Microsoft just announced on a call with shareholders that the Windows Blue update will officially be called Windows 8.1, which will be a free update. It'll be available for both Windows 8 and Windows RT.
A preview will be available to the public after the Microsoft Build conference. Windows 8.1 is expected to fix a lot of the biggest concerns users had with the Metro interface, without completely abandoning the concept.
BELIZE CITY (AP) ? A construction company has essentially destroyed one of Belize's largest Mayan pyramids with backhoes and bulldozers to extract crushed rock for a road-building project, authorities announced on Monday.
The head of the Belize Institute of Archaeology, Jaime Awe, said the destruction at the Nohmul complex in northern Belize was detected late last week. The ceremonial center dates back at least 2,300 years and is the most important site in northern Belize, near the border with Mexico.
"It's a feeling of Incredible disbelief because of the ignorance and the insensitivity ... they were using this for road fill," Awe said. "It's like being punched in the stomach, it's just so horrendous."
Nohmul sat in the middle of a privately owned sugar cane field, and lacked the even stone sides frequently seen in reconstructed or better-preserved pyramids. But Awe said the builders could not possibly have mistaken the pyramid mound, which is about 100 feet tall, for a natural hill because the ruins were well-known and the landscape there is naturally flat.
"These guys knew that this was an ancient structure. It's just bloody laziness", Awe said.
Photos from the scene showed backhoes clawing away at the pyramid's sloping sides, leaving an isolated core of limestone cobbles at the center, with what appears to be a narrow Mayan chamber dangling above one clawed-out section.
"Just to realize that the ancient Maya acquired all this building material to erect these buildings, using nothing more than stone tools and quarried the stone, and carried this material on their heads, using tump lines," said Awe. "To think that today we have modern equipment, that you can go and excavate in a quarry anywhere, but that this company would completely disregard that and completely destroyed this building. Why can't these people just go and quarry somewhere that has no cultural significance? It's mind-boggling."
Belizean police said they are conducting an investigation and criminal charges are possible. The Nohmul complex sits on private land, but Belizean law says that any pre-Hispanic ruins are under government protection.
The Belize community-action group Citizens Organized for Liberty Through Action called the destruction of the archaeological site "an obscene example of disrespect for the environment and history."
It is not the first time it's happened in Belize, a country of about 350,000 people that is largely covered in jungle and dotted with hundreds of Mayan ruin sites, though few as large as Nohmul.
Norman Hammond, an emeritus professor of archaeology at Boston University who worked in Belizean research projects in the 1980s, wrote in an email that "bulldozing Maya mounds for road fill is an endemic problem in Belize (the whole of the San Estevan center has gone, both of the major pyramids at Louisville, other structures at Nohmul, many smaller sites), but this sounds like the biggest yet."
Arlen Chase, chairman of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Central Florida, said, "Archaeologists are disturbed when such things occur, but there is only a very limited infrastructure in Belize that can be applied to cultural heritage management."
"Unfortunately, they (destruction of sites) are all too common, but not usually in the center of a large Maya site," Chase wrote.
He said there had probably still been much to learn from the site. "A great deal of archaeology was undertaken at Nohmul in the '70s and '80s, but this only sampled a small part of this large center."
Belize isn't the only place where the handiwork of the far-flung and enormously prolific Maya builders is being destroyed. The ancient Mayas spread across southeastern Mexico and through Guatemala, Honduras and Belize.
"I don't think I am exaggerating if I say that every day a Maya mound is being destroyed for construction in one of the countries where the Maya lived," wrote Francisco Estrada-Belli, a professor at Tulane University's Anthropology Department.
"Unfortunately, this destruction of our heritage is irreversible but many don't take it seriously," he added. "The only way to stop it is by showing that it is a major crime and people can and will go to jail for it."
Robert Rosenswig, an archaeologist at the State University of New York at Albany, described the difficult and heartbreaking work of trying to salvage information at the nearby site of San Estevan following similar destruction around 2005.
"Bulldozing damage at San Estevan is extensive and the site is littered with Classic period potsherds," he wrote in an academic paper describing the scene. "We spent a number of days at the beginning of the 2005 season trying to figure out the extent of the damage .... after scratching our heads for many days, a bulldozer showed up and we realized that what appear to be mounds, when overgrown with chest-high vegetation, are actually recently bulldozed garbage piles."
However small the compensation, bulldozing pyramids is one very brutal way of revealing the inner cores of the structures, which were often built up in periodic stages of construction.
"The one advantage of this massive destruction, to the core site, is that the remains of early domestic activity are now visible on the surface," Rosenswig wrote.
