Egypt top court rules against religious slogans

CAIRO (AP) ? Egypt's Supreme Constitutional Court ruled on Saturday against parts of an election law approved by the Islamist-led legislature that had lifted a long-standing ban on the use of religious slogans during campaigning.

The decision is the latest sign of tensions between the judiciary and President Mohammed Morsi and his Islamist allies. The courts have dealt Islamists several setbacks over the past two years, including the dissolution of parliament's lower house last year. That ruling was also issued by the Supreme Constitutional Court, which had judged the law governing its election invalid.

In its decision on Saturday, the court said that not explicitly banning religious slogans in campaigns runs counter to national unity and principles of citizenship. It said religious slogans may distract voters from focusing on the candidate's platform.

The bill will be sent back to the Shura Council, or upper house of parliament, for review. The council has temporarily assumed legislative powers in the absence of a lower house of parliament.

It was the second rebuff for the interim parliament's electoral law. The first came in March when a court ruled that the Shura Council had improperly passed the law without allowing the country's Supreme Constitutional Court to review it to ensure it conforms with the constitution. That decision annulled Morsi's decree to begin elections in April.

The Supreme Constitutional Court similarly ruled Saturday against a provision of the law that requires media outlets to give equal time to candidates, saying this violates freedom of the press.

The court also said the bill breaches the principles of separation of powers because it allows the president to set election dates and change them. Morsi had said recently elections could be held in October.

The back and forth over the law is the latest example of the power tussle between the judiciary and Morsi and his allies.

Another row is centered on a controversial law that would drop retirement age for judges from 70 to 60. This would affect nearly a quarter of the country's 13,000 judges and prosecution officials, most of them in senior positions, including in Egypt's Supreme Constitutional Court.

Muslim Brotherhood lawmakers backed by other Islamists in the Shura Council pushed ahead with plans to debate the judicial reform law Saturday.

The move by the president's party and others prompted the country's top council of judges to suspend participation in a government-backed conference earlier this month. Morsi had sponsored the conference, which was meant to allow judges the chance to draft proposals on how reform the judiciary.

Morsi's allies say Egypt's judiciary is filled with supporters of ousted president Hosni Mubarak, who have worked to undermine the transition to democracy and the Islamists' rise to power.

Many judges agree in principle on the need for reform, but don't want the presidency or the legislature to carry it out. They say Morsi has tried to interfere in their affairs and curb their independence.

On Saturday, opposition lawmakers wore black sashes during the Shura Council session that read: "Illegitimate procedure. Illegitimate law."

The handful of opposition members in the Shura Council shouted "illegitimate" as the speaker of the interim parliament, Ahmed Fahmy, said the law will be debated in principle by the body's Legislative Committee. Fahmy is also a Brotherhood party member.

Dozens of protesters outside the building were led by opposition figure Hamdeen Sabahi, who placed third in the country's nationwide presidential elections last year. They accused the Shura Council itself of being illegitimate, recalling the fact that only 7 percent of the electorate voted for the body, which traditionally does not legislate. Morsi appoints a third of the council's members.

"This law is a clear attack on the judiciary and it's against the constitution," Sabahi told The Associated Press. "There's no one logical or wise reason in the nation's interest to insist on passing this law with such hastiness or even discussing it in the Shura Council."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/egypt-top-court-rules-against-religious-slogans-185807540.html

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Stitching defects into world?s thinnest semiconductor

May 23, 2013 ? In pioneering new research at Columbia University, scientists have grown high-quality crystals of molybdenum disulfide (MoS2), the world's thinnest semiconductor, and studied how these crystals stitch together at the atomic scale to form continuous sheets. Through beautiful images of strikingly symmetric stars and triangles hundreds of microns across, they have uncovered key insights into the optical and electronic properties of this new material, which can be either conducting or insulating to form the basic "on-off switch" for all digital electronics.

The study is published in the May 5, 2013, issue of Nature Materials.

"Our research is the first to systematically examine what kinds of defects result from these large growths, and to investigate how those defects change its properties," says James Hone, professor of mechanical engineering at Columbia Engineering, who led the study. "Our results will help develop ways to use this new material in atomically thin electronics that will become integral components of a whole new generation of revolutionary products such as flexible solar cells that conform to the body of a car."

This multidisciplinary collaboration by the Energy Frontier Research Center at Columbia University with Cornell University's Kavli Institute for Nanoscale Science focused on molybdenum disulfide because of its potential to create anything from highly efficient, flexible solar cells to conformable touch displays. Earlier work from Columbia demonstrated that monolayer MoS2 has an electronic structure distinct from the bulk form, and the researchers are excited about exploring other atomically thin metal dichalcogenides, which should have equally interesting properties. MoS2 is in a class of materials called transition metal dichalcogenides, which can be metals, semiconductors, dielectrics, and even superconductors.

