The Pro Bowl remains on the endangered species list.
In what hardly will classify as the most dramatic revelation of the year, Commissioner Roger Goodell said Monday at a town hall meeting sponsored by SiriusXM radio that the Pro Bowl could be abandoned, eventually.
?It?s really tough to force competition and after a long season to ask those guys to go out and play at the same level that they play is pretty tough,? Goodell said.? ?And I made it very clear last year because I really thought the quality of the game last year was way below standards and if we?re going to play like that we should just eliminate the game.?
He?s right.? No player who has made it through a long season of games that count healthy enough to play another game has interest in playing hard in a game that doesn?t count.
So get rid of it.? Be done with it.? Yes, it will result in a lost opportunity to hit the cash register, given that plenty of folks will watch bad football involving good players.? But if it doesn?t do justice to the shield, then it should be abandoned, permanently.
The problem is that the players still want to play the game ? since it entails a free week in Hawaii and, in its current form, a game of two-hand touch in full pads.? And as long as people keep watching it, it will be hard to stop playing it.
?I was leaning that way,? Goodell said.? ?The players asked if they could take another crack at it and they wanted to try to work to make the game more competitive.? Obviously, I support that but if we can?t accomplish that kind of a standard I?m inclined not to play it any longer.?
Thus, this year?s edition could go a long way toward determining the future of the game.? Which means that even more of us will tune in to see just how much better than really bad it will be.
Which will make it even harder to pull the plug, now matter how badly it needs to be pulled.
?Governor Romney?s plan calls for?$2 trillion in additional military spending that the military hasn?t asked for.? ?President Obama, First Presidential Debate, October 3, 2012
The President has repeatedly attacked Governor Romney?s plan to restore baseline military budgets to roughly 4 percent of domestic product as unnecessary spending that the Joint Chiefs of Staff don?t want. In the vice presidential debate, Joe Biden went even farther, claiming it was the service leaders who ?made the recommendation first? to make the latest round of cuts, which total almost $500 billion. ?That?s a fact,? asserted the Vice President.
No, it?s not.
The fact is that this round of defense cuts was first proposed by President Obama on April 13, 2011. In an attempt to preempt the budget-cutting fervor of the House of Representatives? Republican leadership, he said he would trim roughly $400 billion from the defense plan that he had submitted to Congress in February 2011. The President did not even inform Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who was set to retire that June, about the proposed cuts.
And no wonder. Secretary Gates had already declared his opposition to such an approach: ?Suggestions to cut defense by this or that large number have largely become exercises in simple math, divorced from serious considerations of capabilities, risk, and the level of resources needed to protect this country?s security and vital interests around the world.?
And so President Obama has, conveniently, rewritten the standard of military strategy to conform to his defense-budget-cutting desires. But as TheWashington Post has observed, the President?s defense guidance rests ?upon the dubious assumption that there will be no need to fight land wars in the coming decade? The shrinking Navy, in turn, is at odds with Mr. Obama?s strategy of building up forces in Asia against a belligerent China.?
The Post also rightly pointed out that Governor Romney is simply proposing to ?fully fund the four-year plan laid out by the Defense Department.?
In other words: This ?additional? spending previously was asked for by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and recommended to Congress by President Obama himself.
As commander-in-chief, President Obama has the prerogative to define U.S. defense strategy downward. But he does not have the prerogative to define defense facts. And he certainly should not hide behind the Joint Chiefs of Staff when he does so.
Contact: Dr. Andreas Battenberg battenberg@zv.tum.de 49-892-891-0510 Technische Universitaet Muenchen
X-ray technology improves early detection of pulmonary disease
This press release is available in German.
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is considered the fourth most common cause of death in the United States. Usually the precursor to this life-threatening lung disease is a chronic bronchitis. Partially destroyed alveoli and an over-inflation of the lungs, known as emphysema, are serious side effects. However, the subtle differences in the tissue are barely discernable in standard X-ray images.
