*The advertised price does not include sales tax, vehicle registration
fees, finance charges, documentation charges, and any other fees required by law.
We attempt to update this inventory on a regular basis.
However, there can be lag time between the sale of a vehicle and the update of the
inventory.
EPA mileage estimates are for newly manufactured vehicles only. Your actual mileage
will vary depending on how you drive and maintain your vehicle.
Before purchasing this vehicle, it is your responsibility to address any and all
differences between information on this website and the actual vehicle specifications
and/or any warranties offered prior to the sale of this vehicle. Vehicle data on
this website is compiled from publicly available sources believed by the publisher
to be reliable. Vehicle data is subject to change without notice. The publisher
assumes no responsibility for errors and/or omissions in this data the compilation
of this data and makes no representations express or implied to any actual or prospective
purchaser of the vehicle as to the condition of the vehicle, vehicle specifications,
ownership, vehicle history, equipment/accessories, price or warranties.
Depending on your industry, your Government client?s Request for Proposal (RFP) may require you to create and provide a Risk Mitigation Plan or Compliance Matrix with your proposal.? Why?? In the case of the Compliance Matrix, they simply want to give you the chance to ensure that all stated requirements of the RFP are included in your response.? Typically, you will need to review the various Factors and Sub-Factors presented in the RFP Section M, Evaluation Factors for Award, and create a simple table that provides a brief restatement of the Factor/Sub-factor in one column, and a paragraph/page number in another column that links the reader to your specific narrative/data that addresses that Factor/Sub-factor.? In the case of the Risk Mitigation Plan, identify the elements of risk that you have ascertained through your review of the RFP, and address how you would mitigate those risk factors.? It may look something like this:
?
We highly recommend that you create these two tools even if the Government client hasn?t asked for them.? This will ensure that you have given sufficient thought to the risk factors (which may be very big cost drivers), and also ensures that you have addressed all elements of the Section M evaluation factors.
BERLIN (AP) ? Missing: One golden cookie, weighing around 44 pounds (20 kilograms).
Suspect: The Cookie Monster?
The rectangular gilded bronze sculpture was part of a statue gracing the facade of German cookie bakerBahlsen's Hannover office.
How the century-old symbol was taken remains unclear, but police say witnesses reported having seen two men with a ladder in the area earlier this month.
The company has offered ?1,000 ($1,350) for information leading to the cookie's recovery.
A police statement said a local newspaper received a picture Tuesday showing someone in an outfit similar to Sesame Street's Cookie Monster holding a golden cookie.
The sender wrote to demand cookies be delivered to children at a city hospital.
Police aren't sure if it's the same cookie, or a real claim of responsibility.
NEW YORK (AP) ? Alex Rodriguez is in the middle of Major League Baseball's latest doping investigation after an alternative weekly newspaper reported baseball's highest-paid star was among the big leaguers listed in the records of a Florida clinic the paper said sold performance-enhancing drugs.
The Miami New Times said Tuesday that the three-time AL MVP bought human growth hormone and other performance-enhancing substances during 2009-12 from Biogenesis of America LLC, a now-closed anti-aging clinic in Coral Gables, Fla., near Rodriguez's offseason home.
The new public relations firm for the New York Yankees third baseman issued a statement denying the allegations.
New Times said it obtained records detailing purchases by Rodriguez, 2012 All-Star game MVP Melky Cabrera, 2005 AL Cy Young Award winner Bartolo Colon and 2011 AL championship series MVP Nelson Cruz of Texas.
Cabrera left San Francisco after the season to sign with Toronto, while Oakland re-signed Colon.
Other baseball players the newspaper said appeared in the records include Washington pitcher Gio Gonzalez, who finished third in last year's NL Cy Young Award voting, and San Diego catcher Yasmani Grandal.
Biogenesis, which the New Times said was run by Anthony Bosch, was located in a beige, nondescript office park. The former clinic is no longer listed as a business in its directory,
"There was a flier put out by the building management a couple weeks ago. It was put on all the doors and windows of all the offices," said Brad Nickel, who works in a cruise planning company on the floor above where the clinic was located. "It just said this guy's not really a doctor, he doesn't belong here, he's no longer allowed here, call the police or the building management if you see him."
The New Times posted copies of what it said were Bosch's handwritten records, obtained through a former Biogenesis employee it did not identify.
Bosch's lawyer, Susy Ribero-Ayala, said in a statement the New Times report "is filled with inaccuracies, innuendo and misstatements of fact."
"Mr. Bosch vehemently denies the assertions that MLB players such as Alex Rodriguez and Gio Gonzalez were treated by or associated with him," she said.
Rodriguez appears 16 times in the documents New Times received, the paper said, either as "Alex Rodriguez," ''Alex Rod" or the nickname "Cacique," a pre-Columbian Caribbean chief.
Rodriguez admitted four years ago that he used PEDs from 2001-03. Cabrera, Colon and Grandal were suspended for 50 games each last year by MLB following tests for elevated testosterone. Responding to the testosterone use, MLB and the players' union said Jan. 10 they were authorizing the World Anti-Doping Agency laboratory outside Montreal to store each major leaguer's baseline testosterone/epitestosterone (T/E) ratio in order to detect abnormalities.
"We are always extremely disappointed to learn of potential links between players and the use of performance-enhancing substances," MLB said in a statement. "Only law enforcement officials have the capacity to reach those outside the game who are involved in the distribution of illegal performance-enhancing drugs. ... We are in the midst of an active investigation and are gathering and reviewing information."
A baseball official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to make public statements, said Monday that MLB did not have any documentation regarding the allegations. If MLB does obtain evidence, the players could be subject to discipline. First offenses result in a 50-game suspension and second infractions in 100-game penalties. A third violation results in a lifetime ban.
Rodriguez is sidelined for at least the first half of the season after hip surgery Jan. 16. A 50-game suspension would cost him $7.65 million of his $28 million salary.
"The news report about a purported relationship between Alex Rodriguez and Anthony Bosch are not true," Rodriguez said in a statement issued by a publicist. "He was not Mr. Bosch's patient, he was never treated by him and he was never advised by him. The purported documents referenced in the story ? at least as they relate to Alex Rodriguez ? are not legitimate."
Jay Reisinger, a lawyer who has represented Rodriguez in recent years, said the three-time AL MVP had retained Roy Black, an attorney from Rodriguez's hometown of Miami. Black's clients have included Rush Limbaugh and William Kennedy Smith.
Bosch did not return a phone message seeking comment.
MLB hopes to gain the cooperation of Bosch and others connected with the clinic, another baseball official said, also on condition of anonymity because no public statements on the matter were authorized. In order to successfully discipline players based on the records, witnesses would be needed to authenticate them, the official said.
Players could be asked to appear before MLB for interviews, but the official said MLB would be reluctant to request interviews before it has more evidence.
Rodriguez spent years denying he used PEDs before Sports Illustrated reported in February 2009 that he tested positive for two steroids in MLB's anonymous survey while with the Texas Rangers in 2003. Two days later, he admitted in an ESPN interview that he used PEDs over a three-year period. He has denied using PEDs after 2003.
If the new allegations were true, the Yankees would face high hurdles to get out of the final five years and $114 million of Rodriguez's record $275 million, 10-year contract. Because management and the players' union have a joint drug agreement, an arbitrator could determine that any action taken by the team amounted to multiple punishments for the same offense.
But if Rodriguez were to end his career because of the injury, about 85 percent of the money owed by the Yankees would be covered by insurance, one of the baseball officials said.