"This material is the newest in a growing family of two-dimensional crystals," says Arend van der Zande, a research fellow at the Columbia Energy Frontier Research Center and one of the paper's three lead authors. "Graphene, a single sheet of carbon atoms, is the thinnest electrical conductor we know. With the addition of the monolayer molybdenum disulfide and other metal dichalcogenides, we have all the building blocks for modern electronics that must be created in atomically thin form. For example, we can now imagine sandwiching two different monolayer transition metal dichalcogenides between layers of graphene to make solar cells that are only eight atoms thick -- 20 thousand times smaller than a human hair!"

Until last year, the majority of experiments studying MoS2 were done by a process called mechanical exfoliation, which only produces samples just a few micrometers in size. "While these tiny specimens are fine for scientific studies," notes Daniel Chenet, a PhD in Hone's lab and another lead author, "they are much too small for use in any technological application. Figuring out how to grow these materials on a large scale is critical."

To study the material, the researchers refined an existing technique to grow large, symmetric crystals up to 100 microns across, but only three atoms thick. "If we could expand one of these crystals to the thickness of a sheet of plastic wrap, it would be large enough to cover a football field -- and it would not have any misaligned atoms," says Pinshane Huang, a PhD student in the David Muller lab at Cornell and the paper's third lead author.

For use in many applications, these crystals need to be joined together into continuous sheets like patches on a quilt. The connections between the crystals, called grain boundaries, can be as important as the crystals themselves in determining the material's performance on a large scale. "The grain boundaries become important in any technology," says Hone. "Say, for example, we want to make a solar cell. Now we need to have meters of this material, not micrometers, and that means that there will be thousands of grain boundaries. We need to understand what they do so we can control them."

The team used atomic-resolution electron microscopy to examine the grain boundaries of this material, and saw lines of misaligned atoms. Once they knew where to find the grain boundaries, and what they looked like, the team could study the effect of a single grain boundary on the properties of the MoS2. To do this, they built tiny transistors, the most basic component in all of electronics, out of the crystals and saw that the single, defective line of atoms at the grain boundaries could drastically change the key electronic and optical properties of the MoS2.

"We've made a lot of progress in controlling the growth of this new 'wonder' nanomaterial and are now developing techniques to integrate it into many new technologies," Hone adds. "We're only just beginning to scratch the surface of what we can make with these materials and what their properties are. For instance, we can easily remove this material from the growth substrate and transfer it on to any arbitrary surface, which enables us to integrate it into large-scale, flexible electronics and solar cells."

The crystal synthesis, optical measurements, electronic measurements, and theory were all performed by research groups at Columbia Engineering. The growth and electrical measurements were made by the Hone lab in mechanical engineering; the optical measurements were carried out in the Tony Heinz lab in physics. The structural modeling and electronic structure calculations were performed by the David Reichman lab in chemistry. The electron microscopy was performed by atomic imaging experts in the David Muller lab at Cornell University's School of Applied and Engineering Physics, and the Kavli Institute at Cornell for Nanoscale Science.

The study was sponsored by the Columbia Energy Frontier Research Center, with additional support provided by the National Science Foundation through the Cornell Center for Materials Research.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/18ZmWZqKC-o/130523113800.htm

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Fear of art sale sparked by Detroit emergency manager asking for appraisal

By Steve Neavling

DETROIT (Reuters) - As part of his efforts to solve Detroit's financial crisis, the city's emergency manager Kevyn Orr has asked for an appraisal of the collection at the Detroit Institute of Arts, sparking fears in artistic and philanthropic circles that he means to auction off the city's artistic jewels.

Orr was appointed in March by Michigan's Republican Governor Rick Snyder to tackle the shrinking city's long-term debt problem, which the emergency manager estimated at $15 billion in a recent report on the state of Detroit.

Orr's spokesman Bill Nowling insists that the appraisal is not about having an artistic fire sale, but more about being ready when bondholders and their insurers, who will be asked to absorb considerable losses, inquire about the artwork.

"If we are going to ask creditors to get a big haircut, we have to look at how to rationalize all of the city's assets, including the artwork," Nowling told Reuters late on Thursday. "We obviously don't want to get rid of art."

Although Orr is seeking an appraisal for the collection, museum officials and local media claim it is worth several billion dollars. But recent prices at auction for pieces similar to those likely to be sold could not immediately be obtained. Several published sources have estimated the total annual value of fine art auctions by Christie's and Sotheby's at $8 billion, and estimates of the global art market top $60 billion.

