Greece's New Acropolis Museum opens to visitors in London

Greece opened its long-awaited Acropolis Museum in Athens on Saturday with a lavish ceremony attended by 400 guests, including many heads of state, and drawing thousands on the heavily policed streets leading to the building.

But for many Greeks, the celebrations were marred by a sense of loss.

"We cann't dedicate this magnificent new museum with full hearts," Greek Culture Minister Antonis Samaras said Friday, on the eve of the opening ceremony.

"We cann't illuminate fully the artistic achievement created in 5th-century [BC] Athens because almost half of the sculptures from the Parthenon were taken from here 207 years ago to reside in enforced exile 4,000 kilometres away."

Samaras was referring to the Parthenon marbles on display in the British Museum. British Ambassador Lord Elgin began removing artifacts from the Acropolis in 1799 when Greece was under Ottoman rule and sold 75 metres of the original 160 metres of the frieze that ran around the Parthenon's inner core to the British Museum for £35,000 ($72,000).

The return of the artifacts to Athens has been an issue of national pride in Greece, and successive governments have waged high-profile campaigns for their return.

Conspicuously, there were no government officials from Britain at Saturday's opening festivities.

The museum, spreading across 5 levels at the foot of the Acropolis hill in central Athens, has been the centrepiece of Greece's efforts to repatriate its missing sculptures.

Some smaller pieces were recently returned from Italy, the Vatican and Germany, and are on display in the new building. But the British Museum has steadfastly refused to give up Lord Elgin's treasures.

One of its main arguments against their return had been the lack of an appropriate place to house them in Greece. But the $185-million glass-and-concrete museum, designed by U.S.-based architect Bernard Tschumi, has a special gallery for the Parthenon marbles on its third floor. The glass hall displays the section of the Parthenon frieze that Elgin left behind next to plaster casts of the works in London.

The copies are stark white plaster, in contrast with the brownish weathered marble of the originals.

At the opening ceremony, Greek President Karolos Papoulias renewed the call for the missing works. "The whole world can now see the most important sculptures from the Parthenon together," he said.

"But some are missing. It is time to heal the wounds on the monument by returning the marbles that belong to it."

Earlier this month, British Museum spokeswoman Hannah Boulton said the London institution would consider lending the marbles to Greece for 3 months for the opening of the new museum.

Samaras said his government could not accept the offer. "Accepting it would legalize the snatching of the marbles and the monument's carving up 207 years ago," he said.

The Acropolis Museum, with its panoramic views of Acropolis hill, holds more than 4,000 works from the golden age of Athenian democracy in 14,000 square metres of display space.

Antique ceramics and sculptures are displayed on the 1st floor.

The Caryatids — columns sculpted as female figures that held up a porch roof on the southern side of the Erechtheum temple — dominate the top of a ramp leading to the second floor.

The 2nd floor features sculptures from the Temple of Athena and the Propylaea entrance to the Acropolis.

Tschumi has said the proximity of the Acropolis itself was a major challenge in designing the building.

The Parthenon "is one of the most perfect buildings… in Western architecture," the French-Swiss architect said.

The museum will be open to the public for a nominal one euro ($1.42) admission, or the price of a bus ticket in Athens, until the end of this year.

source: http://www.cbc.ca/arts/artdesign/story/2009/06/20/acropolis-museum-opening.html

Windows Azure OS - Microsoft plans to announce next month

Microsoft plans to announce next month more of the business details behind its Windows Azure operating system (OS).

The software maker unveiled the cloud-based operating system at a developer conference last year. It has said that some of the services, currently in free testing, will be released in final form this year. The company has said that it'll run Azure applications in its data centers and will charge users based on the computing resources they need.

In an interview on Monday, Corporate Vice President Allison Watson said that the company will get concrete about the financial details and say how partners can help sell Azure at Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Conference which runs July 13-16 in New Orleans.

Until now, Microsoft has said merely that it plans to be "competitive with the marketplace" when it comes to pricing Azure.

Microsoft has also talked about perhaps having partners run Azure data centers in other locations, but Watson said that announcements on that front are probably further out.

"The economics of running a giant hosted business are different," Watson said. "They are interesting."

Microsoft is still trying to figure out exactly which businesses it wants to be in and which should be left to partners, she said. When Microsoft announced Azure, it said that all of the applications would be run from its data centers. However, Watson said the company is also looking at ways that partners can host cloud-based solutions.

