This 7 foot coiled charger is compatible with most smartphones, Bluetooth headsets and navigation devices equipped with micro USB charging ports. The auxiliary USB port is compatible with most standard USB charging cables (cables sold separately) and allows you to charge an additional device simultaneously.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama is America's business pitchman.
Facing a sluggish economy, Obama is helping connect foreign and domestic companies and investors with economic development organizations across the country while promoting the United States as a sound business environment.
Obama is speaking Thursday before the SelectUSA 2013 Investment Summit, a project of the Commerce Department designed to coordinate efforts to attract foreign investments. Administration officials say in the past states and cities have had to compete directly with foreign countries.
Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker says $160 billion in foreign direct investments flowed into the United States economy last year. As part of the effort, Commerce and State Department teams will make such recruitment one of their priorities.
Pritzker says the summit has attracted 1,200 CEOs, investors and economic development officials.
A wrongful death verdict related to the 2007 shootings at Virginia Tech has been overturned, after the Virginia Supreme Court found that school officials could not have foreseen that 32 people would die in an attack on its campus.
The ruling overturns the findings of a circuit court jury, which had said the school had not done enough to warn students and staff on campus of the threat posed by Seung-Hui Cho — specifically, during a gap of some two hours between the attacks of April 16, 2007.
That gap, between an initial call at 7:30 a.m. that brought police to the scene of a shooting of two people in a dormitory and a later burst of violence around 9:45 a.m. that claimed 30 lives at another campus building, was at the heart of the plaintiffs' case.
In its 15-page decision, the court noted that police and school officials "believed that the [initial] shooting was a domestic incident and that the shooter may have been the boyfriend of one of the victims." Officials also believed the gunman had fled and posed no further danger in the area, the justices said.
The wrongful death lawsuit was filed by the families of Julia Pryde, 23, and Erin Peterson, 18.
"Last year a Montgomery County Circuit Court jury awarded each family $4 million, an amount that was reduced to $100,000 each by a state cap on damages," The Richmond Times-Dispatch reports.
From member station WVTF, Robbie Harris filed this report for our Newscast unit:
"The Justices ruled officials at Virginia Tech could not have reasonably foreseen that a shooter who killed two on campus would go on to massacre another 30 people. Parents of two students killed in the second shooting sued the state, arguing officials should have put out a campus alert.
"Virginia Tech's associate vice president for university relations Larry Hinker says that while the ruling can never reverse the loss of life, the cause was 'easy access to powerful killing weapons by a troubled young man.'
"The families who sued the state did not join in the $11 million settlement the university made with the families of the other victims."
"Based on the limited information available to the Commonwealth prior to the shootings in Norris Hall, it cannot be said that it was known or reasonably foreseeable that students in Norris Hall would fall victim to criminal harm," the judges said. "Thus, as a matter of law, the Commonwealth did not have a duty to protect students against third party criminal acts."
Parents pack into a gym at Cahuilla Desert Academy, a middle school in the southern California city of Thermal. The near triple-digit daytime heat of the Coachella Valley, southeast of Palm Springs, has given way to a cool evening. It's iPad information night.
Before addressing the crowd, Principal Encarnacion Becerra talks up the district's ambitious new iPads-for-all initiative with the fervor of a Silicon Valley entrepreneur.
"It's truly a revolution, what's happening," he says. "Technology has finally caught up to where truly you hold the Internet in the palm of your hands. The power of the mobile devices that exist now — we have to have to leverage that capacity and to evolve as educators to address those needs."
Coachella Valley Unified — a predominantly low income, rural and Latino school district — is in the process of handing out iPads to every student, pre-kindergarten through 12th grade. Kids seventh grade and up get to take the device home evenings, weekends and breaks. Voters approved a bond issue to pay for it.
Administrators here paint it as a modern civil rights issue. Technology tools, they argue, will help boost achievement, prepare kids for today's workplace and narrow the digital divide between poor and wealthy areas.
A growing number of school districts across the U.S. are handing out tablet computers and integrating the devices into their curriculum. But the old issue of how much Web access kids should have on school-issued devices is growing more complicated as kids surf on multiple devices and access multiple networks at home, school, public hot spots and more.
iPad Security
Last month students at the Los Angeles Unified School District easily got around a security firewall on their district-issued iPads and could surf wherever they wanted. LA has now slowed down its iPad rollout amid growing concerns about LA's entire tablet project.
This worries Joey Acuna Jr., father of a student in Coachella Valley Unified.
"I have concerns after hearing what happened in LA Unified," Acuna says. "Kids are kids, and they're going to try to do what they think they can get away with. And not to be mean, but sadly ... some of our kids probably have better knowledge of these kind of electronic devices than some of our teachers."
LA is now exploring new security tools to block access to certain sites, including social media sites and YouTube. "All social media sites are blocked," says LA school district spokesman Thomas Waldman.
Parents here in Coachella want to know whether their district has learned from LA's missteps.
The Coachella Valley school district will block certain sites deemed harmful and install a tracking mechanism and other tools to monitor kids' use. Part of that falls under the Children's Internet Protection Act: Schools and libraries that accept certain federal funding for technology must install Web filters to shield kids from pornography and explicit content online.
But the district is taking a more nuanced approach than LA Unified to the access and use of social media sites. They're not blocked. The idea now is to educate kids and parents about appropriate use of the iPad — or what the district calls online ethics and digital citizenship.