Gonzalez, 21-8 for the Washington Nationals last season, posted on his Twitter feed: "I've never used performance enhancing drugs of any kind and I never will, I've never met or spoken with tony Bosch or used any substance provided by him. anything said to the contrary is a lie."
Colon was not issuing a statement, agent Adam Katz said through spokeswoman Lisa Cohen.
"We are aware of certain allegations and inferences," Cruz's law firm, Farrell & Reisinger, said in a statement. "To the extent these allegations and inferences refer to Nelson, they are denied."
Cruz and Gonzalez had not previously been linked to performance-enhancing drugs. Cruz hit 24 home runs last year for the Rangers.
The New Times report said it obtained notes by Bosch listing the players' names and the substances they received. Several unidentified employees and clients confirmed to the publication that the clinic distributed the substances, the paper said. The employees said that Bosch bragged of supplying drugs to professional athletes but that they never saw the sports stars in the office.
The paper said the records list that Rodriguez paid for HGH; testosterone cream; IGF-1, a substance banned by baseball that stimulates insulin production; and GHRP, which releases growth hormones.
___
Associated Press writers Jennifer Kay in Coral Gables, Fla., and Curt Anderson in Miami, and AP Sports Writers Howard Fendrich and Tim Reynolds contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON (AP) ? Secretary of Defense nominee Chuck Hagel has told Pentagon officials he plans to divest some of his financial holdings and resign from several corporate boards and public interest groups to avoid potential conflicts of interest if he wins Senate confirmation.
Hagel told Defense Department officials in a letter last week that he would resign his corporate board post at Chevron Corp. and shed investments in the energy firm, a major government contractor. He would also cut ties and investments with the McCarthy Group LLC, an Omaha-based private equity firm.
A new personal financial disclosure filed with the Office of Government Ethics lists Hagel's assets at between $2.8 million and $6 million, according to an Associated Press analysis. Hagel made earnings of more than $1 million last year, including director's fees at Deutsche Bank, Zurich Insurance Group and Corsair Capital. Hagel said he would also server ties to those firms.
Hagel's Pentagon nomination has run into heavy fire from conservatives and Republicans who question whether he is sufficiently supportive of Israel. They also question his support for reductions in the nuclear arsenal. Some of his wide-ranging corporate and activist roles have also drawn criticism that his decision-making could be swayed by prior relationships. Hagel's letter to defense officials indicates he is willing to sell off possible conflict holdings and end his directorships to mute those concerns, but would still retain the ability to make his own investments.
In a letter sent last week to Robert Taylor, the Pentagon's acting general counsel, Hagel said that if he wins the defense post, he and his wife would not "invest in any company identified as a Department of Defense contractor or any other entity that would create a conflict of interest with my government duties." Hagel also pledged that if any firm that he has holdings in wins a defense contract, he would sell off those investments.
Some nominees for top government positions place their holdings in federally approved blind trusts so that they have no direct role in private investments during their tenure. There is no mention of the use of a blind trust in Hagel's letter.
Sen. John Kerry, President Barack Obama's pick for secretary of state, has holdings worth more than $184 million, and is also not using a blind trust. Most of Kerry's investments are made through family trusts, which limit his direct involvement but are not as segregated as blind trusts qualified by the Office of Government Ethics.
In his letter, Hagel said he would not participate in any decision that "has a direct and predictable effect on my financial interests" and would request a waiver from the ethics office if he planned any move that could affect him financially.
Hagel's decision to sever his dealings and investments with Chevron were clearly dictated by the firm's extensive dealings with the Pentagon. According to government figures, Chevron received more than $500 million in defense contracts in 2012, ranking 78th among the department's largest corporate beneficiaries.
Hagel joined Chevron's board of directors in 2010 and made $116,000 in fees in 2012. He also has Chevron common stock worth between $100,000 and $250,000 according to his disclosure.
Activists from both the left and right have questioned Chevron's recent involvement with repressive governments, including its plans to develop natural gas reserves in Turkmenistan and its pipeline work in Burma.
One conservative non-profit interest group, the American Future Fund, took aim at Hagel's relationship with Chevron, asking in an attack ad: "How can Chuck Hagel run the Pentagon with so many ethical questions about his own record?"
That broadside came before Hagel's letter outlining his divestment plans. The Senate Armed Services Committee also has some of the most stringent rules for nominees for senior civilian positions in the Defense Department. And Hagel's plans for divesting his holdings were also expected to undergo careful vetting by lawyers and ethics experts at the OGE, Defense and the White House.
Volkswagen just released its Super Bowl spot a week before the game, and it looks pretty different from past big game campaigns.
Gone are the days of tiny Darth Vaders and dogs ? the darlings of Super Bowl commercials.
This year's ad ? following up a teaser crammed with YouTube celebrities ? stars a Minnesotan white dude who gets a Jamaican accent after he gets a bright red VW. The tagline is "Get Happy," reinforced by the "Partridge Family" theme-song that plays in the background.
Deutsch LA created the spot that was directed by Tom Kuntz, who worked on Old Spice's "man your man could smell like" campaign. Apparently he made them reshoot a 10-second scene in which seven people are packed in an elevator 100 times.
Watch the Deutsch LA created spot below and let us know what you think:
MediaTek Inc., a fabless semiconductor company for wireless communications and digital multimedia solutions, today announced the availability of its MT3332/MT3333, a 5-in-1 multi-GNSS receiver system-on-chip (SoC) that support the Beidou Satellite Navigation System. The Beidou system has been commercially operational since the end of 2012, and can identify a user?s location to 10 meters (33 feet), their velocity to within 0.2 meters per second, and clock synchronization signals (one-way) to within 10 nanoseconds.
The MediaTek MT3332/MT3333 can discover GPS, Beidou, GLONASS, Galileo and QZSS constellations. Featuring a multi-GNSS receiver design, the MT3332/MT3333 can reduce the cumulative distance and positioning error accumulated over time/multiple hops, and significantly improve navigation/positioning accuracy, MediaTek said. The MT3332/MT3333 also comes with excellent signal acquisition and tracking sensitivity, which efficiently enhances signal quality within dense cities, tunnels and multi-storey car-parks, while delivering a better user experience, the company said. Moreover, because of its highly integrated, low-cost and ultra-compact system architecture, the MT3332/MT3333 enables multi-GNSS receivers with the same reference board for mobile, industrial and automotive navigation applications.
?The proliferation of LBS (location-based services) using mobile applications over wireless networks such as social check-in or nearby service recommending is driving demand for greater satellite navigation performance and coverage beyond existing technologies. This will also lead to the rapid adoption of multi-GNSS receiver solutions in smartphones, tablets and automotive vehicles because LBS is now an indispensable way for people to interact/communicate with each other on a daily basis,? said SR Tsai, general manager of the Wireless Connectivity and Networking Business Unit at MediaTek. ?We believe the market for Beidou-compatible multi-GNSS receivers in China will accelerate in the coming years. MediaTek will deliver new products that offer high value and are capable of meeting the evolving needs of our customers in the Beidou navigation system market through continuous product innovation. The MT3332/MT3333 [models] are designed to accelerate the realization of satellite navigation services anytime, anywhere, in a seamless fashion.?
The MT3332/MT3333 also incorporates MediaTek?s unique ?AlwaysLocate? technology that can identify the state in which the user is (regardless of on-the-go or sleeping) and automatically adjust the satellite signal receiving modes for more accurate and reliable navigation services, and to save the battery power of the navigation system.
