Japan allows partial glimpse inside crippled nuclear plant (Reuters)

TOKYO (Reuters) ? Conditions at Japan's wrecked Fukushima nuclear power plant, devastated by a tsunami in March, were slowly improving to the point where a "cold shutdown" would be possible as planned, officials said on Saturday during a tour of the facility.

Officials shepherded a group of about 30 mainly Japanese journalists through the plant for the first time since the meltdown of the plant's reactors, the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl 25 years ago.

Cooling systems at the plant, 240 km (150 miles) northeast of Tokyo, were knocked out by the powerful tsunami and evidence of the devastation was clear to see.

The nuclear reactor buildings were still surrounded by crumpled trucks, twisted metal fences, and large, dented water tanks. Smaller office buildings around the reactors were left as they were abandoned on March 11, when the tsunami hit.

Cranes filled the skyline in testimony to recovery efforts.

Journalists on the tour mainly stayed on a bus as they were driven around the plant and were not allowed near the reactor buildings. Still, they all had to wear protective suits, double layers of gloves and plastic boot covers and hair nets.

All carried respiration masks and radiation detectors.

"From the data at the plant that I have seen, there is no doubt that the reactors have been stabilized," Masao Yoshida, chief of the Daiichi plant, told the group.

The compound may still be littered with rubble, but Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco), the utility operating the plant, has succeeded in bringing down the temperatures at the three damaged reactors from levels considered dangerous.

They are confident they will be able to declare a "cold shutdown" -- when temperatures are stable below boiling point -- as scheduled by the end of this year.

While Tepco had managed to stabilize conditions so workers could enter the reactor buildings, Yoshida said there was still danger involved for those working there.

The disaster prompted the government to declare a 20 km (12 miles) no-entry zone around the plant, forcing the evacuation of about 80,000 residents.

A cold shutdown is one of the conditions that must be met before the government considers lifting its entry ban.

As an emergency measure early in the crisis, Tepco tried to cool the damaged reactors by pumping in huge volumes of water, much of it from the sea, only to leave a vast amount of tainted runoff that threatened to leak out into the ocean.

It solved the problem by building a cooling system to clean the radioactive runoff, using some of the water to cool the reactors.

A group of white tents houses the cleaning facility. In front were hoisted the flags of the United States, France and Japan -- the countries that provided the technology for the decontamination system.

"Every time I come back, I feel conditions have improved. This is due to your hard work ," Japan's environment and nuclear crisis minister Goshi Hosono told workers at the plant.

However, Hosono warned it would still take about 30 years to dismantle the reactors after a cold shutdown was achieved.

Workers engaged in the recovery effort are stationed at J-Village, a national soccer training center near Daiichi that has been converted into an operational base.

Tepco says up to 3,300 workers a day arrive from J-Village, located on the edge of the 20 km no-entry zone.

At J-Village, workers on their way to the plant lined up at a white tent to change into protective gear. Every day when they return, the workers discard their protective clothing, which is treated as radioactive waste and stored.

A Tepco guide said every piece of discarded clothing has been kept there since March 17, about 480,000 sets heaped in large piles or put in bed-sized containers and stacked in rows.

(Reporting by a pool reporter representing foreign media in Japan; Writing by Shinichi Saoshiro; Editing by Paul Tait)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/asia/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111112/wl_nm/us_japan_nuclear_tepco

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What's new on the fusion front?

Boris Horvat / AFP - Getty Images

A hardhat worker walks around the construction site for the ITER fusion experiment in Saint-Paul-les-Durance, France.

By Alan Boyle

The standard joke about nuclear fusion is that it's the energy technology of the future, and always will be. Well, fusion is still an energy option for the future rather than the present, but small steps forward are being reported on several fronts.?That even includes the long-ridiculed?campaign?for?"cold fusion."

Efforts by the Italian-based Leonardo Corp. to harness low-energy nuclear reactions (the technology formerly known as cold fusion)?have reawakened the dream of somehow producing surplus?heat through unorthodox chemistry. Today,?Pure Energy Systems News reported that Leonardo's Andrea Rossi signed an agreement with Texas-based National Instruments to build instrumentation for E-Cat cold-fusion reactors.

Will this venture actually pan out? The E-Cat reactors are so shrouded in secrecy and murky claims that it's hard to do a reality check, but most outside experts say that the concept just won't work.

Some observers are similarly pessimistic about the other avenues for fusion research. The basic physics of the reaction is well-accepted, of course. You can see the power generated when hydrogen atoms fuse into helium when you look at that big ball of gas in the sky, 93 million miles away, or when you watch footage of an H-bomb blast.

