LOS ANGELES (AP) — Michael Jackson's doctor was quietly freed from jail on Monday, two years after he was convicted of killing the pop superstar with an overdose of a powerful anesthetic — and he would like to practice medicine again.
Conrad Murray was released at 12:01 a.m. from a jail in downtown Los Angeles after serving about half of his maximum sentence for involuntary manslaughter. A change in California law allowed his incarceration time to be significantly reduced.
Murray was taken from the jail a back way, eluding a cluster of TV crews and a few Jackson fans. Sheriff's officials arranged the quiet exit and drove him away for safety reasons, spokesman Steve Whitmore said.
"He was elated to be out of there" and planned to spend time with his girlfriend and children, said Valerie Wass, Murray's attorney.
Murray's prospects are uncertain: At age 60 his license to practice medicine has been suspended or revoked in three states, and his face and name are well known due to his association with Jackson and his highly publicized trial.
Wass said Murray wants to be a doctor again.
"I believe that he will practice medicine again someday, somewhere," Wass said.
Brian Panish, an attorney for the Jackson family, said Murray should not have "a chance to hurt anyone else" by practicing medicine.
"He has shown no remorse and the consequences of his actions will last forever," the lawyer said.
The former cardiologist was convicted in 2011 of causing Jackson's death in June 2009 by providing him with the powerful anesthetic propofol as a sleep aid. Jackson was in the midst of preparations for a series of comeback concerts and Murray was serving as his physician.
The former doctor is appealing his conviction, although an appeals court has questioned whether it needs to hear the case. His attorney has argued that the court should not dismiss the appeal because it could alter Murray's overall sentence and reduce some of the stigma his conviction has caused.
Despite being jailed, Murray hasn't been entirely silent. The ex-doctor told the Today show that he cried tears of joy after a civil jury recently determined that the promoters of Jackson's comeback shows did not negligently hire Murray.
He did not, however, testify in the civil case or take the stand during his criminal trial.
Wass said Murray did a lot of writing behind bars, but she didn't know if he had plans for a book or any other projects that would allow him to earn a living.
Murray previously maintained clinics in Houston and Las Vegas and frequently complained about conditions in jail after his conviction. He was allowed to serve his entire sentence in a Los Angeles jail rather than a state prison due to a law aimed at easing overcrowding by shifting nonviolent offenders to local lockups.
"Dr. Murray has not received any special treatment in jail and in fact has many less privileges than most inmates because of his notoriety," Wass said in a statement earlier this year.
In a lawsuit filed by Jackson's mother against concert giant AEG Live LLC, jurors determined that Murray was not unfit or incompetent to serve as Jackson's tour doctor.
The panel did, however, say it did not condone his conduct.
"That doesn't mean we felt he was ethical," jury foreman Gregg Barden said of Murray after the AEG Live verdict.
A company that helps enterprises through e-discovery will give customers new tools to streamline the process and cut costs.
Kroll Ontrack is bringing several features together under Ediscovery.com, a site that enterprises will be able to use as a one-stop shop for managing the e-discovery process. The new apps will also offer greater automation. In doing so, the company plans to turn e-discovery from an art to a science, according to Kroll President and CEO Dean Hager.
E-discovery is the process of finding documents relevant to a lawsuit or other legal process, usually for delivery to the opposing side in a potential litigation. It's also used for internal investigations or audits and in preparation for mergers and acquisitions, Hager said. The trick is to find just the right data and leave out what doesn't have to be produced, such as emails covered by attorney-client privilege.
Most enterprises start each e-discovery projects from scratch, essentially re-inventing the wheel, Hager said. That's getting more difficult and expensive because the amount of email, spreadsheets, presentations and other data is growing faster than ever. "Everyone is just typing furiously," Hager said. The cloud-based apps on Ediscovery.com are designed to let Kroll's customers monitor the work in detail and manage all their e-discovery projects as a portfolio.
"On a day-by-day basis, you can say, 'Tell me what this project is costing me, tell me why it's costing me that much, how it compares to other projects that are similar to it," Hager said. "You can even compare it to ... some standards that exist within the industry."
By learning from each project, enterprises also can make e-discovery a more efficient, repeatable process, he said.
Kroll's current offering is already SaaS (software as a service). Companies send potentially relevant data to Kroll, which processes the data through steps such as sifting out duplicate files. That data goes back to lawyers for review, and Kroll then delivers the proper documents to the opposing side. But currently, Kroll simply reports back to the customer periodically on how the process is going, Hager said.
A key feature of Ediscovery.com is a "project wall" that's similar to a Facebook Wall, he said. All communication about the e-discovery project takes place and resides on that page, unless it's a voice call, in which case Kroll writes a summary of the conversation on the wall. This allows for ongoing, real-time monitoring that can help a customer keep the project efficient, Hager said.
One of the biggest costs in e-discovery is hosting the data that may be needed in a case, because lawsuits can go on for years, said David Yerich, director of e-discovery at health insurance company United Health. Kroll and other vendors charge enterprises for storage every month, even though there may be no activity in the case for long periods of time, he said.
Yerich is a Kroll customer and has been briefed on Ediscovery.com. To him, the highlights of what Kroll is promising are features designed to reduce hosting costs. One will allow companies to send plain text rather than the much larger native application files for searching and indexing. The full files can be sent later as needed. Another feature lets companies easily send data they have hosted at Kroll into "near-line" disk storage, which takes longer to call up when needed but costs less, Yerich said.
