Familiar styling and minimalist branding essentially confirm the launch of this new device
Frequent and accurate device leaker @evleaks has just dropped this little gem on our hands -- the LG Optimus G Pro for AT&T. Just a few days before we're set to see what LG has to unveil at a press conference on May 1st, we are likely looking at one of the devices set to be unveiled. The hardware looks very similar to what we found in our review of the international version, complete with a home button LED, brushed silver camera pod and plastic back with textured design. The only difference here looks to be in terms of a small AT&T logo on the back, and the usual AT&T, NFC and 4G LTE logos up in the status bar of the phone.
If you need to refresh your memory on the merits of the Optimus G Pro, we've got a whole lot of content for you to take a look at. Be sure to take a look back at our review of the international device, a deeper look at the new "VR Panorama" photosphere feature, and of course check out our hands-on video below. Naturally, we'll be in New York to see for sure what LG has to unveil on May 1st as well.
Mark Zuckerberg showed he's more than just a social butterfly earlier this month, forming the tech-focused political lobby group FWD.us alongside some other big names in the industry. Now, according to AllThingsD, a few more heavy-hitters have signed up to offer their expertise, including Microsoft's Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, Sean Parker and Intuit CEO Brad Smith. Not a bad crew to have on your side when technology issues are up for discussion, especially Ballmer -- he's notoriously good at getting his point across.
ParElastic, a startup in the cloud data management space, is announcing $5.7 million in funding led by General Catalyst with CommonAngels, Point Judith Capital and Launch Capital, as well as angel investor Jit Saxena (founders of Netazza Software) participating. This brings the startup's total funding to $8.7 million.
In the coming decade and beyond, new telescopes on mountaintops and in orbit will reveal the birth of galaxies, locate (possibly) habitable worlds orbiting other stars, and track asteroids that might impact Earth.
By Kiona Smith-Strickland
", credit: "", sourceid: null, sourcename: "", sourceurl: null, sourcelogo: "", thumbsrc: "/cm/popularmechanics/images/VP/future-telescopes-01-0413-smn.jpg", src: "/cm/popularmechanics/images/mT/future-telescopes-01-0413-lgn.jpg", srcwidth: 600, srcheight: 450 }, { id: "slide2", url: "5-tremendous-telescopes-of-the-future-2", slidetype: "image", title: "2018: James Webb Space Telescope", description: "Because it takes about 13 billion years for light to reach Earth from the most distant galaxies in the universe, those images provide a glimpse into the universe\'s past. A million miles above Earth, the James Webb Space Telescope will study the oldest light in the universe to understand how galaxies formed after the Big Bang.\n
\nAs cosmic objects move farther away, our view of their light shifts toward the red end of the spectrum; light from very distant objects is shifted into the infrared spectrum, which makes infrared telescopes like Webb ideal for studying the oldest objects in space. \n
\nThe more light telescopes collect, the more deeply they can see into the sky. Webb will collect a lot of light: Its 6.5-meter (21-foot) segmented mirror is too wide to fit on a rocket, so it will fold up like origami alongside a sun shield the size of a tennis court, both of which will unfurl once Webb reaches orbit. \n
\nWebb has a projected lifespan of five years, but scientists hope it will last up to 10. However, repairs, like those that have kept its predecessor, Hubble, flying since 1990, will be impossible for Webb. \"It\'s four times higher than the moon, so the day that it stops operating it\'s just going to stay there,\" says Ray Villard, news director for the Space Telescope Science Institute. \n
\nSome scientists consider that a risky proposition. Webb\'s price tag has grown from its original $1 billion budget to about $8.8 billion, forcing NASA to take money from other projects, like the Wide-field Infrared Survey Telescope commercial flights to the International Space Station, to foot the bill.\n
\nIn response, researchers have tried to pack Webb with as many instruments for as many studies as possible ? adding further expense. With Webb, space science is putting most of its eggs in one very expensive basket that can\'t be repaired if it breaks. \n
