Airports challenging FAA's planned tower shutdowns

CHICAGO (AP) -- Airport operators are mounting a legal challenge to the Federal Aviation Administration's decision to cut funding for 149 air traffic control towers, accusing the agency of violating federal law meant to ensure major changes at airports do not erode safety.

Several airports are now asking a federal court to halt the plan and compel the FAA to more carefully study the potential safety impact, said Carl Olson, director of the Central Illinois Regional Airport in Bloomington, Ill. He warned that without a more cautious approach, lives will be put at risk by cuts that he contends are arbitrary and the result of reckless political brinkmanship in Washington.

"I think everybody's going to realize what the industry knows, and that is there is a razor thin margin of error in aviation and any diminishment of safety is going to have an immediate and cascading effect," Olson said in an interview Friday. "And all the talk to the contrary won't change that fact."

Olson's airport is among the latest to file a lawsuit this week with the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington. The others are Spokane Airports in Washington state, and the operators of Florida airports in Naples, Ormond Beach and Punta Gorda. The court combined the suits into a single case Thursday.

FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown said Friday that the agency could not comment on the pending litigation.

The agency's administrator, Michael Huerta, has stressed that safety remains the FAA's top priority even as it is forced by the budget cutting known as sequestration to trim $637 million for the rest of the fiscal year that ends Sept. 30.

The FAA said it had no choice but to subject most of its 47,000 employees, including tower controllers, to periodic furloughs and to close air traffic facilities run by contractors at 149 small airports with lighter traffic. The first of those closures will happen April 7. Olson's airport is slated to lose its funding May 5.

The tower shutdowns will not mean that airports have to close. All pilots are required to know how to land at un-towered airports and to practice those procedures, which include communicating with other pilots over a shared radio frequency.

But airport directors, pilots and others in the aviation sector say stripping away an extra layer of safety during the most critical stages of flight will elevate risks and at the very least slow years of progress that made the U.S. aviation network the safest in the world.

Lawrence Krauter, director of Spokane International Airport, said he expects more airports and possibly trade associations to join the legal challenge. He said the tower closures amount to one of the most significant changes to the national air system's safety network in recent history and deserve to be studied carefully.

"No one's going to tell you ... that there aren't some contract towers out there that could be closed," Krauter said. "What we're saying is that we think that there needs to be a more reasoned and appropriate process."

Spokane's second and smaller airport, Felts Field, is set to lose its tower funding May 5. Like many of the airports losing funding, it has a busy flight school and serves the area's medical air evacuation operation in addition to handling private aircraft.

Local airport authorities have been scrambling to find the money to keep their towers running once the federal funding runs out. And several of the airport operators wrote to Huerta to ask that he halt the plans and detail exactly what study and review processes, if any, the FAA has carried out.

Olson said he's gotten no response and suspects that no substantive review has been conducted.

"We're not aware of any," Olson said. "There doesn't appear to be any consideration for the individual operations, safety or environmental consequences."

The lawsuits specifically mention the National Environmental Policy Act, which requires extensive review of any airport changes, as well as the Safety Management Systems protocols requiring thorough risk analysis that the FAA must carry out.

"That requirement is not excused" by the budget cuts, Olson said.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/airports-suing-faa-over-planned-193151827.html

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Services growth suggests Britain might just skirt recession

By William Schomberg and Olesya Dmitracova

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's dominant services industry grew at its strongest pace in five months in January, a small boost to chances the country might narrowly skirt a new recession.

Output in the sector, which accounts for more than three quarters of the economy, rose 0.3 percent in January from December, the Office for National Statistics said on Thursday.

That was its best performance since August although the data can often prove volatile.

Separate surveys showing that house prices posted their first annual rise in more than a year and consumer confidence held steady, albeit a low levels, added to a picture of a slow and delicate recovery.

Jens Larsen, chief European economist at RBC Capital Markets, said the services data suggested zero growth in the economy in the first quarter.

That would mean Britain escapes a recession - as defined by two consecutive quarters of contraction - by the narrowest possible margin.

Other economists thought Britain's economy shrank in the January-March period, an embarrassment for the government which is sticking to its fiscal austerity push.