Karen Cator, CEO of the nonprofit education group Digital Promise, says the issue of filtering is incredibly complicated because the Internet is continuously changing.
"I think it's futile to try to shut this down completely," she says. "And it's a missed opportunity, if we do that, to teach kids how to act appropriately in what will be their lifelong globally networked world."
Setting Up Rules
Eighth grade physical science teacher Tim Sharpe at Cahuilla Desert Academy has been using the iPad in a pilot program for more than a year. He says tablets are tailor-made for science learning: His students use them to take photos, write about labs and tap into the latest educational science apps.
Sharpe has already confronted the problem of renegade surfing on mobile phones. Students can get on YouTube with their smartphones, he says, but they know Sharpe might take their phone away for the day if they do.
What sites to block, beyond the ones legally required, should be a teacher-student classroom management issue, he says.
Sharpe devised a system that engages kids and rewards them: If they finish their iPad project on time, they can then play games or take pictures for fun with the devices.
"And there's ... a point system," he says. "So you just lay the rules down. And I find that the kids go with that."
Leading cause of heart disease ignored in North America's poorest communities
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
31-Oct-2013
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Contact: Deborah Elson deborah.elson@sabin.org 202-621-1691 Public Library of Science
Inaction has jeopardized the health and economic well-being of millions
A leading cause of heart disease remains overlooked in North America's most impoverished communities, researchers said today in an editorial published in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases. Chagas disease has rendered a heavy health and economic toll, yet insufficient political and medical support for gathering specific data, providing diagnosis and treatment, and developing new tools has impeded much-needed breakthroughs.
"We have already identified critical steps to save lives and make breakthroughs in Chagas disease control in North America," said Dr. Peter Hotez, the editorial's lead author, director of the Sabin Vaccine Institute and Texas Children's Hospital Center for Vaccine Development and dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine. "This is an achievable public health goal that will also reduce the disease's detrimental economic burden. Greater medical awareness, scientific cooperation between key countries, and public-private partnerships will help us beat this scourge."
Chagas disease is a parasitic infection most commonly transmitted through blood-feeding triatomine bugs, but it can also be spread through pregnancy, blood transfusion, and contaminated food or drink. Up to 30% of infections result in debilitating and life-threatening heart disease and severe intestinal and liver complications. People living in extremely impoverished communities are most vulnerable because of poor-quality housing and inadequate access to health care, education and vector control.
Chagas disease infects an estimated 10 million people worldwide; however, much less is known about the true disease burden in North America. According to some preliminary estimates, Mexico ranks third, and the United States seventh, in terms of the number of infected individuals with Chagas disease in the Western Hemisphere, where 99% of the cases occur.
It is also estimated that 40,000 pregnant North American women may be infected with T. cruzi at any given time, resulting in 2,000 congenital cases through mother-to-child transmission.
A lack of facilities offering diagnosis and treatment of Chagas disease has prevented at-risk and infected people from receiving the critical and often life-saving attention they need. While two drug treatments currently exist, they cause undesirable adverse effects, are unsafe for pregnant women and are not approved for use in the United States.
"The research community is pushing science as hard as possible to ensure we get new treatments to people living with Chagas disease, but we need to ensure that governments prioritize the disease," said Dr. Bernard Pecoul, a co-author of the editorial and Executive Director of the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi). "It is urgent to diagnose and treat patients with what we have available today, until research and development efforts deliver true breakthroughs for the millions in need." DNDi has produced a pediatric dosage form of benznidazole for children with Chagas disease, and is currently developing new drug candidates for a truly novel, safe, effective and affordable treatment for all patients.
The Sabin Vaccine Institute's Product Development Partnership (Sabin PDP), in partnership with Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children's Hospital and with support from the Slim Initiative for the Development of Neglected Tropical Diseases and from the Southwest Electronic Energy Medical Research, has initiated development for a new therapeutic vaccine.
###
In addition to Dr. Hotez and Dr. Pecoul, the paper's authors include Eric Dumonteil, Autonomous University of Yucatan (UADY); Miguel Betancourt Cravioto, Carlos Slim Health Institute; Maria Elena Bottazzi, National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine and the Sabin Vaccine Institute and Texas Children's Hospital Center for Vaccine Development; Roberto Tapia-Conyer, Carlos Slim Health Institute; Sheba Meymandi, Olive View-UCLA Medical Center; Unni Karunakara, Medecins Sans Frontiers/Doctors Without Borders; Isabela Ribeiro, DNDi; and Rachel M. Cohen, DNDi.
PLEASE ADD THE FOLLOWING LINK TO THE PUBLISHED ARTICLE IN ONLINE VERSIONS OF YOUR REPORT: http://www.plosntds.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pntd.0002300
(Link will go live upon embargo lift)
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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.
Leading cause of heart disease ignored in North America's poorest communities
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
31-Oct-2013
[
| E-mail
]
Share
Contact: Deborah Elson deborah.elson@sabin.org 202-621-1691 Public Library of Science
Inaction has jeopardized the health and economic well-being of millions
A leading cause of heart disease remains overlooked in North America's most impoverished communities, researchers said today in an editorial published in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases. Chagas disease has rendered a heavy health and economic toll, yet insufficient political and medical support for gathering specific data, providing diagnosis and treatment, and developing new tools has impeded much-needed breakthroughs.
