The winner of this week's Android Central photo contest is August with his picture of a compact in a quiet street scene, taken with his Samsung Galaxy S II using Retro Camera . This week's pictures were as amazing as last time around, and picking just one was no easy feat. It's the kind of work we all enjoy though, so we love doing it. Keep an eye on your e-mail August, I'll be contacting you about getting your battery shipped out.
With so many great pictures, even picking the 10 runners-up was difficult. We finally settled on them, hit the break to have a look. Don't forget, we're starting up a new round tomorrow, so keep an eye out.
Contact: Lynn Yarris lcyarris@lbl.gov 510-486-5375 DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Berkeley Lab researchers discover why pure quantum dots and nanorods shine brighter
To the lengthy list of serendipitous discoveries gravity, penicillin, the New World add this: Scientists with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have discovered why a promising technique for making quantum dots and nanorods has so far been a disappointment. Better still, they've also discovered how to correct the problem.
A team of researchers led by chemist Paul Alivisatos, director of Berkeley Lab, and Prashant Jain, a chemist now with the University of Illinois, has discovered why nanocrystals made from multiple components in solution via the exchange of cations (positive ions) have been poor light emitters. The problem, they found, stems from impurities in the final product. The team also demonstrated that these impurities can be removed through heat.
"By heating these nanocrystals to 100 degrees Celsius, we were able to remove the impurities and increase their luminescence by 400-fold within 30 hours," says Jain, a member of Alivisatos' research group when this work was done. "When the impurities were removed the optoelectronic properties of nanocrystals made through cation-exchange were comparable in quality to dots and nanorods conventionally synthesized."
Says Alivisatos, "With our new findings, the cation-exchange technique really becomes a method that can be widely used to make novel high optoelectronic grade nanocrystals."
Jain is the lead author and Alivisatos the corresponding author of a paper describing this work in the journal Angewandte Chemie titled "Highly Luminescent Nanocrystals From Removal of Impurity Atoms Residual From Ion Exchange Synthesis." Other authors were Brandon Beberwyck, Lam-Kiu Fong and Mark Polking.
Quantum dots and nanorods are light-emitting semiconductor nanocrystals that have a broad range of applications, including bio-imaging, solar energy and display screen technologies. Typically, these nanocrystals are synthesized from colloids - particles suspended in solution. As an alternative, Alivisatos and his research group developed a new solution-based synthesis technique in which nanocrystals are chemically transformed by exchanging or replacing all of the cations in the crystal lattice with another type of cation. This cation-exchange technique makes it possible to produce new types of core/shell nanocrystals that are inaccessible through conventional synthesis. Core/shell nanocrystals are heterostructures in which one type of semiconductor is enclosed within another, for example, a cadmium selenide (CdSe) core and a cadmium sulfide (CdS) shell.
"While holding promise for the simple and inexpensive fabrication of multicomponent nanocrystals, the cation-exchange technique has yielded quantum dots and nanorods that perform poorly in optical and electronic devices," says Alivisatos, a world authority on nanocrystal synthesis who holds a joint appointment with the University of California (UC) Berkeley, where he is the Larry and Diane Bock professor of Nanotechnology.
As Jain tells the story, he was in the process of disposing of CdSe/CuS nanocrystals in solution that were six months old when out of habit he tested the nanocrystals under ultraviolet light. To his surprise he observed significant luminescence. Subsequent spectral measurements and comparing the new data to the old showed that the luminescence of the nanocrystals had increased by at least sevenfold.
"It was an accidental finding and very exciting," Jain says, "but since no one wants to wait six months for their samples to become high quality I decided to heat the nanocrystals to speed up whatever process was causing their luminescence to increase."
Jain and the team suspected and subsequent study confirmed that impurities original cations that end up being left behind in the crystal lattice during the exchange process - were the culprit.
"Even a few cation impurities in a nanocrystal are enough to be effective at trapping useful, energetic charge-carriers," Jain says. "In most quantum dots or nanorods, charge-carriers are delocalized over the entire nanocrystal, making it easy for them to find impurities, no matter how few there might be, within the nanocrystal. By heating the solution to remove these impurities and shut off this impurity-mediated trapping, we give the charge-carriers enough time to radiatively combine and thereby boost luminescence."
Since charge-carriers are also instrumental in electronic transport, photovoltaic performance, and photocatalytic processes, Jain says that shutting off impurity-mediated trapping should also boost these optoelectronic properties in nanocrystals synthesized via the cation-exchange technique.
###
This research was supported by the DOE Office of Science.
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory addresses the world's most urgent scientific challenges by advancing sustainable energy, protecting human health, creating new materials, and revealing the origin and fate of the universe. Founded in 1931, Berkeley Lab's scientific expertise has been recognized with 13 Nobel prizes. The University of California manages Berkeley Lab for the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science. For more, visit http://www.lbl.gov.
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Contact: Lynn Yarris lcyarris@lbl.gov 510-486-5375 DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Berkeley Lab researchers discover why pure quantum dots and nanorods shine brighter
To the lengthy list of serendipitous discoveries gravity, penicillin, the New World add this: Scientists with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have discovered why a promising technique for making quantum dots and nanorods has so far been a disappointment. Better still, they've also discovered how to correct the problem.
A team of researchers led by chemist Paul Alivisatos, director of Berkeley Lab, and Prashant Jain, a chemist now with the University of Illinois, has discovered why nanocrystals made from multiple components in solution via the exchange of cations (positive ions) have been poor light emitters. The problem, they found, stems from impurities in the final product. The team also demonstrated that these impurities can be removed through heat.
"By heating these nanocrystals to 100 degrees Celsius, we were able to remove the impurities and increase their luminescence by 400-fold within 30 hours," says Jain, a member of Alivisatos' research group when this work was done. "When the impurities were removed the optoelectronic properties of nanocrystals made through cation-exchange were comparable in quality to dots and nanorods conventionally synthesized."
Says Alivisatos, "With our new findings, the cation-exchange technique really becomes a method that can be widely used to make novel high optoelectronic grade nanocrystals."
Jain is the lead author and Alivisatos the corresponding author of a paper describing this work in the journal Angewandte Chemie titled "Highly Luminescent Nanocrystals From Removal of Impurity Atoms Residual From Ion Exchange Synthesis." Other authors were Brandon Beberwyck, Lam-Kiu Fong and Mark Polking.
