruggedize(ph) the unit.

FLATOW: Is it something that anybody could build, even, you know, in a place that doesn't have a lot of resources?

YEH: I think you're going to need some resources to build it, but then the challenge is how we're going to make this fit into the existing sanitation cycle and then of course affordability will be an issue. But, you know, I like to always look at it like the USB drive example. You know, when the USB drive first came out many years ago, it was very expensive and, you know, frankly, I don't know how that works. But now you can get one for, what, $5?

FLATOW: Right.

YEH: And so I think if there's a demand, we can create a (unintelligible) market structure, anything can be affordable.

FLATOW: All right. Good luck to you, Dr. Yeh.

YEH: Great. Thank you.

FLATOW: Thank you for taking time with us, Dr. Yeh. Daniel Yeh is an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of South Florida in Tampa. We're talking World Toilet Day coming up tomorrow around the world and we're talking about toilet technology. Let me bring on Rose George. She is author of "The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World Of Human Waste And Why It Matters." Why is it so unmentionable, Rose?

GEORGE: Well, I think actually one of the good things that since I wrote that book, which was in 2008, I think it's become much less unmentionable. And - but there is a conversational and societal taboo about this and it's - the interesting thing about this taboo is that it's not actually that old. It only goes back 200 or 300 years, which is just about the same time that the flush toilet became the norm and so you had this odor-free device that you could have inside your house, which was unthinkable beforehand.

If you'd ever encountered a 17th century privy, you wouldn't want it anywhere near you. So you had this clean and nice, fresh-smelling device. And at this same time, I think, because we could do that, because we could put it behind a closed door, we could also not really think about it and not discuss it. And that's had really quite damaging effects up to the point where, you know, as Frank said in 2011, we're in this ridiculous situation of children dying of the runs, of diarrhea, and surely, you know, we can solve that.

FLATOW: Do you think that if some toilet designers of 100 years ago were alive today, they could walk up to the modern toilet and say, I can still fix that?

GEORGE: I think if you took a standard western toilet, yes. I think if you took - there are these quite amazing Japanese high tech toilets, and that's a whole different kettle of fish.

But I think, yes, if you got hold of Joseph Brown or Alexander Cummings and asked them to fix a toilet, I suspect they'd be able to. I don't think Alexander Graham Bell would be able to get to grips with an iPhone quite as easily.

FLATOW: Jim McHale, you work on some of the cutting-edge designs in toilet technology for American Standard. What are some of the challenges in toilet design today?

MCHALE: Well, first, let me say, we are also interested in the work to help developing countries get toilets. And I've been talking with Frank about what we can do to help. But here in the U.S. market, the challenges are more around water conservation, what can be done to change the designs to get toilets to function properly on less water. There's the EPA's water sense initiative that tries to promote the use of what we call ATTs, toilets that function on 20 percent or less water than a typical 1.6 gallon toilet.

So we spent a lot of time designing toilets that work on less water, but actually that really flush well and aren't going to cause somebody to have to flush the toilet twice because that really is the nemesis of water conservation is when somebody has to flush twice or three times to really clean the bowl.

FLATOW: So that's a real engineering challenge, then.

MCHALE: Absolutely. We use the best available tools and find the best available people to solve that problem just like any other industry would solve their problems.

FLATOW: 1-800-989-8255 is our number. Talking about engineering toilets on World Toilet Day tomorrow. You can also tweet us @scifri, at S-C-I-F-R-I. Let's go take a call or two before the break. Let's go to Russell(ph) in Cincinnati. Hi, Russell.

RUSSELL: Hey, how you doing?

FLATOW: Hey, there.

RUSSELL: Hey, I'm sitting here listening to this and I'm thinking to myself why - what's the big deal? The (unintelligible) toilet has been around since the '60s, I know that much, and that's a composting toilet. It already exists. And when you drive through all the rest areas and more of the public restrooms that you go into now, they've got toilets and urinals that don't use any water at all. So I'm just...

