Qutub Minar Wallpapers and Backgrounds Application
Qutub Minar, also known as Qutb Minar and Qutab Minar, is the tallest minaret in India, originally an ancient Islamic Monument, inscribed with Arabic inscriptions, though the iron pillar has some Brahmi inscriptions, and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
This application contains high quality pictures, any of which you can install on your desktop of your phone or tablet, or save to your device You can also set the time change the image and it will be constantly changing automatically to the next, and you do not have time to go into each app to do it. Every day - a new picture!
This app will add a few search access points on your device. If you do not want to use this new search page, you can either ignore it or delete it. If you do use it, we get a few cents and it will help us a lot to keep developing more apps. If you don?t, you can delete it and no harm is done (our app remains the same, no need to uninstall it!). Thank you.
NEW YORK ? A rally that that brought the stock market to record highs this year came back to life after U.S. home prices rose the most in seven years and consumer confidence reached a five-year high.
The Dow Jones industrial average climbed as much as 218 points during morning trading Tuesday, bouncing back from a loss the week before. The Dow gave back about half of the gain by early afternoon, and was up 101 points shortly before 2 p.m.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury note rose to 2.11 percent, its highest level since April 2012, as investors moved money out of safe assets and into riskier ones like stocks.
The jump in home prices reinforced a theme that has been a major factor behind the surge in stocks this year: a strong recovery in the housing market.
"They say the stock market tends to lead the economy. Now we're starting to see the improvement on the economic front, so there's some justification for this rally," said Ryan Detrick, a senior technical strategist at Schaeffer's investment research.
The market is coming off a rare loss last week, when both the Dow and the Standard & Poor's 500 index had their first losing weeks in a month. Investors worried that the Federal Reserve might slow its extraordinary economic stimulus measures, which have also supported the stock market's advance.
Home builder stocks rose Tuesday after the Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller survey, which was released before stock trading opened, found that U.S. home prices rose 10.9 percent in March, the most since April 2006. A growing number of buyers are bidding on a tight supply of homes. Beazer Homes jumped 63 cents, or 3 percent, to $21.96.
Stocks extended their gains after the Conference Board reported at 10 a.m. that its measure of consumer confidence rose in May to its highest level since February 2008.
The Dow was up 101 points, or 0.7 percent, to 15,405 as of 1:57 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time. If the Dow finishes the day higher it will end have closed higher for 20 straight Tuesdays, according to Schaeffer's investment research.
The S&P 500 index rose nine points, or 0.6 percent, to 1,658. The Nasdaq composite index climbed 25 points, or 0.7 percent, to 3,483.
The gains were broad. Eight of the 10 industry groups in the S&P 500 index rose, led by financial stocks. The only ones that fell were utilities and telecommunication stocks, which investors tend to buy when they're seeking stable, safe stocks that pay high dividends. All but three of the 30 stocks in the Dow Jones industrial average rose.
The Dow has advanced 17.8 percent this year and the S&P 500 index in 16.5 percent higher as investors have piled into stocks.
Unlike the first three months of the year, when the biggest gains were in large, stable companies like consumer staple makers that pay big dividends, in recent weeks investors have been bidding up the stocks of companies that have more to gain if the economy strengths. That shift out of lower-risk stocks and into more "cyclical" stocks, like banks and industrial companies, means investors are becoming more aggressive in seeking returns and more comfortable taking on risk.
Another bullish signal for the market is the strong growth in small-company stocks. Those stocks have a greater potential for growth but also tend to carry greater risk than large, diversified companies. The preference for small stocks was on display again Tuesday as the Russell 2000 index of small-company stocks rose 1.2 percent, more than other market indexes, to 995 points, a gain of 11 points. Its year-to-date increase of 17.2 percent is one percentage point greater than that of the S&P 500.
Bond prices fell and their yields rose. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note rose to 2.11 percent from 2.01 percent late Friday. Markets were closed Monday for Memorial Day.
The longer-term outlook for bonds is bleak as rising inflation will eventually lead to higher interest rates, said Tim Courtney, chief investment officer at Exencial Wealth Advisors. Despite climbing this year, the yield on the 10-year note is still close to the record low of 1.39 percent that it reached in July, 2012, when demand for Treasuries surged as the European debt crisis intensified.
"The only way that bonds can make money from here is if we go a prolonged period of time with very, very low inflation and rates just don't move up a whole lot at all," said Courtney. "Under any other scenario they lose."
