Turkiet planerar att bygga en ny jättekanal genom Turkiets europeiska del. Den nya kanalen ska avlasta den tungt trafikerade och olycksdrabbade Bosporen. Enligt Turkiets premiärminister blir det inga problem med finansieringen, och om kanalbygget blir av öppnas globala affärsmöjligheter och tusentals jobb.
Den nya kanalen - en andra Bosporen - ska förbinda Svarta Havet och Marmarasjön. Den ska därmed kunna avlasta Bosporen som är en av världens mest belastade fraktvägar. Turkiets premiärminister Recep Tayyip Erdogan offentliggjorde planerna igår och mötte både jubel och protester.
SVENSKA DAGBLADET
torsdag, april 28, 2011
Halv miljon elbilar i Kinas femårsplan
I slutet av 2015 ska det finnas över en halv miljon elektriska fordon i Kina, som laddas via 220 000 laddstolpar. Därtill ska 47 000 km järnväg byggas, och 235 GW ickefossil elkraft ska finnas installerat. Ett handelssystem med CO2-utsläppsrätter ska också byggas upp.
Den 5:e mars presenterade det kinesiska kommunistpartiet sin tolfte femårsplan för landet, och nu har analytiker på Deutsche Bank presenterat (länk) sina åsikter om vad den innebär i energihänseende. Och den tyska banken är imponerad.
– Kinas koldioxidpolitik är globalt ledande. Kontrasten är slående mot USA:s stillastående, skriver banken i sin analys.
Det är bara att imponeras av kinesernas frammarch.
LKAB köper fyra nya bamselok
Världens starkaste lok Iore har en dragkraft på 1200 kN.
LKAB har beslutat att köpa ytterligare fyra malmlok av typen Iore för att öka kapaciteten på Malmbanan.
Idag rullar 13 sådana lok på Malmbanan. Men med en planerad ökning av malmtransporterna till 40 miljoner ton per år 2015 måste kapaciteten höjas.
NY TEKNIK
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| Malmbanan |
Sjöbergs förläggare: "Vi är förvånade själva"
Ville att Patrik Sjöberg själv skulle få berätta. Flera medier gjorde intensiva försök att i förhand få ta del av den mörka hemligheten i Patrik Sjöbergs bok "Det du inte såg". Men förlaget lyckades med sin lanseringsplan att hålla tyst – och hoppas på försäljningssuccé.
DAGENS MEDIA
DAGENS MEDIA
Launch Preparations on Track; RSS Rollback Scheduled for Tonight
Preparations for space shuttle Endeavour's launch are continuing as planned at NASA Kennedy Space Center's Launch Pad 39A. STS-134 Commander Mark Kelly and his crew also are continuing their prelaunch activities. Liftoff to the International Space Station is scheduled for 3:47 p.m. EDT Friday. /NASA
Death toll from storms that have hit southern states of U.S. jumps to 159, including 128 in Alabama, officials say./CNN
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| A tornado moves through Tuscaloosa, Ala |
President Obama's Long Form Birth Certificate
The White House Blog
President Obama's Long Form Birth Certificate
Posted by Dan Pfeiffer on April 27, 2011 at 08:57 AM EDT
Ed. Note: Read the transcript of the President's remarks following this release or watch the video below:
In 2008, in response to media inquiries, the President’s campaign requested his birth certificate from the state of Hawaii. The state sent the campaign the President’s birth certificate, the same legal documentation provided to all Hawaiians as proof of birth in state, and the campaign immediately posted it on the internet. That birth certificate can be seen here (PDF).
When any citizen born in Hawaii requests their birth certificate, they receive exactly what the President received. In fact, the document posted on the campaign website is what Hawaiians use to get a driver’s license from the state and the document recognized by the Federal Government and the courts for all legal purposes. That’s because it is the birth certificate. This is not and should not be an open question.
