Black hole naps amidst stellar chaos

June 11, 2013 ? Nearly a decade ago, NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory caught signs of what appeared to be a black hole snacking on gas at the middle of the nearby Sculptor galaxy. Now, NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR), which sees higher-energy X-ray light, has taken a peek and found the black hole asleep.

"Our results imply that the black hole went dormant in the past 10 years," said Bret Lehmer of the Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. "Periodic observations with both Chandra and NuSTAR should tell us unambiguously if the black hole wakes up again. If this happens in the next few years, we hope to be watching." Lehmer is lead author of a new study detailing the findings in the Astrophysical Journal.

The slumbering black hole is about 5 million times the mass of our sun. It lies at the center of the Sculptor galaxy, also known as NGC 253, a so-called starburst galaxy actively giving birth to new stars. At 13 million light-years away, this is one of the closest starbursts to our own galaxy, the Milky Way.

The Milky Way is all around more quiet than the Sculptor galaxy. It makes far fewer new stars, and its behemoth black hole, about 4 million times the mass of our sun, is also snoozing.

"Black holes feed off surrounding accretion disks of material. When they run out of this fuel, they go dormant," said co-author Ann Hornschemeier of Goddard. "NGC 253 is somewhat unusual because the giant black hole is asleep in the midst of tremendous star-forming activity all around it."

The findings are teaching astronomers how galaxies grow over time. Nearly all galaxies are suspected to harbor supermassive black holes at their hearts. In the most massive of these, the black holes are thought to grow at the same rate that new stars form, until blasting radiation from the black holes ultimately shuts down star formation. In the case of the Sculptor galaxy, astronomers do not know if star formation is winding down or ramping up.

"Black hole growth and star formation often go hand-in-hand in distant galaxies," said Daniel Stern, a co-author and NuSTAR project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "It's a bit surprising as to what's going on here, but we've got two powerful complementary X-ray telescopes on the case."

Chandra first observed signs of what appeared to be a feeding supermassive black hole at the heart of the Sculptor galaxy in 2003. As material spirals into a black hole, it heats up to tens of millions of degrees and glows in X-ray light that telescopes like Chandra and NuSTAR can see.

Then, in September and November of 2012, Chandra and NuSTAR observed the same region simultaneously. The NuSTAR observations -- the first-ever to detect focused, high-energy X-ray light from the region -- allowed the researchers to say conclusively that the black hole is not accreting material. NuSTAR launched into space in June of 2012.

In other words, the black hole seems to have fallen asleep. Another possibility is that the black hole was not actually awake 10 years ago, and Chandra observed a different source of X-rays. Future observations with both telescopes may solve the puzzle.

"The combination of coordinated Chandra and NuSTAR observations is extremely powerful for answering questions like this," said Lou Kaluzienski, NuSTAR Program Scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "Now, we can get all sides of the story."

The observations also revealed a smaller, flaring object that the researchers were able to identify as an "ultraluminous X-ray source," or ULX. ULXs are black holes feeding off material from a partner star. They shine more brightly than typical stellar-mass black holes generated from dying stars, but are fainter and more randomly distributed than the supermassive black holes at the centers of massive galaxies. Astronomers are still working to understand the size, origins and physics of ULXs.

"These stellar-mass black holes are bumping along near the center of this galaxy," said Hornschemeier. "They tend to be more numerous in areas where there is more star-formation activity."

If and when the Sculptor's slumbering giant does wake up in the next few years amidst all the commotion, NuSTAR and Chandra will monitor the situation. The team plans to check back on the system periodically.

NuSTAR is a Small Explorer mission led by the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena and managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, also in Pasadena, for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The spacecraft was built by Orbital Sciences Corporation, Dulles, Va. Its instrument was built by a consortium including Caltech; JPL; the University of California, Berkeley; Columbia University, New York; NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.; the Danish Technical University in Denmark; Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, Calif.; ATK Aerospace Systems, Goleta, Calif., and with support from the Italian Space Agency (ASI) Science Data Center.

NuSTAR's mission operations center is at UC Berkeley, with the ASI providing its equatorial ground station located at Malindi, Kenya. The mission's outreach program is based at Sonoma State University, Rohnert Park, Calif. NASA's Explorer Program is managed by Goddard. JPL is managed by Caltech for NASA.

For more information, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/nustar and http://www.nustar.caltech.edu/ . Follow the mission on Twitter via http://www.twitter.com/NASANuSTAR .

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_science/~3/R3vhYJ_Msy0/130611144552.htm

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Immigration bill clears first early Senate hurdle

Senate leaders Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell (Roger L. Wollenberg/Getty Images)

A bipartisan bill to overhaul the nation's immigration system easily cleared its first procedural hurdle Tuesday afternoon, belying the difficult fight that remains in Congress for the legislation.