But no one has been able to achieve a self-sustaining, energy-producing?fusion reaction in a controlled setting on Earth, even after more than a half-century of trying.

Laser ignition
Researchers had hoped to reach?that?big milestone,?known as ignition,?at the $3.5 billion National Ignition Facility by the end of 2010. But in last week's issue of Science, Steven Koonin, the Energy Department's under secretary for science,?was quoted as saying "ignition is proving more elusive than hoped" and added that "some science discovery may be required" to make it a reality. (Coincidentally, Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced this week that Koonin will be leaving his post.)

The big challenge is to tweak all the factors involved in?NIF's super-laser-blaster system to maximize the?energy directed?on tiny pellets of fusion fuel, and minimize the loss of energy through tiny imperfections or interference.?"We're at the end of the beginning," NIF's director, Edward Moses, told Science.

How much longer will it take??The new director of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where?NIF is headquartered, told the San Francisco Chronicle that he was convinced the facility would attain ignition "in this fiscal year" ? that is, by next October.

Magnetic confinement
If NIF hits that schedule, it'll be way ahead of the world's most expensive fusion experiment, the $20 billion ITER experimental project in France. ITER is taking the most conventional approach to creating a controlled fusion reaction, which involves magnetic containment of?a super-hot plasma inside a doughnut-shaped device known as a tokamak. The European Union and six other nations, including the United States, have divvied up the work load with the aim of completing construction in 2017 and?achieving "first plasma" in 2019.

Right now, Oak Ridge National Laboratory and US ITER are testing a fuel delivery system that would?fire pellets of?ultra-cold deuterium-tritium fuel into the?plasma.

"When we send a frozen pellet into a high-temperature plasma, we sometimes call it a 'snowball in hell,'" Oak Ridge physicist David Rasmussen said in an ITER report on the tests at the Dill-D research tokamak in San Diego. "But temperature is really just the measure of the energy of the particles in the plasma. When the deuterium and tritium particles vaporize, ionize and are heated, they move very fast, colliding with enough energy to fuse."

The tricky part has to do with shaping the pellets just right to produce the desired reaction. When it comes to snowballs in hell, the devil is in the details.

The politics of ITER is just as tricky as the technology. Considering the economic problems that are afflicting the world, and Europe in particular, will there be funding to support the development timeline? Last month, one of the leaders of the European Parliament's Green bloc called ITER a "ticking budgetary time bomb."

Wiffle-Balls and other wonders
Smaller-scale fusion research efforts, meanwhile, are getting a lot of good press. For example, the Navy-funded experiments in inertial electrostatic confinement fusion, also called Polywell fusion, are continuing at EMC2 Fusion Development Corp. in New Mexico. The latest status report for the $7.9 million project says that the test?reactor, known as a Wiffle-Ball because of its shape, "has generated over 500 high-power plasma shots."

"EMC2 is conducting tests on Wiffle-Ball plasma scaling law on plasma heating and confinement," the brief report reads.

Live Poll

When will fusion power go commercial?

  • 167387

    In 10 years or less.

    17%

  • 167388

    10 to 50 years.

    50%

  • 167389

    More than 50 years, but it'll happen.

    25%

  • 167390

    Never: It's technologically impossible.

    3%

  • 167391

    Never: It's economically uncompetitive.

    6%

VoteTotal Votes: 829

The Polywell system is designed to accelerate positively charged ions inside a high-voltage?cage, in such a way that they spark a fusion reaction. If enough of the ions fuse, the?energy could exceed the amount put into the system.

In the past, leaders of the EMC2 team have told me that their aim is to build a 100-megawatt demonstration reactor.?Nowadays, EMC2 is more close-mouthed about their progress, primarily because that's the way the Navy wants it. But the report about 500 high-energy plasma shots brought a positive response from the Talk-Polywell discussion board, which has been following EMC2's progress closely. "I'd be drunk by now if those were shots of whiskey," one commenter joked.

Privately backed efforts are moving ahead as well: Last month, Lawrenceville?Plasma Physics reported reaching a record for?neutron yield with its "Focus Fusion" direct-to-electric generator. And this week, Canada's General Fusion?and its magnetized target fusion technology were featured in?an NPR news package.

"I wouldn't say I'm 100 percent sure it's going to work," General Fusion's Michel Laberge told NPR. "That would be a lie. But I would put it at 60 percent chance that this is going to work. Now of course other people will give me a much smaller chance than that, but even at 10 percent chance of working, investors will still put money in, because this is big, man, this is making power for the whole planet. This is huge!"

Is it a huge opportunity, or a huge waste ? especially considering that the energy technology of the future will have to compete with present-day technologies such as solar, wind, biofuel and nuclear fission? Feel free to weigh in with your comments below.

