Florida State's future star

June, 19, 2013

Jun 19

5:00

PM ET

The theme this week at ESPN.com has been looking at the future, trying to predict which teams will be the best in the country three years from now.

On Tuesday, we revealed the College Football Future Power Rankings, and the methodology used to predict them. In the latest ESPNU College Football Podcast, colleagues Ivan Maisel and Travis Haney broke down the ranking, and guru Phil Steele joined the show to help preview the season.

It's impossible to predict a team's future success, though, without knowing a little bit about the recruiting, and expert Tom Luginbill today identified 10 future stars -- including one from Florida State. Check it out to see who might be a rising star on the Noles' D.

• ESPN.com ACC blogger
• Joined ESPN.com in 2007
• Wrote for The Baltimore Sun

Source: http://espn.go.com/blog/acc/post/_/id/56736/fsus-future-star

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Cassini probe to take photo of Earth from deep space

June 18, 2013 ? NASA's Cassini spacecraft, now exploring Saturn, will take a picture of our home planet from a distance of hundreds of millions of miles on July 19. NASA is inviting the public to help acknowledge the historic interplanetary portrait as it is being taken.

Earth will appear as a small, pale blue dot between the rings of Saturn in the image, which will be part of a mosaic, or multi-image portrait, of the Saturn system Cassini is composing.

"While Earth will be only about a pixel in size from Cassini's vantage point 898 million [1.44 billion kilometers] away, the team is looking forward to giving the world a chance to see what their home looks like from Saturn," said Linda Spilker, Cassini project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "We hope you'll join us in waving at Saturn from Earth, so we can commemorate this special opportunity."

Cassini will start obtaining the Earth part of the mosaic at 2:27 p.m. PDT (5:27 p.m. EDT or 21:27 UTC) and end about 15 minutes later, all while Saturn is eclipsing the sun from Cassini's point of view. The spacecraft's unique vantage point in Saturn's shadow will provide a special scientific opportunity to look at the planet's rings. At the time of the photo, North America and part of the Atlantic Ocean will be in sunlight.

Unlike two previous Cassini eclipse mosaics of the Saturn system in 2006, which captured Earth, and another in 2012, the July 19 image will be the first to capture the Saturn system with Earth in natural color, as human eyes would see it. It also will be the first to capture Earth and its moon with Cassini's highest-resolution camera. The probe's position will allow it to turn its cameras in the direction of the sun, where Earth will be, without damaging the spacecraft's sensitive detectors.

"Ever since we caught sight of the Earth among the rings of Saturn in September 2006 in a mosaic that has become one of Cassini's most beloved images, I have wanted to do it all over again, only better," said Carolyn Porco, Cassini imaging team lead at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo. "This time, I wanted to turn the entire event into an opportunity for everyone around the globe to savor the uniqueness of our planet and the preciousness of the life on it."

Porco and her imaging team associates examined Cassini's planned flight path for the remainder of its Saturn mission in search of a time when Earth would not be obstructed by Saturn or its rings. Working with other Cassini team members, they found the July 19 opportunity would permit the spacecraft to spend time in Saturn's shadow to duplicate the views from earlier in the mission to collect both visible and infrared imagery of the planet and its ring system.

"Looking back towards the sun through the rings highlights the tiniest of ring particles, whose width is comparable to the thickness of hair and which are difficult to see from ground-based telescopes," said Matt Hedman, a Cassini science team member based at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., and a member of the rings working group. "We're particularly interested in seeing the structures within Saturn's dusty E ring, which is sculpted by the activity of the geysers on the moon Enceladus, Saturn's magnetic field and even solar radiation pressure."

This latest image will continue a NASA legacy of space-based images of our fragile home, including the 1968 "Earthrise" image taken by the Apollo 8 moon mission from about 240,000 miles (380,000 kilometers) away and the 1990 "Pale Blue Dot" image taken by Voyager 1 from about 4 billion miles (6 billion kilometers) away.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. JPL manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington, and designed, developed and assembled the Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras. The imaging team consists of scientists from the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Germany. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.

To learn more about the public outreach activities associated with the taking of the image, visit: http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/waveatsaturn .

For more information about Cassini, visit http://www.nasa.gov/cassini and http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov .

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/most_popular/~3/UCf8F3Ny_VI/130618161951.htm

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Israel PM: Sanctions on Iran should increase

JERUSALEM (AP) ? Israel on Sunday warned the international community against easing sanctions on Iran following the election of a reformist-backed president, saying the country's nuclear efforts remain firmly in the hands of Iran's extremist ruling clerics.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued the warning a day after the surprise victory by Hasan Rowhani. Although Rowhani is considered a relative moderate and had the backing of Iranian reformists, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is the ultimate authority on all state matters and key security policy decisions, including nuclear efforts, defense and foreign affairs, remain in the hands of Khamenei and his powerful protectors, the Revolutionary Guard.

Netanyahu noted that the Iranian clerics disqualified candidates they disagreed with from running in the election. He said the international community must not get caught in "wishful thinking" and ease the pressure on Tehran, saying "Iran will be tested by its deeds."