"Today's data wasn't a disaster, but is it good enough?" said Alan Clarke, economist at Scotiabank. "It's a close call but my feeling is a triple-dip recession is more likely than not."

Weak as it is, Britain's economy is not as fragile as some in Europe, according to forecasts from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development released on Thursday. They showed Britain was set to outperform France and Italy, but not Germany, in the first two quarters of 2013.

SERVICES FIRM, FACTORIES STRUGGLE

Thursday's services data feeds into the ONS's calculation of gross domestic product. A first reading of GDP in the January-March period is due to be released on April 25.

On a year-on-year basis, services output was up 0.8 percent, the ONS said.

A separate Purchasing Managers' Index survey of Britain's services industry released earlier this month also showed the sector holding up.

Its performance contrasts with a weaker picture in manufacturing. Official data showed earlier that manufacturing output fell in January at the fastest pace since June.

Helping services in January was activity in the transport, storage and communications sector as well as in business services and finance. Cold weather and snowfall in the month held back trade at some smaller retailers and at pubs and bars.

Another long spell of cold weather in March could prove the factor that pushes Britain's economy into a new recession.

In the three months to the end of January, services output was down 0.2 percent compared with the three months to the end of October when the London Olympics boosted the economy.

Separately, the ONS reported that productivity across all sectors of the economy, as measured by output per hour, fell 0.5 percent in the fourth quarter compared with the third quarter.

That was the sixth successive decline in British productivity by that measure. Britain has seen rising employment but falling output per worker, which many economists say could reflect companies' desire to keep employees on their books while offering them lower wage growth, rather than firing them.

But some say the productivity numbers might be a sign of something more worrying.

"There is a growing focus on 'zombie' companies that are essentially being kept alive by low interest rates and banks' reluctance to write off loans," said Howard Archer at IHS Global Insight, adding that would prevent new firms from succeeding.

Unit wage costs rose 0.5 percent in the October-December period compared with the previous three months.

(Editing by Jeremy Gaunt.)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/uk-services-output-rises-january-easing-recession-fears-093418366--business.html

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Green Throttle expands Atlas Controller support to any device running ICS and above

Green Throttle, a start-up focused on bringing quality console-level controllers to Android devices, is announcing wider device compatibility of its app and Atlas Controller. The controller can now be used on any Android device running ICS (4.0.3) or later, although Green Throttle recommends you use a device with video-out support in order to play on a larger screen. After its installed, Green Throttle Arena lets you play games with up to four players on your Android device with a much better experience than using a touch screen.

The app is free, but the Atlas Controller itself will set you back $39.95 stand-alone, or $49.95 with a bundled Micro USB charger and HDMI cable. If you want to play with a friend, a two controller bundle runs $89.99. If you'd like to check them out for yourself, you can grab the app from the Play Store link above, and see more about the controller and technology at the link below.

More: Green Throttle

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/K7or35Pr5CM/story01.htm

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FBI comes clean on top X-File: 'We never investigated' Hottel UFO memo

FBI

The FBI says a 1950 flying-saucer memo rates as the most popular file in its online document repository.

By Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News

The FBI says it never followed up on the most popular file in its online reading room ? a one-page UFO memo that passes along a second- or third-hand report about flying saucers and alien passengers that were supposedly recovered in New Mexico.

The memo, dated March 22, 1950, has been viewed almost a million times over the past two years, the FBI said this week in a blog posting. It was written by Guy Hottel, who was the head of the FBI's field office in Washington at the time, and addressed to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover.

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In the memo, Hottel discusses an account provided to an FBI agent ... that was attributed to an informant ... who purportedly heard from an Air Force investigator ... that "three so-called flying saucers had been recovered in New Mexico."

"They were described as being circular in shape with raised centers, approximately 50 feet in diameter," the memo read. "Each one was occupied by three bodies of human shape but only three feet tall, dressed in metallic cloth of a very fine texture. Each body was bandaged in a manner similar to the blackout suits used by speed fliers and test pilots."

