Report: Torture evidence found in Syrian prisons

BEIRUT (AP) ? Rights activists have found torture devices and other evidence of abuse in government prisons in the first Syrian city to fall to the rebels, Human Rights Watch said in a report Friday.

Raqqa, in eastern Syria, was overrun in late February by rebels fighting to topple President Bashar Assad. The rebels facilitated the New York-based group's access to facilities that had belonged to a security agency and military intelligence in late April.

In a report Friday, the HRW said its researchers found physical evidence indicating Syrians were tortured in cells in detention facilities inspected, including with a device which former detainees said was used to stretch or bend victims' arms and legs. The group also found documents indicating Raqqa residents were detained for legal actions like demonstrating or helping the injured.

Rights groups and opposition activists have long claimed that civilians have been detained arbitrarily, tortured, and sometimes have disappeared since uprising against Assad's regime began. HRW's findings detailed in a report Friday appear to be one of the largest finds of physical evidence bolstering those claims to date.

"The documents, prison cells, interrogation rooms, and torture devices we saw in the government's security facilities are consistent with the torture former detainees have described to us," said Nadim Houry, deputy Middle East director for HRW.

HRW has been documenting abuses on both sides of Syria's civil war during the 26 months of conflict.

The group says abuses by the Assad regime remain far more deadly, systematic and widespread, including on civilians with indiscriminate battlefield weapons such as widely banned cluster bombs. But the rights group also says rebel abuses have increased in frequency and scale in recent months.

The conflict has killed at least 70,000 people and forced millions out of their homes to seek shelter in neighboring countries or in other parts of Syria where fighting has subsided.

In Raqqa, the group's researchers inspected the State Security and Military Intelligence branches and three other detention center formerly managed by Criminal Security, Political Security, and Air Force Intelligence. Government forces abandoned all these institutions that are now controlled by the rebels, the group said.

On the ground floor and in the basement of the State Security facility, HRW found "rooms that appeared to be detention cells," the report said. They also found a pile of documents, including what appeared to be lists of security force members who had worked there.

Four former detainees said that officers and guards in the facility tortured them, HRW said..

In one method of torture, the victim is tied to a flat board, sometimes in the shape of a cross. In some cases guards stretched or pulled their limbs or folded the board in half so that their face touched their legs, causing pain.

The group also interviewed five people formerly held by Military Intelligence in Raqqa. They said security services questioned them about lawful activities, such as participating in anti-Assad demonstrations, providing relief assistance to displaced families, defending detainees, and providing emergency assistance to injured demonstrators.

Syria's conflict started as a peaceful uprising in March 2011. After months of nation-wide protests and street marches against Assad's rule, the revolt turned into an armed conflict when opposition supporters took up arms to fight a brutal government crackdown on dissent.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/report-torture-evidence-found-syrian-prisons-064646031.html

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NASA Designs the Scientifically Perfect Space Meal

After being strapped onto the front of a 15-story controlled explosion and launched clear out of the atmosphere to live in an experimental laboratory orbiting around the Earth at thousands of miles an hour, the least NASA can do is give you a good meal.

Feeding the crew of the ISS and other manned excursions is critical to the mission's success?you simply can't explore the cosmos on an empty stomach. But during the early days of the space program, Apollo and Gemini astronauts were limited to sustenance in either tube or cube form. These days, however, NASA's culinary techniques have advanced nearly as far as their rocket technology. Tested Site Mashup takes a delicious tour of NASA's Space Food Systems Laboratory and looks first hand at what goes into making what goes into astronauts. [Tested Site via Laughing Squid]

Source: http://gizmodo.com/nasa-designs-the-scientifically-perfect-space-meal-508302287

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A Final Blow To American Education - Return Of Kings

By Tuthmosis

Through a strange accident of timing, I was mostly educated by a generation of old-guard teachers on the verge of retirement. Starting in about the eighth grade, it seemed like two or three threw in the towel at the end of every year, having put in their 25 or 30 years. In other words, I was the last student for an uncanny number of teachers. I?m pretty young, but being schooled by a series of old-timers imparted an old-soul sensibility that still gets pointed out to me regularly.