___
Associated Press writer Patrick E. Jones reported this story in Belize and Mark Stevenson reported from Mexico City.
The Sun has unleashed its most powerful eruption of 2013 so far.
The solar flare - a sudden release of radiation - peaked at 1705 BST on Monday, and was associated with a huge eruption of matter.
When these eruptions reach Earth, they can interfere with electronic systems in satellites and those on the ground.
Nasa said this solar explosion - known as a coronal mass ejection (CME) - was not directed at Earth, but it could pass several US spacecraft.
The event on Monday was classified as an "X-class" flare - the most intense type - with a designation of X2.8 (higher numbers denote a stronger flare). It surpassed an X1.7-class flare that occurred 14 hours earlier.
They are the first X-class events to occur this year.
When intense enough, a flare can disturb the Earth's atmosphere in the layer where GPS and communications signals travel.
This disrupts the radio signals for as long as the flare is ongoing - the radio blackout associated with this flare has since subsided.
CMEs can be even more disruptive because they can send billions of tonnes of solar particles into space. In those cases when very strong eruptions do reach Earth, the charged matter can blow out transformers in power grids.
The so-called Carrington Event of 1-2 September 1859 shorted telegraph wires, starting fires in North America and Europe, and caused bright aurorae (northern and southern lights) to be seen in Cuba and Hawaii.
The CME associated with this flare may pass the Stereo-B and Spitzer spacecraft. The operators of those science missions can choose to put their spacecraft into a "safe mode" to protect the electronics in onboard instruments from being tripped.
Increased numbers of flares are expected at the moment because the Sun's normal 11-year activity cycle is approaching a "high" of activity - known as a solar maximum.
WASHINGTON (AP) ? President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron opened wide-ranging talks at the White House Monday on Syria and trade, though brewing domestic controversies were competing for the White House's attention.
Cameron arrived at the White House Monday morning for an Oval Office meeting with Obama. The two leaders were then to hold a joint news conference in the East Room.
The agenda for the meeting of allies was expected to include the protracted Syrian civil war, the Mideast peace process, trade and preparations for a coming summit of the world's leading industrial nations in Northern Ireland.
At the same time, the White House was seeking to contain potential setbacks involving the ongoing investigation into Benghazi attacks and new revelations that the Internal Revenue Service targeting conservative political groups.
On Syria, both the U.S. and Britain are urging Russia to ramp up its pressure on Syrian leader Bashar Assad. The U.S. and Russia agreed last week to arrange an international conference to bring representatives of Assad's government and the opposition to the negotiating table. There is no date yet, but such talks would focus on setting up a transitional government.
Cameron said after a meeting last week with Russian President Vladimir Putin that they both agreed that "we must help drive this process." The British leader also said Britain, the U.S., Russia and other countries should take part in setting up a transitional government.
Separately last week, the Obama administration announced it will provide $100 million in new aid to Syria, strictly for humanitarian relief for Syrian refugees and not linked to any possible decision on arming the rebels who seek to topple Assad from power.
Total U.S. humanitarian assistance in the war, now in its third year, will surpass $500 million.
The Obama administration has said it is considering providing weapons to vetted units in the armed opposition, among other military options, following the recent revelation of a U.S. intelligence assessment that suggested chemical weapons use by the Assad regime.
Obama has said use of such weapons would cross a "red line."
The president and Cameron were also reviewing priorities for the Group of Eight summit. Cameron will preside over the June 17-18 gathering in Lough Erne, Northern Ireland. The White House said Friday that Obama would stop in Belfast, the capital of Northern Ireland, before joining the summit.
The visit will be Obama's first to Northern Ireland.
LAS VEGAS (AP) ? The last time O.J. Simpson was in a Las Vegas courtroom, he stood next to defense attorney Yale Galanter before being handcuffed and hauled off to prison for up to 33 years.
On Monday, the former football hero returns to Clark County District Court with a different set of lawyers hoping to convince a judge that Galanter shouldn't have been handling his armed robbery-kidnapping case ? that the lawyer who was paid nearly $700,000 for Simpson's defense had a personal interest in preventing himself from being identified as a witness to the crimes and so misled Simpson that the former football star deserves a new trial.
"To me, the claims are solid. I don't know how the court can't grant relief," said Patricia Palm, the Simpson appeals lawyer who produced a 94-page petition dissecting Galanter's promises, payments and performance as Simpson's lawyer in the trial that ended with a jury finding Simpson and a co-defendant guilty of 12 felonies.
Galanter declined to comment ahead of his is scheduled testimony.
