The politically touchy topic of climate change will be taught more deeply to students under proposed new national science standards released Tuesday.
The Next Generation Science Standards, developed over the last 18 months by California and 25 other states in conjunction with several scientific organizations, represent the first national effort since 1996 to transform the way science is taught in thousands of classrooms. The multi-state consortium is proposing that students learn fewer concepts more deeply and not merely memorize facts but understand how scientists actually investigate and gather information.
"What's important here is that the standards will give students a deep understanding of how science and scientists actually work," said Phil Lafontaine, a California Department of Education official who helped create the proposed standards. "It's not just what we know but how we came to know it."
Each state will decide on its own whether to adopt the benchmarks, which are based on a 2011 framework by the National Research Council. In California, they will be reviewed by a panel of science experts, with public hearings set to begin later this month in Sacramento, Santa Clara and Riverside. The state Board of Education is expected to vote on them in the fall, with partial implementation scheduled for 2014-15.
The new standards come amid widespread concern that American students are falling behind global counterparts in their mastery of science and math, which are seen as critical fields for future economic growth.
"In the next decade, the number of jobs requiring highly technical skills is expected to outpace other occupations," state Supt. of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson said in a statement. The new approach "will help students achieve real-world practical skills so they can help maintain California's economic and technological leadership in the world."
A recent U.S. Department of Commerce study found that over the past decade, job growth in science, technology, engineering and mathematics was three times greater than that in other fields.
For the first time, the proposed education standards identify climate change as a core concept for science classes with a focus on the relationship between that change and human activity. According to the Oakland-based National Center for Science Education, two-thirds of U.S. students in a 2011 survey said they are not learning much about the topic.
Among high school students, 86% take biology, and more than 50% take chemistry but fewer than 20% take earth sciences ? the course that would cover climate change, said Frank Niepold, a climate education coordinator with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
"The current state of climate change education is poor at best," said Mark McCaffrey, the Oakland center's program and policy director.
In California, climate and weather are covered in earth science standards. But the proposed new standards will more explicitly direct students to examine the scientific evidence for how and why the climate is changing and its impact.
Middle school students, for instance, will be taught that human activities, including the use of fossil fuels and the subsequent release of greenhouse gases, are "major factors" in global warming. A proposed high school standard requires students to explain, based on evidence, how climate change has affected human activities through such phenomena as altered sea levels, patterns of temperature and precipitation and the impact on crops and livestock.
Lafontaine said the deeper look at climate change is being prompted by heightened public concern about the issue. Other topics set for more thorough study include genetic engineering and its real-world impact on food and medicine.
Although legislators in Tennessee, Alabama, Louisiana and other states have proposed or passed bills to require teachers to include different views on climate change or mandate teaching the topic as a "controversial theory," the new national standards have not sparked any major political flaps so far.
James Taylor of the Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based conservative think tank, said the standards aren't perfect ? some positive impacts of climate change should have been included, he said. But they are better than most others, he said.
"They are more balanced and fair than most educational guides I have seen put out by advocacy groups or self-professed science groups," Taylor said.
McCaffrey, of the Oakland group, said approving the standards would only be the first step toward better science education. Massive teacher training is also needed, he said.
A new environmental curriculum, including climate change, is being tested among thousands of California teachers in an initiative involving the state, National Geographic Society and Google, among others, but launching it statewide will require significant funding, McCaffrey said.
"There are enormous and daunting challenges ahead of us," he said.
Apr. 10, 2013 ? Innovative policies and new technologies that reduce water waste are helping countries across the Middle East and North Africa deal with chronic water shortages.
Those advances spring from the simple idea that preventing water loss is effectively the same as giving parched countries new sources of water. This view gained widespread credibility in the wake of an IDRC-supported research program designed to assess how the so-called "water demand management" approach could ease the region's water crisis.
"The idea of using water more efficiently is now on the top of the policy agenda in the Middle East," says former IDRC program officer Lamia El-Fattal. "Our work provided the intellectual backbone that made it possible for people to move with confidence in that direction."
Scaled-down approach
Earlier, governments had seen big, costly projects such as dams, canals, and salt-water desalination plants as the solution to water scarcity. By the mid-1990s, the megaproject approach was widely viewed as a poor response to a water crisis worsened by population growth and climate change. However, the "demand management" alternative to developing new supplies of water -- for example, reducing the amount of water used, wasted, or even needed -- remained unproven.
Enter WaDImena. Between 2004 and 2009, the IDRC-supported program brought together researchers, policymakers, farmers, and community groups to share successes and assess new ideas.
The research was wide-ranging. For example, WaDImena contributors refined the treatment of wastewater to ensure that "greywater" -- non-sewage waste -- could safely be used for certain types of agriculture. They also examined how watering crops at night (to minimize evaporation) and using technologies such as drip-irrigation could reduce agricultural water demand.
Efficiency plus equity
Many of WaDImena's inquiries focused on the dual concerns of enhancing efficiency and distributing water more equitably. A delegation of Syrians to Tunisia, for instance, considered how to replicate the successes of that country's water users associations. These groups empower small farmers to enforce their own methods of fairer and less wasteful water distribution. They are based on the idea that "the best way to manage water is to give power to the people who are using it," says El-Fattal.
Researchers also pondered how fees for water delivery could provide incentives to save water without penalizing the poor. Cultural taboos against charging for water had meant that "the paradox of this region was that water was very scarce but also cheap," explains IDRC program officer and former WaDImena project manager Hammou Laamrani.
The solution since adopted in several countries is to have meters on wells that allow some water to be drawn for free, ensuring fair access for poor farmers. At the same time, distribution fees are imposed for greater use, providing an incentive to conserve water.
Influencing policy
New ideas have led to policy changes at many levels. In Jordan, for example, building codes have been changed to require waste-water recycling to be incorporated into new construction.
In Morocco, government subsidies for efficient drip-irrigation technologies are also used as a lever to encourage farmers to grow value-added crops that make better use of scarce water.
Water demand management, concludes El-Fattal, "has gone from an idea to practical solutions that people are committed to."
