Large Hadron Collider atom smasher collides particles at record energies

Protons zoom around the 17-mile underground loop of the Large Hadron Collider below Switzerland and France, and then crash into each other, dissolving into new and sometimes exotic particles.

Physicists have started running the world's largest particle accelerator at a new record energy and taking the first data from these ultra-powerful collisions.

Skip to next paragraph

Protons zoom around the 17 mile (27 kilometer) underground loop of the?Large Hadron Collider?below Switzerland and France, and then crash into each other, dissolving into new and sometimes exotic particles. Scientists have now sped up those protons a bit more, sending them speeding toward each other at energies of 4 teraelectron volts (TeV), creating a?collision energy of 8 TeV?? a new world record.

"The increase in energy is all about maximizing the discovery potential of the LHC," Sergio Bertolucci, director of research at the LHC's home lab CERN, said in a statement. "And in that respect, 2012 looks set to be a vintage year for particle physics."

Ramping up to higher energies means the LHC has a better chance of creating the rare and highlysought particles it was designed to search for. These include the long-theorized, but not-yet-detected Higgs boson particle, as well as the particles predicted by a physics theory called supersymmetry. If supersymmetric particles are discovered, they may offer an explanation for the mystery of dark matter, the invisible stuff thought to make up most of the matter in the universe. [Wacky Physics: The Coolest Little Particles in Nature]

LHC was opened in September 2008, but shut off nine days later after an accident damaged a number of its superconducting magnets. The accelerator was fixed and got back up and running a little over a year later, and has been operating steadily since. Starting in March 2010, the proton beams have been colliding at energies of 3.5 TeV, creating a smash of 7 TeV.

"The experience of two good years of running at 3.5 TeV per beam gave us the confidence to increase the energy for this year without any significant risk to the machine," said Steve Myers, CERN's director for accelerators and technology. "Now it's over to the experiments to make the best of the increased discovery potential we're delivering them!"

The increased energy should mean more Higgs boson particles are produced, if they exist. Already, scientists at two of the LHC's experiments, Atlas and CMS, have seen promising indications of an excess of particles weighing around 125 GeV (gigaelectron volts) ? potentially?a sign of the Higgs. Yet physicists say they don't have enough data to confirm a discovery with certainty.

The increased energy should up the chances of creating Higgs particles inside the machine, though it will also create more of the "background" particles that produce similar signatures, and must be weeded out from the data.

Ultimately, scientists plan to run particle beams through the LHC at an astounding 7TeVeach, producing collisions of a whopping 14TeV. To do that, they'll need to refurbish the accelerator during a planned shutdown at the end of this year.

You can follow LiveScience senior writer Clara Moskowitz on Twitter @ClaraMoskowitz. Follow LiveScience for the latest in science news and discoveries on Twitter @livescience?and on?Facebook.

where do i vote wheel of fortune today show smokin joe conrad murray verdict tappan zee bridge jessica chastain

The Social Enterprise Part 1 ? Improving Collaboration with ...

This is the first in a series of Summa blog posts delivering an overview of Salesforce.com?s foray into the Social Enterprise. In future posts we will go in-depth on Chatter features, provide deployment strategies that drive higher user adoption, and explore the Social Enterprise in a broader sense.

It?s actually been quite a few years now that the term ?social? has taken on a new significance in our lexicon. It still means what it?s always meant, of course: ?pertaining to?relations?community?companionship?. And the underpinning of the social communal relationship has always been sharing ? sharing feelings, ideas and thoughts.

The growth of social media outlets has fostered this sharing like never before. The most widely-recognized social platforms (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn) have enabled personal, individual connections and sharing by bringing strangers together and reconnecting lost relationships. Seeing an opportunity to leverage these social networks, businesses also can now reach discreet segments of their customers, receive immediate feedback and target promotions like never before.

But what about within the organization? Should companies be considering ways to use social platforms to increase collaboration, efficiencies ? and revenues?

There is, in fact, a role for social collaboration throughout the enterprise. And there is a solution ? Salesforce.com?s Chatter.

