NATO operation in Libya ends after 7 months, could it be a model?

Some see the end of the NATO operation in Libya as a moment for Europe to step up with more robust support of the alliance. The US remains skeptical.

NATO's mission in Libya ends today after seven months.

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What it accomplished in the short term is described in superlatives both by US and European diplomats. Operation Unified Protector was "a true alliance effort,? says Ivo Daalder, the US representative to NATO.

?As good a war as it comes?with limited civilian casualties,? says Tomas Valasek of the Centre for European Reform in London, citing the difference with other NATO operations in precision bombing. ?There were no Chinese embassies hit in Tripoli [as in Belgrade in 1999], no refugee convoys hit, no weddings that I know about [as in Afghanistan.]?

Yet whether the Libya operation is any kind of model ? or a ?one off? made possible by the circumstances of a potential humanitarian disaster in Benghazi ? remains unclear.

To optimists, this is a moment for Europe to step up its support for the 60-plus year alliance.To much of Europe the outcome in Libya is considered a clear cut victory. European leaders, led by Great Britain and France, may even see the Libyan NATO operation as a model for future operations giving the US a background role.

There is, however, more skepticism of that in US military circles. The French, who helped lead the effort, get high marks from Pentagon officials for the first time in many years.

But NATO is an institution that doesn?t operate separately from the collective agreement of its members and leaders. The resulting paucity of European might and resolve ? only eight of 28 NATO nations initially responded to the conflict ? underscores what Mr. Valasek describes as ?the appearance of a weaker European partner? in NATO.

Skeptics in the new post-war generations in Europe are unwilling in an era of austerity to wave much of a revamped NATO flag. And in some US circles, there are questions about why a small war took so long, and why allies at various points ran out of munitions.

Still, the level of European participation was a big change of NATO operations in Europe just over a decade ago. In Kosovo, the US conducted 90 percent of the strikes, and the other allies contributed 10 percent. In Libya, those figures were inverted, and the operation came with palpable support from places like the United Arab Emerites, Qatar, Jordon, and Morocco, as Mr. Daalder notes in The New York Times.

Thus far, there are no clear figures about civilian casualties in the UN mandated operation designed to protect civilians. Some commentators argue that estimates, if any, should be released to counter claims made and reported in some anti-Libya intervention blogs and media about tens of thousands of casualties.

The NATO alliance helped liberate a country whose National Transition Council leaders quickly opened up the question about whether Islamic rulings permitting polygamy should be revisited. European leaders don?t want to think that was part of any NATO liberation, and have said so in recent days.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/Q-eH9NW1DqU/NATO-operation-in-Libya-ends-after-7-months-could-it-be-a-model

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Winless New Mexico loses 42-0 to Air Force

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) ? For the second straight game, New Mexico couldn't even score.

The winless Lobos lost 42-0 Saturday to Air Force, the fifth time this season New Mexico has lost by at least 40 points.

The Lobos (0-8, 0-3) have lost 11 straight loss, including all three under interim coach George Barlow, who replaced the fired Mike Locksley on Sept. 25.

"We went into the game thinking we'd like to have a lot better effort than we had last week," Barlow said. "I thought the effort was better, but a lot of stuff that happened was self-inflicted with the penalties, the turnovers and I thought we needed to do a better job of getting off the field the times that we got them in third-down situations."

Instead, it was just more of the same for New Mexico against the Falcons (4-4, 1-3).

"Everyone is mad," New Mexico running back Crusoe Gongbay, who led the team in rushing with 63 yards on 10 carries. "Mad after every game."

It's not the way the freshman envisioned his college career beginning.

"It's definitely different and frustrating," he said. "I thought I was coming into something that was going to be on the uplift but that isn't the case."

New Mexico linebacker Carmen Messina, who had season-high 15 tackles, said the team is struggling with its morale.

"It is definitely frustrating and a lot of heads are down," he said. "But is the seniors' jobs to keep heads up and keep them focused."

The Lobos did have two chances to score in the fourth quarter, but James Aho missed field goals from 30 and 40 yards.

Air Force, however, scored touchdowns the first two times it had the ball, and recovered a muffed punt on its next possession, leading to another score.

Mike DeWitt had a career-high four touchdowns for Air Force.