FLATOW: Yeah, Frank, good question.

RUSSELL: ...it already exists, so why are we trying to find it?

FLATOW: Frank Rijsberman?

RIJSBERMAN: Yes. And indeed, that has been a common reaction. People have been proposing composting toilets to us. And indeed, if you have a mountain cabin here in the U.S. or so, that may very well be a good solution. They've been around a long time. They've been tested in developing countries and they work for some specific conditions, but for those that we're looking at, slums, lots of people sharing toilets, they fill up too quickly, they don't properly function.

So we recognize that for some conditions, composting toilets work well and actually we have some grants that make those even better, but for the majority of the conditions we're looking at, it's not a good solution. We want something - in fact, the composting toilet is sort of an improved outhouse, if you like. We'd love to get to a toilet, an aspirational product, the cell phone of sanitation, that you and I would also want to have in our house and that doesn't reduce the flush to, say, 1.4, 1.2 gallons per liter, but to zero.

FLATOW: All right. There it is, the iPhone of toilets. We're gonna come back and talk more with Frank Rijsberman, Rose George, author of "The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World Of Human Waste And Why It Matters," Jim McHale, vice president of engineering at American Standard Brands in Piscataway, New Jersey. Our number, 1-800-989-8255. Maybe you have an idea for the toilet of tomorrow, the iPhone of toilets. We'll be right back after this break.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

FLATOW: This is SCIENCE FRIDAY. I'm Ira Flatow. We're talking this hour about the toilet of tomorrow, what would be the ultimate toilet, how should it be designed, with Frank Rijsberman, director of water sanitation and hygiene at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Rose George, author of "The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World Of Human Waste And Why It Matters," Jim McHale, vice president of engineering at American Standard Brands in Piscataway. Our number, 1-800-989-8255.

Jim, you heard Frank say that the ultimate toilet would have no water in it. Is that something practical for an American consumer, though?

MCHALE: In the short term, probably in my lifetime, I would say no. It - there's very cultural aspects with a toilet as well. People - Frank mentioned how people don't like to use composting toilets and a lot of it has to do with the smell. Water has - the main function of water is that it reduces the smells during the process, so I really cannot see that happening in the near-term.

FLATOW: Rose George?

GEORGE: I think, I mean, it's certainly true that there are cultural aspects to sanitation, which make it extremely tricky to solve or to find a perfect solution across the world, which is probably partly why we're in the situation. But I am more optimistic, I think, possibly than Jim. I mean, one of the lovely anecdotes I was told was from a Norwegian professor who told me that a friend of his, their children, their family had a composting latrine at home, thought that was completely normal.

And the day that they went, started kindergarten, were absolutely appalled to find that they had to drop their waste into a load of water and they just didn't like the plop and the splash. So it's - I think things can change slowly. I certainly don't think that the composting toilet is a solution in many situations. But the point about sanitation, the trick to solving sanitation which we're now all understanding is that you have to be flexible. One solution is not going to fit someone else, as Frank said.

You can't really be imposing sewers in a slum, for example, or composting toilets because nobody's - no authority is going to want to install infrastructure in a slum because that would automatically imply that people have land rights. So there's all sorts of political issues. So this issue is really complicated. That makes it fascinating, but it also makes it a huge challenge.

FLATOW: But composting toilets, they're used in public places. I know around here in New York, the Queens Botanical Garden has a wonderful composting toilet. It looks great and it has no smell. Took a tour of it once myself. There are other places that use it. Perhaps public places are where we might see them blossoming, for lack of a better word. They don't smell at all. You know, it's surprising.

RIJSBERMAN: They can work and we are certainly not against composting toilets and we'd love to see them improved further. Normal composting can take up to six months before all the pathogens are really removed from the waste, particularly worm eggs persist very long. So we'd love to have something that is really safe, much quicker than that, which probably involves higher temperatures. But we are certainly not against composting toilets. But as you say, they've been around for a long time and they've had, clearly, if you like, issues to be adopted at a wide scale. We'd love to see something that gives billions of people a new toilet much before Jim passes away.

