Syria: Bombing kills top pro-Assad Sunni preacher

In this undated photo released by the Syrian official news agency SANA, Sheikh Mohammad Said Ramadan al-Buti, an 84-year-old cleric known to all Syrians as a religious scholar, speaks at a press conference. Al-Buti, a top Sunni Muslim preacher and longtime supporter of President Bashar Assad was killed in a suicide bombing in the Eman Mosque, at the Mazraa district, in Damascus, Syria, Thursday, March 21, 2013, state TV reported . (AP Photo/SANA)

In this undated photo released by the Syrian official news agency SANA, Sheikh Mohammad Said Ramadan al-Buti, an 84-year-old cleric known to all Syrians as a religious scholar, speaks at a press conference. Al-Buti, a top Sunni Muslim preacher and longtime supporter of President Bashar Assad was killed in a suicide bombing in the Eman Mosque, at the Mazraa district, in Damascus, Syria, Thursday, March 21, 2013, state TV reported . (AP Photo/SANA)

In this photo released by the Syrian official news agency SANA, Syrian doctors treat an injured man who was wounded at the Eman Mosque where a suicide bomber blew himself up, killing Sheikh Mohammad Said Ramadan al-Buti, an 84-year-old cleric known to all Syrians as a religious scholar, at the Mazraa district, in Damascus, Syria, Thursday, March 21, 2013. A suicide bomber blew himself up during evening prayers inside a mosque in Damascus Thursday, killing a top Sunni Muslim preacher and longtime supporter of President Bashar Assad and least 13 other people, state TV reported. Al-Buti's death is a big blow to Syria's embattled leader, who is fighting mainly Sunni rebels seeking his ouster. (AP Photo/SANA)

In this photo released by the Syrian official news agency SANA, the Eman Mosque is seen destroyed after a suicide bomber blew himself up, killing Sheikh Mohammad Said Ramadan al-Buti, an 84-year-old cleric known to all Syrians as a religious scholar, at the Mazraa district, in Damascus, Syria, Thursday, March 21, 2013. A suicide bomber blew himself up during evening prayers inside a mosque in Damascus Thursday, killing a top Sunni Muslim preacher and longtime supporter of President Bashar Assad and least 13 other people, state TV reported. Al-Buti's death is a big blow to Syria's embattled leader, who is fighting mainly Sunni rebels seeking his ouster. (AP Photo/SANA)

In this photo released by the Syrian official news agency SANA, a Syrian doctor, left, treats an injured man who was wounded at the Eman Mosque where a suicide bomber blew himself up, killing Sheikh Mohammad Said Ramadan al-Buti, an 84-year-old cleric known to all Syrians as a religious scholar, at the Mazraa district, in Damascus, Syria, Thursday, March 21, 2013. A suicide bomber blew himself up during evening prayers inside a mosque in Damascus Thursday, killing a top Sunni Muslim preacher and longtime supporter of President Bashar Assad and least 13 other people, state TV reported. Al-Buti's death is a big blow to Syria's embattled leader, who is fighting mainly Sunni rebels seeking his ouster. (AP Photo/SANA)

Map locates suicide bombing Syria

BEIRUT (AP) ? A suicide bomb ripped through a mosque in the heart of the Syrian capital Thursday, killing a top Sunni Muslim preacher and outspoken supporter of President Bashar Assad in one of the most stunning assassinations of Syria's 2-year-old civil war. At least 41 others were killed and more than 84 wounded.

The slaying of Sheikh Mohammad Said Ramadan al-Buti removes one of the few remaining pillars of support for Assad among the majority Sunni sect that has risen up against him.

It also marks a new low in the Syrian civil war: While suicide bombings blamed on Islamic extremists fighting with the rebels have become common, Thursday's attack was the first time a suicide bomber detonated his explosives inside a mosque.

A prolific writer whose sermons were regularly broadcast on TV, the 84-year-old al-Buti was killed while giving a religious lesson to students at the Eman Mosque in the central Mazraa district of Damascus.

The most senior religious figure to be killed in Syria's civil war, his assassination was a major blow to Syria's embattled leader, who is fighting mainly Sunni rebels seeking his ouster. Al-Buti has been a vocal supporter of the regime since the early days of Assad's father and predecessor, the late President Hafez Assad, providing Sunni cover and legitimacy to their rule. Sunnis are the majority sect in Syria while Assad is from the minority Alawite sect ? an offshoot of Shiite Islam.

"The blood of Sheik al-Buti will be a fire that ignites all the world," said Grand Mufti Ahmad Badreddine Hassoun, the country's top state-appointed Sunni Muslim cleric and an Assad loyalist.

Syrian TV showed footage of wounded people and bodies with severed limbs on the mosque's blood-stained floor, and later, corpses covered in white body bags lined up in rows. Sirens wailed through the capital as ambulances rushed to the scene of the explosion, which was sealed off by the military.

Among those killed was al-Buti's grandson, the TV said.

The bombing was among the most serious security breaches in the capital. An attack in July that targeted a high-level government crisis meeting killed four top regime officials, including Assad's brother-in-law and the defense minister.

Last month, a car bomb that struck in the same area, which houses the headquarters of Syria's ruling Baath party, killed at least 53 people and wounded more than 200 others in one of the deadliest Damascus bombings of the civil war.

A small, frail man, al-Buti was well known in the Arab world as a religious scholar and longtime imam at the eighth-century Omayyad Mosque, a Damascus landmark. State TV said he has written 60 books and religious publications.

In recent months, Syrian TV has carried al-Buti's sermons from mosques in Damascus live every week. He also has a regular religious TV program.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Thursday's attack.

Among the opposition, there was a mixture of suspicion and shock that an elderly religious figure such as al-Bouti would be targeted by a suicide bomber inside a mosque.

"I don't know of a single opposition group that could do something like this," said Walid al-Bunni, a spokesman for the Syrian National Coalition opposition group, speaking on Al-Arabiya TV.

Syrian TV began its evening newscast with an announcement from the religious endowments minister, Mohammad Abdelsattar al-Sayyed, declaring al-Buti's "martyrdom" as his voice choked up. It then showed parts of al-Buti's sermon from last Friday, in which he praised the military for battling the "mercenaries sent by America and the West" and said Syria was being subjected to a "universal conspiracy."

Assad's regime refers to the rebels fighting against it as "terrorists" and "mercenaries" who are backed by foreign powers trying to destabilize the country. The war, which the U.N. says has killed more than 70,000 people, has become increasingly chaotic as rebels press closer to Assad's seat of power in Damascus after seizing large swaths of territory in the northern and eastern parts of the country.

