California faces severe budget cuts when the new year begins, but the state?s residents say something unusual: They could live with higher taxes. NBC?s George Lewis reports.
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NEW YORK -- After a customer backlash, Verizon Wireless is dropping a plan to start charging $2 for every payment subscribers make over the phone or online with their credit cards.
3:50 PM
Walgreen CEO Greg Wasson says chances are probably slim to none that the drugstore operator will reach an agreement with pharmacy benefits manager Express Scripts before their current contract ends Saturday.
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Missed a compelling piece of iPhone news, a great review, or a killer how-to? We?re not collecting absolutely everything in iPhone here ? you can hit up TiPb.com/iPhone and TiPb.com/iPad for that! ? but we?re carefully picking what we think is the best of the last 7 days and presenting it here for your review.
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WASHINGTON ? Melody Barnes is leaving as White House chief domestic policy adviser at a time when President Barack Obama's administration is getting little notice for its work on the home front to fix the struggling economy.
Barnes, who will be gone by Tuesday, is quick to point out that there have been many domestic achievements, even though the public is dissatisfied.
"I completely understand what the American public is feeling," she said in an interview in her tidy West Wing office. "Real people are hurting in a significant way. ... At the same time, I'm proud of the things we've been able to accomplish over the last few years."
Her office is wrestling with multiple thorny issues now just as it was when Barnes started as Obama's domestic policy team director in 2009.
Back then, the economy plunged into free-fall and the country was in its worst economic crisis since the 1930s. Jobs were being lost at a rate of about 750,000 a month ? a number Barnes still finds so staggering she said she has to double-check it every time she says it.
Homes were being foreclosed, unemployment was skyrocketing and reaching double the national average in the black community. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan dragged on, an outbreak of H1N1flu virus became a pandemic, and a tsunami that hit Japan crippled a nuclear plant near Tokyo, to name some of the highlights.
Even her chance to play golf with the president, the first time a woman joined him, was a response to what was a public image crisis for Obama. The president was getting flak for playing basketball with men and fostering complaints about a boys' club in the White House.
Just before Christmas, the president and Congress wrangled over a two-month extension of a Social Security payroll tax cut and unemployment benefits. Obama won a victory when the proposal won bipartisan support in the Senate and finally was accepted by House Republicans under extreme pressure.
Barnes, a Richmond, Va., native with a career in government and private sector work, is bowing out of the political arena as Obama struggles with low approval ratings on his handling of the economy.
A majority of Americans do not think the president deserves a second term, according to the most recent Associated Press-GfK poll. But at the same time, the unemployment rate has dropped to 8.6 percent, the lowest level since March 2009. The president's overall approval rating stands at 44 percent, the lowest of his term in AP-GfK surveys.
His strong stance against House Republicans in the payroll tax standoff has caused an uptick in approval ratings in subsequent polls.
Barnes expects the list of legislative victories that she and others pulled off amid the hemorrhaging economy will become more clear in the coming year as the dark clouds of the economy disperse.
She tops that list with the early work to stabilize the economy, 21 months of consistent job growth and the president's long-term investments in education overhaul, an area that became her specialty.
"Our work on education reform, it'll be part of this president's legacy," she said.
Barnes said that with a fraction of what the federal government spends annually on education, about $100 billion, from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the administration tapped into an education reform movement taking place at the grass roots among governors and local communities frustrated with the prescriptive, one-size-fits-all mandates of No Child Left Behind, the Bush administration's education cornerstone.
Congress has yet to approve revisions to No Child Left Behind, states are using up the stimulus money, and Obama's Race to the Top grant program faces spending cuts. But Barnes said Obama has given a boost to education law changes that now allow such things as connecting student performance and teacher evaluations.
Barnes, chief counsel to the late Sen. Edward Kennedy on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said Obama also deserves credit for passage of a health care overhaul, legislation that she had worked on for eight years with Kennedy. The Massachusetts senator spent his career trying to restructure health care.
There's also the auto industry bailout, expansion of Pell grants to help fund college education, the end of the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy on gays and work to advance civil rights, she said.
"When you are worried about day to day, it's hard to step back and to take all those other things in," Barnes said. "Although at the same time, I'm literally in the grocery store and people come up to me and say, `Hey, you work for the president. You keep on doing what you are doing.' "
Married a few months into the president's first year, Barnes plans to spend more time with family. She is considering offers in the private sector but hasn't disclosed what those are.
