THE JOBS HUNT: Weekly applications for unemployment benefits fell 16,000 to 339,000, the second-lowest in more than five years, according to the Labor Department. U.S. job creation plunged in March, however.
CENTERING IN: Some investors say the stock market's gains this week are being driven not by confidence in the economy but by the belief that the major central banks, including the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank, will continue their easy-money policies.
MORE WITH LESS: So far most S&P 500 companies have beat analysts' estimates for first-quarter earnings, but many have also missed on revenue. That's a sign that companies are making do with less, not that customers are buying.
New LED streetlight design curbs light pollutionPublic release date: 24-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Brielle Day bday@osa.org 202-416-1435 The Optical Society
98 percent of lamp's energy goes to lighting the street instead of the night sky
WASHINGTON, April 24, 2013Streetlights illuminate the night, shining upon roadways and sidewalks across the world, but these ubiquitous elements of the urban environment are notoriously inefficient and major contributors to light pollution that washes out the night sky. Recent innovations in light emitting diodes (LEDs) have improved the energy efficiency of streetlights, but, until now, their glow still wastefully radiated beyond the intended area. A team of researchers from Taiwan and Mexico has developed a new lighting system design that harnesses high-efficiency LEDs and ensures they shine only where they're needed, sparing surrounding homes and the evening sky from unwanted illumination. The team reported their findings today in the Optical Society's (OSA) open-access journal Optics Express.
A unique feature of the new LED system is its adaptability to different street lamp layouts, "to all kinds of streets and roads, providing a uniform illumination with high energy efficiency," says co-author Ching-Cherng Sun of National Central University in Taiwan. For example, some modern lamps that line a thoroughfare or suburban sidewalk lean into the middle of the road, lighting the street from above. But more often, lamps are posted to one side of a street, or alternating in a "zig-zag" pattern from one side to the other a layout that may be more efficient for roads with high traffic flow. The new design provides flexibility to be used for different illumination requests while maintaining a high efficiency, Sun says.
The proposed lamp is based on a novel three-part lighting fixture. The first part contains a cluster of LEDs, each of which is fitted with a special lens, called a Total Internal Reflection (TIR) lens, that focuses the light so the rays are parallel to one another instead of intersectinga process called collimation. These lens-covered LEDs are mounted inside a reflecting cavity, which "recycles" the light and ensures that as much of it as possible is used to illuminate the target. Finally, as the light leaves the lamp it passes through a diffuser or filter that cuts down on unwanted glare. The combination of collimation and filtering also allows researchers to control the beam's shape: the present design yields a rectangular light pattern ideally suited for street lighting, the researchers say.
The team tested their design's performance by analyzing how little the beam would spread as it hit its targeta road or sidewalk 10 meters or more away from the source of the light. They quantified the lamp's performance using something called optical utilization factor (OUF), a number that describes the relationship between the flow rate of light at the target and the flow rate of light coming directly out of the LEDs. Higher OUF indicates better performance. Simulations show that the new design achieves an OUF of 51 to 81 percent, greatly outperforming a recent "excellent" design that reached 45 percent. Furthermore, the proposed streetlamp meets high expectations for power and brightness. And light pollution is also significantly reduced: for conventional street lamps, up to a fifth of their total energy is directed horizontally or upward into the sky. The best LED streetlamps reduce this to a tenth of their total energy. In the new model, just 2 percent of the lamp's total energy would contribute to light pollution.
In addition to cutting light pollution and glare, the new model could also save energy. "A general LED street light could reduce power consumption by 40 to 60 percent," Sun says; the increased efficiency of the proposed design would likely save an additional 10 to 50 percent. Furthermore, he adds, the module would be simple to fabricate, since it comprises just four parts, including a type of LED bulb commonly used in the lighting industry.
Sun's team expects to finish a prototype of their design in the next 3 to 6 months, and to begin practical installations of the new street lamp as early as next year.
###
Paper: "High-performance LED street lighting using microlens arrays," H. Lee et al., Optics Express, Vol. 21, Issue 9, pp. 10612-10621 (2013) (link: http://www.opticsinfobase.org/oe/abstract.cfm?uri=oe-21-9-10612).
EDITOR'S NOTE: High-resolution images are available to members of the media upon request. Contact Angela Stark, astark@osa.org.
