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Gregory Hicks, former deputy chief of mission in Libya, testifies before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee's hearing on the deadly assault of the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi in Washington, Wednesday, May 8, 2013. Hicks described a 2 a.m. call from Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in the middle of the assault, amid confusion about the fate of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and fears about the safety of additional American personnel. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen)
Gregory Hicks, former deputy chief of mission in Libya, testifies before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee's hearing on the deadly assault of the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi in Washington, Wednesday, May 8, 2013. Hicks described a 2 a.m. call from Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in the middle of the assault, amid confusion about the fate of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and fears about the safety of additional American personnel. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen)
Witnesses, from left to right: Mark Thompson, Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary for Counterterrorism at the Department of State; Gregory Hicks, former Deputy Chief of Mission in Libya; Eric Nordstrom, Diplomatic Security Officer and former Regional Security Officer in Libya testify at a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing on "Benghazi: Exposing Failure and Recognizing Courage" on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, May 8, 2013. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)
Eric Nordstrom, Diplomatic Security Officer and former Regional Security Officer in Libya, testifies before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee's hearing on the deadly assault of the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, in Washington, Wednesday, May 8, 2013. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen)
The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, led by Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., holds a hearing about last year's deadly assault on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, May 8, 2013. Left to right are witnesses Mark Thompson, the State Department's acting deputy assistant secretary for counterterrorism, Gregory Hicks, former deputy chief of mission in Libya, and Eric Nordstrom, the State Department's former regional security officer in Libya. House Republicans insist the Obama administration is covering up information about the attack, rejecting administration assurances to the contrary and stoking a controversy with implications for the 2016 presidential race. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
WASHINGTON (AP) ? A former top diplomat in Libya on Wednesday delivered a riveting minute-by-minute account of the chaotic events during the deadly assault on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi last September, with a 2 a.m. call from Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and confusion about the fate of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens.
In a slow, halting and sometimes emotional voice, Gregory Hicks, the deputy chief of mission who was in Tripoli, described for a House committee how a routine day on Sept. 11, 2012, quickly devolved as insurgents launched two nighttime attacks on the facility in eastern Libya, killing Stevens and three other Americans.
The hours-long hearing produced no major revelation while reviving disputes over the widely debunked comments made by U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice five days after the attacks and the inability of the U.S. military to respond quickly.
"I don't think there's a smoking gun today. I don't think there's a lukewarm slingshot," said Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Wis.
The session exposed bitter partisan divisions as Republicans who are pressing ahead with the investigation eight months after the attacks insist the Obama administration is covering up information and Democrats decry politicization of a national security issue.
Republicans have faulted former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, a potential 2016 presidential candidate who came under tough criticism near the hearing's close.
Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, choked up as he lamented the four deaths in Benghazi and accused Clinton of ducking blame for inadequate security. Chaffetz said he was astonished that "Clinton still has the gall to say 'it wasn't me, it was them.'"
A scathing independent review in December faulted the State Department for inadequate security at the mission, but it has not been the final word. Nor has congressional testimony from former Obama Cabinet officials and military leaders.
In a jam-packed hearing room where Republicans and Democrats furiously traded charges, the soft-spoken Hicks presented a lengthy recollection of the events and expressed frustration with a military that he argued could have prevented the second attack.
Hicks and two other State Department witnesses criticized the review conducted by former top diplomat Thomas Pickering and retired Adm. Mike Mullen, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Their complaints centered on a report they consider incomplete, with individuals who weren't interviewed and a focus on the assistant secretary level and lower.
Hicks also told the committee that he was, in effect, demoted when he was moved from the position of deputy chief of mission to desk officer. Asked when he began to sense he was being viewed differently by his superiors, Hicks said he thought the criticism began after he had asked why Rice had referred to demonstrations in her televised remarks when he and others had reported that there had been an attack.
Hicks said he was watching television at his villa in Tripoli when he first got word of the initial attack. He listened to two messages on his cell phone and Stevens' chilling words.
"Greg, we're under attack," the ambassador said.
