The number of U.S. children in foster care has dropped for the sixth straight year, falling to about 400,000 compared to more than 520,000 a decade ago, according to new federal figures demonstrating the staying power of reforms even amid economic turbulence. The drop results primarily from a shift in the policies and practices of …
Author Archives: robotchampion
Twitter now has more than half a billion accounts worldwide
A milestone for Twitter today, according to the Paris-based analyst group Semiocast. The social network has now passed the half-billion account mark — specifically 517 million accounts as of July 1, 2012, with 141.8 million of those users in the U.S., still about half as many users as Facebook has but positioning it as the second-biggest …
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Next Apple event for iPhone 5 set for September 12 – maybe also for iPad mini
iMore has learned that Apple is planning to debut the new iPhone at a special event on Wednesday, September 12, 2012, with the release date to follow 9 days later on Friday, September 21. This information comes from sources who have proven accurate in the past. The iPad mini will be announced at the same September 12 event, as …
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Peter Jackson turns The Hobbit into three films – explained in his own words
From a post by Peter Jackson in Facebook: It is only at the end of a shoot that you finally get the chance to sit down and have a look at the film you have made. Recently Fran, Phil and I did just this when we watched for the first time an early cut …
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The era of micro-spacecraft is here – ultra small satellites are everywhere
There is big news on the small satellite front. From super-secret agencies to the U.S. military, academia, private firms, world space agencies, and NASA, ultra-small satellites are the big thing. In sizing up “smallsats,” there are a range of classifications in the less-than-500- kilogram department, be they minisatellites, microsatellites, nanosatellites, picosatellites, palm-size CubeSats, even the diminutive …
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Photos of the skydiver who parachuted into the Olympics dressed as the Queen
God save the queen. And get her a razor for her five o’clock shadow. The stuntperson who was featured during that showstopping moment in Friday night’s Opening Ceremony when Queen Elizabeth jumped out of a helicopter with James Bond was a better actor than you ever knew. A closer look reveals it was a …
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Ai WeiWei reviews London’s opening ceremony for 2012 Olympics – criticizes Beijing’s
Brilliant. It was very, very well done. This was about Great Britain; it didn’t pretend it was trying to have global appeal. Because Great Britain has self-confidence, it doesn’t need a monumental Olympics. But for China that was the only imaginable kind of international event. Beijing’s Olympics were very grand – they were trying to throw a party …
Prison inmates at San Quentin get contract to build satellite parts for NASA
The NASA Ames Research Center is known for establishing innovative partnerships and Pete Worden, the former Air Force general who serves as the Center’s director, is known as a maverick. Still, the latest joint venture to come to light has caught even some longtime NASA observers by surprise. Under supervision from NASA Ames, inmates working in the …
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Astronomers discover black hole with 140 trillion times more water than Earth
Two teams of astronomers have discovered the largest and farthest reservoir of water ever detected in the universe. The water, equivalent to 140 trillion times all the water in the world’s ocean, surrounds a huge, feeding black hole, called a quasar, more than 12 billion light-years away. “The environment around this quasar is very unique …
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Dr. Weil’s Anti-Inflammatory Food Pyramid
Imagine this for a food pyramid – topped off by dark chocolate and red wine, dairy nowhere to be seen, and fruits/vegetables as the foundation.