Among other stocks making big moves:
-Tiffany rose $3.23, or 4.2 percent, to $79.44 after the high-end jewelry seller said its first quarter net income rose 3 percent as sales improved across all regions. The results beat the forecasts of Wall Street analysts.
-Tesla Motors jumped $7.23, or 7.5 percent, to $104.30. Last week the electric car market raised almost $1 billion from a bond and stock offering and paid off a government loan nine years early. The company is also set to announce this week that it's adding to a network of car charging stations.
-Electricity company FirstEnergy dropped 7.5 percent, or $3.19, to $39.45 after Credit Suisse stripped the company of its 'outperform' rating, saying that a glut of energy would push down prices the company is able to charge.
Traders were encouraged by gains in overseas markets. Japan's benchmark Nikkei rose 1.2 percent. The index had plunged 7.3 percent Thursday on concerns about Japan's massive economic stimulus program. European markets also rose. Britain's FTSE 100 jumped 1.6 percent and Germany's DAX gained climbed 1.2 percent.
In commodities trading, the price of oil rose $1.18, or 1.2 percent, to $95.35. Gold fell $7.70, or 0.6 percent, to $1,378.90 an ounce. The dollar gained against the euro and the Japanese yen.
BAGHDAD (AP) ? Officials say a bomb left on a Baghdad minibus and a suicide truck bomb north of the Iraqi capital have killed seven people.
The two separate attacks on Tuesday followed a particularly bloody day that left more than 70 people dead.
A police officer said the minibus bomb killed five commuters and wounded 25 in Sadr City, a Shiite-majority district in the city's east. Another police office said a suicide bomber set off his explosives-laden truck after passing a police checkpoint in the town of Tarmiyah to the north of Baghdad, killing a policeman and a civilian. Nine were wounded.
Two medical officials confirmed the casualties. All spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to release information.
Boards Of Canada have been busy over the weekend - sharing a new track and hosting a listening party.
Oh, Boards Of Canada... where would we be without you?
New album 'Tomorrow's Harvest' grows closer each day, and with each day the duo seem to drop more clues. Over the weekend, Boards Of Canada dropped a series of hints suggesting that something would happen at 5pm PDT on May 27th.
Come the anointed date and time, the crowd at Detroit's Movement Electronic Music Festival were treated to a mysterious new song blasting out of the speakers. Broadcast with pink visuals emblazoned with a hexagon - seemingly the Sandison's shape of choice - the song has been identified as 'Cold Earth'.
Watch that moment below.
- -
Later, Boards Of Canada posted the simple message: "May 27th 12:00 PDT". Seemingly identified as an abandoned water park, Bleeps 'n' Bloops named the location as Lake Dolores Waterpark in Southern California. A listening party for 'Tomorrow's Harvest' then took place, which was captured by USTREAM user Tonx23.
Watch the first four songs below:
Video streaming by Ustream
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Contact: Jan Overney jan.overney@epfl.ch 41-765-027-373 Ecole Polytechnique Fdrale de Lausanne
EPFL researchers have detected microplastic pollution in Lake Geneva in surprisingly high concentrations
EPFL researchers have detected microplastic pollution in one of Western Europe's largest lakes, Lake Geneva, in large enough quantities to raise concern. While studies in the ocean have shown that these small bits of plastic can be harmful to fish and birds that feed on plankton or other small waterborne organisms, the full extent of their consequences in lakes and rivers is only now being investigated. The study, which is being extending under a mandate by the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment, was published in the latest issue of the journal Archives des Sciences.
"We were surprised to find such high concentrations of microplastics, especially in an environmentally aware country like Switzerland," says first author Florian Faure from EPFL. Faure's study focused on Lake Geneva, where both beaches and lake water were shown to contain significant amounts of microplastic contamination - pieces of plastic waste up to 5 mm in diameter. The study is one of the first of its kind to focus on a continental freshwater lake. And according to Faure, given the massive efforts put into protecting the lakes shores over the past decades, both on its French and the Swiss shores, the situation is likely to be representative of fresh water bodies around the world.
Microplastics in continental waters may be the main source of microplastic pollution in oceans, where huge hotspots containing high concentrations of these pollutants have formed. Scientists estimate that only around 20 percent of oceanic microplastics are dumped straight into the sea. The remaining 80 percent are estimated to originate from terrestrial sources, such as waste dumps, street litter, and sewage.
