Silicone Delta

Every time you answer your phone, turn on a microwave to heat your food, or check your emails, you are using semi-conductors.
The industry that designs and build these essential components of our everyday lives is, perhaps more so than any other business, a truly global one. An integrated circuit or semi-conductor device might be designed in one country, fabricated in another, assembled and tested in a third before being shipped to customers everywhere.
In recent years Vietnam has increasingly become one of the players in this global network, with local and multi-national companies setting up operations in the country. RMIT Vietnam’s Master of Engineering (Electrical and Computer Engineering) program is helping to produce the highly-trained workforce that the industry is always searching for.
The combination of solid technical skill combined with excellent ‘soft’ skills including English language, critical thinking, ability to work in teams, and many more is what makes graduates from the program so special and sought after, says Professor Serge Demidenko, Head of RMIT Vietnam’s Centre of Technology.
“These ‘soft’ skills help our graduates integrate very well into international hi-tech companies who are operating across the globe.
“We have also made significant investments in facilities for the program so we have world-class laboratories and equipment for students to develop their skills,” Professor Demidenko says.
The Master of Engineering program consists of a carefully selected mixture of lectures, laboratories, tutorials, projects and workshops, with efficient on-site and on-line support offered to students individually as well as to research and design project teams. There is also an industry placement so students can gain further experience in a real-world setting.
One of the features of the RMIT Vietnam program is the links that have been forged with industry partners. A recent example was the agreement signed with the South East Asian arm of National Instruments, the US-based global technology leader in instrumentation and measurement, to provide joint training and educational activities as well as to further develop the University’s engineering facilities.
In the final part of their course, students also spend one exchange semester at RMIT in Melbourne, honing their technical and language abilities. This ensures graduates of the Master of Engineering are well-rounded, global professionals.
“What these students emerge from this program with is really a passport to the world,” Professor Demidenko says.
RMIT Vietnam, in conjunction the Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID), is offering a number of scholarships for the Master of Engineering (Electronic and Computer Engineering) program commencing in February 2013. The deadline for submitting applications is 30 November 2012, and the result will be announced in mid-December.

Asia Discovers Who Has The Most Promiscuous Men

PHILIPPINE DAILY INQUIRER (Philippines), CHINA TIMES (Taiwan)
Worldcrunch
BANGKOK- A new survey that ranks cities with the “most promiscuous men” has been making the buzz all over Asia over the past few days, the China Times reported.
The survey was conducted by SeekingArrangement.com, an American-based dating website. 
According to the Bangkok Post the study involved 10,000 men in Asia on the website that claims to be world’s largest sugar daddy dating network, linking wealthy men with attractive younger women for “mutually beneficial relationships.”
The survey results listed Bangkok, Osaka, Makati (Philippines), Hyderabad (India) and Saigon (Vietnam) as the top five cities for promiscuous male sex. Men claiming to have more than five sexual partners per year in these cities range from 72% to 83% in the Thai capital, according to the Philippine Daily Inquirer.
A Makati city government spokesman cast doubt on the credibility of the report by saying that the website is aimed at rich men looking for sex partners. It’s most likely the respondents would pretend that they come from this financial center of the Philippines and boast a high number of sex partnerships to enhance their attractiveness.
“Asia is known for efficiency and discipline. There is a common misconception in the West that Asian men are not as promiscuous as Americans,” said Brandon Wade, CEO and Founder of SeekingArrangement.com., according to the Philippine Daily Inquirer. But “it is simply not true. Because of the fast-paced lifestyle in these cities, men are always looking to relieve stress. In a city where the market is constantly changing, so goes the dating pool.”
In the survey, two of China’s biggest cities Shanghai and Beijing came in at 7^th and 10^th on the ranking. In a data published recently by China’s Ministry of Health, in Shanghai and Beijing, with high concentration of migrant workers, 80 % of them expressed deep frustration of sex while 21% admit that they frequent prostitutes, the China Times reported.
Another set of statistics released by China’s national population and Family Planning Commission showed that there are as many as 13 million abortions annually in China, the highest in the world.

Autumn Lovin': Science Says Fall Is The Best Season For Sex

By Roland Mischke
DIE WELT /Worldcrunch

BERLIN - Till Roenneberg, a professor at the Institute for Medical Psychology at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) in Munich, is a chronobiologist – which means that he specializes in the study of how biological rhythms affect our physiology and behavior. Over the course of his career, he has gathered statistics on people from 166 countries.
The human organism follows the cycle of the seasons: growth, hormones, blood pressure, cutaneous perfusion, the immune system, sleep and body temperature all adjust accordingly.
Our behavior varies with the time of year as well. For example, in winter we eat more, put on weight, and sleep 20 minutes longer on average. Spring is – worldwide – not only the season of increased health irritations and heightened feelings, but of suicide as well. Besides putting a strain on the circulatory system, summer heat makes people a bit reckless, prone to adventure and accidents.
Autumn, at least according to popular opinion, is the season of colds and melancholy.
During the autumn, when leaves change color and drift to the ground we are reminded unequivocally of the passing of all things. Add wind and rain into the equation, and it may all add up to depression.
Roenneberg has observed that the further a country is from the equator, the more its residents notice the seasons. "We live in a society that strives to be happy all the time," says the Munich scientist. "We don’t understand the power of cyclicality." People are, after all, part of nature – a perpetually flowing system of growth and decay. So the emotions we experience during each separate season all have their important role to play.
The best remedy for autumn depression is love. Strolls amid fall foliage are so romantic -- and the season ushers in a deeper quality of love than the summer flirt: when it’s stormy and rainy, we seek to create more warmth on the inside.
In the brain, activity in the right frontal lobe, where sadness, fear, and aggression nest, declines. Parallel to this, the four small areas in the brain that produce feelings of tenderness are particularly well supplied with blood.
Levels of dopamine – a “happiness hormone” – increase. Dopamine is what produces the tummy flutters so familiar to those in love. They are particularly strong in the fall, when he and she both are particularly susceptible to feelings that it’s cozier à deux than alone.
Sharing the darkness
What we don’t like about fall is the loss of light, but that too can have its charms: if you have somebody to share the darkness with, you’re likely to be spared the autumn depression.
Many others suffer from "seasonal affective disorder" (SAD), the seasonal depression that affects more women than men, as the body’s inner clock adjusts to the change from light to dark.
In the long periods of darkness in the fall and winter our living space becomes the center of life: we cook more hearty meals (calories provide protection from the cold), and we talk more, because in the heated protected space of our own home it’s easier to exchange thoughts that during the warmer times of year don’t even occur to us. In fall weather, we not only go deeper into ourselves, but we focus more on our partner as well.
Happiness, researchers tell us, is not a permanent condition -- that we feel it when we experience something that is better than we expected it to be. Fall is full of surprises, and such surprises are the best way to ensure that a sense of dull routine doesn’t get the upper hand – because the sense of routine is what makes us seek happiness all the time, and prevents us from feeling happy for long.
Talking, tender caressing and lovemaking enable us to bypass the darkness of the soul that can overcome us due to the changes of climate fall brings with it. Love also brings feelings of comfort and hope. Perhaps that is why there are fewer suicides during the fall months than at any other time of year (most suicides take place in the spring, particularly on Mondays).
Fall is also the best time for sex. Male testosterone levels vary with the seasons, but fall is when they reach peak levels, as American researchers and Munich expert Eberhard Nieschlag, working independently of each other, have discovered.
It has also been established that female hormonal glands are the most active in the fall. Increased estrogen levels make women feel more like sex, and this too is programmed – babies conceived in the fall are born in a season of light which makes it possible for their organism to start producing Vitamin D right away. That strengthens their bones and immune system.
These are among the findings that chronobiology has been able to unearth so far about seasonal change in human behavior. At the very least, it should stop those aware of them from longing for spring – because the best time for love in the Western Hemisphere is between September 21 and December 21.

