This underrated high-def streamer comes free with AT&T HTC One preorders through April 18
AT&T this morning announced that its HTC One, which will be available April 19, will come with a free Media Link HD. That begs the question: What the heck is the HTC Media Link HD?
It's not a new product. In fact, the Media Link HD is HTC's second foray into wireless streaming. As the name implies, it takes content from your phone and pushes it to your television in living color. And in high definition.
HTC made it dirt-simple, too. Plug everything in -- you use microUSB for power and HDMI to your TV -- and swipe up on your HTC One (or any of HTC's 2012 phones, too) to connect. It takes a few seconds the first time and is nearly instantaneous after that.
The really neat thing about the Media Link is that HTC's continued to improved it over the past 8 months or so via software updates.
The caveat: To get the free Media LInk HD, you need to preorder the HTC One from AT&T, and do so by April 18.
Sunday March 31, 2013, 3:43 pm In Search Of Energy Metaphors: Debunking The Myth Of The Inadequacy Of ?Current Renewables?
By Joe Romm on Mar 12, 2013 at 7:29 pm
Last month, I was on a panel with someone who kept kept saying ?current renewables? were inadequate to address the climate problem and what we needed to do is invest in ?future renewables.? By that he meant increased research and development, of course, and not continued aggressive deployment.
I began my comments with this metaphor:
?There?s no useful intellectual distinction between ?current? and ?future? renewables. It?s like saying my daughter, who?s six, is not the same person once she becomes an adult. The only way she won?t grow is if I don?t feed her.?
The point is that continuing the amazing price drops and learning curves for renewables requires that we keep feeding them and help them keep learning ? by expanding production, as the International Energy Agency has explained (see ?The breakthrough technology illusion?). Many other studies back this up (see ?Study Confirms Optimal Climate Strategy: Deploy, Deploy, Deploy, R&D, Deploy, Deploy, Deploy?).
[In fairness to renewables, solar power is at least a junior in college, and wind power has already graduated. My daughter just happens to be six.]
Here?s a figure that shows what I?m talking about for solar power (learning curve in upper right):
Note that the price drop (and production increase) has continued since 2011 (see ?Chinese Companies Projected To Make Solar Panels for 42 Cents Per Watt In 2015?). And we are also dropping the price of financing solar ? see ?How Crowdfunding Lowers The Cost Of Solar Energy? ? which is just what you would expect as an industry becomes larger and more mature. Indeed, it?s one reason for learning curves ? most things are cheaper when you scale up (except, sadly, nukes).
Similarly, a little over a year ago, Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) analyzed the cost curve for wind projects since the mind-1980?s and found that the cost of wind-generated electricity has fallen 14% for every doubling of installation capacity.
So while I was glad to see the excellent NY Times climate reporter Justin Gillis launch his monthly print column for Science Times, I was disappointed that he rehashed the tired myth pushed by Bill Gates and a few others in his article, ?In Search of Energy Miracles.?
First, though, the good news. Gillis doesn?t fall into the trap of most of the miracle mavens and breakthrough bunch ? the trap of advocating an R&D-centered policy:
Two approaches to the issue ? spending money on the technologies we have now, or investing in future breakthroughs ? are sometimes portrayed as conflicting. In reality, that is a false dichotomy. The smartest experts say we have to pursue both tracks at once, and much more aggressively than we have been doing.
An ambitious national climate policy, anchored by a stiff price on carbon dioxide emissions, would serve both goals at once. In the short run, it would hasten a trend of supplanting coal-burning power plants with natural gas plants, which emit less carbon dioxide. It would drive investment into current low-carbon technologies like wind and solar power that, while not efficient enough, are steadily improving.
And it would also raise the economic rewards for developing new technologies that could disrupt and displace the ones of today. These might be new-age nuclear reactors, vastly improved solar cells, or something entirely unforeseen.
In effect, our national policy now is to sit on our hands hoping for energy miracles, without doing much to call them forth.
Actually, coal is being supplanted by gas and wind (see ?Wind Beats Out Natural Gas To Become Top Source Of New Electricity Capacity For 2012?). And efficiency and demand response have slowed electricity demand growth to under 1% a year.