The President believed the distraction over his birth certificate wasn’t good for the country. It may have been good politics and good TV, but it was bad for the American people and distracting from the many challenges we face as a country. Therefore, the President directed his counsel to review the legal authority for seeking access to the long form certificate and to request on that basis that the Hawaii State Department of Health make an exception to release a copy of his long form birth certificate. They granted that exception in part because of the tremendous volume of requests they had been getting. President Barack Obama's long form birth certificate can be seen here (PDF):
Birth certificate-long-form
At a time of great consequence for this country – when we should be debating how we win the future, reduce our deficit, deal with high gas prices, and bring stability to the Middle East, Washington, DC, was once again distracted by a fake issue. The President’s hope is that with this step, we can move on to debating the bigger issues that matter to the American people and the future of the country.
Dan Pfeiffer is White House Communications Director
AMSAT-UK FUNcube SDR video
The Dutch radio amateur Henk, PA3GUO, has produced a HD video showing the AMSAT-UK FUNcube SDR dongle receiving signals from Amateur Radio satellites.
The FUNcube Software Defined Radio dongle covers 64 to 1700 MHz. and sells for around £125. It was developed to support the educational outreach aspect of the AMSAT-UK FUNcube satellite that will hopefully be launched towards the end of 2011.
The FUNcube Software Defined Radio dongle covers 64 to 1700 MHz. and sells for around £125. It was developed to support the educational outreach aspect of the AMSAT-UK FUNcube satellite that will hopefully be launched towards the end of 2011.
Den delade skolan : segregationsprocesser i det svenska skolsystemet
Detta är en sammanfattning av en avhandling från Örebro : Örebro universitet
Författare Anders Trumberg, Örebor Universitet [2011]
Sammanfattning: In the beginning of the 1990s the responsibility for the compulsory schools shifted from the government to the local authorities, a freedom of choice was introduced, and several municipalities brought in a school voucher system. With these changes, the educational system in Sweden went from being one of the world’s most government dominated and unified, to one with a high level of freedom of choice. The overall aim for this study is to explore the interplay between the school choice policy in the compulsory school and the process of integration and segregation on a school level. The aim is also specifically to study to what degree the pupils’ choice of school reflect the schools’ composition, with regards to ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds between 1992 and 2004.The thesis is based on three different kinds of materials; registry data from SCB (Statistics Sweden), the municipality’s data surrounding the school applications, and interviews with civil servants, politicians, and head teachers. In conclusion, the study shows that a divide has emerged between different schools, the make-up of pupils is becoming more homogenous, and the school as a meeting place between different ethnic groups is affected in a negative way. The study also shows that the school choices have an influence on this segregation between the schools. However, there are a small number of exceptions. In certain schools, the ethnic mix of pupils is relatively fair.
Abstrakt på svenska och engelska >> http://www.skolporten.com/art.aspx?id=JBDss
Författare Anders Trumberg, Örebor Universitet [2011]
Sammanfattning: In the beginning of the 1990s the responsibility for the compulsory schools shifted from the government to the local authorities, a freedom of choice was introduced, and several municipalities brought in a school voucher system. With these changes, the educational system in Sweden went from being one of the world’s most government dominated and unified, to one with a high level of freedom of choice. The overall aim for this study is to explore the interplay between the school choice policy in the compulsory school and the process of integration and segregation on a school level. The aim is also specifically to study to what degree the pupils’ choice of school reflect the schools’ composition, with regards to ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds between 1992 and 2004.The thesis is based on three different kinds of materials; registry data from SCB (Statistics Sweden), the municipality’s data surrounding the school applications, and interviews with civil servants, politicians, and head teachers. In conclusion, the study shows that a divide has emerged between different schools, the make-up of pupils is becoming more homogenous, and the school as a meeting place between different ethnic groups is affected in a negative way. The study also shows that the school choices have an influence on this segregation between the schools. However, there are a small number of exceptions. In certain schools, the ethnic mix of pupils is relatively fair.
Abstrakt på svenska och engelska >> http://www.skolporten.com/art.aspx?id=JBDss
Record Number of Whales, Krill Found in the Antarctic Bays /DUKE
Contact: Tim Lucas at (919) 613-8084 or tdlucas@duke.edu
The sightings, made in waters still largely ice-free deep into austral autumn, suggest the previously little-studied bays are important late-season foraging grounds for the endangered whales. But they also highlight how rapid climate change is affecting the region.