Read the article in the original language.
Photo by - William Christiansen
All rights reserved ©Worldcrunch - in partnership with DIE WELT

Frankenstorm: Why Hurricane Sandy Will Be Historic

The name may be funny—Frankenstorm—but be advised: Hurricane Sandy is no joke. Over the weekend meteorologists were running out of frightening things to say about Sandy, which by the time it makes landfall on Monday evening—most likely in New Jersey—will almost certainly be the largest storm to ever hit the East Coast, with a reach that extends some 450 miles beyond its core. Sandy truly will be the perfect storm—not just because a hurricane is meeting a northern blockage that will fuel its strength as it hits land as well as another western storm system, but because Sandy is set to strike the richest and most populated part of the U.S. “We’re looking at impact of greater than 50 to 60 million people,” said Louis Uccellini, head of environmental prediction for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). A drone strike couldn’t be better targeted to cause maximum damage than this storm.

(MORE: So You’re About to Get Hit By a Hurricane)

Read more: http://science.time.com/2012/10/29/frankenstorm-why-hurricane-sandy-will-be-historic/#ixzz2AgKDCFt8

It’s not so much that Sandy is an incredibly strong storm, with winds at about 75 mph. NOAA’s Hurricane Research Division put the destructive power of Sandy’s winds at a modest 2.6 on a scale of 0 to 6. The real danger comes from the potentially huge storm surges the hurricane could cause along coastal areas. NOAA put the storm surge threat from Sandy at 5.7 on that 6 point scale—greater than any hurricane observed between 1969 and 2005, including Category 5 storms like Katrina and Andrew. NOAA’s National Hurricane Center says that “life-threatening storm surge flooding” is expected along the mid-Atlantic coast.
For coastal cities, such surges—amplified by the fact that Sandy will be hitting during high tide—could prove disastrous. Storm surges are expected to reach 4 to 8 ft., if not higher, as Sandy pushes vast amounts of ocean water onto the land. In and around New York City, it could be worse, with storm surges predicted to reach as high as 11 ft.—nearly a record—in northern New Jersey and Long Island Sound. Preliminary forecasts suggest that lower Manhattan could experience its highest waters since at least 1851.
That’s why Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced Sunday morning that the city would evacuate low-lying areas, meaning that some 370,000 people—a population equal to that of Minneapolis—may need to move. The city also shut down its subway, bus and commuter rail services, beginning at 7 PM on Sunday. (Buses were shut down two hours later.) That decision—also taken when Irene neared New York last year—was made to try to reduce the risk of damage to subway equipment in tunnels, which could  flood depending on the extent of the surge. “I give a 50% chance that Sandy’s storm surge will end up flooding a portion of New York’s subway system,” wrote Jeff Masters of the Weather Underground’s Wunderblog.
(MORE: ‘Frankenstorm’: Worse Than Sum of Its Parts)
It’s not clear when New York’s subway service will be restored, but if the flooding is severe, it might be a long, long time. New York just barely avoided disaster during Irene in 2011—Klaus Jacob, a research scientist at Columbia University’s Earth Institute, noted last year that if the storm surge had been just 1 ft. higher, subway tunnels under the Harlem and East River would have been unusable for a month, at an economic cost of $55 billion. The threat to the subways is another reminder that the economic cost of a storm has as much to do with where it hits as it does with how strong the hurricane is in the first place.
And make no mistake: Sandy is a freak. While it’s not unheard of for hurricanes to form this late in the year—the actual Atlantic hurricane season extends another month—storms will usually be pulled out to sea by a semi-permanent low-pressure system near Iceland. But that’s not what happened with Sandy, as meterologist Eric Holthaus points out:

The coincidence of that strong of a high pressure “block” being in place just when a hurricane is passing by — in and of itself a very rare occurrence — is just mind bogglingly rare. It’s the kind of stuff that’s important enough to rewrite meteorological textbooks. The result: Instead of heading out to sea Sandy’s full force will be turned back against the grain and directed squarely at the East Coast.

(MORE: After Levee Blast, More Rough Water Ahead)
The sheer oddness of Sandy’s arrival begs the obvious question: Is climate change involved here? Many environmentalists certainly think so. But scientists are always reluctant to link climate change to any specific weather event, and the impact of warming on hurricanes have proved particularly difficult to untangle. The last Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report noted that scientists have “low confidence” in long-term increases in tropical cyclone activity due to man-made warming. It’s true that warming does increase the amount of moisture in the air, which can make storms rainier—just as we saw with Irene last year, and potentially with Sandy now. But don’t be fooled by cautious scientists—we can expect that global warming will likely bring about stronger and potentially more destructive storms and other natural disasters like Sandy.
What we know is that, climate change or not, big storms will happen—and if they hit populated areas, they will cause damage. The immediate challenge is to prepare for those disasters, and in the future, build societies and infrastructure that can be resilient to the sort of catastrophes that we know will continue to unfold in the future. Sandy killed at least 61 people as it made its way through the Carribbean—53 of them in the desperately poor country of Haiti, which remains consistently unprepared for natural disasters. Sandy will almost certainly cause billions of dollars of damage when it hits the East Coast. We’re unlikely to see a severe death toll, thanks to the fact that rich societies like the U.S. have gotten better at predicting and preparing for storms. (The famous 1938 Long Island Express hurricane, another historic storm, killed some 800 people in the U.S.—a death toll that would be impossible to imagine today.) As Sandy looms, let’s hope we’re ready.

Read more: http://science.time.com/2012/10/29/frankenstorm-why-hurricane-sandy-will-be-historic/#ixzz2AgKG2tLR