The Detroit Institute of Art's collection features several works by Vincent van Gogh, including a self portrait, Auguste Rodin's "The Thinker," paintings by Henri Matisse, Edgar Degas, Rembrandt, Caravaggio, ancient sculptures, plus enormous and famous murals of Detroit by Diego Rivera.

Many of the works in the institute's collection have been gifted over the years by local noteworthy families from the city's glorious industrial and commercial past, such as scions of the Ford family.

The city's museum is funded by a regional tax, and a nonprofit operates the museum. So if the city wants to sell off the artwork, it could take a judge to decide whether Detroit has the authority to do so.

(Editing by Nick Carey, Lisa Shumaker and Sonya Hepinstall)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/fear-art-sale-sparked-detroit-emergency-manager-asking-050359443.html

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Watch: Benedict Cumberbatch's Deleted 'Star Trek' Shower Scene

Director J.J. Abrams aired the clip on 'Conan' in response to controversy surrounding a scene with Alice Eve.
By Kevin P. Sullivan, with additional reporting by Josh Horowitz

Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1707912/watch-benedict-cumberbatchs-deleted-star-trek-shower-scene.jhtml

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House to vote on variable rate student loans

WASHINGTON (AP) ? House lawmakers are ready to pass legislation that links student loan rates to the financial markets in spite of a veto threat from President Barack Obama.

Supported by Republicans, the bill would avoid a rate increase for students with new subsidized Stafford loans if lawmakers pass it, as expected, on Thursday. Democrats generally opposed the measure, which would provide some students a deal in the first years of the new system before ratcheting up interest rates later.

"As the economy continues to recover and at a time when market interest rates are at historic lows, more than 7 million students who rely on these loans to finance postsecondary education should not be burdened with additional college debt as they seek to graduate, launch a career or a business, start a family or buy a house," the White House Office of Management and Budget said in a memo announcing its opposition.

The top Republican on the Education Committee, Rep. John Kline of Minnesota, said Obama was standing against many of the ideas he included in his own budget.

"The legislation is based on the president's own proposal and provides a solid basis for negotiation through the legislative process," Kline said.

Interest rates on new subsidized Stafford loans are set to double, from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent, for new loans on July 1. Lawmakers said they wanted to avoid that but were divided on how, exactly, to accomplish that. With most lawmakers set to leave Washington for the Memorial Day holiday, time is running short.

"They'll be out all next week," said Terry Hartle, a top official with the higher education lobbying group the American Council on Education. "They'll have four weeks to figure it out."

Senate Democrats are weighing a number of options for avoiding the rate increase.

Lobbying from consumer groups and student organizations is adding pressure and is set to escalate as students leave campus for the summer.

"The House is poised to throw college students under the bus by approving a student loan plan that drives up their costs," said Christine Lindstrom, higher education director for the consumer advocacy group US PIRG.

"Students are better off letting the subsidized Stafford loan rate double to 6.8 percent on July 1" than agreeing to the House Republicans' plan, she added.

Some Democrats are seeking an extension of the current rates until Congress takes up a higher education bill later. Republicans have rejected that as costly and irresponsible.

"I would love to have the rates at 2 percent. It's just not realistic," Rep. Phil Roe, R-Tenn., said during hearings on the bill.

A two-year extension of the 3.4 percent rate for subsidized Stafford loans would cost taxpayers about $9 billion.

Last week, the GOP-led House Education and the Workforce Committee approved its bill, which would offer some students a better deal at first. Democratic critics warned that graduates would face steadily climbing rates and costs over the long haul if the markets change.

"I'm not really thrilled with the Republican plan, which would make student loan interest rates a variable interest rate and could rise above 6.8 percent, which is what the interest rate would rise to if Congress did nothing," said Rep. Mark Takano, a California Democrat who taught in public high schools before his 2012 election to Congress. "The Republican plan is unacceptable and worse than if we do nothing."

Under the GOP proposal, student loans would be reset every year and based on 10-year Treasury notes, with added percentage points. For instance, students who receive subsidized or unsubsidized Stafford student loans would pay the Treasury rate, plus 2.5 percentage points.

Current subsidized Stafford loans are offered at a fixed 3.4 percent rate and unsubsidized Stafford loans are offered at 6.8 percent. The interest rate on loans to parents and graduate students is 7.9 percent.

Using Congressional Budget Office projections, the GOP plan would translate to a 5 percent interest rate on all Stafford loans in 2014, but the rate would climb to 7.7 percent for loans in 2023.

Stafford loan rates would be capped at 8.5 percent, while loans for parents and graduate students would have a 10.5 percent ceiling under the GOP proposal.

In his budget proposal, Obama included flexible rate student loan rates pegged to 10-year Treasury bills. The president did not limit interest rates but included a smaller added interest rate. His plan also expanded income-based repayment options and loan forgiveness.

