Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/286373261?client_source=feed&format=rss
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Thursday, February 21, 2013
Fr. Gheddo: The Resignation of Benedict XVI. A Church on the Verge of an Epochal Change
Speculation and discussion about who will be the next Pope is of little importance
Benedict XVI's revolutionary resignation is an act of wisdom inspired by the Holy Spirit. Speculation over the next Pope is unimportant; as we are already sure he will be the best Pope for the Church today. What is important, however, is that the whole Church, all believers, ask the Holy Spirit for the grace to welcome and to follow him with prayer and in obedience to his indications on the path to be taken in bringing Jesus Christ closer to our contemporaries, especially those who know Him but still reject Him.
MILAN, ITALY (AsiaNews) - The more time passes since February 11, when Benedict XVI humbly and courageously announced he would resign from the Papacy, the more the reasons that led to this decision, truly revolutionary in the two thousand year history of the Church, become clear. Because it is the first time that this has happened.
The few cases of Papal abdications from the distant past were all the result of external pressure and threats, in undemocratic times, unlike the times we live today in our West. In other words, the resignation indicates that the Church is on the verge of an epochal change, that we still can not fathom, but what we do know is that the step taken by the great theologian Pope is for the greater good of the Church, as he himself said on February 11 last.
In other words, it was an act of wisdom inspired by the Holy Spirit, because it opens up a new path for the Church that will favour the proclamation of the message of salvation in Christ to all peoples and especially those of Christian Europe, the vanguard of the "world of today subject to so many rapid changes and shaken by questions of deep relevance for the life of faith," and which are moving away from the practice of the Christian life.
Pope Benedict, "after repeatedly examining" his conscience before God, has come to the certainty that his forces " strengths, due to an advanced age, are no longer suited to an adequate exercise of the Petrine ministry." So, "with full freedom" he renounced "the ministry of Bishop of Rome, Successor of Saint Peter."
After all, in the nearly eight years of his pontificate, Pope Benedict really gave all of himself to the Church's mission and the primary goal that he had set himself from the beginning, the "new evangelization" of Christian peoples. The three encyclicals on Faith (this last not published, but we hope it will later materialize as a volume by Card. Ratzinger), Hope and Charity and the three volumes on the presentation of Christ to the world today, with the many other texts and gestures (the Synod on the New Evangelization, the Court of the Gentiles, the bond between Faith and Reason, the fight against "relativism", etc..), are the culmination of an entire teaching which had the principal purpose of dialogue and the proclamation of salvation in Christ to the Catholic and Christian world.
Over the past few days I have been re-reading "Spe Salvi," on Christian hope, a wonderful and rewarding scenarioon Christian life that could and should provoke a rebirth in the Christian peoples of Europe (the European Community), currently mired in a deep crisis not because of the GDP and the Spred, but because they are losing all hope of progress. "Only when the future is certain as a positive reality - we read in no. 2 - does it become possible to live the present as well". But if there is no God on the horizon of Christian peoples, the future becomes desperate, it leads to nihilism, to nothingness. Benedict XVI proclaimed these truths and wrote about them dozens and dozens of times without, however, garnering any reaction worthy of note.
Similarly, the Pope continued the teaching of Paul VI and John Paul II when he demonstrated that he is a firm believer in rationality of Christian anthropology, almost to the point of codifying "the inalienable values" of the Church ("Caritas in Veritate", nn. 28 , 44, 75), relaunched several times by the Italian Episcopal Conference, and then he sees that Catholic countries are propelling themselves along the road that leads to the destruction of the natural family and the absolute value of human life from conception to natural death. In short, when the Pope condemns war or racism, all agree, but when he speaks of marriage between man and woman and against abortion and euthanasia, then he becomes a dogmatic and reactionary conservative. And this without any serious rational debate on these fundamental issues in light of the Gospel.
Here, Pope Benedict, having given his all and averting a dwindling energy due to his age, made the grand gesture, recalling once again (in a speech to the Roman parish priests of February 14) the duty of purifying the Church of scandals, divisions, power games, slander; in short, from all individual and communal sins that tarnish the immaculate holiness of the Church and undermine the effectiveness of its proclamation of salvation in Christ. Today for us, it is a time of prayer and thanksgiving to God for the Pope that he gifted us and for his renunciation of the papacy, which opens new perspectives for the Church.