Naturally, these teachers ran their classrooms in the old-school ways. My math teacher, a crusty frog- man with old-man spots, claimed to have fought in the Korean War?which was not thoroughly implausible. He?d actually retired and returned to teaching, since he had nothing else to do. When we asked him what good trigonometry would be in ?the real world,? he claimed he?d used it to fire volleys into the enemy camp. When he?d catch us taking notes on basic concepts he say, ?This is why this generation is so stupid.? If students seemed to be spacing out or dozing off, he throw pencil erasers at them or squirt them with a spray bottle, while hurling verbal abuse at the whole class.

Our woodshop teacher, a frustrated, angry dude with a heavy Southern accent, would facepalm (before that term was in wide use) every time a student did something he deemed to be dumb. He would take it upon himself to throw the brick of reality into our ninth-grade faces. When this gigantic fat kid refused to do his projects, he called him out in front of everyone.

Teacher: Tyrell, what do you think you?re going to do with your life, since you never do your work?

Fat Kid: I?m going to play professional football.

Teacher: Professional football players are fast?even the big ones. I?ll tell you what: I?m 62 years old. You?re 14 or 15. Let?s go outside and race. If you win, I?ll give you an automatic A in the class. If you don?t, you have accept that you?ll probably never make it onto a top college team, never mind the NFL.

The kid started crying. We didn?t say fucking shit.

The hallways were no different. Every time you heard ?young man!? behind you, you knew you were in for some trouble. One time, I made the mistake of spitting in one of the (outdoor) hallways on the way to class. Almost instantly, I heard the trademark call of Mr. Pritchard, the school disciplinarian:

Pritchard: Young man!

Me: Yes? [with attitude]

Pritchard: I?m going to need you to pick that up.

Me: How do you expect me to pick that shit up? [with more attitude]

At the sound of the S-word, Pritchard grabbed my punk-ass by the shirt, two-handed, and slammed me against the lockers directly behind me, painfully jamming the lock mechanism into my back. Somehow, it suddenly occurred to me that I could use the paper towel in my backpack to wipe it up, which I promptly did while apologizing.

Nowadays, any one of these acts would get a teacher fired, maybe indicted. But, at my school, a complaint would have had you laughed out of the office. And, no one thought to complain. Parents, teachers, administrators, and students all had an understanding that this is how you operated a school effectively. The old-timers ran a tight operation and had the freedom (and, more importantly, the power) to teach and discipline us. My experience was a little anachronistic, because so many of my teachers were old, but this was just the norm in very recent history.

Times have changed.

This week, a cell-phone video taken in a Duncanville, Texas classroom made the rounds on the Internet. In it, Jeff Bliss?a long-haired stoner who looks like one of the ancillary bullies from the Simpsons?directs a tirade at his teacher after having been asked to leave the room. In the 87-second video, the former drop-out criticizes his teacher?s pedagogical technique, calling for her to ?touch [her students?] hearts? instead of just handing them ?freakin? packets.?

You?d think that this rather ordinary event would go unnoticed. Instead, the video went viral. Even more surprisingly, the kid was showered with praise for his ?courage? and ?intelligence.? He appeared on the local news and was celebrated in a variety of online outlets. The teacher was held up as the paragon of everything that?s wrong with today?s education system: lazy, uncommitted, and incompetent. She was placed on administrative leave by the school?s principal in direct response to the reaction to the video.

But neither of them deserved what they got.

This pot-head slacker certainly deserves no praise. Defiantly parroting a few tired, heartwarming platitudes from a Robin Williams movie isn?t courage, it?s disruptive?and ridiculous. It isn?t the teacher?s responsibility to captivate you with her creative teaching style, or blow you away with some creative illustration of how amazing the subject-matter is?like in some Hollywood movie?just so that you?ll sit still in your chair. Being an 18-year-old man?still in the tenth?grade also evaporates any credibility you have in speaking on matters of learning and education. Furthermore, no one is talking about why Bliss was kicked out of the classroom in the first place. He?s likely displayed this?pattern of disruptiveness, for which he clearly accepts no accountability. It?s always someone else?s fault.

