All posts by : Admin

Monday, October 9, 2006

On Monday, October 9, 2006, Google Inc. announced its decision to purchase YouTube, the popular video-sharing site, for $1.65 billion in stock. Following the closure of the deal, YouTube will operate independently, “to preserve” its user community and its brand, the announcement said.

Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google stated “The YouTube team has built an exciting and powerful media platform that complements Google’s mission to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. Our companies share similar values; we both always put our users first and are committed to innovating to improve their experience. Together, we are natural partners to offer a compelling media entertainment service to users, content owners and advertisers.”

“We are excited to have the resources to move faster than ever before,” co-founder Chad Hurley, YouTube’s 29-year-old CEO, told the Associated Press during a Monday interview.

100 million videos are watched on the YouTube’s flash based site every day, including professional movie and TV clips and music videos, as well as amateur content.

Saturday, March 15, 2008

A tornado, spawned from a large storm, has hit the United States city of Atlanta, Georgia, causing extensive damage throughout the city.

The National Weather Service confirmed Saturday morning that it was a tornado that struck the city. After reviewing the aftermath of the storm, they classified it as an EF2 tornado on the Enhanced Fujita scale. Atlanta mayor Shirley Franklin says she is beginning to apply for federal disaster aid.

There have been no confirmed deaths, but the mayor’s spokeswoman says there may be dead victims trapped within the ruins of a collapsed loft complex. The Fulton Cotton Mill Lofts are located in the historic Cabbagetown neighborhood, where at least 20 homes were destroyed. “It looks like a bomb went off, it looks like World War III,” said Mahsud Olufani, who has an art studio in the neighbourhood. “It’s a disaster area.”

At least 27 people suffered injuries, mostly cuts and bruises. One person is reported to be in critical condition. Grady Memorial Hospital, where many of the injured were taken, had suffered some window damage but was still operating. Around 50 people have been taken to a local Red Cross shelter for displaced residents.

The tornado struck during the semifinal game of the SEC Basktetball Tournament between Mississippi State and Alabama. Play was stopped with around 2 minutes to go in overtime when heavy wind could be heard outside with rippling of the roof. Damage was done to the roof as debris fell to the floor. No injuries were reported in the Dome. “I thought it was a tornado or a terrorist attack,” said Mississippi State guard Ben Hansbrough.

The storm arrived with little forewarning. A tornado warning was issued for the downtown area a few minutes before the storm hit. “Ironically, the guy behind me got a phone call saying there was a tornado warning,” said Lisa Lynn, who was attending the game at the Georgia Dome. “And in two seconds, we heard the noise and things started to shake. It was creepy.”

The CNN Center in downtown Atlanta was severely damaged, especially in the atrium, where the ravaged ceiling allowed water to pour in. Police closed several streets near the CNN Center because of the debris, which included power lines, billboards, and even office chairs.

The Omni Hotel, which is attached to the CNN Center, also sustained damage, with many of its windows shattered. Visitors at the hotel were evacuated to the exhibition hall at street level. “It was crazy. There was a lot of windows breaking and stuff falling,” said Terrence Evans, a valet at the hotel.

At Centennial Olympic Park, located near CNN and the Omni Hotel, two Olympic torch sculptures had fallen over, and a performance pavilion was destroyed. A high-rise dorm at Georgia State University was damaged by the tornado, as evidenced by a large hole in the building’s 14th floor. University students were evacuated on buses.

According to Georgia Power, more than 13,000 of their customers are currently without electricity. Crews are working to fix downed power lines, but they said it would be difficult with all the debris.

Another large storm, currently in Mississippi, is heading towards Atlanta, and is forecast to arrive around 3 p.m. National Weather Service meteorologist Mike Leary said Friday’s storm could be “nothing to compare with what’s coming in tomorrow”.

All downtown events scheduled to occur Saturday have been cancelled. This includes the city’s Saint Patrick’s Day parade. The remaining SEC tournament games are to be played at Georgia Tech‘s Alexander Memorial Coliseum, located in the undamaged midtown.

Monday, October 11, 2010

Wikinews interviewed author Amy Scobee about her book Scientology – Abuse at the Top, and asked her about her experiences working as an executive within the organization. Scobee joined the organization at age 14, and worked at Scientology’s international management headquarters for several years before leaving in 2005. She served as a Scientology executive in multiple high-ranking positions, working out of the international headquarters of Scientology known as “Gold Base”, located in Gilman Hot Springs near Hemet, California.