On Thursday, rebels captured a village and other territory on the edge of the Golan Heights as fighting closed in on the strategic plateau that Israel captured from Syria in 1967 and later annexed, activists and officials said.

The battles near the town of Quneitra in southwest Syria sent many residents fleeing, including dozens who crossed into neighboring Lebanon. The fighting in the sensitive area began Wednesday near the cease-fire line between Syrian and Israeli troops.

One of the worst-case scenarios for Syria's civil war is that it could draw in neighboring countries such as Israel or Lebanon.

There have already been clashes with Turkey, Syria's neighbor to the north. And Israel recently bombed targets inside Syria said to include a weapons convoy headed for Hezbollah in Lebanon, a key ally of the Damascus regime and an arch-foe of the Jewish state.

If the rebels take over the Quneitra region, it will bring radical Islamic militants to a front line with Israeli troops. The rebels are composed of dozens of groups, including the powerful al-Qaida-linked Jabhat al-Nusra, which the Obama administration labels a terrorist organization.

Israel has said its policy is not to get involved in the Syrian civil war, but it has retaliated for sporadic Syrian fire that spilled over into Israeli communities on the Golan Heights.

The Golan front has been mostly quiet since 1974, a year after Syria and Israel fought a war.

The Britain-based activist group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said rebels seized control of parts of villages a few miles (kilometers) from the cease-fire line with Israel after fierce fighting with regime forces.

The Local Coordination Committees, another anti-regime activist group, reported heavy fighting in the nearby village of Sahm al-Golan and said rebels were attacking an army post.

The Observatory said seven people, including three children, were killed Wednesday by government shelling of villages in the area.

Rami Abdul-Rahman, who heads the Observatory, said the fighting around the town of Arnabeh intensified Thursday, a day after rebels captured it. He added that the rebels captured two nearby army posts.

In Lebanon, security officials said 150 people, mostly women and children, walked for six hours in rugged mountains covered with snow to reach safety in the Lebanese border town of Chebaa. They said eight wounded Syrians were brought on mules from Beit Jan and taken in ambulances to hospitals in Chebaa.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media, said the Syrians fled from the town of Beit Jan, near the Golan Heights.

The Yarmouk Martyrs Brigade, a rebel group active in southern Syria, said in a statement on its Facebook page that its fighters stormed an army post between the villages of Sahm al-Golan and Shajara.

Activists on Facebook pages affiliated with rebels in Quneitra announced the start of the operation to "break the siege on Quneitra and Damascus' western suburbs."

The fighting moved closer to Israel as President Barack Obama was visiting the Jewish state for the first time since taking office more than four years ago.

___

Associated Press writer Albert Aji in Damascus contributed to this report.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2013-03-21-Syria/id-1caa89a7a6e24a639fc61a6f31c334a9

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Syria: Bombing kills top pro-Assad Sunni preacher

In this undated photo released by the Syrian official news agency SANA, Sheikh Mohammad Said Ramadan al-Buti, an 84-year-old cleric known to all Syrians as a religious scholar, speaks at a press conference. Al-Buti, a top Sunni Muslim preacher and longtime supporter of President Bashar Assad was killed in a suicide bombing in the Eman Mosque, at the Mazraa district, in Damascus, Syria, Thursday, March 21, 2013, state TV reported . (AP Photo/SANA)

In this undated photo released by the Syrian official news agency SANA, Sheikh Mohammad Said Ramadan al-Buti, an 84-year-old cleric known to all Syrians as a religious scholar, speaks at a press conference. Al-Buti, a top Sunni Muslim preacher and longtime supporter of President Bashar Assad was killed in a suicide bombing in the Eman Mosque, at the Mazraa district, in Damascus, Syria, Thursday, March 21, 2013, state TV reported . (AP Photo/SANA)

In this photo released by the Syrian official news agency SANA, Syrian doctors treat an injured man who was wounded at the Eman Mosque where a suicide bomber blew himself up, killing Sheikh Mohammad Said Ramadan al-Buti, an 84-year-old cleric known to all Syrians as a religious scholar, at the Mazraa district, in Damascus, Syria, Thursday, March 21, 2013. A suicide bomber blew himself up during evening prayers inside a mosque in Damascus Thursday, killing a top Sunni Muslim preacher and longtime supporter of President Bashar Assad and least 13 other people, state TV reported. Al-Buti's death is a big blow to Syria's embattled leader, who is fighting mainly Sunni rebels seeking his ouster. (AP Photo/SANA)

In this photo released by the Syrian official news agency SANA, the Eman Mosque is seen destroyed after a suicide bomber blew himself up, killing Sheikh Mohammad Said Ramadan al-Buti, an 84-year-old cleric known to all Syrians as a religious scholar, at the Mazraa district, in Damascus, Syria, Thursday, March 21, 2013. A suicide bomber blew himself up during evening prayers inside a mosque in Damascus Thursday, killing a top Sunni Muslim preacher and longtime supporter of President Bashar Assad and least 13 other people, state TV reported. Al-Buti's death is a big blow to Syria's embattled leader, who is fighting mainly Sunni rebels seeking his ouster. (AP Photo/SANA)

In this photo released by the Syrian official news agency SANA, a Syrian doctor, left, treats an injured man who was wounded at the Eman Mosque where a suicide bomber blew himself up, killing Sheikh Mohammad Said Ramadan al-Buti, an 84-year-old cleric known to all Syrians as a religious scholar, at the Mazraa district, in Damascus, Syria, Thursday, March 21, 2013. A suicide bomber blew himself up during evening prayers inside a mosque in Damascus Thursday, killing a top Sunni Muslim preacher and longtime supporter of President Bashar Assad and least 13 other people, state TV reported. Al-Buti's death is a big blow to Syria's embattled leader, who is fighting mainly Sunni rebels seeking his ouster. (AP Photo/SANA)

Map locates suicide bombing Syria

BEIRUT (AP) ? A suicide bomb ripped through a mosque in the heart of the Syrian capital Thursday, killing a top Sunni Muslim preacher and outspoken supporter of President Bashar Assad in one of the most stunning assassinations of Syria's 2-year-old civil war. At least 41 others were killed and more than 84 wounded.

The slaying of Sheikh Mohammad Said Ramadan al-Buti removes one of the few remaining pillars of support for Assad among the majority Sunni sect that has risen up against him.

It also marks a new low in the Syrian civil war: While suicide bombings blamed on Islamic extremists fighting with the rebels have become common, Thursday's attack was the first time a suicide bomber detonated his explosives inside a mosque.

