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Thursday, October 24, 2013

NASA sees rainfall in Tropical Storm Francisco

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

24-Oct-2013

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Contact: Rob Gutro
robert.j.gutro@nasa.gov
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center

NASA's TRMM satellite flew above the center of Tropical Storm Francisco in the western North Pacific Ocean early on Oct. 24 and data was used to create a 3-D image of the storm's structure.

Tropical Storm Francisco came into the view of the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission or TRMM satellite at 0919 UTC/5:19 a.m. EDT. Francisco is somewhat close to Super-typhoon Lekima, also in the northwestern Pacific Ocean. Lekima was located southeast of Tropical Storm Francisco over the open waters of the Pacific.

At NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. the data TRMM gathered was used to create imagery of the storm. Precipitation data from TRMM's Microwave Imager (TMI) and Precipitation Radar (PR) instruments were overlaid on infrared images from TRMM's Visible and InfraRed Scanner (VIRS).

TRMM data showed a difference between Lekima and Francisco. TRMM's PR data revealed that Lekima had a small well defined eye at the center of the super typhoon with another concentric outer replacement eye wall. Rain was falling at a rate of over 130mm/~5.2 inches per hour in the powerful storms in Lekima's outer eye wall. Francisco was also a super typhoon on Oct. 20, 2013 but had greatly weakened by the time of the latest TRMM pass. Francisco now had a very large area in the center of the storm that was rain free. Lekima was the fourth super typhoon in the western Pacific this year with wind speeds estimated to be over 130 knots/~150 mph.

Radar reflectivity data from TRMM's PR instrument were used to create 3-D images that showed differences between super typhoon Lekima and tropical storm Francisco. TRMM is managed by both NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.

On Oct. 24 at 1500 UTC/11 a.m. EDT, Francisco's maximum sustained winds were near 60 knots/69 mph/111 kph. Francisco was centered near 26.9 north and 130.8 east, about 134 nautical miles east of Kadena Air Base, Okinawa, Japan. Francisco was moving to the northeast at 7 knots/8 mph/12.9 kph and away from the island.

Francisco is being pushed to the northeast by mid-latitude westerly winds, which are also affect Super-typhoon Lekima behind it. The tropical storm appears elongated on satellite imagery today showing the effect that the westerlies are having on it. Francisco is expected to continue on a northeast track paralleling eastern Japan, but staying out to sea.

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NASA sees rainfall in Tropical Storm Francisco

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

24-Oct-2013

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Contact: Rob Gutro
robert.j.gutro@nasa.gov
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center

NASA's TRMM satellite flew above the center of Tropical Storm Francisco in the western North Pacific Ocean early on Oct. 24 and data was used to create a 3-D image of the storm's structure.

Tropical Storm Francisco came into the view of the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission or TRMM satellite at 0919 UTC/5:19 a.m. EDT. Francisco is somewhat close to Super-typhoon Lekima, also in the northwestern Pacific Ocean. Lekima was located southeast of Tropical Storm Francisco over the open waters of the Pacific.

At NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. the data TRMM gathered was used to create imagery of the storm. Precipitation data from TRMM's Microwave Imager (TMI) and Precipitation Radar (PR) instruments were overlaid on infrared images from TRMM's Visible and InfraRed Scanner (VIRS).

TRMM data showed a difference between Lekima and Francisco. TRMM's PR data revealed that Lekima had a small well defined eye at the center of the super typhoon with another concentric outer replacement eye wall. Rain was falling at a rate of over 130mm/~5.2 inches per hour in the powerful storms in Lekima's outer eye wall. Francisco was also a super typhoon on Oct. 20, 2013 but had greatly weakened by the time of the latest TRMM pass. Francisco now had a very large area in the center of the storm that was rain free. Lekima was the fourth super typhoon in the western Pacific this year with wind speeds estimated to be over 130 knots/~150 mph.

Radar reflectivity data from TRMM's PR instrument were used to create 3-D images that showed differences between super typhoon Lekima and tropical storm Francisco. TRMM is managed by both NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.

On Oct. 24 at 1500 UTC/11 a.m. EDT, Francisco's maximum sustained winds were near 60 knots/69 mph/111 kph. Francisco was centered near 26.9 north and 130.8 east, about 134 nautical miles east of Kadena Air Base, Okinawa, Japan. Francisco was moving to the northeast at 7 knots/8 mph/12.9 kph and away from the island.