About Optics Express
Optics Express reports on new developments in all fields of optical science and technology every two weeks. The journal provides rapid publication of original, peer-reviewed papers. It is published by the Optical Society and edited by Andrew M. Weiner of Purdue University. Optics Express is an open-access journal and is available at no cost to readers online at http://www.OpticsInfoBase.org/OE.
About OSA
Uniting more than 180,000 professionals from 175 countries, the Optical Society (OSA) brings together the global optics community through its programs and initiatives. Since 1916 OSA has worked to advance the common interests of the field, providing educational resources to the scientists, engineers and business leaders who work in the field by promoting the science of light and the advanced technologies made possible by optics and photonics. OSA publications, events, technical groups and programs foster optics knowledge and scientific collaboration among all those with an interest in optics and photonics. For more information, visit http://www.osa.org.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
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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.
New LED streetlight design curbs light pollutionPublic release date: 24-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Brielle Day bday@osa.org 202-416-1435 The Optical Society
98 percent of lamp's energy goes to lighting the street instead of the night sky
WASHINGTON, April 24, 2013Streetlights illuminate the night, shining upon roadways and sidewalks across the world, but these ubiquitous elements of the urban environment are notoriously inefficient and major contributors to light pollution that washes out the night sky. Recent innovations in light emitting diodes (LEDs) have improved the energy efficiency of streetlights, but, until now, their glow still wastefully radiated beyond the intended area. A team of researchers from Taiwan and Mexico has developed a new lighting system design that harnesses high-efficiency LEDs and ensures they shine only where they're needed, sparing surrounding homes and the evening sky from unwanted illumination. The team reported their findings today in the Optical Society's (OSA) open-access journal Optics Express.
A unique feature of the new LED system is its adaptability to different street lamp layouts, "to all kinds of streets and roads, providing a uniform illumination with high energy efficiency," says co-author Ching-Cherng Sun of National Central University in Taiwan. For example, some modern lamps that line a thoroughfare or suburban sidewalk lean into the middle of the road, lighting the street from above. But more often, lamps are posted to one side of a street, or alternating in a "zig-zag" pattern from one side to the other a layout that may be more efficient for roads with high traffic flow. The new design provides flexibility to be used for different illumination requests while maintaining a high efficiency, Sun says.
The proposed lamp is based on a novel three-part lighting fixture. The first part contains a cluster of LEDs, each of which is fitted with a special lens, called a Total Internal Reflection (TIR) lens, that focuses the light so the rays are parallel to one another instead of intersectinga process called collimation. These lens-covered LEDs are mounted inside a reflecting cavity, which "recycles" the light and ensures that as much of it as possible is used to illuminate the target. Finally, as the light leaves the lamp it passes through a diffuser or filter that cuts down on unwanted glare. The combination of collimation and filtering also allows researchers to control the beam's shape: the present design yields a rectangular light pattern ideally suited for street lighting, the researchers say.
The team tested their design's performance by analyzing how little the beam would spread as it hit its targeta road or sidewalk 10 meters or more away from the source of the light. They quantified the lamp's performance using something called optical utilization factor (OUF), a number that describes the relationship between the flow rate of light at the target and the flow rate of light coming directly out of the LEDs. Higher OUF indicates better performance. Simulations show that the new design achieves an OUF of 51 to 81 percent, greatly outperforming a recent "excellent" design that reached 45 percent. Furthermore, the proposed streetlamp meets high expectations for power and brightness. And light pollution is also significantly reduced: for conventional street lamps, up to a fifth of their total energy is directed horizontally or upward into the sky. The best LED streetlamps reduce this to a tenth of their total energy. In the new model, just 2 percent of the lamp's total energy would contribute to light pollution.
In addition to cutting light pollution and glare, the new model could also save energy. "A general LED street light could reduce power consumption by 40 to 60 percent," Sun says; the increased efficiency of the proposed design would likely save an additional 10 to 50 percent. Furthermore, he adds, the module would be simple to fabricate, since it comprises just four parts, including a type of LED bulb commonly used in the lighting industry.
Sun's team expects to finish a prototype of their design in the next 3 to 6 months, and to begin practical installations of the new street lamp as early as next year.