", credit: "", sourceid: null, sourcename: "", sourceurl: null, sourcelogo: "", thumbsrc: "/cm/popularmechanics/images/yy/future-telescopes-02-0413-smn.jpg", src: "/cm/popularmechanics/images/kB/future-telescopes-02-0413-lgn.jpg", srcwidth: 600, srcheight: 450 }, { id: "slide3", url: "5-tremendous-telescopes-of-the-future-3", slidetype: "image", title: "2020: Giant Magellan Telescope", description: "With a 24.5-meter (80-foot) primary mirror, the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT), to be built in the mountains of Chile, will be able to collect more light than any existing telescope. Its primary mirror consists of six 8.4-meter mirrors arranged around a 7.7-meter central mirror. With their combined light-gathering capability, GMT will study some of the most distant objects in the universe.\n
\nGMT will look directly at planets outside our solar system for the first time. Currently, astronomers can study planets in other solar systems only indirectly by observing the way a star \"wobbles\" slightly when affected by a planet\'s gravity, or measuring the change in the chemical spectra of a star when a planet crosses it. Researchers can \"subtract\" the planet\'s spectra from the star\'s to draw conclusions about the planet\'s size and composition.\n
\nWith GMT, astronomers will actually be able to see these extrasolar planets in images 10 times clearer than those from Hubble. \"Once you can actually see them, you can measure a lot of interesting properties,\" GMT director Patrick McCarthy told Popular Mechanics, including color and even some weather patterns.\n
\n\"We chose not to enter into what would be a decades-long process that might lead to federal funding and might not, but might lead to delays in the project and probably additional costs,\" McCarthy told PM. Instead, the program receives funding from its institutional partners, including Australian National University, Astronomy Australia Limited, the Carnegie Institution for Science, Harvard University, the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute, The Smithsonian Institution, Texas A&M University, the University of Arizona, the University of Chicago, and the University of Texas at Austin. \n
\nIn light of the current federal budget situation, he said, \"I think we\'re looking fairly wise.\" \n
", credit: "", sourceid: null, sourcename: "", sourceurl: null, sourcelogo: "", thumbsrc: "/cm/popularmechanics/images/Rf/future-telescopes-03-0413-smn.jpg", src: "/cm/popularmechanics/images/eY/future-telescopes-03-0413-lgn.jpg", srcwidth: 600, srcheight: 450 }, { id: "slide4", url: "5-tremendous-telescopes-of-the-future-4", slidetype: "image", title: "2021: Large Synoptic Survey Telescope", description: "From the mountains of Chile, the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) will map the entire sky rapidly an in greater depth than existing projects, like the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). With its 3.2-gigapixel camera\'s wide field of view, LSST will scan the whole sky twice a week in a series of panoramic shots. An 8.4-meter primary mirror gives it a large light-gathering area, so LSST can detect very faint objects in those panoramas; for a given area of sky, LSST\'s images will reveal 10 times as many galaxies as SDSS.\n
\nThe rapid scans will help build a detailed map of the sky, which researchers will compare with new images to detect changes, like new transient objects. Astronomers expect to discover billions of new objects with LSST, from the most distant stars to the asteroids nearest Earth.\n
\n\"It will be the first time that astronomers have cataloged more objects than there are living people on Earth,\" Zeljko Ivezic of the LSST project tells PM. \n
\nSuch objects include potentially dangerous asteroids, most of which are currently unmapped. A federal mandate charges LSST with finding and mapping the trajectories of 90 percent of Near-Earth Objects wider than 140 meters within 10 years. Researchers hope LSST will also identify smaller?but still dangerous?objects, like the 17-20-meter asteroid that struck Chelyabinsk, Russia in February 2013.\n