Quantum dots and nanorods are light-emitting semiconductor nanocrystals that have a broad range of applications, including bio-imaging, solar energy and display screen technologies. Typically, these nanocrystals are synthesized from colloids - particles suspended in solution. As an alternative, Alivisatos and his research group developed a new solution-based synthesis technique in which nanocrystals are chemically transformed by exchanging or replacing all of the cations in the crystal lattice with another type of cation. This cation-exchange technique makes it possible to produce new types of core/shell nanocrystals that are inaccessible through conventional synthesis. Core/shell nanocrystals are heterostructures in which one type of semiconductor is enclosed within another, for example, a cadmium selenide (CdSe) core and a cadmium sulfide (CdS) shell.
"While holding promise for the simple and inexpensive fabrication of multicomponent nanocrystals, the cation-exchange technique has yielded quantum dots and nanorods that perform poorly in optical and electronic devices," says Alivisatos, a world authority on nanocrystal synthesis who holds a joint appointment with the University of California (UC) Berkeley, where he is the Larry and Diane Bock professor of Nanotechnology.
As Jain tells the story, he was in the process of disposing of CdSe/CuS nanocrystals in solution that were six months old when out of habit he tested the nanocrystals under ultraviolet light. To his surprise he observed significant luminescence. Subsequent spectral measurements and comparing the new data to the old showed that the luminescence of the nanocrystals had increased by at least sevenfold.
"It was an accidental finding and very exciting," Jain says, "but since no one wants to wait six months for their samples to become high quality I decided to heat the nanocrystals to speed up whatever process was causing their luminescence to increase."
Jain and the team suspected and subsequent study confirmed that impurities original cations that end up being left behind in the crystal lattice during the exchange process - were the culprit.
"Even a few cation impurities in a nanocrystal are enough to be effective at trapping useful, energetic charge-carriers," Jain says. "In most quantum dots or nanorods, charge-carriers are delocalized over the entire nanocrystal, making it easy for them to find impurities, no matter how few there might be, within the nanocrystal. By heating the solution to remove these impurities and shut off this impurity-mediated trapping, we give the charge-carriers enough time to radiatively combine and thereby boost luminescence."
Since charge-carriers are also instrumental in electronic transport, photovoltaic performance, and photocatalytic processes, Jain says that shutting off impurity-mediated trapping should also boost these optoelectronic properties in nanocrystals synthesized via the cation-exchange technique.
###
This research was supported by the DOE Office of Science.
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory addresses the world's most urgent scientific challenges by advancing sustainable energy, protecting human health, creating new materials, and revealing the origin and fate of the universe. Founded in 1931, Berkeley Lab's scientific expertise has been recognized with 13 Nobel prizes. The University of California manages Berkeley Lab for the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science. For more, visit http://www.lbl.gov.
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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.
LONDON ? British and French foreign ministers are heading to New York on Monday to bolster Arab League efforts to press for a United Nations resolution aimed at halting Syria's violent crackdown on anti-regime protests.
Britain's Foreign Secretary William Hague and French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe both confirmed they would attend U.N. talks scheduled for Tuesday.
Officials hope that Qatari Prime Minister Hamad bin Jassim and Arab League officials, who will also attend, can help persuade Russia and China to back away from their opposition to a U.N. Security Council resolution.
Russia has insisted that it won't support any resolution which could enable foreign military intervention in Syria.
On Monday, it said Syria's government has agreed to come to Moscow for talks with the country's opposition representatives in. It was not immediately clear if Syria's opposition representatives would agree to such talks, but in the past they have said that an end to violence was their precondition for a meeting.
The French Foreign Ministry said Juppe would travel to New York "to convince the Security Council to assume its responsibilities in the face of the worsening of crimes against humanity by the Syrian regime."
In London, British Prime Minister David Cameron's office urged Moscow to reconsider its stance. "Russia can no longer explain blocking the U.N. and providing cover for the regime's brutal repression," a spokeswoman for Cameron said, on customary condition of anonymity in line with policy.
The U.N. estimates about 5,400 people have been killed in 10 months of violence.
Talks on Tuesday are scheduled to focus on a draft resolution based on an Arab League peace plan. That plan calls for a two-month transition to a unity government in Syria.
A British official, who requested anonymity to discuss negotiations on a resolution, said the U.N. would seek to approve a resolution calling for progress on halting the crisis.
The Security Council will threaten possible sanctions in no progress is made within two weeks, the official said.
However, the text would stress there are no plans for any military intervention in Syria ? though the option would not be explicitly, or permanently, ruled out, the official said.
Arab League Secretary-General Nabil Elaraby said Sunday in Egypt that contacts were under way with China and Russia in the hope of overcoming their opposition to a resolution.
On Saturday, the Arab League halted the work of its observer mission in Syria because of the escalating violence there.
When we drive somewhere new, we navigate by referring to a two-dimensional map that accounts for distances only on a horizontal plane. According to research published online in August in Nature Neuroscience, the mammalian brain seems to do the same, collapsing the world into a flat plane even as the animal skitters up trees and slips deep into burrows.
?Our subjective sense that our map is three-dimensional is illusory,? says Kathryn Jeffery, a behavioral neuroscientist at University College London who led the research. Jeffery studies a collection of neurons in and around the rat hippo?campus that build an internal representation of space. As the animal travels, these neurons, called grid cells and place cells, respond uniquely to distance, turning on and off in a way that measures how far the animal has moved in a particular direction.
Past research has focused on how these cartographic cells encode two-dimensional space. Jeffery and her col?leagues decided to look at how they respond to changes in altitude. To do this, they enticed rats to climb up a spiral staircase while the scientists collected electrical recordings from single cells. The firing pattern encoded very little in?formation about height.
The finding adds evidence for the hypothesis that the brain keeps track of our location on a flat plane, which is defined by the way the body is oriented. If a squirrel, say, is running along the ground, then scampers straight up a tree, its internal two-dimensional map simply shifts from the horizontal plane to the vertical. Astronauts are some of the few humans to de?scribe this experience: when they move in space to ?stand? on a ceiling, they report a moment of disorientation before their mental map flips so they feel right side up again.
Researchers do not know yet whether other areas of the brain encode altitude or whether mammals simply do not need that information to survive. ?Maybe an animal has a mosaic of maps, each fragment of which is flat but which can be oriented in the way that?s appropriate,? Jeffery speculates. Or maybe in our head, the world is simply flat.
Standing atop a huge mound of black, hydrocarbon sand, your sandboard tucked under your arm, you take in the view. Row after row of black dunes march into the distance as far as the eye can see, until everything disappears behind an orange curtain of smog.
This is no Earthly vista: you're on Saturn's largest moon, Titan. You strap your feet onto the board and slip off down the dune. Titan's low gravity means it takes a while to build up speed, but also keeps friction to a minimum, so it's a long glide down before you come to a halt.