Hottel said he was told that the saucers' control systems might have been disrupted by interference from "a very high-powered radar set-up" that the government had in the area. But he admitted in the memo that "no further evaluation was attempted" by the informant, whose name is blacked out in the online document.

The Hottel memo has been in the public record since the 1970s, but it created a huge splash in 2011 when it was added to the FBI Vault, an online repository of public records. Here's how The Sun, a British tabloid, characterized the memo in a headline from those days: "Aliens Exist, Say Real-Life X-Files."

Monday's posting was written to counter such characterizations. The FBI denied that the memo constituted evidence for the existence of extraterrestrial spacecraft ? and?said Hottel's report was never taken all that seriously. Instead, it was considered "an unconfirmed report that the FBI never even followed up on."

The FBI said there was no reason to believe that the memo referred to another famous UFO saga, the purported discovery of a crashed alien spaceship in Roswell, N.M., in 1947. "The Hottel memo is dated nearly three years after the infamous events in Roswell," it said.?

July 9, 2008: NBC's Willie Geist has a little fun with New Mexico flying saucers to mark the anniversary of the 1947 Roswell UFO incident.

The bureau acknowledged that for a few years after the Roswell incident, Hoover followed up on an Air Force request by ordering his agents to verify any UFO sightings. "That practice ended in July 1950, four months after the Hottel memo, suggesting that our Washington Field Office didn't think enough of that flying saucer story to look into it," the posting said.

There's an alternate explanation for the Hottel memo that makes a lot more sense. Two years ago, when the memo was added to the Vault, paranormal investigator Ben Radford noted that the informant's story matched the description of a UFO hoax that was concocted by a man named Silas Newton. In 1950, Newton was telling tales about flying saucers that had crashed at a radar station near the Arizona-New Mexico border. Newton was later convicted of fraud, and died in 1972.

Ironically, there's a whole different section of the FBI Vault that's devoted to Newton, whom the bureau described as "a wealthy oil producer and con man." To get the story about the connections between Newton's tales and the Hottel memos, check out this thorough debunking on the Above Top Secret forum.

Even though the FBI says the memo "does not prove the existence of UFOs," it's not confirming the Silas Newton story, either. "Some people believe the memo repeats a hoax that was circulating at that time, but the Bureau's files have no information to verify that story," it said.

What do you think FBI Agent Fox Mulder would say? "The truth is out there"? Or "Trust no one"? Feel free to weigh in with your own verdict in the comment section below. ?

Update for 6:35 p.m.: Mark Allin, chief operating officer for The Above Network, says the truth is out there, in the form of the Above Top Secret analysis that I mentioned earlier. "The short story is, without a doubt, 'Case Closed,'" Allin said today in an email. "The memo is based on a hoax that was carried out by a convicted con man named Silas Newton, and it was debunked years ago. It's a pretty good and interesting hoax story, to be certain, but there is no value in it beyond that."

More about UFOs:

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Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's?Facebook page, following?@b0yle on Twitter?and adding the?Cosmic Log page?to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out?"The Case for Pluto,"?my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Source: http://feeds.nbcnews.com/c/35002/f/653377/s/2a114e78/l/0Lcosmiclog0Bnbcnews0N0C0Inews0C20A130C0A30C270C174894410Efbi0Ecomes0Eclean0Eon0Etop0Ex0Efile0Ewe0Enever0Einvestigated0Ehottel0Eufo0Ememo0Dlite/story01.htm

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Strap a Tiny Toolbox To Your Zipper With Gerber's Daily Carry Accessories

Gerber's long been a name associated with those big multitools you carry in a nylon pouch on your belt. But as the company works to expand its brand, it's started to think on a smaller scale with its new Gerber Daily Carry—or GDC—tools. More »

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/0yU2IkQ9CHM/strap-a-tiny-toolbox-to-your-zipper-with-gerbers-daily-carry-accessories

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Delinquent Balances on Home Equity Lines Drop 28 Percent ...