\nLSST, a joint project of numerous institutions, including the Space Telescope Science Institute, several universities and national laboratories, and the government of Chile, has received a number of private donations to fund construction. These include $20 million from software developer and space tourist Charles Simonyi and $10 million from Microsoft founder Bill Gates, but, \"We have not received our federal construction money yet. We are hopeful to be in the 2014 budget,\" Suzanne Jacoby of LSST says. \"We\'re funded for most of [2013]. We\'re just waiting to see what happens.\" \n
", credit: "", sourceid: null, sourcename: "", sourceurl: null, sourcelogo: "", thumbsrc: "/cm/popularmechanics/images/MH/future-telescopes-04-0413-smn.jpg", src: "/cm/popularmechanics/images/Kc/future-telescopes-04-0413-lgn.jpg", srcwidth: 600, srcheight: 450 }, { id: "slide5", url: "5-tremendous-telescopes-of-the-future-5", slidetype: "image", title: "2030: Advanced Technology Large-Aperture Space Telescope", description: "The Advanced Technology Large-Aperture Space Telescope (ATLAST) is a NASA project currently in the conceptual stage, but it offers a glimpse at the next generation of telescopes. Engineers have designed several models for ATLAST with primary mirrors between 8-meters and 16-meters in diameter, the smallest of which still would be larger than the largest current space telescopes and 2000 times more sensitive than Hubble, with a resolution five to 10 times better than the James Webb Space Telescope.\n
\nRay Villard of the Space Telescope Science Institute describes ATLAST as a \"life finder.\" It will analyze the spectra of distant planets to detect water vapor, ozone, methane, and other possible signatures of life. ATLAST will also study the universe\'s origins, investigate dark matter, and probe other mysteries we haven\'t even discovered yet.\n
An array of wide-field telescopes known as the Transiting Exoplanet Survey (TESS) will launch in 2017 to conduct the first space-based survey of the entire sky in the search for habitable planets orbiting other stars. TESS will search for planets that pass between Earth and their own stars, causing a change in the observed light from the star?what?s called the transit method.
Ground-based telescopes have used this method to find exoplanets in previous surveys, which have found mostly gas giants similar to Jupiter. Smaller, rocky planets like Earth and Mars are better prospects for life, but they are also harder to spot.
The Kepler space telescope, launched in 2009, has identified some smaller worlds among its 115 confirmed discoveries, such as Kepler-37b, a rocky planet about the size of Earth?s moon with an average temperature of 800 degrees F. However, Kepler is searching for planets around only 100,000 stars in a relatively small slice of the sky. TESS will cover about 400 times as much area.
"It will identify thousands of new planets in the solar neighborhood, with a special focus on planets comparable in size to the Earth," said the project?s principal investigator George Ricker of MIT, in a release. Once it has identified those planets, TESS?s instrument package will allow it to study their orbits, masses, densities, and the chemical composition of their atmospheres.
NASA announced funding for the MIT-led project on April 8 through its Explorers Program, the goal of which is to fund more frequent science missions at relatively low cost per mission. The program imposes a $200 million budget cap on satellite missions like TESS and a $55 million limit on space station missions. Since 1958, the program has launched 90 missions.
DUBAI (Reuters) - Iran said on Tuesday it had started production at two uranium mines and a yellow cake plant, declaring that Western opposition would not slow its nuclear program days after talks between Tehran and world powers failed to reach an accord.
The country opened the Saghand 1 and 2 uranium mines in the central city of Yazd, which will extract uranium from a depth of 350 meters, and the Shahid Rezaeinejad yellow cake plant at Ardakan to mark Iran's National Nuclear Technology Day, state news agency IRNA said.
The Ardakan plant is capable of producing 66 tons of yellow cake - raw uranium - annually, IRNA said.
The United States and some allies suspect Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapons capability but Iran says its atomic program, including its enrichment of uranium, is for purely peaceful purposes. Talks between Iran and world powers held in Kazakhstan last week failed to reach a breakthrough.