The MediaTek MT3332/MT3333 is now in mass production stage and being designed into major satellite navigation systems and mobile communication platforms worldwide.
NBC's Pete Williams reports on the major policy shift being considered by the Boy Scouts of America.
By Pete Williams, Justice Correspondent, NBC News
The Boy Scouts of America, one of the nation?s largest private youth organizations, is actively considering an end to its decades-long policy of banning gay scouts or scout leaders, according to scouting officials and outsiders familiar with internal discussions.
If adopted by the organization?s board of directors, it would represent a profound change on an issue that has been highly controversial -- one that even went to the US Supreme Court. The new policy, now under discussion, would eliminate the ban from the national organization?s rules, leaving local sponsoring organizations free to decide for themselves whether to admit gay scouts.
?The chartered organizations that oversee and deliver scouting would accept membership and select leaders consistent with their organization?s mission, principles or religious beliefs,? according to Deron Smith, a spokesman for the Boy Scouts? national organization.
Individual sponsors and parents ?would be able to choose a local unit which best meets the needs of their families,? Smith said.
The discussion of a potential change in policy is nearing its final stages, according to outside scouting supporters. If approved, the change could be announced as early as next week, after the BSA's national board holds a regularly scheduled meeting.
Only seven months ago, the Boy Scouts affirmed a policy of banning gay members, after a nearly two-year examination of the issue by a committee of volunteers convened by national leaders of the Boy Scouts of America, known as the BSA.
In a statement last July affirming the ban, its national executive board called it ?the best policy for the organization.?
But since then, a scouting official said, local chapters have been urging a reconsideration. "We're a grassroots organization. This is a response to what's happening at the local level," the official said.
Two corporate CEOs on BSA?s national board, Randall Stephenson of AT&T and James Turley of Ernst & Young, have also said they would work to end the ban. Stephenson is next in line to be the BSA?s national chairman. During the 2012 presidential campaign, both Barack Obama and Mitt Romney said the BSA should admit gay scouts and scout leaders.
About 50 local United Way groups and several corporations and charities have concluded that the ban violates their non-discrimination requirements and have ceased providing financial aid to the Boy Scouts. An official of The Human Rights Campaign, an advocate for gay rights, said HRC planned to downgrade its non-discrimination ratings for corporations that continue to give the BSA financial support.
?It?s an extremely complex issue,? said one Boy Scouts of America official, who explained that other organizations have threatened to withdraw their financial support if the BSA drops the ban.
While the national scouting organization sets broad policies, more than 290 local councils nationwide govern the day-to-day conduct of the more than 116,000 local organizations. Individual scouting troops are sponsored by religious and civic organizations that represent a diversity of views on the issue of allowing gay scouts and leaders.
?The beliefs of the sponsoring organizations are highly diverse,? the official said.
The policy change now under discussion ?would allow the religious, civic or educational organizations that oversee and deliver Scouting to determine how to address this issue,? said the BSA's Smith.
?The Boy Scouts would not, under any circumstances, dictate a position to units, members or parents. Under this proposed policy, the BSA would not require any chartered organization to act in ways inconsistent with that organization?s mission, principles or religious beliefs,? he said.
In 2000, the U.S. Supreme Court concluded that the Boy Scouts had a First Amendment right of free expression when it came to the organization?s belief that homosexual conduct is inconsistent with values stated in the scout oath, requiring scouts to be ?morally straight.?
The Scouts have won similar legal battles, with courts finding that the BSA?s right of free association permits it, as a private organization, to reject those it believes do not conform to is values.?
On the internet there is search engine work the online process of web searching techniques, if you are a seo expert then you discover the new strategies but in the process of optimization there is many crucial strategies are available on the internet, it is the choice of our which techniques we use for performing well in our seo process, so we discover the new techniques , the new techniques for seo is give the? numerous advantages to marketing the website and the process with the help of we increase our website visibility . In the crucial strategies there is in the top of the strategies is the content writing organization to the internet by writing content.
So we develop a crucial strategy for SEO: 1. ?The social media marketing it is easily achieving your website traffic on your business category. 2. ?Process is same for small business web sites and big business website. Included in each web design package is basic SEO. 3. ? Attractive website SEO includes setting up page titles, page descriptions (meta tags) and basic key words.
The most effective technique which helps you show the business plane and regarding article writing is show our keyword with effective way the popularity of our keyword is usually they way of search term form the people. When we submit the query in our browser then the work of search engine started with the searching of result query it is help with for your popular article directories.
search engine optimization strategies is basically two type there are On page and the other is Off page both are the process of search engine optimization in the On Page Optimization there is work on the content of website and the relative keyword, to your website in order to make it searching the query by your keyword to spiders will be done with consultation to another result and at need.
?The search engine depends on the amount of keyword which is the most popular for a category with work involved and will be quoted on an individual basis.
On the new site when we use there is number of keyword can create a full support of spamming process new site structure from the foundation up for as Off-Page Optimization. There are a number of different process are available to suit the location and business of campiness it is complexity the use of keyword in our business sites and your ranking on Google search engine. The site map for every site use this very important we place this in our site ranking system on page ONE of the major search engines is also affected by the crucial package that is implemented.
?A very popular for internet marketing is use by every internet marketing business is pay per click marketing and strategy for immediate targeted website traffic is a well managed by email marketing and article marketing. The use of keyword research tools help with a ranking strategies; they make for a very powerful Internet marketing duo ranking and visibility. Our ranking tools is given the features of spider results and your site Page Ranking goes up, pay per click becomes more affordable and less strategic. ?
In today?s world, technology rules. There?s no denying it. It?s near impossible to meet anyone who doesn?t own a smartphone these days. And that means that, for the most part, we all walk around with these lovely hand-sized computers on our persons each and every day. What that means, of course, is that we all have immediate access to just about any piece of information we want.
If your company is not properly represented on the world wide web, it technically doesn?t exist. At least, this is how it will seem to the many people out there who may be interested in the products and services that you offer. This is why MeloTel doesn?t just offer our clients website design and hosting services. We go many steps further.
Naturally, it starts with having a well-created, user-friendly website. You want to give your customers the ability to browse through your items and learn more about your company easily. This is what the general public has become used to during this age when it?s easier to type in a web address than it is to visit an actual, physical store location.
However, the current internet world, in which we live, demands more than just having a cool website for your business. Social media plays a huge role in how businesses communicate with their customer bases. Having a strong hold of how to grab public attention through social networking juggernauts such as Facebook and Twitter is practically mandatory in this day and age.
This is why MeloTel offers services that go far beyond getting your website set up for you. As mentioned, we?ll take it several steps further. MeloTel offers services that ensure that your website is fully functioning ? and that means that your social media profiles are working in conjunction with your site. One way to do this is by writing regular blogs for your company.
Our blogging staff is comprised of very talented writers who come from all walks of life and are well-versed in a variety of areas. Regular blogging is an ideal way to get more traffic to your site by attaching relevant business topics to blogs that will show up in search engines when people are researching them.
Just as we do with our own website, here at MeloTel, we can set up your blogs in such a way that they automatically post to your Facebook and Twitter profiles. Our bloggers also write blurbs for your social media pages in the event that you?d prefer to copy and to post them on your own time. This saves you both the time and energy to come up with things to say on your own. Let the experts do it for you!
Moreover, MeloTel?s blogging services also include postings to Craigslist, Kajiji and LinkedIn. We go all out to make sure that your company doesn?t just look good online, but that it gets noticed ? just as it should! Utilizing social media is certainly the way to go in today?s business world. Call us up at 1-888-MELOTEL so that we can help you make the most of it!