"We have already identified critical steps to save lives and make breakthroughs in Chagas disease control in North America," said Dr. Peter Hotez, the editorial's lead author, director of the Sabin Vaccine Institute and Texas Children's Hospital Center for Vaccine Development and dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine. "This is an achievable public health goal that will also reduce the disease's detrimental economic burden. Greater medical awareness, scientific cooperation between key countries, and public-private partnerships will help us beat this scourge."
Chagas disease is a parasitic infection most commonly transmitted through blood-feeding triatomine bugs, but it can also be spread through pregnancy, blood transfusion, and contaminated food or drink. Up to 30% of infections result in debilitating and life-threatening heart disease and severe intestinal and liver complications. People living in extremely impoverished communities are most vulnerable because of poor-quality housing and inadequate access to health care, education and vector control.
Chagas disease infects an estimated 10 million people worldwide; however, much less is known about the true disease burden in North America. According to some preliminary estimates, Mexico ranks third, and the United States seventh, in terms of the number of infected individuals with Chagas disease in the Western Hemisphere, where 99% of the cases occur.
It is also estimated that 40,000 pregnant North American women may be infected with T. cruzi at any given time, resulting in 2,000 congenital cases through mother-to-child transmission.
A lack of facilities offering diagnosis and treatment of Chagas disease has prevented at-risk and infected people from receiving the critical and often life-saving attention they need. While two drug treatments currently exist, they cause undesirable adverse effects, are unsafe for pregnant women and are not approved for use in the United States.
"The research community is pushing science as hard as possible to ensure we get new treatments to people living with Chagas disease, but we need to ensure that governments prioritize the disease," said Dr. Bernard Pecoul, a co-author of the editorial and Executive Director of the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi). "It is urgent to diagnose and treat patients with what we have available today, until research and development efforts deliver true breakthroughs for the millions in need." DNDi has produced a pediatric dosage form of benznidazole for children with Chagas disease, and is currently developing new drug candidates for a truly novel, safe, effective and affordable treatment for all patients.
The Sabin Vaccine Institute's Product Development Partnership (Sabin PDP), in partnership with Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children's Hospital and with support from the Slim Initiative for the Development of Neglected Tropical Diseases and from the Southwest Electronic Energy Medical Research, has initiated development for a new therapeutic vaccine.
###
In addition to Dr. Hotez and Dr. Pecoul, the paper's authors include Eric Dumonteil, Autonomous University of Yucatan (UADY); Miguel Betancourt Cravioto, Carlos Slim Health Institute; Maria Elena Bottazzi, National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine and the Sabin Vaccine Institute and Texas Children's Hospital Center for Vaccine Development; Roberto Tapia-Conyer, Carlos Slim Health Institute; Sheba Meymandi, Olive View-UCLA Medical Center; Unni Karunakara, Medecins Sans Frontiers/Doctors Without Borders; Isabela Ribeiro, DNDi; and Rachel M. Cohen, DNDi.
PLEASE ADD THE FOLLOWING LINK TO THE PUBLISHED ARTICLE IN ONLINE VERSIONS OF YOUR REPORT: http://www.plosntds.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pntd.0002300
(Link will go live upon embargo lift)
[
| 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.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — All-Pro 49ers linebacker Aldon Smith was activated to the 53-man roster from the non-football injury list Thursday, two days after he turned himself in to Santa Clara County authorities as he faces weapons charges.
One of San Francisco's dynamic pass rushers appears ready to return.
Smith had been undergoing rehab at an in-patient facility for substance abuse since late September and missed five games. With San Francisco (6-2) on its bye this week, Smith could resume practicing and working out on his own, then formally practice next week ahead of a Nov. 10 home game against the Carolina Panthers.
Smith was charged Oct. 9 with three felony counts of illegal possession of an assault weapon, stemming from a party at his home in June 2012.
49ers coach Jim Harbaugh said on his weekly radio show with 95.7 The Game that Smith met with 49ers officials Wednesday at team headquarters. General manager Trent Baalke said last week in London that Smith would have to show "progress" to play again this year.
Smith will be due in court twice — Nov. 12 and Nov. 19 — to face DUI and weapons charges.
The 24-year-old Smith had been on what the team called an indefinite leave of absence from the NFC champion Niners. Smith's agent didn't immediately return requests for comment Thursday.
Harbaugh traded text messages with Smith when he was gone, and the coach said on the radio "he's made quite a bit of progress."
While Smith is likely to face a suspension from the NFL, the league typically waits until all legal issues are resolved before handing down its own discipline.
Also in September, Smith and former teammate Delanie Walker were named in a lawsuit filed in Santa Clara County Superior Court by a Northern California man who said he was shot at a party at Smith's house on June 29, 2012.
The players charged a $10 admission and $5 per drink, the lawsuit said. Smith and now-Titans tight end Walker, 29, were allegedly intoxicated on Smith's balcony when they fired gunshots in the air while trying to end the party, the lawsuit said.
Before the 2012 home opener last September, Smith was the passenger in a car during an accident in Santa Clara County in which the driver swerved to avoid hitting a deer. Smith sustained a cut beneath his right eyebrow. He apologized and insisted he would change his ways.
Smith, selected seventh overall in the 2011 draft out of Missouri, had previously been arrested on suspicion of DUI in January 2012 in Miami shortly after the 49ers lost in the NFC championship game.