"They (world powers) tried their utmost to prevent Iran from going nuclear, but Iran has gone nuclear," Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in a speech at Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation on Tuesday.
"This nuclear technology and power and science has been institutionalized ... All the stages are in our control and every day that we go forward a new horizon opens up before the Iranian nation."
(Additional reporting by Fredrik Dahl in Vienna; Editing by Pravin Char)
In China, You Can Pay Women To Play Video Games With You
In many parts of Asia, there is a job called "beer companion". It's exactly as its name implies. Young women working for a bar or a beer company dress in relatively skimpy outfits to drink with and to entertain bar guests. It's already hit the West, but this seems this type of service is now moving towards the video game world in China.
According to People's Daily, this gaming companion service is a recent thing in China. The service comes in two different types. The first type is a promotion and the other you for pay. In the promotion category, a game company offers a promotion where players can play games with pretty ladies. For pay service, gamers can pay for companions to play online games with them.
What this comes down to is that Chinese players are paying to play with companions online...and paying to play with companions in person.
This service seems to be geared towards male gamers. A quick search online for the phrase gaming companion (MM??) brings up girls looking cute to solicit gamer clients. It should be noted that MM in China refers to "younger sister" (mei mei??), which is also a term often associated with sex workers.
According to the People's Daily, this concept first came about when news broke out about a high-end World of Warcraft club that offered online companion services 24/7. Basically, a member of the WoW club would log on, request a companion and then have someone to play with until they log off.
After the revelation of the WoW club, enterprising "gamers" started advertising similar services of companion play. Some of them offered to in person gaming at a local Internet cafe, others were just online play. The prices vary greatly. It appears playing with a "ranked" gamer will cost about 8 dollars an hour whereas an "amateur" will go for about 3 dollars an hour.
One shop on Chinese e-commerce supersite Taobao.com that Kotaku questioned about services said that pretty much most of the services are "agencies". The shop that we contacted offered the services of a "Dear Sue". The person running the shop chatted with us online through the QQ account of a woman, but we have no way verify her gender. "She" was offering services in games such as Defense of the Ancients,League of Legends, and Counter Strike.
"We have lots of different girls of different skills that can play with you," said 'Sue', despite the fact that her site only advertised her services. "We offer online play only, 1 vs. 1."
This agent also said that "she" couldn't guarantee that we would win our match. On top of that "she" also said that they used the YY TeamChat program to converse.
While there is nothing too sinister about the concept of companion play, searches into the subject leads to some pretty sketchy stuff. Halfway through a search on Taobao.com, the results return with some pretty pornographic material. It's unclear what this entails about the whole situation.
So far, we haven't been able to contact a shop offering in person companion play.
[???????????DotA??20?] [People's Daily]
[Taobao search for MM??] [Taobao.com]
Kotaku East is your slice of Asian internet culture, bringing you the latest talking points from Japan, Korea, China and beyond. Tune in every morning from 4am to 8am.
Apr. 8, 2013 ? Controlling the shapes of nanometer-sized catalytic and electrocatalytic particles made from noble metals such as platinum and palladium may be more complicated than previously thought.
Using systematic experiments, researchers have investigated how surface diffusion -- a process in which atoms move from one site to another on nanoscale surfaces -- affects the final shape of the particles. The issue is important for a wide range of applications that use specific shapes to optimize the activity and selectivity of nanoparticles, including catalytic converters, fuel cell technology, chemical catalysis and plasmonics.
Results of the research could lead to a better understanding of how to manage the diffusion process by controlling the reaction temperature and deposition rate, or by introducing structural barriers designed to hinder the surface movement of atoms.
"We want to be able to design the synthesis to produce nanoparticles with the exact shape we want for each specific application," said Younan Xia, a professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University. "Fundamentally, it is important to understand how these shapes are formed, to visualize how this happens on structures over a length scale of about 100 atoms."