The Duke University-led team tracked the super-aggregation of krill and whales during a six-week expedition to Wilhelmina Bay and surrounding waters in May 2009. They published their findings today in the online science journal PLoS ONE.
“Such an incredibly dense aggregation of whales and krill has never been seen before in this area at this time of year,” says Douglas P. Nowacek, Repass-Rodgers University Associate Professor of Conservation Technology at Duke. Most studies have focused on whale foraging habitats located in waters farther offshore in austral summer.
Nowacek and his colleagues observed 306 humpback whales – or about 5.1 whales per square kilometer, the highest density ever recorded – in Wilhelmina Bay. They measured the krill biomass at about 2 million tons. Small, floating fragments of brash ice covered less than 10 percent of the bay. The team returned in May 2010 and recorded similar numbers. Smaller but still higher-than-normal counts were also reported in neighboring Andvord Bay.
Advancing winter sea ice used to cover much of the peninsula’s bays and fjords by May, protecting krill and forcing humpback whales to migrate elsewhere to find food, Nowacek says, but rapid climate change in the area over the last 50 years has significantly reduced the extent, and delayed the annual arrival, of the ice cover.
"The lack of sea ice is good news for the whales in the short term, providing them with all-you-can-eat feasts as the krill migrate vertically toward the bay’s surface each night. But it is bad news in the long term for both species, and for everything else in the Southern Ocean that depends on krill,” says Ari S. Friedlaender, co-principal investigator on the project and research scientist at Duke.
Antarctic krill are shrimplike creatures that feed primarily on phytoplankton and live in large swarms in the Southern Ocean. Penguins, seals, seabirds and many whale species rely on the protein-rich, pinky-sized crustaceans as a source of food. Commercial fisheries are allowed to harvest up to three-and-a-half tons of the krill a year as food for farm-raised salmon and for oil, rich in omega-3 acids, which is used in human dietary supplements.
Around the Western Antarctic Peninsula, krill migrate in austral autumn from open ocean waters to phytoplankton-rich bays and fjords, where juveniles feed and the population overwinters under the protective cover of ice. There is a strong correlation between the amount of sea ice and the amount of krill that survive the long, harsh Antarctic winter.
“If there are more areas with large aggregations of krill hanging out in waters where sea ice has diminished, you could see a big decrease in the standing krill stock, especially if we have a few years of back-to-back bad ice and the krill can’t replenish themserlves,” Friedlaender says. Scientists already have documented drops in krill abundance over the last 50 years related to reduced sea ice cover. Further drops could have far-reaching consequences. Seals and penguins have a relatively small foraging range, and some can’t eat any prey other than krill or hunt without the presence of sea ice. Whales can migrate longer distances and might be able to find food elsewhere, but may be affected in other ways, as evidenced by snippets of unexpected sounds being transmitted by 11 whales the Duke team tagged in the study.
“We’re starting to hear songs being produced by whales in the Antarctic – sexual advertisements typically heard only in humpback breeding grounds that are located thousands of miles away from these bays,” Friedlaender says.
Humpback whales typically reproduce once every three years, “so if a female doesn’t have to go to the breeding grounds every year – if she has access to food here and isn’t being forced out by sea cover – why should she leave?” Nowacek says. The presence of more females, coupled with access to a nightly krill feast, entices more males to stick around too. “So this may affect the timing and location of humpback breeding and other important lifecycle events.”
Consideration of these factors, and the effects of rapid climate change, on krill dynamics will be critical to managing sustainable krill harvests and the continued recovery of baleen whales in the Southern Ocean, he says.
Nowacek holds appointments at Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment and Pratt School of Engineering. He and Friedlaender’s co-authors on the study were Patrick Halpin, David Johnston and Andrew Read of Duke; Elliott Hazen of the NOAA/University of Hawaii Joint Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research; Boris Espinasse of the Université de la Méditerranée; and Meng Zhou and Yiwu Zhu of the University of Massachusetts. The study was conducted aboard the research vessel Lawrence M. Gould, which is operated by the National Science Foundation Office of Polar Programs.
