HELPER, Carbon County Mayor Dean Armstrong made the decision to resign as mayor at a Helper City Council meeting Saturday morning following his third DUI arrest.
Armstrong told the City Council at the 8:30 a.m. meeting that he wanted his resignation to take effect immediately. The council accepted his resignation, and expressed appreciation to Mayor Armstrong for his service.
The former mayor wrote a letter of resignation in which he stated:
"In light of recent events, I have determined that I can no longer adequately perform the duties of Mayor," Armstrong wrote. "Instead I will turn my focus to my family, my health, and my business. Although I am saddened by my inability to complete my term, I do feel that we have moved Helper City forward over the last several years. The people of this community are strong and it has been my honor and privilege to have served you."
Armstrong was arrested Friday afternoon and booked into the Carbon County Jail following a minor crash on Main Street in Helper, according to Utah Highway Patrol trooper Lawrence Hopper. After the arrest, he took a breath test and remained in jail Friday night on $3,230 bail.
Armstong, 51, has two prior convictions for drinking and driving.
WASHINGTON (AP) ? President Barack Obama, intensifying pressure on congressional Republicans, said Friday that lawmakers still have "the opportunity to make the right decisions" and avert a series of mandatory budget cuts by March 1.
Despite little sign of a deal emerging with Republicans, Obama said he does not believe it is inevitable that the $85 billion in across-the-board budget cuts will take effect. He said finding a way to avert the cuts should be a "no-brainer" for congressional lawmakers.
Speaking in the Oval Office during a meeting with visiting Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Obama said that in contrast to earlier Washington fiscal fights, he didn't believe the economic impact of the cuts would threaten the world financial market. But he added that if the U.S. economy slows as a result of the cuts, the global economy could suffer as well.
Obama's statements continued an administration drumroll of warnings this week, with appeals from Cabinet members ranging from Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Secretary of State John Kerry to Education Secretary Arne Duncan and Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood.
Even a slew of Democratic governors in the capital for their annual meeting picked up the cudgel, making arguments for Obama's position to reporters.
The fight between Obama and congressional Republicans has centered on a seemingly intractable issue: Obama says he wants a more methodical and restrained plan for budget-cutting and one that would necessitate an additional tax increase. GOP lawmakers and their leaders, House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, for the most part have come together to oppose any new revenue measures.
Panetta last week said that the automatic cuts, known in Washington jargon as a sequester, would harm the readiness of U.S. fighting forces. And Kerry, less than a week into his new job, argued at the University of Virginia that the sequester could jeopardize America's standing in the world.
Duncan told reporters Thursday he was increasingly worried that deep spending cuts would harm students and teachers across the country, saying that "no one in their right mind would say this is good for kids or good for the country."
He also said that no one would have designed the automatic budget cuts on purpose.
LaHood, a Republican who served several terms in the House, joined White House press secretary Jay Carney in the briefing room to make an appeal Friday to the reporters gathered there.
LaHood said the across-the-board reductions would require trimming $600 million this year form the Federal Aviation budget and said that would mean furloughing air traffic controllers, which he said in turn would undermine the ability y to guide planes in and out of airports. He also said travelers could experience 90 minute delays or more in major cities..
Asked whether it appeared inevitable that the cuts would materialize, Carney said: "We obviously are discouraged by the line that Republican leaders have taken, which is the book is closed on revenue. ... We remain hopeful and we will continue to engage with Congress."
LaHood, in response to a question, denied that he was simply describing a worst-case scenario that would scare the public and put pressure on Republican lawmakers.
"What I'm trying to do," he said, "is wake up members of the Congress with the idea that they need to come to the table so we don't have to have this kind of calamity in air services in America."
The Democratic governors, after meeting with Obama, said state economies would be hurt by the cuts.
Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin, chairman of the Democratic Governors Association, said states have seen increased employment, but that their prosperity is being hindered by "the games being played by the Republicans in Congress."
And a National Park Service memo obtained by The Associated Press contains a list of potentially adverse effects of the cuts at the nation's most beautiful and historic attractions, including possibly Yosemite National Park, the Cape Cod National Seashore and Gettysburg.
"We're planning for this to happen and hoping that it doesn't," said Park Service spokesman Jeffrey Olson, who confirmed that the list is authentic and represents cuts the department is considering.
Park Service Director John Jarvis last month asked superintendents to show by Feb. 11 how they would absorb the 5 percent funding cuts. The memo includes some of those decisions.
While not all 398 parks had submitted plans by the time the memo was written, a pattern of deep slashes that could harm resources and provide fewer protections for visitors has emerged.
In Yosemite National Park in California, for example, park administrators fear that less frequent trash pickup would potentially attract bears into campgrounds.
Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed a way to melt or "weld" specific portions of polymers by embedding aligned nanoparticles within the materials. Their technique, which melts fibers along a chosen direction within a material, may lead to stronger, more resilient nanofibers and materials.
Physicists Jason Bochinski and Laura Clarke, with materials scientist Joe Tracy, placed specifically aligned gold nanorods within a solid material. Gold nanorods absorb light at different wavelengths, depending upon the size and orientation of the nanorod, and then they convert that absorbed light directly into heat. In this case, the nanorods were designed to respond to light wavelengths of 520 nanometers (nm) in a horizontal alignment and 800 nm when vertically aligned. Human beings can see light at 520 nm (it looks green), while 808 nm is in the near infrared spectrum, invisible to our eyes.
When the different wavelengths of light were applied to the material, they melted the fibers along the chosen directions, while leaving surrounding fibers largely intact.
"Being able to heat materials spatially in this way gives us the ability to manipulate very specific portions of these materials, because nanorods localize heat ? that is, the heat they produce only affects the nanorod and its immediate surroundings," Tracy says.
According to Bochinski, the work also has implications for optimizing materials that have already been manufactured: "We can use heat at the nanoscale to change mechanical characteristics of objects postproduction without affecting their physical properties, which means more efficiency and less waste."
The researchers' findings appear in Particle & Particle Systems Characterization. The work was funded by grants from the National Science Foundation and Sigma Xi. Graduate students Wei-Chen Wu and Somsubhra Maity and former undergraduate student Krystian Kozek contributed to the work.
###
North Carolina State University: http://www.ncsu.edu
Thanks to North Carolina State University for this article.
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Contact: Smita Chandra smita.chandra@zsl.org 020-744-96288 Zoological Society of London
Zoo chimpanzees get feel-good factor from brain teaser
A study, published today by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), shows that just like humans love getting stuck into a crossword, chimpanzees get the same feeling of satisfaction from completing tricky puzzles.
Scientists set up a challenge for six chimpanzees at ZSL Whipsnade Zoo using plumbing pipes from a DIY store. The challenge involved moving red dice through a network of pipes until they fell into an exit chamber. This could only be achieved by the chimps prodding sticks into holes in the pipes to change the direction of the dice. The same task was also carried out with Brazil nuts, but the exit chamber removed so that the nuts fell out as a tasty treat for the chimps.
The paper was published today in the American Journal of Primatology.
ZSL researcher Fay Clark says: "We noticed that the chimps were keen to complete the puzzle regardless of whether or not they received a food reward. This strongly suggests they get similar feelings of satisfaction to humans who often complete brain games for a feel-good reward."
The adult family group of chimpanzees at ZSL Whipsnade Zoo consist of two females and four males, three of which are half-brothers: Phil, Grant and Elvis. This study allowed them to solve a novel cognitive problem in their normal social grouping, by choice. In addition, the chimpanzees were not trained on how to use the device.
"For chimps in the wild, this task is a little bit like foraging for insects or honey inside a tree stump or a termite mound; except more challenging because the dice do not stick to the tool," Fay added.
The challenge, which only cost about 40 to make, was made more intricate by connecting many pipes together, and the level further increased by making pipes opaque so chimpanzees could only see the dice or nuts through small holes.
The chimps took part in the cognitive challenge as part of their normal daily routine and doing the brain teaser was completely voluntarily. As part of the Zoo's enrichment programme, they also receive tasty treats hidden in boxes, as well as pillows and blankets every night to make up their own beds. Chimps build their own nests every night in the wild, and this enrichment encourages the animals' natural behaviours.
This study suggests that like humans, chimpanzees are motivated to solve a puzzle when there is no food reward. They do so for the sake of the challenge itself. It also suggests that chimpanzee cognition can be measured on social groups under more naturalistic conditions.
###
Editors' Notes
Images and B-Roll
High resolution images of the chimps available here:-
https://zslondon.sharefile.com/d/s139da92379d4eec9
Media Information
For more information please contact Smita Chandra on 0207 449 6288 or email smita.chandra@zsl.org
ZSL
Founded in 1826, the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) is an international scientific, conservation and educational charity whose mission is to promote and achieve the worldwide conservation of animals and their habitats. Our mission is realised through our groundbreaking science, our active conservation projects in more than 50 countries and our two Zoos, ZSL London Zoo and ZSL Whipsnade Zoo. For more information visit www.zsl.org
Contact: Smita Chandra, 0207 449 6288 or smita.chandra@zsl.org
Interviews: Available with Fay Clark on request
Images of the chimps can be found at: https://zslondon.sharefile.com/d/s139da92379d4eec9
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Contact: Smita Chandra smita.chandra@zsl.org 020-744-96288 Zoological Society of London
Zoo chimpanzees get feel-good factor from brain teaser
A study, published today by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), shows that just like humans love getting stuck into a crossword, chimpanzees get the same feeling of satisfaction from completing tricky puzzles.