Israel considers a nuclear-armed Iran to be an existential threat, citing Iranian calls for Israel's destruction, its support for anti-Israel militant groups and its missile and nuclear technology.

Tehran insists its nuclear program is peaceful, a claim that Israel and many Western countries reject.

Netanyahu said that sanctions on Iran should be increased. "The more pressure increases on Iran, so will the chance of ending Iran's nuclear program, which remains the biggest threat to world peace," Netanyahu said.

Israeli President Shimon Peres took a softer line. While Peres said it was too early to make predictions, he felt the vote was a clear sign of dissatisfaction with Iran's hard-line leadership and its outgoing president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

"More than half of Iranians, in their own way, in my judgment, protested against an impossible leadership," Peres told The Associated Press. "Ahmadinejad spent hundreds of billions of dollars to build an idol of uranium. What for? He brought down the people the people on their knees. The economy is destroyed. Children don't have enough food. Youngsters are leaving the country. Iran became a center of terror, they hang people, they arrest people. What for?"

He said the biggest loser in the vote was Khamenei. "It is clearly a voice of the people and a voice that says, 'We don't agree with this group of leaders,'" Peres said.

Israel has said that it prefers diplomacy and sanctions to end Iran's nuclear program but has hinted that military action would be an option if peaceful attempts fail. It has called on the international community to issue a clear ultimatum to Iran to curb its nuclear program.

Some Israeli analysts felt having a more moderate Iranian president might make the Islamic Republic harder for Israel to deal with.

Meir Litvak, head of Iranian studies at Tel Aviv University, told Israel Army Radio that Rowhani's "smiley face to the west" might make the option of military action less likely.

In contrast, Uzi Arad, Netanyahu's former security adviser, said that Rowhani's taking over might be good for Israel.

"It's true it might be easier to have an unstable, screaming and vulgar character like Ahmadinejad. but at the end of the day it might be better to have a character that you can deter and can convince via pressure to get the desired result," Arad said.

Arad told Israel Radio that it was a good sign that millions of Iranians voted for a candidate who "explicitly spoke about acting to ease sanctions and strive for talks with the West."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/israel-pm-sanctions-iran-increase-090537956.html

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Predators affect the carbon cycle, study shows

June 17, 2013 ? A new study shows that the predator-prey relationship can affect the flow of carbon through an ecosystem. This previously unmeasured influence on the environment may offer a new way of looking at biodiversity management and carbon storage for climate change.

The study, conducted by researchers at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, comes out this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It looks at the relationship between grasshoppers and spiders -- herbivores and predators in the study's food chain -- and how it affects the movement of carbon through a grassland ecosystem. Carbon, the basic building block of all organic tissue, moves through the food chain at varying speeds depending on whether it's being consumed or being stored in the bodies of plants. However, this pathway is seldom looked at in terms of specific animal responses like fear from predation.

"We're discovering that predators are having important effects on shaping the make-up of ecosystems," says Dr. Oswald Schmitz, professor of ecology and one of the co-authors of the study. "But we've not really spent a lot of time measuring how that translates into other functions like nutrient cycling and recycling."

The researchers manipulated the food chains of grassland ecosystem to see how the levels of carbon would change over time. Dr. Schmitz and his team created several controlled ecosystems: some that contained only native grasses and herbs, others that had plants and an herbivore grasshopper, and some others that had plants and herbivores along with a carnivore spider species -- all three tiers of the food chain. In addition, a form of traceable carbon dioxide was injected into sample cages covered with Plexiglas, which allowed the team to track the carbon levels by periodically taking leaf, root, and dead animal samples.

The study found that the presence of spiders drove up the rate of carbon uptake by the plants by about 1.4 times more than when just grasshoppers were present and by 1.2 more times than when no animals were present. It was also revealed that the pattern of carbon storage in the plants changed when both herbivores and carnivores were present. The grasshoppers apparently were afraid of being eaten by the spiders and consumed less plant matter when the predators were around. The grasshoppers also shifted towards eating more herbs instead of grass under fearful scenarios.

At the same time, the grasses stored more carbon in their roots in a response to being disturbed at low levels when both herbivores and carnivores were present. In cases where only herbivores were present, the plants stored less carbon overall, likely due to the more intense eating habits of the herbivores that put pressure on plants to reduce their storage and breathe out carbon more. These stress impacts, then, caused both the plants and the herbivores to change their behaviors and change the composition of their local environment.

This has significance for biodiversity conservation and ecosystem management. Although the study was carried out on a small scale, it could inform practices done in much larger areas. Places such as the Alaskan wilderness, for example, are home to animals that have the same predator-and-prey dynamics that drive the carbon cycle, and so protecting lands and storing carbon could be linked at the same time. Appreciating the role of predators is also important currently, given that top predators are declining at rates faster than that of many other species in global trends of biodiversity loss.

"It's going to force some thinking about the vital roles of animals in regulating carbon," concludes Dr. Schmitz, pointing to the fact that the UN's body of scientific experts who study climate change don't consider these multiplier effects in their models. "People are arguing for a paradigm change."

