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Thứ Ba, 14 tháng 5, 2013

Insurance giant buys out SW Ohio women's home after 2-year court battle over historic property

Protesters shown on Wednesday, May 8, 2013, in downtown Cincinnati. The group of 150 protesters are demanding that insurance giant Western & Southern Financial Group end a two-year court fight to stop the women's home from renovating and ultimately get them to sell the property to make way for a boutique hotel. (AP Photo/Amanda Lee Myers)The Associated Press
Kate Gallion, member of Allies of the Anna Louise Inn, rallies protesters on Wednesday, May 8, 2013, in downtown Cincinnati. The group of 150 protesters are demanding that insurance giant Western & Southern Financial Group end a two-year court fight to stop the women's home from renovating and ultimately to get them to sell the property to make way for a boutique hotel. (AP Photo/Amanda Lee Myers)The Associated Press
Tatiana McCormick, 24, a former resident of the Anna Louise Inn, is pictured in front of a protest on Wednesday, May 8, 2013, in downtown Cincinnati. The group of 150 protesters are demanding that insurance giant Western & Southern Financial Group end a two-year court fight to stop the women's home from renovating and ultimately to get them to sell the property to make way for a boutique hotel. (AP Photo/Amanda Lee Myers)The Associated Press
Jim Luken, 69, of Cincinnati, parodies Western & Southern CEO John Barrett during a protest on Wednesday, May 8, 2013, in downtown Cincinnati. The group of 150 protesters are demanding that insurance giant Western & Southern Financial Group end a two-year court fight to stop the women's home from renovating and ultimately get them to sell the property to make way for a boutique hotel. (AP Photo/Amanda Lee Myers)The Associated Press

CINCINNATI – A major insurance company has bought out a nonprofit home for struggling women in Cincinnati in a deal announced Monday, ending a bitter two-year court battle over the home's historic property in a beautiful downtown neighborhood.

Western & Southern Insurance Group bought the 104-year-old Anna Louise Inn for $4 million, according to a joint news release issued by the formerly acrimonious pair.

Under the deal, the women now living in the Anna Louise Inn will remain where they are for two years as a new facility for them is built.

Once they move out of the neighborhood, Western & Southern will be able to accomplish its long-standing goal of turning the old property into a boutique hotel.

"Our stance has consistently been that this could be a win-win, and now it is just that," said Western & Southern CEO John Barrett in a statement.

The very public dispute began several years ago when the nonprofit rejected an offer from Western & Southern and the insurer sued to stop planned renovations, leading to a protracted legal battle. Owners and residents of the Anna Louise long have derided Barrett's efforts to convert the home into a hotel, saying they amounted to corporate greed and arrogance because the home was not for sale and the women didn't want to leave.

"It's like someone coming up to you and saying, 'I want to buy your house' and you politely say it's not for sale, and they don't understand that not for sale means it's not for sale," Mary Carol Melton, executive vice president of the nonprofit that operates the inn, had said in October. "We really do believe enough is enough."

In the news release, a short statement from Melton said she was "very pleased that this has come to a mutually agreeable conclusion."

"Now, as we move forward, our women will have a beautiful new home and will continue to enjoy safe and affordable housing for many years to come," she said.

Monday's deal came less than a week after about 150 supporters of the Anna Louise protested outside a downtown courthouse, demanding that Western & Southern give up on buying the home and vowing that the Anna Louise would never give up.

The protest was one of many that have been held in the last two years. Supporters of the Anna Louise also have made an online video parody portraying a Western & Southern spokesman as a corporate fat cat hell-bent on kicking the women out of the Anna Louise, and even crashed the company's title yearly event, the Western & Southern Open.

As the world's top tennis players battled it out on the court this past summer, a plane flew overhead, trailing a banner calling Western & Southern a bunch of bullies.

At one point, the Anna Louise had considered an offer from Western & Southern to buy the property for $1.8 million, less than half its value. The inn decided against it after winning $12.6 million in federal and state tax credits for a renovation, a decision criticized by John Barrett as a taxpayer "bailout."

Days before the inn was to begin renovating, Western & Southern successfully sued to stop them, arguing that they broke zoning codes.

The Anna Louise had appealed and was rezoned but had been prevented from beginning renovations until the court fight was resolved. New arguments had been set for last week, but the home's deal with Western & Southern ends that.

The Anna Louise Inn has been housing low-income, single women in the same building since 1909, after President Howard Taft's brother, Charles P. Taft, built it for ambitious types pouring into Cincinnati to work as stenographers, bookkeepers and secretaries.

Over the years, the inn has become a haven for women looking to make a new start. Some residents are just getting out of foster care, some are between jobs, some have fled abusive relationships, and others are escaping lives as prostitutes and drug addicts. Several have lived there for decades.

During their fight to buy the Anna Louise, Barrett and others at Western & Southern repeatedly referred to the home's former prostitutes and said its residents just don't belong in the serene and lovely neighborhood.