Scientists set up a challenge for six chimpanzees at ZSL Whipsnade Zoo using plumbing pipes from a DIY store. The challenge involved moving red dice through a network of pipes until they fell into an exit chamber. This could only be achieved by the chimps prodding sticks into holes in the pipes to change the direction of the dice. The same task was also carried out with Brazil nuts, but the exit chamber removed so that the nuts fell out as a tasty treat for the chimps.
The paper was published today in the American Journal of Primatology.
ZSL researcher Fay Clark says: "We noticed that the chimps were keen to complete the puzzle regardless of whether or not they received a food reward. This strongly suggests they get similar feelings of satisfaction to humans who often complete brain games for a feel-good reward."
The adult family group of chimpanzees at ZSL Whipsnade Zoo consist of two females and four males, three of which are half-brothers: Phil, Grant and Elvis. This study allowed them to solve a novel cognitive problem in their normal social grouping, by choice. In addition, the chimpanzees were not trained on how to use the device.
"For chimps in the wild, this task is a little bit like foraging for insects or honey inside a tree stump or a termite mound; except more challenging because the dice do not stick to the tool," Fay added.
The challenge, which only cost about 40 to make, was made more intricate by connecting many pipes together, and the level further increased by making pipes opaque so chimpanzees could only see the dice or nuts through small holes.
The chimps took part in the cognitive challenge as part of their normal daily routine and doing the brain teaser was completely voluntarily. As part of the Zoo's enrichment programme, they also receive tasty treats hidden in boxes, as well as pillows and blankets every night to make up their own beds. Chimps build their own nests every night in the wild, and this enrichment encourages the animals' natural behaviours.
This study suggests that like humans, chimpanzees are motivated to solve a puzzle when there is no food reward. They do so for the sake of the challenge itself. It also suggests that chimpanzee cognition can be measured on social groups under more naturalistic conditions.
###
Editors' Notes
Images and B-Roll
High resolution images of the chimps available here:-
https://zslondon.sharefile.com/d/s139da92379d4eec9
Media Information
For more information please contact Smita Chandra on 0207 449 6288 or email smita.chandra@zsl.org
ZSL
Founded in 1826, the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) is an international scientific, conservation and educational charity whose mission is to promote and achieve the worldwide conservation of animals and their habitats. Our mission is realised through our groundbreaking science, our active conservation projects in more than 50 countries and our two Zoos, ZSL London Zoo and ZSL Whipsnade Zoo. For more information visit www.zsl.org
Contact: Smita Chandra, 0207 449 6288 or smita.chandra@zsl.org
Interviews: Available with Fay Clark on request
Images of the chimps can be found at: https://zslondon.sharefile.com/d/s139da92379d4eec9
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
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AAA??Feb. 23, 2013?8:42 AM ET AP PHOTOS: Portraits of Pakistani Taliban victims By The Associated PressBy The Associated Press, Associated Press??
In this Saturday, July 7, 2102, photo, Pakistani daily worker Mufeed Ali, 48, who was injured by a remote control bomb at Lahore train station, on April, 24, 2012, reacts while posing for a picture in Lahore, Pakistan. Hazratullah Khan's right leg was amputated below the knee after he survived a car bombing as he was on his way home from school. His response when asked whether peace talks should be held with the Taliban leaders who ordered attacks like the ones that maimed him is simple: Hang them alive. Slice their flesh off their bodies and cut them into pieces. (AP Photo/Muhammed Muheisen)
In this Saturday, July 7, 2102, photo, Pakistani daily worker Mufeed Ali, 48, who was injured by a remote control bomb at Lahore train station, on April, 24, 2012, reacts while posing for a picture in Lahore, Pakistan. Hazratullah Khan's right leg was amputated below the knee after he survived a car bombing as he was on his way home from school. His response when asked whether peace talks should be held with the Taliban leaders who ordered attacks like the ones that maimed him is simple: Hang them alive. Slice their flesh off their bodies and cut them into pieces. (AP Photo/Muhammed Muheisen)
In this Thursday, Feb. 21, 2012, photo, Pakistani student Hazratullah Khan, 14, who was injured in a car bombing on December 17, 2012 in Peshawar, poses for a picture in Peshawar, Pakistan. Hazratullah Khan's right leg was amputated below the knee after he survived a car bombing as he was on his way home from school. His response when asked whether peace talks should be held with the Taliban leaders who ordered attacks like the ones that maimed him is simple: Hang them alive. Slice their flesh off their bodies and cut them into pieces. (AP Photo/Muhammed Muheisen)