Microplastic pollution is also a strain to lake and river ecosystems, threatening the animals that inhabit these aquatic ecosystems both physically and chemically. When inadvertently swallowed by aquatic birds and fish, the tiny bits of plastic can wind up stuck in the animals' intestines, where they obstruct their digestive tracts, or cause them to suffocate by blocking their airways. Ingested plastics may also leach toxic additives and other pollutants stuck to their surface into the animals that swallow them, such as bisphenol A (BPA) and phthalates, two carcinogenic agents used in transparent plastics, or other hydrophobic water pollutants, such as PCBs.
Like counting needles in a haystack
Florian Faure and his collaborators used a variety of approaches to quantify plastic and microplastic pollution in and around the lake, from combing beaches along Lake Geneva for plastic litter to dissecting animals, fishes (pikes, roaches and breams) and birds from the aquatic environment, and observing bird droppings around the lake.
To measure the concentration of microplastics in the water, Faure worked in collaboration with Oceaneye, a Geneva-based non-profit organization. Using an approach developed to study plastic pollution in the Mediterranean Sea, they pulled a manta trawl - a floating thin-meshed net - behind a boat in Lake Geneva to pick up any solid matter in the top layer of the water. The samples were then sorted out, dried and the solid compounds were analyzed for their composition.
"We found plastic in every sample we took from the beaches," says Faure. Polystyrene beads were the most common culprits, but hard plastics, plastic membranes, and bits of fishing line were also widespread. In this preliminary study, the amount of debris caught in Lake Geneva using the manta trawl was comparable to measurements made in the Mediterranean Sea.
The scientists are now extending their focus to lakes and rivers across the country, backed by a mandate from the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment. According to the lab's director, Luiz Felippe de Alencastro, this will involve studying microplastic pollution in lakes, rivers, and biota across the country, as well as the associated micropollutants, such as PCBs, which have already been found stuck on microplastics from Lake Geneva in significant concentrations.
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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.
Contact: Jan Overney jan.overney@epfl.ch 41-765-027-373 Ecole Polytechnique Fdrale de Lausanne
EPFL researchers have detected microplastic pollution in Lake Geneva in surprisingly high concentrations
EPFL researchers have detected microplastic pollution in one of Western Europe's largest lakes, Lake Geneva, in large enough quantities to raise concern. While studies in the ocean have shown that these small bits of plastic can be harmful to fish and birds that feed on plankton or other small waterborne organisms, the full extent of their consequences in lakes and rivers is only now being investigated. The study, which is being extending under a mandate by the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment, was published in the latest issue of the journal Archives des Sciences.
"We were surprised to find such high concentrations of microplastics, especially in an environmentally aware country like Switzerland," says first author Florian Faure from EPFL. Faure's study focused on Lake Geneva, where both beaches and lake water were shown to contain significant amounts of microplastic contamination - pieces of plastic waste up to 5 mm in diameter. The study is one of the first of its kind to focus on a continental freshwater lake. And according to Faure, given the massive efforts put into protecting the lakes shores over the past decades, both on its French and the Swiss shores, the situation is likely to be representative of fresh water bodies around the world.
Microplastics in continental waters may be the main source of microplastic pollution in oceans, where huge hotspots containing high concentrations of these pollutants have formed. Scientists estimate that only around 20 percent of oceanic microplastics are dumped straight into the sea. The remaining 80 percent are estimated to originate from terrestrial sources, such as waste dumps, street litter, and sewage.
Microplastic pollution is also a strain to lake and river ecosystems, threatening the animals that inhabit these aquatic ecosystems both physically and chemically. When inadvertently swallowed by aquatic birds and fish, the tiny bits of plastic can wind up stuck in the animals' intestines, where they obstruct their digestive tracts, or cause them to suffocate by blocking their airways. Ingested plastics may also leach toxic additives and other pollutants stuck to their surface into the animals that swallow them, such as bisphenol A (BPA) and phthalates, two carcinogenic agents used in transparent plastics, or other hydrophobic water pollutants, such as PCBs.
Like counting needles in a haystack
Florian Faure and his collaborators used a variety of approaches to quantify plastic and microplastic pollution in and around the lake, from combing beaches along Lake Geneva for plastic litter to dissecting animals, fishes (pikes, roaches and breams) and birds from the aquatic environment, and observing bird droppings around the lake.