A stiff price for CO2 would tip the balance even more toward sources like wind that are carbon-free and hence don?t destroy a livable climate. After all, BNEF concluded its wind study:
Assuming specific learning rates for these components, we expect wind to become fully competitive with energy produced from combined-cycle gas turbines by 2016 in most regions offering fair wind conditions.? Any increase in the cost of gas, which will consequently raise the cost of energy of gas-fired turbines, would bring forward the timing of grid parity for wind.
And yes, I?ll get to the so-called intermittency problem.
Where Gillis goes astray is when he buys into Bill Gates? energy miracles nonsense:
Many environmentalists believe that wind and solar power can be scaled to meet the rising demand, especially if coupled with aggressive efforts to cut waste. But a lot of energy analysts have crunched the numbers and concluded that today?s renewables, important as they are, cannot get us even halfway there.
?We need energy miracles,? Mr. Gates said in a speech three years ago introducing his approach, embodied in a company called TerraPower.
Let?s set aside the fact that Gates himself got rich through a deployment-centric innovation and learning curve strategy (see ?Pro-geoengineering Bill Gates disses efficiency, ?cute? solar, deployment ? and still doesn?t know how he got rich?).
The fact is that if ?today?s renewables? ? a meaningless distinction as I?ve said ? could only get us a third of the way there, that would be fine through, say, 2025, since the carbon price and deployment effort would accelerate countless near-commercial technologies now in the pipeline into the market to next us the next third and then the final third.
Jigar Shah, a solar-industry rock star who founded the pioneering solar company SunEdison, explained to Climate Progress at length in 2011 why doubters of today?s renewable energy technologies are so wrong. I recommend the whole interview (Jigar is in the second half), where he explains that the only meaningful technologies for solving climate are those that can be scaled at the trillion-dollar level, and nobody puts a trillion-dollar bet on some brand new, breakthrough technology.
Jigar thinks we could reduce CO2 emissions about 50% cost-effectively with existing technologies, but that by the time we finished doing so in a couple of decades, we?d have another array of cost-effective strategies to take us down another 50%.
If you?d like to see a study of how New York could go 100% renewable in two decades, see ?Examining the Feasibility of Converting New York State?s All-Purpose Energy Infrastructure to One Using Wind, Water and Sunlight? by Stanford?s Marc Jacobson et al.
As for the U.S. as a whole, here are the key points to needed the 450 ppm pathway:
We don?t need to be 100% carbon-free by 2030 ? though that would be a good idea.
We can keep nuclear for baseload and yes we can even keep much of current gas power through 2030 ? we just shouldn?t build a lot of new gas-fired plants.
We could easily keep demand flat using the most cost-effective source of energy there is ? efficiency.
New renewables can back out coal over the next couple of decades (assuming the coal industry continues to commit suicide by failing to develop carbon capture and storage)
Our renewable penetration rate is considerably lower than that of many European countries, so we have a long way to go before increased renewables would cause us problems.
As we get to higher and higher levels of renewable penetration, we deal with intermittency through a combination of demand response, grid storage (which is steadily improving and dropping in price), and plugged in elective vehicles (whose already paid-for batteries are not being used >90% of the time).
Half or more of the ?intermittency problem? is really a ?predictability problem? ? that is, if we could predict with high accuracy wind availability and solar availability 24 to 36 hours in advance, then we can use demand response (aggregated demand reductions by commercial, industrial, and even residential customers, see ?Top 5 Coolest Ways Companies are Integrating Renewable Energy into the Grid?). Fortunately, such prediction capability is already beginning developed (see, for instance, here).
I have discussed these with leading energy analysts and electric grid experts, and they agree this is all doable with existing and near-term technology, assuming we keep feeding our renewable children ? and would go even faster if we had a stiff carbon price.
As for why folks don?t get this, Jigar Shah says:
For some people, technology is not their sweet spot. They have other skills. And so when someone tells them, ?technology is not ready,? they just eat up those words ? hook, line and sinker and then decide that?s what their talking points are going to be. And with those people it?s just sad that they don?t read more.
