05-07-2012 07:51 Mitt Romney speaks to Jan Crawford about the Supreme Court's decision to uphold President Obama's health care law, why his Massachusetts mandate is not a tax, and whether he'd still nominate a Justice like John Roberts.
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05-07-2012 12:51 Business strategistCarol Roth weighs in on the potential impact on businesses from todays health-care ruling.
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Republicans have long pledged to repeal and replace the Obama health care law.
Democrats, however, argue Republicans who want to repeal the law also would reverse the law's most popular reforms, sending the United States back to the days when insurance companies were free to drop people's coverage whenever they liked.
"The choice is to go forward or be dragged backwards," Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa said. "It's time for Speaker Boehner and Republicans to put politics behind us, join with us in ensuring that every American has access to quality affordable care, that no person is denied coverage due to a pre-existing condition."
Republicans say they agree the old system will not work.
"The health care system, the status quo, is unacceptable," Rep. Tom Price, R-GA, who is also a doctor, said. "As a physician, I can tell you it doesn't work for patients. It certainly doesn't work for doctors."
"I know the system is broken. It needs to be fixed," Rep. Denny Rehberg, R-Mont., said. "And there are a lot of ideas that Republicans wanted to throw out when it was initially brought up back in 2009, but we weren't given that opportunity."
One conservative analyst says now is the time -- that Republicans should lay out the details of their plans to show people exactly what they would do.
John Goodman, the author of "Priceless: Curing the Health Care Crisis," said Republicans "need to be able to talk about a health care vision that is different from the ObamaCare vision."
"They need to be able to announce some principles that people can understand and agree with," he said. "No one understands ObamaCare. If you lay out a reasonable alternative, people will understand it and agree with it."
"All the Obama administration and the people that supported the president's health care reform did was add more people to a failed system or a failing system," Rehberg added. "That's not health care reform."
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JUDY WOODRUFF: The debate over whether the health care mandate is a tax remained front and center in the campaign today, even as the president shifted his attention to economic issues at the start of a battleground state bus tour.
(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)
JUDY WOODRUFF: President Obama was back on the stump today in Ohio, touting his own economic policies and taking a shot at those of Republican Mitt Romney.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: I don't think that Mr. Romney's plan to spend trillions of dollars more on tax cuts for folks that don't need them and aren't even asking for them is the right way to grow our economy, especially since they want to pay for it by cutting education spending, and cutting job training programs, and raising middle-class taxes.
JUDY WOODRUFF: The president's stop was part of a two-day bus tour across Ohio and Western Pennsylvania, to draw attention to economies in both states which have been buoyed by a stronger auto industry. But, in his first campaign event since last week's Supreme Court's decision to uphold his health care law, Mr. Obama also issued a firm defense of his overhaul of the system.
BARACK OBAMA: I will work with anybody who wants to work with me to continue to improve our health care system and our health care laws, but the law I passed is here to stay.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Yesterday, in an interview with CBS, Mitt Romney said he disagreed with the court's decision, and for the first time, called the requirement that all Americans buy health insurance, the individual mandate, a tax.
MITT ROMNEY (R): Well, the Supreme Court has the final word, and their final word is that Obamacare is a tax. So it's a tax. It's -- they decided it was constitutional, so it is a tax, and it's constitutional. That -- that's the final word.
There's no way around that. You can try and say you wish they had decided a different way, but they didn't. They concluded it was a tax. That's what it is. And the American people know that President Obama has broken the pledge he made.
JUDY WOODRUFF: But that comment signaled a shift in position. A similar requirement is part of the state health care law that Romney fought for as governor of Massachusetts.
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Between the Medicaid program, subsidized insurance under the 2006 health care access reform law, and investments in state employee health insurance and public health programs, health care spending this fiscal year is on pace to rise to 43 percent of the overall state budget, according to an analysis of the spending bill being reviewed by Gov. Deval Patrick.
One in five Massachusetts residents will have their health care largely covered through the budget and taxpayer-supported health care costs next year will gobble up the majority of new discretionary state revenue, hitting $15.14 billion, up from $14.65 billion. But education accounts will also get a big boost, according to a Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center analysis of the budget lawmakers agreed to last week.