A prolific writer whose sermons were regularly broadcast on TV, the 84-year-old al-Buti was killed while giving a religious lesson to students at the Eman Mosque in the central Mazraa district of Damascus.

The most senior religious figure to be killed in Syria's civil war, his assassination was a major blow to Syria's embattled leader, who is fighting mainly Sunni rebels seeking his ouster. Al-Buti has been a vocal supporter of the regime since the early days of Assad's father and predecessor, the late President Hafez Assad, providing Sunni cover and legitimacy to their rule. Sunnis are the majority sect in Syria while Assad is from the minority Alawite sect ? an offshoot of Shiite Islam.

"The blood of Sheik al-Buti will be a fire that ignites all the world," said Grand Mufti Ahmad Badreddine Hassoun, the country's top state-appointed Sunni Muslim cleric and an Assad loyalist.

Syrian TV showed footage of wounded people and bodies with severed limbs on the mosque's blood-stained floor, and later, corpses covered in white body bags lined up in rows. Sirens wailed through the capital as ambulances rushed to the scene of the explosion, which was sealed off by the military.

Among those killed was al-Buti's grandson, the TV said.

The bombing was among the most serious security breaches in the capital. An attack in July that targeted a high-level government crisis meeting killed four top regime officials, including Assad's brother-in-law and the defense minister.

Last month, a car bomb that struck in the same area, which houses the headquarters of Syria's ruling Baath party, killed at least 53 people and wounded more than 200 others in one of the deadliest Damascus bombings of the civil war.

A small, frail man, al-Buti was well known in the Arab world as a religious scholar and longtime imam at the eighth-century Omayyad Mosque, a Damascus landmark. State TV said he has written 60 books and religious publications.

In recent months, Syrian TV has carried al-Buti's sermons from mosques in Damascus live every week. He also has a regular religious TV program.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Thursday's attack.

Among the opposition, there was a mixture of suspicion and shock that an elderly religious figure such as al-Bouti would be targeted by a suicide bomber inside a mosque.

"I don't know of a single opposition group that could do something like this," said Walid al-Bunni, a spokesman for the Syrian National Coalition opposition group, speaking on Al-Arabiya TV.

Syrian TV began its evening newscast with an announcement from the religious endowments minister, Mohammad Abdelsattar al-Sayyed, declaring al-Buti's "martyrdom" as his voice choked up. It then showed parts of al-Buti's sermon from last Friday, in which he praised the military for battling the "mercenaries sent by America and the West" and said Syria was being subjected to a "universal conspiracy."

Assad's regime refers to the rebels fighting against it as "terrorists" and "mercenaries" who are backed by foreign powers trying to destabilize the country. The war, which the U.N. says has killed more than 70,000 people, has become increasingly chaotic as rebels press closer to Assad's seat of power in Damascus after seizing large swaths of territory in the northern and eastern parts of the country.

On Thursday, rebels captured a village and other territory on the edge of the Golan Heights as fighting closed in on the strategic plateau that Israel captured from Syria in 1967 and later annexed, activists and officials said.

The battles near the town of Quneitra in southwest Syria sent many residents fleeing, including dozens who crossed into neighboring Lebanon. The fighting in the sensitive area began Wednesday near the cease-fire line between Syrian and Israeli troops.

One of the worst-case scenarios for Syria's civil war is that it could draw in neighboring countries such as Israel or Lebanon.

There have already been clashes with Turkey, Syria's neighbor to the north. And Israel recently bombed targets inside Syria said to include a weapons convoy headed for Hezbollah in Lebanon, a key ally of the Damascus regime and an arch-foe of the Jewish state.

If the rebels take over the Quneitra region, it will bring radical Islamic militants to a front line with Israeli troops. The rebels are composed of dozens of groups, including the powerful al-Qaida-linked Jabhat al-Nusra, which the Obama administration labels a terrorist organization.

Israel has said its policy is not to get involved in the Syrian civil war, but it has retaliated for sporadic Syrian fire that spilled over into Israeli communities on the Golan Heights.

The Golan front has been mostly quiet since 1974, a year after Syria and Israel fought a war.

The Britain-based activist group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said rebels seized control of parts of villages a few miles (kilometers) from the cease-fire line with Israel after fierce fighting with regime forces.

The Local Coordination Committees, another anti-regime activist group, reported heavy fighting in the nearby village of Sahm al-Golan and said rebels were attacking an army post.

The Observatory said seven people, including three children, were killed Wednesday by government shelling of villages in the area.

Rami Abdul-Rahman, who heads the Observatory, said the fighting around the town of Arnabeh intensified Thursday, a day after rebels captured it. He added that the rebels captured two nearby army posts.

In Lebanon, security officials said 150 people, mostly women and children, walked for six hours in rugged mountains covered with snow to reach safety in the Lebanese border town of Chebaa. They said eight wounded Syrians were brought on mules from Beit Jan and taken in ambulances to hospitals in Chebaa.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media, said the Syrians fled from the town of Beit Jan, near the Golan Heights.

The Yarmouk Martyrs Brigade, a rebel group active in southern Syria, said in a statement on its Facebook page that its fighters stormed an army post between the villages of Sahm al-Golan and Shajara.

Activists on Facebook pages affiliated with rebels in Quneitra announced the start of the operation to "break the siege on Quneitra and Damascus' western suburbs."

The fighting moved closer to Israel as President Barack Obama was visiting the Jewish state for the first time since taking office more than four years ago.

___

Associated Press writer Albert Aji in Damascus contributed to this report.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2013-03-21-Syria/id-1caa89a7a6e24a639fc61a6f31c334a9

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DRM Software Development Company Intertrust Files Lawsuit ...

The Wall Street Journal reports that patent holding company Intertrust Technologies Corp. has filed suit against Apple, accusing the Cupertino-based company of infringing on 15 of Intertrust's patents related to "security and distributed trusted computing."

Intertrust invents and licenses technologies for digital rights management, currently holding more than 150 patents.

As posted on the company's website, the lawsuit involves multiple Apple products, including the iPhone, iPad, Mac computers and laptops, Apple TV and Apple services like iTunes, iCloud, and the App Store.

"Apple makes many great products that use Intertrust's inventions," said Talal Shamoon, Intertrust's chief executive officer. "Our patents are foundational to modern Internet security and trusted computing, and result from years of internal research and development. We are proud of our record of peaceful and constructive licensing with industry leaders. We find it regrettable that we are forced to seek Court assistance to resolve this matter."

Intertrust, which is backed by Sony Corp. and Royal Philips Electronics NV, successfully collected $440 million from Microsoft in 2004 after winning a patent infringement case against the company. On its licensees page, Intertrust lists major tech companies like Adobe, Samsung, Panasonic, LG, HTC, Nokia, and Motorola.