Sandboarding on Titan still, sadly, only happens in our imagination, but the moon's amazing dunes are real ? and lie in a trippy landscape worthy of a late Beatles song. They were discovered in 2006 in radar images from NASA's Cassini spacecraft (see photo) and could be key to unravelling the climatic history of this eerily Earth-like moon.
Though chilling at -179??C, Titan has rain and lakes ? albeit of liquid methane rather than water ? along with mountains and river channels.
"Methane raining out and flowing across the surface leads to landscapes that are so much like Earth," says Jani Radebaugh, a planetary scientist at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah.
Plastic sand
Perhaps more like Earth than anywhere else in the solar system, in fact. Comparing and contrasting the two worlds could lead to a better understanding of climate and surface features on both, she says.
What makes the similarities so astonishing is the completely different materials of which Titan and Earth are made. Titan's crust and mountains are made of water ice. The sand grains comprising its dunes are thought to be hydrocarbons like benzene, which has been detected in the dunes by the Cassini spacecraft.
On Earth, hydrocarbons tend to exist as liquids or gases in oil deposits. On Titan, though, many are frozen solid. They are thought to form when ultraviolet light drives chemical reactions in Titan's atmosphere, and then to rain down onto the surface.
"The dunes may have a composition that's a little like plastic," says Radebaugh. To visualise standing on a dune on Titan, imagine "standing on huge volumes of plastic sand", she says.
Seasonal sculptures
Despite their unusual composition, Titan's dunes ? typically 100 metres tall, a kilometre wide, and up to hundreds of kilometres long ? are very similar in shape and size to long, skinny dunes in the Sahara desert called linear dunes.
As on Earth, Titan's dunes can tell us about climate. Last year, simulations of the dunes suggested the winds on Titan change seasonally, reversing direction and getting much faster twice a year. This solved a mystery of why Titan's dunes look as though they have been sculpted by winds blowing from west to east, even though the moon's winds were thought to blow in the opposite direction.
Now Alice Le Gall of the Space Atmospheres, Environments and Observations Laboratory (LATMOS-UVSQ) in Paris, France and colleagues have discovered more tantalising climate clues from measurements of the dunes.
They lie in a band 30 degrees both north and south of Titan's equator. Le Gall's team have shown that the dunes get smaller and more widely spaced towards the northern end of this range.
Egg-shaped orbit
The team conclude that this happens because the ground gets wetter with liquid methane towards the north, making the sand stick together and less prone to forming dunes.
This latitudinal variation in weather is likely to be due to Saturn's egg-shaped orbit, the team conclude, which produces more intense, drier summers in Titan's southern hemisphere compared with the north.
The discovery of dunes on Titan was a stroke of luck, says Radebaugh, who worked with Le Gall's team on the latest analysis. "We had no idea that these things would be there," she says. "We were surprised to find such a close analogue to Earth in something so far away."
And if there were only some way to hop over to Titan, she would love to try sandboarding there. "I think it would be possible and probably would be really fun," she says.
Read previous Astrophile columns: How to spot a dark-matter galaxy , Glimpse elusive matter in shattering star, Cool echoes from galaxy's biggest star, Stopped clocks deepen pulsar enigmas, Wounded galaxy is crux of cosmic whodunnit, Did comet killing spark Christmas light show?, Blinged-out stars were born rich, Supercritical water world does somersaults, Attack of the mystery green blobs, Undead stars rise again as supernovae, The sticky star cluster that's mostly black hole, The rebel star that broke the medieval sky, Star exploded? Just another day in Arp 220.
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SADADA, Libya (Reuters) ? A militia commander whose troops were driven out of the Libyan tribal stronghold of Bani Walid this week said on Friday that his forces were massing to recapture the town but were holding back at the government's request.
"It is our right to reenter Bani Walid and nobody can prevent us," Imbarak al-Futmani said in an interview with Reuters at his desert camp near Sadada, 30 miles east of Bani Walid.
Futmani's troops were pushed out by angry townsmen who he accuses of being the remnants of loyalists of Muammar Gaddafi, the former dictator who was overthrown then captured and killed in October.
Eight hundred of his men were now massed along the eastern flank of the town awaiting his orders to enter by force, said the elderly warrior, who was dressed in an ornate black and gold waistcoast, a skullcap and a white blanket over his shoulder.
Bani Walid, 90 miles south of Tripoli, was one of the last towns to surrender to the anti-Gaddafi rebellion last year.
Hundreds of fighters loyal to the interim government have surrounded the isolated town after hearing word that a pro-Gaddafi uprising had broken out.
Futmani said he faced a couple of hundred "criminals" nostalgic for Gaddafi's time in power, rather than large battalions of organized loyalists.
"We have all the revolutionary fighters with us and we can take Bani Walid in a matter of hours."
"If they don't hand themselves in, they will face what they cannot imagine," he added, his eyes hidden by thick-rimmed, amber Ray-Ban sunglasses.
GADDAFI SUPPORT ALLEGATIONS
On Monday, armed residents surrounded Futmani's brigade, who named themselves the "28th of May," after the date last year when Gaddafi loyalists executed a number of pro-democracy protesters in Bani Walid.
After a battle in which Futmani lost six fighters, his men fled the barracks in the dark of the night.
"Once the Gaddafis broke through the gate and entered the barracks, all they cared about was stealing our tanks. We just walked right out," said one of Futmani's men.
Echoing complaints by residents that the 28th of May Brigade had been harassing people and abusing prisoners, the town elders said they were dismissing the government-backed local council on which Futmani sits and appointing their own local government.
They said they were not Gaddafi supporters but just tired of the militia pushing its weight around their town.
Futmani says the elders profited from Gaddafi and were trying to reclaim their town from its rightful rulers, the western-backed National Transitional Council (NTC) government.
WAITING ON THE PRIME MINISTER
With hundreds of fighters waiting at the gates of Bani Walid, drinking tea and oiling their weapons in the cold desert, why have they have not pushed forward?
Sitting in his base, a former Gaddafi holiday mansion on the top of a rocky hill, Futmani said the prime minister had asked him to hold off to allow civilians to leave the town and, hopefully, for the assailants to surrender.
"The prime minister called me and asked me not to move and I accepted," he said.
"(Prime minister Abdel Rahim) El Keib promised that the government would use force to maintain security, if necessary."
Troops from the nascent National Army, composed of revolutionary fighters who have signed up to the government force, had joined the militias around Bani Walid.
The NTC has been unable to fully establish control over armed revolutionary groups in Libya and has only incorporated a few brigades into a national security force. All of the militias claim loyalty to the government but most are still unwilling to disarm. Instead, they adopt a wait-and-see approach to who comes to power, and if they like them.
Futmani's men cruise around the base in dirty pick-up trucks with machineguns mounted on the back.