Hicks described a series of phone calls to the State Department and Libyan officials, frustrating efforts to find out what was happening in Benghazi, and a call from Clinton.
"Secretary of State Clinton called me along with her senior staff ... and she asked me what was going on. And, I briefed her on developments," he said. "Most of the conversation was about the search for Ambassador Stevens. It was also about what we were going to do with our personnel in Benghazi, and I told her that we would need to evacuate, and that was ? she said that was the right thing to do."
He recalled another phone call from the Libyan prime minister with word that Stevens was dead.
"I think it is the saddest phone call I have ever had in my life," Hicks said.
Hicks said that shortly after he was told Stevens was dead, unidentified Libyans called Hicks' staff from the phone that had been with the ambassador that night. These Libyans said Stevens was with them, and U.S. officials should come fetch him, Hicks said. Hicks said he believed Stevens' body was at a hospital at that point, but he could not be certain.
"We suspected we were being baited into a trap," Hicks told the committee, so the U.S. personnel did not follow the callers' instructions. "We did not want to send our people into an ambush," he testified.
Republicans at the hearing focused on the talking points used by Rice on the Sunday talk shows in which she said the attacks appeared to be associated with demonstrations in Egypt and Libya over an anti-Islam video.
Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., said Rice's comments contradicted statements by Libyan leaders and others who called the attacks pre-meditated assaults by terrorists.
Gowdy said Rice's comments "perpetuated a demonstrably false narrative." Hicks, asked his reaction to the Rice's remarks on the talk shows, said: "I was stunned. My jaw dropped and I was embarrassed."
Democrats countered with a video clip of Director of National Intelligence James Clapper telling a Senate panel earlier this year that the hit on Rice was unfair.
"She was going on what we were giving her," Clapper said of the talking points.
Hicks insisted that the second attack in Benghazi could have been prevented if the U.S. military had scrambled jet fighters or sent in a C-130 cargo plane to scare off the insurgents with a show of force. He said he learned in conversations with veteran Libyan revolutionaries that they understood decisive air power after the U.S.-led NATO operation that helped oust Moammar Gadhafi.
"The defense attache said to me that fighter aircraft in Aviano might be able to" get to Benghazi in two to three hours, Hicks said.
Democrats pointed out that this contradicted the testimony of former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who testified before a Senate panel on Feb. 7.
"The bottom line is this: That we were not dealing with a prolonged or continuous assault which could have been brought to an end by a U.S. military response," Panetta testified. "Very simply, although we had forces deployed to the region, time, distance, the lack of an adequate warning, events that moved very quickly on the ground prevented a more immediate response."
After the first attack, a security team left Tripoli for Benghazi with two military personnel. Hicks said four members of a special forces team in Tripoli wanted to go in a second wave but were told to stand down.
Pentagon press secretary George Little said Wednesday that the commander told the team leader to stay in Tripoli because the evacuation of U.S. personnel out of Benghazi was already beginning and the team would not arrive in Benghazi in time to provide any assistance.
Col. David Lapan, spokesman for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that by the time the team would have left Tripoli, the second attack in Benghazi was over.
Republicans on five House committees, in an interim report released last month, also said that "no U.S. government element refused or denied requests for emergency assistance during the crisis."
Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, insisted that the investigation is necessary despite Democratic and administration complaints.
"These witnesses deserve to be heard on the Benghazi attacks, the flaws in the accountability review board's methodology, process and conclusion," he said at the start of the hearing.
Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the panel's top Democrat, challenged the select disclosure of information and comments from Republicans in the days leading up to the hearing.
"I am not questioning the motives of our witnesses. I am questioning the motives of those who want to use their statements for political purposes," Cummings said.
Also testifying at the hearing were Mark Thompson, acting deputy assistant secretary for counterterrorism, and Eric Nordstrom, a former regional security officer in Libya who testified before the panel in October.
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Associated Press writers Charles Babington and Lolita C. Baldor contributed to this report.