While lawmakers and the Patrick administration this year have described fiscal 2013 spending plans ranging from $32.4 billion to $32.5 billion, the centers analysis estimates total state appropriations and transfers at $35.229 billion. Center officials say the higher figure reflects revenues collected and spent on transportation, school construction, public employee pensions and health care based on directives that carve out such spending before deliberations on the rest of the state budget begin each year.
Patrick has until Sunday, July 8 to sign the budget and announce his vetoes and amendments to the bill.
The center provides independent research and analysis of state budget and tax policies. Northeastern University Law School professor Peter Enrich chairs its board, which also includes former Gov. Michael Dukakis, American Red Cross of Eastern Massachusetts CEO Jarrett Barrios, Community Catalyst Executive Director Robert Restuccia, and former Revenue Commissioner Navjeet Bal of Nixon Peabody.
Aside from a proposed $546 million increase in spending on Medicaid and health care reform, the fiscal 2013 budget, approved easily last week by the House and Senate after a deal was struck by a conference committee, proposes $6.95 billion in total education spending, an increase of $302 million.
The majority of the increased education spending, or $238 million is targeted for the K-12 education system, with higher education in line for an increase of $58 million to a total of $1.02 billion, and early education and care spending scheduled to fall to $500 million, from $507 million.
Taken together, proposed state spending on health care and education in fiscal 2013 will approach $22.1 billion, representing about 63 percent of all state spending. Health care spending, as a percentage of the budget, will rise to 43 percent from about 42.8 percent.
But even with the 5.3 percent increase in spending on Medicaid, budget managers will need to secure about $500 million in savings in the program to balance the budget next year. The savings, along with some spending cuts and $615 million in temporary revenues, are being relied upon to close an estimated $1.3 billion gap between available revenues and projected state spending based on fiscal 2012 levels. The centers analysis identifies $41 million in homeless shelter cuts and $8 million in child care subsidy cuts.
State spending on education and health care, by comparison, towers over investments in other key areas.
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Health care, education consume 63 percent of planned state budget
04-07-2012 07:50 Conference by Fyodor Kondrashov, ICREA Research Professor, leader of the laboratory Evolutionary Genomics, within the Bioinformatics & Genomics research programme, at the Centre for Genomic Regulation, in Barcelona, Spain. In this talk he discusses the work that his lab does and the role of bioinformatics in the study of disease-causing mutations in humans. The study of the genome through sequencing produces an enormous quantity of data. This data is analysed by bioinformatics researchers dedicated to the management and analysis of all of the information obtained when a genome is sequenced via, for example, mathematical, biological, computer and statistical tools. Personalised medicine is based on the premise that if a disease is caused by a mutation of a patient's genome, this mutation will always produce the same effect in another person: the effect is stable and constant, independently of whom the individual might be. However, recent research suggests that this effect may depend on the combination with other mutations. In some cases, it can be demonstrated that two "bad" mutations could combine to produce a perfectly healthy person, meaning that in the world of genetics, two "negatives" sometimes make a "positive". It is also likely that some mutations which cause disease may be benign if combined with other genetic changes, although this phenomenon has not yet been observed in humans. This is discouraging for personalised medicine, as the study of mutation interaction ...
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Genome complexity and medicine: illness prediction gets complicated - Video
A Taupo resort owner says freedom campers along the waterfront are urinating in public and swimming naked, but the council says the claims are lies.
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NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--
Fitch Ratings has taken the following actions on the U.S. residential primary servicer rating for Financial Freedom, a division of Onewest Bank, FSB:
--U.S. Residential primary servicer rating for reverse product affirmed at 'RPS3'; Outlook Positive.
The servicer rating actions reflect management changes within several key senior positions and strategic plans to focus on system and operational efficiencies, including several recently completed and in-process enhancements. The rating also incorporates the servicer's proactive adoption of a single point of contact (SPOC) model for its Maturities, Collections and Foreclosure areas. Based on the analysis and the company's profile, Fitch has assigned a Positive Outlook to Financial Freedom's servicer rating.