The research was reported April 8 in the early online edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The research was sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF).
Controlling the shape of nanoparticles is important in catalysis and other applications that require the use of expensive noble metals such as platinum and palladium. For example, optimizing the shape of platinum nanoparticles can substantially enhance their catalytic activity, reducing demand for the precious material, noted Xia, who is a Georgia Research Alliance (GRA) eminent scholar in nanomedicine. Xia also holds joint appointments in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry and the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Georgia Tech.
"Controlling the shape is very important to tuning the activity of catalysts and in minimizing the loading of the catalysts," he said. "Shape control is also very important in plasmonic applications, where the shape controls where optical absorption and scattering peaks are positioned. Shape is also important to determining where the electrical charges will be concentrated on nanoparticles."
Though the importance of particle shape at the nanoscale has been well known, researchers hadn't before understood the importance of surface diffusion in creating the final particle shape. Adding atoms to the corners of platinum cubes, for instance, can create particles with protruding "arms" that increase the catalytic activity. Convex surfaces on cubic particles may also provide better performance. But those advantageous shapes must be created and maintained.
Natural energetic preferences related to the arrangement of atoms on the tiny structures favor a spherical shape that is not ideal for most catalysts, fuel cells and other applications.
In their research, Xia and his collaborators varied the temperature of the process used to deposit atoms onto metallic nanocrystals that acted as seeds for the nanoparticles. They also varied the rates at which atoms were deposited onto the surfaces, which were determined by the injection rate at which a chemical precursor material was introduced. The diffusion rate is determined by the temperature, with higher temperatures allowing the atoms to move around faster on the nanoparticle surfaces. In the research, bromide ions were used to limit the movement of the added atoms from one portion of the particle to another.
Using transmission electron microscopy, the researchers observed the structures that were formed under different conditions. Ultimately, they found that the ratio of the deposition rate to the diffusion rate determines the final shape. When the ratio is greater than one, the adsorbed atoms tend to stay where they are placed. If the ratio is less than one, they tend to move.
"Unless the atomic reaction is at absolute zero, you will always have some diffusion," said Xia, who holds the Brock Family Chair in the Department of Biomedical Engineering. "But if you can add atoms to the surface in the places that you want them faster than they can diffuse, you can control the final destination for the atoms."
Xia believes the research may also lead to improved techniques for preserving the unique shapes of nanoparticles even at high operating temperatures.
"Fundamentally, it is very useful for people to know how these shapes are formed," he said. "Most of these structures had been observed before, but people did not understand why they formed under certain conditions. To do that, we need to be able to visualize what happens on these tiny structures."
Xia's research team also studied the impact of diffusion on bi-metallic particles composed of both palladium and platinum. The combination can enhance certain properties, and because palladium is currently less expensive than platinum, using a core of palladium covered by a thin layer of platinum provides the catalytic activity of platinum while reducing cost.
In that instance, surface diffusion can be helpful in covering the palladium surface with a single monolayer of the platinum. Only the surface platinum atoms will be able to provide the catalytic properties, while the palladium core only serves as a support.
The research is part of a long-term study of catalytic nanoparticles being conducted by Xia's research group. Other aspects of the team's work addresses biomedical uses of nanoparticles in such areas as cancer therapy.
"We are very excited by this result because it is generic and can apply to understand and control diffusion on the surfaces of many systems," Xia added. "Ultimately we want to see how we can take advantage of this diffusion to improve the catalytic and optical properties of these nanoparticles."
The research team also included Xiaohu Xia, Shuifen Xie, Maochang Liu and Hsin-Chieh Peng at Georgia Tech; and Ning Lu, Jinguo Wang and Professor Moon J. Kim at the University of Texas at Dallas.
This research was supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under grant DMR-1215034 and by startup funds from Georgia Tech. Any conclusions expressed are those of the principal investigator and may not necessarily represent the official views of the NSF.