Source: http://www.macrumors.com/2013/03/20/drm-software-development-company-intertrust-files-lawsuit-against-apple-for-patent-infringement/

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Minn. gay marriage bill survives GOP move to block (Star Tribune)

Share With Friends: | | Politics - Top Stories News, RSS Feeds and Widgets via Feedzilla.

Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/291364537?client_source=feed&format=rss

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Social media editor charged in hacking conspiracy

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) ? A journalist vowed that Friday would be "business as usual" despite charges of conspiring with the notorious hacking group Anonymous to deface an online story of the Los Angeles Times.

Federal authorities allege that in December 2010, Matthew Keys provided hackers with login information to access the computer system of the Tribune Co., the parent company of the Times that also owns a Sacramento television station Keys was fired from months before.

Investigators allege that Keys gave a hacker named "Sharpie" the information in an Internet chat room frequented by hackers and urged the hacker to do some damage to the Tribune Co.

According to the indictment, Sharpie altered a Times news story posted Dec. 14 and 15, 2010, to read "Pressure builds in House to elect CHIPPY 1337," a reference to another hacking group. "Chippy 1337" claimed responsibility for defacing the website of video game publisher Eidos in 2011.

Keys' Facebook page says he worked as an online news producer for the Sacramento FOX affiliate KTXL from June 2008 to April 2010.

The news agency Reuters hired Keys in 2012 as a deputy editor for social media and he was at work Thursday. He didn't return a phone call or respond to email messages seeking comment. Reuters spokesman David Girardin said the company was "aware" of the indictment when Keys was hired last year, but he declined further comment.

"I am fine," Keys tweeted Thursday, hours after his federal indictment was announced. "I found out the same way most of you did: From Twitter. Tonight I'm going to take a break. Tomorrow, business as usual."

The indictment alleges that a second attempt to hack the Times was unsuccessful.

Federal prosecutors allege in court papers that a legendary hacker and Anonymous leader named "Sabu" offered advice on how to infiltrate Tribune's systems. The FBI unmasked Sabu when it arrested Hector Xavier Monsegur on June 7, 2011. Monsegur secretly worked as an FBI informant until federal officials announced that he helped them arrest five other alleged hackers on March 6, 2012.

Federal officials declined to comment on whether Sabu assisted in the investigation of Keys.

The day after it was announced that Sabu was an FBI informant, Keys wrote a story for Reuters about "infiltrating" the hackers' chat room.

Keys is charged with one count each of conspiracy to transmit information to damage a protected computer, as well as transmitting and attempting to transmit that information. If convicted, the New Jersey native faces a combined 25 years prison and a $500,000 fine if sentenced to the maximum for each count.

He is scheduled for arraignment April 12 in Sacramento.

The indictment comes after recent hacks into the computer systems of two other U.S. media companies that own The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. Both newspapers reported in February that their computer systems had been infiltrated by China-based hackers, likely to monitor media coverage the Chinese government deems important.

Anonymous and its offshoot, Lulz Security, have been linked to a number of high-profile computer attacks and crimes, including many that were meant to embarrass governments, federal agencies and corporate giants. They have been connected to attacks that took data from FBI partner organization InfraGard, and they've jammed websites of the CIA and the Public Broadcasting Service.

A computer security specialist said the LA Times attack would be an unusual hack if the government's charges are accurate.

"This is first case where I've heard of someone leaking stuff to Anonymous to have a site defaced, instead of defacing it himself," said Clifford Neuman, director of University of Southern California Center for Computer Systems Security. "He found some way to achieve his ends of defacing the website without having to do it himself."

A spokesman for the Chicago-based Tribune Co. declined to comment.

While Keys did not directly address the federal charges Thursday through his voluminous Twitter feed, commentary from his more than 23,500 followers and even a story about the news indictment were retweeted from his account.

He did not address the issue on his Facebook page, where his last posting Thursday was about the best way to make a grilled cheese sandwich.

According to Keys' Facebook profile, he is single, lives in New York City and works at Thomson Reuters Corp.'s New York office, where "I get paid to use Twitter and Facebook at work."

London-based Reuters has been expanding its business in the United States. This year, six of the Tribune's seven newspapers dropped The Associated Press for Reuters, citing cost savings. The Los Angeles Times stayed with AP.

___

Follow Paul Elias and Garance Burke on Twitter at https://twitter.com/paulelias1 and http://twitter.com/garanceburke .

AP National Writer Martha Mendoza in Santa Cruz contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/social-media-editor-charged-hacking-conspiracy-081144356--finance.html

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S. Koreans learn to live with N. Korean war threats

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) ? Nearly two decades ago, South Koreans cleared store shelves after a North Korean threat to turn Seoul into a "sea of fire" raised war panic. On Saturday, South Koreans expressed some fear but mostly apathy and restraint after a week of warlike rhetoric from the North, including another "sea of fire" vow.

Many South Koreans have grown up with a steady drumbeat of over-the-top threats from the North. So while they are aware of soaring tensions as North Korea reacts with anger to major U.S.-South Korean military drills that start Monday and a new round of U.N. sanctions over Pyongyang's recent third nuclear test, there's skepticism that anything serious will happen.

In downtown Seoul, people took photos and laughed as they walked below a giant electronic screen that flashed headlines about North Korea's war threats.

"The odds of dying from a North Korean bomb are probably smaller than being killed in a car accident. I'll spend my time doing better things than worrying about war," said Oh Jin-young, a South Korean office worker out for a walk with his son. "North Korea knows that war will be like committing suicide."

There is some fear, however.

South Koreans are well known for their ability to shake off North Korean threats. But the last several years have seen a rise of bloodshed. The deadly sinking of a South Korean warship ? which Pyongyang denies torpedoing, despite a Seoul-led international investigation that found the North at fault ? and an artillery attack on a front-line South Korean island in 2010 that killed four people have raised the specter of war among some South Koreans.

North Korea vowed this past week to ditch the armistice that ended the Korean War and scrap a nonaggression pact with South Korea. It has also threatened Washington with pre-emptive nuclear strikes.

People interviewed by The Associated Press in Pyongyang on Saturday expressed indignation over the U.N. sanctions.

"I cannot control my anger," said Sin Myong Sil. "Some countries can launch satellites, and one country can conduct nuclear tests freely, and they are not blamed, but only our country is prohibited from doing nuclear tests and launching satellites. This is absurd and illogical."