To measure the concentration of microplastics in the water, Faure worked in collaboration with Oceaneye, a Geneva-based non-profit organization. Using an approach developed to study plastic pollution in the Mediterranean Sea, they pulled a manta trawl - a floating thin-meshed net - behind a boat in Lake Geneva to pick up any solid matter in the top layer of the water. The samples were then sorted out, dried and the solid compounds were analyzed for their composition.
"We found plastic in every sample we took from the beaches," says Faure. Polystyrene beads were the most common culprits, but hard plastics, plastic membranes, and bits of fishing line were also widespread. In this preliminary study, the amount of debris caught in Lake Geneva using the manta trawl was comparable to measurements made in the Mediterranean Sea.
The scientists are now extending their focus to lakes and rivers across the country, backed by a mandate from the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment. According to the lab's director, Luiz Felippe de Alencastro, this will involve studying microplastic pollution in lakes, rivers, and biota across the country, as well as the associated micropollutants, such as PCBs, which have already been found stuck on microplastics from Lake Geneva in significant concentrations.
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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.
Analyze your skin from head to toe every couple of months, utilizing a full-length mirror and hand mirror to ascertain your mouth, nose, scalp, palms, soles, backs of ears, genital area, and between the buttocks. Cover every inch of skin and pay exceptional attention to moles and sites of preceding skin cancerous disease.
Kinds of Skin cancerous disease:
?Squamous cell carcinoma
Symptoms of Skin Cancer
?A small spot that is glossy, waxy, yellow in color, and glossy in texture.
?A red spot that makes firm.
?Spot which bleeds or become hard and gaze as sores.
?Skin will become uneven and scaly.
?A change in a living skin development.
Tips to prevent skin cancer:
?Use sunscreen: if you go outside use sunscreen and bypass direct exposure to midday sun.
?Wear broad-spectrum sunscreen containing both UVA and UVB defense.
?Wear protective apparel. Wear long sleeve tops, long trousers, sun hats, and sunglasses.
May 26 (Reuters) - A gunman randomly firing from his pickup truck killed one person and wounded five, including the sheriff of Concho County, Texas, on Sunday before the suspect was killed in a shootout with law enforcement, officials said.
Authorities recovered an assault rifle, a handgun and hundreds of rounds of ammunition from the suspect, who was said to be 23 years old and from North Carolina. The name was withheld pending notification of relatives, the Texas Department of Public Safety said in a statement.
The statement identified the dead victim as Alicia Torres, 41, who was shot dead in her car, the statement said.
The Texas Rangers, local law enforcement and Texas Parks and Wildlife were investigating multiple scenes in Concho County, about 250 miles (400 km) southwest of Dallas, following the early morning shooting spree.
The first incident took place about 4:30 a.m. when the suspect opened fire on vehicle near Eden, wounding a woman, who was later hospitalized in San Angelo, the statement said.
The suspect wounded two more people a short time later as they sat in their vehicle outside a convenience store in Brady, and then returned to Eden, where he fired on another vehicle and wounded another person. Those three were treated and released.
About 6 a.m., Torres was found shot to death in her car in Eola.
Some 15 minutes later, Concho County Sheriff Richard Doane encountered the suspect on a highway north of Eden. The sheriff was wounded and taken to a San Angelo hospital with non-life threatening injuries, the statement said.
The gunman was killed in a shootout with a Highway Patrol trooper and game warden who arrived to assist the sheriff, the statement said. (Reporting by Daniel Trotta; Editing by Bill Trott)
(some thoughts in response to ?Gutted? ? headline article in the Doncaster Free Press 9/5/13)
Small wonder that Doncaster is the ?fat capital? of Britain (Doncaster Free Press?s Description, not mine) when you look at the state of our high streets. It sometimes appears as if the only viable businesses in our towns and villages are fast food joints and hairdressers? in fact I?m waiting for an entrepreneurial genius to open a place called ?Kebab Kutz? where you can eat a doner and fries whilst getting a short back and sides. I haven?t got anything against hairdressers (come to think of it I could do with a good trim), or even a little indulgence every now and then, but this infestation of grease gourmets is a recipe for disaster.
In a recent TED talk Ron Finley said: ?I live in a food desert, South Central Los Angeles, home of the drive-thru and the drive-by. Funny thing is, the drive-thrus are killing more people than the drive-bys. People are dying from curable diseases in South Central Los Angeles. For instance, the obesity rate in my neighborhood is five times higher than, say, Beverly Hills, which is probably eight, 10 miles away.?