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Follow Donna Cassata at http://twitter.com/DonnaCassataAP
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Airbus isn't putting all its eggs in one basket -- or rather, one bag. While it already has a suite of iPad cockpit apps to assist pilots, the aircraft maker is hedging its bet with a deal to use Dell Latitude laptops as electronic flight bags on the A320 family. Crews will get the Latitude E6330 installed as a Class-2 device that can link up with the A320's avionics; as you'd expect, the PCs will also ship with software for maps, manuals and weather. We've reached out to learn just which carriers are going this route, although possible expansion to other Airbus vehicles could make Dell a common sight at 36,000 feet.
Filed under: Laptops, Transportation, Dell
Source: Dell
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(Correction: With more details on Wong?s correct position below, who will be working as ?senior advisor? to United States CTO Todd Park and not as Chief Privacy Officer.)
Nicole Wong, Twitter?s legal director and longtime veteran of Internet litigation issues, has been picked by the Obama administration to be the nation?s top privacy officer assisting U.S. Chief Technology Officer Todd Park, according to sources familiar with the matter.
The exact details of her new position are unclear, but it?s likely that she?ll be working closely with Park, who assumed office after replacing Aneesh Chopra, the nation?s first CTO (a position also created by the Obama administration).
Wong?s appointment, first reported by CNET, is a new position in the White House.
Wong joined Twitter approximately five months ago to head up its legal team, which has long dealt with First Amendment issues for the microblogging service. Previous to her time at Twitter, Wong spearheaded decisions at Google on whether certain user-generated content would remain up on YouTube and other Google-owned applications. She also dealt much in litigation with China and its government?s decisions to censor Google search content in 2010.
Sources said Twitter has not yet picked a replacement for Wong.
Neither Twitter nor the White House immediately responded to requests for comment.
Full correction: A previous version of this post stated Wong?s new position was as Chief Privacy Officer. As was amended this morning, sources said Wong will act as ?senior advisor? to Park. We will update what that role means when we get more information.
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May 8, 2013 ? Researchers at the University of Strathclyde have discovered that the greater wax moth is capable of sensing sound frequencies of up to 300 kHz ? the highest recorded frequency sensitivity of any animal in the natural world.
Humans are only capable of hearing sounds of 20kHz maximum, dropping to around 12-15 kHz as we age, and even dolphins, known exponents of ultrasound, can?t compete as their limitations are around 160 kHz.
The research, conducted at the University?s Centre for Ultrasonic Engineering, has identified the extraordinary sensory characteristics of the moth, paving the way for developments in air-couple ultrasound.
Dr James Windmill, who has led the research at Strathclyde, said: ?We are extremely surprised to find that the moth is capable of hearing sound frequencies at this level and we hope to use the findings to better understand air-coupled ultrasound.?
?The use of ultrasound in air is extremely difficult as such high frequency signals are quickly weakened in air. Other animals such as bats are known to use ultrasound to communicate and now it is clear that moths are capable of even more advanced use of sound.
?It?s not entirely clear how the moths have developed to be able to hear at such a high frequency, but it is possible that they have had to improve the communication between each other to avoid capture from their natural predator ? the bat ? which use similar sounds.?
The research findings will allow the Dr Windmill and his colleagues to further develop their understanding of ultrasound and how to transmit and receive ultrasonic pulses travelling in air.
With frequency sensitivity that is unparalleled in the animal kingdom, this moth is ready for any echolocation call adaptations made by the bat in the on-going bat?moth evolutionary war.
Dr Windmill?s multi-disciplinary research team is now working to apply the biological study of this, and other insect ears to the design of micro-scale acoustic systems. It is hoped that by studying the unprecedented capabilities of the moth?s ear, the team can produce new technological innovations, such as miniature microphones.
Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/strange_science/~3/ZJc4zH65a7Q/130508092830.htm
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This past weekend teams from the National Football League used statistics like height, weight and speed to draft the best college players, and in a few weeks, armchair enthusiasts will use similar measures to select players for their own fantasy football teams. Neuroscientists at Carnegie Mellon University are taking a similar approach to compile "dream teams" of neurons using a statistics-based method that can evaluate the fitness of individual neurons.
