Europe: learning from air traffic disruption caused by snow

Air: Siim Kallas calls airports (an airport is all buildings and facilities of an airport serving air traffic in a city or region. These buildings and facilities are designed so that aircraft can takeoff and landing, the cargo and passengers can embark and disembark.) to learn from the air traffic disruption caused by snow.

Siim Kallas, Vice-President of the European Commission responsible for transport, met Jan. 19, 2011 in Brussels CEOs of major European airports to discuss how to prevent the problems they faced due to heavy snowfall month (month (From Lat. mensis "month", and formerly in plur. "menses") is an arbitrary time period.) ago. Poor weather forced the major EU airports to close, at least in part, which has significantly disrupted air traffic throughout Europe. 35 000 flights - or more than all of 2009 - were canceled, forcing thousands of passengers to spend the night at airports. The Commission will present specific measures to address some of the most important in a package "Airports" which will be published later this year.

The Vice-President Siim Kallas said: "If the airline industry is hard to predict volcanic ash cloud, we know from cons that we face the winter each year (A year is a unit expressing the length of time between two occurrences of an event linked to the revolution of Earth around the Sun.) and we should be ready. The development and implementation of contingency plans the responsibility of the aviation sector. At European level, we can help by strengthening, if necessary (The needs are at the interaction between the individual and the environment. It is often a classification of human needs into three broad .. .) is the regulatory framework and in particular by requiring European airports to implement a minimum service and meet quality criteria in the interest of passengers. These requirements will be part of a series of legislative proposals contained in the package Airports planned for this year (A year is a unit expressing the time duration between two occurrences of an event linked to the revolution of Earth around the Sun.) . (MEMO/11/28).
The events of the past month
In December 2010, air traffic was severely disrupted. A large number (A number is a concept characterizing a unit, a collection of units or fractional units.) Platforms airports (hubs), among the largest in Europe (Europe is seen as a continent or part of Eurasia (western peninsula), or even the Eurafrasie, depending on the point of view. It is sometimes called the "Old Continent" (or "Old World"), as opposed to the "New ...) in terms of traffic, have a partially closed during the weekends the busiest year since it corresponded to the beginning of the Christmas holidays. Many flights were canceled and thousands of passengers were stranded in the airports all over Europe and even in other parts of the world (The word can describe the world:). This resulted in huge problems handling luggage. In some airports, concerns about a shortage of liquid (the liquid phase is a state of matter.) Deicing also night operations. Total (Total is the quality of what is complete, without exception. From an accounting perspective, a total is the result of an addition that is to say an amount. Example: "The total debts. "In physics the total is not necessarily achieved with the addition: example of the total capacity of a series of capacitors in series, which is not ...), tens of thousands of flights been canceled.

- During the meeting, airport representatives gave their views on events and shared their experiences and failures, and factors involved

- Heavy snowfalls hit the European hub airports that operate near the limit of their capabilities, and one of the busiest times of the year.

- Often, the snow removal operations were too slow.

- Heathrow, one of the platforms where traffic is most intense in the EU, was closed for several days. The closure (The term closure refers to) has led to the closure (The term closure refers to) other airports in cascade, because the airports are a system.

- Information for Travellers have been too slow to avoid waiting times at airports.

- The threat of a shortage of deicing fluid and limited disrupted airport operations.
How to ensure that this never happens again?
- Better emergency plans in case of snow at airports.

- We must ensure better cooperation between all stakeholders in the air and ground.

- We must ensure the proper functioning of the airport hubs. Because of the cascading effect, airports should be more integrated and network. They can not work while being isolated from each other.

- We must improve the quality and timeliness of information to passengers about delays and rerouting.

The aviation sector is primarily responsible for emergency plans. What the Commission can do is strengthen, if necessary, the regulatory framework and, in particular, ensure a minimum service and enforce compliance with quality standards at European airports in the interest of passengers.
Next Steps
Looking ahead to Christmas 2011, Mr. Vice-President Kallas asked European airports to submit as soon as possible a report on the state of affairs regarding plans for next winter.