More about fusion:


Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or following the Cosmic Log Google+ page. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

?

Source: http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/11/10/8740899-whats-new-on-the-fusion-front

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Giffords gives first TV interview (Politico)

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords spoke on national TV for the first time since she was shot in January, telling ABC World News?s Diane Sawyer in a clip aired Thursday that while things are ?difficult,? she is feeling ?pretty good.?

Sawyer teased the brief clip during her show to an upcoming hour-long special ? set to air Monday ? focused on Giffords?s intensive recovery from the Jan. 8 shooting when a gunman killed six people and shot the congresswoman in the head at a constituent meeting near Tucson, Ariz.

Continue Reading

In the exchange, the anchor asked Giffords: ?How do you feel??

?Pretty good,? she replied.

Sawyer then asked: ?Is it painful, is it hard??

With her husband, Mark Kelly, by her side, Giffords responded: ?Difficult.?

In the segment called ?Gabby Speaks,? Sawyer said there are hours of videotape of Giffords?s ?astounding, determined journey.?

Over clips of Giffords?s recovery, Sawyer said: ?Gabby Giffords, fighting her way, one breath, one word, one hard-fought step at a time. There would be music for incredible breakthroughs. And moments of despair.?

Giffords is shown singing in one clip, and shaking her head in the next. In her exchanges with Sawyer, she seemed confident and smiled as she spoke.

Sawyer interviewed a number of people close to Giffords including her mother, husband and doctors who assisted in her recovery.

Kelly told Sawyer: ?Gabrielle Giffords is too tough to let this beat her.? And Giffords?s mother, Gloria, shared with Sawyer that she thinks ?Gabby?s got a message now that exceeds the political one.?

Sawyer said the special will also delve into whether Giffords plans to run again for Congress and what she remembers of the day she was shot.

There had initially been some confusion over whether Giffords would give Sawyer an on-air interview ? and Giffords?s chief of staff, Pia Carusone, told The Arizona Republic last week the congresswoman?s sit down ?was not a full-length interview.?

Giffords? joint memoir with Kelly, ?Gabby: A Story of Courage and Hope,? comes out Tuesday. Kelly wrote the book, but Giffords penned the last chapter ? ?Gabby?s Voice.? The book charts the couple?s romance, Giffords?s political rise, Kelly?s work as an astronaut, the shooting and her recovery.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/politics/*http%3A//us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/external/politico_rss/rss_politico_mostpop/http___www_politico_com_news_stories1111_68119_html/43564427/SIG=11m892rek/*http%3A//www.politico.com/news/stories/1111/68119.html

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What's new on the nuclear?fusion front?

Boris Horvat / AFP - Getty Images

A hardhat worker walks around the construction site for the ITER fusion experiment in Saint-Paul-les-Durance, France.

By Alan Boyle

The standard joke about nuclear fusion is that it's the energy technology of the future, and always will be. Well, fusion is still an energy option for the future rather than the present, but small steps forward are being reported on several fronts.?That even includes the long-ridiculed?campaign?for?"cold fusion."

Efforts by the Italian-based Leonardo Corp. to harness low-energy nuclear reactions (the technology formerly known as cold fusion)?have reawakened the dream of somehow producing surplus?heat through unorthodox chemistry. Today,?Pure Energy Systems News reported that Leonardo's Andrea Rossi signed an agreement with Texas-based National Instruments to build instrumentation for E-Cat cold-fusion reactors.

Will this venture actually pan out? The E-Cat reactors are so shrouded in secrecy and murky claims that it's hard to do a reality check, but most outside experts say that the concept just won't work.

Some observers are similarly pessimistic about the other avenues for fusion research. The basic physics of the reaction is well-accepted, of course. You can see the power generated when hydrogen atoms fuse into helium when you look at that big ball of gas in the sky, 93 million miles away, or when you watch footage of an H-bomb blast.

But no one has been able to achieve a self-sustaining, energy-producing?fusion reaction in a controlled setting on Earth, even after more than a half-century of trying.

Laser ignition
Researchers had hoped to reach?that?big milestone,?known as ignition,?at the $3.5 billion National Ignition Facility by the end of 2010. But in last week's issue of Science, Steven Koonin, the Energy Department's under secretary for science,?was quoted as saying "ignition is proving more elusive than hoped" and added that "some science discovery may be required" to make it a reality. (Coincidentally, Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced this week that Koonin will be leaving his post.)