There was no NFL minimum for the number of games he had to miss while on the non-football injury list. The 49ers continued to pay Smith his weekly salary of more than $98,000 while he was away.
Smith played in a 27-7 home loss to the Colts on Sept. 22 and had five tackles just two days after he was arrested and jailed on suspicion of DUI and marijuana possession. Smith apologized for his behavior after the game then later announced he would leave for treatment.
Smith set a franchise record with 19 1/2 sacks last season.
"Okay Google." Those Touchless Controls aren't just for the Moto X anymore -- they're now part and parcel of the Nexus 5. With today's unveiling of Google's (terribly leaked) Nexus 5, we're getting a first look at Android 4.4 KitKat on the handset, and that OS update comes with some significant ...
SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) — A 6.6-magnitude earthquake rocked central Chile on Thursday, causing buildings to sway in the capital and nervous people to run out into the streets.
But Chile's emergency services office said no damages to infrastructure were immediately reported and discarded the possibility of a tsunami.
The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake's epicenter was located about 65 kilometers (40 miles) southwest of the city of Coquimbo. Its depth was 10 kilometers (6 miles).
Chile is one of the world's most earthquake-prone countries. A magnitude-8.8 quake and the tsunami it unleashed in 2010 killed more than 500 people, destroyed 220,000 homes, and washed away docks, riverfronts and seaside resorts.
Ender's Game, directed by Gavin Hood and based on Orson Scott Card's 1985 novel, stars Asa Butterfield as Ender Wiggin who must try to save Earth from an alien invasion. The sci-fi epic also stars Harrison Ford, Hailee Steinfeld, Ben Kingsley, Viola Davis, and Abigail Breslin.
Harrison Ford, Asa Butterfield, Hailee Steinfeld, Viola Davis and Ben Kingsley star in Gavin Hood's adaptation of the classic 1985 sci-fi novel. Read MarcBernardin's review here.
Owen Wilson, Woody Harrelson and Amy Poehler play a trio of animated turkeys determined to remove the traditional bird from the inaugural Thanksgiving menu. Read MichaelRechtshaffen's review here.
Michael Douglas, Robert De Niro, Morgan Freeman, Kevin Kline and Mary Steenburgen star in director JonTurteltaub's comedy about amiable geezers. Read Todd McCarthy's review here.
Matthew McConaughey, Jennifer Garner and Jared Leto star in the true story of a hedonistic Texan homophobe who bounced back in surprising ways from the gut punch of his HIV-positive diagnosis. Read David Rooney's review here.
Rom-com maestro Richard Curtis mixes familiar boy-meet-girl ingredients with time-traveling magic realism, starring Domhnall Gleeson, Rachel McAdams and Bill Nighy. Read Stephen Dalton's review here.
Jean-Marc Barr, Kate Bosworth, Josh Lucas and Radha Mitchell star in Michael Polish’s adaptation of the Jack Kerouac novel. Read Justin Lowe's review here.
This intensely emotional Belgian drama flavored by American-style bluegrass music traces the sad spiral of a passionate relationship derailed by devastating loss. Read David Rooney's review here.
Casting By
Tom Donahue's documentary chronicles the evolution from studio contract players to the boom in the 1970s of creative casting, with Marion Dougherty leading the charge on that shift. Read David Rooney's review here.
This big-budget English-language co-production shows that Europeans can compete in the sci-fi realm where high production values are king. Read Deborah Young's review here.
Sweet Dreams
Lisa and RobFruchtman's documentary recounts the efforts of a Rwandan woman to create the country's first ice cream parlor. Read FrankScheck's review here.
Last Love
Michael Caineplays a widower who strikes up a friendship with Clemence Poesy's young French dance teacher in SandraNettelbeck's adaptation of a novel by Francoise Dorner. Read Boyd vanHoeij's review here.
Running from Crazy
The dark study of suicides and mental illness in the Hemingway family will air on Oprah Winfrey's OWN. Read Todd McCarthy's review here.
Irina Neustroeva made this incredible video that mashes up 75 years of opening title sequence for animated movies. There's 234 films here including all your favorites like Toy Story, The Lion King, Shrek but also a lot of lesser known flicks and completely forgotten animated movies too.
Scientists claim there are no black holes close enough to harm our solar system. But they're clearly not acknowledging the black holes that exist under every bed, sucking in and trapping dropped items, random clothing, and seemingly every last speck of dust in a room. There's a solution, though, in the form of Letti Bolzan's clever Iorca bed, which lifts your mattress to turn that under-bed void into tons of easily accessible storage space.