He is skeptical of any peaceful solution and saw more violence ahead.
"These pro-Gaddafis, they see us a rats, like Gaddafi did," he said. "They are murderers and criminals, they will never integrate into the new Libya because they know they will face justice now."
NASA's Kepler planet-hunting mission has confirmed the existence of 26 more planets beyond our solar system. Msnbc.com's Alan Boyle explains how the confirmations were made.
By Alan Boyle
The science team for NASA's Kepler planet-hunting mission nearly doubled their list of confirmed planets beyond our solar system in one fell swoop today, announcing the discovery of 26 planets spread among 11 star systems. Their sizes range from just a little bit bigger than Earth to super-Jupiter-size, but they're all closer to their parent stars than Venus is to our own sun.
The accelerating pace of discovery is matched by the diversity seen in the worlds discovered so far, one of the Kepler mission's co-investigators, Harvard astronomer Dimitar Sasselov, told me today.
"There is more diversity out there than our limited imaginations could come up with, which is good," he said.
The $600 million Kepler mission, launched in 2009, now has a list of 61 confirmed planets, and another 2,326 planetary prospects that have yet to be confirmed. At this rate, Kepler's worlds could soon account for the majority of the exoplanets detected beyond our solar system ? a tally that now stands at more than 700.
"Prior to the Kepler mission, we knew of perhaps 500 exoplanets across the whole sky," Doug Hudgins, Kepler program scientist at NASA Headquarters, said in a news release. "Now, in just two years staring at a patch of sky not much bigger than your fist, Kepler has discovered more than 60 planets and more than 2,300 planet candidates. This tells us that our galaxy is positively loaded with planets of all sizes and orbits."
The Kepler space telescope searches for other worlds by staring at more than 150,000 stars in that fist-sized patch of sky, straddling the constellations Cygnus and Lyra. Kepler's instruments can detect the faint dips in starlight that occur on a regular basis as a planet passes over the disk of its parent star, as seen from Earth. By analyzing the patterns of those passes, also known as transits, Kepler's scientists can figure out the orbit and the size of a potential planet ? but not its mass.
An alternative method has to be used to confirm that Kepler is actually looking at a planet rather than something else, such as mutually eclipsing binary stars. The mission's early discoveries were confirmed by looking at the candidates' stars with ground-based telescopes and checking for the telltale gravitational wobbles that are caused by big, close-in planets.
Transit timing variations Most of the planets added to the list today were confirmed using a different backup method. The Kepler mission's astronomers analyzed subtle changes in the intervals between the transits, caused when multiple orbiting planets exert gravitational pull on each other. The resulting data on acceleration and deceleration can be used to confirm the planets' existence and calculate their masses.
"By precisely timing when each planet transits its star, Kepler detected the gravitational tug of the planets on each other, clinching the case for 10 of the newly announced planetary systems," said Dan Fabrycky, an astronomer at the University of California at Santa Cruz and the lead author for a paper confirming four of the planetary systems, known as Kepler-29, 30, 31 and 32.
Other newly confirmed planetary systems include Kepler-25, 26, 27 and 28, described in a paper with Fermilab's Jason Steffen as lead author; and Kepler-23 and 24, which was the focus of research led by the University of Florida's Eric Ford. In today's release, Ford said the transit timing variation method "dramatically accelerated" the pace of planetary discovery.
Yet another study, led by Jack Lissauer, a planetary scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center, detected five planets around Kepler-33, a star that is older and more massive than the sun. Those five planets range in size from 1.5 to five times the width of Earth, and they're all closer to their parent star than Mercury is to our own sun.
"The approach that was used to verify the Kepler-33 planets shows that the overall reliability of Kepler's candidate multiple transiting systems is quite high," Lissauer said in today's release. "This is a validation by multiplicity."
Five of the newly confirmed planetary systems (Kepler-25, 27, 30, 31 and 33) contain a pair of worlds that are bound together in a 1:2 resonance. That means the inner planet makes two circuit for every one circuit made by the outer planet. Four other systems (Kepler-23, 24, 28 and 32) have two planets that are linked in a 2:3 resonance, like Pluto and Neptune in our own solar system.
"These configurations help to amplify the gravitational interactions between the planets, similar to how my sons kick their legs on a swing at the right time to go higher," Steffen said.
Fifteen of the 26 planets announced today are Neptune-size or smaller, and the orbital periods range from six to 143 days.
Great expectations Sasselov marveled that so many of the worlds being found by Kepler are in multiple-planet systems. He recalled that when the Kepler mission was proposed to NASA, more than a decade ago, "there was one little sentence that said maybe two or three of the systems will have multiple transiting planets."
None of the planets announced today would be conducive to life as we know it, because their orbits are so close to their parent stars. It's likely to be just a matter of time before Kepler achieves its main goal ? confirming the existence of Earth-size planets in Earthlike orbits around sunlike stars. Unfortunately, it may be a matter of more time than initially expected.
Funding for the Kepler mission is due to run out in November, but the mission's scientists "don't have enough to statistically complete the core goal of the mission," Sasselov said. It turns out that the data collected by the telescope is "noisier" than expected. That means more observations will be required to confirm the mission's trickiest planetary finds.
The Kepler team has applied for a four-year extension, and is currently waiting for a decision from NASA executives.
More about the planet search:
The planetary confirmations are described in four research papers:
"Transit Timing Observations from Kepler: II. Confirmation of Two Multiplanet Systems via a Non-parametric Correlation Analysis'' by E.B. Ford et al., The Astrophysical Journal.
"Transit Timing Observations from Kepler: III. Confirmation of 4 Multiple Planet Systems by a Fourier-Domain Study of Anti-correlated Transit Timing Variations," by J.H. Steffen et al., Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
"Transit Timing Observations from Kepler: IV. Confirmation of 4 Multiple Planet Systems by Simple Physical Models'," by D.C. Fabrycky et al., The Astrophysical Journal.
"Almost All of Kepler's Multiple Planet Candidates are Planets, and Kepler-33 5-planet System," by J. Lissauer et al.
Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.
TOKYO (Reuters) ? Japan's core consumer prices fell for the third consecutive month in the year to December, and mild deflation is expected to persist this year as energy prices stabilize and worries about Europe's debt crisis suppress wage growth and economic activity.
Core consumer prices declined an annual 0.1 percent, matching the median estimate, and a narrower measure that excludes both food and energy also fell in a sign that Japan continues to grapple with a strong yen, which pushes down import prices and makes exporters reluctant to raise salaries.
Retail sales fell 1.2 pct in 2011, the first fall in two years, and auto and machinery equipment sales posted record falls in the series, which dates back to 1980. But sales rose an annual 2.5 percent in December, the biggest increase in 16 months.