Mr. Vice-President will present specific measures to solve the problems mentioned above in the package Airports normally expected before summer.

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Medical robotics come to Kaiser (photos)

OAKLAND, Calif.--At Kaiser Permanente's Garfield Center for Innovation, the health care giant is testing not just robotics, but new, more efficient hospital room designs.

Kaiser held a demonstration day at the center Thursday for physicians and health care professionals to check out, and give feedback on, future technologies being evaluated for rollout.



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U.K. astronomers discover hottest planet ever found

A team of astronomers in Britain believe they have discovered the hottest planet ever found.

While Venus, right here in our own solar system, was once the hottest known planet, astronomers in the past 20 years have expanded their search outside of the Milky Way.

As a result, planets have been identified that far exceed the 460 degrees Celsius temperature of Venus -- some with scorching temperatures approaching 1,000 C.

But astronomers from England have discovered what is now believed to be by far the hottest plan ever found.

Simply called WASP-33b, the planet is located in the far-off Andromeda constellation, 378 light years from Earth, and boasts a scorching temperature of 3,148 C.

The temperature readings were made using the William Herschel Telescope in the Canary Islands in the Atlantic Ocean southwest of Morocco.

Astronomer Alexis Smith, of Keele University in Staffordshire, U.K., led the study

"Given the nature of its host star and its very short orbital period, WASP-33b has the largest equilibrium temperature of any known exoplanet," said Smith's report.

That temperature means WASP-33b -- which is about 1.4 times the size of Jupiter -- is actually hotter than some stars.

The planet is considered a "hot jupiter" because it orbits close to its star, completing a full rotation every 29.28 hours.

By comparison, it takes planet Earth 365 days to complete a full orbit around the sun. The fast rotation effectively means WASP-33b experiences the equivalent of an Earthly year in 1.2 days.

It is also much closer to its star than Earth is to the sun. While Earth is 93 million miles from the sun, WASP-33b is only 1.86 million miles from the star it orbits.

Though that is not the closest known orbital distance between a star and a planet, WASP-33b's star is among the hottest to host a planet.

The star that WASP-33b orbits has an estimated temperature of about 7,160 C. The sun, by comparison, is about 5,600 C.

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Top-rated reviews of the week (photos)

Here's our weekly roundup of the new products CNET reviewers liked best.

Canon EOS 60D (body only)

Editors' rating: 4 out of 5

The good: Very fast; articulated display; excellent video quality and options.

The bad: Some annoying interface conventions.

The bottom line: The Canon EOS 60D is in many ways a great camera: fast, feature-packed, and with excellent photo and video quality. Some annoying aspects of its control layout dim its shine a little, however, so try before you buy.



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Facebook raises $1.5 billion

Confirming reports that have swirled for weeks, Facebook said Friday that it has raised $1.5 billion from Goldman Sachs and Digital Sky Technologies. The investment gives the company a valuation of approximately $50 billion.

The company also confirmed that it plans to begin filing public financial reports by April 2012 -- a move likely to coincide with an IPO.

243Email Print CommentRegulatory rules are forcing Facebook's hand. When companies have more than 499 shareholders, they're required to publicly disclose their financial results and file quarterly reports to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Facebook said it expects to pass the 500 shareholder mark sometime this year.

The Goldman Sachs (GS, Fortune 500) deal has two parts. The first is a $500 million investment from Goldman Sachs directly, several of the funds it manages, and Digital Sky Technologies, a Russian investment group that already owned a chunk of Facebook.

The second is a $1 billion investment from Goldman Sachs' wealthy individual clients.

On Monday, Goldman Sachs moved to limit that opportunity to only its non-U.S. clients, a decision it attributed to the "intense media attention" the deal has attracted since it came to light earlier this month. Keeping American investors out of the pool limits the scrutiny U.S. regulators can apply to the deal.