The big challenge is to tweak all the factors involved in?NIF's super-laser-blaster system to maximize the?energy directed?on tiny pellets of fusion fuel, and minimize the loss of energy through tiny imperfections or interference.?"We're at the end of the beginning," NIF's director, Edward Moses, told Science.

How much longer will it take??The new director of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where?NIF is headquartered, told the San Francisco Chronicle that he was convinced the facility would attain ignition "in this fiscal year" ? that is, by next October.

Magnetic confinement
If NIF hits that schedule, it'll be way ahead of the world's most expensive fusion experiment, the $20 billion ITER experimental project in France. ITER is taking the most conventional approach to creating a controlled fusion reaction, which involves magnetic containment of?a super-hot plasma inside a doughnut-shaped device known as a tokamak. The European Union and six other nations, including the United States, have divvied up the work load with the aim of completing construction in 2017 and?achieving "first plasma" in 2019.

Right now, Oak Ridge National Laboratory and US ITER are testing a fuel delivery system that would?fire pellets of?ultra-cold deuterium-tritium fuel into the?plasma.

"When we send a frozen pellet into a high-temperature plasma, we sometimes call it a 'snowball in hell,'" Oak Ridge physicist David Rasmussen said in an ITER report on the tests at the Dill-D research tokamak in San Diego. "But temperature is really just the measure of the energy of the particles in the plasma. When the deuterium and tritium particles vaporize, ionize and are heated, they move very fast, colliding with enough energy to fuse."

The tricky part has to do with shaping the pellets just right to produce the desired reaction. When it comes to snowballs in hell, the devil is in the details.

The politics of ITER is just as tricky as the technology. Considering the economic problems that are afflicting the world, and Europe in particular, will there be funding to support the development timeline? Last month, one of the leaders of the European Parliament's Green bloc called ITER a "ticking budgetary time bomb."

Wiffle-Balls and other wonders
Smaller-scale fusion research efforts, meanwhile, are getting a lot of good press. For example, the Navy-funded experiments in inertial electrostatic confinement fusion, also called Polywell fusion, are continuing at EMC2 Fusion Development Corp. in New Mexico. The latest status report for the $7.9 million project says that the test?reactor, known as a Wiffle-Ball because of its shape, "has generated over 500 high-power plasma shots."

"EMC2 is conducting tests on Wiffle-Ball plasma scaling law on plasma heating and confinement," the brief report reads.

Live Poll

When will fusion power go commercial?

  • 167387

    In 10 years or less.

    16%

  • 167388

    10 to 50 years.

    51%

  • 167389

    More than 50 years, but it'll happen.

    25%

  • 167390

    Never: It's technologically impossible.

    3%

  • 167391

    Never: It's economically uncompetitive.

    5%

VoteTotal Votes: 1680

The Polywell system is designed to accelerate positively charged ions inside a high-voltage?cage, in such a way that they spark a fusion reaction. If enough of the ions fuse, the?energy could exceed the amount put into the system.

In the past, leaders of the EMC2 team have told me that their aim is to build a 100-megawatt demonstration reactor.?Nowadays, EMC2 is more close-mouthed about their progress, primarily because that's the way the Navy wants it. But the report about 500 high-energy plasma shots brought a positive response from the Talk-Polywell discussion board, which has been following EMC2's progress closely. "I'd be drunk by now if those were shots of whiskey," one commenter joked.

Privately backed efforts are moving ahead as well: Last month, Lawrenceville?Plasma Physics reported reaching a record for?neutron yield with its "Focus Fusion" direct-to-electric generator. And this week, Canada's General Fusion?and its magnetized target fusion technology were featured in?an NPR news package.

"I wouldn't say I'm 100 percent sure it's going to work," General Fusion's Michel Laberge told NPR. "That would be a lie. But I would put it at 60 percent chance that this is going to work. Now of course other people will give me a much smaller chance than that, but even at 10 percent chance of working, investors will still put money in, because this is big, man, this is making power for the whole planet. This is huge!"

Is it a huge opportunity, or a huge waste ? especially considering that the energy technology of the future will have to compete with present-day technologies such as solar, wind, biofuel and nuclear fission? Feel free to weigh in with your comments below.

Update for 3:40 p.m. ET Nov. 11: Some commenters have rightly pointed out that there are many other nuclear fusion and high-energy plasma initiatives under way, including the Z Machine, a huge X-ray generator?at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico. The journal Science quotes Sandia researchers as saying the machine could be used to start testing the feasibility of pinch-driven fusion, but?conducting a?definitive test would require a far more powerful?machine.

Science also notes that some researchers suspect NIF's indirect approach to laser-driven?fusion, in which fuel pellets are placed inside a pulse-shaping cylinder known as a hohlraum, may not?be as efficient as it needs to be. Research groups are investigating direct-drive laser fusion at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics in Rochester, N.Y., and the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington.?