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Story Source:
The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Georgia Institute of Technology. The original article was written by John Toon.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
X. Xia, S. Xie, M. Liu, H.-C. Peng, N. Lu, J. Wang, M. J. Kim, Y. Xia. On the role of surface diffusion in determining the shape or morphology of noble-metal nanocrystals. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2013; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1222109110
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
The Tribeca Film Institute (TFI) today announced the projects that will receive financial and creative support from the TFI Sloan Filmmaker Fund, provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.? This year, four projects which were chosen from 127 applicants from around the world, will be awarded a total of $140,000 and will be recognized at the annual Tribeca Film Festival, taking place April 17-28, 2013.? The winning films are: 2030, Newton?s Laws of Emotion, Oldest Man Alive and The Doctor.? The projects, which all integrate science and technology themes and characters into their story lines, focus on subjects ranging from climate? change and genetic engineering to physics, medicine and invention.
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The TFI Sloan Filmmaker Fund bestows grants to narrative film projects that dramatize science and technology themes in film or that portray scientists, engineers, or mathematicians in prominent character roles. Grant recipients also receive year-round mentorship from science experts and members of the film industry in order to complete their projects.? 2013 marks the 12th year of the partnership between TFI and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, a founding sponsor of the Tribeca Film Festival and TFI.? The Sloan Foundation will also present a 20th anniversary retrospective screening and discussion of the internationally acclaimed AIDS film And the Band Played On during the Festival.
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The winning projects were selected by a jury composed of film and science luminaries including actors Clark Middleton (Kill Bill: Vol. II, Sin City), Ron Livingston (Office Space, Band of Brothers), Dean Winters (?Oz,? ?30 Rock,? ?Rescue Me?), Helen Fisher, PhD, biological anthropologist; and John Quackenbusch, Harvard professor of computational biology and bioinformatics.
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In addition to financial and year-round ancillary support, TFI Sloan Filmmaker Fund grant recipients will receive exposure to industry executives, financiers and producers during the Tribeca Film Festival. Grant recipients will have the opportunity to present their projects to industry executives during one-on-one pitch sessions at TFI Industry Meetings. The additional support gives winners and their projects unparalleled access and visibility.? 2011 grantee, A Birder?s Guide to Everything (Rob Meyer, director, screenwriter; Luke Matheny, screenwriter; Paul Miller, producer), starring Academy Award? winner Ben Kingsley, will have its world premiere during this year?s Tribeca Film Festival.? Last year?s grantee, Computer Chess, premiered at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Sloan Feature Film Prize, and has been acquired by Kino Lorber.
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Additionally, this year TFI will launch the TFI Professional Partnership, an initiative that will continue TFI's commitment to supporting the careers and projects of their grantees, including those involved with the Sloan Filmmaker Fund. The initiative will partner leading media companies with a pool of talented filmmakers. The partnership will allow these filmmakers to translate their filmmaking skills into areas such as television, web, marketing, and education. The TFI Professional Partnership will kick off with a professional development panel during the Festival.? After the panel, each partnering company will select at least two grantees for further one-on-one development and consideration for their business needs. Partnering companies include NBC Universal and Warner Bros.
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?For the past 12 years, TFI has worked in conjunction with the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to nurture and promote new projects that merge science and character-driven storytelling in a way that is unique in the industry,? said Tamir Muhammad, Director of Feature Programming, TFI. ?In addition, this year marks the fifth anniversary of the Sloan retrospective screening at TFF and this year?s film, And the Band Played On, is a great example of the blending of science and human interest on screen that the TFI Sloan Filmmaker Fund champions.??
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?We are thrilled to partner again with Tribeca in supporting filmmakers who engage with science and technology themes and characters in innovative ways,? said Doron Weber, Vice President, Programs at the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.? ?Three completed feature films ? Future Weather, Computer Chess and ABirder?s Guide to Everything ? have already emerged from this pioneering partnership and we look? forward to seeing this year?s winning film in theaters in the coming years.?