___
Online:
White House Domestic Policy Council: http://www.whitehouse.gov/administration/eop/dpc
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First published: 28 Dec 2011
Cape Town Opera will return to London next summer with a revival of its 2009 production of Porgy And Bess. Following a UK tour, the show will play a two-week run at the London Coliseum.
George Gershwin's iconic opera was written in 1935 and features lyrics by DuBose Heyward and Ira Gershwin. The show, which marks 75 years since George Gershwin's untimely death, will run at London's prestigious opera venue from 11 to 21 July.
Set during the 1920s in America's Deep South, Porgy And Bess tells the story of Porgy, a disabled beggar living in the busy community of Catfish Row, who desperately tries to save the beautiful Bess from her violent boyfriend Crown and the sleazy dope-dealer Sportin' Life.
The seminal piece features songs including Summertime, I Got Plenty Of Nuttin', It Ain't Necessarily So and I Love You Porgy.
Renowned for its gifted young singers, Cape Town Opera is the largest performing arts company in South Africa. The company made its critically acclaimed UK debut with Porgy And Best in 2009 with The Times declaring: "You'd need a heart of concrete not to come out smiling."?
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Source: http://www.officiallondontheatre.co.uk:80/news/latest/view/item118817
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the People’s Daily, the official news organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, reports that a device with the same model...
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Source: abclocal.go.com --- Tuesday, December 27, 2011
The 'pinging' of an IPad helped officials track down a burglary suspect and return Christmas gifts to some happy children. ...
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HONOLULU (AP) ? Southern Illinois will leave Hawaii empty-handed.
The Salukis (3-8) dropped their third straight game Sunday, an 87-77 loss to No. 14 Xavier, and will depart from the Islands without a win. The Musketeers (9-3), led by 21 points from Tu Holloway, snapped their own three-game losing streak with the win in the seventh-place game of the Diamond Head Classic.
SIU coach Chris Lowery pointed at Holloway as the difference-maker in the game.
"Tu Holloway is an NBA guy," Lowery said. "That's the difference between their club and our club. Their thinker is an NBA guy. He never wavered (or) got shook up and he ran the team."
Dantiel Daniels shot 7 of 8 from the field and made all eight of his free throws to lead the Salukis with a game-high 22 points. He scored 13 of his 22 points in the second half.
Mamadou Seck had 12 points with 10 rebounds, Kendal Brown-Surles hit three 3-pointers to finish with 12 points, and T.J. Lindsay added 11 for the Salukis.
Holloway was feeling the Christmas spirit, so he sported green and white shoes with red laces before a sparse, morning crowd on Christmas Day.
The Musketeers won for the first time since Dec. 10, when they beat Cincinnati in a game cut short in the closing seconds by brawling and mayhem on the court.
"That was as good a game as we played offensively all year," Xavier coach Chris Mack said. "On the defense end, we need to get back to being a team that keeps teams to a low field-goal percentage."
It was the first three-game losing streak for Xavier under Mack and first since the 2007-08 season.
Mark Lyons had 17 points and 10 rebounds for the Musketeers (9-3). Andre Walker and Travis Taylor added 13 apiece for Xavier, which made 36 of 48 free throws. Walker also had 10 rebounds.
The Salukis (3-8), losers of three in a row, were led by Dantiel Daniels with 22 points.
"We really needed this one," Lyons said. "We got the W. That's what matters."
Southern Illinois drew to 68-64 at 8:45 after a 3-point play by Daniels, but an 8-1 run gave the Musketeers a comfortable cushion. Holloway's two free throws with a minute to go gave the Musketeers their largest lead, 83-69.
Holloway finished 14 of 15 from the line. He took just six shots from the field, making three, including 1 of 2 3-pointers. He also had seven assists.
"I try to do that every game," Holloway said. "Today my teammates were finishing a lot. I'm the point guard of the team, so that's where it starts for us, passing the ball and sharing the ball."
The senior point guard, third-team AP All-American last season, said he was waiting for the perfect occasion to unveil the festive shoes.
"Since I've been in college this is the first time playing on Christmas Day," Holloway said. "I had a pair of Nikes that match the Christmas colors, green and white. I wanted to wear them on Christmas Day and dedicate (the game) to everybody back home for Christmas."