As in the recent past, the transition from one Pope to another (eg from Pius XII to John XXIII to Paul VI), the Church is no longer the same, precisely because times change and also the proclamation of Christ must be adapted to modern man. The same truth as always, but expressed and lived in a totally new way. Thus, speculation and discussion about who will be the next Pope is of little importance, as we are already sure that the Pope will be the best Pope for the Church today.
What is important, however, is that the whole Church, all believers, ask the Holy Spirit for the grace to welcome and to follow him with prayer and in obedience to his indications on the path to be taken in bringing Jesus Christ closer to our contemporaries, especially those who know Him but still reject Him. A colossal undertaking that only through an enthusiastic faith for the mission of the Church, prayer and witness of Christian life, will bear fruit.
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Father Piero Gheddo of the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions and founder of the missionary news agency AsiaNews
Source: http://www.catholic.org/international/international_story.php?id=49816&wf=rsscol
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Thursday, February 7, 2013
Paramore Bringing 'Now' Video To 'MTV First': Watch A Sneak Peek!
Hayley Williams, Jeremy Davis and Taylor York will premiere the clip Monday at 7:23 p.m. on MTV, followed by an exclusive interview on MTV.com.
By Emily Blake
Hayley Williams in Paramore's "Now" music video
Photo: Fueled By Ramen
Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1701484/paramore-now-music-video-teaser.jhtml
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Tuesday, February 5, 2013
Using single quantum dots to probe nanowires
Feb. 5, 2013 ? Modern telecommunications happens because of fast electrons and fast photons. Can it get better? Can Moore's law -- the doubling of computing power ever 18 months or so -- be sustained? Can the compactness (nm-scale components) of electronics be combined with the speed of photonics? Well, one such hybrid approach is being explored at the Joint Quantum Institute, where scientists bring together three marvelous physics research fields: microfluidics, quantum dots, and plasmonics to probe and study optical nanostructures with spatial accuracy as fine as 12 nm.
Plasmonics
When light strikes a strip of metal an electron wave can be excited in the surface. Is this "surface plasmon" a bit of light or electricity. Well, it's a bit of both. The wavelength of this electromagnetic wave is shorter and the energy density higher than that of the incoming laser light; the plasmon is thus tightly localized light constrained to propagate along the meal surface. The science of "plasmonics" has arisen to capitalize on various imaging, sensing, and processing abilities inherent in plasmons. To start with, though, one needs to know exactly what happens at that laser-excited metallic surface. That light is converted into the plasmonic wave; later the energy can be reconverted into light.
Here's where the JQI experiment comes in. The main result of the work, published February 5 in the journal Nature Communications, is to provide a map showing how the metal strip, in this case a silver wire 4 microns long and 100 nm wide, lights up.
Microfluidics and Quantum Dots
The other two chief components of the experiment, in addition to plasmonics, are microfluidics and quantum dots. Microfluidics, a relatively new science all by itself, features the movement of nanoliter volumes of fluids through channels defined on microchips, analogous to the conducting paths strung across microprocessors for carrying electrical currents. Quantum dots, nanometer-sized semiconductor balls, are tailored to possess a specified set of allowed energy states; in effect the dots are artificial atoms that can be moved around. In the JQI experiment the 10-nm-wide dots (the important cadmium-selenide layer is only 3 nm thick) float in a fluid whose flow can be controlled by varying an applied voltage. The dots are drawn up close to the nanowire as if they were mines next to a submarine.
Indeed the dot is there precisely to excite the wire. The dot is fluorescence machine -- in a loose sense a nanoscopic lightbulb. Striking it with green laser light, it quickly re-emits red light (one photon at a time), and it is this radiation which excites waves in the nearby wire, which acts like an antenna. But the interaction is a two-way street; the dot's emissions will vary depending on where along the length of the wire it is; the end of the wire (like any pointy lightning rod on a barn) is where electrical fields are highest and this attracts the most emission from the dot.