"We have had some interesting conversations," Watson said.

Microsoft already competes directly with its hosting partners in other parts of its services business. For example, Microsoft offers online versions of SharePoint and Exchange, but also has partners that host their own copies of those products for customers.

Even in a world where Microsoft is selling services as much as software and using the Internet to deliver many of those products, Watson says that partners remain key to Microsoft's strategy.

"Partners have been our secret ingredient for how we grow and how we get things done," Watson said.

She noted that some of the key growth areas of technology - virtualization, mobility, and unified communications are places where customers need the skills of a partner as opposed to buying a software or service "off the shelf."

Even many of Microsoft's longtime competitors, folks with big internal sales efforts like IBM and Oracle, are starting to place more emphasis on the role of partners, she said. Even Google, she said, is starting to get in the partner game, announcing a program earlier this year.

For Microsoft, it continues to invest in that area despite the economy, Watson said.

While Microsoft has cut some from its internal field sales ranks, Watson said the company has actually added some to its partner sales channel in hopes that 3rd parties might be able to pick up some of the slack on the sales front.

And while the overall enterprise software business is projected to be roughly flat this year, Watson notes that rate is better than on the hardware side. Since last October, Microsoft has been trying to convince partners that selling Microsoft's software can be a bright spot in an otherwise tough economy.

As for the Azure push, Watson did not want to give away too much more. In the mean time, below is an interview I did with Ray Ozzie when Azure was unveiled. He also spoke about his cloud-based vision in a recent speech at the Churchill Club in Silicon Valley.

source: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10264906-56.html

Yahoo adds new widgets on Yahoo Mail

Yahoo Mail, TV widgets, and Zimbra are the newly-incorporated apps into the Yahoo homepage, as a result of the expansion of the company's Open Strategy - a push that enables third-party apps into the company's e-mail service.

In fact, Yahoo on Friday added over a dozen widgets to its Webmail service, also integrating with PayPal, YouTube, eBay, and Mint.com. These apps are aimed at providing more services to users within Yahoo Mail, thereby eliminating the requirement of shuffling between Websites and services.

The new widgets that Yahoo has incorporated on Yahoo Mail include Zumo Drive; Picnik; Showtime; WordPress; and Food & Wine Pairing.

Talking about the inherent benefits of the assimilation of new widgets, Tapan Bhat, a Senior VP at Yahoo, said in a blog post: "We've spent a lot of time thinking about how we can ease the pain of site-hopping to help you do more things at once."

However, the new Yahoo Mail widgets give the app developer has the leeway to both access as well as store the content of your e-mail messages and any personal information you make available to the apps.

Though the new Mail additions are presently in beta, users can still sign up by visiting the site my.yahoo.com; entering their Yahoo ID; and getting listed as interested users, with Yahoo to notify them when the tools are live!

source: http://topnews.us/content/25498-yahoo-incorporates-new-widgets-yahoo-mail

Air France jet flight control system under investigation

A sophisticated flight-control system that relies on electronic instruments and computers came under growing scrutiny Thursday as investigators tried to unravel the mysterious crash of an Air France Airbus 330 into the Atlantic.

A series of messages sent automatically by the jet moments before it plunged into the ocean late Sunday with 228 passengers and crew members aboard has raised speculation that the crash might have involved a malfunction of the automated system that flies the plane most of the time.

One of the messages reported that one of the plane's navigational control units had failed and that, almost simultaneously, the autopilot system had disengaged.

The sequence of events forced the crew of Flight 447 to fly the jet manually, a difficult task on an Airbus traveling at high altitude near its maximum speed, aviation experts said. Any significant change in airspeed could have caused the plane to lose lift or stability, both potentially deadly conditions.

Meanwhile, new analysis of the weather in the vicinity at the time of the crash appears to cast doubt on earlier reports that the plane encountered severe thunderstorms, lightning and wind gusts. Though there were storms, they were almost certainly less intense than those sometimes encountered above the United States, and lightning was at least 150 miles away, said Greg Forbes, severe-weather expert for the Weather Channel.

Forbes said an examination of weather data for Sunday, including satellite images, indicated updrafts of perhaps 20 mph, far from the initial reports of 100 mph.

"I wouldn't expect it to be enough to break apart the plane," Forbes said.

Though experts generally agreed Thursday that weather alone did not explain the crash, USC aviation safety expert Michael Barr said the investigation was still wide open.