Kroll's new tools for gathering and analyzing metrics could also cut e-discovery costs, Yerich said. Most e-discovery platforms provide statistics such as how much data in a collection turned out to be relevant, but those insights are only available after the fact, he said. Kroll's technology will let an e-discovery team view those metrics in real time and potentially use them to better manage the process. For example, if searches of the data from one employee aren't coming up with many relevant results, the team might decide to take that employee off the list, Yerich said.
The Ediscovery.com suite consists of three products. Ediscovery.com Collect, for identifying, preserving and collecting data from Microsoft Exchange and SharePoint, is available now. Ediscovery.com Review, a tool for controlling data volume and costs, will be generally available early next year. Ediscovery.com for Portfolio Management, for managing e-discovery projects as a portfolio, also will be generally available early next year. Kroll did not disclose pricing.
Stephen Lawson covers mobile, storage and networking technologies for The IDG News Service. Follow Stephen on Twitter at @sdlawsonmedia. Stephen's e-mail address is stephen_lawson@idg.com
Stephen Lawson, IDG News Service , IDG News Service
Stephen Lawson covers mobile, storage and networking technologies for the IDG News Service. More by Stephen Lawson, IDG News Service
The World Jiu-Jitsu Expo has announced another exciting match-up for their next event.
UFC welterweight Jake Shields will face Leandro "Lo" Nascimento in a submission-only 15-minute fight on Nov. 10 at the Long Beach Convention Center in California.
Shields has won the bronze medal at the ADCC in 2005, defeating TUF Brazil 2 winner Leonardo Santos -- who submitted Georges St. Pierre with a flying armbar earlier that day. A jiu-jitsu black belt under Cesar Gracie, Shields is coming off a unanimous decision victory over grappling expert Demian Maia at UFC Fight Night 29 in Barueri, Brazil.
More experienced in the jiu-jitsu mats, "Lo" is a two-time jiu-jitsu world champion (2012 and 2013), and has won multiple championships in Brazil with wins over the likes of JT Torres, Augusto Mendes, Michael Langhi, Lucas Lepri and Celso Venicius. The black belt was expected to face Romulo Barral, but the World Jiu-Jitsu Expo announced the change Monday night.
Saturday, Nov. 9: Caio Terra vs. Nam Pham Rafael Lovato vs. TBA Samuel Braga vs. João Miyao Efrain Escudero vs. Philipe Nover
Sunday, Nov. 10: Jake Shields vs. Leandro "Lo" Nascimento Rousimar Palhares vs. Dean Lister Paulo Miyao vs. Jon Fitch Lucas Leite vs. Keenan Cornelius Bruno Malfacine vs. Jeff Glover
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has not had a great year. After a winning a disputed election, he faces inflation near 50 percent. Supplies of basic goods like toilet paper have run low. Now Maduro is acting. He created a new Vice Ministry of Supreme Social Happiness. It's supposed to coordinate services for the poor.
Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro has not had a great year. After a winning a disputed election, he faces inflation near 50 percent. Supplies of basic goods like toilet paper have run low. But now Maduro is acting. He created a new Vice Ministry of Supreme Social Happiness. It's supposed to coordinate services for the poor. We do not know of the Happiness Ministry will work but it has given a practical benefit, causing people to laugh.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by a contractor for NPR, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of NPR's programming is the audio.
Today at the Samsung Developers Conference in San Francisco, game developer Cie Games has announced the arrival of its drag-racing title, Racing Rivals, on Android. The game, which launched on iOS back in August, pits players against each other in real-time races in a number of real-world cars, with a vehicle tuning and tweaking system allowing gamers to customize their vehicles' look and performance. An in-game betting system also allows players to play for in-game cash as well as personal glory.
Racing Rivals for Android is due to arrive on Google Play "shortly" according to today's press release, so we'll keep an eye on the Play Store and update this post when the download is available.
Hey Google Glass Explorers, Google thinks you’re keen. Really, they do.
So much so in fact that the company has been quietly working on an updated version of the Glass hardware, and those of you who shelled out $1,500 to be among the first to support the project will be able to swap your existing units for the second revision for free.
Of course, Google Glass is still a ways off from its general launch date — expect it to land some time in 2014 on some sort of Google barge — so naturally Google is gearing up to expand its pool of guinea pigs Explorers. To that end, existing Explorers will have 14 days to choose three acquaintances who are worthy of paying $1,500 for Google Glass.
But let’s back up for a moment. What exactly makes this new iteration so special? So far it seems like a pretty incremental upgrade — unless you’re like me and wear honest-to-goodness specs everyday. Google’s Glass team has confirmed on (where else?) its Google+ page that this version will be able to be fitted with “future lines” of prescription lenses. It’s also going to pack a mono earbud, presumably because the existing bone conducting speaker system isn’t exactly the loudest thing you’ll ever hear.
With any luck, Google will have tweaked the internals a bit too, as the existing loadout is getting pretty long in the tooth. In case you’ve forgotten, it sports a TI OMAP4430 chipset and 1GB of RAM, which essentially means that in an age of incredibly high-powered components in smartphones, current Glass owners are walking around with the equivalent of a Galaxy Nexus on their heads.
And in case you were curious, here’s a copy of the email Google is sending out to eligible Explorers, just so you know what to look out for:
Being part of the Glass Explorer program is pretty insane (good insane): let’s face it, using cutting edge technology that changes every month requires a certain sense of adventure. We’re looking for more Explorers like you to be part of the program, so we’ve opened up a few more spots and this time, you decide who gets in. We want you to invite three people to join the Explorer Program, people who you believe would make great Glass Explorers.
You have 14 days to invite 3 of the best potential Explorers you know to buy Glass. Just a reminder that all Glass Explorers must:
be a US resident
be 18 years or older
purchase Glass
provide a U.S. based shipping address OR pick up the device in New York, San Francisco or Los Angeles
We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: thank you for all your feedback and support. It’s because of you that Glass has come this far, and we’re truly grateful.