Coincidentally obesity rates in Doncaster are five times higher than the UK average and despite being a semi-rural area most Doncaster neighbourhoods are also ?food deserts? where it?s easier to buy pizzas than potatoes (unless they?ve been skinned, cut-up and deep-fried of course).
The good news is that Doncaster has so far managed to avoid the ?drive-bys?. The *really* good news is that Ron did something about the food deserts of South Central LA? ?I got tired of seeing this happening. And I was wondering, how would you feel if you had no access to healthy food, if every time you walk out your door you see the ill effects that the present food system has on your neighborhood? ? This has to stop. So I figured that the problem is the solution. Food is the problem and food is the solution ? So what I did, I planted a food forest in front of my house.? And we can do something about the problem here too. In fact a growing number of green fingered, guerrilla gardeners already are?
Ron?s band of food foresters, ?LA Green Grounds? (lagreengrounds.org), was one of the main inspirations behind a grass-roots (no pun intended) group of volunteers called Doncaster Urban Growers (DUG). We plant edible and useful plants around Doncaster, both in members? gardens and on unused plots (often tidying up unsightly ?waste-ground?). Our most recent project was to start planting an Apothecary (food, herb and medicinal plants) Garden at the front of Church View (the former art college behind the Minster opposite Tesco?s car park).
We made a cracking start last Thursday (May 23rd)and will be there again this Thursday (6pm on Thursday 30th May) as part of the Doncaster New Fringe Showdown Exhibition party. Why not join us? Bring whatever tools, talent, seeds and jokes you may have (along with food and drink for the party of course!). But don?t worry if you?re new to growing, DUG?s diggers will teach you a thing or two?
Not only will you learn how to grow healthy produce whilst brightening up Doncaster?s environment, you?ll also find out how growing your own food can save you money. In fact it can even provide some additional income; as Ron says: ?When one dollar?s worth of green beans will give you 75 dollars? worth of produce ? growing your own food is like printing your own money.? What?s more you can even get your kids to eat their greens!.. ?You?d be surprised how kids are affected by this. Gardening is the most therapeutic and defiant act you can do ? If kids grow kale, kids eat kale.?
And if you have a patch of land you?d like to plant-up then you can contact DUG via their blog at thedug.wordpress.com. Let?s turn every food desert into a food forest!
Are you searching for guidance on how to profit from day trading? If so, "10 suggestions for the day trader" is specifically what this will give you; 10 tips to support you get began. They are:
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In addition to the 10 tips for the Day Trader, there are a number of other things that may be useful to you. To find out what they are click 10 tips for the Day Trader.
Curious how much it costs to buy a piece of land on a Colorado ski resort mountain? Try $5.2 million per acre.
Vail Resorts Inc. (NYSE: MTN) sold 2.1 acres of land at the base of Breckenridge Ski Resort?s Peak 8 to an affiliate of Breckenridge Grand Vacations Inc., which developed the Grand Timber Lodge and Grand Lodge at Peak 7. The land carried a $11.1 million cost.
Grand Vacations has plans for a 75-unit timeshare, ski-in/ski-out resort with a restaurant and spa.
?This is an exciting time for Breckenridge Ski Resort, with continued investment both on the mountain and at our base areas,? said Alex Iskenderian, senior vice president and chief operating officer of Vail Resorts Development Co. ?Improving the bed base at Peaks 7 and 8, and having a gondola taking our guests to and from town, has transformed the Breckenridge experience.?
The new development will be where the Bergenhof Day Lodge is located. That lodge will be demolished in coming weeks. Grading and utility work is scheduled to start this summer, with new resort construction starting next spring.
Breckenridge Ski Resort is continuing to add summer activities to the mountain and finishing Peak 6, which will open 543 acres of new ski terrain for the 2013-2014 ski season.
Homebuilder poised to start new development in Jeffco
KB Home (NYSE: KBH) bought 68 lots for a new home development called Lyons Ridge in Jefferson County. The lots are near the Red Rocks Country Club, southwest of Colorado Highway 285 and C-470.
The sales price and previous land owner weren?t disclosed.
?Market activity in the metro Denver area has been encouraging and we feel now is the right time to invest in land and open new communities like Lyons Ridge,? said Matt Mandino, president of KB Home?s Colorado division.