We have to be rather more impatient optimists than that. And we think we can see solutions that will be ready for millions of people more like in three to five years, rather than 20 to 30.

FLATOW: If I heard what you just said, that if, you know, it's too long to wait for a few months for all these pathogens to settle out, are you saying that you might be able to create a toilet that sort of sterilizes itself?

RIJSBERMAN: Yes. We have a lot of other options that are currently being researched. I mean, like Daniel Yeh, we have about 60 of those grants this year and some people propose to use a method that is similar to creating charcoal. It's called creating bio-char. In essence, you heat it up to about 250 degrees, which after 10 minutes is pretty sure to no longer have pathogens. And it creates this bio-char, which is like charcoal, which you can then either put in the soil as a soil improver or in some cases where people cook on charcoal, it could even be cooking fuel.

FLATOW: So you have to not only create a new kind of toilet, but you need a system for disposal of what's left in the toilet.

RIJSBERMAN: That's critical, yes. And actually, we are saying where the current methods all look at this as waste that is costly to remove, we are looking at it as resource recovery, as recycling and that can actually get some money back to people that makes this all affordable.

FLATOW: So, like we used to throw out newspapers and bottles, which we don't do anymore, we recycle them, somebody might come by - somebody might - our toilet might be situated maybe with a door on the outside of our home or our building and somebody could come by and just replace it or the removable parts.

RIJSBERMAN: Yes. Actually, those kind of cartridge toilets are definitely being researched. We are working with a small NGO called Sanergy that, in Kibera, one of the worst slums in Nairobi in Africa, brings people these little cartridge toilets that actually do fit in their homes and collects them every couple days and then brings them to a neighborhood recycling place where you'd have a machine that creates bio-char, like charcoal, out of human waste. And that actually - for us, you'd be able to reduce the cost of treating waste to zero by basically generating revenue out of waste.

FLATOW: Jim McHale, you have this great video of an American Standard toilet, Standard Brand toilet on the internet that, no matter what you throw down there, from a dozen golf balls to 53 chicken nuggets or 56, is it, everything flushes. And with one flush. What is the engineering miracle there? What did you accomplish? How did you figure out how to do that?

MCHALE: That's our H2 option siphonic(ph) dual flush toilet. The trick to getting toilets to flush that well is all optimization of the internal chambers that you can't see. The water is flowing through different passageways that leads to the tank and eventually winds up in the bowl and down the trapway and down the drain. And as I think I mentioned earlier, we use computational fluid dynamics to understand the flow through those chambers and to reduce turbulence wherever it occurs so that we're not wasting any of the energy in the tank.

Any of the energy of the height of water in the tank. Or that's the only potential energy available to remove the waste. So the channels have to be designed perfectly to not waste any of that energy and make it do the work that we need it to do.

FLATOW: How about the composition of the toilet itself, the porcelain? Is there a special material, coating or something that's on there?

MCHALE: Well, we - the other aspect is - there's removing the waste, there's also cleaning the walls of the bowl. And there we've engineered what we call ever-clean antimicrobial glaze. The glaze is the glass coating on a piece of ceramic, what makes it look white and shiny is actually a glass coating. We've engineered that glass coating to be ultra smooth on the nano scale so that material doesn't stick to it. That also helps with the flush because we don't need to use as much water to wash the bowl, so the bowl - and we can put more water into powering the flush and moving waste down the drain.

FLATOW: Yeah, 'cause as we said before, that double flush is what wastes a lot of that water.

MCHALE: Yes, it does. And that's - sometimes toilet designers will miss that aspect of it. And you can have a bowl that removes solid waste very effectively, but if it doesn't clean the walls, people are going to - they're going to flush it twice.