In addition to the conventional X-ray images, the Munich scientists analyzed the radiation scattered by the tissue. From these data they calculated detailed images of the lungs of the investigated mice. Using such images, physicians can see not only if a patient is diseased but also how strongly which parts of the lung are affected.
"Especially in early stages of the disease, identification, precise quantification and localization of emphysema through the new technology would be very helpful", says Professor Maximilian Reiser, head of the Institute for Clinical Radiology at Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich. "We hope that one day this technology will improve COPD diagnosis and therapy, while avoiding the higher radiation exposure associated with high-resolution CT".
The procedure has been developed as part of the research work of the Cluster of Excellence Munich-Centre for Advanced Photonics (MAP) by physicists from the Technische Universitaet Muenchen (TUM), physicians at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich (LMU) and the Comprehensive Pneumology Center (CPC) of the Helmholtz Zentrum Muenchen.
For their experiments, the researchers used the Compact Light Source, a compact synchrotron radiation source of Lyncean Technologies Inc. (USA). In the future the Center for Advanced Laser Applications (CALA), a joint project of TUM and LMU on the Research Campus Garching, will develop new laser-driven x-ray sources.
In parallel, the research group led by Franz Pfeiffer, professor for Biomedical Physics at the Technische Universitaet Muenchen, works on the improvement of the x-ray scattering analysis to pave the way for its use with conventional X-ray machines.
###
This research was supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG) through the Cluster of Excellence Munich-Centre for Advanced Photonics (MAP) and by the European Research Council (ERC Starting Grant No. 240142). The Compact Light Source experiment was supported in part by a National Institute of General Medical Sciences Grant (R44-GM074437) and a National Center for Research Resources Grant (R43- RR025730). Other collaborators were the Karlsruhe Nano Micro Facility (KNMF), a Helmholtz Research Infrastructure at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Lund University (Sweden) and Lyncean Technologies Inc. (USA).
Original publication:
Emphysema diagnosis using X-ray dark-field imaging at a laser-driven compact synchrotron light source. Simone Schleede, Felix G. Meinel, Martin Bech, Julia Herzen, Klaus Achterhold, Guillaume Potdevin, Andreas Malecki, Silvia Adam-Neumair, Sven F. Thieme, Fabian Bamberg, Konstantin Nikolau, Alexander Bohla, Ali . Yildirim, Rod Loewen, Martin Gifford, Ronald Ruth, Oliver Eickelberg, Maximilian Reiser, and Franz Pfeiffer. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, PNAS, Early Edition, 2012, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1206684109
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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: Dr. Andreas Battenberg battenberg@zv.tum.de 49-892-891-0510 Technische Universitaet Muenchen
X-ray technology improves early detection of pulmonary disease
This press release is available in German.
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is considered the fourth most common cause of death in the United States. Usually the precursor to this life-threatening lung disease is a chronic bronchitis. Partially destroyed alveoli and an over-inflation of the lungs, known as emphysema, are serious side effects. However, the subtle differences in the tissue are barely discernable in standard X-ray images.
In addition to the conventional X-ray images, the Munich scientists analyzed the radiation scattered by the tissue. From these data they calculated detailed images of the lungs of the investigated mice. Using such images, physicians can see not only if a patient is diseased but also how strongly which parts of the lung are affected.
"Especially in early stages of the disease, identification, precise quantification and localization of emphysema through the new technology would be very helpful", says Professor Maximilian Reiser, head of the Institute for Clinical Radiology at Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich. "We hope that one day this technology will improve COPD diagnosis and therapy, while avoiding the higher radiation exposure associated with high-resolution CT".
The procedure has been developed as part of the research work of the Cluster of Excellence Munich-Centre for Advanced Photonics (MAP) by physicists from the Technische Universitaet Muenchen (TUM), physicians at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich (LMU) and the Comprehensive Pneumology Center (CPC) of the Helmholtz Zentrum Muenchen.
For their experiments, the researchers used the Compact Light Source, a compact synchrotron radiation source of Lyncean Technologies Inc. (USA). In the future the Center for Advanced Laser Applications (CALA), a joint project of TUM and LMU on the Research Campus Garching, will develop new laser-driven x-ray sources.