Backup quarterback Connor Dietz directed the offense in the absence of injured starter Tim Jefferson, finishing with a game-high 87 yards on six carries, including a 39-yard touchdown run just before halftime that gave Air Force a 35-0 lead.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/newsok/home/~3/PR8KiE-2yhc/312174

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Quiet Cellular Antenna Tech To Boost S. African SKA Bid

Every cell phone tower in the US has access to extremely high precision time signals via GPS (and indeed, most of them function as secondary GPS locators by effectively forwarding that signal plus tower location data for phone "GPS" which isn't). Every cell phone tower is basically a big antenna. Every cell phone tower has excellent signal connectivity (usually fiber, sometimes microwave) to a communications network that can carry the signals they receive at any particular frequency, convolved with a universal time reference frequency synchronized by means of the aforementioned GPS, to a large processing station. Hence it is absolutely bone-simple to turn the entire network of existing cell phone towers into one great big radiotelescope.

The cost of doing so is almost certainly going to be a tiny fraction of the cost of building an actual devoted function radiotelescope. I had a student estimate the cost per tower to be in the ballpark of $1000 US for a local computer and sundry electronics, probably less purchased in bulk. One could very likely get the tower owners to donate at least the access to the radio signals (basically costs them nothing), a place to site electronics (ditto), and with luck even a channel and some bandwidth to permit the upload of x-hours of recorded phase locked signal in off-peak bursts as part of their "public service" requirement.

The additional benefit is that one ends up with a radiotelescope that spans a continent -- an aperture several thousand kilometers across, with hundreds of thousands to millions of towers contributing. The resolution would thus be orders of magnitude greater than any of these toys that they are trying to fund and the sensitivity (proportional to N^2) would be MANY orders of magnitude greater as well. In fact, one could probably build arrays that spanned continents and turn the entire surface area of the earth into one big radiofrequency "eye" that can be turned not just anywhere but everywhere 24x7 -- the towers basically record a high resolution hologram of the night sky and one can "look" in any direction you like within any single dataset by simply adjusting the phases of the recorded signals appropriately in the decoding. That is, one doesn't have to devote the towers to looking in some particular direction, one can look in all directions at once and choose what to actually look at in detail in the step where the signals are decoded and recombined with appropriate phase delays.

This will never get funded, of course -- it isn't "big science" in any visible way. Or rather, perhaps it already has been funded, because it is one of the few ways I can think of that one could provide an ABM defense with a universal direction "eye" with sufficient resolution to locate an incoming warhead, and (by using the entire array as a phase-locked TRANSMISSION array) one might even be able to deliver a megawatt or so of power of microwave energy directly onto the missile itself and burn it out. Of course, if this is true then I guess I'll soon have somebody knocking on my door for publishing this on/., but so be it.

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Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotScience/~3/ai8JvdUxWhg/quiet-cellular-antenna-tech-to-boost-s-african-ska-bid

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Google Business Photos shows you store interiors | Ubergizmo

Google Business PhotosIf you?ve ever wished that you could see the insides of stores that you?ve never set foot into, you?re in luck. Google has recently announced the launch of a new service called Business Photos. Using a concept that?s similar to Google Street View, but instead of giving us a 360-view of the streets, Business Photos gives users a 360-degree view of what the inside of a store looks like. Of course, not all stores are available to virtually visit (since it?s an opt-in, and Google has to go over there to snap photos), but from the demos available on Google?s website, it looks really good.

Unfortunately at the moment, Business Photos isn?t integrated with Street View yet, which means you won?t be able to click on a shop while looking at it from the outside ? to visit the interiors you?ll need to access them via its Place Page. There?s no telling how popular this service will be, and how many stores or business locations will choose to put its insides up on the internet, but it definitely is an interesting concept. Head to the Google Maps site to check out some examples.

Source: http://www.ubergizmo.com/2011/10/google-business-photos/

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Nicki Minaj Is Most-Searched Celeb Halloween Costume

Nicki ranks fourth overall on Google list, trailing only 'Angry Birds,' 'Black Swan' and 'Playboy Bunny.'
By James Montgomery


Nicki Minaj
Photo: Christopher Polk/ AMA2010/ Getty Images

Given that over the past year she's rocked outfits like this — and this and this — it shouldn't really come as a surprise to learn that Nicki Minaj is the year's most-searched celebrity Halloween costume, according to Google.

Minaj bested the likes of Charlie Sheen, Captain America, Smurfette (Katy Perry's gonna be pissed!) and, oddly enough, Wilfred, the titular star of F/X's oddball comedy, on the list. Overall, she ranks fourth on the list of most-searched Halloween costumes, trailing only "Angry Birds," "Black Swan" and "Playboy Bunny."