Although the servicer's customer service metrics, on an annual average, deteriorated slightly compared to the prior year, Financial Freedom implemented measures earlier this year to address this concern. Fitch was provided recent months' metrics which were considerably improved and expects that these efforts will continue; however, Fitch feels that a longer period of time is needed to determine the final impact of these changes.
The rating takes into consideration the financial condition of OneWest Bank FSB (OneWest), a non-rated entity, as financial condition is a component of Fitch's servicer ratings. In addition, the rating reflects Fitch's overall concerns for the U.S. residential servicing industry which include the ability to maintain high performance standards while addressing the rising cost of servicing and changes to industry practices, which are likely to be mandated by regulators and other parties.
Finally, the rating reflects changes Fitch made to its servicer rating category weightings, which was instituted for all forward mortgage servicers in 2011.
The rating was determined in accordance with Fitch's criteria 'U.S. Residential and Small Balance Commercial Mortgage Servicer Rating' and 'Global Rating Criteria for Structured Finance Servicers' which are available on the Fitch Ratings web site at 'www.fitchratings.com'.
As of Feb. 29, 2012, Financial Freedom's servicing portfolio consisted of 145,939 loans with an unpaid principal balance of approximately $24.7 billion. The reverse portfolio is composed of 69% GSE loans (based on unpaid principal balance), 16.2% non-agency RMBS, 9.3% third-party servicing, and 5.3% owned loans.
OneWest is a wholly owned subsidiary of OneWest Bank Group, LLC, which was founded in March 2009 by a consortium of investors including Paulson & Co and J.C. Flowers & Co. IndyMac Mortgage Services (IndyMac), another division of OneWest, operates materially separate from Financial Freedom and maintains its own operations and systems. Financial Freedom has been servicing reverse mortgage product for 19 years and has operations in Austin, TX and Kalamazoo, MI.
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Fitch Affirms Financial Freedom's U.S. RMBS Servicer Rating; Assigns Positive Outlook
The UN Human Rights Council (HRC) in Geneva passed its first resolution on Internet freedom on Thursday with a call for all states to support individuals' rights online as much as offline.
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As Ron and Rand Paul shift focus away from the Fed and toward internet freedom with their new 'Technology Revolution' manifesto, should anti-censorship forces drop their political differences to work against a common foe?
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Ron Paul Takes Up Internet Freedom With New 'Technology Revolution' Manifesto
05-07-2012 07:37 Modular Aquaponics Design and Equipment MADE in the Philippines MADE GEORGE S Update: Ground Elevated Operating Recirculation Growing Eco System MADE Cascade System Update:
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05-07-2012 15:42 Moderator: Frank Sesno, Director of the School of Media and Public Affairs at The George Washington University; Creator and Host, Planet Forward Judith Rodin, President of the Rockefeller Foundation Chris Policinski, President and CEO of Land O'Lakes Calestous Juma, Professor at Harvard University James Boomgard, President and CEO of DAI After examining the major trends on the horizon, this panel will delve more deeply into the specific challenge of increasing food production while sustaining ecosystem function, addressing linkages between markets, food access and food availability from a developing country perspective. The role of innovation and markets in addressing challenges of climate change, population, and energy in meeting the food gap will be highlighted, as well as the impacts on small-holder African farmers. What role does analysis of ecosystem function currently play in efforts to increase agricultural productivity? What role does water and natural resource management play? Have policies or practices to this end shifted as a result of climate change? What is the role for sustainable Intensification?
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Pressures on the Planet: Food Security in an Increasingly Complex Ecosystem - Video
Mound Beach in Quincy has reopened after passing a water quality test. It was closed Tuesday after registering high bacteria levels
All other beaches from Quincy to Plymouth are open, although not all tests results for this week have been posted.
See water quality test results for each community and for Cape Cod, the South Coast and North Shore.
For more on Quincy beaches, call 617-376-1288, or visit tinyurl.com/ledger-quincy-beaches. For more on Wollaston Beach, call 617-626-4972.