Instead of using this sentence to write a proper lede, quite possibly with (or without) a bit of wit, can we agree to stipulate that there are what I believe to be a few decent thoughts on the other side of this post, past that "Read more" thing that does double duty of breaking up a long-ish post and keeping the front page clean while, yes, requiring you to add one more click to your experience here at Android Central?
Holy crap. That sentence itself should have had a "Read more" break. It's been one of those weekends.
So, yeah. Click on through to the other side for a few thoughts on some of the goings-on of the past week or so.
Click here to view the gallery: Top 10 Tech This Week (1/26/2013)
It was another exciting week in tech, with a wide range of exciting news. There was really something for all tastes: 3D printing, futuristic planes, medical breakthroughs and a new social video app.
[More from Mashable: Top 10 Tech This Week, CES 2013 Edition]
The launch of Vine, a social video app developed by Twitter, took the social-media world by storm. Vine allows users to easily create six-seconds movie loops with a smartphone, and so far, it's been a hit. The other big tech announcement came last weekend, with the official launch of Kim Dotcom's new start-up Mega, the successor of the infamous Megaupload.
There were gadgets, too. First, the surprising debut of a new LG phone, the Optimus G Pro, which has even more impressive specs than the Optimus G. Then there was the somewhat wacky NEC Medias W, a phone with two different screens. Yes, you heard that right -- the phone has two screens, one on the front, one on the back.
[More from Mashable: Top 10 Tech This Week]
And in the futuristic news department, we had NASA demonstrating a manufacturing method that could eventually lead to the a manta-ray-shaped plane. -- an aircraft that could potentially consume way less fuel than current airplanes.
Take a look at our Top 10 Tech This Week to see what else happened this week in the world of technology.
AMMAN (Reuters) - The Syrian army has stepped up an offensive on opposition Sunni Muslim strongholds in the central city of Homs, bringing in ground forces and loyalist militia to try to secure a major road junction, opposition sources said on Friday.
Around 15,000 Sunni civilians are trapped on the southern and western edge of the city near the intersection of Syria's main north-south and east-west arteries, crucial to let the army travel between Damascus and the Mediterranean coast, opposition campaigners in Homs said.
Rebels said they had moved into new areas of Homs this month to grab more territory, which could explain the offensive. Activists said that rebels had asked them not to report on the advances because it could provoke retaliatory strikes.
But activists in Homs said a barrage of army rocket, artillery and aerial bombardment had killed at least 120 civilians and 30 opposition fighters since Sunday.
In the south, eight members of Syria's military intelligence were killed by an Islamist militant car bomb on Thursday night near the frontier with the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, opposition activists and a violence monitoring group said on Friday.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the bomb was planted by Al-Nusra Front, a rebel unit fighting to oust Assad that the United States has labeled a terrorist group.
"We think the blast might have killed a colonel who has been leading the fight against rebels in the area," Rami Abdelrahman, head of the Britain-based Observatory said. The building targeted is in the town of Saasa, 14 miles (23km) from the frontier with the Golan Heights, he said.
Syrian authorities have banned most independent media, making it difficult to verify such reports on the ground.
The nearly two-year-old conflict has now killed an estimated 60,000 people and a military stalemate has formed while hundreds of thousands of refugees flood into Syria's neighbors.
The Syrian Interior Ministry called on Thursday for Syrian refugees to come home and said they would be guaranteed safety.
A statement on the state news agency SANA said the government was "offering guarantees to all political opposition sides to enter the country ... (and) ... take part in the national dialogue without any query."
Few who left have returned, especially opposition supporters, and Assad said in a speech this month that he would not talk with opposition members he said had betrayed Syria or "gangs recruited abroad that follow the orders of foreigners".
The war has reached every province in the country and fighting has encroached on the heart of the capital Damascus, with residents reporting the daily thud of artillery being fired on rebel-held districts in the outskirts.
U.S. ambassador to Syria Robert Ford told CNN on Thursday that Assad's mother Anisa Makhlouf and his sister Bushra had both moved to the United Arab Emirates. It is not clear why they left.
SHABBIHA BROUGHT IN
Activist Nader al-Husseini, speaking by phone from the western sector of Homs, said at least 10,000 pro-Assad shabbiha militiamen had been brought from the coastal city of Tartous to back up the regular army.
"They go in infantry formations behind the soldiers and their specialty is looting and killing civilians," he said, adding that among dozens killed by the shabbiha were a family of five in the village of Naqira.
Husseini said 100 wounded civilians were trapped in Homs' western neighborhood of Kafar Aya and that the Free Syrian Army rebels had tried to negotiate a deal to evacuate them but failed.
Opposition sources blame shabbiha for the death of more than 100 Sunni men, women and children when they overran a nearby area 10 days ago.
Mostly Sunni Homs, a commercial and agricultural hub 140 km (90 miles) north of Damascus, has been at the heart of the uprising and armed insurgency against Assad and his establishment, composed mostly of Alawites, who follow an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam and comprise about 10 percent of the population. There is a large Alawite minority in Homs.
Syrian authorities have not commented directly on the latest offensive, but official media have in the past referred to the need to ?cleanse' the city of what they described as terrorists who were terrorizing peaceful neighborhoods.
Tareq, another activist, said the fall of Kafar Aya and the adjacent neighborhoods of Jobar and al-Sultaniya would make the position of Sunnis in the city untenable.
"These districts are the front line with Alawite areas from where rebels have been sometimes disrupting the road between Damascus and Tartous. If they fall the Assad army will have carved a big hole to proceed deep into Homs and secure the link to the capital."
(Additional reporting by Oliver Holmes, Mariam Karouny and Reuters TV in Beirut, Dan Williams in Jerusalem; Writing by Oliver Holmes; Editing by Myra MacDonald)
Have a few users who are unable to open faxes sent to them via Elastix. This is via the option in Extensions to Enable fax and provide an email address.
Two users at the same office running on the same ISP and same mail server, and only one can open faxes. The other one gets a message saying that the PDF is corrupt and can't open the file (both users receive the file via email through an email group).
Users are running Outlook. Recently did a PC rebuild on the computer not able to open the faxes and installed Office 2010 (with all patches). Some faxes work on that PC, but not all of them.
Troubleshooting steps (in no particular order):
a) Skipped creation of PDF and emailed TIFF file instead - also arrives corrupted
b) The fax, when downloaded from the spool folder on the Elastix server and then emailed to the same user will open correctly
c) Moved users to a different email server
One thing I'm wondering about is whether there's an issue with the email template being used or perhaps a conflict in the mime encoding, but I don't have enough experience with this to troubleshoot further.
January 26, 2013 ? The process through which data is retrieved and restored from storage media when the data is not accessible in a normal way is known as data recovery. There are different types of storages devices namely hard disk drives, storage tapes, solid state drives, stick drives, CD?s, DVD?s and many more. Data loss resulting in hard drive recovery is not an uncommon occurrence these days. However, majority of people fail to take the necessary steps so as to retrieve the maximum amount of data from such an occurrence. Platinum Data Recovery is a company that offers proficient engineers for the retrieval and restoration of lost data.
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With almost ten years of experience in real estate marketing, Gregory has worked with top firms in Boston and Cincinnati, where he was raised. After completing his MBA at Xavier University, Gregory entered the world of real estate and successfully earned top Realtor awards for sales his first few years. Transitioning to a marketing role, he has worked in branding, SEO, web, and print and now serves as Director of Marketing for one of the top Boston firms, Charlesgate Realty.