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FILE - In this April 13, 1986, file photo, Jack Nicklaus watches his putt drop for a birdie on the 17th hole at Augusta National during the Masters golf tournament in Augusta, Ga. Nicklaus went on to win his sixth Masters title. Nicklaus loves absolutely everything about Augusta. Nicklaus sat in the interview room at the Masters for an hour Tuesday, April 9, 2013, and had more than enough material for two. (AP Photo/Phil Sandlin, File)
FILE - In this April 13, 1986, file photo, Jack Nicklaus watches his putt drop for a birdie on the 17th hole at Augusta National during the Masters golf tournament in Augusta, Ga. Nicklaus went on to win his sixth Masters title. Nicklaus loves absolutely everything about Augusta. Nicklaus sat in the interview room at the Masters for an hour Tuesday, April 9, 2013, and had more than enough material for two. (AP Photo/Phil Sandlin, File)
Tiger Woods tees off on the first hole during a practice round for the Masters golf tournament Tuesday, April 9, 2013, in Augusta, Ga. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)
Bubba Watson points to the tee from the first fairway during a practice round for the Masters golf tournament Tuesday, April 9, 2013, in Augusta, Ga. (AP Photo/Darron Cummings)
AUGUSTA, Ga. (AP) ? No other major championship has a greater collection of signature shots than the Masters, mainly because it's the only major held on the same course. And it helps that Augusta National is such a course that allows for such big moments.
There was the "shot heard 'round the world" and a shot right out of "Bubba golf." There has been an eagle made on every hole except for the par 5s, where there has been an albatross on all of those, with Louis Oosthuizen finally get a "2'' on the par-5 second hole last year.
According to an Associated Press story from 1935, there were only about 2,000 people in the gallery when Gene Sarazen holed out his 4-wood on the par-5 15th hole in 1935. Thousands more later claimed to witness the historic shot.
Here's one list of the five greatest shots in Masters history:
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5. JACK NICKLAUS IN 1986
No list of great shots at Augusta National should exclude Jack Nicklaus, a six-time champion. His 30 on the back nine in 1986, which carried him to his sixth green jacket, was the most famous charge of all. If there was a signature moment, it happened on the par-3 16th.
Nicklaus was coming off an eagle when he walked over to the 16th tee, which was playing about 175 yards. He hit a 5-iron, and as the ball was still climbing, Nicklaus stooped over and picked up the tee ? partly because he couldn't see so well, partly because he knew he hit it how he wanted.
His son, Jackie, was caddying for him that week and said, "Be right."
Nicklaus replied, "It is."
And it was.
The ball landed right of the pin and trickled down, narrowly missing a hole-in-one and leaving him a short birdie putt that he converted on his way to victory.
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4. SANDY LYLE IN 1988
Sandy Lyle had the lead going into the final round of the 1988 Masters, but found himself in a tight battle with Mark Calcavecchia on the back nine. He was tied for the lead going to the last hole, knowing he would need a birdie to win.
Hitting a 1-iron into the first of two bunkers down the left side of the fairway was probably not the best way to make birdie.
That's when Lyle delivered one of the greatest shots on the closing hole at Augusta. He hit a 7-iron just over the tall lip of the bunker, and the shot covered the flag and landed beyond the pin, rolling back to 10 feet.
Lyle made the birdie putt to become the first British player in a green jacket.
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3. TIGER WOODS IN 2005
Tiger Woods found himself in a surprising duel along the back nine in 2005 with Chris DiMarco. Woods had a one-shot lead with three holes to play, and he looked to be in trouble when he went long on the par-3 16th hole, and DiMarco had a 15-foot birdie putt.
The pin was in its traditional Sunday position, and Woods was in the wrong spot. He had to play the chip away from the flag and catch the slope just right, hopefully without too much speed that it would run by the hole and leave himself a tough putt for par. After measuring the shot for the longest time, he sent his pitch up the slope, and it slowly made a U-turn toward the hole.
The ball broke gently to the left and looked like it might go in, except that it was slowing to a stop. One last turn moved it an inch from the hole. Another turn left it on the on the edge of the cup. And after 2 full seconds, gravity took over and the ball disappeared for birdie.
Despite such a dramatic moment for a two-shot lead, Woods bogeyed the next two holes and had to make one last birdie in a playoff to win.
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2. BUBBA WATSON IN 2012
The final round of the 2012 Masters produced the rarest shot in golf when Louis Oosthuizen holed out a 4-iron on the par-5 second hole for an albatross. At the end of the day, Bubba Watson hit a shot that was rare in its own right. It was a shot only Bubba could hit.
Watson and Oosthuizen headed to the 10th hole for the second playoff hole, and Watson was in trouble. He hit driver deep into the woods to the right of the fairway. Watson hung his head for a moment, figuring he would have to scramble for any chance of par. He always tells his caddie, "If I have a swing, I have a shot."
No one could have drawn this one up. He hit a 40-yard hook with a sand wedge, low to get under the trees, then rising to get onto the elevated green. The ball somehow landed on the green with enough side spin to turn up the hill and settle about 10 feet away. Two putts later, Watson had his par ? and a green jacket.
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1. GENE SARAZEN IN 1935
Gene Sarazen was about the only player who didn't think the second edition of the Masters was over. Craig Wood was in the clubhouse at 6-under 282. Sarazen was in the fairway on the par-5 15th hole, three shots behind while playing with Walter Hagen.
Sarazen had a 4-wood that he called his "Dodo" club, and while he didn't have a great lie, thought he should go for the green from 235 yards away. He tried to play it slightly off the toe to get a little extra distance, and the shot came off perfectly.
The ball bounced just short of the green, hopped on and rolled into the cup for an albatross. Sarazen closed with three pars to force a playoff, and he beat Wood over 36 holes the next day.
It remains the most important shot in tournament history because it put the Masters on the map.
Small-business owners' confidence fell in March ? halting a three-month winning streak, as entrepreneurs still aren't feeling optimistic about business or making substantial hiring plans.
That's the finding of a monthly survey by the National Federation of Independent Business. The group said Tuesday that its small-business optimism index edged down 1.3 points to 89.5 from 90.8 points in February.
"Virtually no owners think the current period is a good time to expand," said NFIB chief economist Bill Dunkelberg in a prepared statement. Plus, "over 75 percent think that business conditions in 6 months will be no better or worse than they currently are," he said.
Although housing and the energy sectors are forecast to add jobs, Main Street collectively has no plans to create new employment in the coming months, according to the monthly sentiment report.
The sentiment reading had ticked higher in December, January and February. But to describe that as a " 'run' is an exaggeration," Dunkelberg said.
Bottom line: As the recovery tries to gain traction, there may be only modest support from new Main Street jobs?a traditional driver of past recoveries.
Plans to create small-business jobs tumbled in March, falling 4 points to a net zero percent of small employers, who plan to increase total employment, according to NFIB data.