They argued that a boutique hotel was much more suited to the area, and pointed to a University of Cincinnati study commissioned by Western & Southern that showed a hotel there could generate $355 million in economic impact over 30 years.

"It is the right thing to do for Cincinnati," Barrett wrote in an October editorial in The Cincinnati Enquirer. "No one loses with our proposal."

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Follow Amanda Lee Myers on Twitter at https://twitter.com/AmandaLeeAP

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Thứ Sáu, 3 tháng 5, 2013

Giant solar wave erupts from the sun

By Tariq Malik

Published May 02, 2013

Space.com

A coronal mass ejection (CME) erupted from just around the edge of the sun on May 1, 2013, in a gigantic rolling wave. CMEs can shoot over a billion tons of particles into space at over a million miles per hour. This CME occurred on the sun’s lNASA/Goddard/SDO

The sun celebrated May Day with a spectacular solar eruption Wednesday, unleashing a colossal wave of super-hot plasma captured on camera by a NASA spacecraft.

The solar eruption occurred over a 2.5-hour period Wednesday, May 1, and appeared as a recorded by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, agency officials said in an image description. The solar eruption is what scientists call a coronal mass ejection (CME) — a type of sun storm that can fire off billions of tons of solar material at more than a million miles per hour, they added.

When aimed directly at Earth, the most powerful CME events can pose a risk to satellites and astronauts in orbit, as well as interfere with communications and navigation networks. They can even damage ground-based power infrastructure.

But the May Day solar eruption occurred on the side of the sun and was not aimed at Earth, NASA officials said. It produced a dazzlingly bright wave of plasma that expanded from the sun's surface and then erupted from the sun's side, or limb, into open space.

The sun is currently in an active phase of its 11-year solar weather cycle and is expected to reach its peak activity this year.

NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory is one of several sun-watching spacecraft that keeps constant watch on Earth's nearest star to track solar weather patterns and storm events. The $850 million SDO mission launched in 2010 and records constant high-definition views of the sun in several different wavelengths, including the extreme ultraviolet range of the light spectrum used to make the video of the May 1 solar eruption.

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Thứ Tư, 24 tháng 4, 2013

Samsung Galaxy S4 review: A powerful, giant, confusing smartphone

The new Samsung Galaxy S4, the flagship smartphone from the tech powerhouse.Samsung
An array of colorful covers will let consumers personalize the Samsung Galaxy S4.Samsung
A new "peek" cover for the Samsung Galaxy S4 lets you see snippets of information -- and even answer the phone -- without opening the cover.Samsung

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With more features than Batman’s belt has gadgets, the do-anything Samsung Galaxy S4 is an elegant, powerful smartphone as likely to confound as it is to amaze.

The flagship in Samsung’s lineup and easily one of the best Android phones on the market, the Galaxy S4 can tell where you’re looking (and turn the page for you), translate over a dozen languages in real time, make you a pro photographer, help you lose weight, and more.

And to support so many features, this phone has menus and buttons galore. Indeed, it has so many menus, it’s menus actually have their own menus.

Samsung has thrown so many features into its new phone that the company actually bakes in an “Easy mode” that simplifies the interface down to a handful of easy to read items. You can turn the world’s smartest phone into the world’s dumbest, in other words.

While the simplicity of such a mode is likely to be a godsend for new smartphone users and those flustered by features -- I found it to be a breath of fresh air -- those willing to dive into the deep end of the feature pool will be rewarded with some impressively powerful tools that the company has made clear efforts to make intuitive.

And it has more tools than a carpenter, thanks to the most powerful hardware you’ll find on the market today. The 5-inch screen takes up most of the 5.38-inch phones frame, and will dazzle you. While enormous, the body is thin and fits pleasingly into the average palm. Some may prefer the iPhone’s all-aluminum body, but plastic is fine with me: It’s durable, lightweight, and knocks a few bucks off the cost.

A 13-megapixel camera (how big is your standalone digital device?) and some wonderful software are a clear standout feature. A new mode menu brings up a carousel with simple terms for a variety of different modes: Sports, Panorama, Night, Animated photo, Best face, and so on. Select one and a message pops up telling you just what it does (“Select the best picture of each person from 5 consecutive pictures to get the best merged group picture.”)

And, of course, there are options galore.

Can’t get Junior to sit still with you long enough for a nice photo? You can use the front and rear cameras at the same time to add yourself to the shot, in a variety of styles.

Want to get artistic? Take a series of pictures as your child takes the winning shot on goal or dismounts the balance beam -- the resulting image shows a static background with 4 or 5 sequential action shots. Or erase passers-by from a crowded setting; shots from that last Disney vacation never looked so good.

Grab a Galaxy S4 and the phone will likely be the best point-and-shoot digital camera you’ve ever owned.

S Translator is another powerful tool, one very similar to the Google Translate app. It can translate speech to and from a variety of languages in more or less real time, as long as you’re online of course. It can do the same for text, and ties into the email app.