Mayor Rob Ford walks past Halloween decorations on his way to talk to media at City Hall in Toronto on Thursday, Oct. 31, 2013. Ford says he has no reason to step down despite police confirmation that they have seized a video that appears to show him smoking a crack pipe. (AP Photo/The Canadian Press, Frank Gunn)
Mayor Rob Ford walks past Halloween decorations on his way to talk to media at City Hall in Toronto on Thursday, Oct. 31, 2013. Ford says he has no reason to step down despite police confirmation that they have seized a video that appears to show him smoking a crack pipe. (AP Photo/The Canadian Press, Frank Gunn)
Mayor Rob Ford talks to media at City Hall in Toronto on Thursday, Oct. 31, 2013. Ford that appears to show him smoking a crack pipe. (AP Photo/The Canadian Press, Frank Gunn)
Toronto Mayor Rob Ford addresses media outside his office in Toronto on Thursday, Oct. 31, 2013. Ford says he has no reason to step down despite police confirmation that they have seized a video that appears to show him smoking a crack pipe.(AP Photo/The Canadian Press, Nathan Denette)
These annotated video frame grab images provided by the Toronto Police Service on Thursday, Oct. 31, 2013, show Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, left, and his close friend, Alexander Lisi. Police say they rummaged through Ford's garbage and conducted a massive surveillance operation monitoring him and Lisi following drug use allegations. The marks seen on the images were drawn by the police. (AP Photo/Toronto Police Service via The Canadian Press)
This annotated video frame grab image provided by the Toronto Police Service on Thursday, Oct. 31, 2013, shows Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, left, and his close friend, Alexander Lisi. Police say they rummaged through Ford's garbage and conducted a massive surveillance operation monitoring him and Lisi following drug use allegations. The marks seen on the images were drawn by the police. (AP Photo/Toronto Police Service via The Canadian Press)
TORONTO (AP) — Calls for the resignation of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford intensified after police said they had obtained a video that appears to show him smoking a crack pipe, discovered in a massive surveillance operation of a friend who is suspected of supplying the mayor with drugs.
Police said they did not have enough evidence to file charges against the mayor, who had claimed the video didn't exist and vowed not to resign, repeating the pledge Thursday.
Voters could have the final word on the strange career of the populist mayor whose travails have captivated and embarrassed Canadians for months. Ford has promised to run for a second term next year.
"I have no reason to resign," Ford told reporters with a smile, as his office welcomed visitors to check out its Halloween decorations Thursday.
The embattled mayor, who has been the butt of jokes on U.S. late night television, said he couldn't defend himself because the affair is part of a criminal investigation involving an associate, adding: "That's all I can say right now."
Ford faced allegations in May that he had been caught on video puffing from a glass crack pipe. Two reporters with the Toronto Star said they saw the video, but it has not been released publicly. Ford maintained he does not smoke crack and that the video did not exist.
Ford was elected mayor three years ago on a wave of discontent simmering in the city's outlying suburbs. Since then he has survived an attempt to remove him from office on conflict-of-interest charges and has appeared in the news for his increasingly odd behavior.
But the pressure ramped up on Thursday with all four major dailies in the city calling on Ford to resign.
Cheri DiNovo, a member of Ontario's parliament, tweeted: "Ford video nothing to celebrate Addiction is illness. Mayor please step down and get help?"
Police Chief Bill Blair said the video, recovered after being deleted from a computer hard drive, did not provide grounds to press charges against Ford.
Blair said the video of the mayor "depicts images that are consistent with those previously reported in the press."
"As a citizen of Toronto I'm disappointed," Blair said. "This is a traumatic issue for citizens of this city and the reputation of this city."
Blair said the video will come out when Ford's associate and occasional driver, Alexander Lisi, goes to trial on drug charges. Lisi now also faces extortion charges for trying to retrieve the recording from an unidentified person. Blair did not say who owned the computer containing the video.
Blair said authorities believed the video is linked to a home in Toronto, referred to by a confidential informant as a "crack house" in court documents in Lisi's drug case.
The prosecutor in the Lisi case released documents Thursday showing they had rummaged through Ford's garbage in search of evidence of drug use. They show that they conducted a massive surveillance operation monitoring the mayor and Lisi following drug use allegations.
The documents show that friends and former staffers of Ford were concerned that Lisi was "fuelling" the Toronto mayor's alleged drug use.
The police documents, ordered released by a judge, show Ford receiving packages from Lisi on several occasions.
"Lisi approached the driver's side of the Mayor's vehicle with a small white gift bag in hand; he then walked around to the passenger side and got on board," reads one document dated July 30, 2013. "After a few minutes Lisi exited the Escalade empty handed and walked back to his Range Rover."
Another dated July 28 says Lisi "constantly used counter surveillance techniques" when he met with Ford that day.
On August 13 documents say Lisi and Ford met and "made their way into a secluded area of the adjacent woods where they were obscured from surveillance efforts and stayed for approximately one hour."
Ford recently vouched for Lisi in a separate criminal case, praising his leadership skills and hard work in a letter filed with the court. The letter was part of a report prepared by a probation officer after Lisi was convicted of threatening to kill a woman.
Ford said previously that he was shocked when Lisi was arrested earlier this month, calling him a "good guy" and saying he doesn't abandon his friends.
The documents also say that Ford met Lisi through Payman Aboodowleh, a volunteer football coach at Don Bosco Catholic Secondary School, where Ford coached the team while also serving as mayor. He told police he was "mad at Lisi because he was fuelling the mayor's drug abuse," the document says.
Ford's controversies range from the trivial to the serious: Walking face-first into a TV camera. Falling down during a photo op while pretending to play football. Being asked to leave an event for wounded war vets because he appeared intoxicated, according to the Toronto Star. Being forced to admit he was busted for marijuana possession in Florida in 1999, after repeated denials. Making rude gestures at Torontonians from his car.
"The mayor has said there wasn't a video," Toronto councilor Paula Fletcher said. "He has said there is a conspiracy against him. With Chief's Blair's press conference I think that's put to rest."
Councilor Joe Mihevc said he continues to be shocked by the "depth and revelations that are coming out."