In South Korea, worry can be seen most clearly on the Internet, where some believe that South Koreans, world leaders in broadband access, are less afraid to express their honest, anonymous feelings.

A user identifying herself as the mother of two posted on a cooking website Saturday that she was so scared by North Korea's war threats that she took a day of leave from work on Friday.

"I'm most worried that I might not be able to run to my kids quickly enough if something happens," she wrote, prompting a flurry of replies meant to sooth her.

South Korean officials have tried to boost public confidence that the country can defend itself, issuing stern warnings of their own. Defense Ministry spokesman Kim Min-seok said Friday that North Korea's government would "evaporate from the face of the Earth" if it ever used a nuclear weapon. Despite North Korea's threat of nuclear strikes on Washington, experts believe Pyongyang still lacks the technology to create a miniaturized warhead to place on a ballistic missile.

South Korea's new president, Park Geun-hye, told newly commissioned officers that any country ? a clear reference to North Korea ? would "bring destruction upon itself" if it focused on building nuclear arms instead of feeding its people.

"North Korea makes me slightly worried, but I'm too busy running my food stall to be bothered," said 52-year-old Seoul resident Shin Jeong-sook. "I don't hear customers speaking about North Korea, either. Don't North Koreans do this all the time?"

Bridget Hogan, a 24-year-old American who teaches English on South Korea's southern island of Jeju, said most of her Korean friends were calm. "It's probably not smart of me, but I'm not worried," Hogan, who is from California, said in Seoul, where she was meeting friends.

It's no surprise that South Koreans have grown accustomed to the state of confrontation that has lasted since the 1950-53 Korean War ended in a fragile cease-fire, but they may also be unconsciously avoiding the uncomfortable thought of being thrust into war, said Kwak Keum-joo, a psychology professor at Seoul National University.

"Being callous is their way of coping with threats because, otherwise, the fear would trouble them so much that they wouldn't be able to live their lives normally. Imagine what would happen if everyone panicked over every threat?" she said. "Perhaps we do need to be more alert now."

Even during the deadly artillery attack on Yeonpyeong island in 2010, people in other parts of the country remained generally calm and did not clear store shelves like they did in 1994, after the "sea of fire" threat, Kwak noted.

"We live with the tension, and we probably will until we die," said Park Sin-young, a 22-year-old college student. "What else can we do?"

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/skoreans-learn-live-nkorean-war-threats-083550641.html

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A Conversation with Jen Schwarting | Art21 Blog

Jen Schwarting, ?Image Search (Drunk Girls) #7,? 2012. Wood, burlap, paint, collage, plexi-glass. 28 x 26 in. Courtesy the artist.

In the following back and forth with ?artist and writer Jen Schwarting, we discuss her ideas and process around her current?Drunk Girls series. Born in the Bronx, Schwarting now lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She makes?sculpture and collage, writes about art, and teaches at Pace University in lower Manhattan. Her work explores the boundaries of class, sex, and gender while mining territories of feminism, pop culture, social media, and histories of representation.

Amanda Beroza Friedman: In your current series, the focal point of each construction is a printout of a jpg pulled from a Google search of the phrase ?drunk girls.? How did you come to this search?

Jen Schwarting: Like a lot of people, over the past several years I?ve become increasingly concerned about issues of privacy and the ways in which the Internet and social media have altered or removed certain levels of privacy we used to enjoy. And because I teach at a university, I find myself talking with other faculty about how grateful we are that Facebook and especially camera phones didn?t exist when we were in college. In my teens and twenties, I felt a real sense of freedom to experiment without exposure, and I think that was crucial to my development as an artist. It seems different today, where constant recording and overexposure defines so much of our culture. I?m fascinated with this state of exposure and how it?s manifest in entertainment and social media, I also keep up with some very low-brow popular culture. I?m currently watching that new MTV reality show, Buckwild, featuring the manic, drunken behavior of twenty-somethings in West Virginia. So thinking about a kind of base entertainment, exploitation, and the dichotomies of privacy and exposure is what first led me to notice, and then start searching for, the many images of young, drunk college-aged girls publicly posted online.

ABF: How do you pick which image to use? I identify the art historical reclining nude pose.

JS: Having combed through the hundreds of images that pop up under the query ?drunk girls,? I can say that many of the casual snapshots people post are pretty explicit, and I am wary of choosing images that are overly sensational. I gravitate toward pictures that are darkly humorous or nuanced in some way that might cause a viewer to do a double-take. One of my favorite photos depicts two women passed out on the floor of a college dorm room, lying in the same crumpled-over pose and wearing almost identical outfits, so that it is unclear at first whether it is one person reflected in a mirror or two people in the same sorry state.?I also tend to choose images of women that are beyond drunk to the point of passed out, to emphasize a state that is oblivious and the opposite of conscious. On some level too, as you mention, I am considering the history of representation of the female figure, including Western art?s classical nude, so often lying prostrate, and the way those works of art throughout history ignited controversy over the limits of taste and taboo.

Jen Schwarting, ?Image Search (Drunk Girls) #6,? 2012. Wood, burlap, paint, collage, plexi-glass. 29 x 23 in. Courtesy the artist.

ABF: One of the earliest questions in feminism was who has control of a woman?s body, leading to the question of who has control of her image? In the current fluid state of images is this issue of image-control relevant?

JS: I think it is relevant. For most of the twentieth century, advertising, fashion, TV and film were directed and run by men?I?m suddenly picturing the ad agency on Mad Men?and women we can fairly say didn?t control their own image. During the feminist movement of the 1970s, many women artists began making work that challenged sexism and prescribed notions of femininity, as well as the image?s authority. For me, growing up in the 1990s, this question of who controls our image was something that I continued to talk about with friends all of the time?I associated it with feminism, but it also stemmed from a broader, national conversation about identity, race, and gender, and also indie culture and mainstream resistance. I was thinking about the genres of Grunge and Riot Grrrl music recently, and how a critique of image and control was built-in to so much of the film, art, and music we were into at the time. Today, in one sense, individuals have much more control over their own image and the tools of distribution. But as demonstrated by the ?drunk girls,? we have also have less. As the parameters continue to change in the digital age a critical discourse on issues of control is not only relevant but more pressing than ever.

Click the image to read the RIOT GRRRL MANIFESTO.

ABF: I inevitably want to interchange the word ?still? for ?image? when describing the ?drunk? pictures.