Everyone knows what it feels like to be absolutely terrified. And while it might not be your favorite flavor of fun, you can't deny it's a rush. That's because your brain takes fear as a cue to start dishing out its own kind of halloween candy in the form of delicious neurotransmitters.
They’re both worldwide superstars, so it’s no wonder Kim Kardashian and Cheryl Cole are becoming good friends.
The “Keeping Up with the Kardashians” cutie and the former Girls Aloud singer hung out at Kanye West’s concert at the Staples Center in Los Angeles on Saturday night (October 26).
During the gig, Kim and Cheryl posed for a silly selfie, and of course they both posted the image to their Instagram pages immediately.
Furthermore, Cole praised the man of the evening, tweeting, “Kanye West is a genius #fact.” Meanwhile, Kim’s sister Khloe turned out to be quite a fan of Cole- she wrote, “I found a soul sister in @CherylCole tonight #Yeezus.”
Earlier this year, Cheryl reached out to Kim after she received criticism over her pregnancy weight gain. Cole tweeted, “Just wanted to send you a tweet to say I think you are an incredibly beautiful woman inside and out. I can only imagine how tough it is to be heavily pregnant and feeling extremely vulnerable on top of some of the daily criticism you take! I admire your tenacity and send you my best wishes with the rest of your pregnancy.”
Kim replied, “Your message really touched me! Thank you so much for the support & positivity! It’s so important for women to feel confident & at peace during this amazing time! Your sweet tweet really made me smile!”
Contact: Monika Landgraf presse@kit.edu 49-721-608-47414 Helmholtz Association
Vast energy sources are slumbering below big cities. Sustaina-ble energies for heating in winter and cooling in summer may be extracted from heated groundwater aquifers. Researchers from KIT and ETH Zurich developed an analytical heat flux model and found that increasing heat in the underground is mainly caused by an increase in surface temperatures and heat release from buildings. Work of the scientists is now reported in the renowned journal "Environmental Science and Technology" (DOI: 10.1021/es401546u).
Temperatures in big cities are far above those in the surrounding rural area: Dense settlement, surface sealing, industry, traffic, and lacking vegetation cause an urban microclimate with increased tem-peratures in the atmosphere. Temperature anomalies also develop in the underground. They spread laterally and vertically. In the past decades, groundwater in conurbations heated up considerably. "In Karlsruhe, the average heat flux density into subsurface aquifers was 759 milliwatts per square meter in 1977. In 2011, a heat flux density of 828 milliwatts per square meter was reached," says Junior Professor Philipp Blum, Head of the Engineering Geology Division of the KIT Institute of Applied Geosciences (AGW). "This amount of heat corresponds to 1 petajoule per year and would suffice to supply at least 18,000 households in Karlsruhe with heat."
In cooperation with Kathrin Menberg and Axel Schaffitel from KIT and Dr. Peter Bayer from ETH Zurich, Philipp Blum also studied the origin of heat in the underground of conurbations. The scientists developed an analytical heat flux model to examine factors, such as the increase in temperatures of sealed surfaces, heat release from buildings, sewage ducts, and underground district heating networks as well as discharge of thermal waste water. By modeling anthropo-genic heat fluxes into the underground of the city of Karlsruhe, the researchers determined long-term trends of heat flux processes. They found that the increased surface temperature and heat release from buildings in particular are responsible for the increase in tem-peratures in the subsurface area.
The energy from close-to-surface groundwater aquifers might be used for heating in winter and cooling in summer via geothermal heat pumps and groundwater heat pumps. Use of this geothermal potential would not only cover part of the growing demand for ener-gy, but also reduce the emission of greenhouse gases, which would counteract heating of the cities.
###
Kathrin Menberg, Philipp Blum, Axel Schaffitel, and Peter Bayer: Long-Term Evolution of Anthropogenic Heat Fluxes into a Subsur-face Urban Heat Island. Environmental Science and Technology, 2013, 47 (17), pp. 97479755. DOI: 10.1021/es401546u.
Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) is one of Europe's lead-ing energy research establishments. Research, education, and innovation at KIT foster the energy turnaround and reorganiza-tion of the energy system in Germany. For this, KIT links excel-lent competences in engineering and science with know-how in economics, the humanities, and social science as well as law. The activities of the KIT Energy Center are organized in seven topics: Energy conversion, renewable energies, energy storage and distribution, efficient energy use, fusion technology, nuclear power and safety, and energy systems analysis. Clear priorities lie in the areas of energy efficiency and renewable energies, energy storage technologies and grids, electric mobility, and enhanced international cooperation in research.
Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) is a public corporation according to the legislation of the state of Baden-Wrttemberg. It fulfills the mission of a university and the mission of a national research center of the Helmholtz Association. Research activities focus on energy, the natural and built environment as well as on society and technology and cover the whole range extending from fundamental aspects to application. With about 9000 employees, including nearly 6000 staff members in the science and education sector, and 24000 students, KIT is one of the biggest research and education institutions in Europe. Work of KIT is based on the knowledge triangle of research, teaching, and innovation.
This press release is available on the internet at http://www.kit.edu.
The photo of printing quality may be downloaded under http://www.kit.edu or requested by mail to presse@kit.edu or phone +49 721 608-4 7414. The photo may be used in the context given above exclusively.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Urban underground holds sustainable energy
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
28-Oct-2013
[
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]
Share
Contact: Monika Landgraf presse@kit.edu 49-721-608-47414 Helmholtz Association
Vast energy sources are slumbering below big cities. Sustaina-ble energies for heating in winter and cooling in summer may be extracted from heated groundwater aquifers. Researchers from KIT and ETH Zurich developed an analytical heat flux model and found that increasing heat in the underground is mainly caused by an increase in surface temperatures and heat release from buildings. Work of the scientists is now reported in the renowned journal "Environmental Science and Technology" (DOI: 10.1021/es401546u).