Dennis Huspeni covers real estate and retail for the Denver Business Journal and writes for the ?Real Deals? blog. Phone: 303-803-9232.
Loren is a long-time Denver real estate investor. He has bought, remodeled and sold homes throughout the Denver metro area. Loren has also invested in commercial real estate. He is an entrepreneur who has owned multiple businesses and is a licensed real estate agent in the state of Colorado. Loren and his wife, Karen Bimler, make up Team Bimler at Your Castle Real Estate. If you would like more information about the Denver Real Estate market, give Loren a call at 720-837-0831.
The Interstate 5 Bridge over the Skagit River in Washington state collapsed around 7 p.m. on Thursday, dumping cars and people into the water, KIRO-TV reported.
According to the Trooper Mark Francis, public information officer for the Washington State Patrol, both north and southbound lanes of the interstate were affected.
At least two vehicles were on the span when it fell into the river. Rescue teams quickly arrived on the scene to save victims from the chilly waters. When first responders pulled the first victim off the roof of his vehicle, nearby eyewitnesses applauded, The Skagit Valley Herald reported.
Authorities said nobody was killed in the incident, but three people were injured and taken to area hospitals.
Cause of the collapse is unknown at this time. According to The Associated Press, police are speaking with a commercial truck driver whose rig may have hit the bridge.
The 1,111-ft. Skagit River Bridge is located between Burlington and Mt. Vernon, about 60 miles north of Seattle. Built in 1955, BridgeHunter.com notes that the four-lane structure sees an average daily traffic of about 71,000 vehicles.
Bart Treece with the Washington State Department of Transportation told KOMO News that he was unsure when the bridge was last inspected.
"All of our bridges in the area are pretty old," he said.
One in nine of the nation's bridges has been rated as structurally deficient, the American Society of Civil Engineers 2013 Report Card for America's Infrastructure reported. The Seattle chapter of the ASCE awarded the state's bridges a C- grade.
The Federal Highway Administration estimates that it would cost $20.5 billion a year to eliminate the country's bridge deficient backlog by 2028.
MORE FROM THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
MOUNT VERNON, Wash. ? An Interstate 5 bridge over a river collapsed north of Seattle Thursday evening, dumping two vehicles into the water and sparking a rescue effort by boats and divers who pulled three injured people from the chilly waterway.
Authorities said it appeared nobody was killed in the bridge failure that raised the question about the safety of aging spans and cut off the main route between Seattle and Canada.
"We don't think anyone else went into the water," said Marcus Deyerin, a spokesman for the Northwest Washington Incident Management Team. "At this point we're optimistic."
A man and a woman were reported in stable condition with non-life-threatening injuries in the emergency room at Skagit Valley Hospital, hospital spokeswoman Kari Ranten said. Another man was reported in stable condition at United General Hospital in Sedro-Woolley, hospital CEO Greg Reed said. He said he didn't know whether the man would be admitted.
Traffic along the heavily-travelled route could be impacted for some time.
"The I-5 corridor is totally disrupted," said Gov. Jay Inslee, who went to the scene Thursday night.
He said work has already started to design detour, but state Transportation Secretary Lynn Peterson asked people to avoid I-5 in the area for the next several days.
Washington State Trooper Mark Francis said a portion of the four-lane bridge over the Skagit River collapsed about 7 p.m.
Jeremiah Thomas, a volunteer firefighter, said he was driving nearby when he caught something out of the side of his eye and turned to look.
"The bridge just went down, it crashed through the water," he said. "It was really surreal."
It was not known what caused the collapse of the bridge about 60 miles north of Seattle in Skagit County, but State Patrol detectives and the patrol's commercial vehicle enforcement bureau troopers were talking late Thursday night to a commercial truck driver whose rig was believed to have struck the bridge.
"It appears the commercial vehicle made contact with the bridge," Francis said. "Whether it was the cause" of the collapse or made contact as the bridge was falling "that will all come out in the wash. But it appears it hit the bridge."
The four-lane bridge was about 50 feet above the water. Deyerin said it appeared that two vehicles - a car and a pickup with the travel trailer attached - fell into the river. He said the water depth was about 15 feet, and that the vehicles were half-visible in the water likely are resting on portions of the collapsed bridge.
Crowds of people lined the river to watch the scene unfold.
"It's not something you see every day," said Jimmy O'Connor, the owner of two local pizza restaurants who was driving on another bridge parallel to the one that collapsed. "People were starting to crawl out of their cars."