Of the 22 allegations of conflict-of-interest and ineffective counsel that Palm raised, Clark County District Court Judge Linda Marie Bell has agreed to hear 19.
The proceedings, technically neither a trial nor appeal, are expected to take all week before Bell decides whether Simpson deserves a new trial. It's not clear whether she'll rule immediately.
Some who've watched the Simpson saga say he might have a chance.
"I think there's a lot to this," said John Momot, a lawyer nearing 40 years of criminal defense in Las Vegas who played himself in the 1995 movie "Casino" and provided expert cable TV commentary during Simpson's monthlong trial in September 2008.
"I don't think O.J. Simpson could ever get a fair trial, period, based on his reputation from California," Momot said. "But based on these allegations, if you took Joe Jones from the street and put him in the same situation, I think it would be possible he'd get a new trial."
Ozzie Fumo, a veteran Las Vegas trial lawyer now representing Simpson, said it took two years of convincing by jailhouse lawyers at Nevada's Lovelock Correctional Center before Simpson broke with Galanter.
Simpson now says that Galanter not only knew ahead of time about his plan to retrieve what he thought were personal mementoes but met with Simpson in Las Vegas to discuss the plan the night before Simpson and five other men confronted two sports memorabilia dealers and a middleman in a cramped casino hotel room in September 2007.
Simpson maintains the plan was to take back what he expected would be family photos and personal belongings stolen from him after his 1995 "trial of the century" acquittal in the slayings of his wife and her friend in Los Angeles.
Galanter blessed the plan as within the law, as long as no one trespassed and no force was used, Simpson said.
During trial, Simpson contends Galanter "vigorously discouraged" him not to testify, and never told him that prosecutors were willing to let him plead guilty to charges that would have gotten him a minimum of two years in prison.
"He consistently told me the state could not prove its case because I acted within my rights in retaking my own property," Simpson said in a sworn statement outlining what he plans to say when he testifies this week.
Simpson's lawyers also say that while continuing to represent Simpson through oral arguments in a failed 2010 appeal to the Nevada Supreme Court, Galanter kept a lid on his own behind-the-scenes involvement. That nearly extinguished any chance Simpson had to claim ineffective representation in state or federal courts.
Simpson still says he had no idea two of the men with him brought guns to the hotel room. Palm and Fumo noted that the possibility of diminished perception wasn't raised at trial.
On Monday, Dr. Norman Roitman, a Las Vegas psychiatrist, is expected to testify that Simpson's perception of what took place in the Palace Station hotel room might have been hampered by football brain injuries and the effects of several vodka and cranberry juice cocktails he consumed before the confrontation.
H. Leon Simon, the chief deputy district attorney representing the state, is scheduled to call another psychiatrist later in the week for another opinion.
_____
Find Ken Ritter on Twitter: http://twitter.com/krttr
Cooling ocean temperature could buy more time for coral reefsPublic release date: 14-May-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Philippa Walker philippa.walker@bristol.ac.uk 44-117-928-7777 University of Bristol
Limiting the amount of warming experienced by the world's oceans in the future could buy some time for tropical coral reefs, say researchers from the University of Bristol.
The study, published by the journal Geophysical Research Letters, used computer models to investigate how shallow-water tropical coral reef habitats may respond to climate change over the coming decades.
Elena Couce and colleagues found that restricting greenhouse warming to three watts per square metre (equivalent to just 50-100 parts per million carbon dioxide, or approximately half again the increase since the Industrial Revolution) is needed in order to avoid large-scale reductions in reef habitat occurring in the future.
Shallow-water tropical coral reefs are amongst the most productive and diverse ecosystems on the planet. They are currently in decline due to increasing frequency of bleaching events, linked to rising temperatures and fossil fuel emissions.
Elena Couce said: "If sea surface temperatures continue to rise, our models predict a large habitat collapse in the tropical western Pacific which would affect some of the most biodiverse coral reefs in the world. To protect shallow-water tropical coral reefs, the warming experienced by the world's oceans needs to be limited."
The researchers modelled whether artificial means of limiting global temperatures known as solar radiation 'geoengineering' could help. Their results suggest that if geoengineering could be successfully deployed then the decline of suitable habitats for tropical coral reefs could be slowed. They found, however, that over-engineering the climate could actually be detrimental as tropical corals do not favour overly-cool conditions. Solar radiation geoengineering also leaves unchecked a carbon dioxide problem known as 'ocean acidification'.
Elena Couce said: "The use of geoengineering technologies cannot safeguard coral habitat long term because ocean acidification will continue unabated. Decreasing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is the only way to address reef decline caused by ocean acidification."