Temperatures in big cities are far above those in the surrounding rural area: Dense settlement, surface sealing, industry, traffic, and lacking vegetation cause an urban microclimate with increased tem-peratures in the atmosphere. Temperature anomalies also develop in the underground. They spread laterally and vertically. In the past decades, groundwater in conurbations heated up considerably. "In Karlsruhe, the average heat flux density into subsurface aquifers was 759 milliwatts per square meter in 1977. In 2011, a heat flux density of 828 milliwatts per square meter was reached," says Junior Professor Philipp Blum, Head of the Engineering Geology Division of the KIT Institute of Applied Geosciences (AGW). "This amount of heat corresponds to 1 petajoule per year and would suffice to supply at least 18,000 households in Karlsruhe with heat."
In cooperation with Kathrin Menberg and Axel Schaffitel from KIT and Dr. Peter Bayer from ETH Zurich, Philipp Blum also studied the origin of heat in the underground of conurbations. The scientists developed an analytical heat flux model to examine factors, such as the increase in temperatures of sealed surfaces, heat release from buildings, sewage ducts, and underground district heating networks as well as discharge of thermal waste water. By modeling anthropo-genic heat fluxes into the underground of the city of Karlsruhe, the researchers determined long-term trends of heat flux processes. They found that the increased surface temperature and heat release from buildings in particular are responsible for the increase in tem-peratures in the subsurface area.
The energy from close-to-surface groundwater aquifers might be used for heating in winter and cooling in summer via geothermal heat pumps and groundwater heat pumps. Use of this geothermal potential would not only cover part of the growing demand for ener-gy, but also reduce the emission of greenhouse gases, which would counteract heating of the cities.
###
Kathrin Menberg, Philipp Blum, Axel Schaffitel, and Peter Bayer: Long-Term Evolution of Anthropogenic Heat Fluxes into a Subsur-face Urban Heat Island. Environmental Science and Technology, 2013, 47 (17), pp. 97479755. DOI: 10.1021/es401546u.
Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) is one of Europe's lead-ing energy research establishments. Research, education, and innovation at KIT foster the energy turnaround and reorganiza-tion of the energy system in Germany. For this, KIT links excel-lent competences in engineering and science with know-how in economics, the humanities, and social science as well as law. The activities of the KIT Energy Center are organized in seven topics: Energy conversion, renewable energies, energy storage and distribution, efficient energy use, fusion technology, nuclear power and safety, and energy systems analysis. Clear priorities lie in the areas of energy efficiency and renewable energies, energy storage technologies and grids, electric mobility, and enhanced international cooperation in research.
Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) is a public corporation according to the legislation of the state of Baden-Wrttemberg. It fulfills the mission of a university and the mission of a national research center of the Helmholtz Association. Research activities focus on energy, the natural and built environment as well as on society and technology and cover the whole range extending from fundamental aspects to application. With about 9000 employees, including nearly 6000 staff members in the science and education sector, and 24000 students, KIT is one of the biggest research and education institutions in Europe. Work of KIT is based on the knowledge triangle of research, teaching, and innovation.
This press release is available on the internet at http://www.kit.edu.
The photo of printing quality may be downloaded under http://www.kit.edu or requested by mail to presse@kit.edu or phone +49 721 608-4 7414. The photo may be used in the context given above exclusively.
[
| E-mail
Share
]
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Contact: Monika Landgraf presse@kit.edu 49-721-608-47414 Helmholtz Association
Vast energy sources are slumbering below big cities. Sustaina-ble energies for heating in winter and cooling in summer may be extracted from heated groundwater aquifers. Researchers from KIT and ETH Zurich developed an analytical heat flux model and found that increasing heat in the underground is mainly caused by an increase in surface temperatures and heat release from buildings. Work of the scientists is now reported in the renowned journal "Environmental Science and Technology" (DOI: 10.1021/es401546u).
Temperatures in big cities are far above those in the surrounding rural area: Dense settlement, surface sealing, industry, traffic, and lacking vegetation cause an urban microclimate with increased tem-peratures in the atmosphere. Temperature anomalies also develop in the underground. They spread laterally and vertically. In the past decades, groundwater in conurbations heated up considerably. "In Karlsruhe, the average heat flux density into subsurface aquifers was 759 milliwatts per square meter in 1977. In 2011, a heat flux density of 828 milliwatts per square meter was reached," says Junior Professor Philipp Blum, Head of the Engineering Geology Division of the KIT Institute of Applied Geosciences (AGW). "This amount of heat corresponds to 1 petajoule per year and would suffice to supply at least 18,000 households in Karlsruhe with heat."
In cooperation with Kathrin Menberg and Axel Schaffitel from KIT and Dr. Peter Bayer from ETH Zurich, Philipp Blum also studied the origin of heat in the underground of conurbations. The scientists developed an analytical heat flux model to examine factors, such as the increase in temperatures of sealed surfaces, heat release from buildings, sewage ducts, and underground district heating networks as well as discharge of thermal waste water. By modeling anthropo-genic heat fluxes into the underground of the city of Karlsruhe, the researchers determined long-term trends of heat flux processes. They found that the increased surface temperature and heat release from buildings in particular are responsible for the increase in tem-peratures in the subsurface area.