More about fusion:


Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or following the Cosmic Log Google+ page. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Source: http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/11/10/8740899-whats-new-on-the-fusion-front

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Survey: iPad set to be pushed aside by Kindle Fire this holiday season (Digital Trends)

amazon-kindle-fireIt looks like Apple?s iPad finally has some serious competition on its hands. According to the results of a recent survey by consumer electronics shopping and review site Retrevo, shoppers in the US interested in buying an iPad this holiday season are outnumbered by more than three times by those interested in Amazon?s Kindle Fire ? and it?s not even on the shelves yet.

Of those considering purchasing a tablet, 44 percent said they would take a look at Amazon?s Kindle Fire while only 12 percent said they would definitely get an iPad.

At $199, Amazon?s 7-inch 8GB tablet, which goes on sale next week, costs $300 less than Apple?s cheapest iPad, the 16GB Wi-Fi only model.

Encouraged by the number of pre-orders it has received since the Kindle Fire was unveiled in September, the e-commerce giant has reportedly ramped up production to meet demand. The Fire will start shipping next week.

Retrovo?s study, which involved more than 1,000 consumers, showed that tablets could be the hot item this holiday season, with 69 percent of respondents saying they?re looking to buy one, or want to at least find out more about them.

Retrovo said that ???the iPad 2 is starting to show its age and the new Kindle Fire is about to make the scene with a very attractive $199 price point.??

It also commented on Amazon?s timing regarding the release of the Fire. ?With the iPad 2 nearly a year old and the iPad 3 rumored to not be available until next year (missing the holiday season), Amazon may have timed the launch of their tablet just right.?

The unveiling of Barnes & Noble?s Nook Tablet on Monday, however, undermines the survey?s results somewhat. The research was carried out before the Nook Tablet was announced, and with a spec sheet similar to that of the Fire, it?ll no doubt be of interest to consumers too. Barnes & Noble?s new tablet, which hits the shelves later next week, also sports a 7-inch screen and runs a version of the Android operating system, although it has double the internal memory and costs $50 more than the Fire.

Of course, with Apple having sold somewhere in the region of 35 million iPads since its launch in 2010, Amazon has some catching up to do, but if the results of Retrovo?s survey prove accurate, this holiday season may see a noticeable shift in the tablet market for the first time.

This article was originally posted on Digital Trends

More from Digital Trends

Amazon?s tablet will be named the Kindle Fire

WSJ: Amazon tablet due in October

Why did Apple choose Twitter over Facebook for iOS 5?

Police use Apple iOS tracking data for investigations

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/applecomputer/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/digitaltrends/20111111/tc_digitaltrends/surveyipadsettobepushedasidebykindlefirethisholidayseason

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Insurer Allianz net drops to $350 million (AP)

FRANKFURT, Germany ? German insurer Allianz SE saw third quarter profits sag to euro258 million ($350 million) from euro1.27 billion the year before because of investment losses and Greek bond writedowns from Europe's debt crisis.

Revenue fell 1.8 percent to euro24.07 billion.

Munich-based Allianz said Friday it lost euro122 million from writing down Greek bonds, and euro817 million from the fallen value of its holdings in other financial companies such as banks and insurers.

Greece is in the process of working out a debt reduction that includes bondholders taking 50 percent losses on the value of their investments. Fears that Greece's problems will infect larger countries such as Italy have led to sharp swings on stock and bond markets.

Allianz said it would stay with its profit estimate for the full year of operating earnings of euro8.0 billion plus or minus euro0.5 billion.

"All market participants are confronted at this time with the uncertainty and large swings on capital markets," said Oliver Baete, head of controlling, reporting and risk.

The company's basic property and casualty insurance business showed a slight decline of 1 percent in operating earnings to euro1.11 billion, and its combined ratio slipped to 97.6 percent from 97.1 percent in the same quarter a year ago. The ratio measure costs and claims against premiums, ratios under 100 therefore show the gain from basic underwriting.

The company said it suffered higher losses from natural catastrophes but was able to make up some of that with higher prices.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/europe/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111111/ap_on_bi_ge/eu_germany_earns_allianz

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Meet The MythBusters

Discovery Channel's MythBusters have taken on more than 700 myths, from how hard it is to find a needle in a haystack (it's hard) to whether toothbrushes have fecal matter on them (they do). Series hosts Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage talk about the show with host Ira Flatow.