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_science/~3/G75cAhhGpI0/130617160902.htm

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Thai Muslims debate their future as peace talks raise hope

By Amy Sawitta Lefevre

PATTANI, Thailand (Reuters) - Huddled in a room on the periphery of a university campus in the southern Thai province of Pattani, Muslim students debate ideas that have long been considered inflammatory or even treasonous.

An insurgency by shadowy Muslim fighters in predominantly Buddhist Thailand's three southernmost provinces has claimed 5,700 lives since 2004.

Just a few hundred kilometers from tourist beaches, the conflict rarely hits the headlines but the failure to stamp it out is an embarrassment for a country that prides itself on being a developed, international business and travel hub.

There are signs that the government has become more conciliatory since it agreed to hold talks in February with the Barisan Revolusi Nasional (BRN), a major rebel group.

The student gathering this month at the university and debate of concepts such as autonomy would have been rare, if not impossible, a few years ago. Those present would have risked being detained on charges of sedition.

The Thai constitution sets out that the country's territory is indivisible and talk of separatism is tantamount to treason.

Few details have emerged from two preliminary rounds of peace talks, brokered by neighboring Malaysia, between the government and the BRN. Some rebels have called for a degree of self-rule.

On Wednesday, Thai officials will sit down for a third round of talks with the BRN to try to resolve Southeast Asia's deadliest internal conflict.

Despite hopes for change that the talks have brought, those attending the student gathering were still nervous.

"There is no guarantee we will not be blacklisted after this meeting," said one student who did not want to be identified.

"Someone could be a spy and report us, but our need to talk has overcome our fear."

Muslims in the three provinces have chafed under the rule of faraway Bangkok since Thailand annexed what was then an Islamic sultanate a century ago.

Generations of men have fought the state and the latest and most serious violence erupted in the early 2000s.

But analysts say incremental changes are taking place and have gathered momentum since the talks began. Frustration once expressed with graffiti daubed on walls after dark is now being vented openly among a growing network of civic groups.

They have opened discussion in meetings and on social media, fuelling debate about the political aspirations of the region's ethnic Malay, Muslim population.

"For a long time, the Thai state's interest was to consolidate control of the border states," Thomas Parks, regional director for conflict and governance at the Asia Foundation, a U.S.-based development organization, told Reuters.

"The word 'autonomy' was a bad word, but now there's open discussion about it."

Srisompob Jitpiromsri of the Deep South Watch think-tank said he also saw a change in government attitudes.

"The mindset of many of the policy-makers is different, they have become more accepting of the demands of the local population," Srisompob said.

"There is optimism."

"SAME RIGHTS NOT SEPARATISM"

The mayor of Yala town, Pongsak Yingcharoen, said the talks had raised expectations.

"Locals expected the violence to decrease when talks began. That didn't happen, so now they are trying to better understand this peace process," Pongsak said.

For years, the state has worked to instill a strong sense of Thai nationalism in the region's Malay-speaking population and symbols of "Thainess" pervade. The national anthem blares out of public speakers in the morning and at night.

Many Muslims say harsh government assimilation policies have led to the suppression of their religion, language and culture.

Army checkpoints dot the roads through a picturesque region rich in rubber yet bypassed by Thailand's economic boom. Pattani, along with neighboring Yala and Narathiwat provinces, are among Thailand's least developed areas with some of the lowest education levels.

Thailand's powerful military, which has 60,000 troops in the region, has been lukewarm about talks that could confer legitimacy on an armed movement the generals have dismissed as more criminal than political.

As some feared, the talks also appear to be encouraging ethnic Malay Muslims to express political aspirations Bangkok has long viewed as disloyal.

"People have to watch themselves when talking about separatism, but we won't detain them," said Pramote Prom-in, an army spokesman. "We understand some young people are hot-headed."

While the militants are often described as separatists, many southerners acknowledge that creating a tiny Islamic republic sandwiched between Thailand and Malaysia is unrealistic.

"Most people here aren't after a separate state, they just want to have the same rights as Buddhists," said Romuelah Saeyeh whose husband, Muhamad Anwar Ismail Hajiteh, a freelance journalist, was sentenced to 12 years in prison in May for being a member of the BRN rebel group.

The government of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra has been credited for giving dialogue a chance.

Critics say her influential brother, former premier Thaksin Shinawatra, has become involved in trying to end the conflict because he is aiming to boost his standing as he plots a return to the country, and perhaps to power, from self-imposed exile.

Thaksin was widely blamed for exacerbating the conflict with harsh tactics when he was in power, including the death in 2004 of 78 Muslim protesters.

Thai security chief and Thaksin loyalist Paradorn Pattanathabutr, a key figure in the talks, told Reuters Thaksin had met separatists in Malaysia. Thaksin denied that.

Shintaro Hara, a Malay-language professor at Prince of Songkhla University in Pattani, said Bangkok politics were not a factor for most people in the south.

"Thaksin's involvement is secondary, people are just glad to see talks happening," he said.

"We cannot afford more corpses, our graveyards are already full. If we miss this chance, when will the next one come?"

(Editing by Robert Birsel)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/thai-muslims-debate-future-peace-talks-raise-hope-210750821.html

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