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Saturday, March 15, 2008

There were 5 games played in the National Hockey League on March 14, 2008.

Friday, May 7, 2010

US stock markets saw an unusually turbulent day yesterday, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) losing almost a thousand points in thirty minutes, although later recovered somewhat to end the day with a smaller loss.

The DJIA had its worst fall since 1987, a drop of 9% or 998.50 points, before going back up a bit to close with a loss of 3.30% or 347.80 points to a level of 10,520. The Nasdaq fell 82.65 points or 3.44%, and the Standard & Poor’s 500 index dropped 3.24% or 37.75 points.

According to some reports, the quick loss happened because a trader mistyped an order to sell a large amount of stock, causing the stock price to go down enough to trigger orders to sell elsewhere in the market. (By the following day this theory had been abandoned.) Other reports suggested that the biggest markets “slowed” their executions when it became clear that computerized errors were occurring; as a result, the vast majority of buy orders were briefly withdrawn, allowing the free-fall to continue for several minutes.

Stock for the Procter & Gamble company fell almost 37% during the sell-off, about 75 minutes to the closing bell. An investigation started into whether any erroneous trades happened.

Procter & Gamble spokeswoman Jennifer Chelune spoke about the incident: “We don’t know what caused it. We know that that was an electronic trade […] and we’re looking into it with Nasdaq and the other major electronic exchanges.”

The Reuters news agency reports that, at their height, the losses cause equity values to lose $1 trillion.

Some stocks saw extreme, but short, changes; for instance, consulting firm Accenture saw its shares plummet from about $42 to four cents, although it later rebounded to close the day at $41.09.

Meanwhile, oil prices also dropped to lows not reached since February. Benchmark crude was down $2.86 to $77.11 in New York.

“The potential for giant high-speed computers to generate false trades and create market chaos reared its head again today,” said Delaware senator Edward Kaufman. “The battle of the algorithms — not understood by nor even remotely transparent to the Securities and Exchange Commission — simply must be carefully reviewed and placed within a meaningful regulatory framework soon.” Kaufman, along with senator Mark Warner from Virginia, called on Congress to investigate the cause of the mass sell-offs.

Nasdaq, meanwhile, says that all trades of stocks at prices 60% higher or lower than the preceding price at or around 2.40 PM “or immediately prior” are to be cancelled; it noted that it coordinated its move with the other exchanges.

Chief investment officer at Fort Pitt Capital Group Charlie Smith said: “I think the machines just took over. There’s not a lot of human interaction. We’ve known that automated trading can run away from you, and I think that’s what we saw happen today.”

In the past three days, the DJIA has lost 631 points, or 5.7%, mainly over concerns about Greece’s ailing, debt-burdened economy. Peter Boockvar an equity strategist for Miller Tabak, commented: “The market is now realizing that Greece is going to go through a depression over the next couple of years. Europe is a major trading partner of ours, and this threatens the entire global growth story.”

Sunday, February 17, 2008

There were 10 games played in the National Hockey League on February 16, 2008, including the New York Rangers, who hadn’t played since the afternoon of February 10, taking on the Buffalo Sabres.

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Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Television audience ratings for U.S. TV host Conan O’Brien’s first TBS program Conan last night were higher than rival Jay Leno and his late night program on NBC, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. O’Brien’s ratings were also higher than CBS network’s David Letterman, as well as Comedy Central programs hosted by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert.

Monday marked O’Brien’s return to late night television after his departure as host of The Tonight Show on NBC following a dispute this year, in which Leno’s program The Jay Leno Show was canceled after poor ratings, and NBC reinstated Leno as host of The Tonight Show.

O’Brien’s debut program featured guests including curator Arlene Wagner of the Leavenworth Nutcracker Museum, actor Seth Rogen and actress Lea Michele. His guest schedule for Tuesday night’s program included actors Tom Hanks and Jack McBrayer, in addition to music from the group Soundgarden.

The premiere of Conan was watched by over 4.1 million viewers. Nielsen ratings data made public today showed that Leno’s program The Tonight Show was only watched by 3.5 million viewers, and Letterman’s Late Show was seen by 3.4 million people. The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report were watched by 1.3 million and 1 million viewers, respectively.

O’Brien announced his move to TBS, a cable channel founded by Ted Turner and owned by Time Warner, in April.

O’Brien’s viewership trended towards younger people, with 2,451,000 individuals ranges from ages 18 to 34 – and 3,285,000 people in the 18 to 49 age demographic. Leno’s The Tonight Show, in comparison, only drew in 950,000 people in the same younger demographic breakdown.

In an analysis of O’Brien’s ratings win, Dave Itzkoff of The New York Times wrote, “the debut of ‘Conan,’ the new late-night show starring Conan O’Brien, got off to a strong start”. James Hibberd commented for The Hollywood Reporter, “Conan O’Brien is enjoying a sweet, sweet victory in the ratings.”