Francisco is being pushed to the northeast by mid-latitude westerly winds, which are also affect Super-typhoon Lekima behind it. The tropical storm appears elongated on satellite imagery today showing the effect that the westerlies are having on it. Francisco is expected to continue on a northeast track paralleling eastern Japan, but staying out to sea.

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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.

Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-10/nsfc-nsr102413.php
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Obamacare contractor says Healthcare.gov is being fixed

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Obamacare's problem-plagued website Healthcare.gov will be fixed in time to allow people to enroll in private health insurance by a December 15 deadline to obtain benefits beginning on January 1, the main Obamacare contractor CGI Federal told a congressional panel.

Executives representing CGI and another technology contractor, UnitedHealth Group unit Quality Software Services Inc. (QSSI), said they made no recommendation to U.S. officials on whether the site should open for enrollment on October 1. But QSSI told lawmakers that it kept the Obama administration apprised of risks throughout development.

(Reporting by David Morgan and Susan Cornwell; Editing by Vicki Allen)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/obamacare-contractor-says-healthcare-gov-being-fixed-142354903--business.html
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The Obamacare Tech Mess? It's A Familiar Government Story

In this Oct. 11 computer frame grab, a HealthCare.gov website message is displayed.

Uncredited/AP

In this Oct. 11 computer frame grab, a HealthCare.gov website message is displayed.

Uncredited/AP

By this point, it's all but a universally acknowledged truth that the launch of the HealthCare.gov website has been a failure.

That's bad news for President Obama and his health care law. But it's not exceptional when it comes to big government software programs and platforms.

Earlier this year, California ended a contract to modernize its payroll system, an effort that had eaten up 10 years and $250 million and gotten essentially nowhere. Colorado has had a number of high-profile embarrassments when upgrades to its revenue systems caused residents tax refund and car title problems, while Florida legislators last year scuttled a $70 million attempt to unify the state's email systems.

In fact, governments at every level — but particularly states and the feds — have suffered expensive, embarrassing flops when it came time to roll out new information technology (IT) projects.

"The bigger the system, the harder it is, because there are more variables," says Steve Kolodney, a former chief information officer for the state of Washington.

It isn't just size.

Private sector companies generate plenty of software flops, too. But the way governments typically manage computer projects — with diffuse authority, penny pinching and a deadly combination of delays and rigid deadlines — they're especially prone to producing disappointment.

No One Really In Charge

It doesn't seem like there should be any great trick to designing new systems. We've all become accustomed to using our computers or phones to easily order new barbecue sets along with a dozen out-of-print books, or to stream old sitcoms all weekend.

So why is it such a trick for government to get people signed up for health insurance, or make appointments at the Department of Motor Vehicles?

There are a bunch of reasons. The first problem is that top-ranking government officials often expect these things to be easy. They come up with some application they want started up and then expect the IT guys and their vendors to make it happen.

It's like having no knowledge of what goes on under the hood, and then pulling into the dealership and asking them to design an entirely new car.

"They proudly announce that they don't understand the technology — 'my 14-year-old knows more than I do,' which is a moronic statement," says Gopal Kapur, founder of the Center for Project Management in California.

Legislators and agency heads may not know anything about lines of code, but that doesn't keep them from second-guessing the tech folks. They tend to view IT as a drain on resources and wonder why they have to keep buying new versions of software to keep up.

When it comes to government projects, Kapur says, people know they have to spend money in a given year, because funding may dry up the following year. Planning for upgrades over, say, a three-year period just doesn't happen the way it should.

"Companies don't fall apart because a new CEO comes," he says. "If you go to a state, nobody does anything for a year before the governor's going to change, and then the year after nobody does anything because they don't know what the governor wants."

Keeping Up With The Times

Big government projects can take years to build, which means the world of technology will have changed dramatically since a given project began.

There's just been a new iPad released, for instance, but think about how important tablets have become in just the past few years. You wouldn't want to design a user interface today that didn't take into account mobile computing.

But governments typically don't budget for the need to overhaul entire project designs along the way. And, because of strict procurement rules, the IT staff may not be able to buy new products it needs, sometimes for more than a year at a stretch.

Meanwhile, policymakers keep asking for new features. There may be changes in law that have to be incorporated within a website. The budget deal that reopened the government this month, for instance, included stricter income verification requirements for people signing up for coverage under the health care law.