Manchester United force victory after Chelsea are reduced to nine men

It was a wild and eccentric match that finished amid great controversy and, from Chelsea's point of view, a thick portfolio of grievances about the incidents that accompanied Manchester United's first league win at Stamford Bridge for a decade.
Their complaints were long and vociferous. Justifiable, too, because even ignoring, for one moment, the red card for Fernando Torres that left Chelsea two men down, Roberto Di Matteo had every right to be aggrieved about the chain of events leading to the decisive goal.
Javier Hernández, the United substitute, was in an offside position when Rafael da Silva took aim at Petr Cech's goal and misdirected his shot into the Mexican's path. The flag never went up and Chelsea's unbeaten start to the league season was over.
It was a rancorous ending and there were moments when Di Matteo and his coaching staff became embroiled in a heated exchange with Sir Alex Ferguson on the touchline. Afterwards Di Matteo complained with unusual vigour about the performance of Mark Clattenburg and the referee's assistants.
Chelsea had shown great togetherness to recover from United racing into a 2-0 lead inside 12 minutes. Their opponents have never lost a match from that position in the Premier League but had been looking vulnerable until red cards for Branislav Ivanovic and then Torres in the 63rd and 69th minutes. Clattenburg, Di Matteo said, had "ruined the game". Later there were more serious allegations about comments the referee had allegedly made to Mikel John Obi and another Chelsea player.
There could be no dispute about the validity of the first dismissal, Ivanovic clipping Ashley Young's heels as the forward ran clear on goal. Yet Chelsea were entitled to their complaints after Clattenburg decided Torres had been trying to deceive him when the Spaniard turned past Jonny Evans. The replays showed there had been a slight touch – not a heavy contact but a touch all the same – and when Clattenburg reached for his pocket most of the crowd would have assumed he was going to punish Evans. Instead it was a second yellow card for Torres and, after that, it was not particularly surprising the away side took advantage of their extra numbers.
The first booking for Torres had come at the end of the first half, barely a minute after Juan Mata's superb free-kick had put Chelsea back into the game, and this is perhaps where Di Matteo's argument is undermined a little. Torres had embedded his studs into Tom Cleverley's chest and a challenge that high might have enticed a red card of its own.
By the end Clattenburg, excellent for the first hour, was straying dangerously close to losing the plot and Antonio Valencia was booked for diving when there was clearly a tangle of legs with Mikel John Obi. It was just a pity the match had to end in this fashion because, along the way, the two sides conjured up some great artistry and entertainment.
United began the game as though affronted that their record on this ground should be so undistinguished. Valencia's direct running made him a difficult opponent for Ashley Cole. Young, starting his first game since August, was prominently involved and Rooney was exceptional in his dedication to getting on the ball and influencing the match.
They also had a striker, Robin van Persie, who had the technical gifts and force of personality to cause Chelsea's defence an uncommon number of problems. After three minutes Rooney broke on the right and Van Persie's right-foot shot flashed against the post, bounced out and ricocheted against David Luiz to pinball its way into the net. United's second goal also originated on the right, an unmarked Van Persie firing in Valencia's low cross with another right-foot effort, and at that stage Chelsea looked as though they had temporarily forgotten everything that has helped them to the top of the table. For the opening half an hour it was difficult to think United had been more impressive at any other point this season.
Rooney, however, also made one contribution that might have had serious repercussions for his team. His hack at Eden Hazard's ankles was not just needless but also dim-witted, to say the least, when Chelsea's artillery included a free-kick specialist of Mata's refinement. Just outside the penalty area Mata sized it up, then speared his left-foot shot into the top corner.
Chelsea had taken their time to get going but when they did clear their heads their response was impressive. Mata became increasingly influential, aided and abetted by Hazard and Oscar. David de Gea, United's goalkeeper, made several fine saves, particularly to keep out Torres's header at 2-0.
Evans turned a cross against his own post and Rooney hacked away Gary Cahill's goal-bound header.
This was a staunch recovery from Chelsea and, after 53 minutes, they were level. Oscar hooked the ball across the penalty area and Ramires outjumped Cleverley to direct his header past De Gea.
Yet there was a certain inevitability attached to what happened after Torres's red card. Within six minutes Cech turned Van Persie's shot against the post and the ball came out to Rafael. Offside, Hernández applied the final touch for a chaotic and controversial win.
Man of the match Robin van Persie (Manchester United)

Mark Clattenburg accused of racial slur during Chelsea v Manchester United

Chelsea make formal complaint over 'inappropriate language'
• Mikel John Obi one of the players at centre of storm
• Referee promises to co-operate fully with investigation

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• David Hytner at Stamford Bridge
• The Guardian, Sunday 28 October 2012 21.39 GMT

Mark Clattenburg has been accused of 'inappropriate language' towards two Chelsea players. Photograph: Michael Regan/Getty Images

Chelsea have made a formal complaint to the football authorities about the referee Mark Clattenburg, whose handling of their 3-2 home defeat to Manchester United caused such controversy, alleging that he directed "inappropriate language" towards two of their players, with club officials briefing that one part of the allegation concerns language of a racist nature.
The west London club released a statement at eight o'clock, which brought a fresh twist to a tumultuous day. They did not reveal the identity of the players, although one of them is understood to have been the Nigeria international Mikel John Obi, a player that Sir Alex Ferguson, the United manager, felt had been lucky to avoid a red card from Clattenburg, in a game in which two Chelsea players, Branislav Ivanovic and Fernando Torres, did receive them.
Roberto Di Matteo, the Chelsea manager, was furious at Clattenburg's decisions, in particular the one to give Torres a second yellow card for diving while the assistant referee allowed Javier Hernández's winning goal to stand, despite him having come back from an offside position. Di Matteo went to see Clattenburg after the match, flanked by some of his backroom staff, and he was aware at the time of the grievances of his players. Mikel is understood to have visited Clattenburg in his room.
"We have a lodged a complaint to the Premier League match delegate with regards to inappropriate language used by the referee and directed at two of our players in two separate incidents during today's match," said a Chelsea spokesman. "The match delegate will pass the complaint to the Football Association. We will make no further comment at this time."
Clattenburg was not reachable for comment after Chelsea's allegations but a statement from Professional Game Match Officials said it "is aware of the allegations and they are being treated with the utmost seriousness. Mark will co-operate fully and welcomes the opportunity for the facts to be established. No further comment will be made until matter has been properly investigated."
It is understood that the other Chelsea player who felt he was the victim of offensive language from Clattenburg was white, with reports suggesting it was the Spaniard Juan Mata. Chelsea are fully aware of the severity of the allegation, particularly in the wake of the John Terry-Anton Ferdinand racist slur saga.
Terry did not play here, as he served the second part of his four-match domestic ban from the FA for the racist abuse of Ferdinand, the QPR defender, but Rio Ferdinand did play for United. He was the subject of cat-calls, his every touch booed and, after Hernández's winner, he struck a defiant celebratory pose that appeared to enrage the crowd, leading to missiles being thrown.
This was after Chelsea had chosen to support the Kick It Out anti-racism campaign and Terry mentioned his club's "pride" at backing the campaign in his programme notes. Terry wore an anti-racism badge for the day. All of the Chelsea players wore Kick It Out T-shirts in the warm-up; the United winger, Ashley Young, was the only player who did not. It was unclear whether he was making a statement. There were ironic cheers from the United supporters when the on-pitch announcer read out the anti-discrimination message and, over 90 frenetic minutes, there was also rancour between the benches, Ferguson clashing with Di Matteo and members of the Chelsea staff after Torres's red card and at full-time.
Rio Ferdinand shook hands beforehand with Ashley Cole, who had given evidence in support of Terry at the Chelsea captain's magistrates court trial for abusing Anton. It felt as though a line had attempted to be drawn under one of the modern game's most destructive episodes, only for another controversy to erupt.
Clattenburg was miked up throughout the game and he could be heard by his assistants and the fourth official. Their conversations would not have been recorded but they could, in theory, be in a position to assist any inquiry.
Di Matteo was furious at his post-match press conference, although he ocused only on Clattenburg's decisions in relation to the match. "Yes, I have been in to see him," he said. "Surely, when he's going to watch the images he's going to realise that he made big mistakes.
"We are massively disappointed that these key decisions were wrong. It always seems to be in favour of the opposition. That's a massive disadvantage for us. I thought at 2-2, we looked like the team that were probably going to win the game. You don't want the referees to be a big influence in the game, you let the two teams play each other and play a good game, that's what everybody loves to watch."