Turns out what's happening in the broader U.S. economy?an anemic employment picture?is playing out among mom and pops. Private sector job creation was considerably less than forecast for March. That report was released jointly by ADP and Moody's Analytics last Wednesday.
The report was a preview to Friday's nonfarm payrolls report, also weak. Job creation slowed to a crawl during March, with the U.S. economy adding just 88,000 positions though the unemployment rate fell to 7.6 percent. The number was a sharp decline from February's upwardly revised 268,000.
"Overall, it appears that there will be little growth coming from the small business half of the economy and as the world economy slows, maybe even less from big business," Dunkelberg said.
A factor in the jobs drag is mandatory federal spending cuts. "One reason is the sequester. I think that will start to kick in," Moody's economist Mark Zandi said last week on CNBC. "I think that will start to show up in jobs in the next few months. The other thing is health care."
For employers, there has been a heavy cloud of uncertainty about anticipated spending cuts and costs associated with Obamacare that go into effect in 2014.
But unlike larger private sector businesses, smaller employers usually don't have buffers such as large cash reserves to ride out federal budget cuts. Most smaller firms also can't quickly pivot business strategies to ride out a rough patch. So their strategy has largely been staying in a holding pattern?including hiring decisions.
Fred Deluca, the founder of privately held Subway Restaurants, said the government is simply out of touch with small-business owners. Policies including Obamacare discourage entrepreneurship and the American dream of owning your own business, Deluca told CNBC's "Squawk on the Street" in February.
Added NFIB's Dunkelberg, "For the sector that produces half the private GDP and employs half the private sector workforce?the fact that they are not growing, not hiring, not borrowing and not expanding like they should be, is evidence enough that uncertainty is slowing the economy."
Watson will receive the MTV Trailblazer Award at Sunday's MTV Movie Awards, an honor her 'This Is the End' co-star dubs 'impressive.' By Jocelyn Vena, with reporting by Josh Horowitz
Emma Watson in "The Perks of Being a Wallflower" Photo: Summit Entertainment
Just few months after German bike giant BMW Motorrad held talks with Venu Srinivasan-led TVS Motors for an India entry rival KTM bought a synchronous brand Husqvarna and announced its India launch plans.
Austria-based KTM, which overtook BMW to become the largest bike maker in Europe last year, is planning to roll out Husqvarna motorcycles from the Chakan, Pune-based plant of partner Bajaj Auto.
For BMW, India is the key for the future as matured bike markets, which are also its traditional markets including Europe, USA and Canada are grappling with weakening demand.
Emerging markets such as India, South East Asia and Latin America will power growth for even niche brands such as BMW, say automotive market experts as demand smaller performance superbikes is expected to hit new highs
Both Chennai-based TVS Motors and BMW Motorrad will cooperate in a new series of motorcycles having engine capacity below 500cc. The partnership will benefit BMW in pulling down their entry price level, which is too high at the moment.
BMW has been selling premium bikes in India since early 2011, however, they are fully imported directly from Germany with most being imported only as per order and are priced upwards of Rs 1,800,000.
KTM, along with Rajiv Bajaj-led Bajaj Auto, is planning to roll out Husqvarna motorcycles in 2015. The bikes will be designed and developed by Bajaj and will be made locally to achieve pricing advantage.
Like KTM Husqvarna, which is headquartered in Sweden, too is primarily into off-road motorcycles. The Austrian company, in which Bajaj Auto holds nearly 48 % stake, bought controlling stake in Husqvarna from BMW in February this year.
KTM aims to position Husqvarna bikes above the Pulsar brand of Bajaj but on par with its own range which presently includes the Duke 200, priced at around Rs 120,000. One of the models planned for the Swedish brand for India includes a touring bike powered by the same engine used by the Duke 200 and the Pulsar 200NS.
In an exclusive interview to Business Standard earlier, Stefan Pierer, chief executive, KTM, said, ?For the small displacements it could be that Huskys be made at Chakan. We are also thinking and analyzing which displacement makes sense, a 200cc and a touring version for something like the emerging markets; so in the mid-term for sure Huskys can come from the Chakan plant.?
KTM and Bajaj have moved beyond the Duke 200 and will shortly roll out the Duke 390 followed by a watered down version of the RC8 superbike. Moving forward the two companies will share engines, platforms and components for all the brands made in India.
?It will take two years time for the roll out of Huskys from here although the engine in ready, to develop a bike which is a part of other activities, it will take two years. Huskys will be made by Bajaj Auto just like other small displacement KTMs. It could be that the Pulsar, Duke and a Husqvarna be using the same platform?, added Pierer.
However BMW, KTM and Husqvarna are not alone. At least three more premium international bike brands are aggressively targeting the Indian buyers.
UK?s century old iconic bike brand Triumph is building a new assembly factory in Karnataka, its only third global plant after the UK and Thailand. A new 250cc model is also being reportedly developed for the emerging markets.
South Korean racing specialist Hyosung is keen to expand its product portfolio in India. Partner DSK Motowheels is investing Rs 300-400 crore into a new plant in Maharashtra which will produce 250cc and above motorcycles.
US-based cruiser brand Victory Motorcycles will also launch its bike range in India by the end of this year. The company?s high engine capacity products are built for leisure riding activities.
Apr. 8, 2013 ? A study from the University of North Carolina School of Medicine offers new insights into how the nervous system processes hot and cold temperatures. The research led by neuroscientist Mark J. Zylka, PhD, associate professor of cell biology and physiology, found an interaction between the neural circuits that detect hot and cold stimuli: cold perception is enhanced when nerve circuitry for heat is inactivated.
"This discovery has implications for how we perceive hot and cold temperatures and for why people with certain forms of chronic pain, such as neuropathic pain, or pain arising as direct consequence of a nervous system injury or disease, experience heightened responses to cold temperatures," says Zylka, a member of the UNC Neuroscience Center.
The study also has implications for why a promising new class of pain relief drugs known as TRPV1 antagonists (they block a neuron receptor protein) cause many patients to shiver and "feel cold" prior to the onset of hyperthermia, an abnormally elevated body temperature. Enhanced cold followed by hyperthermia is a major side effect that has limited the use of these drugs in patients with chronic pain associated with multiple sclerosis, cancer, and osteoarthritis.
Zylka's research sheds new light on how the neural circuits that regulate temperature sensation bring about these responses, and could suggest ways of reducing such side-effects associated with TRPV1 antagonists and related drugs.
The research was selected by the journal Neuron as cover story for the April 10, 2013 print edition and was available in the April 4, 2013 advanced online edition.