Julie Phung, the teacher, is also receiving undue blame. Even if the claims are true, what else do you expect from teachers nowadays??There?s little incentive to do anything but the minimum, never mind scintillating daily presentations to keep the easily distractable engaged for an extra 10 minutes. The hours are long (contrary to popular belief) and the attitudes, nuisances, and outright risks you have to put with increase with every year. You?re constantly attacked from all sides: the increasingly degenerate students, shitty (or entitled) parents, the principal, society at-large.

Not only that, you?re also a paper tiger with little power to maintain order or stand up for yourself?a fact the students are keenly aware of. Even if a kid punches you in the face, you run the risk of major legal troubles?never mind jeopardizing your livelihood?for so much as restraining them. If Ms. Phung can be placed on leave for not ?touching kids? hearts? enough, what do you think a slam against some lockers would get you??All of this for a job that pays shit?a salary so low that it?s not going to attract the best and the brightest, and hasn?t for years. Frankly, we should be thankful?anyone?is willing to do that job.

American education is in irretrievable decline for a laundry list of reasons: the willful de-funding of it, the decline of competent parenting, shrinking attention spans, large class-sizes, the criminalization of teacher-imposed discipline, the removal of trades (shop classes) from curriculum offerings, the McDonaldization effect created by mandatory standardized testing. The list goes on.

Teachers have been rendered into little more than a cross between babysitter and probation officer. We have to face the fact that the teaching profession, as we knew it, no longer exists. To blame teachers for systemic problems is not only unfair, it?s easy.

Read More: The Power of Shame

About the Author

Tuthmosis is a writer and consultant, with specialties in dating culture, social intelligence, and the state of masculinity. He splits his time between various U.S. cities. His column runs every Wednesday.

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Source: http://www.returnofkings.com/10962/a-final-blow-to-american-education

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Nine-year-old Mars rover passes 40-year-old record

May 17, 2013 ? While Apollo 17 astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt visited Earth's moon for three days in December 1972, they drove their mission's Lunar Roving Vehicle 19.3 nautical miles (22.210 statute miles or 35.744 kilometers). That was the farthest total distance for any NASA vehicle driving on a world other than Earth until yesterday.

The team operating NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity received confirmation in a transmission from Mars today that the rover drove 263 feet (80 meters) on Thursday, bringing Opportunity's total odometry since landing on Mars in January 2004 to 22.220 statute miles (35.760 kilometers).

Cernan discussed this prospect a few days ago with Opportunity team member Jim Rice of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. The Apollo 17 astronaut said, "The record we established with a roving vehicle was made to be broken, and I'm excited and proud to be able to pass the torch to Opportunity."

The international record for driving distance on another world is still held by the Soviet Union's remote-controlled Lunokhod 2 rover, which traveled 23 miles (37 kilometers) on the surface of Earth's moon in 1973.

Opportunity began a multi-week trek this week from an area where it has been working since mid-2011, the "Cape York" segment of the rim of Endeavour Crater, to an area about 1.4 miles (2.2 kilometers) away, "Solander Point."

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Exploration Rover Project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. JPL also manages the Mars Science Laboratory Project and its rover, Curiosity, which landed on Mars in August 2012.

For more information about Opportunity, visit http://www.nasa.gov/rovers and http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov . You can follow the project on Twitter and on Facebook at: http://twitter.com/MarsRovers and http://www.facebook.com/mars.rovers .

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/~3/wuHIEDRP8yQ/130517120939.htm

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Nokia announces Smart Camera app for the Lumia 925 (video)

Here at the Nokia event in London, we've seen the Lumia 925 go from rumor to reality, and now we're hearing more about the camera software debuting on the handset. For starters, the app has improved low-light performance and noise reduction, and will burst capture at 5-megapixels, with the full 8.7-megapixels available in single-shooting mode. Sports shooters will get Action Shot, which combines several images for a slow-mo effect, and Best Shot will let you (or the camera) choose one of 10 frames that gives the best overall image. Motion focus will add a blur effect to the background while keeping moving objects in focus, with the option to adjust the level of blur later.