Xavier scored 17 points off 11 SIU turnovers. SIU shot 40 percent and made just 5 of 20 from behind the arc. The Musketeers led 42-36 at halftime.
This was the second meeting between the schools and first since SIU beat Xavier in 1972. The Musketeers lost at home to Oral Roberts a week ago before dropping their first two games in Honolulu, against Long Beach State and Hawaii. The Salukis also lost earlier in the week to Kansas State and Clemson.
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ISLAMABAD ? Pakistan's prime minister has denied reports that he plans to sack the country's powerful army and intelligence chiefs amid tension with the military over a secret memo scandal.
Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said late Monday he did not view the generals as a threat to democracy, contradicting statements he made last week.
The current scandal centers around a memo sent to Washington in May asking for help in stopping a supposed military coup in the wake of the U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden.
Local media reports speculated that Gilani might try to sack army chief Gen. Pervez Ashfaq Kayani and the head of the Inter-Services Intelligence agency, Lt. Gen. Shuja Pasha, to neutralize the threat to his government.
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Source: Pwinsider
Here is the latest from TNA?s new Ring Ka King promotion in India:
* Pictured above is the entrance set the company is using.
* The Indian talents involved are signed to multi-year contracts.
* The American talents who worked the tapings are not signed to contracts for the Ring Ka King project.
* Matt Morgan won the promotion?s main championship.
* Harry Smith and Chavo Guerrero won the tag team titles
* The crowd heat for the tapings was reportedly great, and wrestlers like Scott Steiner were said to get ?old school, white hot heat.?
Source: http://www.24wrestling.com/new-details-on-tnas-new-company-in-india-its-first-show/
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HONOLULU ? The White House is condemning what it is calling a "senseless" Christmas terrorist attack in Nigeria.
The White House also offered its condolences to the Nigerian people, especially the families of the at least 39 people killed Sunday. The majority died on the steps of a Catholic church after celebrating Mass, part of an apparently coordinated assault by a radical Muslim sect.
The White House says U.S. officials have been in contact with their counterparts in Nigeria and pledged to assist them in bringing those responsible to justice.
President Barack Obama was monitor developments from Hawaii, where he is vacationing with his family.
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Taking photos in a large group can result in some great memories, but it can also result in a chorus of ?You have to send me that photo!? causing you email and text exhaustion. Hipstamatic?s new app Hipstamatic Disposable, for iPhone and iPod Touch, aims to take the work out of group photography by setting up an automatically shared camera ? with a twist.
The app comes with two free camera styles, but you can pick up a third pack by liking the app on Facebook. Although you can use the cameras an unlimited number of times, this is a throwback app ? each camera only offers 24 exposures (remember those days?). When you set up the camera, you can create a custom sticker (in case you have more than one camera working at once) and share the camera with other Hipstamatic Disposable-using friends ? ideal for when you?re at a gathering and want to capture different event angles. Oh, and just like film, you won?t be able to see any of your images until the roll of 24 is complete. Some might consider this a frustration, but I think it?s an interesting concept in the land of digital immediacy. It also will cut down on the overwhelming ?Let me see? chorus in group settings.
Once you?ve completed your camera roll, the images are automatically shared with all of the friends on the camera. From here you can share the images further with Twitter and email, or save individual shots to your photo library.
The biggest problem I see with Hipstamatic Disposable is its pricing model. Additional camera filters are available for in-app purchase, but not all of these are unlimited use. In fact, the company has already changed the model once, responding to public criticism, and added unlimited options to the Hipstamart. Caveat emptor, since some of the filters are still restricted; for instance, Dreamy includes nine cameras of 24 exposures each for a buck, and 99 cameras for $3.99. I didn?t buy in, but I?d be highly surprised if the filter is anything that special, and the idea of paying for something repeatedly should be a user turn-off.
I like Hipstamatic Disposable?s nostalgic quality and the group sharing is a big bonus, but I?d stick with the free cameras if you pick up this app.
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An oil spill near the coast of Nigeria is likely the worst to hit those waters in a decade, a government official said Thursday, as slicks from the Royal Dutch Shell PLC spill approached the country's southern shoreline.
The slick from Shell's Bonga field has affected 115 miles of ocean near Nigeria's coast, Peter Idabor, who leads the National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency, told The Associated Press. Idabor said the slick continued to move toward the shore Thursday night, putting at risk birds, fish and other wildlife in the area.