NOTE: Douglas P. Nowacek can be reached for comment at (252) 646-5658 or dpn3@duke.edu; Ari S. Friedlaender can be reached at (919) 672-0103 or asf7@duke.edu.
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/Swedish:/ Duke University är ett universitet i Durham i den amerikanska delstaten North Carolina. Universitetet grundades 1838.
President Reshuffles National Security Team
President Obama is shaking up his national security team.
According to multiple media reports, the president will announce this week that he has chosen current Central Intelligence Agency director Leon Panetta to succeed Robert Gates as secretary of defense. The change, which has been rumored to be in the works for some time, is expected to occur sometime this summer.
Meanwhile, Gen. David Petraeus, who currently is the commander of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, will take over for Panetta as the chief of the CIA.
NEW YORK TIMES
According to multiple media reports, the president will announce this week that he has chosen current Central Intelligence Agency director Leon Panetta to succeed Robert Gates as secretary of defense. The change, which has been rumored to be in the works for some time, is expected to occur sometime this summer.
Meanwhile, Gen. David Petraeus, who currently is the commander of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, will take over for Panetta as the chief of the CIA.
NEW YORK TIMES
U.S. Census Bureau 2010 Census News Update
Profiles will be available for each of the 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico down to the place/functioning minor civil division-level. Profiles for the United States, regions and divisions will be available at the end of May with the final states' releases.
When:
The news release and data for these 13 states will be released Thursday, May 5. The data will be available in American FactFinder
Online Press Kit:
For more information about the Census Bureau's 2010 Census Demographic Profile's, please visit
For more information about the U.S. Census Bureau, please visit
"eta Aquarids."
(The eta Aquarids are best viewed from the southern hemisphere, but there's something special about them no matter where you live)
Storm death toll reaches 54 in South
The city of Tuscaloosa, Ala., was among the hardest hit, with the mayor announcing at least 15 people had died after a tornado struck there. Those deaths were among at least 40 reported in the state.
Storms also killed 11 in Mississippi, two in Georgia and one in Tennessee.
LOS ANGELES TIMES
onsdag, april 27, 2011
Champions league - semifinal
Real Madrid - Barcelona 0-2 (rättvist)
Målen: Messi
Messis andra mål idag (Maradoamål):
Svenskarnas fysiska prestationsförmåga oförändrad senaste tio åren – bukfetman ökar
Det finns inga skillnader i syreupptagningsförmåga relaterad till kroppsvikt mellan män och kvinnor i Sverige, enligt en rapport från en befolkningsbaserad studie som undersökt trenderna under en tioårsperiod. Men förekomsten av bukfetma är alarmerande hög i alla åldersgrupper.
LÄKARTIDNINGEN
LÄKARTIDNINGEN
Fatah and Hamas Said to Reach Deal to End Schism
Fatah and Hamas Said to Reach Deal to End Schism
Fatah and Hamas, the rival Palestinian movements, reached
understandings on Wednesday to end the years-long internal
Palestinian schism, according to Egyptian and Palestinian
officials.
Citing an Egyptian official, the official Palestinian news
agency Wafa reported that delegations led by Azzam al-Ahmed
of Fatah and Moussa Abu Marzouk of Hamas had agreed in Cairo
on issues including the formation of a temporary unity
government and the holding of Palestinian elections.
NEW YORK TIMES
Fatah and Hamas, the rival Palestinian movements, reached
understandings on Wednesday to end the years-long internal
Palestinian schism, according to Egyptian and Palestinian
officials.
Citing an Egyptian official, the official Palestinian news
agency Wafa reported that delegations led by Azzam al-Ahmed
of Fatah and Moussa Abu Marzouk of Hamas had agreed in Cairo
on issues including the formation of a temporary unity
government and the holding of Palestinian elections.
NEW YORK TIMES