When Google Maps can deliver detailed views of the world with imagery that zooms right down to our backyards, they're can't be much demand for desk globes anymore. So a Japanese company called Gakken has taken its Worldeye globe to another level by turning it into a display that can show everything from weather patterns to stars.
BEIRUT (AP) — Nine Shiite pilgrims from Lebanon kidnapped in Syria were freed late Friday night as part of a negotiated hostage deal that could see two Turkish pilots held by Lebanese militants released, officials said.
The complicated three-way deal also potentially includes the release of female prisoners now held by the embattled government of Syrian President Bashar Assad. While details about the deal remained murky, it appeared to represent one of the more ambitious negotiated settlements to come out of Syria's civil war, now entering its third year and being fought by forces tearing apart the region and largely opposed to any bartered peace.
The pilgrims were part of a group of 11 hostages taken by a rebel faction in northern Syria in May 2012. Two were later released, but the nine had been held since, causing friction in the region and sparking the August kidnapping in Beirut that saw two Turkish Airlines pilots abducted.
Lebanese Interior Minister Marwan Charbel told The Associated Press that the nine Lebanese hostages "are now in Turkish territories." Charbel said he expects two Turkish pilots to be released in Lebanon soon and the Syrian government will release a number of female detainees.
"We insist that those who kidnapped the Turks release them," Charbel said, referring to the pilots. The two pilots appeared in a video on Wednesday, the first since they were kidnapped.
"This is all part of one deal," Charbel said by telephone.
Asked when he expects the freed Lebanese to come home, he said "in the coming 24 to 48 hours."
In Turkey, the state-run Anadolu Agency quoted Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu as saying "there are positive developments" concerning the hostages and that the issue had "mostly been resolved." The agency did not immediately provide any further details, though a previous story said Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan called the wife of one of the kidnapped pilots to say the two would be released soon.
"We are very close to reaching a happy ending, this could happen any time," the agency quoted Erdogan as saying.
The pilgrims were kidnapped in May 2012 while on their way from Iran to Lebanon through Turkey and Syria. Militants kidnapped them shortly after they crossed the Turkish border into Syria. Two of the pilgrims were later released with Turkey's assistance.
In Beirut's southern suburbs, the families of the nine Lebanese gathered Friday night at a travel agency that they went to Iran with, some of them weeping.
The two Turkish Airlines pilots, previously identified as Murat Akpinar and Murat Agca, were kidnapped after flying into Beirut from Istanbul on Aug. 9. Lebanon's state news agency reported that a group called Zuwaar al-Imam Rida claimed responsibility for the kidnapping. The group said the pilots "will only be released when the Lebanese hostages in Syria return," referring to the Shiite pilgrims.
The commander of the rebel brigade that kidnapped the pilgrims, Ammar al-Dadikhi, told the AP last September that he was holding them captive to try to force Lebanon's Shiite militant group Hezbollah to stop supporting Assad's government.
Syria's rebels are predominantly Sunnis, and are widely supported by Lebanon's own Sunni community. Hezbollah fighters have played a critical role in recent battlefield victories for forces loyal to Assad.
Details about the negotiated deal remained vague Friday night, including who was responsible for coordinating across different factions in the Syrian civil war. Satellite news channel Al-Jazeera quoted Qatar's Foreign Minister Khalid bin Mohamed al-Attiyah as saying the tiny Gulf nation negotiated the release of the nine pilgrims.
It also remained unclear what female prisoners the Syrian government would release under any potential deal. Syrian officials could not be immediately reached for comment Friday night.
At least 100,000 Syrians have been killed in the country's civil war, now in its third year. While world powers recently helped negotiate a deal for Syria's stockpile of chemical weapons to be itemized and destroyed, bringing the government and rebel factions to peace talks remains difficult. Syria's government this week floated Nov. 23-24 as possible dates for talks on a political solution to the conflict, though there was no agreement on the ground rules for negotiations and the main Western-backed opposition hasn't decided whether to attend.
Meanwhile, the war continues. Regime forces and Syrian rebels fighting for control of the small but strategic town of Tal Aran in the country's embattled northern province of Aleppo have killed at least 20 people, most of them civilians, activists said Friday. Meanwhile, rebels killed at least 30 Syrian soldiers, including ten who were executed after they were captured, said the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
___
Associated Press writers Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey, Jon Gambrell in Cairo and Diaa Hadid in Beirut contributed to this report.