The energy from close-to-surface groundwater aquifers might be used for heating in winter and cooling in summer via geothermal heat pumps and groundwater heat pumps. Use of this geothermal potential would not only cover part of the growing demand for ener-gy, but also reduce the emission of greenhouse gases, which would counteract heating of the cities.
###
Kathrin Menberg, Philipp Blum, Axel Schaffitel, and Peter Bayer: Long-Term Evolution of Anthropogenic Heat Fluxes into a Subsur-face Urban Heat Island. Environmental Science and Technology, 2013, 47 (17), pp. 97479755. DOI: 10.1021/es401546u.
Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) is one of Europe's lead-ing energy research establishments. Research, education, and innovation at KIT foster the energy turnaround and reorganiza-tion of the energy system in Germany. For this, KIT links excel-lent competences in engineering and science with know-how in economics, the humanities, and social science as well as law. The activities of the KIT Energy Center are organized in seven topics: Energy conversion, renewable energies, energy storage and distribution, efficient energy use, fusion technology, nuclear power and safety, and energy systems analysis. Clear priorities lie in the areas of energy efficiency and renewable energies, energy storage technologies and grids, electric mobility, and enhanced international cooperation in research.
Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) is a public corporation according to the legislation of the state of Baden-Wrttemberg. It fulfills the mission of a university and the mission of a national research center of the Helmholtz Association. Research activities focus on energy, the natural and built environment as well as on society and technology and cover the whole range extending from fundamental aspects to application. With about 9000 employees, including nearly 6000 staff members in the science and education sector, and 24000 students, KIT is one of the biggest research and education institutions in Europe. Work of KIT is based on the knowledge triangle of research, teaching, and innovation.
This press release is available on the internet at http://www.kit.edu.
The photo of printing quality may be downloaded under http://www.kit.edu or requested by mail to presse@kit.edu or phone +49 721 608-4 7414. The photo may be used in the context given above exclusively.
[
| E-mail
Share
]
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Urban underground holds sustainable energy
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
28-Oct-2013
[
| E-mail
]
Share
Contact: Monika Landgraf presse@kit.edu 49-721-608-47414 Helmholtz Association
Vast energy sources are slumbering below big cities. Sustaina-ble energies for heating in winter and cooling in summer may be extracted from heated groundwater aquifers. Researchers from KIT and ETH Zurich developed an analytical heat flux model and found that increasing heat in the underground is mainly caused by an increase in surface temperatures and heat release from buildings. Work of the scientists is now reported in the renowned journal "Environmental Science and Technology" (DOI: 10.1021/es401546u).
Temperatures in big cities are far above those in the surrounding rural area: Dense settlement, surface sealing, industry, traffic, and lacking vegetation cause an urban microclimate with increased tem-peratures in the atmosphere. Temperature anomalies also develop in the underground. They spread laterally and vertically. In the past decades, groundwater in conurbations heated up considerably. "In Karlsruhe, the average heat flux density into subsurface aquifers was 759 milliwatts per square meter in 1977. In 2011, a heat flux density of 828 milliwatts per square meter was reached," says Junior Professor Philipp Blum, Head of the Engineering Geology Division of the KIT Institute of Applied Geosciences (AGW). "This amount of heat corresponds to 1 petajoule per year and would suffice to supply at least 18,000 households in Karlsruhe with heat."
In cooperation with Kathrin Menberg and Axel Schaffitel from KIT and Dr. Peter Bayer from ETH Zurich, Philipp Blum also studied the origin of heat in the underground of conurbations. The scientists developed an analytical heat flux model to examine factors, such as the increase in temperatures of sealed surfaces, heat release from buildings, sewage ducts, and underground district heating networks as well as discharge of thermal waste water. By modeling anthropo-genic heat fluxes into the underground of the city of Karlsruhe, the researchers determined long-term trends of heat flux processes. They found that the increased surface temperature and heat release from buildings in particular are responsible for the increase in tem-peratures in the subsurface area.
The energy from close-to-surface groundwater aquifers might be used for heating in winter and cooling in summer via geothermal heat pumps and groundwater heat pumps. Use of this geothermal potential would not only cover part of the growing demand for ener-gy, but also reduce the emission of greenhouse gases, which would counteract heating of the cities.
###
Kathrin Menberg, Philipp Blum, Axel Schaffitel, and Peter Bayer: Long-Term Evolution of Anthropogenic Heat Fluxes into a Subsur-face Urban Heat Island. Environmental Science and Technology, 2013, 47 (17), pp. 97479755. DOI: 10.1021/es401546u.
Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) is one of Europe's lead-ing energy research establishments. Research, education, and innovation at KIT foster the energy turnaround and reorganiza-tion of the energy system in Germany. For this, KIT links excel-lent competences in engineering and science with know-how in economics, the humanities, and social science as well as law. The activities of the KIT Energy Center are organized in seven topics: Energy conversion, renewable energies, energy storage and distribution, efficient energy use, fusion technology, nuclear power and safety, and energy systems analysis. Clear priorities lie in the areas of energy efficiency and renewable energies, energy storage technologies and grids, electric mobility, and enhanced international cooperation in research.
Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) is a public corporation according to the legislation of the state of Baden-Wrttemberg. It fulfills the mission of a university and the mission of a national research center of the Helmholtz Association. Research activities focus on energy, the natural and built environment as well as on society and technology and cover the whole range extending from fundamental aspects to application. With about 9000 employees, including nearly 6000 staff members in the science and education sector, and 24000 students, KIT is one of the biggest research and education institutions in Europe. Work of KIT is based on the knowledge triangle of research, teaching, and innovation.
This press release is available on the internet at http://www.kit.edu.