In this Sunday, July 15, 2012 photo, Pakistani student Tahir Wilayat, 17, who was injured on June, 12, 2012, by a bomb planted on a donkey cart in Peshawar, poses for a picture in Peshawar, Pakistan. To many victims of Taliban violence, the idea of negotiating with people responsible for so much human pain is abhorrent. Their voices, however, are rarely heard in Pakistan, a country where people have long been conflicted about whether the Taliban are enemies bent on destroying the state or fellow Muslims who should be welcomed back into the fold after years of fighting.(AP Photo/Muhammed Muheisen)
In this Thursday, July 12, 2012, photo, Pakistani Bachir Gul, 42, who was injured by a remote control bomb in Peshawar on October, 9, 2007, reacts while posing for a picture, in Peshawar, Pakistan. To many victims of Taliban violence, the idea of negotiating with people responsible for so much human pain is abhorrent. Their voices, however, are rarely heard in Pakistan, a country where people have long been conflicted about whether the Taliban are enemies bent on destroying the state or fellow Muslims who should be welcomed back into the fold after years of fighting.(AP Photo/Muhammed Muheisen)
In this Sunday, July 15, 2012, photo, Pakistani student Farouq Aftab, 12, who was injured on June, 12, 2012, by a bomb planted on a donkey-cart in Peshawar, reacts while posing for a picture in Peshawar, Pakistan. To many victims of Taliban violence, the idea of negotiating with people responsible for so much human pain is abhorrent. Their voices, however, are rarely heard in Pakistan, a country where people have long been conflicted about whether the Taliban are enemies bent on destroying the state or fellow Muslims who should be welcomed back into the fold after years of fighting.(AP Photo/Muhammed Muheisen)
In recent weeks, the Pakistani government and Taliban forces fighting in northwestern tribal areas have expressed an interest in peace talks to end the years-long conflict. An estimated 30,000 civilians and 4,000 soldiers have died in terrorist attacks in Pakistan since Sept. 11, 2001 ? many at the hands of the Pakistani Taliban. Many of those victims are angry at the prospect of peace talks with their attackers.
"Hang them alive," said 14-year-old Hazratullah Khan, who lost his right leg below the knee in a car bombing on his way home from school. "Slice the flesh off their bodies and cut them into pieces. That's what they have been doing to us."
AP's chief photographer for Pakistan, Muhammed Muheisen, made a series of portraits of some of these victims of Taliban violence.
_____
Read the full text story that accompanies this gallery here: http://apne.ws/XrPgd7
More hi-tech words have found their way into Oxford Dictionary's online English version, and some of them couldn't be shorter.
By Leslie Meredith,?TechNewsDaily / February 22, 2013
Not all of today's additions qualify for your next game of Scrabble.
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Thx to the lexicographers at Oxford Dictionaries who added a fresh round of tech jargon to its online English dictionary, you can now look up words like "thx."
Click Here for your FREE 30 DAYS of The Christian Science Monitor Weekly Digital Edition
Some of today's (Feb. 22) additions will be familiar, such as "tweetable" and "social sharing," which refers to people's growing need to post every piece of daily trivia to the Internet. (Thanks for that Instagram of your sushi dinner last night.) You can probably guess at others, like "dumbphone," even if you don't use the term yourself.
But "touchless," for example, might not be as intuitive. According to Oxford, the term refers to gesture-control devices such as Microsoft's?Kinect??gaming accessory that uses a camera to interpret body motions for game-play.
Still other entries might indeed have people turning to Oxford online to check definitions. "Cruft"? A new addition that means badly designed or unwanted software. And what about "range anxiety"? This term will surely be heard more frequently as electric cars become more common and drivers worry whether they'll make it to their destination before the?car's battery dies.
Each new word and phrase added to Oxford goes through a fairly rigorous assessment, whether it began as a suggestion from the public or if the Oxford team itself suggested the word. If a proposed entry is used by just one segment of the population, like young teens, it's disqualified. If it's a trademark, it must have broader use, such as generic use as a verb. (Have you?googled??anyone lately?)
Oxford consults specialists when necessary, and the dictionaries' editors review proposed entries. Those that make the cut are added to the online dictionary, and later, to printed versions.
The quarterly updates may please Scrabble players hunting new words, but remember, just because a word has been blessed by Oxford Dictionaries, doesn't mean it's okay for Scrabble. For instance, Oxford added LOL back in 2011, but Scrabble Checker still says "no."
Follow TechNewsDaily on Twitter?@TechNewsDaily, or on Facebook. Follow Leslie Meredith?@lesliemeredith.
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Public release date: 23-Feb-2013
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