Burst shooting also gives the ability to selectively choose the most (or least) hammy expressions on your subjects and finally, there's an option that lets you delete moving objects that might be in the way of your subject, as shown above. Nokia announced that Smart Camera won't just be limited to the Lumia 925 either, as all of the Finnish company's Windows 8 Phone devices will get it through Nokia's Lumia Amber firmware update, arriving sometime this summer. If none of that works for you, there's always Hipstamatic -- also just trumpeted for Windows Phone 8 at the Catwalk event. For more about Smart Camera, head after the break for videos detailing the new features.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Nokia

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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/14/nokia-announces-smart-camera-app-for-the-new-lumia-925/?utm_medium=feed&utm_source=Feed_Classic&utm_campaign=Engadget

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Colossal hydrogen bridge between galaxies could be fuel line for new stars

Researchers studying a filament of hydrogen between the Andromeda and Triangulum galaxies found rotating clumps of gas the size of dwarf galaxies. But questions remain.

By Pete Spotts / May 8, 2013

This combined graphic shows new, high-resolution GBT imaging of recently discovered hydrogen clouds between M31 (upper r.) and M33.

Bill Saxton, NRAO/AUI/NSF

Enlarge

Newly published radiotelescope observations of this segment of what researchers have dubbed the ?cosmic web? reveal that about half of the neutral hydrogen gas in the bridge is contained in rotating clumps the size of dwarf galaxies. Neutral hydrogen ? atoms with one proton and one electron ? represents the raw material for new stars.

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?If this gas is being accreted by the galaxies, then we need to understand how they're doing that. That information could, in principle, help us understand how galaxies like Andromeda, like our own Milky Way, can acquire gas to form new stars,? says Spencer Wolfe, a PhD candidate in astronomy at West Virginia University and the lead scientist on the project.

Over the past decade, astronomers have come to appreciate the potential of gas between galaxies to provide fresh fuel for making stars in spiral galaxies.

Star formation in the universe appears to have peaked some 10 billion to 11 billion years ago. Stellar birthrates these days are less than 10 percent of what they were then, notes Robert Braun, an astronomer at the Australia Telescope National Facility in Epping, New South Wales.

Left to their own devices, galaxies have on average about 1 billion to 2 billion years worth of gas in the cosmic tank, a condition that has existed throughout most of the universe's history, Dr. Braun writes in an e-mail. Many of them, therefore, should have stopped forming stars billions of years ago.?Moreover, the total mass of stars in the universe today is about five times higher than the amount of neutral hydrogen available 12 billion years ago, suggesting that the universe's larger inventory of ionized hydrogen kept star formation going in some way.

Researchers have identified other mechanisms for the galactic equivalent of in-flight refueling. For instance, gas gets recycled for a time through successive generations of stars. Collisions, mergers, and even near-misses between galaxies can trigger bursts of star formation.?But filaments of ionized hydrogen appear to be the only features persistent enough to keep galaxies stocked with stars over billions of years of cosmic history. Somehow, within those filaments, enough of the ionized gas condenses into the neutral form to serve as new stellar nurseries.

The filament or bridge Mr. Wolfe and his team studied appears between the Milky Way's nearest neighbor, the Andromeda Galaxy, and the Triangulum Galaxy. Andromeda is some 2.5 million light-years from Earth, while the Triangulum is roughly 3 million light-years away.

The presence of neutral hydrogen in the bridge was first reported in 2004 and confirmed in follow-up observations published last year. But it's fiendishly difficult to detect. One way neutral hydrogen betrays its presence is via radio waves, with a tell-tale signal at about the same frequency that a typical cell-phone uses. But the clumps are so wispy that their radio emissions were too faint for detailed studies with the radio telescopes used in the early work.

The new observations were made with a 100-meter-wide dish at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory's Greenbank facility in West Virginia. Although it's significantly more sensitive than the radio telescopes used previously, the team still had to push it to its limits.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/science/~3/A69dw6I6LmM/Colossal-hydrogen-bridge-between-galaxies-could-be-fuel-line-for-new-stars

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