Megastorm Could Wreak Havoc Across 800 Miles of U.S.

(SHIP BOTTOM, N.J.) — Forget distinctions like tropical storm or hurricane. Don’t get fixated on a particular track. Wherever it hits, the behemoth storm plodding up the East Coast will afflict a third of the country with sheets of rain, high winds and heavy snow, say officials who warned millions in coastal areas to get out of the way.
“We’re looking at impact of greater than 50 to 60 million people,” said Louis Uccellini, head of environmental prediction for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
As Hurricane Sandy trekked north from the Caribbean — where it left nearly five dozen dead — to meet two other powerful winter storms, experts said it didn’t matter how strong the storm was when it hit land: The rare hybrid storm that follows will cause havoc over 800 miles from the East Coast to the Great Lakes.
(PHOTOS: Hurricane Sandy Wreaks Havoc in Caribbean)
Governors from North Carolina, where steady rains were whipped by gusting winds Saturday night, to Connecticut declared states of emergency. Delaware ordered mandatory evacuations for coastal communities by 8 p.m. Sunday.
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who was criticized for not interrupting a vacation in Florida while a snowstorm pummeled the state in 2010, broke off campaigning for Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney in North Carolina on Friday to return home.
“I can be as cynical as anyone,” said Christie, who declared a state of emergency Saturday. “But when the storm comes, if it’s as bad as they’re predicting, you’re going to wish you weren’t as cynical as you otherwise might have been.”
Eighty-five-year-old former sailor Ray Leonard agreed. And he knows to heed warnings.
Leonard and two crewmates in his 32-foot sailboat, Satori, rode out 1991′s infamous “perfect storm,” made famous by the Sebastian Junger best-selling book of the same name, before being plucked from the Atlantic off Martha’s Vineyard, Mass., by a Coast Guard helicopter.
“Don’t be rash,” Leonard said Saturday from his home in Fort Myers, Fla. “Because if this does hit, you’re going to lose all those little things you’ve spent the last 20 years feeling good about.”
Sandy weakened briefly to a tropical storm Saturday but was soon back up to Category 1 strength, packing 75 mph winds. It was about 260 miles (420 kilometers) south-southeast of Cape Hatteras, N.C., and moving northeast at 13 mph as of 5 a.m. Sunday, according to the National Hurricane Center in Miami.
(PHOTOS: The Most Destructive U.S. Hurricanes of All Time)
The storm was expected to continue moving parallel to the Southeast coast most of the day and approach the coast of the mid-Atlantic states by Monday night, before reaching southern New England later in the week.
It was so big, however, and the convergence of the three storms so rare, that “we just can’t pinpoint who is going to get the worst of it,” said Rick Knabb, director of the National Hurricane Center in Miami.
Officials are particularly worried about the possibility of subway flooding in New York City, said Uccellini, of NOAA.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo told the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to prepare to shut the city’s subways, buses and suburban trains. The city closed the subways before Hurricane Irene last year, and a Columbia University study predicted that an Irene surge just 1 foot higher would have paralyzed lower Manhattan.
Up and down the Eastern Seaboard and far inland, officials urged residents and businesses to prepare in ways big and small.
On Saturday evening, Amtrak began canceling train service to parts of the East Coast, including between Washington, D.C., and New York. Airlines started moving planes out of airports to avoid damage and adding Sunday flights out of New York and Washington in preparation for flight cancellations on Monday.
The Virginia National Guard was authorized to call up to 500 troops to active duty for debris removal and road-clearing, while homeowners stacked sandbags at their front doors in coastal towns.
(MORE: How Do Weather Reporters Stay Safe in a Hurricane?)
“You never want to be too naive, but ultimately, it’s not in our hands anyway,” said Andrew Ferencsik, 31, as he purchased plywood and 2-by-4 lumber from a Home Depot in Lewes, Del.
Utility officials warned rains could saturate the ground, causing trees to topple into power lines, and told residents to prepare for several days at home without power.
President Barack Obama was monitoring the storm and working with state and locals governments to make sure they get the resources needed to prepare, administration officials said.
In North Carolina’s Outer Banks, a group of about 20 people was forced to wait out the storm on Portsmouth Island, a former fishing village that is now uninhabited and accessible only by private ferry.
“We tried to get off the island and the ferry service shut down on us,” said Bill Rowley, 49, of Rocky Mount, N.C.
Rowley said he could see 15-foot seas breaking over the island’s dunes, enough to bring water to the island’s interior.
“We’ll be inundated and it’ll probably be worse tomorrow,” he said.
In New Jersey, hundreds of coastal residents started moving inland. Christie’s emergency declaration will force the shutdown of Atlantic City’s 12 casinos for only the fourth time in the 34-year history of legalized gambling here. City officials said they would begin evacuating the gambling hub’s 30,000 residents at noon Sunday, busing them to mainland shelters and schools.
The storm also forced the presidential campaign to juggle schedules. Romney scrapped plans to campaign Sunday in Virginia and switched his schedule for the day to Ohio. First lady Michelle Obama canceled an appearance in New Hampshire for Tuesday, and Obama moved a planned Monday departure for Florida to Sunday night to beat the storm. He also canceled appearances in Northern Virginia on Monday and Colorado on Tuesday.
By ALLEN G. BREED and WAYNE PARRY

Read more: http://nation.time.com/2012/10/28/megastorm-could-wreak-havoc-across-800-miles-of-u-s/#ixzz2Abjrd747