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Selected projects for funding:
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In a near future Vietnam where seawater has buried a large part of the land and cultivation has to be done on floating farms, a strong-willed woman has to make a critical decision about her ex-lover, a geneticist who could be her husband?s murderer.? Nghiem-Minh Nguyen-Vo (Screenwriter, Director), Bao Nguyen (Producer)
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Newton?s Laws of Emotion
As a young Isaac Newton pursues the affections of a headstrong princess, he seeks to uncover the principles of love using his new system of mathematics. However, his equations start to break down when her former lover enters the scene.? Eugene Ramos (Screenwriter), Andeep Singh (producer)
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A suicidal 88-year-old inventor finds a reason to live in the young Romanian woman who saves him from drowning. But when she moves into his Manhattan townhouse, it upsets his son and daughter-in-law, who have waited decades to inherit the multi-million dollar dwelling.? Antonio Tibaldi (Screenwriter, Director), Ryan Brown (Screenwriter)
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Salim, a disgraced young doctor from India, will do anything to get back into medicine. But when he takes a job at an illegal clinic in New York, he finds more danger than redemption.? Musa Syeed (Screenwriter, Director), Nicholas Bruckman (Producer)
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On Monday, April 22, the grant-winning film projects will have scenes from their screenplays performed by an esteemed cast at the invitation-only Sloan Work-In-Progress Readings at The Crosby Hotel.?
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The Sloan Foundation and TFI will present a Sloan 20th anniversary retrospective screening of the film And the Band Played On followed by a panel that explores the science of AIDS through the arts and features prominent figures in film and science. The panel will examine the science of AIDS and the social politics surrounding the AIDS epidemic from the 1980?s until the present, and analyze how the AIDS crisis has inspired storytelling that engages scientists, artists and politicians as part of ?Tribeca Talks: After the Movie.?
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And the Band Played On ? Sloan Retrospective Screening and Panel?
Saturday, April 27 at SVA Theater, 3:30 p.m.
Celebrating its twentieth anniversary, And the Band Played On premiered at the height of the AIDS epidemic in the early ?90s.? The film examines the facts surrounding the deadly disease and debunks many of its myths.? The film won three Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Made for Television Movie.? Topping the incredible ensemble cast is Matthew Modine, who received Emmy and Golden Globe-nominations for his poignant portrayal of a doctor who heads an American research team.?
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About the Tribeca Film Institute:
The Tribeca Film Institute is a 501(c)3 year round nonprofit arts organization founded by Robert De Niro, Jane Rosenthal, and Craig Hatkoff in the wake of September 11, 2001. TFI empowers filmmakers through grants and professional development, and is a resource and advocate for individual artists in the field. The Institute?s educational programming leverages an extensive film community network to help underserved New York City students learn filmmaking and gain the media skills necessary to be productive citizens and creative individuals in the 21st century. Administering a dozen major programs annually, TFI is a critical contributor to the fabric of filmmaking and aids in protecting the livelihood of filmmakers and media artists.
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For more information and a list of all TFI programs visit www.tribecafilminstitute.org/
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Follow us on Twitter @TribecaFilmIns.? Join the conversation #scienceandfilm.
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About the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation:
The New York based Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, founded in 1934, makes grants in science, technology, and economic performance.? Sloan?s program in public understanding of science and technology, directed by Doron Weber, supports books, radio, film, television, theater and new media to reach a wide, non-specialized audience.?