The Bank of Japan and the government concede that the economy is in a lull, and they could come under increasing pressure to support it with currency intervention and monetary policy easing as Europe's debt crisis weighs on external demand.
Europe's downturn could offset the economic benefits of rebuilding the country's earthquake-damaged northeast coast.
"The stagnation of other developed countries is likely to push back the timing of Japan beating deflation from the mid-2010s as originally thought to the late 2010s," said Takeshi Minami, chief economist at Norinchukin Research Institute.
"The BOJ will need to keep its ultra-easy stance in the meantime. If risks from the euro-zone debt crisis heighten, it could move for an additional easing in the near term."
Japan's core consumer price index (CPI) includes oil products but excludes volatile prices of fresh fruit, vegetables and seafood.
The so-called core-core inflation index, which excludes food and energy prices and is similar to the core index used in the United States, fell 1.1 percent in the year to December.
Core consumer prices in Tokyo, available a month before the nationwide data, fell 0.4 percent in the year to January. That compares with the median estimate for a 0.3 percent annual decline.
HARD TO EXPECT SELF-SUSTAINED RECOVERY SOON
Annual data showed the core CPI slipped 0.3 percent in 2011, the third straight yearly fall. Japan's consumer inflation has been around zero or minus for over a decade, except a 1.5 percent rise in 2008 on the back of an increase in energy prices.
"Overall consumption is relatively firm partly supported by reconstruction demand. But it is hard to expect to see a self-sustainable recovery in private spending," said Masamichi Adachi, senior economist at JPMorgan Securities Japan.
"With uncertainty about the economic outlook and lackluster wage growth, consumers are unlikely to boost spending."
Nippon Keidanren, the country's largest business lobby, cited this week uncertainty about energy, the strong yen and a manufacturing shift overseas as reasons why pay raises are out of the question in annual labor union negotiations in the spring.
Japan's economy will likely show a mild contraction in the fiscal year ending in March but is expected to rebound next fiscal year, supported by reconstruction demand after the March 2011 earthquake.
Reconstruction could help narrow the gap between supply and demand but won't be enough to inflate demand in excess of supply and bring about an end to deflation, economists say.
Some Bank of Japan board members see a slight delay in post-quake reconstruction demand, and the global slowdown is somewhat more acute than previously thought, minutes of the central bank's December 20-21 meeting showed on Friday.
(Additional reporting by Rie Ishiguro; Writing by Stanley White; Editing by Kim Coghill)
ScienceDaily (Jan. 25, 2012) ? A significant obstacle to progress in understanding psychiatric disorders is the difficulty in obtaining living brain tissue for study so that disease processes can be studied directly. Recent advances in basic cellular neuroscience now suggest that, for some purposes, cultured neural stem cells may be studied in order to research psychiatric disease mechanisms. But where can one obtain these cells outside of the brain?
Increasingly, schizophrenia research is turning to the nose. Strange as it may seem, the idea makes sense because the olfactory mucosa, the sense organ of smell in the nose, is continually regenerating new sensory neurons from "adult" stem cells. These neurons are among the very few nerve cells outside of the skull that connect directly to nerve cells in the brain.
Over several decades, researchers found that these cells can be collected directly by obtaining a small tissue sample, called a biopsy. By taking small pieces of olfactory tissue from the nose, researchers of this new study were able to gain access to the stem cells from patients with schizophrenia and compare them to cells from healthy individuals.
"We have discovered that patient cells proliferate faster -- they are running with a faster speed to their clock controlling the cell cycle -- and we have identified some of the molecules that are responsible," explained Dr. Alan Mackay-Sim from the National Centre for Adult Stem Cell Research in Brisbane, Australia, an author of the study. The findings clearly indicate that the natural cell cycle is dysregulated in individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia.
"This is a first insight into real differences in patient cells that could lead to slightly altered brain development," Mackay-Sim added. This is an important finding, as scientists are already aware of many developmental abnormalities in the 'schizophrenia brain'.
Dr. John Krystal, editor of Biological Psychiatry, commented: "The current findings are particularly interesting because when we look closely at the clues to the neurobiology of psychiatric disorders, we find new and often unexpected mechanisms implicated."
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Journal Reference:
Yongjun Fan, Greger Abrahamsen, John J. McGrath, Alan Mackay-Sim. Altered Cell Cycle Dynamics in Schizophrenia. Biological Psychiatry, 2012; 71 (2): 129 DOI: 10.1016/j.biopsych.2011.10.004
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Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
Animals from butterflies to birds have iridescent colours to draw the eye. But why golden moles? They spend most of their lives in near-darkness - and they're blind.
Now a study of the structure of the hairs shows that they may be designed to streamline the moles or repel water, rather than attract a mate.
Matthew Shawkey of the University of Akron in Ohio took samples from four golden mole species, all with blue or green iridescence. Electron microscopes revealed that the hairs were flattened into paddle shapes, giving a greater surface area to reflect light.
Unusually, the scales on each hair contained alternating light and dark layers. Each layer bent the rays of light just like oil on water (Biology Letters, DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2011.1168). Shawkey says this is the first example of a multilayer reflector in hair.
The iridescence is an evolutionary accident, he believes. The hairs' structure may make them more sturdy, repel water, or streamline the moles so they can move quickly through dirt and sand. "Penguin feathers are flattened like this," he points out.
Most iridescent animals probably evolved it for communication, but golden moles are a rare exception, says St?phanie Doucet of the University of Windsor in Ontario, Canada. Some burrowing snakes and beetles are also iridescent, probably for similar reasons, she adds.
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FYI: How Long-Running Is the Longest-Running Lab Experiment? Eighty-five years so far. The pitch-drop experiment?really more of a demonstration?began in 1927 when Thomas Parnell, a physics professor at the University of Queensland in Australia, set out to show his students that tar pitch, a derivative of coal so brittle that it can be smashed to pieces with a hammer, is in fact a highly viscous fluid.
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ScienceDaily (Jan. 24, 2012) ? Rice University physicists have gone to extremes to prove that Isaac Newton's classical laws of motion can apply in the atomic world: They've built an accurate model of part of the solar system inside a single atom of potassium.
In a new paper published this week in Physical Review Letters, Rice's team and collaborators at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Vienna University of Technology showed they could cause an electron in an atom to orbit the nucleus in precisely the same way that Jupiter's Trojan asteroids orbit the sun.
The findings uphold a prediction made in 1920 by famed Danish physicist Niels Bohr about the relationship between the then-new science of quantum mechanics and Newton's tried-and-true laws of motion.