Collaboration?s obstacles

As efficient as we?ve become, collaboration in the workplace is generally much harder today:

• Organizations are larger, with unique structures and roles
• Organizations are more disperse, with multi-site locations
• The virtual workspace has moved employees away from each other
• Business is faster-paced
• We are all exposed to content overload, and sifting through it all takes time
• ?and then there?s NOISE?the irrelevant, insignificant and unneeded information

What is Chatter?

Chatter is Salesforce?s cloud-based enterprise social network. Chatter fosters collaboration within your organization by:

• Enabling relevance ? your staff chooses the information that?s important to them, bringing the conversation to the subject
• No more seeking for important information - Chatter pushes relevant updates directly to users
• Delivering efficiency ? through automated feeds, your employees have quick and seamless access to relevant content
• Shrinking the organization ? bringing remote locations together
• Cutting through the noise

Chatter?s value

In a study done by Nucleus Research in July 2011, Chatter has proven to directly contribute to an organization?s productivity and efficiency:

• Companies adopting Chatter to support business collaboration drove greater productivity ? but also made employees more aware and aligned with company goals
• Chatter users experienced a 12.5% increase in productivity (on average)
• Productivity savings were often seen to have a direct impact on the improved performance of the sales team
• With increased manager visibility through automated feeds, managers are more quickly aware of events, setbacks or actions needed
• Improved responsiveness was seen with topic/customer-specific questions, delivering solutions that are more on target with reduced cycle-time

Features of Chatter

Taking some of the best features of the most popular social platforms, Chatter brings your workforce together, and improves the visibility and dialog throughout the enterprise. Some of Chatter?s key features include:

Groups ? Groups help your teams organize around business processes, topics and customers. By collaborating within specific categories they share relevant information and work more productively. They can even set up private groups to work on sensitive projects.

Feeds ? with Feeds your team can monitor the projects, people and groups that matter most in one spot. The automated content push sends updates on sales pursuits, customer projects, and marketing campaigns.

File Sharing ? Chatter?s file sharing improves access to important files across your team ? right from your browser. You can even receive notifications whenever a document has been updated.

Messenger ? a new feature, Chatter Messenger enables private and group instant messaging to enhance productivity.

Next week: a deeper dive on some of Chatter?s most impactful features.

To learn more about Chatter, the Social Enterprise and how Summa can make your organization more collaborative, contact Orion Wolff at 412.708.5787.

Source: http://www.summa-tech.com/blog/2012/03/29/the-social-enterprise-part-1-%E2%80%93-improving-collaboration-with-salesforcecoms-chatter/

tenacious d steve smith zou bisou bisou tim tebow press conference tebow press conference trina andy roddick

Pardon me: Did a robot just hear fish farts?

23 hrs.

John Roach

A torpedo-shaped robot that bobbed up and down along the Florida coast to map sound production by red grouper and toadfish has detected what appears to be the unmistakable sound of herring passing gas.

That is, a robot heard what scientists believe to be fish farts.

"This remains merely a hypothesis, an untested but logical idea," Carrie Wall, a graduate student in marine biology at the University of South Florida?who led the study, told me in an email today.

"We can't say (and haven't said) with any certainty that that is in fact the source of what we have termed the 6 kHz Sound," she added.

But all signs do appear to point in the direction of herring farts. Such sounds have been descried before, noted Wall, who sent me in the direction of a post on Improbable Research,?the organization that hands out the Ig Nobels. Two papers on herring farts earned that distinguished prize in 2004.

"Our hypothesis is potentially likely as menhaden and other species related to herring are present in our study area and the 6 kHz Sound has similar characteristics to the findings of the previous research," Wall told me.

The "6 KHz Sound" she refers to are at the least "three unknown biological sounds" documented by their one week survey along the West Florida Shelf, Wall and her colleagues report this week in the journal Marine Ecology Research.

The mystery sound is in addition to the detection of the more familiar grunts and whistles of red grouper and toadfish that typically make sound in the range from 100 Hz to 2000 Hz.

"6 kHz is far above that frequency range, suggesting that an alternative method of sound production (such as gas release) is responsible for this sound," Wall said.?

"However, without further research, we won't know for sure."