This is both amazingly practical and fun. Playing around with the Galaxy S4 over the last few days, I’ve translated menus and secretly insulted people in German. Sie wünschen ein Stück von mir? Gutes Glück, harter Junge!

S Health is another promising bit of innovation. This tool helps you set and keep fitness goals, count your footsteps and more. Look for more details about this, as well as an array of accessories such as heart rate monitors and pedometers, in May.

Many of the science-fiction features in this phone are more likely to frustrated and irritate than simplify life, however. An eye tracking feature meant to automatically scroll the page for you didn’t work well in testing, and getting back into the menu to disable it was an exercise in annoyance: Samsung has added a submenu to the row of status icons atop a standard Android phone to control its myriad features. But which of the 19 icons and catchy names controls this scrolling thing? I’ve got no idea.

Air Gesture is likewise a fascinating piece of tech you’ll never need. Thanks to yet another sensor on the front of the phone, you can page through emails, photos, and webpages by passing your hand over the phone. But why would you? Air view, which shows information when you hover a finger over the screen, is somewhat more useful. You can see the contents of an email by hovering over it, or details on the day’s events -- or you could just open the email or calendar item, of course.

The features list goes on from there, ad nauseum. Multiple people can play the same tune simultaneously, for a surround effect. (This was impossible to test, of course, but sure seems gratuitous.) An integrated infrared camera lets you control your TV with the phone. S Note is Samsung’s integrated memo pad. Etc. and etc.

All these features, cameras and sensors tax even this phone’s giant 2,600-mAh battery. Turn off those you aren’t using and you’ll get a surprisingly reasonable battery life. And the promise of countless apps to play with mean this phone is likely to keep entertaining you for weeks to come.

Just take a minute to watch where you’re walking, ok?

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Thứ Hai, 1 tháng 4, 2013

Giant robot jellyfish to patrol US coasts

Student team members from the Virginia Techâs National Science Foundation Center for Energy Harvesting Materials and Systems (CEHMS) test a 5-foot wide jellyfish-like robot under water at War Memorial Hall.Amanda Loman, Virginia Tech
Left to right, robotic jellyfish research team members Alex Villanueva of St-Jacques, New-Brunswick, Canada, and a doctoral student; and Kenneth Marut of Washington, D.C, and Tyler Michael of Lexington, N.C., both masters students, all in the mechanical engineering program.Amanda Loman, Virginia Tech

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A man-sized robot jellyfish is patrolling U.S. coasts.

A Virginia Tech College of Engineering team has announced their successful testing of this new jellyfish robot. Weighing in at 170 pounds, the robot prototype called Cyro, is far larger than its predecessor.

In 2012, the team led by Professor Shashank Priya revealed RoboJelly, approximately the size of a real jellyfish. In less than a year, they have evolved from the size of a human hand to nearly 6 feet in length.

Cyro is the product of nationwide research funded by U.S. Naval Undersea Warfare Center and the Office of Naval Research. The $5 million research program includes other universities as well such as University of California Los Angeles, the University of Texas at Dallas and Stanford University.

UCLA’s research is developing underwater sensing and communication for the jellyfish robots based on electric fields. The goal is to create robots that are autonomous and self-powered to conduct surveillance. They could also be deployed to map ocean floors, study marine life and monitor the environment and ocean currents.

The larger the jellyfish robot, the more potential it has for greater endurance and operational range.

Jellyfish live in every ocean of the world, inhabiting both salt and fresh water, making it easier for a robot jellyfish to blend in and go undetected.

Cyro
Cyro has been built to replicate the jellyfish that also inspired its name, the cyanea capillata.

Compared to other marine life, jellyfish have a low metabolic rate and consume little energy, making them attractive as inspiration for robot design.

Researchers like those at the University of Gothenberg have been studying the North American comb jellyfish capable of silently approaching a target like a stealth submarine.

Different species of jellyfish inhabit a range from shallow coastal waters through to 4 or more miles below sea level and are capable of enduring an equally wide range of temperature.

The Nomura jellyfish can grow up to six feet long and weigh more than 600 pounds. With a thick layer of skin made of silicone that covers the “electronic guts,” Cyro looks very much like a real jellyfish.

Cyro is autonomous and can swim by itself like a real jellyfish. In order to swim, the robot jellyfish has electric motors that direct its arms and artificial jelly body.

The robot jellyfish does not have a nervous system. To move and execute missions it uses “a diffused nerve net.” While swimming, it can collect and analyze data at the same time. It can also relay the information back to humans.

The goal is for the robot jellyfish to operate for months on their own. Robojelly needed to be tethered to operate, but Cyro can run on its own powered by a rechargeable nickel metal hydride battery.

Next Phase
Both robots are in prototype phase and it will be several years before they could be deployed.

However, a new prototype model already is under construction and they’re looking at reducing power consumption and improving its ability to swim.

Ballet dancer turned defense specialist Allison Barrie has traveled around the world covering the military, terrorism, weapons advancements and life on the front line. You can reach her at wargames@foxnews.com or follow her on Twitter @Allison_Barrie.

Allison Barrie

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