Facebook took pains to make clear that it was approached about the investment deal -- not the other way around.

"DST and Goldman Sachs approached Facebook to express their interest in making an investment, and Facebook decided it was an attractive opportunity to bolster its cash reserves and increase its financial flexibility with limited dilution to existing shareholder," the company said in a press release.

It also didn't take as much cash as it could have.

"Facebook had the option to accept between $375 million and $1.5 billion from the Goldman Sachs overseas offering," the company said. "While the offering was oversubscribed, Facebook made a business decision to limit the offering to $1 billion."

Facebook now has over 500 million users, and according to a recent Hitwise study, surpassed Google as the most visited site in 2010.


0:00 /6:31Does Facebook hurt real friendships?
A $50 billion valuation is a big step up for Facebook, which had a $15 billion valuation three years ago, when Microsoft paid $240 million for a 1.6% ownership stake.

But it could prove tricky to sustain once the company goes public and has its shares traded more broadly. At $50 billion, Facebook would be worth more than media and e-commerce companies like News Corp., CBS, Yahoo and eBay.

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RN ICU IR

Company: mKmResources
Job Title: RN ICU IR
Employment Category: Nursing

Location: Los Angeles - CA California - USA
Employment Type: Full Time
Posting Date: 2011-01-22
Job Description
Our client is a large medical facility that is looking for an RN that is ICU trained with IR experience. If you are a dynamic individual, able to thrive in a stressful environment, then you just may be the right person for this job. Apply!
Position Requirements
Skills / Qualifications Required: Registered Nurse
ICU trained
Interventional radiology experience
Minimum Education Level required: College
Minimum Years of Experience required: 3 to 5 Years
Contact Information
Contact Name: Hugh
Contact Phone: (800) 642-5031 (800) 642-5031
Preferred method of contact: E-mail via Apply Online Box

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Medical Receptionist

Company: mKmResources
Job Title: Medical Receptionist
Employment Category: Healthcare

Location: Los Angeles - CA California - USA
Employment Type: Temporary
Posting Date: 2011-01-22
Job Description
This position is at a large medical facility in Los Angeles. The department if very fastpaced.

The candidate will be responsible for answering the phones for three other departments also. The department supports five MDs and can check in 75 patients a day!

This role is 100% front desk so you must be able to answer multiple phone lines, check in patients, fax and scan information, take messages accurately, and perform well under pressure.

You must be able to juggle multiple priorities and remain calm and professional and get tasks done in the middle of a fast paced office.
Position Requirements
Skills / Qualifications Required: The right candidate will be computer savvy, have great people skills, be knowledgeable of basic medical terms, and able to work under stressful conditions.

Please tell us the average number of patients you have checked in, the average number of MDs you have supported, and the average number of phone lines you have handled on your most recent job.

Pay is up to $14/hr.
Minimum Education Level required: High School
Minimum Years of Experience required: 3 to 5 Years
Contact Information
Contact Name: Hugh
Contact Phone: (800) 642-5031 (800) 642-5031
Contact Fax: (909) 989-7633
Preferred method of contact: E-mail via Apply Online Box

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Power cord lights up as electricity flows

Think about the "vampire electronics" in your kitchen -- all of those blenders, coffee pots, toasters and toaster ovens that are sucking down power simply because they're plugged into an outlet.

These electronics gobble an estimated 5% to 10% of all the electricity used in U.S. homes, according to the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

But what if you could see your money going down the drain? Would visualizing power use help you save energy?

That's one possible effect of a new smartphone charger from Dexim.

When electricity is flowing down the charger's cord, blue lights travel down the cord, too, letting users see the energy that's needed to charge their smartphones. The lights zip down the cord more quickly when the phone is almost out of juice, since more electricity is needed.

Patrick Tarpey, a spokesman for the company, said this "electro-luminescent wire" is intended as a visual reminder for phone users so that they can see from across the room whether their phone is almost charged.