--Via Discovery News

John Roach is a contributing writer for msnbc.com. To learn more about him, check out his website?and follow him on Twitter. For more of our Future of Technology?series, watch the featured video below.

Source: http://www.futureoftech.msnbc.msn.com/technology/futureoftech/pardon-me-did-robot-just-hear-fish-farts-583098

lewis black kirkwood chris brown and rihanna nightline brady quinn brady quinn bloom box

Real-estate In Larger Hyderabad Costs Better Than Before. | Real ...

The proven fact that global warming will affect our future doesn't need introduction. Our buildings and sub-structure are critical elements in how we influence and conform to the changes connected with global warming. Emissions of CO2 during construction and operation, global warming resiliency and changes in the way folks will organize their lives are all critical things to consider when getting ready to develop new property. To a degree these contributors are being considered in most new development projects. The Island of Hawaii also includes 5 volcanoes. It is exploding about steadily and pouring lava out into the sea. You might have heard about Kilauea on the news, as this volcano is really active.

Not to mention the proven fact that there are a lot of property for sale at this time that have not sold, some people say that is good because every one that sells too inexpensive, ends up driving down assessments and injuring things worse. Hawaii basically has a various mixture of terrain on the Massive Island-ranging from mountain slopes-both treeless and forested-and near desert scenarios in the north to tropical forests and even high fields. If you're an author and plan on writing about this industry, commercial real-estate or commercial construction subjects that I've a few bits of advice for you. All this may change, and things will come back, they mostly do, and when they do commercial construction and new development will once more provide roles for construction employees and business development for towns. Specifically , people in the bizz wish to know which properties have sold, which projects are slated, which developments have been fast tracked by the town to enhance business development, and they would like to know the statistical data and increases in the marketplace for retail space, warehouse space, business office space, and multiple unit housing. Less owners and rental properties means the price goes up and that implies the extra cost causes the quality of live of poor folk to go down. They exit the business knowing it is not a good gamble and go.

I am hoping they are satisfied now. Please think about this. The downbeat with these mortgage alterations will be the ?reality check ? factor. How many owners will all of a sudden awaken to the incontrovertible fact that their home is now worth several thousand greenbacks less than their mortgage balance? Only the trusting will accept that their San Diego home?s price will snap back shortly. Driving this phenomenon is the increasing number of homes that are terribly ?under water,? owing way more than the prevailing price of their houses.

Source: http://www.real-estate-blog.info/2012/03/real-estate-in-larger-hyderabad-costs-better-than-before/

wake forest old dominion insync the duchess the duchess katy perry spice

'Balanced budget,' 'surplus' gloss over many states' financial woes

By Kirsten Adshead | Wisconsin Reporter

MADISON ? What?s in a ?surplus? or a ?balanced budget??

The better question might be: What?s not?

As the economy improves and tax revenue rebounds, politicians nationwide are touting balanced budgets ? even surpluses ? as proof their states are on a positive fiscal track.

The problem, fiscal analysts say, is that for virtually any state, those reports are little more than a thin veil, masking deep-rooted financial problems.

Seeking balance?

For years, states have relied on accounting gimmicks, pension-plan deferments and help from the federal government to keep budgets balanced, Eileen Norcross, a senior research fellow at George Mason University?s Mercatus Center testified to the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform in February 2011.

?These techniques helped states show budgetary balance, grow spending and pass the cost of funding plans onto future taxpayers,? Norcross said. ?States are now looking to a future with slower economic growth and dramatically increased federal deficits and debt. States will have to rethink how they are budgeting.?

Last year, the Wisconsin Legislature passed a budget that avoided most of the accounting tricks and fund transfers used by previous administrations, Democrat and Republican alike, to balance the budget as state law requires.

?(W)e balanced the $3.6 billion budget deficit with long-term, structural reforms. We thought more about the next generation than we did about the next election,? Gov. Scott Walker said in this year?s State of the State address.

Filling the GAAP?

The Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance, or WISTAX, though, isn?t so celebratory ? even setting aside a February report that predicts Wisconsin will have a budgetary deficit after all.

A report from the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau indicated that Wisconsin is projected to have a $53 million deficit at the end of fiscal 2012, which concludes June 30, and a $208 million deficit at the end of fiscal 2013, due largely to lower-than-expected tax revenue.

