Saturday, April 2, 2005

Regional U.S. telephone giant SBC Communications is one step closer to offering cable television to the 18 million households in its 13 state coverage area. The company announced a $195 million contract with Scientific-Atlanta Thursday to provide a video operations center and regional hubs for the new service. Under the brand name, U-verse, the SBC’s television rollout is set to launch in 2006 after field trials begin later this year.

The company is seeking the so-called “triple play,” where a telecommunications company offers voice, data and video in one bundled package. Local telephone companies like SBC have been losing business to cable TV companies, which have added telephone and Internet services in recent years.

In a slew of recent deals, SBC is looking to stop that trend. Within the past six months it has signed alliances with various technology firms to build out a fiber network to the home strategy. For instance, SBC has a $1.7 billion deal with Alcatel to build out its fiber optic network and a 10-year, $400 million, pact with Microsoft to license its IPTV technology to allow multi-channel television to stream over its Internet backbone.

In most of the U.S. only cable TV companies like Comcast have been able to offer the “triple play” of voice, video and data services. But traditional phone companies like SBC and Verizon have been upgrading their copper wire telephone networks to fiber optic. SBC says it plans to spend billions of dollars to overhaul its telecommunications network, saying the aging and brittle copper wires which were originally laid in the early 1900s do not have enough bandwidth to allow television capability.

Thursday, July 24, 2008

A bus crash in Victoria, Australia has injured at least 20 people, two of whom are listed as critical. One victim is reported to be still trapped in the wreckage.

The accident occurred between a bus and a semi-trailer on the Princes Highway in the Traralgon area around 10:50am AEST. The La Trobe Valley Busliner bus was traveling east when it collided with the back of a heavy haulage truck.

Those critically injured are being airlifted to a hospital in Melbourne. Others are being transported by Ambulance to La Trobe Valley Hospital in Traralgon.

SES crews are on scene, along with St. John Ambulance and fire crews.

The eastbound lanes of the highway have been blocked by police and traffic is being diverted.

Thursday, May 6, 2010

This table shows the results for 649 of 650 constituencies in the 2010 general election in the United Kingdom (not including the delayed constituency of Thirsk and Malton, which will hold its election on 27 May).

The “Constituency” column shows the name of each constituency, linked to the relevant Wikipedia article. the “Result” column shows the winning party, and whether they held or gained the seat (and, if relevant, who they gained it from). The “Votes” column shows how many votes were received by the winning party, the “Share” column their share of the vote, and the “Swing” column the swing in the direction of the gaining party.

In the general election, people over the age of eighteen around the United Kingdom may choose to vote for a candidate at their local polling booth, and Members of Parliament are elected to each constituency based on the first past the post system. Whichever party has a majority of MPs after all constituencies have announced their results has the opportunity to form a government.

The incumbent party before the dissolution of parliament was Gordon Brown’s Labour Party, exit polls suggested a small Conservative Party majority, which—when this swing is projected nationally—would cause a hung parliament. The exit polls also suggested that despite reports that support for the Liberal Democrats had surged following the first national televised leaders’ debates in the United Kingdom, the Liberal Democrats would suffer from a third party squeeze.

On the morning of Friday 7, 2010 the accuracy of the exit polls was demonstrated when it was revealed that there was indeed a hung Parliament and that although the Conservative Party had the greatest number of seats and votes it would be impossible for them to achieve an outright majority. The constitution of the United Kingdom allows for the incumbent Labour Party to first attempt to form a government and incumbent Prime Minister, Gordon Brown announced that he would allow civil servants from the Cabinet Office to help facilitate negotiations. Despite the Labour Party openly courting the Liberal Party, their leader Nick Clegg has stated that as the party with the most seats and most votes the Conservatives have the right to attempt to form a government.

Some seats were also be contested by one or more of a number of smaller parties and independents, including the United Kingdom Independence Party, the British National Party, and the Green Party of England and Wales, who all already hold seats in the European Parliament and local government authorities, all hoped to gain their first seats in the House of Commons in this election. History was made when the Greens won their first Parliamentery with their leader Caroline Lucas winning Brighton Pavilion. In Northern Ireland the Alliance Party also won their first seat with Naomi Long taking Peter Robinson’s seat.

Please refresh this page periodically to see the latest results as they come in.

Tuesday, March 22, 2005Volunteers began a 60 day bed-rest marathon on March 19 to study simulated weightlessness effects on women astronauts. The study, Women International Space Simulation for Exploration(WISE), is conducted at the MEDES Space Clinic in Toulouse, France.

The 12 women, selected from 1600 applicants hailing from France,Great Britain, Germany, Finland, The Netherlands, Poland and the Czech Republic began the study after a 20 day screening for baseline comparison data as the study progressed.

The women will conduct all activities from eating, bathing, and reading while lying in hospital beds tilted headfirst at a six degree angle. This particular position, called head-down tilt bed rest was determined from previous studies to remove the vertical load of gravity on the body, inducing changes similar to what astronauts in a genuine weightless environment experience [1].

Long term exposure to weightlessness creates a number of physiological and psychological problems in astronauts such as:

• Reduced capacity for physical exertion
• Muscle atrophy
• Affects of confinement and isolation
• Impaired circulatory function

A total of 24 women will participate in the study. A second group of 12 will join in September.

Three groups of eight women each will be studied over the course of the two campaigns of bed rest. One group will serve as a control, receiving no specific treatments, the second will exercise, while the third will receive nutritional supplements.

The study is designed to fill in gaps of knowledge on the differences between men and women during extended weightlessness. It also aims to develop countermeasures for reducing the debilitating effects of long spaceflights.

Participating agencies in the study include the European Space Agency, NASA, the French Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency.

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