###
Paper: "High-performance LED street lighting using microlens arrays," H. Lee et al., Optics Express, Vol. 21, Issue 9, pp. 10612-10621 (2013) (link: http://www.opticsinfobase.org/oe/abstract.cfm?uri=oe-21-9-10612).
EDITOR'S NOTE: High-resolution images are available to members of the media upon request. Contact Angela Stark, astark@osa.org.
About Optics Express
Optics Express reports on new developments in all fields of optical science and technology every two weeks. The journal provides rapid publication of original, peer-reviewed papers. It is published by the Optical Society and edited by Andrew M. Weiner of Purdue University. Optics Express is an open-access journal and is available at no cost to readers online at http://www.OpticsInfoBase.org/OE.
About OSA
Uniting more than 180,000 professionals from 175 countries, the Optical Society (OSA) brings together the global optics community through its programs and initiatives. Since 1916 OSA has worked to advance the common interests of the field, providing educational resources to the scientists, engineers and business leaders who work in the field by promoting the science of light and the advanced technologies made possible by optics and photonics. OSA publications, events, technical groups and programs foster optics knowledge and scientific collaboration among all those with an interest in optics and photonics. For more information, visit http://www.osa.org.
[ | 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.
WASHINGTON (AP) ? The federal government added the name of the dead Boston Marathon bombing suspect to a terrorist database 18 months before the deadly explosions, U.S. officials told The Associated Press on Wednesday.
The CIA made the request to add Tamerlan Tsarnaev's name to the terrorist database after the Russian government contacted the agency with concerns that he had become a follower of radical Islam. About six months earlier, the FBI had separately investigated Tsarnaev, also at Russia's request, but the FBI found no ties to terrorism, officials said.
The new disclosure that Tsarnaev was included within a huge, classified database of known and suspected terrorists before the attacks was expected to drive congressional inquiries in coming weeks about whether the Obama administration adequately investigated tips from Russia that Tsarnaev had posed a security threat. Shortly after the bombings, U.S. officials said the intelligence community had no information about threats to the marathon before the April 15 explosions.
Tsarnaev died Friday in a police shootout hours before his younger brother, Dzhokhar, was discovered hiding in a boat in a suburban back yard.
The terrorist database is called TIDE, the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment. Analysts at the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center submit names and even partial names into TIDE. About a year ago, there were some 745,000 people listed in the database. Intelligence analysts scour TIDE, trying to establish connections and update files as new intelligence is uncovered.
For entries with a full name, date of birth and intelligence indicating a reasonable suspicion that a person is a terrorist or has terror ties, the person's name is sent to a terror watch list, which feeds into lists like the one that bans known or suspected terrorists from traveling on planes.
Officials say they never found the type of derogatory information on Tsarnaev that would have elevated his profile among counterterrorism investigators and placed him on the terror watch list.
Five days after the U.S. determined who was allegedly behind the deadly Boston marathon terror attacks, Washington is piecing together what happened and whether there were any unconnected dots buried in U.S. government files that, if connected, could have prevented the bombings.
Lawmakers who were briefed by the FBI said they have more questions than answers about the investigation of Tsarnaev. U.S. officials were expected to brief the Senate on the investigation Thursday.
"The review is just beginning, but I haven't seen any red flags thus far," said Rep. Adam Schiff, a California Democrat who sits on the House Intelligence Committee and was briefed on the investigation Wednesday. House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., however, said lawmakers intend to pursue whether there was a breakdown in information-sharing.
U.S. officials described to the AP what the government knew about Tsarnaev since he was first placed on the intelligence community's radar 18 months ago. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the ongoing investigation.
Russia's internal security service, the FSB, sent information to the FBI about Tamerlan Tsarnaev on March 4, 2011. The Russians told the FBI that Tsarnaev, an ethnically Chechen Russian immigrant living in the Boston area, was a follower of radical Islam and had changed drastically since 2010. Because of the subsequent FBI inquiry, Tsarnaev's name was added to a Homeland Security Department database used by U.S. officials at the border to help screen people coming in and out of the U.S. That database is called the Treasury Enforcement Communications System, or TECS.
The FBI's Boston office opened a preliminary review of Tsarnaev and searched government databases for potentially terror-related communications. Investigators looked into whether Tsarnaev used online sites that promoted radical activity. They interviewed Tsarnaev and his family members but found nothing connecting him to terror activity. The FBI shared that information with Russia and also asked for more information on Tsarnaev, but never heard back. The FBI's review into Tsarnaev was closed in June 2011.