The Comeback Kings: Highlights from Week 3 of the Champions League

Nothing to Brag(a) About. What is it with Manchester United offering teams head starts in Champions League games? Time and again, they approach their home games at Old Trafford with a generosity akin to a golfer giving his opponent a stroke advantage on every hole. Sure enough, United found themselves two goals down after 20 minutes to Portugese side Braga on Tuesday, as veteran Brazilian striker Alan gave the Red Devils a mountain to climb (in fact, it was the eighth time out of 12 games this season in which United have trailed). The back four were shaky, with manager Sir Alex Ferguson’s decision to rest stalwarts Rio Ferdinand and Patrice Evra seeming more foolish by the minute. And foolish is the apt term to describe how make-shift centre-half Michael Carrick was made to look on the second goal. But then again, who are we to question Sir Alex, who has presided over more comebacks than Frank Sinatra. His Mexican striker Javier Hernandez scored with headers either side of a scrambled Jonny Evans equalizer to complete the fightback. It was the first time Utd. has recovered from a 0-2 deficit in the Champions League since the epic 1999 semi-final second leg against Juventus. They went on to lift the trophy that year (they also won the domestic league and FA Cup to give them the treble) so Fergie will be hoping for similar success this season.
(MORE: Will Soccer Ever Be Able to Kick Racism Out?)
Leaving It Late. But if Man Utd. has designs on the Champions League, you’d imagine that all paths have to go through favorites Barcelona, who most recently won the trophy by defeating Utd. 3-1 in 2011. The Barca players and fans must have been anticipating a walk in the (Camp Nou) park to chalk up a 100th win in the competition by dispatching Scottish champions Celtic. But the Scots have proved nobody’s mugs thus far, and entered Tuesday’s game unbeaten in the group.
Incredibly, much like Braga, they found themselves with a precious lead within 20 minutes as Barca’s Javier Mascherano diverted Charlie Mulgrew’s free-kick into his own net to give Celtic a shock lead (but much like Utd., Barca have had their defensive difficulties this campaign, conceding the first goal on no less than seven occassions). Even before going in front, Celtic had goalkeeper Fraser Forster to thank for keeping out Marc Bartra’s header. He also saved Adriano Correia’s effort and saw attempts from Bartra and Lionel Messi whistle wide while his team hung on to their precious advantage. But he was unable to stop Xavi and Andres Iniesta combining as Iniesta leveled on the stroke of half time. While Celtic had a glorious opportunity to regain the lead seven minutes into the second half – Victor Wanyama couldn’t convert Mulgrew’s pinpoint corner – it then became the Forster show. A string of miraculous saves denied the great Messi, as well as Iniesta, and when substitute David Villa hit the post with time running out, it appeared that one of the finest nights in Celtic’s proud history was upon us. But Jordi Alba found himself unmarked to poach a winner in injury time from just a yard out and break Scottish hearts in the process. But Celtic can take pride from their performance and will be keen to get something out of the return fixture on November 7.
(MORE: TIME’s Cover Story on Messi)
Woe No. Some of Europe‘s biggest sides came a cropper on Wednesday night. Spanish champions Real Madrid slumped to a 2-1 defeat at Borussia Dortmund though it should be pointed out that Dortumund are arguably the best club side in Germany and were some experts’ pre-season dark horses to go far in the Champions League this season. Dortmund’s star striker, Polish player Robert Lewandowski, put them 1-0 up in the first half but — guess who? — Cristiano Ronaldo leveled the score just two minutes later. Remarkably, CR7 has scored 12 of Real Madrid’s 24 goals in the Champions League in 2012.
But staggering statistic aside, it was the Germans who notched a winner through Marcel Schmelzer. And while Dortmund could celebrate a famous victory, the two English sides in action Wednesday weren’t so fortunate. Arsenal were favored to see off their German opposition in the form of Schalke but late strikes from Klaas-Jan Huntelaar and Ibrahim Affelay did for the Gunners. And English Premier League champions Manchester City went down 3-1 at Ajax despite taking a first half lead courtesy of former Arsenal midfielder Samri Nasri. Crucially for the Dutch side, Siem de Jong equalized on the stroke of half-time and second half goals from Niklas Moisander and Christian Eriksen have rooted City to the bottom of group D with Ajax chasing down Real Madrid for the second qualifying spot behind current leaders Dortmund. As for Ajax, it marked their first win against English opposition since 1980.

Read more: http://keepingscore.blogs.time.com/2012/10/25/the-comeback-kings-highlights-from-week-3-of-the-champions-league/#ixzz2AIqJXCZh

Scientific Illiteracy: Why The Italian Earthquake Verdict is Even Worse Than it Seems

Yesterday was a very good day for stupid — better than any it’s had in a while. Stupid gets fewer good days in the 21st century than it used to get, but it enjoyed a great ride for a long time — back in the day when there were witches to burn and demons to exorcise and astronomers to put on trial for saying that the Earth orbits around the sun.
But yesterday was a reminder of stupid’s golden era, when an Italian court sentenced six scientists and a government official to six years in prison on manslaughter charges, for failing to predict a 2009 earthquake that killed 300 people in the town of l’Aquila. The defendants are also required to pay €7.8 million ($10 million) in damages. “I’m dejected, despairing,” said one of the scientists, Enzo Boschi, in a statement to Italian media. “I still don’t understand what I’m accused of.”
As well he shouldn’t. The official charge brought against the researchers, who were members of the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV), was based on a meeting they had in the week leading up to the quake, at which they discussed the possible significance of recent seismic rumblings that had been detected  in the vicinity of l’Aquila. They concluded that it was “unlikely,” though not impossible, that a serious quake would occur there and thus did not order the evacuation of the town. This was both sound science and smart policy.
(More: Earthquake Damage: Are Bad Maps to Blame?)
The earthquake division of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) estimates that the world is shaken by several million earthquakes each year, most of which escape notice either because they are too small or are in remote areas that are poorly monitored. An average of 50 earthquakes do manage to register on global seismographs every day, or about 18,000 annually. The overwhelming majority do not lead to major quakes and the technology does not exist to determine which ones will. The best earthquake forecasters can do is apply their knowledge and experience to each case, knowing that you can’t evacuate 50 towns or cities every day — and knowing too that sometimes you will unavoidably, even tragically, be wrong.
“If scientists can be held personally and legally responsible for situations where predictions don’t pan out, then it will be very hard to find scientists to stick their necks out in the future,” said David Oglesby, an associate professor on the earth sciences faculty of the University of California, Riverside, according to CNN.com.
The Italian seismologists are appealing their sentences and the global outcry over the wrong-headedness of the ruling will likely weigh in their favor. But whatever the outcome of their case, they’re really just the most recent victims of  the larger, ongoing problem of scientific illiteracy.
(More: Earthquake Swarm Strikes California: 300 Quakes in a Single Day)
Just the day after the ruling came down, University of Michigan researchers released the latest results from the Generation X Report, a longitudinal study funded by the National Science Foundation that has been tracking the Gen X cohort since 1986. One of the smaller but more troubling data points in the new release was the finding that only 43% of Gen Xers (53% of males and 32% of females) can correctly identify a picture of a spiral galaxy — or know that we live in one.
Certainly, it’s possible to move successfully through life without that kind of knowledge. “Knowing your cosmic address is not a necessary job skill,” concedes study author Jon D. Miller of the University of Michigan, in a release accompanying the report. But not knowing it does suggest a certain lack of familiarity with the larger themes of the physical universe — and that has implications. It’s of a piece with the people who believe humans and dinosaurs co-existed, or the 50% of Americans who do not believe that human beings evolved from apes, or the 1 on 5 who, like Galileo’s inquisitors, don’t believe the Earth revolves around the sun.
(More: Washington Monument to Remain Closed Until 2014)
More troubling than these types of individual illiteracy are the larger, population-wide ones that have a direct impact on public policy. As my colleague Bryan Walsh observed, the issue of climate change received not a single mention in all three of this year’s presidential debates, and has barely been flicked at on the campaign trail. Part of that might simply be combat fatigue; we’ve been having the climate argument for 25 years. But the fact is there shouldn’t be any argument at all. Serious scientists who doubt that climate change is a real threat are down to just a handful of wild breeding pairs. But sowing doubt about the matter has been a thriving industry of conservatives for decades — most recently in the form of a faux scientific study published by the Cato Institute, that purports to debunk climate science as fatally flawed at best or a hoax at worst. Speaking of a federally funded and Congressionally mandated report by the U.S. Global Change Research Program that responsibly reviewed the state of climate science, the Cato publication argues:

It is immediately obvious that the intent of the report is not to provide a accurate [sic] scientific assessment of the current and future impacts of climate change in the United States, but to confuse the reader with a loose handling of normal climate [italics theirs]…presented as climate change events.