"The mayor has to come clean and do it as soon as possible," Mihevc said. "He needs to talk honestly about his use of illicit drugs."
Android tablets may be on the rise in China, but that hasn't stopped Beijing resident Fu Zheng from buying Apple's latest iPad product. He was among the first to get his hands on the device on Friday when Apple launched the iPad Air at one of its local stores in the city.
"Everyone thinks Apple products are good," said Fu, who also own's the third and fourth generation iPads.
Apple still remains the leading tablet vendor in China, but increasingly more consumers in the country are buying Android tablets. In this year's second quarter, Apple's tablet shipments to the Chinese market fell to a 28 percent market share, while competing products from Samsung Electronics, Lenovo and little-known "whitebox" vendors saw shipments increase, according to research firm IDC.
Apple's China tablets shipments will pick up with the arrival of the iPad Air, and the iPad mini, slated to arrive later this month, said IDC analyst Dickie Chang. "We think Chinese customers will have a positive response to the iPad Air," he said, pointing to the tablet's light weight, thinner design, and improved performance.
But in China, Android tablets will continue to eat away at Apple's market share over time, he added. "Lenovo, Acer, Asus, Sony, Samsung, all these vendors are providing Android solutions," he said. "Apple's products I think have good performance and the quality is good, but the price is still different. There are now Android tablets at $100, $150."
In China, Apple's iPad Air starts at 3588 yuan (US$585). But on Friday, customers waiting outside the Apple store in Beijing's Sanlitun district were eager to buy the product, despite its higher price over Android tablets.
"I've bought Android products before," said a 20-year-old, with the surname Li, who waited in line. "But I think I want to buy a tablet with higher quality," he added, referring to the iPad Air.
About 50 people waited in line before the Apple store opened at 8 a.m. on Friday. In the past, newly launched products from the company have attracted massive crowds of hundreds when first day of sales started. But since July last year, Apple has implemented a reservation system at its Chinese stores to cut down on lines and prevent customer skirmishes from erupting.
"It was easy to make a reservation," said Fan Huajie, who wanted to upgrade to the latest Apple tablet. "I have all of their iPads," he added.
Michael Kan, IDG News Service Beijing correspondent, IDG News Service, IDG News Service
Michael Kan covers IT, telecom and Internet in China for the IDG News Service. More by Michael Kan, IDG News Service
Contact: Holly Evarts holly.evarts@columbia.edu 347-453-7408 Columbia University
Columbia Engineers develop new device architecture for 2D materials, making electrical contact from the 1D edge
New York, NYOctober 31, 2013Columbia Engineering researchers have experimentally demonstrated for the first time that it is possible to electrically contact an atomically thin two-dimensional (2D) material only along its one-dimensional (1D) edge, rather than contacting it from the top, which has been the conventional approach. With this new contact architecture, they have developed a new assembly technique for layered materials that prevents contamination at the interfaces, and, using graphene as the model 2D material, show that these two methods in combination result in the cleanest graphene yet realized. The study is published in Science on November 1, 2013.
"This is an exciting new paradigm in materials engineering where instead of the conventional approach of layer by layer growth, hybrid materials can now be fabricated by mechanical assembly of constituent 2D crystals," says Electrical Engineering Professor Ken Shepard, co-author of the paper. "No other group has been able to successfully achieve a pure edge-contact geometry to 2D materials such as graphene."
He adds that earlier efforts have looked at how to improve 'top contacts' by additional engineering such as adding dopants: "Our novel edge-contact geometry provides more efficient contact than the conventional geometry without the need for further complex processing. There are now many more possibilities in the pursuit of both device applications and fundamental physics explorations."
First isolated in 2004, graphene is the best-studied 2D material and has been the subject of thousands of papers studying its electrical behavior and device applications. "But in nearly all of this work, the performance of graphene is degraded by exposure to contamination," notes Mechanical Engineering Professor James Hone who is also a co-author of the study. "It turns out that the problems of contamination and electrical contact are linked. Any high-performance electronic material must be encapsulated in an insulator to protect it from the environment. Graphene lacks the ability to make out-of-plane bonds, which makes electrical contact through its surface difficult, but also prevents bonding to conventional 3D insulators such as oxides. Instead, the best results are obtained by using a 2D insulator, which does not need to make bonds at its surface. However, there has been no way to electrically access a fully-encapsulated graphene sheet until now."
In this work, says Cory Dean, who led the research as a postdoc at Columbia and is now an assistant professor at The City College of New York, the team solved both the contact and contamination problems at once. "One of the greatest assets of 2D materials such as graphene is that being only one atom thick, we have direct access to its electronic properties. At the same time, this can be one of its worst features since this makes the material extremely sensitive to its environment. Any external contamination quickly degrades performance. The need to protect graphene from unwanted disorder, while still allowing electrical access, has been the most significant roadblock preventing development of graphene-based technologies. By making contact only to the 1D edge of graphene, we have developed a fundamentally new way to bridge our 3D world to this fascinating 2D world, without disturbing its inherent properties. This virtually eliminates external contamination and finally allows graphene to show its true potential in electronic devices"
The researchers fully encapsulated the 2D graphene layer in a sandwich of thin insulating boron nitride crystals, employing a new technique in which crystal layers are stacked one-by-one. "Our approach for assembling these heterostructures completely eliminates any contamination between layers," Dean explains, "which we confirmed by cross-sectioning the devices and imaging them in a transmission electron microscope with atomic resolution."