Title: Emotional Freedom Technique EFT Master Featured in Free Teleseminar Series
West Shokan, NY (PRWEB) March 1, 2009
Dr. Carol Robin hosts a free weekly teleseminar series ?Profound Paths to Health, Healing and Happiness? beginning Tuesday, March 3, 2009 and featuring Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) Master Jan Luther.
Anyone interested in natural health and wellness is welcome to listen to these information and inspiration-filled weekly conversations via telephone or Internet. Free registration at: http://www.GuidedCDs.com/seminar.
?This series specializes in exploring the most innovative and visionary people and techniques in natural health, wellness and mind-body healing. These powerful techniques and philosophies help integrate and balance body, heart, mind and spirit and guide people to greater health, happiness, healing and empowerment,? says Dr. Robin.
Dr. Robin, DC, CCN has been a practitioner in the natural health and healing field for 30 years, and in this series she brings together some of today?s most innovative and pioneering health, wellness and mind-body healing experts for in-depth conversations about their philosophies and techniques for enhanced energy, health, well-being and happiness.
Speakers include:
Kathlyn Hendricks
Guy Finley
Dr. Darren Weissman
Dr. Loren Cordain
Jan Luther
Suzanne Scurlock-Durana
Drs Molly and Bob Roberts
Dr. Simon Evans
Janice Taylor
Stevan Thayer
Jordan Gruber
Topics include:
-Releasing stress, grief and trauma with EFT
-Transforming relationships and conscious loving
-The holistic approach to stress, anxiety and depression
-Fearless living
-Experiencing present moment awareness and full body presence
-The power of Infinite Love & Gratitude
-Brain fitness and improving your brain function
-The Paleolithic diet
-Weight loss as transformation
-Rebound exercise for health and wellness
-Integrated Energy Therapy (IET)
?Invest one hour a week in yourself, listening to today?s most brilliant and innovative health and wellness experts as they freely share their wisdom, insights and profound and practical paths to balance body, heart, mind and spirit. Let them guide you to greater health, happiness, healing and freedom,? says Dr. Robin.
For more information about the free ?Profound Paths to Health, Healing and Happiness? Teleseminar series that begins Tuesday March 3rd, 2009, or to register any time during the series, go to http://www.GuidedCDs.com/seminar.
Dr. Carol Robin is a Chiropractor, Certified Clinical Nutritionist, Health and Healing Mentor and Coach, and co-founder and President of Guided CDs Inc., producers of guided imagery meditation CDs and mp3?s for natural health and healing.
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Related Emotional Freedom Technique Press Releases
While out working on a story in freezing New Jersey, a reporter and camera crew from New York station WABC-TV noticed a dog left out in the cold.
Hours later, when they passed by again and saw that the dog was still outside, they decided to take the issue to Twitter, and the mayor.
Reporter Toni Yates tweeted N.J. Mayor Cory Booker and WABC. In the tweet, she applauded Newark for its heat help, but added, "Make pet owners get their dogs out of the cold."
In another tweet, she wrote that she asked the block captain to "do something, call someone," but doubted he would.
People began re-tweeting the messages, and soon enough the mayor was on the scene with the shivering dog.
"This is brutal weather. This dog is shaking really bad and you just can't leave your dogs out here on a day like this and go away and expect them to be OK," the mayor told WABC. "Hypothermia on any animal including a human animal will set in pretty quickly. So this is very sad. You can just feel the dog shaking pretty badly."
Booker picked up the dog and put it into the back of a police car.
"If you'd crank up that heat, I'd appreciate it," he told the police officer.
Booker, 43, called the dog's owner and told them it was unacceptable to leave the dog outside in the freezing weather, WABC reported.
The owners said they were in Queens, N.Y., and did not know that Cha Cha had gotten outside. They said it was an accident and thanked the mayor for saving the dog, a new mother.
Booker, who's exploring a run for U.S. Senate, later tweeted the reporter, "Because of you that dog was rescued. Thank you for reaching out. Thank u for your kindness."
This is not the first time Mayor Booker has come to the rescue.
Booker returned home one evening in April to find flames shooting out of his neighbor's home. A woman screamed that her daughter was still inside.
The mayor and two of his security detail ran inside to rescue the woman, who Booker said he had known for years. He carried her out of the building over his shoulder and the woman was treated for smoke inhalation and released.
Joe Casale, far right, watches workers remove debris from his flooded home in Breezy Point, N.Y., on Nov. 1.
By Miranda Leitsinger, Staff Writer, NBC News
BREEZY POINT, N.Y. -- A first-of-its-kind home repair program pioneered by the federal government and local agencies has made thousands of New York City homes livable since Hurricane Sandy, but thousands of other homeowners are still waiting for help, and growing more frustrated with each passing day.
?Nobody communicates anything to you,? said Joe Casale, a 52-year-old service engineer who lives in Breezy Point with his wife, Katie, and three sons. ?I have to keep on calling up and busting people?s chops to find out what?s going on. It?s ridiculous. ? It?s not rapid for one. We started up on Nov. 15 and they?re just getting around to us now.?? They held us back a good month I would say.?
Despite assessments like Casale's, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, widely vilified for its response after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, has mostly avoided a similar public relations disaster in the wake of Sandy. FEMA officials say that?s at least partly due to the Rapid Repairs program, aimed at getting victims back home quickly so they can focus on rebuilding.
The program, which provides free utility repairs and replacement equipment like water heaters and boilers to qualified homeowners, has restored services to more than 11,800 residences in New York City, officials say. Work is under way on about 1,900 more dwellings.
Two neighboring New York counties and two New Jersey communities are also running the same program, which they call STEP (Sheltering and Temporary Essential Power).
While the idea of Rapid Repairs initially received positive reviews,critics say the execution has been far from flawless. Nearly three months after the Oct. 29 storm, some 7,000 New York City households have not yet received help through the program.
That assessment is echoed by those still waiting, who tell stories of canceled or missed appointments, improperly installed equipment and a disorganized bureaucracy where their complaints fall on deaf ears.?
Barry Fischer, a 45-year-old electrician who also lives in this coastal New York City enclave with his wife, Christina, and their five children, called the program ?nonexistent,? noting that they had been waiting since mid-November for electrical work and a hot water heater.?
His wife, a 35-year-old college professor, said she had been going to the Rapid Repairs? offices every day to find out when the workers would come to her home. She also made dozens of calls, and even chased contractors? trucks through her neighborhood on foot and in her car, and one time even tried to cut them off and block them in order to force a conversation.?
The final straw came last week, when she met a Rapid Repairs? worker looking for a nearby home that is only occupied in the summer.
?I was really freaking out,? she said. ?? And that?s terrible. Why should somebody be really that crazy in order to get assistance??
David Friedman / NBC News
Christina Fischer plays with her disabled daughter Georgia, 4, and son Timothy, 7, after school on Jan. 14 in Rockaway Beach, N.Y. The family of seven waited two months for through the Rapid Repairs program.
Officials overseeing the program acknowledge there have been missteps and say they understand the frustration building among those who still don?t have basic utilities. But they defend the premise of Rapid Repairs -- that residents can rebuild their homes much more quickly when they are living in them -- and vow to learn from the mistakes, some of which resulted from their efforts to act decisively.
The program was launched two weeks after the storm struck, leaving about 20,000 residential buildings in the city with some damage or disruption to their utilities.