That's not why HealthCare.gov isn't working, but things like that happen all the time. It's as if a developer had to start construction of an office tower using an incomplete set of blueprints and then was told at the last minute to add another elevator shaft and a couple of bathrooms per floor.

Some people in the IT world like to argue it's never the technology that's at fault, it's the management.

"Good governance, not superior technical chops or ready access to alpha geeks, is how you build complex systems that deliver reliable and resilient value for money," Michael Schrage, a research fellow at the MIT Center for Digital Business, wrote in a Harvard Business Review blog post Tuesday.

Getting Ready In Time

There's no end to software snafus in the private sector. A filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission just last week outlined how a software bug led trading firm Knight Capital to lose $172,000 a second for 45 minutes.

Still, governments demand perfection in a way that private companies generally do not. Obama compared the health care website's problems to Apple, and that company's problems with its maps app show how even the best-run brands can run into trouble.

A better comparison might have been with Google, however, which releases beta versions of programs it knows will have bugs. That company relies on crowdsourcing to find and help fix any issues.

"That's not the model in government," says Doug Robinson, executive director of the National Association of State Chief Information Officers, or NASCIO.

"In government, you want to release something that's absolutely rock-solid perfect the day you release it to the market," Robinson says. "That might not be possible."

Knowing a big release date is coming — say, Oct. 1 for the exchanges at HealthCare.gov to go live — doesn't lead to new levels of quality control. Instead, problems are patched and may be overlooked by agency heads or other managers who just want to get the thing up and running.

A new website might have all the latest and zippiest features, but if it's having to talk to antiquated systems — as is often the case with back-end government operations, which offer differ wildly by agency — it still may not work.

"States certainly have had their fair share of projects that have failed or at least underperformed after tens or hundreds of millions have been spent," Robinson says.

Check The Vital Signs

To combat some of these problems, states such as California and Indiana are now making public what they call the "vital signs" of every major project, allowing politicians and the public to keep track of how every aspect of development is proceeding along the way.

It's like when the police release details about a case, but not necessarily every scrap such as the name of the victim, says Kapur, in hopes the public can offer information that might help the case.

The government itself, however, is ultimately responsible. That's why it was important that the president himself came out on Monday and took his lumps about HealthCare.gov's failures, Kapur says.

Often, it's the IT people who are forced to face the cameras. They have to explain why things aren't working, but typically lack the power to make changes that can turn a project around.

"They can find the problems and report the problems, but they don't have the political or administrative authority to change what is causing the problems," Kapur says.

Source: http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2013/10/24/240247394/the-obamacare-tech-mess-its-a-familiar-government-story?ft=1&f=1001
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8 states vow 3.3M zero-emission vehicles by 2025

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The governors of eight states including California and New York pledged Thursday to get 3.3 million zero-emission vehicles on roadways by 2025 in an effort to curb greenhouse gas pollution.

Representatives from all eight states were scheduled to gather in Sacramento at 8:30 a.m. to sign a memorandum of understanding that would increase infrastructure and make other changes to help increase market share for electric cars, hydrogen fuel-cell electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids. By 2015, there are expected to be more than 200,000 zero emissions vehicles on the road.

"This agreement is a major step forward to reducing the emissions that are causing our climate to change and unleashing the extreme weather that we are experiencing with increased frequency," New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said in a statement.

The other states involved are Massachusetts, Maryland, Oregon, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Vermont. The eight states together represent about 23 percent of the U.S. auto market.

Each state has already, separately adopted rules to require a percentage of new vehicles sold to be zero emission by 2025. California's mandate alone of 15.4 percent calls for a total of 1.5 million zero-emission vehicles to be on the state's roads by that time.

It's a steep curve. In California, plug-in-hybrids and electric vehicles currently make up less than 2 percent of the auto market.

Under terms of the memorandum, the states will first establish a taskforce to share ideas that will help expand the network of charging and fueling stations needed to make electric and hydrogen-fueled vehicles more attractive to consumers.

"The idea is to broaden the pool of people talking about this and working their way through the challenges that come up in setting up this kind of infrastructure, and growing this kind of a market," said Dave Clegern, a spokesman for California's Air Resources Board, which regulates auto emissions.

There are now 16 zero-emission vehicles from eight manufacturers on the market; nine that run on batteries alone, two hydrogen fuel cell cars and five plug-in hybrid models, which can run on battery alone or gasoline.

Officials say that every automaker will have a zero-emission model by 2015.