Once they created the stack, they etched it to expose the edge of the graphene layer, and then evaporated metal onto the edge to create the electrical contact. By making contact along the edge, the team realized a 1D interface between the 2D active layer and 3D metal electrode. And, even though electrons entered only at the 1D atomic edge of the graphene sheet, the contact resistance was remarkably low, reaching 100 Ohms per micron of contact widtha value smaller than what can be achieved for contacts at the graphene top surface.
With the two new techniquesthe contact architecture through the 1D edge and the stacking assembly method that prevents contamination at the interfacesthe team was able to produce what they say is the "cleanest graphene yet realized." At room temperature, these devices exhibit previously unachievable performance, including electron mobility at least twice as large as any conventional 2D electron system, and sheet resistivity less than 40 Ohms when sufficient charges are added to the sheet by electrostatic "gating." Amazingly, this 2D sheet resistance corresponds to a "bulk" 3D resistivity smaller than that of any metal at room temperature. At low temperature, electrons travel through the team's samples without scattering, a phenomenon known as ballistic transport. Ballistic transport, had previously been observed in samples close to one micrometer in size, but this work demonstrates the same behavior in samples as large as 20 micrometers. "So far this is limited purely by device size," says Dean, "indicating that the true 'intrinsic' behavior is even better."
The team is now working on applying these techniques to develop new hybrid materials by mechanical assembly and edge contact of hybrid materials drawing from the full suite of available 2D layered materials, including graphene, boron nitride, transition metal dichlcogenides (TMDCs), transition metal oxides (TMOs), and topological insulators (TIs). "We are taking advantage of the unprecedented performance we now routinely achieve in graphene-based devices to explore effects and applications related to ballistic electron transport over fantastically large length scales," Dean adds. "With so much current research focused on developing new devices by integrating layered 2D systems, potential applications are incredible, from vertically structured transistors, tunneling based devices and sensors, photoactive hybrid materials, to flexible and transparent electronics."
"This work results from a wide collaboration of researchers interested in both pure and applied science," says Hone. "The unique environment at Columbia provides an unparalleled opportunity for these two communities to interact and build off one another."
The Columbia team demonstrated the first technique to mechanically layer 2D materials in 2010. These two new techniques, which are critical advancements in the field, are the result of interdisciplinary efforts by Lei Wang (PhD student, Electrical Engineering, Hone group) and Inanc Meric (Postdoc, Electrical Engineering, Shepard group), co-lead authors on this project who worked with the groups of Philip Kim (Physics and Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics, Columbia), James Hone (Mechanical Engineering, Columbia), Ken Shepard (Electrical Engineering, Columbia) and Cory Dean (Physics, City College of New York).
###
This work is supported by the Department of Defense (DoD) through the National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship (NDSEG) Program, the National Science Foundation (DMR-1124894), the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (FA9550-09-1-0705), the office of Naval Research (N000141310662), the ONR Grant N000141110633 and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (under ONR Grant N000141210814), and the Nano Material Technology Development Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (2012M3A7B4049966).
Columbia Engineering
Columbia University's Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science, founded in 1864, offers programs in nine departments to both undergraduate and graduate students. With facilities specifically designed and equipped to meet the laboratory and research needs of faculty and students, Columbia Engineering is home to NSF-NIH funded centers in genomic science, molecular nanostructures, materials science, and energy, as well as one of the world's leading programs in financial engineering. These interdisciplinary centers are leading the way in their respective fields while individual groups of engineers and scientists collaborate to solve some of modern society's more difficult challenges. http://www.engineering.columbia.edu/
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New techniques produce cleanest graphene yet
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
31-Oct-2013
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Contact: Holly Evarts holly.evarts@columbia.edu 347-453-7408 Columbia University
Columbia Engineers develop new device architecture for 2D materials, making electrical contact from the 1D edge
New York, NYOctober 31, 2013Columbia Engineering researchers have experimentally demonstrated for the first time that it is possible to electrically contact an atomically thin two-dimensional (2D) material only along its one-dimensional (1D) edge, rather than contacting it from the top, which has been the conventional approach. With this new contact architecture, they have developed a new assembly technique for layered materials that prevents contamination at the interfaces, and, using graphene as the model 2D material, show that these two methods in combination result in the cleanest graphene yet realized. The study is published in Science on November 1, 2013.
"This is an exciting new paradigm in materials engineering where instead of the conventional approach of layer by layer growth, hybrid materials can now be fabricated by mechanical assembly of constituent 2D crystals," says Electrical Engineering Professor Ken Shepard, co-author of the paper. "No other group has been able to successfully achieve a pure edge-contact geometry to 2D materials such as graphene."
He adds that earlier efforts have looked at how to improve 'top contacts' by additional engineering such as adding dopants: "Our novel edge-contact geometry provides more efficient contact than the conventional geometry without the need for further complex processing. There are now many more possibilities in the pursuit of both device applications and fundamental physics explorations."