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Tuesday, August 28, 2012

London, England — Yesterday, the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) held their first formal press conference as part of the 2012 Summer Paralympics. Approximately 60 media representatives attended and had the opportunity to ask questions of Craig Spence, IPC President Philip Craven, Chairman of the London Organizing Committee of the Olympic and Paralymic Games (LOCOG) Sebastian Coe, and LOCOG Director of Communications and Public Affairs Jackie Brock-Doyle following a short speech on the history of the Paralympic Games.

The reporters asked a variety of questions. A British journalist asked about having ATOS as a sponsor given the negative history the business has had with disability services in the country. The IPC responded by saying this is an issue that should be taken up by the relevant British government agency.

A Wikinews reporter asked if the high cost of technology for participating in disability sport at the elite level would leave Oceania, Asia, and Africa behind. Craven said historically, the IPC has worked on increasing disability sport participation; they were now working on changing that to developing disability sport around the world. He highlighted efforts by the IPC to bring down the cost of wheelchairs and prostheses as these are sporting equipment for participation in disability sport. He also said they had donated 4,000 wheelchairs to help spread disability sport.

A Canadian journalist from the Vancouver Sun asked about the lack of substantial coverage of the Games in North America. Craven responded by saying he was disappointed by United States coverage and the IPC has been aware of the problem for years. He contrasted the situation in the United States with France, where the public successfully put pressure on the rights-holding network to improve the coverage of the Games.

Another reporter asked about Paralympic social media usage during the Games. Craven responded that while not a big user of it himself, the IPC embraced social media. Spence said the IPC encouraged everyone involved to use it; 47 Paralympians have video blogs, and the Opening Ceremonies will be covered while they happen.

Thursday, June 23, 2011

NASA’s Cassini–Huygens spacecraft has discovered evidence for a large-scale saltwater reservoir beneath the icy crust of Saturn’s moon Enceladus. The data came from the spacecraft’s direct analysis of salt-rich ice grains close to the jets ejected from the moon. The study has been published in this week’s edition of the journal Nature.

Data from Cassini’s cosmic dust analyzer show the grains expelled from fissures, known as tiger stripes, are relatively small and usually low in salt far away from the moon. Closer to the moon’s surface, Cassini found that relatively large grains rich with sodium and potassium dominate the plumes. The salt-rich particles have an “ocean-like” composition and indicate that most, if not all, of the expelled ice and water vapor comes from the evaporation of liquid salt-water. When water freezes, the salt is squeezed out, leaving pure water ice behind.

Cassini’s ultraviolet imaging spectrograph also recently obtained complementary results that support the presence of a subsurface ocean. A team of Cassini researchers led by Candice Hansen of the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona, measured gas shooting out of distinct jets originating in the moon’s south polar region at five to eight times the speed of sound, several times faster than previously measured. These observations of distinct jets, from a 2010 flyby, are consistent with results showing a difference in composition of ice grains close to the moon’s surface and those that made it out to the E ring, the outermost ring that gets its material primarily from Enceladean jets. If the plumes emanated from ice, they should have very little salt in them.

“There currently is no plausible way to produce a steady outflow of salt-rich grains from solid ice across all the tiger stripes other than salt water under Enceladus’s icy surface,” said Frank Postberg, a Cassini team scientist at the University of Heidelberg in Germany.

The data suggests a layer of water between the moon’s rocky core and its icy mantle, possibly as deep as about 50 miles (80 kilometers) beneath the surface. As this water washes against the rocks, it dissolves salt compounds and rises through fractures in the overlying ice to form reserves nearer the surface. If the outermost layer cracks open, the decrease in pressure from these reserves to space causes a plume to shoot out. Roughly 400 pounds (200 kilograms) of water vapor is lost every second in the plumes, with smaller amounts being lost as ice grains. The team calculates the water reserves must have large evaporating surfaces, or they would freeze easily and stop the plumes.

“We imagine that between the ice and the ice core there is an ocean of depth and this is somehow connected to the surface reservoir,” added Postberg.

The Cassini mission discovered Enceladus’ water-vapor and ice jets in 2005. In 2009, scientists working with the cosmic dust analyzer examined some sodium salts found in ice grains of Saturn’s E ring but the link to subsurface salt water was not definitive. The new paper analyzes three Enceladus flybys in 2008 and 2009 with the same instrument, focusing on the composition of freshly ejected plume grains. In 2008, Cassini discovered a high “density of volatile gases, water vapor, carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide, as well as organic materials, some 20 times denser than expected” in geysers erupting from the moon. The icy particles hit the detector target at speeds between 15,000 and 39,000 MPH (23,000 and 63,000 KPH), vaporizing instantly. Electrical fields inside the cosmic dust analyzer separated the various constituents of the impact cloud.

“Enceladus has got warmth, water and organic chemicals, some of the essential building blocks needed for life,” said Dennis Matson in 2008, Cassini project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

“This finding is a crucial new piece of evidence showing that environmental conditions favorable to the emergence of life can be sustained on icy bodies orbiting gas giant planets,” said Nicolas Altobelli, the European Space Agency’s project scientist for Cassini.

“If there is water in such an unexpected place, it leaves possibility for the rest of the universe,” said Postberg.