Source: http://www.npr.org/2011/11/11/142244054/meet-the-mythbusters?ft=1&f=1007

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Bill Clinton's Vision for 'A Smart Government and a Strong Economy' (Time.com)

Bill Clinton, the 42nd President of the United States, spoke with TIME's Rick Stengel about his new book, Back to Work, and how to fix the economy. Excerpts of that conversation follow.

Why did you write this book?

I thought maybe it would be helpful just to have both an explanation of what's happened over the last 30 years and what I believe we need to do now.

How did you write it?

I just sat down and wrote it. I literally saved hundreds of newspaper articles, blog sites, you know, op-ed pieces, magazine articles, marks in books. I've been doing this, and I didn't do it with any intent to write a book. I just kind of collected all this stuff because it helped me to understand what was going on. (See photos of Bill Clinton's last days in the White House.)

So what has happened to the economy and the U.S. over the past 30 years?

First of all, we face more and more intense competition from around the world, and at the same time we have adopted ? except in the eight years I served and the first two years President Obama was serving ? this antigovernment philosophy, which has mostly, as I point out, been an antitax and an antiregulation philosophy, so that we have dramatically increased the national debt and our reliance on other countries to fund it. Now we are facing the retirement of the baby boomers and once again a dramatic increase in health care cost. So we have to figure out a way to put the country in the future business. We have to get ahold of the long-term debt problem, and we have to revitalize the private sector. And you can't do it with an antigovernment strategy. You have to have a smart government and a strong economy. That's basically the argument of the book.

What is it that Democrats don't understand about how to make the economy work again, and what is it that Republicans don't understand?

Republicans believe that if you cut taxes, especially for upper-income people, that's always going to work: no matter what it does to the deficit, no matter what it does to our investment in the future, it's always the answer to every economic problem. Now with the Democrats, they're going to be reluctant to make changes in the big programs that retirees depend on ? Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid. What the Democrats have to understand is, if they want to preserve a health care program for people who need it and the benefits of Medicare, we have to be willing to change the delivery system. We're spending too much money on the way we finance health care, the overhead and the way we pay for it. The Republicans can't be completely allergic to taxes. The Democrats can't be completely allergic to changes in health care delivery. And both of them have got to look for specific opportunities to save money in a way that doesn't hurt anything. (Read the interview with Hillary Clinton.)

You were talking a lot about health care expenditure. What hasn't been done?

We need a massive national focus now on improving delivery systems in a way that maintains quality and cuts costs. We know that it can be done, but we don't have any systematic way of doing it. And to me, this is something ready-made for people to work on across party lines. But to say, "Well, if you just repeal the health care bill, everything will be hunky-dory," that's not true. If you repeal the health care bill, you'll get more of what you got in 2009. Health care insurance premiums will go through the roof. Employers will have to stop offering their employees health care coverage, or they'll keep the health care coverage and their employees won't get a raise for five years. And meanwhile, America will become less and less and less competitive. So this is not an ideological problem. This is a management problem.

Could you briefly talk about some ways to create jobs that we're not using now and why banks and corporations are sitting on so much cash?

Well, the banks have about $2.2 trillion in cash uncommitted to loans. And they need to hold somewhere between $160 billion and $200 billion of that because they have their own mortgages that are still uncertain. But they could loan in theory, at conservative ratios of 10-to-1, $20 trillion. Obviously, if that happened, the recession would be over in 15 seconds. Pepperdine, a conservative university, did a study showing that 40% of the small businesses said they would expand their operations and hire more people if they could get credit, and they can't get credit. We've got to clean these bank books up. Once that happens, it will dramatically boost confidence. Right now, everybody's frozen in place. And by far the biggest thing we could do is to have a more aggressive move on the home-mortgage problem. All the various players are reluctant to do it, but we need to do it.

What will make banks start spending cash?

You've got a lot of cash being held overseas. The last time it was brought back, President Bush made a good-faith effort to get it reinvested in the economy in 2005, and he let corporations bring it back at a tax rate of 5.25%. So what I think we should do now is say, You bring this money back while we're debating the corporate tax reform for free if you can prove you increase net employment. For everybody you increase net employment on, you get that much credit for free. If you want to spend it on whatever you want, pay the long-term capital gains rate, 15%.

Are corporate taxes too high?

I'd like to see the President offer the Congress an opportunity to work on a bipartisan basis on a reform of the corporate tax laws. Essentially, our tax rates are very high, but our tax take is the average or a little below the average of Europe. The rate is 35%; the take is 23%. And clearly what we need to do is to restrict a lot of the credits and deductions and lower the rate, because you got a lot of big corporations that are paying under 20%, less than the average American's paying. (Read "Tax Reform and the Revenue Problem.")

What can a President really do about the economy?