First isolated in 2004, graphene is the best-studied 2D material and has been the subject of thousands of papers studying its electrical behavior and device applications. "But in nearly all of this work, the performance of graphene is degraded by exposure to contamination," notes Mechanical Engineering Professor James Hone who is also a co-author of the study. "It turns out that the problems of contamination and electrical contact are linked. Any high-performance electronic material must be encapsulated in an insulator to protect it from the environment. Graphene lacks the ability to make out-of-plane bonds, which makes electrical contact through its surface difficult, but also prevents bonding to conventional 3D insulators such as oxides. Instead, the best results are obtained by using a 2D insulator, which does not need to make bonds at its surface. However, there has been no way to electrically access a fully-encapsulated graphene sheet until now."
In this work, says Cory Dean, who led the research as a postdoc at Columbia and is now an assistant professor at The City College of New York, the team solved both the contact and contamination problems at once. "One of the greatest assets of 2D materials such as graphene is that being only one atom thick, we have direct access to its electronic properties. At the same time, this can be one of its worst features since this makes the material extremely sensitive to its environment. Any external contamination quickly degrades performance. The need to protect graphene from unwanted disorder, while still allowing electrical access, has been the most significant roadblock preventing development of graphene-based technologies. By making contact only to the 1D edge of graphene, we have developed a fundamentally new way to bridge our 3D world to this fascinating 2D world, without disturbing its inherent properties. This virtually eliminates external contamination and finally allows graphene to show its true potential in electronic devices"
The researchers fully encapsulated the 2D graphene layer in a sandwich of thin insulating boron nitride crystals, employing a new technique in which crystal layers are stacked one-by-one. "Our approach for assembling these heterostructures completely eliminates any contamination between layers," Dean explains, "which we confirmed by cross-sectioning the devices and imaging them in a transmission electron microscope with atomic resolution."
Once they created the stack, they etched it to expose the edge of the graphene layer, and then evaporated metal onto the edge to create the electrical contact. By making contact along the edge, the team realized a 1D interface between the 2D active layer and 3D metal electrode. And, even though electrons entered only at the 1D atomic edge of the graphene sheet, the contact resistance was remarkably low, reaching 100 Ohms per micron of contact widtha value smaller than what can be achieved for contacts at the graphene top surface.
With the two new techniquesthe contact architecture through the 1D edge and the stacking assembly method that prevents contamination at the interfacesthe team was able to produce what they say is the "cleanest graphene yet realized." At room temperature, these devices exhibit previously unachievable performance, including electron mobility at least twice as large as any conventional 2D electron system, and sheet resistivity less than 40 Ohms when sufficient charges are added to the sheet by electrostatic "gating." Amazingly, this 2D sheet resistance corresponds to a "bulk" 3D resistivity smaller than that of any metal at room temperature. At low temperature, electrons travel through the team's samples without scattering, a phenomenon known as ballistic transport. Ballistic transport, had previously been observed in samples close to one micrometer in size, but this work demonstrates the same behavior in samples as large as 20 micrometers. "So far this is limited purely by device size," says Dean, "indicating that the true 'intrinsic' behavior is even better."
The team is now working on applying these techniques to develop new hybrid materials by mechanical assembly and edge contact of hybrid materials drawing from the full suite of available 2D layered materials, including graphene, boron nitride, transition metal dichlcogenides (TMDCs), transition metal oxides (TMOs), and topological insulators (TIs). "We are taking advantage of the unprecedented performance we now routinely achieve in graphene-based devices to explore effects and applications related to ballistic electron transport over fantastically large length scales," Dean adds. "With so much current research focused on developing new devices by integrating layered 2D systems, potential applications are incredible, from vertically structured transistors, tunneling based devices and sensors, photoactive hybrid materials, to flexible and transparent electronics."
"This work results from a wide collaboration of researchers interested in both pure and applied science," says Hone. "The unique environment at Columbia provides an unparalleled opportunity for these two communities to interact and build off one another."
The Columbia team demonstrated the first technique to mechanically layer 2D materials in 2010. These two new techniques, which are critical advancements in the field, are the result of interdisciplinary efforts by Lei Wang (PhD student, Electrical Engineering, Hone group) and Inanc Meric (Postdoc, Electrical Engineering, Shepard group), co-lead authors on this project who worked with the groups of Philip Kim (Physics and Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics, Columbia), James Hone (Mechanical Engineering, Columbia), Ken Shepard (Electrical Engineering, Columbia) and Cory Dean (Physics, City College of New York).
###
This work is supported by the Department of Defense (DoD) through the National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship (NDSEG) Program, the National Science Foundation (DMR-1124894), the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (FA9550-09-1-0705), the office of Naval Research (N000141310662), the ONR Grant N000141110633 and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (under ONR Grant N000141210814), and the Nano Material Technology Development Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (2012M3A7B4049966).
Columbia Engineering
Columbia University's Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science, founded in 1864, offers programs in nine departments to both undergraduate and graduate students. With facilities specifically designed and equipped to meet the laboratory and research needs of faculty and students, Columbia Engineering is home to NSF-NIH funded centers in genomic science, molecular nanostructures, materials science, and energy, as well as one of the world's leading programs in financial engineering. These interdisciplinary centers are leading the way in their respective fields while individual groups of engineers and scientists collaborate to solve some of modern society's more difficult challenges. http://www.engineering.columbia.edu/
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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.
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"Okay Google." Those Touchless Controls aren't just for the Moto X anymore -- they're now part and parcel of the Nexus 5. With today's unveiling of Google's (terribly leaked) Nexus 5, we're getting a first look at Android 4.4 KitKat on the handset, and that OS update comes with some significant ...