After assembling the teams, a computer simulation pitted the groups of neurons against one another in a playoff-style format to find out which population was the best. Researchers analyzed the winning teams to see what types of neurons made the most successful squads.
The results were published in the early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the week of April 29.
"We wanted to know what team of neurons would be most likely to perform best in response to a variety of stimuli," said Nathan Urban, the Dr. Frederick A. Schwertz Distinguished Professor of Life Sciences and head of the Department of Biological Sciences at Carnegie Mellon.
The human brain contains more than 100 billion neurons that work together in smaller groups to complete certain tasks like processing an odor, or seeing a color. Previous work by Urban's lab found that no two neurons are exactly alike and that diverse teams of neurons were better able to determine a stimulus than teams of similar neurons.
"The next step in our work was to figure out how to assemble the best possible population of neurons in order to complete a task," said Urban, who is also a member of the joint Carnegie Mellon/University of Pittsburgh Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition (CNBC).
However, using existing methods, scouting for the best team of neurons was a seemingly daunting task. It would be impossible for scientists to determine how each of the billions of neurons in the brain would individually respond to a multitude of stimuli. Urban and Shreejoy Tripathy, the article's lead author and graduate student in the CNBC's Program in Neural Computation, solved this problem using a statistical modeling approach, known as generalized linear models (GLMs), to analyze the cell-to-cell variability. Urban and Tripathy found that by applying this approach they were able to accurately reproduce the behavior of individual neurons in a computer, allowing them to gather statistics on each single cell.
Then, much like in fantasy football, the computer model used the statistics to put together thousands of teams of neurons. The teams competed against one another in a computer simulation to see which were able to most accurately recreate a stimulus delivered to the team of neurons. In the end researchers identified a small set of teams that they could study to see what characteristics made those populations successful.
They found that the winning teams of neurons were diverse but not as diverse as they would be if they were selected at random from the general population of neurons. The most successful sets contained a heterogeneous group of neurons that were flexible and able to respond well to a variety of stimuli.
"You can't have a football team made up of only linebackers. You need linebackers and tight ends, a quarterback and a kicker. But, the players can't just be random people off of the street; they all need to be good athletes. And you need to draft for positions, not just the best player available. If your best player is a quarterback ? you don't take another quarterback with your first pick," Urban said. "It's the same with neurons. To make the most effective grouping of neurons, you need a diverse bunch that also happens to be more robust and flexible than your average neuron."
Urban believes that GLMs can be used to further understand the importance of neuronal diversity. He plans to use the models to predict how alterations in the variability of neurons' responses, which can be caused by learning or disease, impact function.
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Carnegie Mellon University: http://www.cmu.edu
Thanks to Carnegie Mellon University for this article.
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College is a very big event in life and preparing your soon to be college freshman beforehand is a must. Being away from home sounds like paradise to most teenagers, but you can bet that deep down inside they harbor some kind of worry. Since a lot of teenagers use college grants, scholarships, and student loans, they will more than likely get a crash course in budgeting within their first few weeks away from home.
Before that day comes when your teen starts packing up to go to school, take a minute and discuss with them the importance of cash management. A lot of parents believe that they have taught their child the value of the almighty dollar, but as stated before, once away from home, things change. Sitting with your teen and going over a budget on how they can make the most of their cash (without having to eat those cheap noodles everyday) might save them from asking you for extra cash. You want you"re soon to be college student to get the most out of life and be embracing the independence that comes with going away to college and this should include not having to call mom and dad for cash.
Another important thing that should be discussed before a teen goes to college is credit cards. As soon as freshmen hit the dorms you can bet that there will be numerous booths that are there to entice them with those little pieces of plastic that you as a parent knows all so well can quickly lead to debt. Let them know that if they must take out a credit card to at least discuss it with you first. You would be amazed at how much debt a college freshman can finish their year of college with by opening up many different credit card accounts.
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Source: http://www.nationalpayday.com/education/financial_help/What_College_Kids_Should_Know.asp
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