A major 2000 report by the International Energy Agency, Experience Curves for Energy Technology Policy, analyzed a variety of experience curves for various energy technologies. Their key conclusion has already been demonstrated, in part, by the massive investment in renewables we?ve seen in the past decade, but it bears repeating:
A general message to policy makers comes from the basic philosophy of the experience curve. Learning requires continuous action, and future opportunities are therefore strongly coupled to present activities. If we want cost-efficient, CO2-mitigation technologies available during the first decades of the new century, these technologies must be given the opportunity to learn in the current marketplace. Deferring decisions on deployment will risk lock-out of these technologies, i.e., lack of opportunities to learn will foreclose these options making them unavailable to the energy system.
Don?t lock our growing kids out of the job market by depriving them of food and learning. Deployment must be ramped up again and again and again (and yes, R&D, too).
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This image provided by WKYC, Channel 3, shows the scene outside a church in Ashtabula, Ohio, on Sunday, March 31, 2013. Police in northeast Ohio are investigating a shooting outside the church that has reportedly left one man dead after an Easter service. (AP Photo/WKYC)
This image provided by WKYC, Channel 3, shows the scene outside a church in Ashtabula, Ohio, on Sunday, March 31, 2013. Police in northeast Ohio are investigating a shooting outside the church that has reportedly left one man dead after an Easter service. (AP Photo/WKYC)
ASHTABULA, Ohio (AP) ? Witnesses say the 25-year-old man accused of walking into an Ohio church and fatally shooting his father after an Easter service was yelling about God and Allah after the killing.
Police say Reshad Riddle walked into the Hiawatha Church of God in Christ in Ashtabula and killed his father, 52-year-old Richard Riddle, with a single shot from a handgun Sunday afternoon.
Associate Pastor Sean Adams tells The (Ashtabula) Star Beacon newspaper (http://bit.ly/10rk63k ) that worshippers started screaming, ducking down and calling 911 on cellphones after the shooting.
Adams says Reshad Riddle then continued into the church, still holding the gun, and yelled that the killing was "the will of Allah. This is the will of God."
Reshad Riddle was quickly subdued by officers, who arrived just moments after the shooting. Police say he offered no motive for the shooting.
Court records show Reshad Riddle has an extensive criminal record.
HBO’s popular fantasy series Game of Thrones is back tonight with episode 1 of season 3. You can get in on the fun with the Paper Flying Dragons book by Pat Murphy. This book includes fully illustrated punch out parts that will allow you to create 12 paper dragons includes: 5 foot long flyers, 5 [...]
SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea will strike back quickly if the North stages any attack, the new president in Seoul warned on Monday, as tensions ratcheted higher on the Korean peninsula amid shrill rhetoric from Pyongyang and the U.S. deployment of radar-evading fighter planes.
North Korea says the region is on the brink of a nuclear war in the wake of United Nations sanctions imposed for its February nuclear test and a series of joint U.S. and South Korean military drills that have included a rare U.S. show of aerial power.
The North, whose economy is smaller than it was 20 years ago, appeared to move on Monday to addressing its pressing need for investment by appointing a reformer to the country's ceremonial prime minister's job, although the move mostly cemented a power grab by the ruling Kim clan.
North Korea had said on Saturday it was entering a "state of war" with South Korea in response to what it termed the "hostile" military drills being staged in the South. But there have been no signs of unusual activity in the North's military to suggest an imminent aggression, a South Korean defense ministry official said last week.
"If there is any provocation against South Korea and its people, there should be a strong response in initial combat without any political considerations," President Park Geun-hye told the defense minister and senior officials at a meeting on Monday.
The South has changed its rules of engagement to allow local units to respond immediately to attacks, rather than waiting for permission from Seoul.
Stung by criticism that its response to the shelling of a South Korean island in 2010 was tardy and weak, Seoul has also threatened to target North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and to destroy statues of the ruling Kim dynasty in the event of any new attack, a plan that has outraged Pyongyang.
Seoul and its ally the United States played down Saturday's statement from the official KCNA news agency as the latest in a stream of tough talk from Pyongyang.
North Korea stepped up its rhetoric in early March, when U.S. and South Korean forces began annual military drills that involved the flights of U.S. B-2 stealth bombers in a practice run, prompting the North to puts its missile units on standby to fire at U.S. military bases in the South and in the Pacific.
The United States also deployed F-22 stealth fighter jets on Sunday to take part in the drills. The F-22s were deployed in South Korea before, in 2010.
