Hasta La Gadget!

A swarm of parents and kids filled the sidewalk outside North Brooklyn’s PS 132 on a steamy June afternoon. Just feet away, a steady stream of large trucks rumbled down Metropolitan Avenue, the fleet nearly outnumbering the passing cars.

About half of the trucks were en route either to or from the neighborhood’s 19 waste transfer stations, where garbage is shifted to 18-wheelers for shipment out of state. For the after-school crowd, the vehicles left a haze of diesel fumes, a known asthma trigger and a recently declared carcinogen.

The congested scene is fairly typical here. Christina Reich, who was among the crowd with her son, said that she’s seen an increase in daily truck traffic in the years since the 2001 closure of the Fresh Kills Landfill on Staten Island required more garbage to be handled by transfer stations.

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What I really love about her and what I wish I’d thanked her for, is not letting all that cleverness and wit get the better of her. I so wish I’d thanked her for not allowing her hurts and betrayals to make her shriveled and bitter and mean-spirited.
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We parents are the searchers and we can’t give up, no matter how rough a ride it is.
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Astronomers in Chile using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope are now able to analyze the atmosphere on faraway planet Tau Bootis b. Using CRIRES, a supercooled infrared spectrograph bolted to the ‘scope, the team was able to judge the size of the exoplanet — and for the first time, take a reading of the atmosphere while not in transit. Historically, the only time researchers have been able to conduct atmospheric analysis is during the transit of its nearby star, which imprints the qualities of the atmosphere onto the light. The team found that Tau Bootis b is around six times the size of Jupiter, but its air is so thick with Carbon Monoxide that we’ll have to look elsewhere to plan that expedition to the stars.

Infrared telescope can pick out the atmosphere on distant planets, smell what the aliens are smelling originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 28 Jun 2012 18:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Covering breaking news is tough — and covering a highly divisive, hotly anticipated Supreme Court ruling might be one of the toughest assignments in the journalism business. There’s no video or audio — you’re just handed a pile of paper and have to decipher arcane legal conclusions in a flash.

So it’s not surprising that the court’s landmark health care decision sent media organizations into a complete frenzy on Thursday. Networks raced to decipher the 193-page decision live on-air just seconds after getting a copy in their hands, and as viewers saw, some missed the mark. One who got it right was ABC News’ Terry Moran. As he told The Huffington Post on Thursday, he definitely felt the pressure when he delivered the ruling’s biggest point within thirty seconds of receiving the papers.

“It was hairy, but fun,” Moran said about the experience on Thursday. The correspondent, who covers the Supreme Court for ABC News, said, “I’ve been doing this a long time, looking at judicial opinions for the better part of 20 years, so I knew how to look, where to look. The pressure was really crazy, and I had fun doing it.”

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