JS: I do choose photographs that appear to be one moment captured from a larger narrative. Something has clearly happened prior to the moment the picture was taken, and because most of the women are unconscious?but the photographer is necessarily present?there is something foreboding, like the potential for a dangerous aftermath. The thought or threat of rape, or some equally horrifying outcome, is apparent in some of the pictures. I like the word ?still? because of its connection to narrative, and to Cindy Sherman, who is a big influence. I think a difference is that Sherman?s [Untitled] Film Stills and early centerfold images implied a constructed narrative, pointing to representations of women in film and advertising. I am going for something similar in terms of stereotypes, appropriation, and representation, but it is complicated by the fact that the photographs I?m using allegedly depict real girls, and further, that their images are being used without permission.

Jen Schwarting, ?Image Search (Drunk Girls) #2,? 2012. Wood, burlap, paint, collage, plexi-glass. 27 x 23 in. Courtesy the artist.

ABF: How do you see your role connecting to the implicit voyeurism of Internet searching? Can you speak to the the anonymous authors and casual quality as found documents these photographs have?

JS: Now that practically any image is available to anyone with the Internet, and everyone we know is constantly looking at the activity of other people online, we are all voyeurs and it seems harder to define voyeurism in negative terms. What attracts me to and troubles me about these pictures of drunk girls is less the proximity to perversion and more, as you say, the anonymity of its authors. I imagine most of the photos are taken by friends of the drunk women and posted without their permission with the intention to humiliate. The spectacle of this?the cheap laugh and the mean-spiritedness of it?is a major component of the project.

ABF: You have mentioned in our conversations that it is not enough to simply reproduce the found pictures. Are your elaborate frames an homage to the nameless girls that they are built around?

JS: Once I choose a photograph to work with, I begin responding to specific aspects of the image, building out around them a larger photographic collage and textile frame. In a recent piece I honed in on one visual element?a blanket covering a girl on a couch?and painted the blanket?s repeating pattern around the picture for emphasis. I think I developed this process to spend extended time examining and considering each photograph, reconciling it in some sense. It?s interesting that you ask about an ?homage? to the girls. When I started the project I had in mind a broad critique of the current state of entertainment, and drunk girls seemed like anonymous archetypes, generic casualties of over-indulgence and social cruelty. I thought the works would spark a dialogue about privacy, responsibility, and exploitation, but assumed an overt emotional response would be limited to me, my own politics and investment in the project. What has surprised me has been the way that the works seem to touch a nerve with viewers and have provoked really personal conversations, genuine empathy and concern about the individual girls and scenarios.

Anni Albers, ?Intersecting,? 1962. Cotton and rayon. 15.687 x 16.5 in. Private Collection ? 2008 The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

ABF: There is a blatant juxtaposition of high and low culture in your referencing of what look like Bauhaus textiles and the modernist aesthetic alongside found representations of bad behavior (sharpie graffitied passed-out girls). Where do you see this discussion touching off from in these collages?

JS: I love the history of the Bauhaus; it embodied as a school and movement many of my major interests: teaching, education, labor, art, architecture, and high-minded idealism. But it was, in line with the times, profoundly unequal. Men could fully participate across all disciplines, and women could only do women?s work, like weaving. So I think about the incredible textiles that artists like Anni Albers and Gunta St?lzl created, and their Modernist aesthetic surreptitiously exemplifying a struggle for equality, as much as intellectual design. And I?m using the aesthetic in my collages to bookend that history with the present? juxtaposing it with contemporary images of drunk girls and making these current scenes seem all the more gratuitous.

ABF: Will you address why collage was the medium of choice for much practice labeled ?feminist? starting in the ?60s and why you find it a productive way to work today?

JS: What?s funny is that whenever I introduce a collage-based project in class, students invariably ask if they can bypass paper and glue and create the project in Photoshop, so it may become increasing difficult to argue for collage?s relevance. But in the 1960s feminist artists intent on social change, like Martha Rosler, used the very material they were critiquing to make their work?cutting sexual and domestic scenes out of lifestyle magazines to point to and subvert their meaning. The collage aesthetic is also deeply rooted in previous artistic movements of resistance and revolution, like Constructivism and Dada, so the technique continues to reinforce a political agenda. I still find the manipulation of images to be an important and powerful subject, and I like working within the history of collage?s social message. I also just really enjoy the physical act of making collage and engaging with the material of everyday life.

Rosemarie Trockel, ?White Origami,? 2008. Offset lithograph. 33 x 24 in.

ABF: What artists are you looking at now?

JS:?I just saw the Rosemarie Trockel retrospective at the New Museum which I thought was both excellent and also a bit uneven. Actually, I enjoyed the moments where it failed because it made her ongoing search for subject, materials and meaning all the more evident. She uses a lot of found images and woven textiles in her work, which I definitely relate to, and have considered an inspiration for a long time. The forth floor of the Museum was dedicated to showing dozens of her ?book drafts,? these casual, hand-drawn and collaged book covers that are tongue-in-cheek ideas for books. A lot of them are really funny cultural critiques, riffs on advertising and fashion magazines, or art nerd in-jokes. She had both a book draft and a fluorescent light sculpture titled Spiral Betty, a feminist totem that?s a play on minimalism and Robert Smithson?s Spiral Jetty.

?ABF:?What are you reading?

?JS:?I mostly read contemporary fiction, but I?m currently teaching a course on graphic novels, so the past few months I?ve been re-reading a lot of graphic novels, zines, and artist books. I am reminded what a gutsy art form they are, and am awed at how the picture/text relationship in the best novels can engender such intense emotional and political narratives. Ron Rege?s?Against Pain?comes to mind. I just read Alison Bechdel?s new memoir?Are You My Mother?,?which was pretty amazing. It delves into her fraught relationship with her parents, but it?s also about reading, self-analysis, and the everyday practice of being an artist.

Jen Schwarting, ?Image Search (Drunk Girls) #2,? 2012. Wood, burlap, paint, collage, plexi-glass. 27 x 23 in. Courtesy the artist.

Amanda Beroza Friedman is Blogger-in-Residence through March 29, 2013.

Source: http://blog.art21.org/2013/03/04/a-conversation-with-jen-schwarting/

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Gate placement a concern for NASCAR after crash

Kyle Larson (32) goes airborne and into the catch fence during a multi-car crash involving Justin Allgaier (31), Brian Scott (2) and others during the final lap of the NASCAR Nationwide Series auto race at Daytona International Speedway, Saturday, Feb. 23, 2013, in Daytona Beach, Fla. Larson's crash sent car parts and other debris flying into the stands injuring spectators. (AP Photo/John Raoux)

Kyle Larson (32) goes airborne and into the catch fence during a multi-car crash involving Justin Allgaier (31), Brian Scott (2) and others during the final lap of the NASCAR Nationwide Series auto race at Daytona International Speedway, Saturday, Feb. 23, 2013, in Daytona Beach, Fla. Larson's crash sent car parts and other debris flying into the stands injuring spectators. (AP Photo/John Raoux)

Injured spectators are treated after a crash at the conclusion of the NASCAR Nationwide Series auto race Saturday, Feb. 23, 2013, at Daytona International Speedway in Daytona Beach, Fla. Driver Kyle Larson's car hit the safety fence sending car parts and other debris flying into the stands. (AP Photo/David Graham)

AVONDALE, Ariz. (AP) ? NASCAR will look at the placement of gates at its tracks after a Nationwide Series car crashed through the fence at Daytona and injured more than two dozen fans.