Then, in late September 2011, Russia separately contacted the CIA with nearly identical concerns about Tsarnaev. The Russians provided two possible birthdates for him and a variation of how his name might be spelled, as well as the spelling in the Russian-style Cyrillic alphabet.
The CIA determined that Tsarnaev should be included in TIDE, and the National Counterterrorism Center added it into the database. The spelling of Tsarnaev's name in TIDE was not the same as the spelling the FBI used in its investigation. The CIA also shared this information with other federal agencies in October.
In January 2012, Tsarnaev traveled to Russia and returned to the U.S. in July. Three days before he left for Russia, the TECS database generated an alert on Tsarnaev. That alert was shared with a Customs and Border Protection officer who is a member of the FBI's Boston joint terrorism task force. By that time, the FBI's investigation into Tsarnaev had been closed for nearly six months because the FBI uncovered no evidence that he was tied to terror groups.
On Jan. 21, 2012, the airline on which Tsarnaev was traveling misspelled his name when it submitted its list of passengers to the U.S. government for security screening. Airlines are required to provide the list of passengers on international flights so the U.S. can check their names through government databases, including the terrorist watch list. Because his name was misspelled, there was not another alert like there was three days earlier.
In July 2012, Tsarnaev returned to the U.S., and another alert was generated in TECS. This information was again shared with the Customs and Border Protection officer on the FBI's Boston joint terrorism task force. But because the FBI had closed its investigation into Tsarnaev a year earlier, there was no reason to be suspicious of his travels to Russia.
"Later on, these agencies will be judged," said Dutch Ruppersberger of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. "But right now, it's way too soon to criticize or to start making political arguments or who failed or whatever."
___
Associated Press writer Pete Yost contributed to this report.
___
Follow Eileen Sullivan on Twitter: http://twitter.com/esullivanap
SANAA, Yemen (AP) ? A Yemeni court on Tuesday sentenced 11 convicted al-Qaidamilitants to up to 10 years in prison for forming armed gangs to destabilize the country and planning attacks on foreign embassies and security forces.
The sentencing came as militants attacked a military camp in the central town of Radda, about 160 kilometers (100 miles) south of Sanaa, setting off clashes that killed three soldiers and eight militants. Radda was briefly seized by al-Qaida militants last year before the Yemeni government waged an offensive to drive them out.
The militants, who took refuge in other areas in the central province where Radda is located, have been trying to return to the town.
During Yemen's 2011 uprising, al-Qaida occupied large swaths of land and towns in the south before being driven out to mountainous areas by the new government. Since then the group has retaliated with assassinations and bombings at military compounds.
In the court in Sanaa, Ahmed al-Hababi, one of the defendants, threatened to kill the judge, shouting, "we will teach you a lesson and we will drag you on the ground." Two raised an al-Qaida flag inside the defendants' cage. Others shouted "God is great" in Arabic.
In another trial on Tuesday, a court in Aden, Yemen's second largest city, began trying nine Yemenis for smuggling Iranian-made weapons on a ship. Eight were captured in January in the country's territorial waters and one was tried in absentia. The trial was adjourned until April 30.
In another development, Yemen's former President Ali Abdullah Saleh returned from Saudi Arabia after medical treatment, his office said Tuesday. Saleh left earlier this month. He has been under international pressure to leave the country over accusations that he is trying to undermine the country's transition.
Saleh stepped down in February 2012 and was replaced by his deputy. He spent time in Saudi Arabia and the U.S. last year for medical treatment for serious burns sustained in a June 2011 assassination attempt.
MUNICH, April 23 (Reuters) - Barcelona centre half Gerard Pique acknowledged his team were thoroughly second best as Bayern Munich romped to a 4-0 win in their Champions League semi-final first leg at the Allianz Arena on Tuesday. "They gave us a thrashing," he said. "We will try to turn it around in the return leg (on May 1) and put in a good performance for the fans. "They were better and faster than us. There is no point talking about the referee, there is no excuse." Arjen Robben, who sparkled on the wing for Bayern and scored one of the goals, hailed his team's spectacular performance. ...