"You can never disregard any possibility until you can prove what happened," Barr said. "The key here is to determine what the crew could have done after the initial event. Or was there nothing they could have done and they were just along for the ride?"

Air France executives said the plane had sent out a series of messages indicating technical failures, confirming news reports in Brazil and data that U.S. aviation experts had already gained access to.

A series of serious electronic breakdowns occurred on the Airbus over a four-minute period before the jet plunged into the sea, said Robert Ditchey, an aeronautical engineer, pilot and former airline executive.

The sequence started with an autopilot failure and a loss of the air data inertial reference unit, a system of gyroscopes and electronics that provides information on speed, direction and position. That system has been involved in two previous incidents that caused Airbus jetliners to plunge out of control, though the pilots were able to recover.

The automated messages then indicate that a fault occurred in one of the computers for the major control surfaces on the rear of the plane. Such a failure would have compounded the problems, particularly if the pilots were flying through even moderate turbulence.

The last message indicates that multiple failures were occurring, including pressurization of the cabin. Such a message would have reflected either a loss of the plane's pressurization equipment or a breach of the fuselage, resulting in rapid decompression.

All of these issues would have made the plane difficult to control.

When cruising at high altitude, a plane must fly within a fairly small window of speed, said Robert Breiling, an aviation safety expert in Florida. If speed drops even slightly, the plane can lose lift. If the speed is too high, it causes instability over the control surfaces.

"Flying a big jetliner at high altitude without autopilot, you have your hands full," Breiling said.

Ditchey said the Airbus software would have left the crew with a very small margin of error, where even minor buffeting could have boosted the risk of losing control.

"As they got into a degraded regime, they probably got into a bigger and bigger pickle," Ditchey said.

source: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-brazil-crash5-2009jun05,0,6741218.story

The 10 most dangerous web search terms revealed

Melbourne, June 3: Web searches including terms like lyrics, free music downloads are most likely to put your computer at risk of virus or even malicious software, for security firm McAfee, Inc. has listed these words as some of the most dangerous search terms on the internet.

In a recent report, McAfee has revealed Web search terms that put users most at risk for accidentally downloading unwanted or malicious software.

The report, titled "The Web's Most Dangerous Search Terms", reveals that the researchers analysed over 2,600 of the most popular search terms of 2008 from a range of sources, including the Google Zeitgeist and the Yahoo! 2008 Year in Review.

"Search engines are our on-ramp, our highway and our off-ramp -- they''re everything for Web travel. The hacking community is very smart -- they can spot a trend as well as any trendspotter," the Telegraph quoted Shane Keats, the research analyst with McAfee who led the study, as saying.

After analysing the search terms, the researchers found that hackers looking for crowds.

They are also attacking Internet surfers who are ready to take an online action, like downloading a ringtone or logging in to a site with a name, address and social security number.

For example, people searching for free music downloads are easy targets for hackers because they are expecting to download an mp3.

In order to evaluate the risk associated with each keyword, the researchers looked at the search results generated by each keyword, and then calculated the percentage of links that would take users to Web sites with unwanted adware, spyware or other malicious software.

For example, the term "lyric," had an average risk of 14.8 percent, meaning that nearly 15 out of 100 search results would take users to risky sites.

The most dangerous categories of search terms include online games, free downloads, song lyrics, and screensavers.

Search terms involving online games were among the riskiest because online games often prompt users to install plug-ins or register with a name or e-mail address.

Keywords that include lyrics were risky because Web sites featuring the words to songs sometimes host links that take users to sites with unwanted pop-up ads or spyware.

The 10 Most Dangerous Web Searches in the United States are:

1. Word Unscrambler
2. Lyrics
3. MySpace
4. Free Music Downloads
5. Phelps, Weber-Gale, Jones and Lezak Wins 4x 100m Relay
6. Free Music
7. Game Cheats
8. Printable Fill in Puzzles
9. Free Ringtones
10. Solitaire (ANI)

source: http://breakingupdate.com/news/10-most-dangerous-web-search-terms-revealed-43685.html

Joseph Letzelter - New Zealand judged most peaceful place on earth

If it is peace you are looking for, New Zealand is the place to be.

Our Pacific neighbor has been named the most peaceful country on earth in the latest Global Peace Index, an annual ranking of 144 nations on the basis of how peaceful they are.

Australia was 19th, sandwiched between Switzerland at 18th and Chile at 20th, and an 8 -spot improvement on last year.