There are lots of things you can do. And in this case, the President can do quite a bit just with his regulatory authorities, as he's been doing in the last few weeks, but he could do a lot more if the Congress would work with him to dislodge this mortgage problem and to reform the corporate tax laws. You know, what you have to do is look at the pressure points of the economy and say, What could I do here that would generate real economic activity?

It seems almost impossible to get Congress to approve anything in any kind of bipartisan way. Does that mean the President has to do as much as he can on his own?

Yes. If he can't get Congress to act, he's got to do everything he can by Executive Order. I understand why he's frustrated, because a lot of these proposals that he's made are ideas that were first proposed by Republicans, who are all of a sudden now against them and seem to be against them just because [Democrats are] for them. But he ought to keep fighting for his ideas in Congress. No one knows for sure when we'll reach that tipping point and we'll really be out of this thing and going again. These kinds of financial/housing crises, if you go back hundreds of years, tend to take five to 10 years to get over. And what we're trying to do is to beat that timetable. That's all we're trying to do.

How can Obama get re-elected with an unemployment rate hovering around 9%?

I think the President will be able to rely on the fact that he has tried to come up with a serious and very comprehensive plan. And if people don't feel it yet, then [they will]. The question is, Will they behave the way voters typically behave in these circumstances? Or will they understand that this was a different sort of recession and then evaluate the competing candidates, depending on whom the Republicans nominate, in terms of whether their ideas are more or less likely to get us out of the fix we're in? You know, I think people are pretty smart once they understand the deal. And that's one of the reasons ? you've read the book, so you know ? that I wrote this: to give people kind of a short handbook, which would at least offer some explanation about the various elements of the economic crisis and some perspective on why these things take a long time to get over and how we can speed it up. (Read "Obama and the Imperceptible Recovery.")

Speaking of policies, you balanced the budget and cut the size of the government. How come you're not a hero of the Tea Party?

I thought I should've been their favorite politician. I think because I didn't do it according to the ideology. I raised taxes and cut spending. I did it with a mix of policies that also left us money to invest in our future and in our quality of life. I think that's really important. There are some things that the government has to do because the private sector does not have the capacity to advance the public interest in that way.

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Researchers Look to the Cloud to Develop Personalized Medicine for Kids With Cancer

When it comes to treating pediatric cancer a group of academic researchers, oncologists and pathologists believes that a more personal approach isn?t just more humane, it?s the key to survival. For members of the Neuroblastoma and Medulloblastoma Translational Research Consortium (NMTRC) this personal touch means using genomic analysis to develop highly targeted therapies to treat each individual tumor. Such analysis produces a lot of data, which means it holds a lot of potential for helping kids with neuroblastoma, an often aggressive malignant tumor that develops from nerve tissue. It also means the researchers need access to some serious computer power to make sense of that data.

NMTRC announced a big boost to their work Thursday?they will soon be doing their research on a new high-performance cluster of computers donated by Dell and dedicated exclusively to their work. The timing couldn?t be better as NMTRC in May launched a clinical trial studying pediatric neuroblastoma patients to find ways of more quickly and effectively treating their cancer. Neuroblastoma is most commonly diagnosed before age five and occurs in about one out of 100,000 children (it is slightly more common in boys). While the prognosis for infants with neuroblastoma is good, only 30 percent of children diagnosed after the age of 12 to 15 months survive (pdf).

Doctors have had few treatment options to choose from. Over the past 25 years the FDA has approved only one treatment for pediatric cancer, as compared to 50 for adult cancer patients. The NMTRC trial aims to match kids with effective drugs more quickly and to potentially identify treatments physicians hadn?t previously thought of. It will enroll 14 kids with late-stage neuroblastoma who haven?t responded well to conventional therapy. Physicians will take a biopsy from each patient and submit it for genomic analysis.

The results of that analysis will be fed into the computer cluster, which will analyze it using software developed by the Van Andel Research Institute?s Pediatric Cancer Translational Research Program in Grand Rapids, Mich. Doctors will then create a list of FDA-approved drugs to consider for treatment, Giselle Sholler, NMTRC chair and co-director of Van Andel?s Pediatric Cancer Translational Research Program, said Thursday at a press conference hosted by Dell.

It?s easier to develop treatments for adult patients because there is typically a large sample of people to study and there?s a wider variety of FDA-approved drugs and dosages to choose from, Jeffrey Trent, president and research director of the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen), said at Thursday?s press conference. TGen will operate the cluster at its facility in Phoenix.