Contact: Vanessa Wood wood@iis.ee.ethz.ch 41-446-326-654 ETH Zurich
Lithium-ion batteries are in our cellphones, laptops, and digital cameras. Few portable electronic devices exist that do not rely on these energy sources. Currently battery electrodes contain active materials known as intercalation compounds. These materials store charge in their chemical structure without undergoing substantial structural change. That makes these batteries comparatively long-lived and safe. However, intercalation materials have one drawback: their limited energy density, the amount of energy they can store per volume and mass.
In the search for higher energy density batteries, scientists have experimented for more than 20 years with materials capable of repetitively alloying and de-alloying with lithium. Laboratory-scale experiments have shown that batteries with such materials have energy densities multiple times that of intercalation materials; however, these alloying materials are not yet exploited in industry because their lifetime is limited. Martin Ebner, Ph.D. student at the Laboratory for Nanoelectronics in the Department of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering (D-ITET) explains: "their capacity typically fades after a couple of charging and discharging cycles." This is attributed to a massive up to threefold expansion of the electrode material during charging. During discharge, the materials contract again, but do not reach their original state. Electrode particles break apart, the electrode structure disintegrates, and the fragments loose contact to the rest of the cell.
Batteries x-rayed during operation
To better understand this complex electrochemical and mechanical degradation of the electrode and to gain insight into how to develop better batteries, Martin Ebner and ETH-Professor Vanessa Wood, head of the Laboratory for Nanoelectronics at D-ITET, recognized the need to study a battery electrode non-invasively during operation. To do so, they turned to an imaging tool developed by ETH-Professor Marco Stampanoni. Professsor Stampanoni, holds a faculty position at the Institute for Biomedical Engineering at D-ITET and runs the tomographic x-ray microscopy beamline at the Swiss Light Source, the synchrotron facility at the Paul Scherrer Institute. The spectrally pure and intense synchrotron x-ray radiation enables the fast acquisition of high-resolution x-ray images that can be computationally assembled into three-dimensional movies.
The researchers observed the inside of the battery as it charged and discharged over 15 hours. They gathered unique, three-dimensional movies that capture the degradation mechanisms occurring in the battery and quantified the processes occurring within every particle for the thousands of particles in the electrode. The results of this study will be published in the journal Science; a pre-print version is available online at Science Express.
Irreversible structural changes
The data illustrate that tin oxide (SnO) particles expand during charging due to the influx of lithium ions causing an increase in particle volume. The scientists demonstrate that material lithiation happens as a core-shell process, progressing uniformly from the particle surface to the core. The material undergoing this reaction expands linearly with the stored charge. The x-ray images show that charging destroys the particle structure irreversibly with cracks forming within the particles. "This crack-formation is not random," emphasizes Ebner. Cracks grow at locations where the crystal lattice contains preexisting defects. During discharge, the particle volume decreases; however, the material does not reach its original state again; the process is therefore not completely reversible.
The volume change of the individual particles drives expansion of the entire electrode from 50 micrometers to 120 micrometers. However, during discharge, the electrode contracts only to 80 micrometers. This permanent deformation of the electrode demonstrates that the polymer binder that holds the electrode together is not yet optimized for high volume expansion materials. This is critical for battery performance because deformation of the binder causes individual particles to become disconnected from the electrode and the battery looses capacity.
In addition to demonstrating that x-ray tomographic microscopy provides insight into morphological changes in the particles and electrodes, the researchers show that this technique can also be used to obtain quantitative and spatially resolved chemical information. For example, the researchers analyze chemical composition throughout the battery electrode to look at differences in lithiation dynamics at the single particle level and compare this to the average particle behavior. This approach is essential to understanding the influence of particle size, shape, and electrode homogeneity on battery performance.
Such insights into the operation of a battery would not be possible without the highly advanced x-ray tomography setup at the Swiss Light Source. "Visualizing batteries in operation was essentially impossible until recent advances in x-ray tomography. Thanks to the world class facilities developed by Professor Stampanoni and his team, we can watch the battery at work," adds Wood enthusiastically.
Alternatives to crystalline materials
The researchers chose crystalline tin oxide as a model material because it undergoes a series of complex transformations also present in other materials, enabling deeper understanding into the behavior of a variety of battery materials. The insights provide the basis for developing new electrode materials and electrode structures that are tolerant to volume expansion. For Prof. Wood the results of this work indicate the benefit of using amorphous or nanostructured materials instead of crystalline ones. "On the quest for new materials, one must also bear in mind that they are only of industrial interest if they can be produced in large quantities at a low cost. However, amorphous and nanostructured materials offer a sufficient playground for innovation." emphasizes Wood.