This new study used cutting edge cell ablation technology to delete the nerve circuit that encodes heat and some forms of itch while preserving the circuitry that sense cold temperatures. This manipulation results in animals that were practically "blind" to heat, meaning they could no longer detect hot temperatures, Zylka explains. "Just like removing heat from a room makes us feel cold (such as with an air conditioner), removing the circuit that animals use to sense heat made them hypersensitive to cold. Physiological studies indicated that these distinct circuits regulate one another in the spinal cord."
TRPV1 is a receptor for heat and is found in the primary sensory nerve circuit that Zylka studied. TRPV1 antagonists make patients temporarily blind to heat, which Zylka speculates is analogous to what happened when his lab deleted the animals' circuit that detects heat: cold hypersensitivity.
Zylka emphasizes that future studies will be needed to confirm that TRPV1 antagonists affect cold responses in a manner similar to what his lab found with nerve circuit deletion.
The study was conducted in the Zylka lab by postdoctoral scientists Eric S. McCoy, Sarah E. Street, and Jihong Zheng and by research associates Bonnie Taylor-Blake and Alaine Pribisco. Funding for the research came from the Searle Scholars Program, The Klingenstein Foundation, The Rita Allen Foundation, the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD).
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Apr. 8, 2013 ? Nearly half of the world's population is at risk of infection by the dengue virus, yet there is no specific treatment for the disease. Now a therapy to protect people from the virus could finally be a step closer, thanks to a team at MIT.
In a paper published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers, from MIT's Koch Institute of Integrative Cancer Research, present a novel approach to developing a dengue therapy using mutated antibodies.
According to a study by the International Research Consortium on Dengue Risk Assessment, Management and Surveillance, up to 390 million people are infected with the dengue virus each year. For most people the mosquito-borne virus causes flulike symptoms, including fever, headache and joint pain. But for some, particularly children, the virus can develop into the far more serious dengue hemorrhagic fever, causing severe blood loss and even death.
Despite the threat posed by the disease, developing a vaccine against dengue has so far proved challenging, according to Ram Sasisekharan, the Alfred H. Caspary Professor of Biological Engineering at MIT. That's because dengue is not one virus but four different viruses, or serotypes, each of which must be neutralized by the vaccine.
Protecting people from only one or some of the four viruses could cause them to develop the more severe form of dengue if they later become infected with one of the other serotypes, in a process known as antibody-dependent enhancement, Sasisekharan says. "That was the motivation for carrying out our study, to generate a fully neutralizing antibody that works for all four serotypes."
Pushing the envelope
Efforts to develop a therapeutic antibody for dengue are focused on a part of the virus called the envelope protein. "This is a very critical protein that allows the virus to latch on to the appropriate receptor within the host, to infect them, replicate and spread," Sasisekharan says.
The envelope protein contains two regions of interest, known as the loop and the "A" strand. Research teams have previously attempted to engineer an antibody that targets the loop region of the virus protein, as this is known to be able to attack all four serotypes if targeted in the right way.
However, the antibodies that target the loop region tend to have low potency, meaning they are unable to completely neutralize the virus. This increases the risk of more severe secondary dengue infection.
So a team led by Sasisekharan decided instead to look for antibodies that target the "A" strand region of the protein. Such antibodies tend to have much higher potency, but they are unable to neutralize all four serotypes.
450-fold increase
The researchers chose as their model an antibody known as 4E11, which has been shown in tests to neutralize dengue 1, 2 and 3, but not dengue 4. "We wanted to see if we could get good neutralizing activity to dengue 4, and also tweak the antibody to increase the potency associated with the other subtypes," Sasisekharan says.
The authors mined existing antibody-antigen complexes to analyze the physical and chemical features that play an important role in their interaction, such as hydrogen bonding and ionic attraction. Taking a statistical approach, they then ranked these features in terms of their importance to each of the antibody-antigen interactions.
This significantly narrowed the number of possible changes, or mutations, the researchers needed to make antibody 4E11 in order to improve its ability to neutralize all four viruses, in particular dengue 4. "So rather than random screening, we used a statistically driven approach so we knew the regions to focus on, and what things we had to change," Sasisekharan says.
As a result, the researchers came up with 87 possible mutations, which they were able to reduce to just 10 changes after further investigation.
When they tested their mutated antibody on samples of the four dengue serotypes in the laboratory, they found it had a 450-fold increase in binding to dengue 4, a 20-fold increase in binding for dengue 2, and lesser improvements in binding for dengue 1 and 3, Sasisekharan says.
The researchers have developed a novel computational method for predicting protein-protein interaction that captures the essential chemical and physical features of interacting surfaces, says Subhash Vasudevan, an associate professor in the Emerging Infectious Diseases Program at the Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School in Singapore.
"By learning and validating data from numerous three-dimensional structures of interacting antibody and protein complexes, the researchers gained valuable insights that enabled them to redesign a dengue virus envelope antibody to improve its binding by an astounding 450-fold," Vasudevan says.
"The cross-reactive and pan-dengue neutralizing antibody was protective against all four serotypes in cell culture and in an animal model of infection," he adds.
The MIT researchers are now preparing for potential preclinical trials, and hope to be ready to test the antibody on humans within the next two to three years. In the meantime, they are also investigating other targets for their immunotherapy approach, including the influenza virus.
This work was funded by the National Institutes of Health and the National Research Foundation Singapore through the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology's Infectious Diseases Research Program.
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Journal Reference:
K. Tharakaraman, L. N. Robinson, A. Hatas, Y.-L. Chen, L. Siyue, S. Raguram, V. Sasisekharan, G. N. Wogan, R. Sasisekharan. Redesign of a cross-reactive antibody to dengue virus with broad-spectrum activity and increased in vivo potency. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2013; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1303645110
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Hear that? It's Austin, being weird enough to add yet another reason to live within its city limits. As rumored, Google Fiber will be rolling down to one of Texas' most esteemed towns in the near future, joining the Kansas City, Kansas and Missouri metro as the only locales (so far) in the US of A offering the outfit's Fiber-based TV, phone and 1Gbps broadband services. Mum's the word on an exact rollout, but we'll update this post as we learn more.
Levenger has developed an impressive line of iPad accessories, and they’ve been expanding their line to include some accessories designed specifically for the smaller iPad mini. ?Their new Nantucket Mini Easel Stand for the iPad mini is sized to be just right for the smaller iPad, other small tablets, or even a smart phone. ?It’s [...]