A CCD camera captures light coming from the dots and from the wire. The camera qualities, the optical properties of the dot, the careful positioning of the dot, and the shape and purity of the nanowire combine to provide an image of the electric field intensity of the nanowire with 12-nm accuracy. The intensity map shows that the input red light from the quantum dot (wavelength of 620 nm) has effectively been transformed into a plasmonic wavelength of 320 nm.
Chad Ropp is a graduate student working on the project and the lead author on the paper. "Plasmonic maps have been resolved before, but the quantum mechanical interactions with a single emitter have not, and not with this degree of accuracy," said Ropp.
Possible Applications
In an actual device, the quantum dot could be replaced by a bio-particle which could be identified through the nanowire's observed effect on particle's emissions. Or the dot-wire duo could be combined in various configurations as plasmonic equivalents of electronic circuit components. Other uses for this kind of nanowire setup might exploit the high energy density in the plasmonic state to support nonlinear effects. This could enable the nanowire-dot combination to operate as an optical transistor.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Joint Quantum Institute, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
- Chad Ropp, Zachary Cummins, Sanghee Nah, John T. Fourkas, Benjamin Shapiro, Edo Waks. Nanoscale imaging and spontaneous emission control with a single nano-positioned quantum dot. Nature Communications, 2013; 4: 1447 DOI: 10.1038/ncomms2477
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.
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Small asteroid to whiz past Earth safely
Feb. 4, 2013 ? The small near-Earth asteroid 2012 DA14 will pass very close to Earth on February 15, so close that it will pass inside the ring of geosynchronous weather and communications satellites. NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office can accurately predict the asteroid's path with the observations obtained, and it is therefore known that there is no chance that the asteroid might be on a collision course with Earth. Nevertheless, the flyby will provide a unique opportunity for researchers to study a near-Earth object up close.
Asteroid 2012 DA14 will be closest to Earth on Feb. 15, at about 11:24 a.m. PST (2:24 p.m. EST and 1924 UTC), when it will be at a distance of about 27,700 kilometers (17,200 miles) above Earth's surface. Although this is close enough for the asteroid to pass inside the ring of geosynchronous satellites, located about 35,800 kilometers (22,200 miles) above the equator, it will still be well above the vast majority of satellites, including the International Space Station. At its closest, the asteroid will be only about 1/13th of the distance to the moon. The asteroid will fly by our planet quite rapidly, at a speed of about 17,400 mph (7.8 kilometers per second) in a south-to-north direction with respect to Earth.
Even though 2012 DA14 is coming remarkably close, it will still only appear as a point of light in the biggest of optical telescopes, because of its small size. Based on its brightness, astronomers estimate that it is only about 45 meters (150 feet) across. It will brighten only to magnitude 7.5, too faint to be seen with the naked eye, but easily visible with a good set of binoculars or a small telescope. The best viewing location for the closest approach will be Indonesia, from which the asteroid will be seen to move at a rate of almost 1 degree per minute against the star background. Eastern Europe, Asia and Australia are also well situated to see the asteroid around its closest approach. But by the time Earth rotates enough for observers in the continental United States to have a chance to see the asteroid, it will have receded and faded to about the 11th magnitude. Radar astronomers plan to take images of the asteroid about eight hours after closest approach using the Goldstone antenna in California's Mojave Desert, which is part of NASA's Deep Space Network.
2012 DA14 has not been in the catalogues for very long -- it was discovered in February of 2012 by astronomers at the La Sagra Sky Survey program in southern Spain and reported to the Minor Planet Center, which designates minor bodies in our solar system. At the time of the discovery, the asteroid had just made a fairly distant passage by Earth, about seven times farther than the distance to the moon. Since 2012 DA14's orbital period around the sun has been about 368 days, which is very similar to Earth's, the asteroid made a series of annual close approaches. This year's is the closest approach, and is the closest the asteroid will come for at least three decades. But this encounter will shorten 2012 DA14's orbital period to about 317 days, changing its orbital class from Apollo to Aten, and its future close approaches will follow a different pattern.