"Bohr predicted that quantum mechanical descriptions of the physical world would, for systems of sufficient size, match the classical descriptions provided by Newtonian mechanics," said lead researcher Barry Dunning, Rice's Sam and Helen Worden Professor of Physics and chair of the Department of Physics and Astronomy. "Bohr also described the conditions under which this correspondence could be observed. In particular, he said it should be seen in atoms with very high principal quantum numbers, which are exactly what we study in our laboratory."
Bohr was a pioneer of quantum physics. His 1913 atomic model, which is still widely invoked today, postulated a small nucleus surrounded by electrons moving in well-defined orbits and shells. The word "quantum" in quantum mechanics derives from the fact that these orbits can have only certain well-defined energies. Jumps between these orbits lead to absorption or emission of specific amounts of energy termed quanta. As an electron gains energy, its quantum number increases, and it jumps to higher orbits that circle ever farther from the nucleus.
In the new experiments, Rice graduate students Brendan Wyker and Shuzhen Ye began by using an ultraviolet laser to create a Rydberg atom. Rydberg atoms contain a highly excited electron with a very large quantum number. In the Rice experiments, potassium atoms with quantum numbers between 300 and 600 were studied.
"In such excited states, the potassium atoms become hundreds of thousands of times larger than normal and approach the size of a period at the end of a sentence," Dunning said. "Thus, they are good candidates to test Bohr's prediction."
He said comparing the classical and quantum descriptions of the electron orbits is complicated, in part because electrons exist as both particles and waves. To "locate" an electron, physicists calculate the likelihood of finding the electron at different locations at a given time. These predictions are combined to create a "wave function" that describes all the places where the electron might be found. Normally, an electron's wave function looks like a diffuse cloud that surrounds the atomic nucleus, because the electron might be found on any side of the nucleus at a given time.
Dunning and co-workers previously used a tailored sequence of electric field pulses to collapse the wave function of an electron in a Rydberg atom; this limited where it might be found to a localized, comma-shaped area called a "wave packet." This localized wave packet orbited the nucleus of the atom much like a planet orbits the sun. But the effect lasted only for a brief period.
"We wanted to see if we could develop a way to use radio frequency waves to capture this localized electron and make it orbit the nucleus indefinitely without spreading out," Ye said.
They succeeded by applying a radio frequency field that rotated around the nucleus itself. This field ensnared the localized electron and forced it to rotate in lockstep around the nucleus.
A further electric field pulse was used to measure the final result by taking a snapshot of the wave packet and destroying the delicate Rydberg atom in the process. After the experiment had been run tens of thousands of times, all the snapshots were combined to show that Bohr's prediction was correct: The classical and quantum descriptions of the orbiting electron wave packets matched. In fact, the classical description of the wave packet trapped by the rotating field parallels the classical physics that explains the behavior of Jupiter's Trojan asteroids.
Jupiter's 4,000-plus Trojan asteroids -- so called because each is named for a hero of the Trojan wars -- have the same orbit as Jupiter and are contained in comma-shaped clouds that look remarkably similar to the localized wave packets created in the Rice experiments. And just as the wave packet in the atom is trapped by the combined electric field from the nucleus and the rotating wave, the Trojans are trapped by the combined gravitational field of the sun and orbiting Jupiter.
The researchers are now working on their next experiment: They're attempting to localize two electrons and have them orbit the nucleus like two planets in different orbits.
"The level of control that we're able to achieve in these atoms would have been unthinkable just a few years ago and has potential applications in, for example, quantum computing and in controlling chemical reactions using ultrafast lasers," Dunning said.
The research was funded by the National Science Foundation, the Robert A. Welch Foundation, the Austrian Science Fund and the Department of Energy. Paper co-authors include S. Yoshida of the Vienna University of Technology; C.O. Reinhold of Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University of Tennessee; and J. Burgd?rfer of Vienna University of Technology and the University of Tennessee.
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Tom Brady had one of his most memorable post-game moments on the AFC title game podium last night.
?Well, I sucked pretty bad today, but our defense saved us,? Brady said. ?And I?m going to try to go out and do a better job in a couple weeks.?
It was an interesting moment. Brady was obviously thrilled to go to the Super Bowl, but his press conference later showed that ?the night was almost bittersweet. Brady was still bothered by his performance. He missed too many open passes and made two big mistakes on interceptions.
Going home to Giselle apparently didn?t make things any better. Brady said his interception to Matthew Slater bothered him the most.
?That was probably the play that kept me up all night last night,? he said on WEEI this morning via ESPNBoston.com.
After the game, Brady went up to Patriots owner Robert Kraft and promised that he?d play better in the Super Bowl. Kraft didn?t sound too worried about his quarterback.
We wonder if Brady, aware of his own football mortality, was almost too amped up for Sunday?s game. Brady turns 35 this year and he knows these chances don?t come around every year.
?Not that I?ve ever taken for granted being there, because I certainly haven?t, but you really realize how hard it is to get there,? Brady said.
Brady says he still can?t watch highlights from the team?s loss in Super Bowl 42 because it was so painful. Now he will get a chance to make amends for the worst loss of his career in a legacy-altering rematch against the Giants.
Just a guess, but we doubt he sucks pretty bad again.
A psychologist takes up guitar in his late 30s and becomes a working exemplar of the brain's inherent plasticity
By Gary Stix
?|
January 21, 2012?|
Gary Marcus, in the red shirt, helped hone his playing skills at the DayJams summer camp, by playing in a band.Image: Athena Vouloumanos
Gary Marcus suffers from what a friend jokingly describes as congenital arrhythmia?the inability, despite many hours of his youth spent practicing and taking lessons, to learn to play a musical instrument. A few years ago Marcus, a cognitive psychologist at New York University, decided at 38 to make one last try when he took up guitar. No surprise: He did not succeed in becoming the next Jimi Hendrix, but managed to acquire a modicum of skill?and went on to describe his experience in Guitar Zero: The New Musician and the Science of Learning.
Marcus says his personal experience jibes with current theories in neuroscience that adult brains are plastic?that, in practice, they can learn new skills that scientists once thought had to be acquired during the so-called critical period of prepubescent childhood. Marcus, though, calls into question the conventional wisdom that hard work alone suffices. Raw talent also plays a role, he says?a message that will come as a surprise to many people in an era that lauds "tiger moms" and 10,000-hour apprenticeships. Marcus spoke with Scientific American about music and the brain. Excerpts
[An edited transcript of the interview follows.]
What is a critical period?
It's supposed to be a window in development that defines the only period in which a thing can be learned.
How has our understanding about this concept changed?
There used to be an idea that there were very strict critical periods,?? that you had to learn something by a certain time or you wouldn't be able to do it all. That's the dominant idea in the textbooks. What we've found in the last decade is that there's a gradual decline rather than an immediate falloff.