Well, no, but never mind. Our willingness to believe in junk science like this exacts a very real price — in an electorate that won’t demand action from its leaders on a matter of global significance; in parents who leave their babies unvaccinated because someone sent them a blog post fraudulently linking vaccines to autism; in young gays and lesbians forced to submit to “conversion therapy” to change the unchangeable; in a team of good Italian scientists who may spend six years in jail for failing to predict the unpredictable. No one can make us get smart about things we don’t want to get smart about. But every day we fail to do so is another good day for stupid — and another very bad one for all of us.

Read more: http://science.time.com/2012/10/24/scientific-illiteracy-why-the-italian-earthquake-verdict-is-even-worse-than-it-seems/#ixzz2AIniC3I0

Why Climate Change Has Become the Missing Issue in the Presidential Campaign

We’re in the final few months of what’s shaping up to be the hottest year on record. In September, Arctic sea ice melted to its smallest extent in satellite records, while the Midwest was rocked by a once-in-a-generation level drought. Global carbon dioxide emissions hit a record high in 2011 of 34.83 billion tons, and they will almost certainly be higher this year. Despite that fact, the more than two decade-old international effort to deal with climate change has hit a wall, and the upcoming U.N. global warming summit in the Qatari capital of Doha — whose residents have among the highest per-capita carbon emissions in the world — is unlikely to change that hard fact.
Given all that, it might seem reasonable to think that climate change —a nd how the U.S. should respond to it — would be among the top issues of the 2012 presidential election. We are, after all, talking about a problem that has the potential to alter the fate of the entire planet, one that requires solutions that utterly alter our multi-trillion dollar energy system. Climate change has been a subject at the Presidential or Vice-Presidential debates since 1988, as Brad Johnson, who surveys environmental coverage for ThinkProgress, pointed out this week. Yet through all of the 2012 debates, not a single question was asked about climate change, and on the stump, neither candidate has had much to say about the issue — with Mitt Romney more often using global warming as a punchline, and President Obama mentioning it in passing, at most.
That’s not to say that the root cause of climate change — energy use — has been ignored. Romney and Obama have sparred over fossil fuel production in the U.S., with each candidate trying to position himself as the bigger booster of domestic oil or natural gas. The shale oil and gas boom in the U.S. is real, and it will be enormously important to the economy and to energy prices in the years to come. But neither Romney nor Obama seem to want to acknowledge the negative environmental effects of producing and consuming more and more oil and natural gas. As Slate’s Will Oremus wrote last week:

It started off with an audience member asking Obama whether he agreed with his energy secretary, Steven Chu, that lowering gas prices isn’t his department’s goal. That sparked an increasingly heated exchange in which both candidates vehemently asserted their fossil-fuel bona fides, without ever mentioning that there might be a downside to reinforcing the country’s dependence on oil, gas, and coal. In fact, when Romney accused Obama of not being “Mr. Oil or Mr. Gas or Mr. Coal,” the president defended his record of opening public lands for oil drilling and fired back that Romney was no great friend of coal either. And when he criticized Romney for dismissing wind power, he neglected to offer any reason why alternative energy might be a good thing, other than creating some jobs in Iowa. Romney, for his part, allowed that he “appreciates wind jobs in Iowa,” before returning to his unwavering support for the holy trinity of oil, gas, and coal.

Environmental groups are so frustrated by the disappearance of climate change as a campaign issue that they recently launched a website, ClimateSilence.org, that argues Romney and Obama have toned down their statements on global warming in a “collective descent toward mute acceptance of global calamity.” Translation: climate change is getting worse all the time, but our Presidential candidates can’t seem to be bothered to debate about it.
It’s not surprising that Romney would avoid talking about climate change. Though he pushed Massachusetts to join other Northeastern states in a regional pact to reduce greenhouse gases early in his term as governor, in the years since, the Republican party has moved almost lockstep into climate denialism — and Romney has proven that he is adept at shifting his beliefs when it’s politically expedient. It’s still noteworthy though that even as Romney has made moves toward the center over the past month in a successful effort to close the gap with Obama — soft-pedaling his opposition to abortion, insisting he won’t cut taxes on the wealthy — he’s made no effort to cite climate change as evidence of his moderate temperament. It’s as if the Republican campaign has concluded that Americans simply don’t care enough about global warming — not now, with the economy foremost on everyone’s mind — to bother even pretending that a Romney victory would be good for the environment.
The Obama campaign can point to specific policy initiatives that help combat global warming — including significant improvements in auto fuel efficiency, billions of dollars in investment in clean energy technologies and new regulations that will curb coal pollution. And it’s true that Obama does specifically mention climate change in public statements, as a memo put out yesterday by energy and environmental officials advising the campaign underscored. There’s no doubt that of the two candidates, only President Obama has anything like a plan to deal with climate change, and that global warming is one of the issues about which Romney and Obama are furthest apart.
But it’s still notable that in the debates, Obama hasn’t brought up global warming on his own, even at moments when it would have helped explain some of his actions over the past four years. In the second debate, for example, after a questioner asked him about what his Administration was doing to about high gas prices, Obama managed to talk about energy for minutes without mentioning the need to eventually reduce carbon emissions, beyond a paean to energy efficiency. When the Keystone XL pipeline came up, Obama didn’t talk about the effect that increased U.S. dependence on Canadian oil sands might have on global carbon emissions. Once again, climate change was missing in action.
In the end, though, it’s difficult to blame either candidate for dropping climate talk in this election. Beyond committed environmentalists, there hasn’t been much evidence that Americans even want to think about global warming, much less vote on it. But the job of a leader — or someone who is applying to become a leader — should involve telling the occasional difficult, even inconvenient truth. That’s been missing in this campaign.

Read more: http://science.time.com/2012/10/23/why-climate-change-has-become-the-missing-issue-in-the-presidential-campaign/#ixzz2AInYMtBa