FILE - In this Thursday, Oct. 27, 2011 file photo, South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Jung Seung-jo, right, shakes hands with his U.S. counterpart, Gen. Martin Dempsey before their Military Committee Meeting between the U.S. and South Korea at Defense Ministry in Seoul, South Korea. South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Jung Seung-jo had planned to meet with his U.S. counterpart, Gen. Martin Dempsey, in Washington on April 16 for regular talks. But tensions on the Korean Peninsula are so high that Jung cannot take a long trip away from South Korea, so the meeting will be rescheduled, a South Korean Joint Chiefs officer said Sunday. (AP Photo/ Lee Jin-man, Pool, File)
FILE - In this Thursday, Oct. 27, 2011 file photo, South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Jung Seung-jo, right, shakes hands with his U.S. counterpart, Gen. Martin Dempsey before their Military Committee Meeting between the U.S. and South Korea at Defense Ministry in Seoul, South Korea. South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Jung Seung-jo had planned to meet with his U.S. counterpart, Gen. Martin Dempsey, in Washington on April 16 for regular talks. But tensions on the Korean Peninsula are so high that Jung cannot take a long trip away from South Korea, so the meeting will be rescheduled, a South Korean Joint Chiefs officer said Sunday. (AP Photo/ Lee Jin-man, Pool, File)
South Korean army soldiers patrol along a barbed-wire fence at sunset near the border village of Panmunjom, which has separated the two Koreas since the Korean War, in Paju, north of Seoul, South Korea, Sunday, April 7, 2013. A top South Korean national security official said Sunday that North Korea may be setting the stage for a missile test or another provocative act with its warning that it soon will be unable to guarantee diplomats' safety in Pyongyang. But he added that the North's clearest objective is to extract concessions from Washington and Seoul. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)
A North Korean military guard post is seen near the border village of Panmunjom, which has separated the two Koreas since the Korean War, in Paju, north of Seoul, South Korea, Sunday, April 7, 2013. A top South Korean national security official said Sunday that North Korea may be setting the stage for a missile test or another provocative act with its warning that it soon will be unable to guarantee diplomats' safety in Pyongyang. But he added that the North's clearest objective is to extract concessions from Washington and Seoul. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)
BAGRAM, Afghanistan (AP) ? The top U.S. military officer said Sunday the Pentagon had bolstered its missile defenses and taken other steps because he "can't take the chance" that North Korea won't soon engage in some military action.
Heightened tensions with North Korea led the United States to postpone congressional testimony by the chief U.S. commander in South Korea and delay an intercontinental ballistic missile test from a West Coast base.
North Korea, after weeks of war threats and other efforts to punish South Korea and the U.S. for joint military drills, has told other nations that it will be unable to guarantee diplomats' safety in the North's capital beginning Wednesday.
U.S. Gen Martin Dempsey, the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman who just wrapped up a visit to Afghanistan, was asked in an Associated Press interview whether he foresees North Korea taking military action soon.
"No, but I can't take the chance that it won't," he said, explaining why the Pentagon has strengthened missile defenses and made other decisions to combat the potential threat.
Dempsey said the U.S. has been preparing for further provocations or action, "considering the risk that they may choose to do something" on one of two nationally important anniversaries in April ? the birth of North Korean founder Kim Il Sung and the creation of the North Korean army.
U.S. Gen. James Thurman, the commander of the 28,000 American troops in South Korea, will stay in Seoul as "a prudent measure" rather than travel to Washington to appear this coming week before congressional committees, Army Col. Amy Hannah said in an email Sunday to the AP.
Thurman has asked the Senate Armed Services Committee, the House Armed Services Committee, and the House Appropriations subcommittee on defense to excuse his absence until he can testify at a later date.
Dempsey said he had consulted with Thurman about the rising tensions on the Korean peninsula.
Dempsey said both Thurman and South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, Gen. Jung Seung-jo, decided it would be best for them to remain in Seoul rather than come to Washington. The Korean general had planned to meet with Dempsey, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, in mid-April for regular talks.
Dempsey said that instead of meeting in person with Thurman and Jung in Washington, they will consult together by video-teleconference.
The Pentagon has postponed an intercontinental ballistic missile test that was set for the coming week at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, a senior defense official told the AP on Saturday.
The official said U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel decided to put off the long-planned Minuteman 3 test until April because of concerns the launch could be misinterpreted and exacerbate the Korean crisis. Hagel made the decision Friday, the official said.
North Korea's military said this past week that it was authorized to attack the U.S. using "smaller, lighter and diversified" nuclear weapons. North Korea also conducted a nuclear test in February and in December launched a long-range rocket that could potentially hit the continental U.S.
The U.S. has moved two of the Navy's missile-defense ships closer to the Korean peninsula, and a land-based system is being deployed to the Pacific territory of Guam later this month. The Pentagon last month announced longer-term plans to strengthen its U.S.-based missile defenses.
The defense official, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the Minuteman 3 test delay and requested anonymity, said U.S. policy continues to support the building and testing of its nuclear deterrent capabilities. The official said the launch was not put off because of any technical problems.
Dempsey said he was not familiar with details of the Minuteman decision because he was traveling in Afghanistan.
But, he said, "it would be consistent with our intent here, which is to do what we have to do to posture ourselves to deter (North Korea), and to assure our allies. So things that can be delayed should be delayed."
A South Korean national security official said Sunday that North Korea may be setting the stage for a missile test or another provocative act.
Citing North Korea's suggestion that diplomats leave the country, South Korean President Park Geun-hye's national security director said the North may be planning a missile launch or another provocation around Wednesday, according to presidential spokeswoman Kim Haing.
In Washington, an adviser to President Barack Obama said "we wouldn't be surprised if they did a test. They've done that in the past."
Aide Dan Pfeiffer told ABC's "This Week" that "the key here is for the North Koreans to stop their actions, start meeting their international obligations, and put themselves in a position where they can achieve what is their stated goal, which is economic development, which will only happen if they rejoin the international community."
He told "Fox News Sunday" that "the onus is on the North Koreans to do the right thing here," adding that "they are the source of the problem and the only way to solve this is for them to take a step back."
If they don't, there will be consequences, Pfeiffer said.
"They will be able to further isolate themselves in the world, they will continue to further hurt themselves. The North Korean people are starving because of actions like the ones North Koreans are taking right now."
U.S. Sen. John McCain said the North's young leader, Kim Jong Un, is playing a game of brinksmanship.