The Senate voted 82 to 15 to limit debate on the bill, allowing senators to begin voting on amendments to legislation crafted by the bipartisan Gang of Eight and passed by the Senate Judiciary Committee. All 15 "no" votes came from Republicans.

The initial nod of approval, however, does not mean GOP lawmakers who voted yes on the procedural matter will vote for final passage. Over the coming weeks, Republicans and Democrats will propose their own changes to the bill. Many Republicans, including the bill's co-author, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, have said they will reject final passage unless the chamber agrees to amendments that strengthen border security.

Speaking on the Senate floor Tuesday morning, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who voted in favor of Tuesday's motion to proceed, said he would withhold judgement on whether to support the bill's final passage until after the amendment process.

"It?s time for the Gang of 100 to do its work ? for the entire Senate to have its say on this issue, and see if we can do something to improve the status quo," McConnell said. "At the risk of stating the obvious, this bill has serious flaws. I?ll vote to debate it and for the opportunity to amend it, but in the days ahead there will need to be major changes to this bill if it?s going to become law. These include, but are not limited to, the areas of border security, government benefits and taxes."

The amendment process begins one of the most contentious periods for the bill in the Senate. Republican opponents of the overhaul are expected to offer a series of amendments that could derail the effort. Likewise, Democrats will be required to support changes that strengthen enforcement or face defections from key Republicans who have worked on the bill from the beginning.

Rubio is planning to introduce an amendment to delete a provision that allows immigrants to obtain green cards if they enroll in a government-approved English course. He has also expressed concern over border control measures?something Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas has said he will address by introducing an amendment to require four border security "triggers" to be met before a pathway to citizenship for the undocumented can be undertaken.

Republican Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana on Tuesday voted against the procedural measure. "A bill with a $6.3 trillion price tag that completely walks away from border security is not ready for serious discussion or consideration,? Vitter said. ?With so many dangerous flaws, I?ll be opposing the motion to proceed.?

Hours before the vote, President Barack Obama called on Congress to come together to support what he views as the country's best hope to fix the current system.

"If you're not serious about it?if you think that a broken system is the best America can do?then I guess it might make sense to try to block it," Obama said of the bill during remarks delivered in the White House East Room. "But if you're actually serious and sincere about fixing a broken system, this is the vehicle to do it and now is the time to get it done. There is no good reason to play procedural games or engage in obstruction, just to block the best change we've had in years to address this problem."

Obama described the pathway to citizenship offered by the bill as "arduous," noting background checks, learning English, paying taxes and going to the back of the line for citizenship applications. It is estimated it will take 13 years before today's undocumented immigrants can even apply, if the bill is passed by the end of this summer.

Obama, who has made immigration reform a second-term priority, highlighted other aspects of the bill: It would invest millions of additional funds in border security; work to modernize the immigration system; increase penalties against smugglers and traffickers; allow employers to check the immigration status of potential employees more easily; and hold those who hire undocumented workers more accountable.

Obama on Tuesday stressed that the bill is not going to make every stakeholder in the immigration debate happy, but that it remains the best path forward.

There is "no good reason to stand in the way of this bill," he said.

Supporters who appeared with Obama on Tuesday morning included local law enforcement officials, lawmakers from Texas and California, clergy, business leaders, union officials such as AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka, and DREAMers?undocumented immigrants who entered the United States as children.

Obama encouraged lawmakers to think of DREAMers as well as their parents and grandparents as they take up debate on the bill.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., is aiming to push final Senate passage of the bill by July 4.

In the House, a bipartisan group of lawmakers is working on its own version of an immigration reform package. House Speaker John Boehner has urged committees to wrap up their work on the bill by the Fourth of July recess. Boehner said in an interview Tuesday with ABC News that there is "no question" the overall bill could pass by the end of the year.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/obama-press-senate-immigration-142411782.html

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Will NSA leaks wake us from our techno-utopian dream?

A vast surveillance state is being made possible by the technologies that we were told would liberate us.

By Dan Murphy,?Staff writer / June 10, 2013

Could the leaks about the extent of the National Security Agency's surveillance of US citizens be the death knell of techno-utopianism?

Skip to next paragraph Dan Murphy

Staff writer

Dan Murphy is a staff writer for the Monitor's international desk, focused on the Middle East.?Murphy, who has reported from Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt, and more than a dozen other countries, writes and edits Backchannels. The focus? War and international relations, leaning toward things Middle East.