?We thought that with some basic repair work ? that would enable families to basically shelter in place, be in their homes, be safe and then begin the real work of rebuilding and doing it in their communities not away from (them),? Cas Holloway, deputy mayor for operations, told NBC News. ?We wanted to move fast.?
For many Sandy victims, that?s what happened.
Nine general contractors hired by the city, who in turn have more than 100 subcontractors working with them, had completed repairs on more than 6,800 buildings, comprising 11,800 residential units, as of Jan. 21, according to the mayor?s Office of Housing Recovery. Crews had started work on about 1,900 others.
Mario Tama / Getty Images
Residents of the Northeast are still picking up the pieces after Superstorm Sandy.
About 3,000 other households opted out of the program for various reasons, including not wanting to wait for repairs, Holloway said, leaving fewer than 7,000 residences still waiting.
Homeowners had from Nov. 13 through Jan. 14 to sign up for the pilot program. The city will eventually submit the bill to FEMA, which?preliminarily?authorized spending up to $500 million on the program?and is expected to reimburse between 80 percent and 90 percent of the cost.
The cost for each household is supposed to be about $10,000, though it could go higher depending on the work required, said Michael Byrne, the senior FEMA official in New York state for the Sandy response and recovery.
FEMA: What the program covers
FEMA said it no longer uses the ubiquitous travel trailers that were deployed to temporarily house thousands of Katrina victims, and Holloway and Byrne said mobile homes weren?t viable in the densely-populated urban environment of New York City. They also carry a hefty price tag of $250,000, and take months to set up, they said.
Those already helped by the program said they're happy with the results.
Fran McCabe, who responded to an NBC News inquiry about the program on Facebook, wrote: ?Waited for weeks but finally got a hot water heater and then a few weeks later got a new furnace. Work crews were WONDERFUL. ? We're very grateful to the city for this program. It would have been much faster to do the repairs privately but the cost was a hardship for us at this time.?
But for families like the Fischers, whose children include a 10-year-old son with severe hearing loss and a 4-year-old daughter with Charcot Marie Tooth Disease, a common nerve disorder that can make it hard to walk, and apraxia, a speech disorder, the intended jumpstart has proven to be a roadblock.
They still don?t have central heat, hot water or working toilets in their two-story home, which forced them to sign a one-year rental agreement on a house in Jackson Heights in northern Queens. They?ve had to dip into Barry?s 401(k) savings, since the FEMA rental aid doesn?t cover their entire rent, and they have to pay their mortgage and co-op fees on a home they can?t live in. Adding to the financial strain: Their insurance will cover just one-third of the $300,000 cost to rebuild.?
'Why ... all this insanity?' While the city has an ?active high priority list? for residents in the greatest need of shelter, including the elderly and disabled, and Christina had informed the program many times about her disabled children, she found out last week that they weren?t on it.
Finally, a Rapid Repairs? plumber showed up with a new boiler last Friday, Christina Fischer said. In the days since, electricians have done most of the wiring though there is still no heating system for the first floor.
?I don?t understand why a family with disabled children would have had to go through all this insanity in order to get this done when this was the whole kind of point of the program ? to help the people who needed it most from the get-go,? she said. ?It came to me going there every day, me becoming very threatening for it to get done, and I think that?s really, really unfortunate.?
It's been two and a half months since Superstorm Sandy barreled through New Jersey and New York, but people are still desperately awaiting aid. NBC's Katy Tur reports.
Holloway, the deputy mayor of operations, and Byrne, of FEMA, acknowledge that there were challenges getting the pilot program up and running, which led to some delays.
Holloway said they switched from a ?first-in, first-out? service model to a block-by-block method in order to avoid ?wasting half a shift in transport.? They also had to order equipment and set up staging areas for it that were easy for contractors to access.
?There have been a lot of challenges setting this up,? he said, noting it was ?unfortunate? some of the people who signed up early ?probably have now had to wait longer than really they expected to and more than we would have liked them to.?
Holloway said the work has accelerated as the process has improved, noting that for a recent three-week period crews had worked on 100 homes a day on average. He said the program also is less expensive per household than mobile homes, though he could not say how much money the overall city bill will be.
Despite the problems, Byrne and Holloway both say they believe it could become a model for disaster response.
?I think it will end up being pretty remarkable that families are back in much faster than they might have been under a different model where you might ? go rent a place for a year and then come back,? Holloway said. ?? That is a terrible option for a homeowner and a family, and it?s terrible for a neighborhood.?
David Abramson, deputy director of Columbia University?s National Center for Disaster Preparedness, said he was initially impressed with the Rapid Repairs? concept because it addressed some key barriers facing communities when they begin the recovery process, such as having credentialed and trusted contractors.
But he said execution of the program has been spotty.
?I certainly don?t want to throw them under the bus so quickly because they?re having a lot of hiccups in the initial phase,? he said, ?(but) they?re clearly having major issues.? ?
?I think it falls in the category of good plan, poor implementation,? he added. ?
Lucas Jackson / Reuters
Cranes work to remove several feet of sand deposited on Ocean Avenue by Hurricane Sandy in Sea Bright, N.J., on Oct. 31.
In the suburban New York City counties of Suffolk and Nassau, where the STEP program was announced in mid-November, more than 540 homes had been repaired by Jan. 15, out of some 2,350 households that signed up, according to FEMA.
The STEP program also is operating in two coastal New Jersey communities: Sea Bright, where 115 property owners have signed up, and in Ocean City, where enrollment data was not available.
Sea Bright Mayor Dina Long told NBC News work there is expected to begin in mid-March. A town meeting last week addressed STEP, and she said people were "grateful (for the program), they want to come home." Very few residents have insurance settlements, or they've come in much lower than their losses, leaving many of them in limbo.
Retired grandparents Jeanne and Burt Metz lost their home when Superstorm Sandy hit Breezy Point, New York. A volunteer organization told the couple that their floors and walls would be rebuilt ? but little did the Metz family know that hundreds of people were working to resurrect their entire house. NBC's Rehema Ellis reports.
?Sandy devastated this little town,? she said. ?We lost every business, 75 percent of our homes are not habitable. It?s a ghost town. ... Almost three months later, we are not getting very far. And so something like STEP at least gives us a chance to start moving back to the recovery.?
Sandy victims on the move, but temporary housing 'will never be ... home'But some of those in New York City who are just beginning to receive help from Rapid Repairs said they wish they had never waited on it.
Casale, the Breezy Point engineer, had to take a loan from his brother-in-law to help cover repairs he and his wife started on their own.
They?ve done most of the electrical work, but with no heat and water, paint wouldn't dry and they couldn?t get someone to work on their kitchen due to the cold.?
They finally received a hot water heater and a boiler on Jan. 11, but after the installation was finished the boiler began leaking and shorted out the electronic controls on Monday. They?re now waiting for a replacement part to arrive.?
?It was one big fiasco after another,? Katie Casale, 49, a personal assistant at an insurance company, said Tuesday.?
On top of that, Joe Casale found out from Rapid Repairs on Monday that the contractor had already submitted a bill saying the work was complete.
?I?m paying rent and I?m paying a mortgage for three months, so how rapid is rapid?? he said. ?It?s not a rapid repair. ? We wanted to get back in here.?
Like the Casales, Christina Fischer said her family wishes they hadn't had?to rely on the program.?
?Very few of us would have waited for Rapid Repairs if we all had the money to do this, but we don?t,? she said. The program is ?a great idea ? but winter?s upon us and it?s not done.? ?