Shell, the major oil producer in Nigeria, said late Thursday the spill came from a "flexible export line" connecting the offshore field to a waiting tanker. The company published photographs of the spill, showing a telltale rainbow sheen in the ocean, but said it believes that about 50 percent of the leaked oil has already evaporated.
The source of the leak has been plugged and experts from Britain were coming to help with the cleanup, Idabor said. Nigerian Navy ships also had been sent into the area to help control the spill, he said.
Shell estimates the Bonga spill likely was less than 40,000 barrels, or 1.68 million gallons. That's about the same amount of oil spilled offshore in 1998 at a Mobil field. The 1998 spill saw oil slicks extended for more than 100 miles to Lagos, the country's commercial capital.
"Since the Mobil spill, this is just about the most major one," Idabor said.
Nigerian authorities hope to use oil booms and chemicals to disperse or collect the spilled oil, Idabor said. In a statement, Shell said its Nigerian subsidiary already had sent ships out to the slick to use dispersant on the oil sheen. The company also said it would use infrared equipment to trace places where the sheen is the thickest.
However, the size of the spill may be even larger. SkyTruth, a nonprofit group based in West Virginia that uses satellite imagery to detect environmental problems, estimated the oil spill might stretch across roughly 350 square miles of ocean ? three times what Nigerian authorities believe.
"The spill could be near the upper limit of what Shell has stated," John Amos, SkyTruth's founder and president, told the AP on Thursday. However, he said he needed more information to determine the spill's true scope.
Bonga sits about 75 miles off Nigeria's coast. It can produce about 200,000 barrels of oil and 150 million cubic feet of gas a day, according to Shell's Nigerian subsidiary. Production at the field, which Shell operates in partnership with Italy's Eni SpA, Exxon Mobil Corp., France's Total SA and the state-run Nigerian National Petroleum Corp., has been halted since the discovery of the spill.
Environmentalists blame Shell and other foreign oil firms for polluting the country's oil-rich Niger Delta. Some environmentalists say as much as 550 million gallons of oil poured into the delta during Shell's roughly 50 years of production in Nigeria ? a rate roughly comparable to one Exxon Valdez disaster per year. An estimated 11 million gallons was released during the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska.
Shell in recent years has said most of the spills in the delta are caused by militant attacks or thieves tapping into pipelines to steal crude oil, which ends up sold into the black market or cooked into a crude diesel or kerosene. Company statistics kept by Shell show spills have dropped as militant attacks in the region subsided, though this single spill at Bonga roughly doubles the amount of oil spilled by Shell this year.
Apparently predicting interest in the spill would grow, Shell already had taken out Internet advertising Thursday on search engines, directing those searching for the spill to their website. Jonathan French, a Shell spokesman in London, said the advertising came in the "interests of full transparency" so people can read the company's updates on the spill.
Nigeria, an OPEC member nation producing about 2.4 million barrels of crude oil a day, is a top supplier to the U.S.
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Source: http://www.cricwaves.com/1261/australia-vs-india-26-dec-2011/Scorecard.html
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ScienceDaily (Dec. 22, 2011) ? Evidence of the single-celled ancestors of animals, dating from the interval in Earth's history just before multicellular animals appeared, has been discovered in 570 million-year-old rocks from South China by researchers from the University of Bristol, the Swedish Museum of Natural History, the Paul Scherrer Institut and the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences.
All life evolved from a single-celled universal common ancestor, and at various times in Earth history, single-celled organisms threw their lot in with each other to become larger and multicellular, resulting, for instance, in the riotous diversity of animals. However, fossil evidence of these major evolutionary transitions is extremely rare.
The fossils, reported this week in Science, preserve stages in the life cycle of an amoeba-like organism dividing in asexual cycles, first to produce two cells, then four, eight, 16, 32 and so on, ultimately resulting in hundreds of thousands of spore-like cells that were then released to start the cycle over again. The pattern of cell division is so similar to the early stages of animal (including human) embryology that until now they were thought to represent the embryos of the earliest animals.
The researchers studied the microscopic fossils using high energy X-rays at the Swiss Light Source in Switzerland, revealing the organisation of the cells within their protective cyst walls. The organisms should not have been fossilized -- they were just gooey clusters of cells -- but they were buried in sediments rich in phosphate that impregnated the cell walls and turned them to stone.