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Weekly Digital Edition

Well, if we're lucky. The notion that the Internet, cellphones, and related digital technologies would set us all free - the definition of "free" generally determined by the political biases of whatever polemicist you happened to be reading -- has been a durable one for years now. Citizens would evade government censors, tweet and Facebook their way to revolution, and forge new, and better, democracies.

Anonymity and encryption would ensure the free flow of information, and people empowered by technology would be the bane of tyrants and government abuse everywhere. Bitcoins would be the new global currency, Wikipedia a new and better global university, and white-hat hackers would be our standard bearers. WikiLeaks would avenge and expose injustice and the global capitalist successes of companies like Google would be evidence that you could do well while not being evil.?

Well, it was a nice fantasy while it lasted.

While it's been clear to some for a while now that the Internet isn't exactly the magic democracy machine it has been cracked up to be (a great place to start in this vein is Evgeny Morozov's 2011 book, The Net Delusion), a rosy glow continues to surround the information age and its potential to remake human societies.?

But the sheer extent of the US government's digital surveillance efforts, revealed by former CIA employee and NSA contractor Edward Snowden to The Guardian and The Washington Post this week, will hopefully bring techno-skepticism to a broader audience. Amid the debates over the legality and constitutionality of the government's PRISM and related programs, whether Mr. Snowden is a whistle-blower or traitor, whether marginally greater safety is worth the intrusion on private citizens' lives, there is one indisputable fact: The US and other governments have more information about the habits of their citizens at their command than at any other time in human history. Orders of magnitude more, and growing every day.

Will they use their new powers for good or ill? Well, the track record of human history doesn't provide much ground for reassurance. And while the discussion that President Obama now says he wants about these issues (after keeping the expanding programs secret for years) may yield more robust laws to protect US citizen privacy, China or Pakistan or Kazakhstan may have different ideas.

That the "Internet" and all that goes with it is simply a technology, a tool, that is value-neutral on its own, should be self-evident. But the opposite case has been peddled by powerful and influential people who have profited handsomely from this new world.?

Case in point is Eric Schmidt of Google. The Internet giant has, according to one of the NSA slides Snowden gave to The Guardian, been feeding information into the PRISM system since Jan. 14, 2009. Though the company denies any knowledge of the program, it uses the same no "direct access to our servers" formulation that's been used by the eight other companies involved.

As PRISM was hoovering data from Google, Mr. Schmidt was penning, with Google Ideas Director Jared Cohen,?The New Digital Age, a paean to the transformative power of our new technologies. It contains some doozies. Like: "The collective power of the online world will serve as a tremendous deterrent to potential perpetrators of brutality, corrupt practices and even crimes against humanity" and; "As governments look for ways to persuade ex-combatants to turn in their AK47s, they will find that the prospect of a smart phone might be enough to get started." And, "In the future people won't just back up their data; they'll back up their government."

Mr. Morozov has a typically amusing criticism of the book's apparent argument that everything old is new again (h/t Joshua Foust):

The problem is that you cannot devise new concepts merely by sticking adjectives on old ones. The future depicted in?The New Digital Age?is just the past qualified with ?virtual.? The book is all about virtual kidnappings, virtual hostages, virtual safe houses, virtual soldiers, virtual asylum, virtual statehood, virtual multilateralism, virtual containment, virtual sovereignty, virtual visas, virtual honor killings, virtual apartheid, virtual discrimination, virtual genocide, virtual military, virtual governance, virtual health-insurance plans, virtual juvenile records, and?my favorite?virtual courage. The tricky subject of virtual pregnancies remains unaddressed, but how far away could they be, really?

To be sure, there are caveats. Schmidt and Cohen write of "the importance of a guiding human hand in the new digital age. For all the possibilities that communication technologies represent, their use for good or ill depends solely on people. Forget all the talk about machines taking over. What happens in the future is up to us."

Well, maybe. But while "us" figures out how to control and contain the potential damage of the era of big data, it turns out governments have been happily setting the rules for themselves ? with the acquiescence, at least, of the likes of Google.

If we accept The Guardian's account of Google's cooperation with PRISM, it's interesting to note that a company that profits from sorting through mounds of data and helping advertisers target customers doesn't appear to have mounted much of a legal challenge to the government's demand for access to the information on their servers. Contrast that with their successful fight against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) last year, which was framed as a battle for Internet freedom but was also good for the bottom line of content distributors like Google (rather than content producers).?

Mr. Snowden himself appears to allude to a dawning knowledge of the downside of the digital world as part of his inspiration to come forward, exposing himself to serious legal repercussions in the process. He told The Guardian's Glen Greenwald that the NSA is "intent on making every conversation and every form of behavior in the world known to them" and that:

... he once viewed the internet as "the most important invention in all of human history". As an adolescent, he spent days at a time "speaking to people with all sorts of views that I would never have encountered on my own".