FLATOW: You know, the toilet I hate to use the most is the one in airplanes that has that air sucking through the toilet bowl. I think that's really probably - 'cause my own - it's so loud, it really hurts your ears. I wonder if it breaks OSHA rules or something for sound level in some way. Has anybody thought of using that kind of technology, though, I wouldn't want to use one myself?

RIJSBERMAN: Yes, actually. In places where - in China, where they don't want to use six liters or 1.4 gallon or so to flush their toilets, the next thing, if you use only the one liter or so that people use to clean themselves, that's not enough to transport the waste, so then you have to have vacuum tubes in apartment buildings. Not necessarily the cheapest option, but that helps like an airplane toilet to move waste with very little water.

FLATOW: Let's go to Debbie(ph) in Layton, Utah. Hi, Debbie.

DEBBIE: Hi.

FLATOW: Hi there.

DEBBIE: I just have a quick comment. My family and I lived in Shanghai, China, actually, until just a couple years ago and we always thought it was so interesting. You know, the vast majority of toilets, especially in public places, are - we call them squatters for, you know, lack of a better term. And even when you could find a Western toilet, we would go in and we would very often see footprints where people had stood on top of the Western toilet because they thought that it was unhygienic to sit on a toilet where someone else had sat.

And they didn't know how to use it. And I just wondered if you could comment on the cultural implications of trying to switch, even in a country like China that obviously has the money and the political will to do it, still has not happened. Thank you.

FLATOW: Thank you. Rose George? Any comment?

GEORGE: I've heard of that as well. It's pretty common to hear of footprints on the seats. I mean, I'm not sure if Jim from American Standard is going to like this, but ergonomically and biologically, it's actually much better for us to squat anyway. So they're actually - I'm not actually against those mysterious footprint leavers on toilet seats. Obviously, hygienically, it may not be the best thing, but if they wipe it afterwards then I don't see that much wrong with it. So I don't see it as a huge cultural barrier. But it is interesting, if you look nearer to China, if you look at Japan, they went from, in about 60 years, from a nation of people who squatted and used pit latrines, essentially, to people sitting on Western seats and using Western-style toilets - oh, they're much improved and innovated upon, certainly more advanced in terms of robotic technology and stuff.

So it can be done, but it was a massive cultural shift. And it was very difficult, and took about 20 years or so. We just - we have all these quirks about our attitude to how we dispose of our own human deposits. I don't like to use the word waste. I avoid it if I can. But we're not rational beings about this, which is what makes it such an interesting topic and endlessly rich.

FLATOW: Because we know we do use manure from other animals as fertilizer and don't think twice about it. But people would be a little squeamish to use human waste.

GEORGE: I - when I was in a village in India, in (unintelligible), I remember vividly meeting a young woman who - I was talking to her about whether she wanted to use a biogas digester, which is an anaerobic digester, which - they're very popular China, about 18 million households have them. And there's - they're very energy efficient. You just tap off the meter and then you can produce - you can use it for cooking gas and use electricity. But in India, there is an attitude towards human waste which is very different. And it's very much seen as a taboo. So she looked absolutely horrified and then immediately stuck her hand in a big bowl of green cow manure and started spreading it all over her wool. So, you know, we are strange creatures.

FLATOW: Here's a tweet, came in from SCIENCE FRIDAY in Second Life. It says: Why isn't water from showers and washing machines normally reused for flushing toilets? It's even illegal by city building codes. Why - we're not drinking it. Why should we not use it. Any thoughts on that?

MCHALE: That actually is being done in some areas. It's called gray water reuse. People are collecting the water from the sink where you wash your hands or collecting the water from the shower and reusing it to flush the toilets. Actually, I think the Gates Foundation headquarters has toilets and urinals that function like that. A lot of new buildings are putting in systems to handle gray water in that manner. It's an infrastructure challenge, though, you need to put in the system to do it, but it's certainly feasible.

GEORGE: I think it's - so I think it's a regulatory challenge as well. I think a lot of times - it's not that it's illegal or legal. It's just that the regulations aren't there. So people - you do have a kind of underground gray water recycling community, and that they're not quite sure where they stand. But it makes - it just makes perfect sense. There should be more of it.