New Zealand scored top position thanks to its relatively low rate of violence, decrease in military spending and the election of a conservative coalition government last year.

"The centre-right National Party has a strong popular mandate and a robust parliamentary majority by New Zealand's standards, putting the new Prime Minister, John Key, in a good position to push through his agenda," the report states.

The Kiwi nation also got top marks for its homicide rate and the level of respect for human rights.

It replaces Iceland, which has seen an increase in violence and violent demonstrations following the banking collapse that engulfed its economy in September.

Nordic nations dominated the top of the chart, with Denmark, Norway and Iceland coming second, third and fourth, followed by Austria and Sweden.

Professor Kevin Clements, director of New Zealand's National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, said the index was a pretty good reflection of countries people want to live in.

"If you look at the top 20, they are all small nations based on strong welfare principles, all with good and relatively uncorrupt governance," Clements said.

Securely nailed to the bottom of the list was Iraq, which has claimed the wooden spoon 3 years running.

It sits below Afghanistan, Somalia and Israel, followed by Sudan, The Democratic Republic of the Congo, Chad, Pakistan, Russia and Zimbabwe.

Britain made 35th place, a slight improvement on last year, while the United States came in 83rd, 6 places up the ladder from 2008.

source: http://livenews.com.au/feature/nz-judged-most-peaceful-place-on-earth/2009/6/3/208698

CANCER specialists New Approach For Advanced Lung Cancer

ORLANDO - CANCER specialists, gathered for an annual meeting, are reporting progress in the fight against lung cancer, the most common and deadliest form of cancer, but little progress in treating colorectal cancer.

Doctors and researchers at the 45th gathering of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) - the world's main cancer conference - on Saturday learned of two studies showing progress in the battle against lung cancer.

The first study showed how the combination of two anti-cancer treatments following standard chemotherapy can slow the advance of lung cancer. Patients treated with a combination of Tarceva, sold by the Swiss drugmaker Roche, and Avastin, a drug by Roche's Genentech unit, saw their cancer growth slow more than a control group treated with Avastin.

More than 750 patients were randomised to receive Avastin and a placebo, or Avastin and Tarceva. Those in the Tarceva group survived an average of 4.8 months before the cancer started growing again, compared to 3.7 months for the control group, said Vincent Miller, the study's main author. The numbers translated to a 29 per cent reduced risk of disease progression for patients who took a combination of Tarceva and Avastin.

'This is the first study to show that adding erlotinib (Tarceva) to maintenance therapy with bevacizumab (Avastin) delays disease progression in patients who have already received bevacizumab as part of their initial chemotherapy,' said Mr Miller.

A second study with 663 patients with advance lung cancer were given the drug Alimta, from US pharmaceutical Eli Lilly, which blocks cell growth. Preliminary results showed that patients who took the drug lived 26 percent longer compared to a control group that took a placebo: 13.4 months against 10.6 months. As in the first study, all the patients had already received four standard chemotherapy sessions.

'This study will change the overall standard of care,' said Chandra Belani, the deputy director of the Penn State Cancer Institute, as she presented the research. 'Maintenance therapy with Alimta (permetrexed) offers a new paradigm for patients who have advanced lung cancer, because it has a low toxicity and can be given on an ongoing basis over a prolonged period of time to extend patients' lives,' she said.

However there were few advances to report in the fight against colorectal cancer, the fourth most common in the United States and the second deadliest type of cancer. Research on 2,710 patients with Phase Three colorectal cancer taking the drug Avastine along with standard chemotherapy treatment showed no difference in the survival rate or the recurrence of the tumor after three and a half years when compared to those not taking the drug.

Another study conducted in Italy among 747 patients with advanced colorectal cancer showed that the drug Eloxatine from the French firm Sanofi did not reduce the size of the tumor when combined with standard treatment used ahead of cancer surgery.

On Sunday, several sessions at the ASCO event, scheduled to end on Tuesday, will focus on the result of clinical tests on female breast and uterus cancer. -- AFP

source: http://www.straitstimes.com/Breaking%2BNews/Tech%2Band%2BScience/Story/STIStory_384034.html

Joseph Letzelter - Police sweep woods for Nevaeh Buchanan

A task force searched a wooded area with shovels and rakes just north of the Charlotte Arms Apartments Friday afternoon in the continual search for 5-year-old Nevaeh Buchanan of Monroe, Mich.