But he believed that the value of the internet, along with basic privacy, is being rapidly destroyed by ubiquitous surveillance. "I don't see myself as a hero," he said, "because what I'm doing is self-interested: I don't want to live in a world where there's no privacy and therefore no room for intellectual exploration and creativity."

Once he reached the conclusion that the NSA's surveillance net would soon be irrevocable, he said it was just a matter of time before he chose to act. "What they're doing" poses "an existential threat to democracy", he said.

The Internet, access to information, the ability of people to communicate and share ideas over great distances and tiny costs, are all wonderful things. But they are also creating indelible records of what every wired person thinks and buys, whom they talk to and how often, and all that is inevitably fed into algorithms designed to spew out answers to every question imaginable, from "Is this person in the market for Pampers?" to "Is this person a dangerous subversive?"

The real conversation we need to be having is to how to control and, yes, regulate this awesome power. The efforts of Mr. Snowden may get that discussion under way.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/sFsBgDSH3rc/Will-NSA-leaks-wake-us-from-our-techno-utopian-dream

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Music service, mobile software expected from Apple

NEW YORK (AP) ? A digital radio service and changes to the software behind iPhones and iPads are among the features expected Monday as Apple opens its annual conference for software developers in San Francisco.

Apple is expected to unveil a simplified look to iOS, the software that runs iPhones and iPads. If the speculation is correct, it would be the most radical design change since the iPhone made its debut in 2007. The alterations, however, could alienate long-time users accustomed to the existing look and feel.

Although CEO Tim Cook has said people shouldn't expect new products until the fall, Apple could preview what those products will do in unveiling new services and features.

Apple also is expected to debut a streaming music service dubbed iRadio.

Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference runs through Friday.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/495d344a0d10421e9baa8ee77029cfbd/Article_2013-06-09-Apple/id-a67d8a4864674e47a4db8900a90205a4

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Los Angeles Jewish Home's Blog: Grandparenting Dos and Don'ts

Being a grandparent can be one of life's most fulfilling roles, one that benefits both you and your grandchildren. Grandparents can share valuable life lessons with their grandchildren, enjoying a nurturing? relationship without many of the day-to-day burdens of parents. Grandchildren, in turn, can gain a sense of family history and belonging as well as receive a special kind of love that differs from the love they get from their parents.

At the same time, the role of grandparents can be tricky. It can be hard to find the right balance between being involved and being over-involved.

"The key is to find your place in the family. You must fit into the family culture, rather than challenging it," says Gayle Peterson, PhD, a family therapist specializing in family development, in an article on nuturecenter.com.

A review of the advice offered by Peterson, as well as other such as AARP family expert Amy Goyer and grandparents.com columnist Barbara Graham, garnered some common themes for keeping the "grand" in grandparenting:

Grandparenting Dos

• Respect the parents decisions of your children: Know their rules and be willing to enforce them.
• Support your grandchild's parents from the beginning: Welcome your new in-law as family and establish a good relationship with him or her.
• Make time for your grandchildren: Do projects together. Share your hobbies and learn about the activities your grandchildren love. Travel with your grandchildren if possible, whether for a day trip or longer excursion.
• Keep in regular contact with your grandchildren. Use phone, email, and video chatting to stay in touch when you can't get together in person.
• Accept that you may have made mistakes in parents and that your children will as well. Know that child-rearing styles change with each generation.
• Help out whenever you can, but not so much that you resent it.
• Maintain balance in your own life.

Grandparenting Don'ts

• ?Don't try to be the parent.
• Don't try to buy affection.
• Don't offer unsolicited advice to the parents.
• Don't "compete" with other grandparents.

Jerry Witkovsky, a social worker and former general director of the Jewish Community Center of Chicago, focuses on the third and fourth bullet points of the Do's list: sharing experiences with grandchildren and keeping in regular contact with them. Founder of Grand Consultants, he is currently writing a book, entitled The Grandest Love of All: A Guide for Grandparents on Strengthening the Bonds with Grandkids (and Their Parnets).

Witkovsky keeps a standard weekly phone appointment with each of his six grandchildren, who range in age from 10 to 30. He also asks them what subjects not to inquire about.

Witkovsky urges keeping up with your grandchildren's activities so you can ask relevant questions and have meaningful discussions. For example, instead of asking "How's school?" see if you can subscribe to the school's parent newsletter. Or ask your grandchild for his or her English class reading list and read some of the books so you can discuss them together.

"Grandparents and grandchildren have a responsibility to teach and learn from one another," says Witkovsky. "Grandparents can and should be a vital part of the family."

Source: http://blog.jha.org/2013/06/grandparenting-dos-and-donts.html

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