The fans were injured during the 12-car crash last Saturday when pieces of rookie Kyle Larson's car ripped through the fence, including a section where a gate connects the grandstand and the track.

"I think because of where it came through and having pieces that did get through and it being a gate area, that's really going to be the focus for us to look at," Steve O'Donnell, NASCAR's Senior Vice President, Racing Operations said Saturday from Phoenix International Raceway. "We're certainly going to look at fencing in general, but I think that particular area, that it was a gate, did impact it. We know the gate was locked, but does that provide as much stability as the rest of the fencing we believed it did? We've now got to look at that impact."

The crash occurred on the final lap of the Nationwide race the day before the Daytona 500, when leader Regan Smith tried to block Brad Keselowski and triggered a chain reaction. Larson's car went airborne during the wreck and slammed into the fence, sending debris into the stands.

O'Donnell said two injured fans remain at the hospital, but everyone else has been released.

The crash has forced NASCAR to take a closer look at its safety measures, particularly fencing around its tracks.

O'Donnell said NASCAR mostly leaves fencing up to the individual tracks, but may look at being more involved, similar to what it did requiring impact-absorbing SAFER barriers along concrete walls.

"It's important to note that most of the safety elements in that car did their job," O'Donnell said. "The driver, as you saw, walked away. However, the car then got up into the fence. Our focus is going to be if the elements in the car did their job, now what do we need to do in looking at the impact of the fence, what happened when that car impacted the fence with parts getting away."

O'Donnell also said that the tethers that hold Larson's car together worked, but that the section the tethers were attached to sheared the car, sending pieces flying.

"We've tethered a number of different things as we've learned and added safety aspects to the car, but what do we need to do in addition to that when we look at this aspect specifically?" O'Donnell said. "

Instead of bringing Larson's car immediately back to NASCAR's research and development center in Charlotte, N.C., it was left in Daytona so track officials use it in their investigation into what happened with the fencing. The car is in the process of being brought back to the R&D center, where it will be put back together and, with the help of video, hopefully determine what parts of the car came off when.

O'Donnell said NASCAR will bring in Larson's race team, which hasn't seen the car since it was impounded after the wreck, to talk about how the car was constructed and fabricated.

NASCAR also will bring in outside experts, including Dr. Dean Sicking, director of the Midwest Roadside Safety Facility at the University of Nebraska, officials from Indianapolis Motor Speedway and outside engineers to look at the fencing.

Daytona will have its experts work with an outside firm to analyze what was in place and analyze what may need to be done.

"When you talk about safety, I think Jeff Burton said it best: There's no end goal of safety, it's something we work on each and every day," O'Donnell said. "Same with this process. If there's something we can learn today, we'll apply that. If it's two months from now, we'll apply it as well.

O'Donnell said NASCAR will look at the issue of restrictor-plate racing at Daytona and Talladega, where the series stops in May, but he said he's comfortable with plate racing at the two superspeedways right now.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2013-03-02-CAR-NASCAR-Daytona-Crash/id-c503c2066de14afa9cbdb4a0bc0aa99c

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Improved synchronicity: Preventive care for the power grid

Mar. 1, 2013 ? President Obama in this year's State of the Union address talked about the future of energy and mentioned "self-healing power grids" -- a grid that is able to keep itself stable during normal conditions and also to self-recover in the event of a disturbance caused, for example, by severe weather.

But as the national power-grid network becomes larger and more complex achieving reliability across the network is increasingly difficult. Now Northwestern University scientists have identified conditions and properties that power companies can consider using to keep power generators in the desired synchronized state and help make a self-healing power grid a reality.

The Northwestern team's design for a better power grid could help reduce both the frequency of blackouts and the cost of electricity as well as offer an improved plan for handling the intermittent power sources of renewable energy, such as solar and wind power, which can destabilize the network.

"We will be looking at a completely different power grid in the future," said Adilson E. Motter, who led the research. "The use of renewable energy is growing. More people will be driving electric cars, and the power grid will be delivering this energy, not gas stations. We need a power grid that is more capable and more reliable. This requires a better understanding of the current power grid as well as new ways to stabilize it."

Motter is the Harold H. and Virginia Anderson Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Northwestern's Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences.

The crux of the challenge is that for the U.S. power grid to function the power generators in each of its three interconnections (Eastern, Western and Texas) must be synchronized, all operating at the frequency of 60 hertz. Out-of-synch power generators can lead to blackouts that affect millions of people and cost billions of dollars -- losses similar to those of the Northeast blackout of 2003.

Having a network that can synchronize spontaneously and recover from failures in real time -- in other words, a self-healing power grid -- could prevent such blackouts. To help achieve this, power companies could apply the Northwestern guidelines as they add power generators to the network or tweak existing generators.

A paper describing the researchers' mathematical model, titled "Spontaneous synchrony in power-grid networks," is published in the March 2013 issue of the journal Nature Physics.

When a problem develops in the power-grid network, control devices are used to return power generators to a synchronized state. Motter likens this to using medicine to treat someone who is ill. He and his colleagues are suggesting conditions to keep synchronicity in good shape so interventions are kept to a minimum.

"Our approach is preventive care -- preventing failures instead of mitigating them," said Motter, an author of the paper and an executive committee member of the Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO). "The guidelines we offer could be very useful as the power grid expands."

The researchers derived a condition under which the desired synchronous state of a power grid is stable. They then used this condition to identify tunable parameters of the power generators that result in spontaneous synchronization. This synchronization can be autonomous, not guided by control devices.

"The blackout at this year's Super Bowl was caused by a device that was installed specifically to prevent blackouts," said Takashi Nishikawa, an author of the paper and a research associate professor of physics and astronomy at Northwestern. "A large fraction of blackouts have human and equipment errors among the causes.

"Reduced dependence on conventional control devices can improve the reliability of the grid," he said. "Our analysis also suggests ways to design control strategies that potentially can improve the existing ones."