They'll know it's almost ready when the lights slow down, he said. That occurs when the phone is 65% charged. The charger shuts down completely and the light goes off when the charge is complete, he said.

"There's not really anything that's much like it out on the market," Tarpey said.

The charger, which only works with Apple devices such as the iPhone and iPod, is expected to be available for $40 in February. It will be sold on Amazon.com and on Dexim's website, Tarpey said.

Tarpey said the Dexim charger isn't intended to guilt consumers into using less energy. It's just meant as a neat visual indicator of power use. It could have that guilt effect, however.

BJ Fogg, director of the Persuasive Tech Lab at Stanford University, wrote in an e-mail to CNN that the charger "will influence some people (not all people) to recharge their phones differently."

"It's a cool idea," he said.

Academic researchers have been looking at the idea of visualizing power and cutting down "vampire" electricity usage for some time.

For example, Swedish nonprofit research group Interactive Institute has developed a product it calls the Power-Aware Cord -- a surge protector that lights up when it's pulling power from the wall and gets brighter as more power is used. (TIME named this one of the best inventions of 2010.)

The group outlines its motivations in a 2005 academic paper (PDF):

"Electricity is both invisible and intangible. We can see, feel, hear and even smell its effects, but we can not really perceive it," the paper says. "As the effects of electricity (light, heat and so on) often are taken for granted in our domestic homes today, electricity becomes even more invisible.

"In order to support increased awareness in the area of consumer energy consumption, on a large scale in society as well as on the mundane level of the home, it is crucial that people learn about different amounts of energy used by the electric products in their everyday life.

"If this awareness is increased, people might gain control over their own local relationship to this invisible global resource. Ultimately this will lead them to question their energy behaviors."

In the 2006 post "Glowing Guilt," the tech blog Gizmodo put this idea into simpler terms:

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14-year-old creates 'Bubble Ball,' iTunes' most popular free app

His name is Robert Nay, and he's an 8th grader in Spanish Fork, Utah.

But the media is fascinated by this story. In part because Nay is so young. Partly because he used a public library to do some of the work (hello, quaint factor). And, here's perhaps the most lasting piece of this, because he used a program that's designed to make app-building easy for anyone -- even non-programmers.

Then there's the fact that his app, Bubble Ball, is so freakishly popular. According to the All Things Digital blog, Nay's app -- a series of puzzles where players have to guide a ball through courses that they manipulate -- was downloaded a million times in its first two weeks.

The app debuted on December 29, the blog says, and hit the top of the iTunes chart late last week, beating out a holiday-themed version of "Angry Birds," which is the king of all the time-waster games. (The paid version of "Angry Birds", which is the one most people will know, is still on top of the paid app chart at the Apple App Store, which serves iOS devices like the iPod).

In an interview with ABC News, Nay looked like a middle schooler's version of dapper. Video clips showed him pulling books off of library shelves while wearing a blue button-up and jeans (it's an outfit Zuckerberg may want to make note of, after his slouchy fashion sense earnedhim a worst-dressed rating from Esquire magazine). He talks with that Zuckerbergian, code-is-my-first-language type of rhythm.

But, for Nay, these coding skills are new and basic. He used a program called Corona, from Ansca Mobile, to develop the app. This is part of a recent trend: Google also unveiled an app-development tool, called App Inventor, which it says will be used in middle school and high school classrooms.

The gist, proponents say, is that apps now can be developed by anyone -- just like Blogger and Tumblr let anyone author a blog, even without knowledge of the HTML coding language.

Corona's website explains the program this way:

"With Corona, you can quickly create applications in a matter of hours. No Objective-C/Cocoa required, and no C++."

All Things Digital, the Wall Street Journal blog network, offers details on Nay's background in computers and coding, which isn't deep (reminder: he's only 14):

"Although it's his first game, Nay has been into computers for some time, including Web programming and helping others with their computers. When he's not at the computer (or school) he also likes reading, especially science fiction, and playing the piano and trumpet.