And while we can't help you with either of those three (though, really, how hard is it to dress up like a ballerina or a bunny?) over on the MTV Style Blog, there's an entire post dedicated to mimicking Minaj's looks for Halloween, including the beehived princess-of-the-future look she rocked at the 2010 VMA pre show.

And though they didn't make Google's most-searched list, the folks over at Style have also put together Halloween how-to's for Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Ke$ha and Taylor Momsen. Of course, if you're broke, you could just rock one of our costume suggestions, most of which don't actually require a costume at all.

Perhaps getting herself in the Halloween spirit, earlier this month Nicki wrapped filming on the video for Birdman's latest single "Y.U. Mad," in which she dresses as Lil Wayne, donning dreadlocks, a tank top and some saggy shorts to complete the look.

Related Artists

Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1673267/nicki-minaj-halloween-costume.jhtml

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Robot dragon teaches kids language skills, battles impulse to terrorize city

Did you have trouble learning language skills at a young age? It's probably because you didn't have the right teacher. And by "the right teacher," we mean the right robotic dragon, naturally. This cuddly little mythical beast is the joint creation of researchers at Northeastern University, MIT and Harvard -- some of whom were behind the decidedly creepier Nexi bot. It's part of a National Science Foundation-funded program to help young children learn language skills, suggesting that forming a bond with a teacher plays an important role in the educational process. The dragon will be brought to preschool classes to help test out this hypothesis. Hopefully a robotic knight will also be on-hand, just in case.

Robot dragon teaches kids language skills, battles impulse to terrorize city originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 26 Oct 2011 23:55:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/10/26/robot-dragon-teaches-language-battles-im/

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Rangers twice within one strike of title

By RONALD BLUM

updated 3:08 a.m. ET Oct. 28, 2011

ST. LOUIS - One strike away. One strike away.

If the Rangers don't win Game 7, that could become the franchise mantra for years to come, maybe decades.

Instead of popping champagne corks and bringing Texas the title, Neftali Feliz, Scott Feldman and Mark Lowe became a pitching trio that will live in infamy.

Feliz and Feldman came within one strike of finishing off the first World Series championship in the Rangers' 51-season history. But then it all came apart in a stunning finish, leaving Texas 20 hours to recover for the first Game 7 since 2002.

Feliz allowed David Freese's two-run, two-strike triple just over the glove of a leaping Nelson Cruz at the right-field wall, tying the score 7-all in the ninth inning.

Then, after Josh Hamilton's two-run homer against Jason Motte in the 10th inning put the Rangers ahead again, Feldman gave up an RBI groundout to Ryan Theriot in the bottom half followed by Lance Berkman's two-out, two-strike single.

Capping the collapse, Lowe allowed Freese's leadoff homer the landed halfway up the center-field grass in the 11th inning, giving the Cardinals an incredible 10-9 victory Thursday in one of baseball's greatest meltdowns.

"That," Feldman said, "was definitely up there as one of the craziest games I've seen."

Bill Buckner made only one error as the Boston Red Sox wasted a two-run lead in the 10th inning in Game 6 in 1986.

Don Denkinger blew only one call as the Kansas City Royals rallied to beat the Cardinals in Game 6 in 1985.

This collapse was unprecedented. No team had ever come from behind twice in the ninth inning and later to tie a World Series game or take the lead.

St. Louis became only the third team one out from elimination in the Series to rally and survive, following the New York Giants in Game 5 against the Philadelphia Athletics in 1911 and the New York Mets in the Buckner game in 1986, according to STATS LLC.

"You know, it's not that easy to win a world championship, as we found out tonight," Rangers manager Ron Washington said. "We'll bounce back tomorrow. We've been in some tough situations before. We've always responded, and I expect us to respond tomorrow."

Texas hasn't lost consecutive games since Aug. 23-25, but this will be hard to overcome. No team had ever had three blown saves in a World Series game.

"What happened today, I just think it's ? you had to be here to believe it," Cardinals manager Tony La Russa said.

A sellout crowd of 47,325 at Busch Stadium stayed around long after the final out, cheering and waving white pompoms. It was a famous World Series score, matching Pittsburgh's Game 7 win against the Yankees in 1960 on Bill Mazeroski's ninth-inning home run.

It was the most thrilling Game 6 since Kirby Puckett's 11th-inning homer at the Metrodome propelled the Minnesota Twins over the Atlanta Braves in 1991.

They'll be replaying this one for a long, long time, especially if Texas loses Friday night. Matt Harrison starts for the Rangers, and La Russa won't say which pitcher he'll send to the mound ? ace Chris Carpenter on three days' rest or Kyle Lohse. Home teams have won eight straight Game 7s.