Neurons do become less flexible over time, which makes learning more difficult, but not all in one moment. There's sort of a gradual decline. The other thing that gets in the way relates to interferences with what's learned early in life. So if you try to learn a new language that works differently from your old language, you sometimes get stuck when using the new language. Another reason for difficulty learning new things is that adults are simply busy with other obligations.
There have always been late bloomers. Grandma Moses and Anton Bruckner, among others.
For sure! People like that presumably have considerable innate talent, to begin with, and then later in life develop a passion that consumes them and leads them to great heights.
How far do you think someone could go? Do you think it would ever be possible to start playing at 50 and become a concert violinist?
I think it's possible. It's less likely; starting earlier is better. If you're starting later in life, I think you need to temper your ambitions. But I don't think it's completely impossible if you devote yourself to something?especially if you have some raw talent.
How important is talent? The popular psychology literature has focused a lot of attention on the question of motivation?the idea that 10,000 hours of concerted practice can make you an expert in virtually any field.
The idea of 10,000 hours is a nice first approximation, but also very much oversold. It's weird the way some prominent people seem to have forgotten about genes. Some people become experts faster, some slower, and it also depends on what skill you are trying to acquire.
The fact that practice is important doesn't mean that talent isn't. Most of the top performers in any field are people who combine industry with predisposition. You can actually see that in the original studies that inspired the "10,000 hour" rule of thumb?some people who had practiced for 10 years were better than others that practiced for 20, and that's what talent is. There is also a huge literature in twin studies that highlights the contributions of genes and heritability. Without talent you can become very good, but to be truly outstanding, you probably need the right genes, too.
LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) ? Tracy Morgan sent up his gay slur controversy on Thursday's "30 Rock," but this time GLAAD is laughing.
Morgan landed in the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation's crosshairs last summer when he joked during a standup routine that he would stab his son to death if he were gay. After the remarks went viral, NBC programming chief Robert Greenblatt and "30 Rock" creator Tina Fey issued statements condemning his act.
Morgan apologized to the gay community for the routine and met with GLAAD and victims of anti-gay violence.
The rainbow tour of remorse's final stop may have been on Thursday's "30 Rock." In the episode, Tracy Jordan (Morgan's clueless onscreen ego) sparks a protest after he angers audiences with a homophobic standup routine.
His boss, Liz Lemon (Fey) demands he apologize, telling him, "You're a public figure and, believe it or not, the dumb things you say may influence or hurt people."
But Morgan mistakenly apologizes to the makers of Glad bags, rather than to the anti-defamation group.
GLAAD's Senior Director of Programs Herndon Graddick told The New York Times, "I thought it was hilarious. We've been called worse than trash bag manufacturers and look forward to seeing the second part next week."
COLUMBIA, S.C. ? Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich collided Saturday in the South Carolina primary, the first Southern testing ground in the race for the Republican presidential nomination and historically a harbinger of the final outcome.
Rick Santorum and Texas Rep. Ron Paul rounded out the field in a campaign defined by its unpredictability.
There were 25 Republican National Convention delegates at stake, but political momentum was the real prize with the race to pick an opponent to President Barack Obama still in its early stages.
In all, more than $12 million was spent on television ads by the candidates and their allies in South Carolina, much of it on attacks designed to degrade the support of rivals.
Already, Romney and a group that supports him were on the air in next-up Florida with a significant ad campaign, more than $7 million combined to date. The state's primary is Jan. 31.
Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, swept into South Carolina 11 days ago as the favorite after being pronounced the winner of the lead-off Iowa caucuses, then cruising to victory in New Hampshire's first-in-the-nation primary.
But in the sometimes-surreal week that followed, he was stripped of his Iowa triumph ? Santorum holds the lead if not the win ? while former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman dropped out and endorsed Romney and Texas Rep. Rick Perry quit and backed Gingrich.
Romney responded awkwardly to questions about releasing his income tax returns, and about his investments in the Cayman Islands. Gingrich, the former speaker of the House, benefited from two well-received debate performances while grappling with allegations by an ex-wife that he had once asked her for an open marriage so he could keep his mistress.
By primary eve, Romney was speculating openly about a lengthy battle for the nomination rather than the quick knockout that had seemed within his grasp only days earlier.
One piece of primary day theater failed to materialize when the two men avoided crossing paths at Tommy's Ham House in Greenville, packed with partisans holding signs that read either "Romney" or "Newt 2012."
Romney rolled in earlier than expected, and had left by the time Gingrich arrived.
Santorum got a lift hours before the polls closed when the Iowa Republican Party declared him the winner of the caucuses on Jan. 3. Romney was pronounced the victor by eight votes initially, but on Thursday, party officials said a recount showed Santorum ahead by 34. Even so, they declared the outcome a tie.
Santorum, a former Pennsylvania senator, pinned his South Carolina hopes on a heavy turnout in parts of the state with large concentrations of social conservatives, the voters who carried him to his surprisingly strong showing in Iowa.
Paul had a modest campaign presence here after finishing third in Iowa and second in New Hampshire. His call to withdraw U.S. troops from around the world was a tough sell in a state dotted with military installations and home to many veterans.
As the first Southern primary, South Carolina has been a proving ground for Republican presidential hopefuls in recent years.
Since Ronald Reagan in 1980, every Republican contender who won the primary has gone on to capture the party's nomination.
Romney's stumbles began even before his New Hampshire primary victory, when he told one audience that he had worried earlier in his career about the possibility of being laid off.
He gave a somewhat rambling, noncommittal response in a debate in Myrtle Beach last Monday when asked if he would release his tax returns before the primary. The following day, he told reporters that because most of his earnings come from investments, he paid about 15 percent of his income in taxes, roughly half the rate paid by millions of middle-class wage-earners. A day later, aides confirmed that some of his millions are invested in the Cayman Islands, although they said he did not use the offshore accounts as a tax haven.
Asked again at a debate in North Charleston on Thursday about releasing his taxes, his answer was anything but succinct and the audience appeared to boo.
Gingrich benefited from a shift in strategy that recalled his approach when he briefly soared to the top of the polls in Iowa. At mid-week he began airing a television commercial that dropped all references to Romney and his other rivals, and contended that he was the only Republican who could defeat Obama.
It featured several seconds from the first debate in which the audience cheered as he accused Obama of having put more Americans on food stamps than any other president.
Nor did Gingrich flinch when ex-wife Marianne said in an interview on ABC that he had been unfaithful for years before their divorce in 1999, and asked him for an open marriage.