He said he and his girlfriend were about 400 yards away on the Burlington Bridge when they heard "just a loud bang."
"Then we looked over and saw the bridge was down in the water," he said.
He pulled over and saw three vehicles in the water, including a camping trailer that landed upside-down, he said.
The bridge is not considered structurally deficient but is listed as being "functionally obsolete" - a category meaning that the design is outdated, such as having narrow shoulders and low clearance underneath, according to a database compiled by the Federal Highway Administration.
The bridge was built in 1955 and has a sufficiency rating of 57.4 out of 100, according to federal records. That is well below the statewide average rating of 80, according to an Associated Press analysis of federal data, but 759 bridges in the state have a lower sufficiency score.
According to a 2012 Skagit County Public Works Department report, 42 of the county's 108 bridges are 50 years or older. The document says eight of the bridges are more than 70 years old and two are over 80.
Washington state was given a C in the American Society of Civil Engineers' 2013 infrastructure report card and a C- when it came to the state's bridges. The group said more than a quarter of Washington's 7,840 bridges are considered structurally deficient or functionally obsolete.
Democratic Rep. Judy Clibborn, who leads the transportation committee in the state House, said the bridge wasn't one that has been a focus for lawmakers.
"It is shocking that I-5 would have something happen like this," she said.
Clibborn said the collapse will call attention to the issues facing bridges ? especially the old bridge over the Columbia River that connects Vancouver and Portland, Ore.
A change in taste cells makes glucose-baited traps repellent
By Susan Milius
Web edition: May 23, 2013
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BITTERSWEET
German cockroaches have fought back against bait traps that pair sugar with poison. Over time, the insects have developed taste cells that register sugar as disgusting.
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Cockroaches that don?t fall for traps? sweet poisons have evolved taste cells that register sugar as bitter.
In certain groups of the widespread German cockroach (Blattella germanica), nerve cells that normally detect bitter, potentially toxic compounds now also respond to glucose, says entomologist Coby Schal of North Carolina State University in Raleigh. The ?bitter? reaction suppresses the ?sweet? response from other nerve cells, and the roach stops eating, Schal and his colleagues report in the May 24 Science.
Normally roaches love sugar. But with these populations, a dab of jelly with glucose in it makes them ?jump back,? Schal says. ?The response is: ?Yuck! Terrible!??
This quirk of roach taste explains why glucose-baited poison traps stopped working among certain roaches, Schal says. Such bait traps combining a pesticide with something delicious became popular during the mid-1980s. But in 1993, Jules Silverman, also a coauthor on the new paper, reported roaches avoiding these once-appealing baits.
?This is a fascinating piece of work because it shows how quickly, and how simply, the sense of taste can evolve,? says neurobiologist Richard Benton of the University of Lausanne in Switzerland.
What pest-control manufacturers put in their roach baits now, and whether some still use glucose, isn?t public, Schal says. But humankind?s arms race with cockroaches could have started long ago, ?in the caves,? he says. In this back-and-forth struggle, it?s important ?to understand what the cockroach is doing from a molecular basis.?
Roaches don?t detect taste with tongues, as people do, but instead use hairlike structures that grow in lots of spots on their bodies. ?The cockroach can taste things by stepping into them,? Schal says. Taste nerve cells spangle the roach hairs. Coauthor Ayako Wada-Katsumata presented various flavors and measured the responses from two types of nerve cells, the GRN1 cells, which detect sugars, and the GRN2 cells, which normally warn of bitter compounds such as caffeine.
In roaches that shied away from glucose, the sweet-detecting nerve cells continued to fire when exposed to various sugars. What differed in these roaches were the bitter-detecting GRN2 cells, which responded to glucose as well as to bitter compounds. In these insects, bitter overwhelms the signal from the sweet detector.
Among the scenarios Schal imagines for the origin of GRN2?s glucose aversion are a chance mating with some other as-yet-unidentified roach species that doesn?t eat glucose. Or he wonders if the bait traps triggered the spread of formerly rare genetic variations in roach taste cells left over from before the species moved in with people. Those outdoor ancestors might have evolved a distaste for glucose because so many plants defend themselves with compounds called glucosides, blends of sweetness and something noxious.