The photo of printing quality may be downloaded under http://www.kit.edu or requested by mail to presse@kit.edu or phone +49 721 608-4 7414. The photo may be used in the context given above exclusively.
[
| E-mail
Share
]
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Folks … I am about to share with you THE greatest Hallowe’en video of all time, possibly the greatest video of any kind of all time. Our dear Britney Spears paid a visit to BBC Radio 1 when she was in London, England a couple of weeks ago and she teamed up with Nick Grimshaw to produce the absolutely BEST thing you’ll see all day (or all LIFE). In grand dramatic fashion, Britney recites the spoken monologue from Michael Jackson‘s Thriller as a Hallowe’en gift to mankind. Epic doesn’t even come close to describing how life-changing this video is … from beginning to end. It’s Britney, Witch! Click the embed above to have your life altered forever for the better by watching this flawless Hallowe’en video from Britney to you!
This might be one of Bellator's weakest cards of the season, but there is a saving grace. This event features the semifinals of the lightweight tournament and a hugely important bout for one of MMA's top prospects. Either Will Brooks is going to round the corner and continue to develop as a star on the rise or he's not. He needs to get past Saad Awad to do that and after their first bout, it's not clear he can.
Will he right the wrongs he committed in their first fight? Will Awad prevail and prove he's still one of MMA's most underrated fighters? I answer those questions and more with predictions for Friday's fights.
There are a number of important bouts this weekend on any of the major MMA shows and this one is no exception. While I certainly would not say Brooks' career is over or something equally hyperbolic, he's in a bit of trouble if he can't redeem himself against Awad. And the more I think about it, the victory for Awad was no fluke. He's lightening quick hands and very respectable power has given his Bellator opposition fits.
Brooks needs to show he can not only establish the takedown whenever he wants it, but that he also has patience. The timing of his offense is critical in this contest. He can't rush in nor he can he hang back. And if he has Awad in a dominant position, he needs to take advantage of it with damage or threatening submissions. Positional control is not going to get the job done.
I believe Brooks can and will do it, but he needs to demonstrate growth in order to get there.
Tirloni might be the best guy Bellator has that just can't seem to break through. If there's a good prospect or a really tough veteran, Tirloni oftens come up short. I don't think tonight will be any different. I suspect he's going to get lit up on the feet and either stopped there or submitted after he's hurt and unable to properly defend himself.
This is a plainly terrible fight, but I was surprised how semi-decent Mo looked in his last Bellator fight. These two are going to slug it out until someone falls, which shouldn't take long and means either man could conceivably win. All things being equal, though, Mo should prevail by KO or TKO in the first.
Fadiora has the karateka style of bouncing on his toes as he strikes from the outside. His hands aren't necessarily as crisp as they could be, but they are quick and his combinations are deliberate. The Brit's defense needs some work, but his all-around ability is pretty respectable. Berry is a tough slugger, but not a whole lot else. The American has a puncher's chance, but not much more.
Cut Copy's new album, Free Your Mind, comes out Nov. 5.
Courtesy of the artist
Cut Copy's new album, Free Your Mind, comes out Nov. 5.
Courtesy of the artist
An acid house-influenced album from Melbourne is not something that one imagines writing about in 2013. A knee-jerk response would involve some reference to our internet-addled times but for Australian band Cut Copy the seed for their fourth album, Free Your Mind, out Nov. 5, was altogether more analogue. It involved the spirit of the UK's second summer of love, circa 1988, evoked the old-fashioned way: a DJ spinning records in Melbourne's burgeoning underground dance music scene.
Not that acid house is new to these guys — they've long counted KLF as an influence — but a few lost nights out rekindled the flame. While there's not a scrap of the seminal London duo's radicalism on this record, there is clear evidence of acid house's rallying call to let your hair down — albeit filtered through Cut Copy's pop kaleidoscope. After 2011's somewhat introverted Zonoscope, the Melbourne foursome's return to the bounce of their breakthrough second record, 2008's In Ghost Colours, is welcome.
"We Are Explorers" is the closest to that album, its melody evoking the innocence and verve of their most well-known song, "Hearts On Fire." The biggest props on Free Your Mind are paid to the more rave-focused side of Manchester's Factory Records. "Take Me Higher" guns for the Balearicism of late-'80s New Order, providing a mellower moment of plateaued ecstasy before finding a second wind in gospel-tinged piano house. Similarly, "Let Me Show You Love" tips its hat to Welsh house music crew K-Klass (who were born on the dancefloor of Factory Records' legendary club The Hacienda) and their 1993 single "Let Me Show You."
Occasionally the unerring abstract positivism gets a little too much ("Walking In The Sky" could've been turned down a notch or 10, for example) and I have to wonder how much sense music born of Chicago's inner-city poverty and raised in Manchester's grim, unemployment-riddled past makes in the context of Melbourne's beach and coffee house culture. Thankfully, a number of evocative interludes — "(into the desert)," "above the city" and "waves" — provide countering calm.
Far and above the best track on Free Your Mind is the appropriately titled "Footsteps." Its lush percussion and exotic bird calls trace a line to Italian house group Sueño Latino's imaginatively titled 1989 hit "Sueño Latino," which in turn was based on a sample from Berlin composer Manuel Göttsching's sprawling 1984 opus "E2-E4." It's a salient reminder that repackaging musical history is as old of the hills. Therein lies the potential of Free Your Mind: by providing portals to another time and place, it makes new possibilities for discovery.
Samantha Langello and her daughter Alanna, 2, stand in front of their flood-damaged house in Fox Beach on Staten Island, N.J.
Joel Rose/NPR
Samantha Langello and her daughter Alanna, 2, stand in front of their flood-damaged house in Fox Beach on Staten Island, N.J.