FLATOW: I'm Ira Flatow. This SCIENCE FRIDAY from NPR. Rose, you went to Japan to investigate the toilets there. We have seen pictures of these toilets that cost thousands and thousands of dollars. What's your feeling about this?

GEORGE: Well, I have to confess I do actually have one, so I feel very happy about it. But it was given to me by Toto, who is the leading brand and I should say - without wanting to give them market advantage - the second brand is called INAX. Anyway, there are basically three big Japanese plumbing companies who have developed these astonishing toilets. And, of course, you don't need a several thousand dollar toilet. I mean, they are amazing, but what they do do, which is I think the biggest selling point, is that they can clean you.

So if you actually think about toilet paper, toilet tissue, it's not - we're using something dry to clean the dirtiest parts of our body, whereas we wash everything else. It really doesn't make much sense. Whereas these Japanese toilets, and you can just get a sort of add-on toilet seat, which has an in-built bidet nozzle. And I think hygienically, they are far superior to my toilet in the U.K., for example.

FLATOW: But then you're using more water.

GEORGE: You are using a little more water. I haven't looked into the exact statistics of it, but it's not that much. It's - because if the nozzle is efficiently designed at the correct angle - and trust me, these Japanese companies have spent years and millions of dollars doing the research to put it at an exact angle. I think it's quite efficient. Oh, the other difficulty with these toilets is they do need electricity, so if you're trying to reduce your carbon footprint, then maybe they're not for you.

FLATOW: Certainly, that's the last thing you're going to worry about if you have one of these toilets, is whether you have enough electricity for it.

RIJSBERMAN: The challenge for our toilet inventors then is to come up with a toilet where even Rose would replace her Toto with one of our reinvented toilets. And frankly all our reinvented toilets do use water to clean people, but that takes maybe half a liter or a liter. What we are against is the larger amount of water to transport our waste. And while we really talk about the toilet only now, we are, of course, thinking of the whole system. It's not so much a toilet that is unaffordable. It's the sewers and the wastewater treatment plants that are unaffordable.

There are some 2 billion, if you like to call them, toilets out there, they're really latrines and septic tanks, that are not connected to anything. And indeed part of our work is not only to reinvent the toilet, but to link services to those latrines and septic tanks so that they can be safely emptied because today, those toilets are often emptied by hand, by bucket, and then that waste is dumped around the corner in the alley where kids play. So beyond the actual toilet that we sit on, it's really the whole system of sanitation services that interests us.

And a lot of the money that we give out - and we are, by the way - and I can tell you that as a news item, we are announcing a whole new set of grants tomorrow on our blogs, some $48 million worth of new grants. But a lot of that is not for reinventing the toilets as the user interface. It's also for systems that are safe and affordable for people to empty their latrines and to generate energy and nutrients from that waste.

FLATOW: Allright. Thank you very much, and we'll be watching for that announcement tomorrow. Frank Rijsberman is the director of water sanitation and hygiene at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in Seattle. And they have the Reinvent the Toilet Challenge. They have about eight people in the running - eight organizations running to - is there a prize for that or just - you've already given out the money in challenges?

RIJSBERMAN: No. Part of the challenge is they'll come and present their prototypes next year, and then the winners will get more money for the best toilet.

FLATOW: Great. Rose George is author of "The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why It Matters," a very good reading book. You know where you might want to read that book. Jim McHale is vice president of engineering at American Standard Brands in Piscataway, New Jersey. Thank you, Jim, for taking time to be with us today.

MCHALE: It's my pleasure.

FLATOW: Have all a great weekend. We're going to take a break and we'll be right back. Stay with us.

I'm Ira Flatow. This is SCIENCE FRIDAY from NPR.