"In the past we have seen this repetitious confrontation, negotiation, incentives to North Korea to better behave, hopes that they will abandon their nuclear quest ? which they never will, otherwise, they'd be totally irrelevant," McCain told CBS' "Face the Nation."
"And so we've seen the cycle over and over and over again, for last 20 or 30 years. They confront. There's crisis. Then we offer them incentives ? food, money. While meanwhile the most repressive and oppressive regime on earth continues to function," he added.
McCain said China "does hold the key to this problem. China can cut off their economy if they want to."
___
Associated Press writers Lolita C. Baldor, Philip Elliott and Erica Werner in Washington contributed to this report.
Ocean explorers want to get to the bottom of GaliciaPublic release date: 8-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: David Ruth david@rice.edu 713-348-6327 Rice University
Rice researchers: 3-D seismic survey will give best-ever view of ancient North Atlantic rift
HOUSTON (April 8, 2013) An international team of scientists and technicians led by Rice University will spend 45 days in the North Atlantic this summer to gather the most detailed information ever about the geology of the ocean basin that formed at what was once the center of Pangaea.
Geologists Dale Sawyer and Julia Morgan of Rice and Donna Shillington of Columbia University are leading the $6 million international project to study the Galicia rift northwest of the Spanish coast where, unusually, sediment has not deeply buried formations that have existed at the bottom of the ocean for millions of years.
A National Science Foundation (NSF) grant to Rice of more than $1.2 million will put five faculty members and graduate students on the 50-plus crew aboard the Seismic Vessel Marcus G. Langseth, owned by the NSF and operated by the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.
The Langseth stopped in Galveston last month, where Sawyer took stock of its tools. He and Morgan have been waiting for their ship to come in since proposing the project eight years ago. "We had to wait for other seismic studies, creating a critical mass of work in the Atlantic in order to bring the ship from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic," Sawyer said.
For 45 days the ship will trace a spiraling path -- Sawyer compared it to mowing a lawn -- over the rectangular 64-by-22.4 kilometer target. Throughout the journey, the 15 scientists and their technicians and students will analyze data and make critical decisions on optimizing data quality.
Sawyer will represent Rice on the ship, joined by graduate students Sarah Dean, Brian Jordan and Mari Tesi Sanjurjo and adjunct faculty lecturer Steve Danbom. All will begin analyzing the massive amount of data the ship will collect while on board, but the results will take years for geologists to fully process and understand, Sawyer said.
"Between 225 and 110 million years ago, the Atlantic Ocean opened up between Africa and North America, and the breakup propagated northward, opening a new ocean and pulling Spain and Portugal apart from what is now Newfoundland," Sawyer said. "What makes this unusual is that it is a volcanic-starved rift."
Elsewhere on the planet, lava flowed upward into rifts and created oceanic crust. "We found in the last 20 years that most margins are volcanic-dominated," he said. "They actually pull apart, lots of magma comes up and the sea-floor spreading process begins immediately. Galicia is at the other end of the spectrum. Volcanic-dominated margins are thought to be caused by unusually high heat in the Earth's mantle, while magma-starved margins are caused by cooler mantle rocks.
But the volcanic crust hasn't reached the Galicia, where sections of the Earth's mantle in the form of peridotite lie just under a thin layer of sediment. At this rift, the crust is neither oceanic nor continental, but of a different type. These formations may tell geologists a great deal about the rifts that appeared when the great continent split and began evolving into the map we know today.
"The sediments are thin," Sawyer said, "so we can do seismic characterization and potentially drill into these rocks without having to go through 10 or 15 kilometers of sediment.
"One of our objectives with the 3-D survey is to find the best places to drill," he said. "Now we can see the fans of sediment deposited on the broken and tilted continental crust blocks, but we don't know when they broke and how quickly." The images should allow them to gather core samples at the right places. "Then we have paleontological evidence we can date, and then we can start to know."
To learn all this, the team will make 3-D images of the upper 20 kilometers of the rocks under the ocean. The RV Langseth will tow four cables, each 6 kilometers long, carrying nearly 2,000 hydrophones. The towed cables cover a width of 600 meters as they rake through the water. Constantly on the move, the ship fires an array of compressed air guns towed behind the ship. Airgun shots will be fired every 37 meters (once about every 16 seconds), and the seismometers will sense the reflections that come back from the seafloor and from rock layers. Using sound to see what eyes can't, the signals are translated into an accurate three-dimensional image of the geological terrain below.
Before the Langseth sails from Vigo, Spain, on June 1, the German Research Vessel Poseidon and scientists from Germany and the United Kingdom will drop about 80 ocean-bottom seismometers in a grid on the same patch of ocean floor that the Rice-led team will survey.
"The ocean-bottom seismometers give us much better information about the speed of sound through the rocks, and that tells us a lot about what kind of rock the seismic wave is traveling through," Sawyer said.
Several oil companies are interested in this work, Sawyer said. Although the sediments to be studied are thin and unlikely to yield oil or gas, other places in the world with similar magma-starved rifting and thick overlying sediments are virtually certain to contain hydrocarbons. Images taken through the thin Galicia sediments will provide information about what to expect in hydrocarbon-bearing areas elsewhere, he said.
###
Read the NSF abstract: http://tinyurl.com/dyljq34
This news release can be found online at http://news.rice.edu/2013/04/08/ocean-explorers-want-to-get-to-the-bottom-of-galicia-2/
Follow Rice News and Media Relations via Twitter @RiceUNews.
Related Materials:
R/V Marcus G. Langseth: http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/research/office-of-marine-operations/langseth
GeoPRISMS: http://www.geoprisms.org
Julia Morgan: http://earthscience.rice.edu/faculty/morgan/
Rice researchers who will study the Galicia rift off the coast of Spain this summer are (from left, front) Sarah Dean, Steve Danbom and Mari Tesi Sanjurjo and (from left, rear) Brian Jordan, Dale Sawyer and Julia Morgan. All but Morgan will make the 45-day cruise to map the terrain under the rift. (Credit: Colin Zelt/Rice University)
The Galicia rift, west of Spain, is a unique magma-starved margin dominated by mantle rock. An international team led by Rice University will perform a seismic survey of the region this summer.
David Ruth
713-348-6327
david@rice.edu
Mike Williams
713-348-6728
mikewilliams@rice.edu
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Ocean explorers want to get to the bottom of GaliciaPublic release date: 8-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: David Ruth david@rice.edu 713-348-6327 Rice University
Rice researchers: 3-D seismic survey will give best-ever view of ancient North Atlantic rift
HOUSTON (April 8, 2013) An international team of scientists and technicians led by Rice University will spend 45 days in the North Atlantic this summer to gather the most detailed information ever about the geology of the ocean basin that formed at what was once the center of Pangaea.