Saturday, January 8, 2005

U.S. citizens donating in 2005 to help tsunami victims may write off their donations on their 2004 tax returns, thanks to a bill quickly passed in the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate on a voice vote, and signed into law by president George W. Bush.

Without the new law, contributors would have waited until 2006 and their 2005 tax returns to be able to write off their charitable donations. The law is intended to promote donating towards the tsunami relief effort.

CBS News reports Indiana University’s Center on Philanthropy is estimating approximately 322 million U.S. dollars in goods and cash have been donated by private U.S. citizens and corporations, in addition to the 350 million that was promised by the government.

An AP/ISOS poll has found three in ten U.S. citizens have donated to Tsunami Aid organizations.

Thursday, June 23, 2011

NASA’s Cassini–Huygens spacecraft has discovered evidence for a large-scale saltwater reservoir beneath the icy crust of Saturn’s moon Enceladus. The data came from the spacecraft’s direct analysis of salt-rich ice grains close to the jets ejected from the moon. The study has been published in this week’s edition of the journal Nature.

Data from Cassini’s cosmic dust analyzer show the grains expelled from fissures, known as tiger stripes, are relatively small and usually low in salt far away from the moon. Closer to the moon’s surface, Cassini found that relatively large grains rich with sodium and potassium dominate the plumes. The salt-rich particles have an “ocean-like” composition and indicate that most, if not all, of the expelled ice and water vapor comes from the evaporation of liquid salt-water. When water freezes, the salt is squeezed out, leaving pure water ice behind.

Cassini’s ultraviolet imaging spectrograph also recently obtained complementary results that support the presence of a subsurface ocean. A team of Cassini researchers led by Candice Hansen of the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona, measured gas shooting out of distinct jets originating in the moon’s south polar region at five to eight times the speed of sound, several times faster than previously measured. These observations of distinct jets, from a 2010 flyby, are consistent with results showing a difference in composition of ice grains close to the moon’s surface and those that made it out to the E ring, the outermost ring that gets its material primarily from Enceladean jets. If the plumes emanated from ice, they should have very little salt in them.

“There currently is no plausible way to produce a steady outflow of salt-rich grains from solid ice across all the tiger stripes other than salt water under Enceladus’s icy surface,” said Frank Postberg, a Cassini team scientist at the University of Heidelberg in Germany.

The data suggests a layer of water between the moon’s rocky core and its icy mantle, possibly as deep as about 50 miles (80 kilometers) beneath the surface. As this water washes against the rocks, it dissolves salt compounds and rises through fractures in the overlying ice to form reserves nearer the surface. If the outermost layer cracks open, the decrease in pressure from these reserves to space causes a plume to shoot out. Roughly 400 pounds (200 kilograms) of water vapor is lost every second in the plumes, with smaller amounts being lost as ice grains. The team calculates the water reserves must have large evaporating surfaces, or they would freeze easily and stop the plumes.

“We imagine that between the ice and the ice core there is an ocean of depth and this is somehow connected to the surface reservoir,” added Postberg.

The Cassini mission discovered Enceladus’ water-vapor and ice jets in 2005. In 2009, scientists working with the cosmic dust analyzer examined some sodium salts found in ice grains of Saturn’s E ring but the link to subsurface salt water was not definitive. The new paper analyzes three Enceladus flybys in 2008 and 2009 with the same instrument, focusing on the composition of freshly ejected plume grains. In 2008, Cassini discovered a high “density of volatile gases, water vapor, carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide, as well as organic materials, some 20 times denser than expected” in geysers erupting from the moon. The icy particles hit the detector target at speeds between 15,000 and 39,000 MPH (23,000 and 63,000 KPH), vaporizing instantly. Electrical fields inside the cosmic dust analyzer separated the various constituents of the impact cloud.

“Enceladus has got warmth, water and organic chemicals, some of the essential building blocks needed for life,” said Dennis Matson in 2008, Cassini project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

“This finding is a crucial new piece of evidence showing that environmental conditions favorable to the emergence of life can be sustained on icy bodies orbiting gas giant planets,” said Nicolas Altobelli, the European Space Agency’s project scientist for Cassini.

“If there is water in such an unexpected place, it leaves possibility for the rest of the universe,” said Postberg.

Tuesday, March 4, 2008

Randall Munroe is the writer of the popular webcomic xkcd. The comic is known for its geeky humor and minimalist drawing style that generally uses stick figures. Munroe worked as a contractor for NASA before writing xkcd full time in 2006.

Wikinews reporter Joshua Zelinsky interviewed Munroe at Vericon, Harvard’s annual science fiction convention.