"Some months back, a friend suggested that if Nay liked his iPod Touch so much, perhaps he should try his hand at programming for it. At first he tried the standard Objective-C programming tools, but found the learning curve a little steep. He tried another tool called GameSalad, but didn't like the results. In the end, he settled on the Corona tools from Ansca Mobile. Corona was easy to use, he said, and also let him write once and publish for both Apple and Android devices."

ABC echoes the fact that he struggled with the process until he found the Corona tool:

"Robert said he enjoyed creating the game, which was somewhat inspired by features of his own favorite iPod games, but it wasn't always smooth sailing. 'There were some times when I felt like, 'can people seriously do this?' It seemed impossible,' he said. 'But then there were times when things just worked and I'd be like 'maybe I can actually do this.'"

Google's App Inventor software has been compared to stacking Legos. It doesn't require coding knowledge. Corona -- check out its video demo here -- looks more complicated, and All Things Digital writes that Nay did author 4,000 lines of code to create Bubble Ball. So this isn't child's play.

That blog says Nay's mother helped her son by doing the "grown-up stuff" -- putting the app on iTunes, promoting it and drawing some of the layouts for Bubble Ball's levels. Her son did all the code, All Things Digital says.

ABC writes that Nay is being coy about his future as a developer:

"Aside from excelling at school, Robert plays the piano, mandolin and trumpet. But given the response to 'Bubble Ball,' he said he's going to be carving out more of his time to work on his next application. Robert said he'll likely charge people for his next download, but is learning quickly to be tight-lipped about his plans. When asked about his newest game, he told 'Good Morning America Weekend' just this: 'It's secret for now.'"

Meanwhile, the app is getting good reviews on iTunes, with an average rating of three stars out of five.

Some reviewers note that Nay's story factored into their decision to download Bubble Ball: "This game is pointless and stupid!!! Sooo glad I didn't pay money for this!! Only reason it has that many downloads is because a 14 year old kid made it," wrote one reviewer called Epicmetal.

Others didn't mention the 14-year-old at all, perhaps because the app's description does not advertise Nay or his youth.

"Some people might skip this because of the 'homemade' look of the graphics, but that would be a big mistake! It's not complicated, it's easy to get into, and best of all, it's a lot of fun!" wrote a reviewer listed as Jay Jennings. "Worth the download, for sure!"

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Instructor of Science & Technology

Company: RY Robotics Explorers
Job Title: Instructor of Science & Technology
Employment Category: Teaching
Engineering

Location: Alpharetta - GA Georgia - USA
County or nearby cities: North Atlanta
Employment Type: Full Time
Posting Date: 2011-01-18
Job Description
The Instructor of Science and Technology will execute science and engineering exploration programs (classes, camps, and competitive teams) in a working laboratory. They will provide leadership to students, coaches, and interns as well as assist with recruitment of the same.

Main Responsibilities:
After-School Program Administration
Staff Recruitment, Management and Support
Client Relations
Student Recruitment and Enrollment
Community Relations

Training will be provided in all curriculum and technical program areas.

Reports to: President
Direct Reports: Interns, Coaches
Position Requirements
Skills / Qualifications Required: Qualifications:
Bachelor's Degree
Passion for science and technology
Ability to teach effectively using a variety of methods
Focus on student achievement elementary through high school
Strategic thinker and problem solver
Adept at tactical execution of programs
Self-motivated
Excellent written and oral communication skills
Strong organizational skills; time management, reliable and accurate record-keeping abilities
High ethical standards
Proficiency with Microsoft Office and Internet; Computer programming experience a plus
Previous exposure to pre-enginnering building sets such as LEGO, K'NEX, and others
Flexible schedule
Minimum Education Level required: Bachelor
Contact Information
Contact Phone: 770-772-6622     

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