Geologists Dale Sawyer and Julia Morgan of Rice and Donna Shillington of Columbia University are leading the $6 million international project to study the Galicia rift northwest of the Spanish coast where, unusually, sediment has not deeply buried formations that have existed at the bottom of the ocean for millions of years.
A National Science Foundation (NSF) grant to Rice of more than $1.2 million will put five faculty members and graduate students on the 50-plus crew aboard the Seismic Vessel Marcus G. Langseth, owned by the NSF and operated by the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.
The Langseth stopped in Galveston last month, where Sawyer took stock of its tools. He and Morgan have been waiting for their ship to come in since proposing the project eight years ago. "We had to wait for other seismic studies, creating a critical mass of work in the Atlantic in order to bring the ship from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic," Sawyer said.
For 45 days the ship will trace a spiraling path -- Sawyer compared it to mowing a lawn -- over the rectangular 64-by-22.4 kilometer target. Throughout the journey, the 15 scientists and their technicians and students will analyze data and make critical decisions on optimizing data quality.
Sawyer will represent Rice on the ship, joined by graduate students Sarah Dean, Brian Jordan and Mari Tesi Sanjurjo and adjunct faculty lecturer Steve Danbom. All will begin analyzing the massive amount of data the ship will collect while on board, but the results will take years for geologists to fully process and understand, Sawyer said.
"Between 225 and 110 million years ago, the Atlantic Ocean opened up between Africa and North America, and the breakup propagated northward, opening a new ocean and pulling Spain and Portugal apart from what is now Newfoundland," Sawyer said. "What makes this unusual is that it is a volcanic-starved rift."
Elsewhere on the planet, lava flowed upward into rifts and created oceanic crust. "We found in the last 20 years that most margins are volcanic-dominated," he said. "They actually pull apart, lots of magma comes up and the sea-floor spreading process begins immediately. Galicia is at the other end of the spectrum. Volcanic-dominated margins are thought to be caused by unusually high heat in the Earth's mantle, while magma-starved margins are caused by cooler mantle rocks.
But the volcanic crust hasn't reached the Galicia, where sections of the Earth's mantle in the form of peridotite lie just under a thin layer of sediment. At this rift, the crust is neither oceanic nor continental, but of a different type. These formations may tell geologists a great deal about the rifts that appeared when the great continent split and began evolving into the map we know today.
"The sediments are thin," Sawyer said, "so we can do seismic characterization and potentially drill into these rocks without having to go through 10 or 15 kilometers of sediment.
"One of our objectives with the 3-D survey is to find the best places to drill," he said. "Now we can see the fans of sediment deposited on the broken and tilted continental crust blocks, but we don't know when they broke and how quickly." The images should allow them to gather core samples at the right places. "Then we have paleontological evidence we can date, and then we can start to know."
To learn all this, the team will make 3-D images of the upper 20 kilometers of the rocks under the ocean. The RV Langseth will tow four cables, each 6 kilometers long, carrying nearly 2,000 hydrophones. The towed cables cover a width of 600 meters as they rake through the water. Constantly on the move, the ship fires an array of compressed air guns towed behind the ship. Airgun shots will be fired every 37 meters (once about every 16 seconds), and the seismometers will sense the reflections that come back from the seafloor and from rock layers. Using sound to see what eyes can't, the signals are translated into an accurate three-dimensional image of the geological terrain below.
Before the Langseth sails from Vigo, Spain, on June 1, the German Research Vessel Poseidon and scientists from Germany and the United Kingdom will drop about 80 ocean-bottom seismometers in a grid on the same patch of ocean floor that the Rice-led team will survey.
"The ocean-bottom seismometers give us much better information about the speed of sound through the rocks, and that tells us a lot about what kind of rock the seismic wave is traveling through," Sawyer said.
Several oil companies are interested in this work, Sawyer said. Although the sediments to be studied are thin and unlikely to yield oil or gas, other places in the world with similar magma-starved rifting and thick overlying sediments are virtually certain to contain hydrocarbons. Images taken through the thin Galicia sediments will provide information about what to expect in hydrocarbon-bearing areas elsewhere, he said.
###
Read the NSF abstract: http://tinyurl.com/dyljq34
This news release can be found online at http://news.rice.edu/2013/04/08/ocean-explorers-want-to-get-to-the-bottom-of-galicia-2/
Follow Rice News and Media Relations via Twitter @RiceUNews.
Related Materials:
R/V Marcus G. Langseth: http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/research/office-of-marine-operations/langseth
GeoPRISMS: http://www.geoprisms.org
Julia Morgan: http://earthscience.rice.edu/faculty/morgan/
Rice researchers who will study the Galicia rift off the coast of Spain this summer are (from left, front) Sarah Dean, Steve Danbom and Mari Tesi Sanjurjo and (from left, rear) Brian Jordan, Dale Sawyer and Julia Morgan. All but Morgan will make the 45-day cruise to map the terrain under the rift. (Credit: Colin Zelt/Rice University)
The Galicia rift, west of Spain, is a unique magma-starved margin dominated by mantle rock. An international team led by Rice University will perform a seismic survey of the region this summer.
David Ruth
713-348-6327
david@rice.edu
Mike Williams
713-348-6728
mikewilliams@rice.edu
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Veteran quarterback Matthew Hasselbeck had an eventful couple of days last month.? Cut by the Titans, he quickly landed in the same division, with the Colts.
Now the clear-cut backup to Andrew Luck after being in 2012 the clear-cut backup to Jake Locker, Hasselbeck?s work will be deemed a success if he can constantly nudge Luck to be the best quarterback he can be.
?I feel like I learned a lot in my role with Jake Locker this past year and it really was fulfilling to work with a young guy that?s talented and eager to work and eager to learn,? Hasselbeck told Monday?s edition of Pro Football Talk.? ?I think the thing that I could probably do a better job is just really bringing a competitive spirit to the room.? Obviously, Andrew Luck?s gonna be the starting quarterback there but I can still come in and bring an element of like just being the best that I can be, each and every day.