Asked about the accusation in the opening moments of the second debate of the week, he unleashed an attack on ABC and debate host CNN and accused the "liberal news media" of trying to help Obama by attacking Republicans. His ex-wife's account, he said, was untrue.
___
Associated Press writers Shannon McCaffrey, Kasie Hunt and Beth Fouhy contributed to this report.
Redbox's kiosks are now the leading source of physical DVD rentals in the U.S., and video-on-demand accounts for one out of three paid movie rentals.
"Brick-and-mortar retail stores continue to cede movie-rental market share, as kiosks and digital-streaming rentals become more accepted by consumers," said The NPD Group Thursday.
Live Poll
Which do you mainly use to rent movies?
173804
1. Those red kiosks (Redbox).
36%
173805
2. Video on demand.
8%
173806
3. Netflix DVDs or streaming.
40%
173807
4. iTunes or Amazon.
4%
173808
5. Blockbuster or other brick-and-mortar store.
3%
173809
6. Don't rent movies at all.
9%
VoteTotal Votes: 554
"There's no doubt that Redbox has been the largest beneficiary of the collapsing brick-and-mortar store rental business, especially with ongoing Blockbuster store closings and the fact that there are also fewer independent stores than the prior year," said Russ Crupnick, senior vice president, industry analysis for The NPD Group, in a release.
Netflix remains the "dominant provider of paid digital movie rentals, posting a 55 percent share in the fourth quarter of 2011, though Netflix's share is down somewhat from the company's peak of 59 percent" in the second and third quarters of last year,?according to the?The NPD Group.
The research firm said U.S. consumer rental of movies in DVD and Blu-ray disc formats fell by 11 percent in 2011 from 2010. The leader for actual disc rentals was Redbox, which saw its unit volume up by 29 percent in 2011 over the year before.
Some consumers may have been driven to Redbox or video on demand after giving up on Netflix, whose price hikes last year angered consumers.
The company's "share erosion may have resulted from their recent well-publicized challenges with pricing, and from their now defunct Quikster (DVDs-only) experiment," Crupnick said. "However, they are in the process of shifting customers to their Watch Instantly option, so not all of the physical movie rental share drop is a net loss."
The movie rental market is "clearly undergoing a sea change, as consumers become better equipped to access on-demand and streamed movies and are more comfortable with available delivery options," he said. But, he added, "Even so, renting physical discs from now-ubiquitous kiosks in grocery stores and other venues has taken the lead as the most popular movie-rental method in the U.S."
"Now-ubiquitous" is right, for Redbox. You can't, it seems, go a block or past a grocery store or drugstore without finding the red kiosks, almost as prevalent as Starbucks. One down side is that when you're at the kiosk, if something goes wrong during the purchase process, you can be stuck (despite an 800 number to call that often results in a long, long wait) ? something you don't want to do standing near a parking lot.
Related stories:
Check out Technolog, Gadgetbox, Digital Life and In-Game on?Facebook,?and on Twitter, follow Suzanne Choney.
>>congressman from
south carolina
. thank you for your time.
>>thank you for having me.
>>why do you believe he had a 23-point lead in the polls, and now it's down to ten.
>>well, there are two things converging in this state. one, mr.
romney
himself. he has allowed himself to be separated from the
ordinary people
. it's one thing to be wealthy, nobody begrudges him for that. it's another thing to try and make yourself different because of that wealth. that's what he has done with a lot of his words and phrases. for him to say last night during the debate that he walked ordinary streets, everybody knows that's not true. for him to say he inherited nothing from his father. that everything he got he made it himself. that is absolutely not true. people are beginning to say this guy will say anything in order to get a vote, and he has separated himself from
ordinary people
. now, you got
newt gingrich
on the other side putting out his
tax returns
, showing that he may have paid somewhere around 30%
income tax
on his earnings. here is a guy with all that wealth and saying he's paid only 15%. he has separated himself from
ordinary people
in a way that newt only had to go halfway.
romney
went the other half be.
>>let me ask you, there was this title of the inevitable nominee. people believe it was his game to lose. then another bad debate when it came to answering these financial questions. evenmitt
romney
, tries to just poex him when has not tried. it's like he's putting the cart before the horse.
>>that's correct. i wondered from day one, what kind of candidate would go out, extend him or herself to the other side without ever consolidatiing his or her own base. they didn't seem to do that. the whole thing was all you got to do was be a hater to
obama
or an objector for
obama
and that's all you needed for your base. no, no. voters are interested in what you are going to do with me. how will by table top issues get better if you get elected? you just can't be against the other guy. you got to show me why it is i need to invest my precious vote in you and
mitt romney
--
>>i want to ask you, is that what
newt gingrich
is doing in your home state? there's been instances where he's referred to the president as this
food stamp
president and a woman flattered him by saying it was good that she showed
juan williams
his place in all of this. there's been a lot of talk about race and how it is, for some people, fuel for fire. making them want to get out and vote against this president for whatever reasons or obvious reasons. it is true you have to put out ideas because what we saw in that debate, he's putting out more fire.
>>what i said was, newt had to do his 50%. his 50% was consolidating his base. that's what he's doing with that kind of language. he does his anti-
obama
stuff, but newt has done a good job of consolidating his base. i don't like where his base is, but the fact of the matter is, using words and phrases like that tend to consolidate his base. that's what he has done to excite these voters and that's why with
romney
failing to connect and not talking about his vision for the future and with him consolidating his base, those two things have converged in such a way that mitt will benefit in the a very positive way.
>>let me ask you about the first five minutes of the debate when
john king
asked
newt gingrich
about his wife's interview in which she revealed
newt gingrich
asked her for an
open marriage
. all of the candidates were asked their thoughts on this issue of a person's character and how it should play into the vote. i want to show you each introduced themselves to the audience.
>>i'm
rick santorum
, and i want to thank the people for their hospitality for my wife and karen children.
>>i'm married now 42 years. i have five kids, daughters-in-law and 16 grand kids.
>>i'm proud that my wife of 54 are years tonight.
>>i want to thank the people of
south carolina
for being so hospitable.
>>the other three thanked their lives and brought up their families. when given an opportunity not to do any mud slinging, but to just talk about character. they passed, but then were passive aggressive and bringing up their spouses and how many kids they have.
>>we all do that. i'm proud of the fact that i've been married to the same person for 50 years. i have three lovely daughters and three great-grandchildren. we talk about that. i think it's
fair game
. we talk about family issues and
family values
. the question is to the extent of which we value our families. i think it's very good for them to do that. if i were newt, i would have brought up the fact that i've got a wife even though it may be a third one. the fact of the matter is, i think i would have brought it up if i were him.
>>all right. congress clyburn it's great to have you. thank you.
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