In parallel, the research group led by Franz Pfeiffer, professor for Biomedical Physics at the Technische Universitaet Muenchen, works on the improvement of the x-ray scattering analysis to pave the way for its use with conventional X-ray machines.
###
This research was supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG) through the Cluster of Excellence Munich-Centre for Advanced Photonics (MAP) and by the European Research Council (ERC Starting Grant No. 240142). The Compact Light Source experiment was supported in part by a National Institute of General Medical Sciences Grant (R44-GM074437) and a National Center for Research Resources Grant (R43- RR025730). Other collaborators were the Karlsruhe Nano Micro Facility (KNMF), a Helmholtz Research Infrastructure at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Lund University (Sweden) and Lyncean Technologies Inc. (USA).
Original publication:
Emphysema diagnosis using X-ray dark-field imaging at a laser-driven compact synchrotron light source. Simone Schleede, Felix G. Meinel, Martin Bech, Julia Herzen, Klaus Achterhold, Guillaume Potdevin, Andreas Malecki, Silvia Adam-Neumair, Sven F. Thieme, Fabian Bamberg, Konstantin Nikolau, Alexander Bohla, Ali . Yildirim, Rod Loewen, Martin Gifford, Ronald Ruth, Oliver Eickelberg, Maximilian Reiser, and Franz Pfeiffer. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, PNAS, Early Edition, 2012, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1206684109
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
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.
So, the iPad mini is here at last! Smaller tablets have already carved out a real niche for themselves, and if you've always wanted an iPad but were scared off by its size, then maybe this is the day you've been waiting for. More »
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Choosing a great case when building a computer is a tough decision, as you have to consider size, features, aesthetics. It's tough to find one solution that fulfills every need. The BitFenix Prodigy manages to pull it off.
When I first built my hack mini, I stuck it in a diminutive Mini ITX case. The case came with an integrated power supply which died about a month ago and I had to quickly find a replacement. Fortunately, the BitFenix Prodigy recently came to market and I was pretty impressed by the specifications. Not only is the case beautiful, but it offers a ton of space and features that you normally wouldn't find in a Mini ITX form-factor. It offers room for five hard drives, an optical drive, a large graphics card, two PCI slots, and frontside USB 3.0. While it's a bit larger than your average Mini ITX case?you won't fit it in a slim media cabinet?it's still rather compact. The case sounded perfect so I called around until I found one about an hour drive away and immediately hopped in the car to get it.
I spent the rest of my afternoon transferring my hack mini into the BitFenix Prodigy. While the case wasn't quite as intuitive as I'd hoped, I only needed to consult the manual once to figure out how to safely remove the front panel to install the optical drive. Everything else was incredibly straightforward, and I was able to add a spare hard drive and a better optical drive now that I had the extra space. The interior made this all very easy because of how it's organized, and because of a number of special compartments I had no trouble managing cables. If you don't need a tiny form-factor, this is the case you should get for your next Mini-ITX build. It's fantastic, comes in both black and white, and is well worth the $80.
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Public release date: 22-Oct-2012
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Choosing a great case when building a computer is a tough decision, as you have to consider size, features, aesthetics. It's tough to find one solution that fulfills every need. The BitFenix Prodigy manages to pull it off. 
When I first built my hack mini, I stuck it in a diminutive Mini ITX case. The case came with an integrated power supply which died about a month ago and I had to quickly find a replacement. Fortunately, the BitFenix Prodigy recently came to market and I was pretty impressed by the specifications. Not only is the case beautiful, but it offers a ton of space and features that you normally wouldn't find in a Mini ITX form-factor. It offers room for five hard drives, an optical drive, a large graphics card, two PCI slots, and frontside USB 3.0. While it's a bit larger than your average Mini ITX case?you won't fit it in a slim media cabinet?it's still rather compact. The case sounded perfect so I called around until I found one about an hour drive away and immediately hopped in the car to get it.