Related:
Superstorm Sandy: Residents consider future as demolitions begin in Breezy Point
Sandy-struck Breezy Point facing 'greatest historical challenge'
Sandy victims on the move, but temporary housing 'will never be ... home'
Contact: Joshua Brown joshua.e.brown@uvm.edu 802-656-3039 University of Vermont
Pulsarstiny spinning stars, heavier than the sun and smaller than a cityhave puzzled scientists since they were discovered in 1967.
Now, new observations by an international team, including University of Vermont astrophysicist Joanna Rankin, make these bizarre stars even more puzzling.
The scientists identified a pulsar that is able to dramatically change the way in which it shines. In just a few seconds, the star can quiet its radio waves while at the same time it makes its X-ray emissions much brighter.
The research "challenges all proposed pulsar emission theories," the team writes in the January 25, 2013 edition of the journal Science and reopens a decades-old debate about how these stars work.
Like the universe's most powerful lighthouses, pulsars shine beams of radio waves and other radiation for trillions of miles. As these highly magnetized neutron stars rapidly rotate, a pair of beams sweeps by, appearing as flashes or pulses in telescopes on Earth.
Using a satellite X-ray telescope, coordinated with two radio telescopes on the ground, the team observed a pulsar that was previously known to flip on and off every few hours between strong (or "bright") radio emissions and weak (or "quiet") radio emissions.
Monitoring simultaneously in X-rays and radio waves, the team revealed that this pulsar exhibits the same behaviour, but in reverse, when observed at X-ray wavelengths.
This is the first time that a switching X-ray emission has been detected from a pulsar.
Flipping between these two extreme statesone dominated by X-ray pulses, the other by a highly organized pattern of radio pulses" "was very surprising," says Rankin.
"As well as brightening in the X-rays we discovered that the X-ray emission also shows pulses, something not seen when the radio emission is bright," said Rankin, who spearheaded the radio observations. "This was completely unexpected."
No current model of pulsars is able to explain this switching behavior. All theories to date suggest that X-ray emissions would follow radio emissions. Instead, the new observations show the opposite. "The basic physics of a pulsar have never been solved," Rankin says.
The research was conceived by a small team then working at the University of Amsterdam, including UVM's Rankin, who has studied this pulsar, known as PSR B0943+10, for more than a decade; Wim Hermsen from SRON, the Netherlands Institute for Space Research in Utrecht, and the lead author on the new paper; Ben Stappers from the University of Manchester, UK; and Geoff Wright from Sussex University, UK.
These researchers were joined by colleagues from institutions around the world to conduct simultaneous observations with the European Space Agency's X-ray satellite, XMM-Newton, and two radio telescopes, the Giant Meter Wave Telescope (GMRT) in India and the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) in the Netherlands, to reveal this pulsar's so-far unique behavior.
"There is a general agreement about the origin of the radio emission from pulsars: it is caused by highly energetic electrons, positrons and ions moving along the field lines of the pulsar's magnetic field," explains Wim Hermsen.
"How exactly the particles are stripped off the neutron star's surface and accelerated to such high energy, however, is still largely unclear," he adds.
By studying the emission from the pulsar at different wavelengths, the team's study had been designed to discover which of various possible physical processes take place in the vicinity of the magnetic poles of pulsars.
Instead of narrowing down the possible mechanisms suggested by theory, however, the results of the team's observing campaign challenge all existing models for pulsar emission. Few astronomical objects are as baffling as pulsars and despite nearly fifty years of study they continue to defy theorists' best efforts.
Of the more than 2000 pulsars discovered to date, a number of them have erratic behavior, with emissions that can become weak or disappear in a matter of seconds but then suddenly return minutes or hours later.
B0943+10 is one of these erratic stars. Discovered at Pushchino Radio Astronomical Observatory near Moscow, "this star has two very different personalities," that were uncovered by Svetlana Suleymanova in the 1980's, says Rankin.
"But we're still in the dark about what causes this, and other pulsars, to switch modes," Rankin says. "We just don't know."
"But the fact that the pulsar keeps memory of its previous state and goes back to it," says Hermsen, "suggests that it must be something fundamental."
Recent studies indicate that the switch between "radio-bright" and "radio-quiet" states is correlated to the pulsar's dynamics. As pulsars rotate, their spinning period slows down gradually, and in some cases the slow-down process has been observed to accelerate and slow down again, in conjunction with the pulsar switching between bright and quiet states.
This correlation between a pulsar's rotation and its emission has led astronomers to wonder about a connection between the star's surface and the much-larger surrounding magnetosphere, which may extend up for 30,000 miles.
These new observations "strongly suggests that a temporary 'hotspot' appears close to the pulsar's magnetic pole which switches on and off with the change of state," said Geoff Wright one of the team's astronomers from the University of Sussex.
But the new results also suggest that something in the whole magnetosphere is changing suddenly and not just at the poles or other hotspots. "Something is happening globally," Rankin says, across the whole star.
In order for the radio emission to vary so radically on the short timescales observed, the pulsar's global environment must undergo a very rapid and reversible transformation.
"If that is true, it means the entire magnetosphere is alive and connected in very important ways," Rankin says, allowing a change in the pulsar's basic mode of shining in about one second, less time than it takes it to spin once on its axis.
"Since the switch between a pulsar's bright and quiet states links phenomena that occur on local and global scales, a thorough understanding of this process could clarify several aspects of pulsar physics," says Hermsen. "Unfortunately, we have not yet been able to explain it."
The team planned to search for the same pattern in X-rays that has been observed in radio waves to investigate what causes this switching behavior. They chose as their subject PSR B0943+10, a pulsar that is well known for its switching behavior at radio wavelengths and for its X-ray emission, which is brighter than might be expected for its age.
"Young pulsars shine brightly in X-rays because the surface of the neutron star is still very hot. But PSR B0943+10 is five million years old, which is relatively old for a pulsar: the neutron star's surface has cooled down by then," explains Hermsen.
Astronomers know of only a handful of old pulsars that shine in X-rays and believe that this emission comes from the magnetic poles the sites on the neutron star's surface where the acceleration of charged particles is triggered. "We think that, from the polar caps, accelerated particles either move outwards to the magnetosphere, where they produce radio emission, or inwards, bombarding the polar caps and creating X-ray emitting hot-spots," Hermsen adds.
There are two main models that describe these processes, depending on whether the electric and magnetic fields at play allow charged particles to escape freely from the neutron star's surface. In both cases, it has been argued that the emission of X-rays follows that of radio waves.
Monitoring the pulsar in X-rays and radio waves at the same time, the astronomers hoped to be able to discern between the two models.
"The X-ray emission of pulsar PSR B0943+10 beautifully mirrors the switches that are seen at radio wavelengths but, to our surprise, the correlation between these two emissions appears to be inverse: when the source is at its brightest in radio waves, it reaches its faintest in X-rays, and vice versa," says Hermsen.
The new data also show that the source pulsates in X-rays only during the X-ray-bright phase which corresponds to the quiet state at radio wavelengths. During this phase, the X-ray emission appears to be the sum of two components: a pulsating component consisting of thermal X-rays, which is seen to switch off during the X-ray-quiet phase, and a persistent one consisting of non-thermal X-rays.
Neither of the leading models for pulsar emission predicts such behavior.
In the second half of 2013 the team plans to repeat the same study for another pulsar, PSR B1822+09, which exhibits similar radio emission properties but with a different geometry.
In the meantime, these observations will keep theoretical astrophysicists busy investigating possible physical mechanisms that could cause the sudden and drastic changes to the pulsar's entire magnetosphere and result in such a curious flip in how they shine.