Even if the state?s general fund ? which covers most state expenses ? was statutorily balanced, the state?s Generally Accepted Accounting Principles deficit, or GAAP, measuring beyond the general fund, is running between $2.5 billion and $3 billion, said Dale Knapp, research director of WISTAX, a private government research nonprofit.

GAAP is a much more stringent way of accounting.

Knapp gave the analogy of charging an item on a credit card: Under the state?s current way of accounting, there isn?t a budgeted expense until the bill comes due.

GAAP accounting says, however, that there is a known, real expense that will have to be paid at some point, and therefore that expense should be factored in to budgeting.

By the GAAP measure, including such things as inventory costs, Wisconsin?s debt is between $2.5 billion and $3 billion, according to the alliance.

?It?s worsened in almost every year since 2003,? Knapp said. ?So (lawmakers this year) stopped making it any worse. So to that degree, it?s a positive. But they didn?t do anything to make it better. They didn?t do anything to reduce it.?

The state Assembly passed a joint resolution in February to amend the Wisconsin Constitution to require GAAP principles to be used in state budgeting. But the Senate hadn?t taken action on the amendment as of Thursday afternoon, the last day of the legislative session.

Checking in on the neighbors?

Wisconsin is far from the only state with financial problems that budget announcements seemingly belie.

Three of Wisconsin?s neighboring states have or are projecting budgetary surpluses this fiscal year:

• Minnesota has an estimated $323 million surplus this year. But Gov. Mark Dayton and lawmakers balanced the state budget largely through accounting tricks, including delaying payments to school districts, which now won?t get 40 percent of the money they?re owed from the state until the following fiscal year, according to the Minnesota Budget Project, an initiative of the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits, which provides nonpartisan budget analyses.
• Iowa has a projected $396 million surplus in the upcoming fiscal year. But total state debt, including pension obligations, is nearly $26 billion, according to Sunshine Review, a nonprofit that emphasizes government transparency.
• Michigan balanced its fiscal 2012 budget similarly to how lawmakers dealt with the Wisconsin budget and now has a projected $627 million surplus for the year that ends Sept. 30. But Michigan?s unfunded pension liability to its teachers alone is $18 billion, and that doesn?t include the cost of other retiree benefits or any pensions and benefits owed to state employees, said Craig Thiel, state budget expert for the Citizens Research Council of Michigan, a nonprofit that studies finance and government issues.

?Those are the big long-term liabilities that the state has,? Thiel said.?

Illinois? shaky finances are extensive. At the end of this year, the state is projected to have $8.5 billion in back bills to pay and still faces an $85 billion unfunded pension liability.

Lessons from the past

As the Great Recession fades further into history and tax revenue once again is on the rise, lawmakers nationwide are facing decisions on what to do with the new money: Set it aside in a rainy day fund? Pay off debt? Increase services??

Thiel said Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder has emphasized using one-time dollars for one-time expenses, such as offering high-performing school districts a one-time cash influx or giving more money to local governments that agree to share services.

Jeff Esser, CEO of the Government Finance Officers Association, which identifies and develops financial policies and best practices in government for the public benefit, said lawmakers can look to the past for lessons for the future.

?I think each state has to make that determination on their own,? Esser said. ?? they have to look at what were their revenue projections and what did they actually earn, and extrapolate from that what were the (lessons learned) for the next time there?s a recession.?

Norcross told Wisconsin Reporter on Thursday that she thinks states have learned the importance of keeping up with their pension payments. She said states might be more inclined to put money away in a rainy day fund.

And she encourages people to be critical of state budgets.

??Balanced budget? simply means that things look like they?re balanced,? Norcross said, adding,??a surplus is a good thing certainly, but I think one problem with state budgets is there is a tendency to put on myopic glasses and just look at year to year.?

Source: http://www.wisconsinreporter.com/balanced-budget-surplus-gloss-over-many-states-financial-woes

pandaria pandaria baby lisa irwin baby lisa irwin pearl jam 20 martha marcy may marlene lacuna

Board Games For Kids To Develop Emotional Skills - Award winning ...