This passage of 2012 DA14 by Earth is a record close approach for a known object of this size. A few other known asteroids have flown by Earth even closer, but those asteroids were smaller. On average, we expect an object of this size to get this close to Earth about once every 40 years. An actual Earth collision by an object of this size would be expected much less frequently, about once every 1,200 years, on average.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
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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/space_time/astronomy/~3/xk2rab1oyG8/130204131341.htm
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Sunday, February 3, 2013
Syria activists: Rebel advance near Aleppo airport
BEIRUT (AP) ? Syrian rebels made advances on Saturday in the country's north, capturing a strategic neighborhood near Aleppo airport that has been a major front in the nearly two-year conflict, activists say.
Troops loyal to President Bashar Assad and rebels have been locked in a deadly stalemate in Aleppo, Syria's largest urban center and main commercial hub, and other areas in the country's north since last summer. Seven months later, the rebels hold large parts of the city and its outskirts, including some army bases. Still, they have been unable to overcome the regime's far superior firepower.
The capturing of the Sheik Said neighborhood southeast of Aleppo is a significant blow to regime forces because the area includes a major road, linking the northern city with the airport. The army has used the road to supply troops.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said rebels captured the area Saturday after several days of fierce battles with Assad's troop. Rebels have previously established enclaves outside Syria's major cities to threaten the regime, including near the capital, Damascus, but they were later bombed out by Assad's fighter jets and artillery.
The opposition's Western backers, including the United States have been reluctant to supply rebels with more sophisticated weapons because of the increased influence of an al-Qaida-affiliated group among the anti-Assad fighters on the front lines. The Islamists growing prominence in the Syrian opposition has fueled fears that Muslim radicals might try to hijack the revolt that started as peaceful protests against Assad, whose family has ruled Syria for more than 40 years.
In Germany, Vice President Joe Biden said, "The opposition (to Assad) continues to grow stronger."
Speaking at an annual security conference in Munich, Biden stated the conviction of the U.S. and many others that "President Assad ? a tyrant hell-bent on clinging to power ? is no longer fit to lead the Syrian people and he must go."
Assad has repeated brushed aside international calls to step down, characterizing its opponents as Islamic extremists who are out to destroy the country. In a speech last month, Assad outlined a peace initiative that would keep him in power.
The opposition coalition has rejected any talks with Damascus until Assad steps down. However, Moaz al-Khatib, the president of the coalition that is dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood movement, has departed recently from the categorical refusal, saying on Wednesday he is willing to negotiate with members of Assad's regime to bring a peaceful end to the country's civil war.
Later on Saturday Biden is scheduled to hold a separate meeting in Munich with al-Khatib as well as the international envoy to Syria's conflict, Lakhdar Brahimi, and Russia's foreign minister Sergey Lavrov.
Russia is Assad's longtime ally, and it has disagreed sharply with Washington and its Western allies on ways to end Syrian bloodshed. Moscow has maintained that Assad is part of the solution to the crisis, though Russian officials have recently criticized their ally in Damascus and even mentioned the possibility of rebels winning the war.
However, Lavrov told the gathering of top security officials that Biden's statement that Assad must go was counterproductive.
"The persistence of those who say that priority number one is the removal of President Assad ? I think it's the single biggest reason for the continued tragedy in Syria," Lavrov said.
Syria's civil war is estimated to have claimed more than 60,000 lives since the uprising against Assad erupted in March 2011.
______
Associated Press writers Geir Moulson and David Rising in Munich contributed to this report.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/syria-activists-rebel-advance-near-aleppo-airport-130657935.html
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Saturday, February 2, 2013
Negotiators talking to Alabama captor through pipe
MIDLAND CITY, Ala. (AP) ? More than three days after he allegedly shot a school bus driver dead, grabbed a kindergartner and slipped into an underground bunker, Jimmy Lee Dykes is showing no signs of turning himself over to police.
Hostage negotiators in Midland City, Ala., tried Thursday to persuade the 65-year-old retired truck driver to release the 5-year-old, who has Asperger's syndrome and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
But they acknowledged Dykes could hold out for days.
James Arrington is police chief of the neighboring town of Pinckard. He told reporters camped out at the site Thursday that Dykes has been known to hole up in the underground bunker resembling a tornado shelter for as many as eight days.
Dale County Sheriff Wally Olson said late Thursday that authorities were still communicating with the suspect.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/negotiators-talking-ala-captor-pipe-181459029.html
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