According to Equifax's latest National Consumer Credit Trends Report, severe derogatory or charged-off balances, the bulk of student loan write-offs, for the first two months of the year hit $3 billion, an increase of more than 36 percent from same time a year ago ($1.9 billion) while balances in bankruptcy remained level at $0.5 billion.?In the home finance department, severely delinquent balances on home equity lines of credit declined 28 percent from February 2012 to February 2013, from $14 billion to less than $10 billion.?Severely delinquent balances on closed-end home equity loans declined 25 percent from February 2012 to February 2013, from $6.6 billion to $5 billion.?In that same time, severely delinquent balances on first mortgages declined 23 percent, from $490 billion to $375 billion. Sixty-five?percent of total severely delinquent balances on first mortgages are tied to loans opened from 2005-2007.?Similarly, 73 percent of delinquent balances on home equity lines of credit were opened in that same time period.

"Driven heavily by economic factors, including unemployed or under-employed consumers going back to school along with the rising cost of tuition, student lending has demonstrated consistent, year-over-year growth," said Equifax Chief Economist Amy Crews Cutts. "Continued weakness in labor markets is limiting work options once people graduate or quit their programs, leading to a steady rise in delinquencies and loan write-offs. Many policy options are being discussed regarding how to reduce some of the burden, including graduated payments that reflect the lower starting salaries of new graduates, and improve the performance of these loans."

Other changes in student loan characteristics from February 2012 to February 2013:

?Balances outstanding on student loans increased more than 14 percent, from $746.3 billion to $852.7 billion.

?The number of student loans outstanding increased nearly 13 percent, from 108 million to more than 123 million.

"Student loans are unique today in that they are the only major form of credit that is not rigorously underwritten on either a past credit-performance basis (such as using credit scores) or ability to pay based in income," said Crews Cutts.

?

Source: http://nationalmortgageprofessional.com/news35818/student-loans-highlighted-recent-equifax-report

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Sea hares outsmart peckish lobsters with sticky opaline

Public release date: 27-Mar-2013
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Contact: Nicola Stead
nicola.stead@biologists.com
44-012-234-25525
The Company of Biologists

Sea hares are not the favourite food choice of many marine inhabitants, and it's easy to see why when you find out about the chemical weapons they employ when provoked namely, two unpalatable secretions, ink and opaline, which they squirt at unsuspecting peckish predators. However, while much is known about the consequences of purple ink secretion, how the whitish and viscous opaline outsmarts a potential predator remains unknown. Charles Derby from Georgia State University, USA, wondered whether opaline could decrease the activity of a predator's sensory system. Along with his colleagues Tiffany Love-Chezem and Juan Aggio, he set out to test the effect of opaline on spiny lobsters, which occasionally try to snack on sea hares. The investigating trio find that it is opaline's sticky nature, rather than the chemicals present in the opaline, that is responsible for plugging their sense of smell and published their results in The Journal of Experimental Biology at http://jeb.biologists.org.

To begin, they extracted the water-soluble fraction of opaline, and although this lacks the amino acids and other chemical attractants that make up opaline, it is nonetheless just as sticky and possesses the physical properties of opaline. The team then painted this sticky, water-soluble fraction onto the tips of the lobsters' antennules, which act as the lobster's 'nose' and are important for motivation and ability to feed upon smelling a delicious treat. The trio then presented them with tasty smelling 'shrimp juice' and measured electrical activity in both chemosensory and motor neurons. Unlike lobsters with clean, gunk-free antennules, the shrimp juice failed to whet the appetite of opaline-treated lobsters, with the response of chemosensory and motor neurons being significantly reduced.

The team next wondered whether the amino acids present in opaline could also dampen neuronal activity. Mixing together the five most prominent amino acids found in opaline, they again painted the antennules and tempted the lobsters with the scent of shrimp juice. This time, however, the neurons fired robustly in reaction to the delicious shrimpy aroma. When the amino acids were mixed with the sticky substance carboxymethylcellulose, the neuron reactions were again inhibited. Furthermore, carboxymethylcellulose alone also stopped neurons firing. So, it seems that stickiness is the key to blocking neurons and allowing the sea hare to escape as the lobster preens and cleans itself of the gungy opaline.