___

Follow Philip Elliott on Twitter: www.twitter.com/philip_elliott

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/89ae8247abe8493fae24405546e9a1aa/Article_2013-05-23-Student%20Loans/id-e10a348bb32b42abac314b329abfc9e3

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Movie Reviews: Why What Maisie Knew Translates So Easily to the ...

The ease with which Henry James? Victorian-era satire What Maisie Knew translates to its 21^st century setting in Scott McGehee and David Siegel?s very loose adaptation of the novel should be met with some uneasiness. We have traveled through more than a century of democratizing social fervor, and have arrived in a remarkably similar era, one in which the upper crusts outsource parental obligations and the struggling underclasses, who take on the burden for financial reasons, but end up shaping the lives of the heirs of the one percent.

There will be some who see this film and wonder why Julianne Moore?s character, Susanna, a manic, middle-aged rock star, and her husband Beale (Steve Coogan), a solipsistic, self-absorbed busy businessman, ever decided to have little Maisie in the first place. As far as the film is concerned, however, that?s a moot question. Maisie has been made, she exists, and so in what way should the social circumstances into which she has been born in to bend to her needs? The film takes up residence squarely in Maisie?s perspective, opening with a series of scenes that spy bitter parental arguments from around the corners of the family?s white-walled, modernistic multi-storied New York flat, and continuing to shoot with a camera that is often perched at her eye level. The questions of What Maisie Knew are entirely Maisie?s, and the central question is the most unsettling: what is love, and who loves me?

The divorce is inevitable, after all Beale is sleeping with the beautiful young Scottish nanny, Margo (Joanna Vanderham). The ink is still wet on the divorce papers when Susanna picks up a hunky bartender half her age, Lincoln (Alexander Skarsg?rd), whom she marries. Amidst this chaotic family situation, scenes range from excruciating depictions of neglect, as when the loud music and noise from one of Susanna?s parties keeps up Maisie and her friend who is sleeping over, prompting a middle-of-the-night pick-up by the friend?s father; to the comic, like when Skarsg?rd?s Lincoln stumbles into Maisie?s school to pick-up the little girl, introduces himself to her, and then tries to explain to the school principal that he is her stepfather even though she?s only met him once before.

Gradually Beale and Susanna drift to the periphery of the picture. Beale has business to take care of in London, and he eventual ponders moving back to his native land altogether. With Maisie? Maybe, but, no, that won?t work. Susanne has a tour coming up, and with Beale away, it becomes increasingly difficult to find someone to pick up the slack on the childrearing. Lincoln is conveniently useful in this regard, but even as he begins to forge a tender relationship with the child, Susanna intervenes to defend her parental territory. Julianne Moore?s desperate portrayal of Susanna is what injects the film with its overwhelming sense of dread. At the heart of her character there is something like love, but she is tossed about and fractured by her own self piteous angst.

The nanny Margo also becomes a confidant for the young Maisie, and when Beale marries her, she seems a suitable stepmother. But no sooner is the ring on the finger than Margo is reduced to just another piece of overlooked furniture in Beale?s distracted life. The three outcasts ? Lincoln, Margo, and Maisie ? end up improvising their own family unit, and a trip on the Long Island Rail Road out to a rental home on the shores of the Great South Bay sets the stage of a retreat from the onslaught of their respective oppressive loves. In these scenes, and particularly the film?s final moments, we find resolution to the impossibility of Maisie?s circumstance in the fleeting glow of a lyric moment, which finds in the rarity of familial normalcy an attribute of life lived simply, in common and with self-giving love.

Source: http://frontrow.dmagazine.com/2013/05/movie-reviews-why-what-maisie-knew-translates-so-easily-to-the-21st-century/

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Pandora gets cozier with Facebook, makes it easier to share listening activities to Timeline

Looks like Pandora isn't quite done making announcements this week. Hot on the heels of the introduction of its Premieres music strategy, the streaming service is now releasing a feature perfectly fitted for Facebook users. Starting today, folks will be able to easily share more of their Pandora activities (what you're listening to, the artists you like, etc.) directly to the Timeline and newly minted music section. However, given the auto-share nature of the feature, Pandora is allowing you to tweak the privacy options -- you know, in case you're not interested in letting friends know you're jamming out quietly listening to Justin Bieber's Baby. Pandora's one-click-share-to-Facebook is now available via the web and Android / iOS apps -- and, because we know you're going to inquire, there's no word on when we can expect it to hit Windows Phone 8.

Filed under: Portable Audio/Video, Internet, Software, Mobile

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Source: Pandora

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/Lboa8z0TyPc/

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