WASHINGTON - More than a year into the gravest financial crisis since the Great Depression, millions of Americans have seen their home values and retirement savings plunge and their jobs evaporate. What they haven’t seen are any Wall Street tycoons forced to swap their multi-million dollar jobs and custom-made suits for dishwashing and prison stripes. There are plenty of civil and class-action lawsuits from aggrieved investors angered by the losses in their mortgage bonds, hedge funds or pensions. Regulators have stepped up their vigilance after the fact. But to date, no captain of finance tied to the crisis has walked the plank. There have been some high-profile arrests and federal convictions of financial giants - such as Ponzi scheme king Bernard Madoff and Stanford Financial Group chairman Robert Allen Stanford. They weren’t among the causes of the financial meltdown, however, just poster boys for an era of lax enforcement, weak regulation and devout faith in free markets. ‘A lot of people who are responsible (for the crisis) seem to have gotten awfully rich in the process,’ said Barbara Roper, the director of investor protection for the Consumer Federation of America. The absence of what many […]
WASHINGTON — Nearly 150,000 same-sex couples reported being in marriage relationships last year, many more than the number of actual weddings and civil unions, according to the first U.S. census figures released on same-sex marriages. About 27 percent of the estimated 564,743 total gay couples in the United States said they were in a relationship akin to ‘husband’ and ‘wife,’ according to the Census Bureau tally provided to The Associated Press. That’s compared with 91 percent of the 61.3 million total opposite-sex couples who reported being married. A consultant to the Census Bureau estimated there were roughly 100,000 official same-sex weddings, civil unions and domestic partnerships in 2008. Analysts said the disparities are probably a reflection of same-sex couples in committed relationships who would get married if they could in their states. The numbers are also an indicator of the count to come in the 2010 census, a tally that could stir a state-by-state fight over same-sex marriage, gay adoption and other legal rights. Nationwide, about 56 percent of the 149,956 total same-sex marriages in the census survey last year were lesbian couples. Same-sex spouses were reported in every state; specific breakdowns weren’t immediately available. […]
The United Nations is planning a form of diplomatic shock therapy for world leaders this week in the hope of injecting badly needed urgency into negotiations for a climate change treaty that, it is now widely acknowledged, are dangerously adrift. UN chief Ban Ki-Moon and negotiators say that unless they can convert world leaders into committed advocates of radical action, it will be very hard to reach a credible and enforceable agreement to avoid the most devastating consequences of climate change. As the digital counter ticking off the hours to the Copenhagen summit – which had been supposed to seal the deal on climate change – hit 77 days today, progress at the UN summit in New York is seen as vital. Nearly 100 heads of state and government are to attend the summit, for which a pared-down format has been devised. ‘We need these leaders to go outside their usual comfort zones,’ said one diplomat. ‘Our sense is that leaders have got a little too cosy and comfortable. They really have to hear from countries that are vulnerable and suffering.’ Rajendra Pachauri, head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which won the Nobel peace […]
Does theory lead experiments or do experiments lead theory? Scientists know the correct answer is that interplay between theory and experiments result in new advances. At times, experiment and technological development pave the way for theory. At other times, successful theory can contribute substantially to interpretation and analysis of the experimental data. But even more important is when theory can predict new effects and lead to new experiments and developments. This is evident in the new work at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Materials Research Science and Engineering Center published in the scientific journal Nano Letters. Three years ago, theoretical work of a research group of UNL physics and astronomy professor Evgeny Tsymbal predicted a new effect that could revolutionize the field of microelectronics by allowing faster, smaller and more energy-efficient memory devices. Recently, measurements of the electrical properties of ferroelectric materials performed at the Alexei Gruverman lab led to experimental verification of the predicted behavior. In their paper published online Aug. 21 in Nano Letters, Gruverman, an associate professor of physics and astronomy, and Tsymbal, with co-authors demonstrated a several-orders-of-magnitude change in electrical resistance upon flipping of polarization in ultra-thin ferroelectric films. Because of their ability to […]
A new study led by the University of Colorado at Boulder indicates most of the world’s low-lying river deltas are sinking from human activity, making them increasingly vulnerable to flooding from rivers and ocean storms and putting tens of millions of people at risk. While the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report concluded many river deltas are at risk from sea level rise, the new study indicates other human factors are causing deltas to sink significantly. The researchers concluded the sinking of deltas from Asia and India to the Americas is exacerbated by the upstream trapping of sediments by reservoirs and dams, man-made channels and levees that whisk sediment into the oceans beyond coastal floodplains, and the accelerated compacting of floodplain sediment caused by the extraction of groundwater and natural gas. The study concluded that 24 out of the world’s 33 major deltas are sinking and that 85 percent experienced severe flooding in recent years, resulting in the temporary submergence of roughly 100,000 square miles of land. About 500 million people in the world live on river deltas. Published in the Sept. 20 issue of Nature Geoscience, the study was led by CU-Boulder Professor James Syvitski, […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