Lead author Therese Huldtgren said: "The fossils are so amazing that even their nuclei have been preserved."
Co-author Dr John Cunningham said: "We used a particle accelerator called a synchrotron as our X-ray source. It allowed us to make a perfect computer model of the fossil that we could cut up in any way that we wanted, but without damaging the fossil in any way. We would never have been able to study the fossils otherwise!"
This X-ray microscopy revealed that the fossils had features that multicellular embryos do not, and this led the researchers to the conclusion that the fossils were neither animals nor embryos but rather the reproductive spore bodies of single-celled ancestors of animals.
Professor Philip Donoghue said: "We were very surprised by our results -- we've been convinced for so long that these fossils represented the embryos of the earliest animals -- much of what has been written about the fossils for the last ten years is flat wrong. Our colleagues are not going to like the result."
Professor Stefan Bengtson said: "These fossils force us to rethink our ideas of how animals learned to make large bodies out of cells."
The research was funded by the Natural Environment Research Council, the Swedish Research Council, the Paul Scherrer Institut, Ministry of Science and Technology of China, National Natural Science Foundation of China, and EU FP7.
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Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/12/111222142444.htm
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10:27 am, December 22nd | by Hillary Reinsberg
It seems Sarah Silverman came across The Hollywood Reporter?s Top Women issue.?And her response is in song, of course.
?You won?t believe it, I just read an incredible article about women?who have?JOBS!? Needless to say, Silverman is less than impressed by an issue of a magazine devoted to the most powerful women in Hollywood ? and she?s tweeted a whole video about it. Make of that what you will.
Source: http://www.thejanedough.com/sarah-silverman-women-with-jobs/
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BRUSSELS (Reuters) ? The downgrade of Belgium's credit rating by agency Moody's underlines the need to cut the budget deficit next year to 2.8 percent of GDP as agreed by the ruling coalition, Belgian Finance Minister Steven Vanackere said on Saturday.
While the deficit target and measures to reach it have been agreed by Belgium's six-party ruling coalition, economists expect more austerity steps may be necessary given a weakening economic outlook for the country and the euro zone as a whole.
Vanackere told Reuters in an interview that if periodic checks during 2012 showed Belgium was off course to achieve the target, new measures would be implemented.
"The 2.8 percent will be achieved. If growth estimates are downgraded in March, that will of course imply new measures to guarantee the result of 2.8 percent," he said.
"2012 will be a year in which we will have several budget controls. We will be very active on that level and we will achieve the 2.8 percent," he said.
Moody's cut Belgium's rating by two notches late on Friday to Aa3 from Aa1, citing deteriorating financing conditions in the euro zone, risks to economic growth and the costs of bailouts of banks such as Dexia (DEXI.BR).
"No finance minister is glad when there is a downgrade of a country, but at the same time it is not a big surprise," Vanackere said.
"Everyone knows that in the whole of the euro zone there are downgrades and Belgium in particular, with a large banking and financial sector, is of course vulnerable through the immense operations to save the banking sector."
Crisis-hit Franco-Belgian bank Dexia (DEXI.BR) secured earlier this month temporary financing guarantees from Belgium, France and Luxembourg to keep it running while the countries cement a bailout they put together in October.
The three states gave 90 billion euros ($121 billion) of guarantees to cover Dexia's borrowings.
However, these guarantee have yet to take effect, sparking talk the states were wrangling about how the burden should be shared. Reports of fresh talks last month hit both Belgian government bonds and the euro.
"It is clear that when a state gives a guarantee there is a risk," Vanackere said about Dexia.
"Our job is to minimize the risk and make sure that the restructuring of the financial sector and Dexia in particular, goes at a swift pace to minimize the problems for Belgium," he said. "I am quite convinced that we will be able to come to good solutions, but I'm not going to comment too much on that."
Vanackere said that apart from austerity, Belgium had to take steps to boost economic growth and that it could do that through better use of its labor market, noting Belgians worked on average 3-4 years less over their entire careers than the European Union norm.
"We have tremendous untapped potential in the Belgian labor market. When we get more people to work we will also be able to steam up growth," he said.
"As we speak, rules and new measures are being taken to prolong the length of careers and to postpone the age of retirement."