?I do remember as a young quarterback with the Green Bay Packers, the atmosphere was just very, very competitive.? I mean and everyone knew if Brett Favre had two broken legs, he was still going to be the starting quarterback but the atmosphere was that, ?Hey we?re going to come in and we?re going to compete with each other, each and every day and really just try to push each other in any way that we can sort of like one-up a guy.?? We are just gonna go for it and I think it just, I don?t know if it made Brett any better but I know it made me better and so I think that?s probably the lesson that I learned or one of the lessons that I learned and so I?m looking forward to being around a great talent like Andrew Luck.? I think it?ll probably improve my game just having that mentality and in the end ironically it?ll help the Indianapolis Colts be a better team because of it.?
But it likely won?t result in Hasselbeck ending up as a starter elsewhere.
?I would be shocked if this is not the last stop,? Hasselbeck said.? ?I signed a two-year deal.? My goal right now is just to play those two years and make them two great years but this whole ride has been a dream come true for me.? I was a sixth-round draft pick, wasn?t invited to the Combine, really when I got uh drafted by the Green Bay Packers if I had left training camp with a free pair of Green Bay Packer shorts I would have chalked it up as a victory so this really is a dream come true for me to get to do this for a living.? And it?s not easy.? It takes everything you?ve got each and every year.? You?ve got to bring it 100 percent to have a successful season but I?m committed to two years right now and I?d be shocked if there?s anything beyond that.?
Despite the commitment level required to thrive in the NFL, Hasselbeck has other interests.? His appearance on Monday?s show came in connection with his work with the End It Movement, which has made April 9 an international effort to bring awareness to and ultimately to abolish the ongoing global slavery problem.
There are now more slaves in the world that at any point in history.? You?ll learn that troubling fact and others if you visit the End It Movment?s website.
RANCHO MIRAGE, Calif. (AP) ? Inbee Park's 7-iron tee shot Saturday on the 168-yard 17th hole turned to left on a perfect line at the back-left pin, landed softly and rolled to 2? feet for yet another birdie in the Kraft Nabisco Championship.
The 24-year-old South Korean player, three strokes ahead with a round left in the first major championship of the year, admitted it wasn't quite the way she planned it after watching playing partner Lizette Salas' ball sail too far left and into a bunker.
"It was actually a little bit of a mis-shot," Park said. "I aimed a little more right, but I slightly pulled it and it ended up perfect."
Bogey-free in her last 22 holes at Mission Hills, Park shot her second straight 5-under 67 in tricky wind conditions to reach 12 under.
"I feel really good about my swing and the stroke at the moment," Park said. "I feel really comfortable around this golf course, too. That helps. Three good rounds, and I just need another one tomorrow. ... I was really used to the wind after yesterday, because we had a really similar wind. It was a lot easier to judge today."
She's in position for her second major title and second victory of the year. She won the 2008 U.S. Women's Open and added her fourth LPGA Tour title in February in Thailand when Ariya Jutanugarn closed with a triple bogey to blow a two-stroke lead.
"This one would mean a lot," Park said. "It's just been a tournament I always wanted to win and, with the special ceremony jumping in the water, everybody just wants to do that."
Salas, a stroke behind Park entering the round, had a 69 to remain second.
"I've just got to stay patient and just trust my putter and just keep it simple," Salas said "I'm just going to stick to my game plan. I can't control what she does. I can only control my swing thoughts and my routine."
Hall of Famer Karrie Webb, the tournament winner in 2000 and 2006, was five strokes back at 6 under along with Suzann Pettersen, Angela Stanford, Jessica Korda, Karine Icher and Pornanong Phatlum. Stanford had a 66, the best round of the tournament. Webb and Pettersen shot 67, Korda and Icher 68, and Phatlum 70.
Park matched Salas with a birdie on the par-4 opening hole and got to 9 under with a 25-foot birdie putt on the par-3 ninth. Park stretched her advantage to two strokes with another 25-foot birdie putt on the par-4 10th, then nearly holed her 9-iron approach on the par-4 12th, leaving only 2? feet for another birdie that pushed the lead to three.
Salas pulled within two with a birdie on the par-4 13th, and Park countered with the birdie on 17. Park saved par on 17 after hitting into the bunker, then missed a chance to get closer on the par-5 18th when her 6-foot birdie attempt slid by to the right.
"I wasn't hitting the ball as well as the first two days, but I kept putting myself in good position, hit some good shots out of the rough, and hit a great bunker shot on 17 to get up and down for par," Salas said. "Obviously, you want to end with a birdie, and it didn't quite drop. Overall, pretty good day considering I didn't hit the ball well."
The 23-year-old Salas grew up west of Los Angeles in Azusa, where her father is the head mechanic at a golf course. She was a four-time All-America selection at the University of Southern California.
"I feed off the crowd and, to have my fans out here, my family here, it just helps me stay calm," Salas said. "I'm playing in my backyard, so I can't ask for anything more than that."
Stanford rebounded with the 66 after opening with rounds of 70 and 74.
"I've kind of been fighting it all week and I kind of found a thought that worked the rest of the day," Stanford said. "I made the turn and started hitting some good shots."
Pettersen, who turned 32 on Sunday, birdied the final four holes. She had a share of the first-round lead after a 68, then dropped back with a 75 on Friday.
"I probably should have had six straight birdies coming in," said Pettersen, a three-time runner-up in the event. "I've given myself a chance for tomorrow."
The 38-year-old Webb won the last of her 38 tour titles in 2011.
"I'm just glad I gave myself a chance," Webb said. "If we can get some breeze going tomorrow, I think that'll make it interesting."
Korda, the 20-year-old daughter of former tennis star Petr Korda, is spending time with her family for the first time since January.
"It's really nice," said Korda, the Women's Australian Open winner last year. "My brother and sister got so big. It was really nice to see everybody. I miss my dad's humor and my mom's calmness, and she did my laundry last night, so it was kind of nice."
Michelle Wie had a 73 to drop to 1 under. She has broken 70 only once in 17 rounds this season and is using an unorthodox putting stance with her torso bent parallel to the ground,
Top-ranked Stacy Lewis was 1 under after a 71.
"Coming into the week my swing didn't feel great and I was kind of hoping I would figure things out by now, but I just haven't," said Lewis, the 2011 champion.
She has struggled after winning consecutive events this year in Singapore and Phoenix to take the top spot in the world from Yani Tseng.
DIVOTS: The second-ranked Tseng was even par after a 69. She won the 2010 tournament and finished second in 2011 and third last year. ... Lydia Ko, the 15-year-old New Zealand amateur who won the Canadian Women's Open last August to become the youngest LPGA Tour champion, shot a 71 to reach 1 over. ... Natalie Gulbis was 2 over after a 72 in her return from malaria.
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Public release date: 8-Apr-2013
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