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Contact: Joshua Brown joshua.e.brown@uvm.edu 802-656-3039 University of Vermont
Pulsarstiny spinning stars, heavier than the sun and smaller than a cityhave puzzled scientists since they were discovered in 1967.
Now, new observations by an international team, including University of Vermont astrophysicist Joanna Rankin, make these bizarre stars even more puzzling.
The scientists identified a pulsar that is able to dramatically change the way in which it shines. In just a few seconds, the star can quiet its radio waves while at the same time it makes its X-ray emissions much brighter.
The research "challenges all proposed pulsar emission theories," the team writes in the January 25, 2013 edition of the journal Science and reopens a decades-old debate about how these stars work.
Like the universe's most powerful lighthouses, pulsars shine beams of radio waves and other radiation for trillions of miles. As these highly magnetized neutron stars rapidly rotate, a pair of beams sweeps by, appearing as flashes or pulses in telescopes on Earth.
Using a satellite X-ray telescope, coordinated with two radio telescopes on the ground, the team observed a pulsar that was previously known to flip on and off every few hours between strong (or "bright") radio emissions and weak (or "quiet") radio emissions.
Monitoring simultaneously in X-rays and radio waves, the team revealed that this pulsar exhibits the same behaviour, but in reverse, when observed at X-ray wavelengths.
This is the first time that a switching X-ray emission has been detected from a pulsar.
Flipping between these two extreme statesone dominated by X-ray pulses, the other by a highly organized pattern of radio pulses" "was very surprising," says Rankin.
"As well as brightening in the X-rays we discovered that the X-ray emission also shows pulses, something not seen when the radio emission is bright," said Rankin, who spearheaded the radio observations. "This was completely unexpected."
No current model of pulsars is able to explain this switching behavior. All theories to date suggest that X-ray emissions would follow radio emissions. Instead, the new observations show the opposite. "The basic physics of a pulsar have never been solved," Rankin says.
The research was conceived by a small team then working at the University of Amsterdam, including UVM's Rankin, who has studied this pulsar, known as PSR B0943+10, for more than a decade; Wim Hermsen from SRON, the Netherlands Institute for Space Research in Utrecht, and the lead author on the new paper; Ben Stappers from the University of Manchester, UK; and Geoff Wright from Sussex University, UK.
These researchers were joined by colleagues from institutions around the world to conduct simultaneous observations with the European Space Agency's X-ray satellite, XMM-Newton, and two radio telescopes, the Giant Meter Wave Telescope (GMRT) in India and the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) in the Netherlands, to reveal this pulsar's so-far unique behavior.
"There is a general agreement about the origin of the radio emission from pulsars: it is caused by highly energetic electrons, positrons and ions moving along the field lines of the pulsar's magnetic field," explains Wim Hermsen.
"How exactly the particles are stripped off the neutron star's surface and accelerated to such high energy, however, is still largely unclear," he adds.
By studying the emission from the pulsar at different wavelengths, the team's study had been designed to discover which of various possible physical processes take place in the vicinity of the magnetic poles of pulsars.
Instead of narrowing down the possible mechanisms suggested by theory, however, the results of the team's observing campaign challenge all existing models for pulsar emission. Few astronomical objects are as baffling as pulsars and despite nearly fifty years of study they continue to defy theorists' best efforts.
Of the more than 2000 pulsars discovered to date, a number of them have erratic behavior, with emissions that can become weak or disappear in a matter of seconds but then suddenly return minutes or hours later.
B0943+10 is one of these erratic stars. Discovered at Pushchino Radio Astronomical Observatory near Moscow, "this star has two very different personalities," that were uncovered by Svetlana Suleymanova in the 1980's, says Rankin.
"But we're still in the dark about what causes this, and other pulsars, to switch modes," Rankin says. "We just don't know."
"But the fact that the pulsar keeps memory of its previous state and goes back to it," says Hermsen, "suggests that it must be something fundamental."
Recent studies indicate that the switch between "radio-bright" and "radio-quiet" states is correlated to the pulsar's dynamics. As pulsars rotate, their spinning period slows down gradually, and in some cases the slow-down process has been observed to accelerate and slow down again, in conjunction with the pulsar switching between bright and quiet states.
This correlation between a pulsar's rotation and its emission has led astronomers to wonder about a connection between the star's surface and the much-larger surrounding magnetosphere, which may extend up for 30,000 miles.
These new observations "strongly suggests that a temporary 'hotspot' appears close to the pulsar's magnetic pole which switches on and off with the change of state," said Geoff Wright one of the team's astronomers from the University of Sussex.
But the new results also suggest that something in the whole magnetosphere is changing suddenly and not just at the poles or other hotspots. "Something is happening globally," Rankin says, across the whole star.
In order for the radio emission to vary so radically on the short timescales observed, the pulsar's global environment must undergo a very rapid and reversible transformation.
"If that is true, it means the entire magnetosphere is alive and connected in very important ways," Rankin says, allowing a change in the pulsar's basic mode of shining in about one second, less time than it takes it to spin once on its axis.
"Since the switch between a pulsar's bright and quiet states links phenomena that occur on local and global scales, a thorough understanding of this process could clarify several aspects of pulsar physics," says Hermsen. "Unfortunately, we have not yet been able to explain it."
The team planned to search for the same pattern in X-rays that has been observed in radio waves to investigate what causes this switching behavior. They chose as their subject PSR B0943+10, a pulsar that is well known for its switching behavior at radio wavelengths and for its X-ray emission, which is brighter than might be expected for its age.
"Young pulsars shine brightly in X-rays because the surface of the neutron star is still very hot. But PSR B0943+10 is five million years old, which is relatively old for a pulsar: the neutron star's surface has cooled down by then," explains Hermsen.
Astronomers know of only a handful of old pulsars that shine in X-rays and believe that this emission comes from the magnetic poles the sites on the neutron star's surface where the acceleration of charged particles is triggered. "We think that, from the polar caps, accelerated particles either move outwards to the magnetosphere, where they produce radio emission, or inwards, bombarding the polar caps and creating X-ray emitting hot-spots," Hermsen adds.
There are two main models that describe these processes, depending on whether the electric and magnetic fields at play allow charged particles to escape freely from the neutron star's surface. In both cases, it has been argued that the emission of X-rays follows that of radio waves.
Monitoring the pulsar in X-rays and radio waves at the same time, the astronomers hoped to be able to discern between the two models.
"The X-ray emission of pulsar PSR B0943+10 beautifully mirrors the switches that are seen at radio wavelengths but, to our surprise, the correlation between these two emissions appears to be inverse: when the source is at its brightest in radio waves, it reaches its faintest in X-rays, and vice versa," says Hermsen.
The new data also show that the source pulsates in X-rays only during the X-ray-bright phase which corresponds to the quiet state at radio wavelengths. During this phase, the X-ray emission appears to be the sum of two components: a pulsating component consisting of thermal X-rays, which is seen to switch off during the X-ray-quiet phase, and a persistent one consisting of non-thermal X-rays.
Neither of the leading models for pulsar emission predicts such behavior.
In the second half of 2013 the team plans to repeat the same study for another pulsar, PSR B1822+09, which exhibits similar radio emission properties but with a different geometry.
In the meantime, these observations will keep theoretical astrophysicists busy investigating possible physical mechanisms that could cause the sudden and drastic changes to the pulsar's entire magnetosphere and result in such a curious flip in how they shine.
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Public release date: 24-Jan-2013
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