###

IF REPORTING ON THIS STORY, PLEASE MENTION THE JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL BIOLOGY AS THE SOURCE AND, IF REPORTING ONLINE, PLEASE CARRY A LINK TO: http://jeb.biologists.org/content/216/8/1364.abstract

REFERENCE: Love-Chezem, T., Aggio, J. F. and Derby, C. D. (2013). Defense through sensory inactivation: sea hare ink reduces sensory and motor responses of spiny lobsters to food odors. J. Exp. Biol. 216, 1364-1372. .

This article is posted on this site to give advance access to other authorised media who may wish to report on this story. Full attribution is required, and if reporting online a link to jeb.biologists.com is also required. The story posted here is COPYRIGHTED. Therefore advance permission is required before any and every reproduction of each article in full. PLEASE CONTACT permissions@biologists.com

THIS ARTICLE IS EMBARGOED UNTIL WEDNESDAY, 27 March 2013, 18:00 HRS EDT (22:00 HRS GMT)

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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.

Public release date: 27-Mar-2013
[ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Nicola Stead
nicola.stead@biologists.com
44-012-234-25525
The Company of Biologists

Sea hares are not the favourite food choice of many marine inhabitants, and it's easy to see why when you find out about the chemical weapons they employ when provoked namely, two unpalatable secretions, ink and opaline, which they squirt at unsuspecting peckish predators. However, while much is known about the consequences of purple ink secretion, how the whitish and viscous opaline outsmarts a potential predator remains unknown. Charles Derby from Georgia State University, USA, wondered whether opaline could decrease the activity of a predator's sensory system. Along with his colleagues Tiffany Love-Chezem and Juan Aggio, he set out to test the effect of opaline on spiny lobsters, which occasionally try to snack on sea hares. The investigating trio find that it is opaline's sticky nature, rather than the chemicals present in the opaline, that is responsible for plugging their sense of smell and published their results in The Journal of Experimental Biology at http://jeb.biologists.org.

To begin, they extracted the water-soluble fraction of opaline, and although this lacks the amino acids and other chemical attractants that make up opaline, it is nonetheless just as sticky and possesses the physical properties of opaline. The team then painted this sticky, water-soluble fraction onto the tips of the lobsters' antennules, which act as the lobster's 'nose' and are important for motivation and ability to feed upon smelling a delicious treat. The trio then presented them with tasty smelling 'shrimp juice' and measured electrical activity in both chemosensory and motor neurons. Unlike lobsters with clean, gunk-free antennules, the shrimp juice failed to whet the appetite of opaline-treated lobsters, with the response of chemosensory and motor neurons being significantly reduced.

The team next wondered whether the amino acids present in opaline could also dampen neuronal activity. Mixing together the five most prominent amino acids found in opaline, they again painted the antennules and tempted the lobsters with the scent of shrimp juice. This time, however, the neurons fired robustly in reaction to the delicious shrimpy aroma. When the amino acids were mixed with the sticky substance carboxymethylcellulose, the neuron reactions were again inhibited. Furthermore, carboxymethylcellulose alone also stopped neurons firing. So, it seems that stickiness is the key to blocking neurons and allowing the sea hare to escape as the lobster preens and cleans itself of the gungy opaline.

###

IF REPORTING ON THIS STORY, PLEASE MENTION THE JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL BIOLOGY AS THE SOURCE AND, IF REPORTING ONLINE, PLEASE CARRY A LINK TO: http://jeb.biologists.org/content/216/8/1364.abstract

REFERENCE: Love-Chezem, T., Aggio, J. F. and Derby, C. D. (2013). Defense through sensory inactivation: sea hare ink reduces sensory and motor responses of spiny lobsters to food odors. J. Exp. Biol. 216, 1364-1372. .

This article is posted on this site to give advance access to other authorised media who may wish to report on this story. Full attribution is required, and if reporting online a link to jeb.biologists.com is also required. The story posted here is COPYRIGHTED. Therefore advance permission is required before any and every reproduction of each article in full. PLEASE CONTACT permissions@biologists.com

THIS ARTICLE IS EMBARGOED UNTIL WEDNESDAY, 27 March 2013, 18:00 HRS EDT (22:00 HRS GMT)

---

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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.

Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-03/tcob-sho032013.php

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