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Source: http://www.npr.org/2011/11/18/142512096/building-a-better-toilet?ft=1&f=1007

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শনিবার, ১৯ নভেম্বর, ২০১১

European bank chief urges action on rescue fund (Reuters)

FRANKFURT (Reuters) ? European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi told euro zone governments on Friday to act fast to get their rescue fund up and running, expressing exasperation at their lack of progress in responding to the escalating debt crisis.

The ECB is under intense pressure to play a greater role in tackling the euro zone crisis. A Reuters poll of 50 bond strategists in Europe and the United States gave an even probability that it would eventually agree to print money.

Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany rebuffed demands from British Prime Minister David Cameron for decisive action, making clear she favoured a step-by-step approach that has seen Germany resist calls for the ECB to backstop other governments.

"The British demand that we use a large amount of firepower to win back credibility for the euro zone is right," Merkel said. "But we have to take care that we don't pretend to have powers we don't have. Because the markets will figure out very quickly that this won't work."

A Reuters poll of 50 bond strategists in Europe and the United States however gave an even probability that the ECB would eventually agree to print money.

Draghi put the onus firmly on governments, saying they had failed to put into practice decisions underpinning the European Financial Stability Facility -- the rescue fund which they have promised to give more firepower without yet explaining how.

"Where is the implementation of these long-standing decisions?" Draghi said at a banking conference in Frankfurt. "We should not be waiting any longer."

Many analysts believe the only way to stem the contagion in a crisis that began with Greece but now risks engulfing Italy, Spain and even France is for the ECB to buy up large quantities of bonds, effectively the sort of 'quantitative easing' undertaken by the U.S. and British central banks.

That would be a highly controversial break from its existing policy, where it offsets government bond purchases by draining liquidity from the system in separate operations.

While the ECB, with strong German support, is anxious to remain free from political interference and is resisting calls to take major action, it has made limited bond purchases that have steadied investors' nerves.

FIVE-WEEK LOWS

The euro rose on Friday as pressure on Italian and Spanish bonds eased after the ECB stepped in to stabilize the market, but fears that both countries' borrowing costs are at unsustainable levels sent European shares to new five-week lows.

Deutsche Bank Chief Executive Josef Ackermann said European states could not rely on the ECB to solve the euro zone debt crisis. "The ECB's primary role should not be to take up these bonds," he said.

Euro zone governments have set a December deadline to strengthen the EFSF but these efforts have been undermined by delays, surging borrowing costs and scant investor interest.

In Rome, Prime Minister Mario Monti won an overwhelming vote of confidence in parliament after warning politicians they would have to face the Italian public if they sabotaged a sweeping package of reforms aimed at ending an acute debt crisis

"But we think that if we do a good job, then you too, when you give us a vote of confidence or withdraw it, should remember what the consequences will be for citizens' confidence in you," said Monti, who was sworn in on Wednesday as head of a government of experts after a rushed transition from the discredited Silvio Berlusconi.

With Italy's borrowing costs now at unsustainable levels, Monti will have to work fast to calm financial markets, given that Italy needs to refinance some 200 billion euros ($273 billion) of bonds by the end of April.

Greece's new government took a first step toward meeting terms of an international bailout its needs in order to avoid bankruptcy, submitting a budget bill that foresees no new austerity measures next year as long as reforms are enacted.

The draft predicted Greece would slide into a fifth year of recession, but economists said years of tax hikes, public salary and pension cuts and other austerity measures could send the economy deeper into contraction and the draft spending plan's forecasts are probably too optimistic.

But still more important, analysts said, was a rift between parties in technocrat Prime Minister Lucas Papademos's unity coalition caused by jockeying for position by the conservative New Democracy party ahead of an election slated for February 19.

Papademos must win pledges from the rival parties that they will do what it takes to meet bailout terms or Greece's lenders will withhold an 8 billion euro aid tranche Athens needs to dodge default next month, plus longer-term financing later.

(Writing by Giles Elgood; Editing by Mike Peacock and Patrick Graham)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/eurobiz/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111118/bs_nm/us_eurozone

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