On its part, North Korea has cancelled an armistice agreement with the United States that ended the Korean War and cut all hotlines with U.S. forces, the United Nations and South Korea.
NUCLEAR WEAPONS "NOT A BARGAINING CHIP"
Park's intervention came on the heels of a meeting of the North's ruling Workers Party Central Committee where leader Kim Jong-un rejected the notion that Pyongyang was going to use its nuclear arms development as a bargaining chip.
"The nuclear weapons of Songun Korea are not goods for getting U.S. dollars and they are ... (not) to be put on the table of negotiations aimed at forcing the (North) to disarm itself," KCNA news agency quoted him as saying.
At the meeting, Kim appointed a handful of personal confidants to the party's politburo, further consolidating his grip on power in the second full year of his reign.
The most surprising appointment came on Monday as former prime minister Pak Pong-ju was re-appointed as premier, although the move likely signaled another power struggle in Pyongang staged by the country's leader Kim Jong-un.
Pak is viewed as a key ally of Jang Song-thaek, the young Kim's uncle and also a protege of Kim's aunt and is viewed as a pawn in a power game that has seen Jang and his wife re-assert power over military leaders.
Analysts said the move would not likely change Pyongyang's approach to a confrontation that appears to have dragged the two Koreas closer to war.
Pyongyang's on-off negotiations saw it take part in nuclear disarmament talks for five years aimed at paying it off in return for abandoning its atomic weapons program. Those talks fell apart in 2008. Some experts say the talks gave the North grounds to pursue a highly enriched uranium program that took it closer to owning a working arsenal.
Songun is the Korean word for the "Military First" policy preached by Kim's father who used it to justify the use of the impoverished state's scare resources to build a 1.2-million strong army and a weapons of mass destruction program.
CALLS FOR RESTRAINT
White House National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said North Korea's announcement that it was in a state of war followed a "familiar pattern" of rhetoric.
China has repeatedly called for restraint on the peninsula.
However, many in South Korea have regarded the North's willingness to keep open the Kaesong industrial zone, located just a few miles (km) north of the heavily-militarized border and operated jointly by both sides, as a sign that Pyongyang will not risk losing a lucrative source of foreign currency.
Closure could also trap hundreds of South Korean workers and managers of the more than 100 firms that have factories there.
(Additional reporting by Paul Eckert in WASHINGTON; Editing by David Chance, Raju Gopalakrishnan, Ian Geoghegan and Ron Popeski)
Although sildenafil is best known for promoting erections, it may also serve as a weight loss aid by coaxing our bodies to store more healthy "brown fat" relative to unhealthy "white fat" than it would otherwise do on its own. According to new research published online in The FASEB Journal, this is because sildenafil inhibits the breakdown of cyclic GMP, which has been well known as a messenger molecule used by the body to control blood pressure and flow, and has now been shown to play an important role determining which type of fat?white or brown?the body stores.
"There is a growing need for novel treatments against obesity," said Alexander Pfeifer, M.D., Ph.D., a researcher involved in the work from the Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology at the University of Bonn, Biomedical Center in Bonn, Germany. "Finding new positive effects of existing drugs, such as sildenafil, in adipose tissue might help to bridge the period until novel drugs against obesity have been developed."
To make this discovery, Pfeifer and colleagues used mice to show that cyclic GMP reduced the secretion of pro-inflammatory hormones, which, in turn, shifted the "color code" of fat from white to brown. Mice treated with sildenafil showed browning of the white fat after just a few days of treatment, which is believed to be the result of high cyclic GMP levels. Then the researchers used isolated fat cells and treated the cells directly with cyclic GMP and identified a "browning" effect as well.
"Clearly, size matters when it comes to our weight," said Gerald Weissmann, M.D., Editor-in-Chief of The FASEB Journal. "Numerous studies show that obesity is a risk factor for virtually every human disease, and that obesity is epidemic. The finding that Viagra? and similar drugs can change our body fat composition has major implications. These drugs have well defined risk/benefit profiles and are approved for the treatment of erectile disorders. Further research will determine whether they are useful in the treatment of human girth disorders."
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Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology: http://www.faseb.org
Thanks to Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology for this article.
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