Car dealers, who are under pressure to help meet these 2025 goals, say getting fueling infrastructure like charging stations in place quickly is the only way to get average consumers used to a new product that requires new driving habits.

"We think that is going to be necessary for some of the range anxiety and other acceptance barriers that need to be broken down," said Brian Maas, president of the California New Car Dealers Association.

"The cars are coming - they're here already - but if you don't have a place to charge them, there's not going to be the level of consumer acceptance."

Governors signing the memorandum all hailed the cooperative effort as a way to more quickly solve the inevitable problems that arise when making such far-reaching changes in people's everyday lives.

And some see future economic benefits from the switch to new vehicles.

Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick said more electric vehicles are key to his state's efforts grow the region's economy.

"Diversifying transportation fuels and providing drivers with options will help reduce vulnerability to price swings in imported oil that hurt consumers and our economy," Patrick said in a statement.

___

Jason Dearen can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/JHDearen

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/8-states-vow-3-3m-zero-emission-vehicles-150331894.html
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China, India sign border cooperation agreement

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, second right, talks with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang during a meeting at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China Wednesday, Oct. 23, 2013. (AP Photo/Peng Sun, Pool)

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, second left, talks with India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh during a meeting at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China Wednesday, Oct. 23, 2013. (AP Photo/Peng Sun, Pool)

BEIJING (AP) — China and India signed a confidence-building accord Wednesday to cooperate on border defense following a standoff between armed forces of the two Asian giants in disputed Himalayan territory earlier this year.

The agreement followed a meeting in Beijing between Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and visiting Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who also had trade ties on the agenda as India seeks to gain greater access to Chinese markets and attract inbound Chinese investment.

At present trade between the two sides is heavily skewed in China's favor. With growing economies and a combined population of 2.5 billion, the two neighbors have set a target of $100 billion in bilateral trade by 2015, up from $61.5 billion last year.

The meeting Wednesday will "inject new momentum and vitality into the China-India relationship," Li said.

Relations between the nations are overshadowed by a half-century-old border dispute over which they fought a brief but bloody war in 1962. More than a dozen rounds of talks have failed to resolve the issue, and the two sides had a three-week standoff at their frontier earlier this year.

India alleged that Chinese soldiers launched incursions across the Line of Actual Control at the Himalayan frontier between the sides, though China denied setting foot anywhere but on Chinese territory.

The cooperation accord signed Wednesday is aimed at averting such incidents.

"I am sure it will help to maintain peace, tranquility and stability in our border areas," Li said following the signing at a news conference, at which no questions from reporters were allowed.

China claims around 90,000 square kilometers (35,000 square miles) of land in India's northeastern state of Arunachal Pradesh, while India says China is occupying 38,000 square kilometers (15,000 square miles) of territory on the Aksai Chin plateau in the western Himalayas.

Associated PressSource: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2013-10-23-China-India/id-08a894f6b14b4017953c99bfee277f2f
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Watch These Water Drops Levitate and Form Spinning, Pulsating Stars

If you play around with an ultrasound field for long enough, you can set up standing waves that allow you to levitate water drops in mid-air—but that's only where the fun starts.

Yahoo to close Cairo office by year end

Yahoo has decided to shut down its office in Cairo, Egypt by the end of this year as the company tries to revitalize its business.

The Internet company said the Middle East and Africa region remains an important market for it, and it will continue to serve users and advertisers, including in Egypt, from its operations in Amman and Dubai.

The company did not disclose the number of employees who would lose their jobs in Cairo. "All of our Cairo employees will be treated with respect and fairness through this transition, and we are offering separation packages to all employees which exceed local law requirements," Yahoo's spokeswoman Sara Gorman said via email.

The decision by Yahoo to shutter its Cairo office is said to be part of the company's global effort "to streamline operations, encourage collaboration by bringing more Yahoos together in fewer locations, and build a strong global business that is set up for long-term growth."

Yahoo, which is going through a major refocusing, including a string of acquisitions and a recent change of logo, said in October last year it planned to shut down its struggling business in South Korea by the end of the year to focus its resources. The Internet company had been struggling in South Korea against large local players such as NHN's Naver and Daum Communications.

Yahoo runs the Yahoo Maktoob portal in the region, an offshoot of the 2009 acquisition of Arabic Internet services company Maktoob.com.

John Ribeiro, IDG News Service , IDG News Service

John Ribeiro covers outsourcing and general technology breaking news from India for The IDG News Service.
More by John Ribeiro, IDG News Service

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