Don’t Sneeze in Space: When Astronauts Get Sick

Few people had a worse time in space than the crew of Apollo VII. It wasn’t just the 11 days they spent in orbit in 1968 test-driving the new — and decidedly cramped — Apollo command module. That’s what they’d trained for, after all.  What they hadn’t banked on was that they’d all contract serious head colds — first Wally Schirra, the veteran commander, then his rookie crewmates Walt Cunningham and Donn Eisele. All three men grew cranky, snappish and downright mutinous, even breaking mission rules by refusing to wear their helmets during re-entry, lest their already clogged ears pop painfully. Schirra, who had announced in advance that Apollo VII would be his last mission, retired and went on to become a pitchman for, yes, the cold medicine Actifed. Cunningham and Eisele, who had been in line for flights to the moon, were permanently grounded.
In many ways, NASA got lucky that an Apollo VII happened only once. If you were trying to design a friendlier Petri dish for infectious agents, you couldn’t do better than a spacecraft — a confined space in which densely packed humans breathe recirculated air, touch common surfaces over and over again and have a whole lot less opportunity to wash than they do on Earth. The risk becomes worse as NASA contemplates renewed flights to deep space where medical care is even farther out of reach than it is when crews are in orbit.
“Two years in a microgravity environment may have profound changes in astronauts and in aggressive microbes,” says infectious disease specialist Dr. Leonard Mermel  of Brown University and Rhode Island Hospital, “creating a scenario not previously experienced in the history of human space flight.” To prevent that from happening, Mermel, in consultation with NASA, has just published  a paper in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases exploring what steps we need to take to make space a healthier place — and what the perils are if we don’t.
(MORE: When Wally Schirra Said, “Go to Hell”)
Mermel began his work by surveying the health records of astronauts across the 30 year history of the space shuttle program, and the results were troubling. Of 106 flights and 742 crewmembers he studied, there were 29 cases of infectious disease transmission. Most of them involved fever and chills, but there were also cases of fungal, urinary tract and skin infections, as well as flu-like illnesses and viral gastroenteritis.
A lot of the problem begins with zero-g — which is something of a Disneyland for germs. A cough or sneeze on Earth blasts infectious particles from 3 to 6 ft. (1 to 2 m) away before gravity takes over and they fall out of the air. In space, they float everywhere. When they do land, they don’t settle in some safe, out of the way place, because in a spacecraft there is no out of the way. Instrument panels, food preparation surfaces, experiment racks are everywhere. And astronauts who do become infected, are often less up to fighting the pathogen than they normally would be.
For reasons scientists have not quite figured out, the immune system can go on the fritz in space: wounds heal more slowly; infection-fighting T-cells send signals less efficiently; bone marrow replenishes itself less effectively; killer cells — another key immune system player — fight less energetically. At the same time, the pathogens grow stronger, developing thicker cell walls, greater resistance to antimicrobial agents and a greater ability to form so-called biofilms that cling to surfaces. Dormant herpesvirus infections are known to become more active in space, and swabs of astronauts taken when they return to Earth show higher populations of staph on the skin, in the upper airway and in the colon. All of that means a single spark of a disease could burn out of control fast.
(MORE: Will NASA Have to Abandon the International Space Station?)
“Oy vey,” Mermel says straightforwardly when contemplating all of the ways disaster could strike. “What if someone started shedding a streptococcus that quickly spread to others? Another scenario would be a reactivation of a dormant bacteria like meloidosis that would cause pneumonia and spread.” Even worse, a dormant salmonella infection from one astronaut could reawaken and infect food as it’s being prepared.
Simple air filtration systems seem like they ought to cut the risk, but there are problems. So-called high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filters, regularly used in medical settings, are energy hogs and would not fit into the limited power budget of a spacecraft. Irradiation of all food is a common way to kill microbes before they’re consumed, but the human gut needs some symbiotic bacteria to function properly and wiping them all out could make astronauts sicker than they’d be if you just left things alone. And while humidity is controlled in a spacecraft for both comfort and equipment safety, it’s not yet regulated with pathogen suppression in mind.
“We do know on Earth that humidity has a major effect on influenza virus and it may explain greater transmission in heated buildings with lower humidity,” says Mermel. “I don’t know if anyone’s studied these variables [in space].”
(MORE: A Dragon Shakes Hands With the Space Station)
That kind of research is essential to safeguard future astronauts, as is the fast-track design of higher efficiency HEPA systems. Mermel also calls for a host of other measures including the use of what’s known as positive or neutral air pressure systems to keep atmosphere — and germs — carried up in unmanned cargo vessels from flowing into manned vessels like the International Space Station. He recommends that the interior surfaces of all living and working spaces be covered in non-porous antimicrobial material, and that washing stations and toilets be redesigned so they can be operated by foot pedals. Better screening and vaccinating of astronauts before missions is essential too — especially as multi-nation crews mix pathogens that may be familiar to one astronaut but novel to another. “This adds a unique twist,” Mermel says, “[involving] what to screen for and what might rear its head several months after launch.”
None of these measures could guarantee astronauts won’t get sick in space — but nothing guarantees people won’t get sick on Earth either. On Earth, however, you can always duck out to the doctor. When you’re 150 million miles from home and a year or two from an emergency room or a drug store, it pays to take a couple of precautions.
WATCH: Next to Space: Inside the Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle

Read more: http://science.time.com/2012/10/22/dont-sneeze-in-space-when-astronauts-get-sick/#ixzz2AInQ3oCI

Can It Get Any Worse For Lance Armstrong?

Can things get any worse for Lance Armstrong? Most definitely.
Armstrong got hit with another double-dose of bad news on Monday. Cycling’s world governing body, the International Cycling Union (UCI), officially stripped Armstrong of his seven Tour de France titles. “Lance Armstrong has no place in cycling … He deserves to be forgotten in cycling,” UCI president Pat McQuaid said in a news conference. McQuaid said he was “sickened” by the revelations in the United States Anti-Doping Agency’s report.
(This claim, incidentally, rang hollow to vindicated journalist David Walsh, whom Armstrong sued for writing a book about Armstrong’s alleged doping. McQuaid, after all, could have more thoroughly investigated the suspicions about Armstrong, and reached a similar conclusion to USADA).
After the UCI’s decision was released, Oakley, the sunglasses and sports wear maker, became the latest company to dump Armstrong.
(MORE: Travis Tygart, Lance Armstrong’s Ahab)
Armstrong has lost his titles, his sponsors, and his chairmanship of cancer awareness charity Livestrong. Now, he could lose some cash — in lawsuits. The Sunday Times of London, which published an article referencing Walsh’s book, L.A. Confidential: The Secrets of Lance Armstrong, in 2004, is considering suing Armstrong over a libel case the cyclist brought against the paper back in the mid-2000s. Armstrong won that case and reached a financial settlement with the paper: now that evidence has emerged that Armstrong indeed doped, the paper is “considering taking action to recover money spent on a libel case Armstrong brought and to pursue him for fraud.”
And the money woes continue. It’s been reported that Armstrong will need to repay his Tour de France winnings, estimated at $3.85 million, with Tour de France director Christian Prudhomme describing the UCI decision as “totally logical.” And a Texas promotional company that paid Armstrong millions in bonus money, for winning the Tour de France, may look to get that money back, now that Armstrong isn’t a champion. As Reuters reports:

Dallas-based SCA Promotions paid Armstrong $7.5 million for winning his sixth Tour title in 2004 – $5 million as a performance bonus and $2.5 million in interest and attorney fees – as part of a 2006 legal settlement. Armstrong had sued SCA when it withheld the payment after doping allegations against him surfaced.
Tailwind Sports, the owner of Armstrong’s U.S. Postal team, had promised the cyclist a $5 million bonus if he won a sixth Tour title and it took out insurance coverage with SCA.
In all, SCA Promotions paid Armstrong some $12 million, the company’s lawyer Jeffrey Dorough said.
It was unclear exactly how much SCA may seek to recover.
“Mr. Armstrong is no longer the official winner of any Tour de France races, and as a result it is inappropriate and improper for him to retain any bonus payments made by SCA,” Dorough said in a statement.
He said SCA Promotions was “digesting the UCI’s decision” and that the company was taking into consideration the possibility that Armstrong or the World Anti-Doping Agency could appeal.