Monday, March 12th, 2012 at 1:27 am ?

Businesses are finding that most successful people have one thing in common: the ability to deal with people. But successful employees don?t learn this skill when they enter the work force; they learn it at an early age.

As a parent, you may wonder how to help your children develop the emotional skills they need to get through life and be successful in their future careers.

It?s a challenging task, but one game manufacturer has set out to make it easier through its series of ?emotional intelligence? kids board games.

Parents looking for ways to breach difficult topics; teach their children about qualities such as empathy, problem solving, assertiveness and good manners; or who just want to have some family fun will find many opportunities in the following products:

* Crossen Creations Magical Rainbow Board Game has the important lesson of sharing. ?Children learn about sharing and the goodness in giving to others. ?

* Oikos Game Levels 1 to 3: Through active play, children learn positive strategies to handle common emotional situations relating to anger, aggression, fear and conflict.

* A 31 Day Success Principles for Kids and Teens: Each card contains a success principle ? such as ?know your purpose? or ?be persistent? ? and a mini-biography of a famous person who made use of that principle.

* A 31 Day Positive Affirmations for Kids and Teens: Each card contains one affirmation to read each day. The intention is for kids to focus on their strengths and positive attributes.

Oikos Global also offers fun family games such as Fikloo, a party game of crazy commands, and Wordigy, a challenging and educational word game.

Oikos games and activities might get your children thinking beyond the latest ?must have? video game or DVD. They also make good gifts for holidays, birthdays and graduations.

Crossen Creations also offers Exact Change the award winning money card game. ?

Filed under: Board Games For Kids

Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!

Source: http://crossencreations.com/funkidsgames/blog/2012/03/12/board-games-for-kids-to-develop-emotional-skills/

yule log ham recipes adrian peterson darlene love free kindle books roasted potatoes turkey recipes

Exploring the ancestry of your desktop PC

John Graham-Cumming, contributor

In Turing's Cathedral: The origins of the digital universe, science historian George Dyson exposes a little-known precursor to your PC

SECRECY and computers have always been intertwined. Developed during the fraught years of the second world war, details of the efforts to build Colossus, the British machine that helped decrypt Nazi messages, were kept close to the chests of the Allies.

In Turing's Cathedral, science historian George Dyson shines light on the critical period when computers came into being. He begins with British mathematician Alan Turing's famous 1936 description of a machine designed to resolve a problem in mathematical logic.

While impractical and not intended for construction, the theory behind the Universal Turing Machine, as it is now called, laid the foundations for computer science. But it was not until the 1940s that anyone set out to build the first practical computer.

Dyson focuses on US efforts, when at the close of the war a group of engineers, scientists and mathematicians, gathered together by Hungarian-American polymath John von Neumann at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, bent their minds to the making of the IAS machine.

Providing a riveting account of the people behind the IAS machine, Dyson also conveys the electrifying sense of possibility that the first computers unleashed. With the machine half-built, early programmers began to write software to simulate hydrogen bomb explosions, follow genetic mutations, predict the weather and examine the life cycle of stars.

But in claiming that the IAS machine begat all others, Dyson downplays the influence of UK-based work on computers at that time. The IAS machine was important because it was copied and reported on around the world. Von Neumann's team was able to publicise it freely, whereas wartime secrecy prevented Turing from discussing the earlier Colossus. And the IAS machine did not stand alone: it relied on "Williams tube" memory - developed using the UK's Manchester Baby computer, which had become operational three years earlier - because there was no alternative in the US.

Nevertheless, Dyson's book is a page-turner for anyone fascinated by the beginnings of the computer age and an important text covering a little-known computer that had a big influence.

Book Information
Turing's Cathedral
by George Dyson
Published by: Allen Lane/Pantheon
?25/$29.95

Source: http://feeds.newscientist.com/c/749/f/10897/s/1d38d212/l/0L0Snewscientist0N0Cblogs0Cculturelab0C20A120C0A30Cexploring0Ethe0Eancestry0Eof0Eyour0Edesktop0Epc0Bhtml0DDCMP0FOTC0Erss0Gnsref0Fonline0Enews/story01.htm

baby lisa