Seventy-five salt water beaches on the South Shore are tested for enterococci, intestinal bacteria found in humans and animals. High levels of enterococci indicate the waters may also contain other disease-causing microbes that are present in sewage but are more difficult to detect. Bacterial colonies are filtered from three ounces of water and placed on a gel infused with nutrients and chemicals designed to promote growth. Left in an incubator, the single cells isolated on the filter grow explosively, forming colonies visible to the naked eye.After one day, the colonies are counted and if they exceed 104 colonies, the beach is closed to swimming.
Source: Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
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As hot weather continues to bake the region, residents should be wary of which beaches they choose to take a dip because they arent all safe for swimming.
As of last week, Holiday Beach in Amherstburg was closed because of an E. coli bacteria count of 1,000 fecal coliforms per 100 millilitres, which makes the water a health hazard. West Belle River Beach in Lakeshore and Colchester Beach in Essex have E. coli readings of 100 fecal coliforms per 100 millilitres or more. Residents should avoid swimming at those beaches as the pollution can cause ear, nose and throat irritation, according to the Windsor-Essex County Health Unit.
New water samples were taken Wednesday and results should be available later today. The stormy weather seen daily since last weekend might push up the number of contaminated beaches. Dr. Allen Heimann, medical officer of health for the health unit, said high winds, storms and waves cause lake bottoms to churn and produce cloudy water, which results in higher E. coli counts.
There is no doubt that in urban areas around the Detroit River and with combined sewer overflows thats where you get the bacteria contamination, Heimann said.
Bacteria counts vary from day to day and are associated with weather events. Sometimes a beach will be closed for a few weeks and then the bacteria count gets very low.
When you look at the amount of sewage that goes into Lake St. Clair, the Detroit River and Lake Erie thats certainly the basis for the problem, he said.
While Holiday Beach was off-limits for swimming eight of 12 weeks last year, the beach was never closed. In 2010, Holiday Beach was closed one week and swimming wasnt allowed all summer. The lack of swimming affects day use of the recreation area owned by the Essex Region Conservation Authority.
When our beach is closed fewer people come, said Kevin Money, ERCAs director of conservation areas. You can still picnic, play in the sand or walk your dog. We offer a lot of other things to the general public in terms of camping and bird activities in the spring and fall.
Money said the source of E. coli contamination isnt known.
Its easy to point the finger at septic systems but that may not be the issue, Money said pointing to a provincial order 13 years ago that made area homeowners hook up to sewer plants and stop using septic systems.
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GKN HAS agreed to buy Volvo’s aerospace division for £663 million (€831 million) in cash, sealing a deal it has been favoured to win since March.
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A biotech company has been accused of releasing preliminary and misleading information about a clinical trial. The company, Osiris Therapeutics, is the manufacturer of a cultured mesenchymal stem cell therapy called Prochymal, which is being studied in a phase 2, placebo-controlled study in post-MI patients. Earlier this week Osiris issued a press release [...]
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Currently, land-based tower wind turbines are the dominant source of wind power, but they take up a lot of space and generally need to be placed in high visibility areas, such as the tops of hills or ridges. They are also located close to the ground, where friction from the Earths surface slows the wind and increases its turbulence, negatively affecting the efficiency of the turbines. NASA engineers are looking at technologies that would help airborne wind power systems, capable of generating much more power, get off the ground.
There are two basic types of kite-based airborne wind-energy systems. Flygen systems see turbines built into the kite that generate the electricity and feed it via a tether to a storage or distribution device on the ground. The second features a ground-based generator that is powered by the reeling out of the tether as the kite catches the wind. By tacking the kite upwind like a sailboat, the periodic reeling-in phase takes much less energy around 10 percent than is produced by the reeling-out phase, resulting in a 90 percent net energy gain.
Both systems also rely on the aerodynamics of the kite and autonomous flight control. It is these two aspects of the technology that NASA researchers are looking to improve to help make airborne wind-energy systems a viable alternative to ground-based turbines.
"A lot of the systems that are flying have pretty cruddy aerodynamics," says David North, an engineer at NASA's Langley Research Center in Virginia. He points out that companies under deadline pressure from investors arent able to spend much time on the difficult challenge of optimizing the kites efficiency. "Here at NASA," he said, "we have the luxury of focusing very specifically on problems and not have to worry about getting a commercial product fielded by a certain date."