In February, the U.S. dropped a federal criminal investigation into Armstrong’s doping. Now the USADA has uncovered what seems to be new evidence against Armstrong, could the feds reopen the case? Armstrong has testified, under oath, that he did not dope, leaving him susceptible to a perjury charge. “I would be shocked if the case wasn’t reopened,” says Peter Keane, ex-dean of the Golden Gate University School of Law. Keane has closely followed doping trials against professional athletes. “I’d imagine that there is a fair amount of lobbying amongst investigators to rev it up. For career investigators and prosecutors, there’s the thrill of the hunt. They want a trophy case on their wall.” Especially since high-profile doping cases against Roger Clemens, who was acquitted, and Barry Bonds, who was found guilty of obstruction of justice, but escaped perjury, didn’t go the government’s way.

For Armstrong, the pain might just be beginning.

Read more: http://keepingscore.blogs.time.com/2012/10/23/lance-criminal-now/#ixzz2A7BNDbXW

Will Soccer Ever Be Able to Kick Racism Out?

For soccer fans in the U.K., it’s been a week to bury your head in the sand out of utter dismay when it comes to the woeful wave of racism stories roiling the world’s most popular game. Where to begin? With the guilty verdict and fine handed out to Chelsea’s John Terry for his remarks to Anton Ferdinand, Serbia’s alleged abuse toward England during their under-21 game last week and the controversy over who did and didn’t wear the Kick It Out T-shirts this past weekend, it’s been difficult to reflect on the actual action that takes place in the world’s most exhilarating league.
And in the eyes of some high-profile players, the powers that be who run the sport have been burying their heads in the sand too. To start with the most recent incident, a debate is raging over the extent of support literally shown (or not) by the players in the English Premier League (EPL). While the vast majority sported the Kick It Out T-shirts in the warm-up to the games this weekend — the Let’s Kick Racism Out of Football campaign was established in 1993 and has since become Kick It Out — the headlines were inevitably made by the soccer players who opted out. Brothers Rio and Anton Ferdinand, who play for Manchester United and Queens Park Rangers respectively, perhaps unsurprisingly didn’t play ball as they’re dismayed, one could surmise, with the Football Association (FA) only handing out a four-match suspension and a $350,000 fine to Terry for racially abusing Anton Ferdinand (it should be noted that Terry was cleared of all criminal charges in July after the Westminster Magistrates’ Court concluded there was insufficient evidence against the Chelsea captain). But to give a fuller indication that this wasn’t just one or two names who didn’t pull on the T-shirt, Ferdinand, Shaun Wright-Phillips, Nedum Onuoha, Sylvain Distin and Victor Anichebe decided against it before Sunday’s match between QPR and Everton, and none of the players participating in Saturday’s fixture between Swansea and Wigan got involved.
(MORE: ‘Footballing Reasons’: The Sordid Backstory to Rio Ferdinand’s Euro 2012 Omission)
Rio Ferdinand’s stand didn’t go down well with his manager, Sir Alex Ferguson, who took it personally, noting that it’s “embarrassing for me,” as he’d already gone on record saying that his players would wear the T-shirt. “He’ll be dealt with, don’t worry about that,” Ferguson went on, which unfortunately steered the conversation in a different direction, as it resulted in the Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA) backing the player’s right to the freedom of expression. The PFA chairman, Clarke Carlisle, was put in the awkward situation of both agreeing with Ferguson’s position and having to protect his player. “Everyone has a right to free speech — just like you can’t coerce anyone into shaking hands, you can’t make somebody wear a T-shirt — although I do personally believe that joining in with the campaign is the best way forward,” Carlisle said. Former Manchester United defender Viv Anderson, who was the first black player to represent the England senior side in 1978, didn’t “agree with Rio,” maintaining that Ferguson “expects his senior boys to set an example. He is the manager. If he says we are all doing it together, it should be the end of the story. But Rio has gone the other way. I don’t see where he is coming from, and I don’t know what it is going to achieve.”
To say it’s a complex situation is an understatement, containing ironies like how a player not wearing the T-shirt can lead to more publicity for the campaign or Ferguson’s severe stance clouding the good work he’s undertaken for Kick It Out (on Monday, Ferguson walked back on his original remarks by saying, “I’ve spoken to Rio. There is no issue. There was a communication problem but it has been resolved”). Speaking of resolution, it remains unclear how Terry will see out his playing days at his beloved Chelsea, which finally took action of its own against its captain. Chelsea chief executive Ron Gourlay said a “very, very heavy fine” had been meted out to the 31-year-old defender, adding that “it was a lapse in judgment and out of character for John, he did fall below the standards we expect.” Chairman Bruce Buck confirmed that Russian owner Roman Abramovich was consulted before “firm disciplinary action” was taken but Gourlay’s remark that “John Terry apologized to everybody and in my mind that means an apology to Anton Ferdinand” might not necessarily be taken that way by Ferdinand. For his part, Terry has been asked by UEFA to wear an antiracism armband during Chelsea’s Champions League match against Shakhtar Donetsk on Tuesday, and it is unthinkable that he’d refuse.
(MORE: QPR vs. Chelsea in the EPL: John Terry Returns to Loftus Road)
While great strides have been achieved by the likes of the Kick It Out campaign to raise awareness — “the progress we’ve made in the last 20 years has been as a consequence of collective collaboration, rather than individuals working alone,” stated ex-player Paul Elliott, who was recently awarded a CBE for services to equality and diversity in football — isolated incidents are sadly still seen on and off the field. In England, the Terry and Luis Suárez cases from last season (Liverpool’s Suárez was handed an eight-match ban by the FA for racially insulting Manchester United’s Patrice Evra, a further reason Rio Ferdinand wouldn’t have felt inclined to help the cause) dominated many a news cycle, but it’s even worse on foreign fields. Last week’s England under-21 international game in Serbia was overshadowed by the alleged abuse directed toward England’s black players by their Serbian counterparts and supporters. England’s Danny Rose was sent off at the final whistle but clearly indicated that he was racially abused (as England’s players celebrated their victory, a series of objects were thrown on the field). It’s not the first time that scenes such as these have taken place involving the Serbs. In 2007, the Serbian Football Federation was fined a paltry $26,000 at the European Under-21 Championships in the Netherlands after their fans racially abused England’s Onuoha.
Onuoha’s club manager soon after that incident and now is Mark Hughes, as the former Manchester City pair have been reunited at QPR. And Hughes remains convinced that, depressingly, soccer may never be fully rid of racism as “there’ll always be some idiot who feels that it’s something they want to do.” He was speaking after the other EPL match on Sunday backed his point: the local derby between Sunderland and Newcastle resulted in a 1-1 tie on the pitch but the key statistic was that in addition to the 15 arrests related to the game, a Northumbria police spokesman confirmed that “there was one report of racist language having been used by a supporter in one area of the stadium — inquiries into this report are ongoing.” It’s clear that the battle to educate minds and overcome racism, wherever it takes place, is also ongoing.
MORE: Racism and Euro 2012: Football’s Ongoing Struggle

Read more: http://keepingscore.blogs.time.com/2012/10/23/will-soccer-ever-be-able-to-kick-racism-out-of-the-sport/#ixzz2A790zKqi