Joel Rose/NPR
After Hurricane Sandy, the south shore of Staten Island looked like it had been hit by a tsunami. The storm surge devastated whole neighborhoods suddenly, in a matter of hours. In the year since the storm, some families have been rebuilding their homes and their lives. Others are ready to sell their flood-damaged properties and move on.
Joe Salluzzo lives in a neighborhood called New Dorp Beach, a few blocks from the ocean. He rode out the storm on the second story of his brick bungalow, which he's been repairing himself every since.
People are coming back "little by little," Salluzzo says. He's staying put: "This is the only house I got."
Around the corner, Linda Azzara is basking in the sunshine on the deck in her front yard. A year ago, she was clinging to it for dear life as the flood waters rose.
"We were the last family rescued here. They took us from the deck here, from the top step, in a boat," she says.
Today Azzara's yard is immaculate. And her house is in good shape, too. But she says the repairs cost her $80,000 out of her own pocket. Azzara says her insurance company was no help. She says few of her neighbors saw any payments from theirs either. Officials at FEMA say they've distributed more than $8 billion in total disaster assistance in New York. But in her neighborhood, Azzara says that help has been inconsistent.
"FEMA helped some of us, and not some of us. It was a weird thing. I think it was who came to your house," she says. "If you were lucky to get somebody with a little heart, they helped you. If not, they gave you $200."
'We Are Staying!!!'
Azzara has a red and white sign on her fence that says "We Are Staying!" You see the same sign in windows and front yards up and down her block. But for many of her neighbors, the hard work continues.
Electricians are still working on the house next door. A few houses on the block have new windows and doors. Others look like they've been abandoned since the storm.
"Everybody thinks a year later, we're New York and ... everybody's fine and dandy. No, it isn't," says Scott McGrath, who lives across the street. "It's real out there. It's still a lot of people needing help."
McGrath and his wife started a non-profit organization called Beacon of Hope New York to help rebuild the neighborhood. They made the "We Are Staying" yard signs. But McGrath admits that not everyone will. Like many of his neighbors, McGrath has to decide whether to meet new requirements to raise his house further off the ground or face a huge jump in his flood insurance premiums.
"You can walk up and down the block and you're gonna see For Sale signs in a lot of areas. They're selling their homes due to the fact they're not gonna be able to pay that flood insurance — so you might as well cut your losses now," McGrath says. "A lot of people are gonna take a hit on their property."
A year after Superstorm Sandy some residents of Fox Beach on Staten Island are determined to stay in the flood-ravaged town.
Joel Rose/NPR
A year after Superstorm Sandy some residents of Fox Beach on Staten Island are determined to stay in the flood-ravaged town.
Joel Rose/NPR
Homeowners across the region are finding they can't sell their houses for anything near what they were worth before the storm. But in another part of Staten Island, there is one big exception to that rule.
When Rebuilding Is Not An Option
Samantha Langello opens the door to her house in the Fox Beach neighborhood — or what's left of it. Sandy was the third big flood here in 5 years.
"It kind of just melted," Langello says. "The salt-water like just ate through the sheet rock."
When the state offered to buy these homeowners out at pre-storm values, almost all of them jumped at the chance. Real estate broker Joseph Tirone — who owns a rental property in Fox Beach — helped organize the effort. Tirone says the first checks went out this month.
"Rebuilding was not an option here. Not in this area," he says. "When they start getting their checks, I think initially they're gonna be extremely happy. But I think walking away from their home, I think that's gonna be tough on them."
Langello — toting a 2-year-old on her hip — says it's not easy to watch the neighborhood where she's been raising her two young children turn back into marshland.
"Sad and relief are probably the two main emotions," she says.
Langello knows her family is lucky to be getting the buyout.
"You get a little tired of picking up your wet sea-smelling clothes and going through things to see what you can salvage. In that sense I'm relieved that I won't have to deal with the clean-up ever again," she says.
Langello hopes other Sandy victims can know that feeling, too. But for most, that sense of relief may still be months or years away.
Editor’s note: Tadhg Kelly is a veteran game designer and creator of leading game design blog What Games Are. He has recently moved into managing developer relations at OUYA. You can follow him on Twitter here.
Pervasive gaming is a well-worn idea that’s drifted through the pages of design theory for at least 20 years. It’s the idea of a game that goes beyond the bounds of one screen. You’d play your game on your computer and then go out into the world with your PDA and keep playing. Your game would seep in to your life in a variety of ways and maybe even the boundaries of play and not-play would become illusive. While the target devices have maybe moved on from computers and PDAs to tablets and smartphones, the idea is alive and well.
Pervasiveness forms the meat of transmedia and gamification. The former is interested in using it as a way to tell stories, going from one format to another. The latter is more concerned with ways that games and behavior usefully coincide. Pervasiveness also features in much of the thinking surrounding massive multiplayer and social game experiences, or at least where the designers of those games believe they should go. When futurist game designers look at smartwatches, smart TVs, iPad minis, microconsoles and other upcoming device types, they invariably forecast a kind of game that hooks into all of the above and gels together.
Yet what we actually see in pervasive gaming is pretty thin. It boils down to little more than notifications nagging players to come back and play some otherwise thoroughly normal game along with some data sharing. Pervasiveness simply means messages that remind you to take your turn and cloud saves.
There are many sensible reasons why it’s not been a big deal so far. The first is the technology. While the pervasive game sounds good in theory, in practice it’s meant getting a lot of different devices to play nice, and that’s not easy. Look at how long it’s taken simple office software to go from a single-device to a cloud-based experience, and you get some sense of the challenge. Until recently PCs didn’t talk to mobile phones. Mobile phones didn’t have reliable-enough connectivity to maintain conversations with clouds. Consoles didn’t talk to anything almost as an article of faith.