Energy companies are using a drilling technique known as fracking to extract natural gas underground. Many people raise questions about the environmental impact, but there is no doubt fracking has produced lots of natural gas and driven down the price. That has led energy-hungry manufacturers to build plants in fracking hot spots like Texas and Pennsylvania. But even in old factories ? far from the drilling or even the pipelines ? cheap natural gas is providing a competitive edge.
Copyright ? 2013 NPR. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.
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We've reported on how cheap natural gas is revolutionizing the energy industry. It's plentiful, thanks to the drilling technique known as fracking. Well, that's also changing American manufacturing. Factories are turning to natural gas to replace oil and even biomass sources like woodchips. And here's an example, a paper mill in East Millinocket, Maine.
Jay field of Maine Public Radio has the story.
JAY FIELD, BYLINE: When the elevator doors open on the fourth floor of the Great Northern Paper Company, you get hit with a blast of hot air and a non-stop drone. The sprawling plant makes paper for catalogues, newspapers and flyers.
(SOUNDBITE OF MACHINERY)
NED DWYER: We dry a lot of paper, hundreds of tons of paper everyday.
FIELD: Ned Dwyer, Great Northern's president, leads me across a walkway of steel grates for a close look at the mill's three boilers. One burns biomass, two run on oil. The machines that dry all the paper run on steam, millions of pounds of it a year cranked out by those boilers.
DWYER: This is a pretty energy intensive industry. What you want to be able to do is operate consistently, where you can consistently provide the products that customers want.
FIELD: And for decades, the mill in the northern Maine town of East Millinocket ran round the clock, thanks to all the cheap power it drew from the Penobscot River. In 1964, the original Great Northern Paper Company generated two-thirds of its energy from the six hydropower dams it owned on the river. The mill eventually lost control of its dams in the years of mergers, ownership changes and financial instability that followed.
And now, an ongoing problem with the mill's current mix of energy sources has come to a head as the company, located in an area known for its long, cold winters, looks to cut costs.
DWYER: This is a fairly severe winter in this part of the country and the heat load in the facility increases substantially in the winter.
FIELD: Ned Dwyer says the biomass boiler doesn't generate enough steam to run the paper machines and heat the mill. For years, the solution was easy. Just fire up one of the backup oil boilers every year during the winter months.
DWYER: All the Great Northern facilities burn oil, but historically oil was cheap and it's not any longer.
FIELD: The kind of oil used at the plant costs about $100 a barrel nowadays, many times the price that prevailed when those boilers were installed decades ago. With oil prices so high this past winter, the company had to make a tough decision to save money. It chose to keep the workers warm rather than continue paper production at high levels.
But next year, if all goes as planned, Great Northern Paper likely won't have to make such a penny-pinching choice. That's because the mill has started converting one of its boilers to run on much cheaper natural gas.
TOM RUNIEWICZ: Anybody that is a high consumer of energy will be looking at significant cost savings if they convert to natural gas.
FIELD: Tom Runiewicz, an economist with the firm IHS Global Insight, says that's why many companies that use big industrial boilers and furnaces are also making the switch. But Runiewicz says it may not be easy for some companies that want to convert to natural gas to get a regular supply of it.
RUNIEWICZ: The most efficient way to do that is to pipeline. That infrastructure will have to be developed and further enhanced to get the full advantage of, you know, the natural gas energy source.
FIELD: Northern New England has a very limited pipeline system. State lawmakers in Maine are trying to pass bills to pave the way for an expansion. In the meantime, Great Northern Paper has found its own short-term solution.
CLYDE COLEMAN: These are the trailers that actually transport the gas. We are a pipeline on wheels, if you will.
FIELD: Clyde Coleman heads up engineering for Express Natural Gas, or XNG. The young company has just started trucking natural gas to customers in Maine from its compression station near the Canadian border. Ned Dwyer says the boiler conversion is scheduled to be completed in June.
DWYER: It allows us to run a second vapor machine in the wintertime. It produces about another 40 jobs.
FIELD: And it gives Great Northern Paper the best chance of holding on to its more than 200 workers. Just two years ago, those people were laid off for four months during tough times. Now, they're hoping the energy cost reductions will help their plant continue operating even when the weather or the economy turn cold. For NPR News, I'm Jay Field.
ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:
It's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR New.
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