An aversion to glucose doesn?t mean distaste for all sugars. The new study found roach enthusiasm for fructose, although Schal has heard that other roaches may be averse to it. What would really surprise him, he says, is a roach distaste for the beery sugar maltose. During roach courtship, a male roach offers maltose as a gift to win female favor. The male fans out his wings so a female can climb onto his back to nibble at maltose he produces. ?They use it the way we use chocolates,? he says.
Cockroaches used to love sugar and would mob both jelly and peanut butter. But some roaches have evolved aversions to glucose and avoid jelly. Courtesy of Ayako Wada-Katsumata
(Reuters) - Dish Network Corp has rolled out an advertising campaign suggesting a deal by a Japanese company to acquire Sprint Nextel Corp could threaten U.S. national security, hoping to sway lawmakers and win support for its rival offer.
The campaign, which so far appears on the Internet and in Washington-area newspapers, is Dish's most public lobbying effort yet against Japan-based SoftBank Corp.
Dish has been pushing the national security angle hard in Washington. Since April, it has filed several documents raising alleged national security risks tied to SoftBank, while also promoting its own $25.5 billion bid for Sprint.
A full-page color ad ran on A5 of the Washington Post on Wednesday comparing SoftBank's proposed acquisition of Sprint to the 2006 Dubai Ports World controversy. In that case, legislators helped block a deal to buy several U.S. ports by stressing the national security concerns.
"In an ever advancing world, 'ports' may change," the newspaper ad says, "but keeping them in American hands never should. Don't outsource our national security."
The ad has a photo of shipping ports sitting above a photo of networking equipment. Dish's accompanying website, Nationalsecuritymatters.com, claims SoftBank spends "significant amounts with Chinese equipment manufacturers for its wireless network in Japan."
Dish also said on the website that China is the leading source of cybersecurity breaches. Dish's online ads link to that webpage, which was set up earlier this week.
In response, SoftBank says on its own website about the deal that it is "committed to using only network equipment that is acceptable to the U.S. government." SoftBank also made a pledge at the end of March that it would not use equipment from China's Huawei in Sprint's network.
WIDE FOCUS
Jeff Blum, Dish's Washington-based deputy general counsel, said the newspaper ads also appeared in Washington trade publications such as Politico, The Hill, Roll Call and the National Journal. Digital ads appear online in the National Journal and Politico, as well as news sites such as Reuters.com.
James Burger, an attorney who focuses on lobbying and policy at Thompson & Coburn in Washington, is skeptical the ads will be effective, especially because Japan is a U.S. ally and not viewed as a threat.
"I'm not convinced that the ads will convince the decision makers," he said.
Burger, who lobbied for Apple in the 1990s, but does not do work for SoftBank, Sprint or Dish, added that the ads will fall on deaf ears if SoftBank follows its pledge to use no Chinese equipment in its U.S. network.
"It seems to me that Dish is harping on the China bashing," he said. "But if SoftBank swears not use Chinese equipment, I wonder how well this will work."
Yet Dish has said its lobbying effort in Washington appears to be working. At a congressional cybersecurity hearing on Tuesday, the SoftBank deal made its way into the debate.
When asked by Virginia Representative Morgan Griffith if he had concerns about the deal, Mike McConnell, former director of national intelligence, said he would not be in favor of a U.S. communications company controlled by a foreign entity.
The ad campaign comes one day after SoftBank said it would grant a waiver to Sprint to allow it to consider Dish's bid.
On Tuesday, Sprint said its recommendation in favor of the SoftBank agreement had not changed. But some major Sprint shareholders, including Paulson & Co and Omega Advisors, have said the Dish offer looks better than SoftBank's deal.
(Reporting By Liana B. Baker. Additional reporting by Alina Selyukh in Washington. Editing by Andre Grenon)
Just as CEO JK Shin predicted, Samsung has announced its new Galaxy S 4 topped 10 million units sold in record time. That beats the 50 days it took the Galaxy S III to sell that many, a mark it took 5 months for the Galaxy S II to pass and 7 months for the original Galaxy S. Samsung has been able to crank up production and speed up worldwide rollouts for its increasingly popular flagship models, contributing to the rapidly increasing pace of sales. To help keep the sales channels flowing, Samsung also announced a few new colors on the way. Joining the existing White Mist and Black Forest models this summer are Blue Arctic and Red Aurora, followed later by Purple Mirage and Brown Autumn editions. Of course, the model many will covet is the one with stock Android announced at Google I/O, but that may depend on whether you want your customizations inside or outside.
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Public release date: 28-May-2013
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