(Reporting By Phil Blenkinsop, writing by Jan Strupczewski; Editing by John Stonestreet)
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ScienceDaily (Dec. 14, 2011) ? A stroll on the beach can mean sinking your toes into smooth sand or walking firm-footed on a surface that appears almost solid. While both properties are commonplace, exactly what it is that makes granular materials change from a flowing state to a "jammed," or solid, state? Whether it's sand on a beach or rice grains in a hopper, being able to predict the behavior of granular matter can help engineers and manufacturers of a wide range of products.
In a study out this week in the journal Nature, researchers at Brandeis in collaboration with Duke University explain how granular materials are transformed from a loose state to a solid state when force is applied at a particular angle, in a process known as shearing. "Traditionally people thought of shearing as a mechanism for breaking up materials," says Dapeng Bi, a graduate student in the Martin Fisher School of Physics. "In this case, we find shear actually drives solidification."
Bulbul Chakraborty, the Enid and Nate Ancell Professor of Physics, and Bi, analyzed an experiment performed at Duke which used photo-elastic discs of two different sizes to represent granular materials such as rice or sand. The discs were placed into a plastic box whose shape could be precisely manipulated and measured. The box was illuminated from the bottom, forcing light through the discs. A polarized lens placed on top of the box revealed the photo-elastic discs creating colorful patterns -- called force chains -- caused by the pressure they received when the sides of the box were moved to create a rectangle. Using a computer program the Duke researchers were able to determine the amount of force that was exerted by the discs on each other.
"The polarized light changes the index of refraction of the materials and makes the patterns non-uniform," says Bi. "We then use those numbers to calculate the forces and the geometry of the contact ?network that the discs formed."
The researchers found that when the shape of the box changed due to shear, the discs exhibited a solid state even without the density changing. This, Chakraborty says, is remarkable because usually it is an increase in density that transforms loose material to a solid. "For theorists like us, these experiments are wonderful because we can see exactly what this system is doing," says Chakraborty. "How these patterns change as the discs are pushed and altered gives us information such as how many contacts each grain makes, and the force at every contact."
Chakraborty says that using this data she and Bi constructed a theory that explains how the solid is being formed. "It's possible that if there was no friction between the discs that they would have been able to slide past each other and not get jammed," says Chakraborty. "We now are performing computer simulations to see if shear jamming will occur without friction."
In an abstract written in 2008 in Jamming of Granular Matter, Chakraborty and Robert P. Behringer of Duke University explained that jamming is the extension of the concept of freezing to the transition from a fluid state to a jammed state. Understanding jamming in granular systems, they say, is important from a technological, environmental, and basic science perspective. A jamming of grains in silos can cause catastrophic failures. Avalanches are examples of unjamming, which need to be understood in order to prevent and control, such as the avalanche that killed pro skier Jamie Pierre on November 13, 2011.
Shearing is a major force in nature, explains Chakraborty. When wind blows over the earth, shearing occurs in the sand. Understanding what shear does, she says, is very important.
"We have a very good theoretical framework as to how water behaves, or ice or air," says Chakraborty. "We don't have any fundamental theoretical framework to predict how sand behaves when the wind is blowing fast or slow."
This information could potentially be used to further understand? things like avalanches and earthquakes and erosion. "Those are effects of shearing of granular materials," says Chakraborty. "What we're trying to do is get at a basic understanding of how sand responds to shear. Most natural forces are shearing forces."
The behavior seen here is similar to "shear thickening," which has been used when manufacturing bulletproof vests that present as a soft material when worn, but hardens upon impact of a bullet.
"The research shows that friction can fundamentally change the nature of granular materials in intriguing ways," says Daryl Hess, program director for condensed matter and materials theory at the National Science Foundation. "Friction and shear reveal the richness of possible states of granular matter, pointing us down a road paved with new discoveries. These may expose deeper connections between jamming and seemingly unrelated phenomena spanning from earthquakes to transformations occurring in other kinds of matter, like water to ice."
In industries where hoppers are used, like loading rice grains onto a truck for example, jamming can be a problem. One possible solution, says Chakraborty, is to change the traditional shape in order to both prevent and break up jams.
"We need these sort of laboratory-based experiments to construct and test theories," says Chakraborty. "Once you get into an industrial situation things are not controlled enough to understand."
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Brandeis University. The original article was written by Susan Chaityn Lebovits.
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Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/12/111214135816.htm
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