Power generators are very different from each other; some are large and others small. Motter and his colleagues identified a "body mass index" for power generators, which they suggest should be kept approximately the same (making, in essence, all generators look the same to the network) in order to strengthen spontaneous synchronicity in the system. If the body mass indices change, they should be changed in a coordinated way.

The researchers demonstrated their model using real power grids of hundreds of power generators, similar to the size of the Texas portion of the U.S. power grid.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Northwestern University, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. Adilson E. Motter, Seth A. Myers, Marian Anghel, Takashi Nishikawa. Spontaneous synchrony in power-grid networks. Nature Physics, 2013; 9 (3): 191 DOI: 10.1038/nphys2535

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/66bNJO0KLNg/130302125404.htm

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Saharan and Asian dust, biological particles end global journey in California

Feb. 28, 2013 ? A field study of aerosol impacts on clouds and precipitation in the Sierra Nevada shows that dust and microorganisms transported from as far away as the Sahara desert help to spur the precipitation that California counts on for its water supply.

The CalWater field campaign, funded by the California Energy Commission and led by UC San Diego and NOAA, could help western states better understand the future of their water supply and hydropower generation as climate change influences how much and how often dust travels around the world and alters precipitation far from its point of origin.

Jessie Creamean, a postdoctoral associate at NOAA's Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colo., co-authored the paper appearing in the journal Science with Kaitlyn Suski, a graduate student in the laboratory of Distinguished Chair in Atmospheric Chemistry Prof. Kimberly Prather, who holds appointments at Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at UCSD.

"We were able to show dust and biological aerosols that made it from as far as the Sahara were incorporated into the clouds to form ice, then influenced the formation of the precipitation in California," said Creamean, who conducted the fieldwork as a UCSD graduate student under Prather, the study leader. "To our knowledge, no one has been able to directly determine the origin of the critical aerosols seeding mid-level clouds which ultimately produce periods with extensive precipitation typically in the form of snow at the ground."

Researchers have long known that winds can carry aerosols such as dust at altitudes above 5,000 meters (16,400 feet) from continent to continent. An unrelated 2009 study found that in one instance, Asian dust made a complete circuit around the planet in 13 days.

These dust particles can act as ice nuclei within clouds at warmer temperatures than would occur in their absence. They initiate the freezing of water vapor and water droplets, then precipitate as rain, snow, or hail depending on whether meteorological conditions enable them to attain sufficient mass to fall from the sky before evaporating. Without ice nuclei, ice would likely not form in clouds with temperatures above -38 degrees C (-36.4 degrees F).

Besides dust, aerosols can be composed of sea salt, bits of soot and other pollution, or biological material. Bacteria, viruses, pollen, and plants, of both terrestrial and marine origin, also add to the mix of aerosols making the transcontinental voyage.

The researchers' analysis of winter storms in 2011 found that dust and biological aerosols tend to enhance precipitation-forming processes in the Sierra Nevada. In previous studies, researchers have found that pollution particles have the opposite effect, suppressing precipitation in the Sierra Nevada.

The bulk of the data collected during CalWater came from instruments known as aerosol time-of-flight mass spectrometers (ATOFMS), co-developed by Prather, and the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation (CALIPSO) satellite, which tracked the transport of aerosols through the atmosphere from continent to continent. Measurements in and around clouds utilized the Department of Energy's G-1 research aircraft, which carried other vital instruments, such as a specialized detector for the presence of dust ice nuclei feeding clouds and their presence in the collected residue of ice crystals. That portion of the study was led by co-author Paul DeMott, a senior research scientist at Colorado State University.

Using these tools, the researchers were able to determine that at least some of the dust and bioparticles detected by an aircraft-mounted ATOFMS unit during February 2011 flights through Sierra Nevada storm clouds were in the skies over Oman 10 days earlier, having likely originated in the Sahara a few days earlier. Along the journey, the Saharan dust and microbes mixed with other aerosols from deserts in China and Mongolia before wafting over the Pacific Ocean. Upon arrival in California, the aerosols effectively seeded the storm clouds and contributed to the efficiency of clouds in producing precipitation. Two other transportable ATOFMS units housed in trailers at Sugar Pine Dam just south of Interstate 80 in the Tahoe National Forest and other instruments made further measurements. They determined the chemical composition of aerosols at the end of their journey by looking at the particles present in precipitation samples that were collected during storms.

The researchers said it is a major challenge to sort out the relative impacts of meteorology, atmospheric dynamics, and the original sources of the cloud seeds on precipitation processes. They added that further studies like CalWater are necessary to further identify which aerosols are conducive to precipitation formation and which aerosols stifle its production.

"Due to the ubiquity of dust and co-lofted biological particles such as bacteria in the atmosphere, these findings have global significance," the study concludes. "Furthermore, the implications for future water resources become even more substantial when considering the possible increase in [wind-blown] dust as a result of a warming climate and land use changes."

"Hydropower is an essential source of electricity in California providing, on average, 15 percent of our annual generation. More importantly, it provides electricity during hot summer days when it is needed the most," said Energy Commission Chair Robert B. Weisenmiller. "This state-funded study in cooperation with NOAA will help us understand how small particles in the air affect precipitation and hydropower generation. Additionally, this information will be useful in estimating the effects of our changing climate."

The study, "Dust and Biological Aerosols from the Sahara and Asia Influence Precipitation in the Western US," appears Feb. 28 in online versions of Science. Besides Creamean, Suski, and Prather, study coauthors include Daniel Rosenfeld of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Alberto Cazorla of UCSD, Paul DeMott of Colorado State University, Ryan Sullivan of Carnegie Mellon University, Allen White, F. Martin Ralph of NOAA, Patrick Minnis of NASA's Langley Research Center, and Jennifer Comstock and Jason Tomlinson of the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Wash.

"UC San Diego is a leader in addressing complex, multi-disciplinary global challenges, such as water shortages and environmental concerns," said UCSD Chancellor Pradeep K. Khosla. "Our researchers work collaboratively to investigate and produce meaningful and impactful research that will further our understanding of our planet and environment, so we can improve human life and our world."

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of California - San Diego.

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Journal Reference:

1. J. M. Creamean, K. J. Suski, D. Rosenfeld, A. Cazorla, P. J. DeMott, R. C. Sullivan, A. B. White, F. M. Ralph, P. Minnis, J. M. Comstock, J. M. Tomlinson, K. A. Prather. Dust and Biological Aerosols from the Sahara and Asia Influence Precipitation in the Western U.S.. Science, 2013; DOI: 10.1126/science.1227279

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/~3/GUzsdae_1HE/130301123308.htm

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