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Sloan?s film program encourages filmmakers to create more realistic and accurate stories about science and technology and to challenge existing stereotypes about scientists and engineers in the popular imagination. Over the past decade, the Foundation has partnered with some of the top film schools in the country ? including AFI, Carnegie Mellon, Columbia, NYU, UCLA, and USC ? and established annual awards in screenwriting and film production and an annual best-of-the-best Student Grand Jury Prize that Tribeca administers. Sloan also supports Screenplay Development Programs at Sundance,? Hamptons International Film Festival, Film Independent and Tribeca? and has developed such film projects as Future Weather, a coming of age story about a young woman who finds personal meaning in science, starring Lili Taylor and Amy Madigan (which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival); Valley of Saints and Robot and Frank both of which premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival and shared the Sloan Feature Film Prize; A Birder?s Guide to Everything which will premiere at this year?s Tribeca Film Festival; and Computer Chess, which premiered at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival and will be released in theatres this summer.
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The Foundation awards annual Science and Technology Feature Film Prizes and has honored feature films such as The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Grizzly Man,Obselidia, Agora and Another Earth. Sloan also partners with Ensemble Studio Theatre and Manhattan Theatre Club in support of new science plays such as Isaac?s Eye about the rivalry between Isaac Newton and Robert Hooke and the upcoming world premiere of The Explorers Club, a witty satire about gender bias in science. ?For more information about the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation please visit www.sloan.org. ?
Apr. 1, 2013 ? Pharmaceuticals commonly found in the environment are disrupting streams, with unknown impacts on aquatic life and water quality. So reports a new Ecological Applications paper, which highlights the ecological cost of pharmaceutical waste and the need for more research into environmental impacts.
Lead author Dr. Emma Rosi-Marshall, a scientist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, comments: "Pharmaceutical pollution is now detected in waters throughout the world. Causes include aging infrastructure, sewage overflows, and agricultural runoff. Even when waste water makes it to sewage treatment facilities, they aren't equipped to remove pharmaceuticals. As a result, our streams and rivers are exposed to a cocktail of synthetic compounds, from stimulants and antibiotics to analgesics and antihistamines."
With colleagues from Indiana University and Loyola University Chicago, Rosi-Marshall looked at how six common pharmaceuticals influenced similar-sized streams in New York, Maryland, and Indiana. Caffeine, the antibiotic ciprofloxacin, the antidiabetic metformin, two antihistimines used to treat heartburn (cimetidine and ranitidine), and one antihistamine used to treat allergies (diphenhydramine) were investigated, both alone and in combinations, using pharmaceutical-diffusing substrates.
Rosi-Marshall explains, "We focused on the response of biofilms -- which most people know as the slippery coating on stream rocks -- because they're vital to stream health. They might not look like much to the naked eye, but biofilms are complex communities composed of algae, fungi, and bacteria all living and working together. In streams, biofilms contribute to water quality by recycling nutrients and organic matter. They're also a major food source for invertebrates that, in turn, feed larger animals like fish."
Healthy streams are slippery streams. And it turns out that antihistamines dry more than our noses. The most striking result of the study was diphenhydramine's effects on algal production and microbial respiration. Exposure caused biofilms to experience up to a 99% decrease in photosynthesis, as well as significant drops in respiration. Diphenhydramine also caused a change in the bacterial species present in the biofilms, including an increase in a bacterial group known to degrade toxic compounds and a reduction in a group that digests compounds produced by plants and algae.
Results suggest that this antihistamine is disrupting the ecology of these sensitive biofilm communities. Rosi-Marshall notes, "We know that diphenhydramine is commonly found in the environment. And its effect on biofilms could have repercussions for animals in stream food webs, like insects and fish. We need additional studies looking at the concentrations that cause ecosystem disruption, and how they react with other stressors, such as excess nutrients."
The other pharmaceuticals investigated also had a measurable effect on biofilm respiration, both alone and in combinations. More work is needed to understand how drug mixtures, which most natural streams experience, impact freshwater systems.
Society's dependence on pharmaceuticals is not likely to wane. Nor is its need for clean, fresh water. This study adds another piece of evidence to the case calling for innovations in the way we manage waste water. Currently, only a fraction of the world's waste water is treated, and the infrastructure in many developed nations is aging.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies.
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