###
Reference
Ebner M, Marone F, Stampanoni M, Wood V. Visualization and quantification of electrochemical and mechanical degradation in Lithium ion batteries. Science Express, published online 17th October 2013.
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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.
Why lithium-ion-batteries fail
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
17-Oct-2013
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Contact: Vanessa Wood wood@iis.ee.ethz.ch 41-446-326-654 ETH Zurich
Lithium-ion batteries are in our cellphones, laptops, and digital cameras. Few portable electronic devices exist that do not rely on these energy sources. Currently battery electrodes contain active materials known as intercalation compounds. These materials store charge in their chemical structure without undergoing substantial structural change. That makes these batteries comparatively long-lived and safe. However, intercalation materials have one drawback: their limited energy density, the amount of energy they can store per volume and mass.
In the search for higher energy density batteries, scientists have experimented for more than 20 years with materials capable of repetitively alloying and de-alloying with lithium. Laboratory-scale experiments have shown that batteries with such materials have energy densities multiple times that of intercalation materials; however, these alloying materials are not yet exploited in industry because their lifetime is limited. Martin Ebner, Ph.D. student at the Laboratory for Nanoelectronics in the Department of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering (D-ITET) explains: "their capacity typically fades after a couple of charging and discharging cycles." This is attributed to a massive up to threefold expansion of the electrode material during charging. During discharge, the materials contract again, but do not reach their original state. Electrode particles break apart, the electrode structure disintegrates, and the fragments loose contact to the rest of the cell.
Batteries x-rayed during operation
To better understand this complex electrochemical and mechanical degradation of the electrode and to gain insight into how to develop better batteries, Martin Ebner and ETH-Professor Vanessa Wood, head of the Laboratory for Nanoelectronics at D-ITET, recognized the need to study a battery electrode non-invasively during operation. To do so, they turned to an imaging tool developed by ETH-Professor Marco Stampanoni. Professsor Stampanoni, holds a faculty position at the Institute for Biomedical Engineering at D-ITET and runs the tomographic x-ray microscopy beamline at the Swiss Light Source, the synchrotron facility at the Paul Scherrer Institute. The spectrally pure and intense synchrotron x-ray radiation enables the fast acquisition of high-resolution x-ray images that can be computationally assembled into three-dimensional movies.
The researchers observed the inside of the battery as it charged and discharged over 15 hours. They gathered unique, three-dimensional movies that capture the degradation mechanisms occurring in the battery and quantified the processes occurring within every particle for the thousands of particles in the electrode. The results of this study will be published in the journal Science; a pre-print version is available online at Science Express.
Irreversible structural changes
The data illustrate that tin oxide (SnO) particles expand during charging due to the influx of lithium ions causing an increase in particle volume. The scientists demonstrate that material lithiation happens as a core-shell process, progressing uniformly from the particle surface to the core. The material undergoing this reaction expands linearly with the stored charge. The x-ray images show that charging destroys the particle structure irreversibly with cracks forming within the particles. "This crack-formation is not random," emphasizes Ebner. Cracks grow at locations where the crystal lattice contains preexisting defects. During discharge, the particle volume decreases; however, the material does not reach its original state again; the process is therefore not completely reversible.
The volume change of the individual particles drives expansion of the entire electrode from 50 micrometers to 120 micrometers. However, during discharge, the electrode contracts only to 80 micrometers. This permanent deformation of the electrode demonstrates that the polymer binder that holds the electrode together is not yet optimized for high volume expansion materials. This is critical for battery performance because deformation of the binder causes individual particles to become disconnected from the electrode and the battery looses capacity.
In addition to demonstrating that x-ray tomographic microscopy provides insight into morphological changes in the particles and electrodes, the researchers show that this technique can also be used to obtain quantitative and spatially resolved chemical information. For example, the researchers analyze chemical composition throughout the battery electrode to look at differences in lithiation dynamics at the single particle level and compare this to the average particle behavior. This approach is essential to understanding the influence of particle size, shape, and electrode homogeneity on battery performance.
Such insights into the operation of a battery would not be possible without the highly advanced x-ray tomography setup at the Swiss Light Source. "Visualizing batteries in operation was essentially impossible until recent advances in x-ray tomography. Thanks to the world class facilities developed by Professor Stampanoni and his team, we can watch the battery at work," adds Wood enthusiastically.