Dr Erica Hendy, one of the co-authors, added: "This is the first attempt to model the consequences of using solar radiation geoengineering on a marine ecosystem. There are many dangers associated with deliberate human interventions in the climate system and a lot more work is needed to fully appreciate the consequences of intervening in this way."
###
Notes to editors
Photos
Two photos of coral reefs in the Red Sea (copyright Elena Couce) can be downloaded from here: https://fluff.bris.ac.uk/fluff/u2/inpaw/lEGYXJVny6Xb2Oq_bii0HAFga/
Paper
'Tropical coral reef habitat in a geoengineered, high-CO2 world' by E. Couce, P.J. Irvine, L. J. Gregorie, A. Ridgwell and E.J. Hendy in Geophysical Research Letters
The Cabot Institute
The Cabot Institute at the University of Bristol carries out fundamental and responsive research on risks and uncertainties in a changing environment. Our interests include natural hazards, food and energy security, resilience and governance, and human impacts on the environment. Our research fuses rigorous statistical and numerical modelling with a deep understanding of interconnected social, environmental and engineered systems past, present and future. We seek to engage wider society listening to, exploring with, and challenging our stakeholders to develop a shared response to twenty-first century challenges.
Issued by the Public Relations Office, Communications Division, University of Bristol, tel: (0117) 928 8896, email: hannah.johnson@bristol.ac.uk
[ | E-mail | Share ]
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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.
Cooling ocean temperature could buy more time for coral reefsPublic release date: 14-May-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Philippa Walker philippa.walker@bristol.ac.uk 44-117-928-7777 University of Bristol
Limiting the amount of warming experienced by the world's oceans in the future could buy some time for tropical coral reefs, say researchers from the University of Bristol.
The study, published by the journal Geophysical Research Letters, used computer models to investigate how shallow-water tropical coral reef habitats may respond to climate change over the coming decades.
Elena Couce and colleagues found that restricting greenhouse warming to three watts per square metre (equivalent to just 50-100 parts per million carbon dioxide, or approximately half again the increase since the Industrial Revolution) is needed in order to avoid large-scale reductions in reef habitat occurring in the future.
Shallow-water tropical coral reefs are amongst the most productive and diverse ecosystems on the planet. They are currently in decline due to increasing frequency of bleaching events, linked to rising temperatures and fossil fuel emissions.
Elena Couce said: "If sea surface temperatures continue to rise, our models predict a large habitat collapse in the tropical western Pacific which would affect some of the most biodiverse coral reefs in the world. To protect shallow-water tropical coral reefs, the warming experienced by the world's oceans needs to be limited."
The researchers modelled whether artificial means of limiting global temperatures known as solar radiation 'geoengineering' could help. Their results suggest that if geoengineering could be successfully deployed then the decline of suitable habitats for tropical coral reefs could be slowed. They found, however, that over-engineering the climate could actually be detrimental as tropical corals do not favour overly-cool conditions. Solar radiation geoengineering also leaves unchecked a carbon dioxide problem known as 'ocean acidification'.
Elena Couce said: "The use of geoengineering technologies cannot safeguard coral habitat long term because ocean acidification will continue unabated. Decreasing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is the only way to address reef decline caused by ocean acidification."
Dr Erica Hendy, one of the co-authors, added: "This is the first attempt to model the consequences of using solar radiation geoengineering on a marine ecosystem. There are many dangers associated with deliberate human interventions in the climate system and a lot more work is needed to fully appreciate the consequences of intervening in this way."
###
Notes to editors
Photos
Two photos of coral reefs in the Red Sea (copyright Elena Couce) can be downloaded from here: https://fluff.bris.ac.uk/fluff/u2/inpaw/lEGYXJVny6Xb2Oq_bii0HAFga/
Paper
'Tropical coral reef habitat in a geoengineered, high-CO2 world' by E. Couce, P.J. Irvine, L. J. Gregorie, A. Ridgwell and E.J. Hendy in Geophysical Research Letters
The Cabot Institute
The Cabot Institute at the University of Bristol carries out fundamental and responsive research on risks and uncertainties in a changing environment. Our interests include natural hazards, food and energy security, resilience and governance, and human impacts on the environment. Our research fuses rigorous statistical and numerical modelling with a deep understanding of interconnected social, environmental and engineered systems past, present and future. We seek to engage wider society listening to, exploring with, and challenging our stakeholders to develop a shared response to twenty-first century challenges.
Issued by the Public Relations Office, Communications Division, University of Bristol, tel: (0117) 928 8896, email: hannah.johnson@bristol.ac.uk
[ | E-mail | Share ]
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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.
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Public release date: 14-May-2013
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