Game 6 will be a classic everywhere but in Texas.

The Rangers built a 7-4 lead in the seventh when Adrian Beltre and Cruz hit consecutive home runs off Lance Lynn, and Ian Kinsler added an RBI single off Octavio Dotel.

Allen Craig's second homer of the Series cut the gap in the eighth against Derek Holland.

In the ninth, Albert Pujols doubled with one out off Feliz for his first hit since Game 3, and Berkman walked on four pitches.

Craig took a called third strike, and Freese fell behind in the count 1-2. Thrown a 98 mph fastball, he sliced an opposite-field drive, and when Cruz jumped, the crowd of 47,315 at Busch Stadium couldn't tell at first whether he caught it. The ball bounced off the wall.

"I just said, 'Heater,'" Freese recalled of his guess.

Feliz then retired Yadier Molina on a flyout to right, sending the game to extra innings.

Hamilton thought he had it won with his first home run in 66 at-bats this postseason.

"It's about time! That was my first thought. But you've got to finish the game off and we didn't do that," Hamilton said. "I'm not going to lose any sleep over it. We're just going to do everything we can to prepare. Guys are already talking about it. We're ready for Game 7. Shake it off and come back tomorrow."

Singles by Daniel Descalso and Jon Jay off Darren Oliver started the second St. Louis comeback in the bottom half. But when Feldman retired Theriot on a run-scoring grounder to third for the second out, the Rangers were one out away again.

Pujols was intentionally walked for the fifth time in the Series before Berkman fell behind 1-2, took a ball and then singled to center on a 93 mph cutter from Feldman.

"I didn't quite get it in enough," Feldman said.

Lowe fell behind Freese 3-0, then worked the count full. Lowe threw a changeup and Freese connected for his fifth postseason homer, a long drive that had half a dozen fans jumping from their seats onto the grass to grab it before the ball even landed.

"He got it," Lowe said. "Just bad location. It wasn't the wrong pitch at all in my mind."

With another game to play, Lowe was somewhat philosophical.

"If you don't want to be in that situation I was in as a pitcher, you're in the wrong business. This is what I've worked for my whole career and I was there, where I wanted to be," Lowe said. "Tomorrow's a new day, and I could get in there and get a big out and nobody remembers this game."

With Texas ahead 3-2 in the Series and one win from its first title, the Rangers also wasted 1-0, 3-2 and 4-3 leads. The Cardinals made three errors in a Series game for the first time since 1943, with Freese dropping a popup at third and Matt Holliday flubbing a fly ball to left. Rangers first baseman Michael Young made two errors, with each team allowing two unearned runs.

Much later, Freese ended a night not to be forgotten, almost not to be believed. Lowe turned, watched the ball land, then exhaled. The Rangers trudged off the field, to a quiet clubhouse.

How many chances will they get?

NOTES: Cruz left in the 11th because of a strained right groin. ... X-rays on Mike Napoli's ankle were negative after he twisted it going into second in the fourth. ... Holliday was picked off in the sixth at third base by Napoli, thwarting the Cardinals' attempt to go ahead, and he had to leave the game because of a bruised right pinkie. He might not be able to play Friday.

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.


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From ugly to thriller

HBT: The final three innings of Game 6 were as exciting as can be. The first eight, well, they were rather iffy. But here we are, after a 10-9 Cardinals victory over the Rangers, a Game 7 left to decide who will be crowned champion.

Cards rally past Rangers, force Game 7

David Freese homered to lead off the bottom of the 11th inning, and the St. Louis Cardinals forced the World Series to a Game 7 by rallying from two-run deficits against the Texas Rangers in the 9th and 10th on Thursday night.

Source: http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/45072078/ns/sports-baseball/

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Study: Japan nuke radiation higher than estimated (AP)

NEW YORK ? A new report says the Fukushima nuclear disaster released twice as much of a dangerous radioactive substance into the atmosphere as Japanese authorities estimated, reaching 40 percent of the total from Chernobyl.

The new estimate for cesium-137 comes from a worldwide network of sensors. Study author Andreas Stohl of the Norwegian Institute for Air Research says the Japanese government estimates would have missed emissions blown out to sea.

Stohl says finding twice the amount of cesium isn't considered a major difference because such measurements are so imprecise. He said some previous estimates had been higher than his. The study didn't address health effects.

The journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics posted the report online for comment but has not been reviewed by experts in the field or accepted it for publication.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/science/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111027/ap_on_sc/us_sci_japan_nuclear

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