North says that, while several companies attempting to bring airborne wind energy to market have demonstrated autonomous flight, they have relied on sophisticated onboard electronics and flight-control systems, comparable to autopilot systems used on commercial aircraft. "Our goal is to simplify the whole thing," he said, "especially if we are only flying at 2,000 feet, which is in most cases below the clouds."
North and his colleagues at Langley achieved the worlds first sustained autonomous flight using only ground-based sensors on March 1, 2012. "The breakthrough we've made is we are basically using a cheapo digital webcam tied into a laptop computer (on the ground) to track the motion of the kite and keep it flying autonomously, North explained.
The system developed by the NASA researchers builds on the principle that the tips of a wind turbines blades generate as much as 90 percent of the turbines power because they are further from the hub and spin faster than the rest of the blade. In effect, placing a wind turbine at the end of a tether instead of it being attached to a concrete foundation allows the kite to act as a flying blade tip. It also allows the system to harness the much faster and steadier winds that can be found at higher altitudes.
The autonomous system functions in a similar way to Microsofts Kinect, with pattern recognition software determining where the kite is positioned, how it is oriented, and how fast it is moving. This data is fed into a flight-control system that keeps the kite in the air flying in a figure-8 pattern. The prototype kite only had a wingspan of about 10 feet (3 m), which is much smaller than the devices expected to be used in commercial applications. "Some people are talking very large, like wings the size of Boeing 747 airliners," North said
So far, the teams test flights have been limited to low altitudes to avoid interfering with aircraft, but they are trying to gain permission to fly at 2,000 feet for long periods of time in the restricted airspace reserved for NASA above Wallops Island, Virginia. Above 2,000 feet is considered the sweet spot for airborne wind-energy systems.
While the research will benefit renewable energy generation on Earth, NASA says the airborne power-generation systems could also be put to use on neighboring worlds, such as Mars, Venus, and Titan.
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NASA researchers aim to help get airborne wind power systems off the ground
Synopsis/Solicitation Combo - Jul 03, 2012
On-Line RFQ - Posted on Jul 03, 2012
General Information
Solicitation Number: NNK12440488Q Posted Date: Jul 03, 2012 FedBizOpps Posted Date: Jul 03, 2012 Recovery and Reinvestment Act Action: No Original Response Date: Jul 18, 2012 Current Response Date: Jul 18, 2012 Classification Code: 34 -- Metalworking machinery NAICS Code: 333514 Set-Aside Code: Total Small Business
Contracting Office Address
NASA/John F. Kennedy Space Center, Procurement, Kennedy Space Center, FL 32899
Description
NASA/KSC has a requirement for 3D Printers which allows for professional grade 3-D models. Item 1: MoJo Printer Kit or equal, QTY 1 EA; Item 2: uPrint SE Plus Printer or equal, QTY 1 EA.
This notice is a combined synopsis/solicitation for commercial items prepared in accordance with the format in FAR Subpart 12.6, as supplemented with additional information included in this notice. This announcement constitutes the only solicitation, which is issued as a Request for Quotation (RFQ); quotes are being requested and a written solicitation will not be issued. Offerors are required to use the On-Line RFQ system to submit their quote. The On-line RFQ system is linked above or it may be accessed at http://prod.nais.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/eps/bizops.cgi?gr=C&pin= . The information required by FAR Subpart 12.6 is included in the on-line RFQ.
The Government intends to acquire a commercial item using FAR Part 12 and the Simplified Acquisition Procedures set forth in FAR Part 13.
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As a powerful summertime derecho moved from Illinois to the Mid-Atlantic states on June 29, expanding and bringing destruction with it, NASA and other satellites provided a look at various factors involved in the event, its progression and its aftermath.
According to NOAA's Storm Prediction Center web site, a derecho (pronounced "deh-REY-cho") is a widespread, long-lived wind storm that is associated with a band of rapidly moving showers or thunderstorms. Damage from a derecho is usually in one direction along a relatively straight track. By definition an event is classified a derecho if the wind damage swath extends more than 240 miles (about 400 kilometers) and includes wind gusts of at least 58 mph (93 km/h) or greater along most of its length.