Alternatives to crystalline materials
The researchers chose crystalline tin oxide as a model material because it undergoes a series of complex transformations also present in other materials, enabling deeper understanding into the behavior of a variety of battery materials. The insights provide the basis for developing new electrode materials and electrode structures that are tolerant to volume expansion. For Prof. Wood the results of this work indicate the benefit of using amorphous or nanostructured materials instead of crystalline ones. "On the quest for new materials, one must also bear in mind that they are only of industrial interest if they can be produced in large quantities at a low cost. However, amorphous and nanostructured materials offer a sufficient playground for innovation." emphasizes Wood.
###
Reference
Ebner M, Marone F, Stampanoni M, Wood V. Visualization and quantification of electrochemical and mechanical degradation in Lithium ion batteries. Science Express, published online 17th October 2013.
[
| 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.
Did you a buy a new Nexus 7 and think to yourself, "Self, I'd really like Google to make a cover for this thing?" Well, consider your (not very lofty) dreams realized, because Google's done just that by offering smart cases for its refreshed tablet via the Play store. The molded microsuede cases come in four colors and do just what you'd expect them to do: protect your purchase and help it stand on its own. The covers are going for $50 each and can be pre-ordered now (ships tomorrow, the 9th) at the link below.
EzineArticles Computers-and-Technology:Personal-Tech Alerts EzineArticles AlertsComputers-and-Technology:Personal-Tech New EzineArticles Posted In The Last 24 Hours: How Can I Speed Up My Internet Streaming? By: John A Courtenay In the last few years, the amount of people using the Internet for streaming has dramatically increased, and more often than not, especially on slower ... Easy Tips to De-Clutter Your Inbox By: Alicia Portman There are times when you look at your e-mail inbox and discover hordes of e-mail messages lying in your inbox. There are many messages that ... Discover more Computers-and-Technology:Personal-Tech Articles here:http://EzineArticles.com/?cat=Computers-and-Technology:Personal-Tech This email alert is a service of EzineArticles.com. Should you no longer wish to receive these messages please go here to unsubscribe or send an email to: leave-9317431-7330762.ced0ff69b8fbebc8b41e3bf7f020b6b9@lists.permissionbasedemail.com To ensure delivery of this email alert to your inbox and to enable images to load in future mailings, please add alerts@ezinearticles.com to your e-mail address book or safe senders list. New Alerts | Manage Your Alerts | EzineArticles.com Postal address: EzineArticles.com, PO Box 12740 Green Bay WI 54307 USA (C) Copyright 1999-2013 EzineArticles.com. All Rights Reserved. To view our Privacy Policy click here.
Susan Cooper (left), of Richardson, Texas, sits with her husband, Jack, 93, as they demonstrate against the government shutdown in Dallas in early October.
Tony Gutierrez/AP
Susan Cooper (left), of Richardson, Texas, sits with her husband, Jack, 93, as they demonstrate against the government shutdown in Dallas in early October.
Tony Gutierrez/AP
Remember how that fight over the budget was all about Obamacare?
Seems like ancient history now, but House Republicans ostensibly shut down the government 17 days ago, demanding first a defunding, and, when that failed, a year's delay in the health law.
When it became clear that President Obama and Senate Democrats weren't going to yield to demands to stop or slow implementation of the administration's signature legislative achievement, Republicans looked for smaller changes.
They floated the idea of killing or delaying an unpopular tax on medical devices. Many Senate Democrats joined Republicans in a nonbinding vote of displeasure on the tax earlier this year.
None of those things ended up in the final bill that reopened the federal government and raised the debt ceiling Wednesday night.
So what did?
Well, there was a little language related to the health law. It requires that the Secretary of Health and Human Services "certify to the Congress that the Exchanges verify" that individuals who get subsidies for premiums and cost-sharing are, in fact, eligible. And that the secretary "shall submit a report to the Congress that details the procedures employed by the American Health Benefit Exchanges to verify eligibility for credit and cost-sharing."
Sounds like a big deal? Not really. It so happens that the much-maligned "data hub" that's part of the health exchange already links to the IRS to verify income eligibility. So, basically, the law requires HHS Secretary Sebelius to write a letter explaining what the department is already doing.
But it's not just that the Republicans failed to make any changes to the health law in their 16-day tirade against the government. News coverage of the shutdown and potential default crowded out stories about the very rocky rollout of the health exchanges themselves.
As The Washington Post's Ezra Klein tweeted Wednesday:
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