The second reason is expertise. Developing a game to work on one platform is hard, never mind porting to similar platforms. Trying to take a game across many form factors and control types and yet somehow make them make sense is a daunting challenge and many game makers balk at the manpower required. This is why many pervasive gamelike experiences (such as Foursquare) tend to be rudimentary, and in turn why they struggle to maintain engagement levels.
We may be starting to overcome many of these issues. The Unity 3D engine, for example, has made cross-compatibility between platforms much easier. It is now much less daunting for a small studio to consider publishing everywhere, and the performance trade-offs that used to exist with middleware have become a non-issue. There’s also the convergence of core technologies in the computing sector. Microsoft may have gotten the implementation of this idea wrong with Windows 8, but the notion that screens of all sizes will start to operate in similar touch-based ways is likely correct. As device categories become better at being interoperable and clouds offload some of the heavy lifting, possibilities emerge.
But there is also a perception issue. Although there is plenty of evidence to suggest that multi-screen multi-device households are becoming the norm (in rich countries at least), game makers tend to think of that as a one-percenter perspective. They believe that the idea that players might move from screen to screen is a nice dream, but most of them won’t. And there is some precedent to this. In the more dedicated end of the video game market gamers tend to be loyal to specific brands and formats. In more casual markets players tend to have a default device, even a default game, that they play regularly but don’t seem inclined to change up. There is also the fractious history of alternate reality games and how they didn’t attract a lot of long term interest.
Video games are usually designed with a target environment and control method in mind, indeed making that control method part of the challenge of the game. Starcraft works really well as a mouse-and-keyboard game but would suck with a joypad. However the experience of playing Mario demands a joypad and would be boring in touch. That close relationship is not easily unpicked, and arguably not one that many players or developers want unravelled. You can’t play World of Warcraft on your iPhone. You can’t even conceive of how it would work because the whole game is designed from a PC perspective.
Pervasiveness is just another way of saying as-a-service. We predicted for a long time that software would move over to that model, and it has. Barring a few holdouts like Photoshop and Maya, the clear direction for growth in the software industry has been all about service for a while. It’s changed how software is thought of and what’s considered to be an important feature versus just another bullet point on a box. It’s changed how community works with software, often being the force that drives its direction.
As a result the powers in the pervasive software landscape look completely different to the older kings. Basecamp to Microsoft Project. Gmail to Outlook. Perhaps the new Numbers to Excel. Successful pervasive games will probably have to do something similar, to be designed from the ground up rather than to think of extra platforms as value-adds.
Imagine, for example designing a pervasive space-trading game. The king of the genre, EVE Online, has existed since 2003 and is designed entirely with the PC in mind. It has a hugely loyal user base that’s sensitive to changes. The game is persistent but not necessarily pervasive unless you sit in front of your PC a lot. It’s attempted to branch out into other platforms (such as through Dust 514) but not been successful in doing so.
Creating a pervasive space-trading game does not mean taking EVE and adding some mobile features. It means rethinking everything from the ground up. It probably means making a game that will always be much simpler than EVE, but that’s okay. The target of the experience is that pervasive feeling rather than the super-featured depth of the current king.
Designing for pervasiveness probably needs a whole new approach and this is one of the bigger challenges that game makers will face over the next few years because pervasiveness is already here. It’s Netflix remembering your position in a TV series from device to device. It’s collaborating on a Google document on the train while your colleague is doing the same from his desk. It’s checking your text message on your wearable smart watch. It’s whatever a sexier looking Google Glass turns out to be good for. None of these new software experiences really fit the mould of uni-device usages, and increasingly the idea that software in the future would work that way will seem quaint.
It’s not that games will all need to become pervasive to thrive, but the opportunity is opening up for studios willing to think that way to deliver new kinds of play experience.
Paramount and MTV Films' Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa scored a strong $1.4 million as it began rolling out in North American theaters Thursday night.
Pointing out that Bad Grandpa is a spinoff, Paramount is predicting an opening in the $20 million-plus range -- well below the last two Jackass films -- while rivals believe the movie could approach $30 million, considering the strength of the gross-out franchise.
One Paramount insider counters that Bad Grandpa is tracking relatively in line with Carrie, which debuted to $16.1 million last weekend (many also thought Carrie would cross $30 million).
This summer, This Is the End played to much the same audience, collecting $2.2 million on its first Tuesday night on its way to a $20.7 million domestic debut. And R-rated comedy We're the Millers collected $1.7 million on Tuesday night (both movies debuted midweek) on its way to a $26.4 million debut.
The big question is whether Bad Grandpa can unseat Gravity. The 3D space epic, heading into its fourth weekend with a domestic cume of $177.2 million, could earn $20 million or more. The Warner Bros. film has turned into a box-office sensation, earning north of $300 million to date.
Bad Grandpa, the first Jackass film to have any sort of plot, stars Johnny Knoxville as signature character Irving Zisman, a crotchety 86-year-old, and Jackson Nicoll as 8-year-old grandson Billy. The outrageous duo embark on a hidden-camera road trip across America, performing stunts and punking people. Along the way they encounter, among others, male strippers, disgruntled child beauty pageant contestants and bikers.
JeffTremaine returns to direct and produces alongside Knoxville, Spike Jonze and Derek Freda.
Knoxville is the only Jackass regular to appear in the film, which cost a modest $15 million to produce. It opens three years after Jackass 3D debuted to a sizzling $50.4 million. Jackass: Number Two opened to $29 million in late September 2006. The first Jackass, opening in late October 2002, debuted to $22.8 million.
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