These storms are most common in the United States during the late spring and summer, with more than three quarters occurring between April and August. They either extend from the upper Mississippi Valley southeast into the Ohio Valley, or from the southern Plains northeast into the mid-Mississippi Valley.
NOAA's GOES-13 satellite, which watches the movement of weather systems in the eastern half of the U.S., captured the expansion and movement of the derecho from its birthplace in Illinois. The satellite data was compiled and animated by the NASA GOES Project at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
The movie begins on June 28 at 1515 UTC (11:15 a.m. EDT) and ends on June 30, 2012 at 1601 UTC (12:01 p.m. EDT). In the animation, the derecho's clouds appear as a line in the upper Midwest on June 29 at 1432. By 1602 UTC, they appear as a rounded area south of Lake Michigan. By 2132, the area of the derecho's clouds were near Lake Erie and over Ohio expanding as the system track southeast. By 0630 UTC, the size appears to have almost doubled as the derecho moves over West Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia. At 0232 UTC on June 30 (10:32 p.m. EDT), the Derecho was over the mid-Atlantic bringing a 100 mile line of severe storms and wind gusts as high as 90 mph to the region.
"It is interesting how the process is a self-sustaining process that is fed by a combination of atmospheric factors that all have to be in place at the same time," said Joe Witte, a meteorologist in Climate Change Communication at George Mason University, Va. and a consultant to NASA Headquarters, Washington. "That is why they are relatively rare: not all the elements line up that often."
Witte said that one could think of the strong winds as a combination to two main wind flows: the downburst winds from very high altitudes, and the forward speed of the storms.
A downburst occurs when cold air in the upper atmosphere is cooled more by the evaporation of some of the rain and melting of the frozen precipitation pushed up into the high levels of the towering cumulonimbus (thunderclouds). That cold air becomes much denser than the surrounding air and literally falls to the ground, accelerating like any other falling body. "The huge blob of very cold air from the upper atmosphere has a higher forward wind speed since it is high in the atmosphere, " Witte said. "This gives the 'blob' great forward momentum. Add that speed to the falling speed and the result is a very powerful forward moving surface wind."
The process of a derecho can become self-sustaining as hot and humid air is forced upward by the gust front and develops more (reinforcing) towering clouds. When one adds in a rear low level jet stream, there is nothing to stop the repeating process.
NASA's Aqua satellite flew over the derecho on June 29 and June 30, using the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder instrument (AIRS) onboard to capture infrared imagery of the event.
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Today it was announced that NASA and Craig Technologies have signed a five-year, non-reimbursable Space Act Agreement which will have NASA loaning 1,600 pieces of space shuttle era equipment to Craig Technologies. The agreement will have Craig Technologies maintain an inventory of unique processing and manufacturing equipment for future mission support at the agencys Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
This is an innovative way to ensure that space shuttle era technology and tools are reused for other hi-tech, private sector purposes along the Space Coast, said David Weaver, NASAs associate administrator for the Office of Communications.This is all part of NASAs plan to support the transition to the next era of exploration, creating good-paying American jobs and keeping the United States the world leader in space.
Craig Technologies will have use of the equipment starting in 2013 when the current partnership between NASA and United Space Alliance ends. The equipment, which is currently being held the NASA Shuttle Logistics Depot in Cape Canaveral, Fla, will be available for Craig to use with 2 restrictions. One being that they can use the equipment until NASA needs to use it. And two, they must store the used equipment within a 50 mile radius of Kennedy Space Center.
Kennedy continues to work with the commercial community to find inventive ways to share our unique capabilities, said Joyce Riquelme, manager of the Kennedy Center Planning and Development Office. This partnership benefits new customers who will use the equipment now, and keeps it close for our use in future spaceflight projects.
NASA has really been focusing on outsourcing the things it does as its budget continually dwindles. This deal, partnered with the deal they struck with SpaceX shows that NASA is capable of moving forward in these rough financial times.
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