The Dell compute cluster, will initially consist of 148 CPUs capable of 8.2 teraflops (or 8.2 trillion floating point operations per second) and can expand to 13 teraflops . (That?s quite a bit of computing power although the world?s fastest supercomputers operate at thousands of teraflops.). Eventually, 11 NMTRC sites will be tied into the compute cluster using the cloud-computing model?they?ll communicate over a single network, be able to use the same software and all have access to a centralized database. This infrastructure will also make it easier to admit additional research facilities to the project, Trent said, adding that 17 other research sites have expressed interest in joining the pediatric cancer trial.

One model for the pediatric cancer clinical trial is the Biomarker-integrated Approaches of Targeted Therapy for Lung Cancer Elimination (BATTLE) study, whose results thus far indicate that patients prescribed treatment with existing drugs based on their tumor biomarkers benefit more than patients whose treatment is not based on their tumor biomarkers. The study, conducted by University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center researchers and funded by the U.S. Department of Defense, successfully completed its Phase II clinical trial program last year. Another model, the I SPY 2 TRIAL (Investigation of Serial Studies to Predict Your Therapeutic Response with Imaging And moLecular Analysis 2), is designed to determine whether women with newly diagnosed locally advanced breast cancer benefit from investigational drugs in addition to standard chemotherapy rather than standard chemotherapy alone before having surgery.

Once a personalized neuroblastoma treatment model is established, the same high-performance computing and analysis approach can be expanded to a variety of other diseases, Sholler said.

Image portrays an MRI of an adrenal mass diagnosed as neuroblastoma. Courtesy of WebMD

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Obama pipeline punt spurs 2012 talk (Politico)

President Barack Obama was caught between a green and a blue place on the Keystone XL oil pipeline ? the environmentalists who insisted he reject the proposal in order to earn their support in 2012 and labor unions excited at the prospect of jobs.

On Thursday, Obama?s State Department punted a verdict on Keystone until 2013, and while his administration is busy claiming the decision has nothing to do with politics, try telling that to everyone in Washington.

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?This decision is based on the process that we have been going through,? Assistant Secretary of State for Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs Kerri-Ann Jones pushed back. ?This is not a political decision.?

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton informed Obama earlier this week, Jones said, but the White House ?did not direct us to make this decision. ? And there was no effort to sort of influence the decision.?

The delay may placate environmental groups sore about Obama?s decision to delay a new smog rule until at least 2013.

Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune had recently told reporters Obama?s decision on Keystone would ?have a very big impact? on whether the nation?s largest environmental group funnels resources more toward congressional races rather than the race for the White House.

Bill McKibben, the organizing force behind the envrionmentalists? protests against the pipeline said he was encouraged.

?The people spoke, loudly, and thankfully the president heard,? McKibben said. ?A done deal has come spectacularly undone, and TransCanada now has 1,700 miles of pipe rusting on the prairie. Since we get few even partial victories on climate, this is a big day.?

Obama?s other constituency in the fight ? labor unions ? weren?t celebrating, even though Obama?s decision to delay until 2013 means the project remains on life support for him or a Republican president to resurrect.

?Environmentalists formed a circle around the White House and within days the Obama administration chose to inflict a potentially fatal delay to a project that is not just a pipeline, but is a lifeline for thousands of desperate working men and women,? Terry O?Sullivan, general president of the Laborers?s International Union of North America, said in a statement. ?The administration chose to support environmentalists over jobs ? job-killers win, American workers lose.?

And Republicans blasted the decision, linking it to 2012 at every turn.

?More than 20,000 new American jobs have just been sacrificed in the name of political expediency,? House Speaker John Boehner said in a statement. ?The current project has already been deemed environmentally sound, and calling for a new route is nothing but a thinly veiled attempt to avoid upsetting the president?s political base before the election.?

For months, the conventional wisdom had been that a presidential permit for Keystone XL was inevitable; Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in October 2010 that she was ?inclined? to approve it because it was better to get oil from Canada than from less-friendly nations. The State Department then said in August stating that TransCanada?s proposed route is the preferred option.

Thursday, Jones said the new review is needed because the department has not yet examined a route contained within Nebraska that would minimize or avoid the Sand Hills area. ?What we?ve heard is from many in the public in Nebraska as well as comments across the nation about the route going through these fragile landscapes in the Sand Hills,? she said.

The department had already examined routes further west and northeast of Nebraska that would have avoided the Sand Hills area and had released a final supplemental environmental review in August that said TransCanada?s proposed route was the preferred option and would have minimal effect on the environment.

But Nebraska officials in both parties had opposed that route, raising the issue in public hearings and a special session recently convened by the state Legislature.

"They're looking at this and saying if we can find a better route some of this controversy will go away. And it will," said Sen. Mike Johanns (R-Neb.).

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