Twitter for Windows Phone gets pushy, adds Notifications support

Starting this week, Windows Phone users with a Twitter fixation will have a much easier time feeding the little, blue, bird-shaped beast. The latest update to the app features long-awaited Notifications support. Downloading version 1.5 will deliver such important Twitter info as retweets, mentions, direct messages, new followers and favorited tweets to the forefront where they belong. You can download the app in the source link below and then tell all your friends through the microblogging service of your choice, whatever that might be. Fair warning in the meantime -- a number of folks are reporting issues with the update, and we've had some difficulty getting it up an running on our own handsets. Feel free to sound off in the comments below -- since you may have some trouble doing so on Twitter.

Twitter for Windows Phone gets pushy, adds Notifications support originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 29 Jun 2012 09:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/06/29/twitter-for-windows-phone-gets-pushy-adds-notifications-support/

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Is Magic Mike Headed for Broadway?

Director Steven Soderbergh's Magic Mike debuted over the weekend, closing out the Los Angeles Film Festival. And while the Warner Bros film opens in theaters this Friday, fans may have the opportunity to see it live in the flesh as it were in the future.

Starring Channing Tatum, the story loosely revolves around the actor's eight month stint dancing at male strip clubs in Tampa, Florida. It is a time during which Tatum admits to witnessing a much more dark and depressing version of events than what producing partner/writer Reid Carolin transposes to the script. He meets an eager college drop out, played by Alex Pettyfer and takes him under his wing.

Carolin tipped off to USA Today that there are plans to strut Magic Mike on Broadway in the near future. ""We are working on it as a Broadway show, which would be a different story," said Carolin, adding, "More of a romp, more of a fun night out at a club with a story. I'm almost more excited about that than the movie because I think it's the perfect thing for women to go see on Broadway, to be participants in the show." And Pettyfer may have a chance to show more skin as well if and when the show hits the great white way. He said he "absolutely" would do the show. ""I think we should all do the opening night," he said.

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PFT: Ochocinco sends Goodell a warning

Getty Images

Monday?s tweet from Jonathan Vilma confirms what anyone following the Saints bounty scandal already knew.? Unless he?s planning to buy a condo at Del Boca Vista, ?Phase 2? means litigation.

Technically, the litigation will be in the form of an attack on an arbitration award.? And as the judge who recently rejected the challenge of Broncos linebacker D.J. Williams to the league?s decision to uphold his six-game suspension explained it, ?[j]udicial review of an arbitration award ?is among the narrowest known to the law.??

The reason is simple.? Courts like it when parties privately agree to settle their own disputes via arbitration, since that reduces the number of cases that otherwise end up clogging the publicly-financed justice system.? Thus, Commissioner Roger Goodell?s inevitable decision not to reconsider his initial decision on the player suspensions will be overturned only if he ?ignore[s] the plain language of the collective bargaining agreement? or if he ?strays from interpretation and application of the agreement and effectively dispenses his own brand of justice.?

The Federal Arbitration Act, a law that requires courts to defer to arbitration awards, creates four specific reasons for scrapping the outcome of arbitration:? (1) if the decision was ?procured by corruption, fraud, or undue means?; (2) if there was ?evident partiality or corruption by the arbitrator?; (3) if the arbitrator was ?guilty of misconduct in refusing to postpone a hearing, in refusing to hear evidence, or in misbehaving in some other way?; or (4) the arbitrator ?exceeded his powers and imperfectly executed them.?

Given the perceptions and opinions of the suspended players, those four factors likely provide a source of encouragement, since they believe Goodell crafted a flawed procedure that was both partial and corrupt.? And so the players have focused ? and will continue to focus ? on alleged problems with the nuts and the bolts, from failing to demand the introduction of testimony supporting the league?s position to producing the documents the league intended to use less than 72 hours before the hearing (which may be a clear violation of the plain language of the CBA) to failing to share exculpatory evidence generated during the investigation with the players.

Perhaps the biggest problem for the league continues to be the decision of Roger Goodell, after leading the investigation and being aware of (or at least having access to) every nook and cranny of the evidence developed, to appoint himself to serve as the arbitrator.? That?s why the NFLPA asked Goodell to stand down at the outset of the June 18 hearing; they believe that his public comments in support of the league?s discipline predispose him to finding that the discipline was proper.? (Regardless of which side you personally favor, that?s not a bad argument.

And so these various factors give the players reason to believe that ?Phase 2? will have a chance at succeeding.

Still, it?s a high bar.? The court won?t be able to second-guess Goodell?s decision.? Instead, the court will be able to disregard it only if the court believes that flaws in the process fall within one of the four factors on which arbitration awards may be overturned.

Either way, look for the lawsuit to be filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana, where the appointed judge potentially will be more likely to have an open mind when assessing the various ways that an arbitration award can be overturned.

And look for that lawsuit to be filed promptly upon the issuance of the letters from Goodell upholding the suspensions.

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Witnesses defend Texas stand-your-ground convict

Raul Rodriguez sits in court in the beginning of his trial at Harris County Criminal Courthouse on Monday, June 25, 2012, in Houston. Relatives of Rodriguez, who claimed Texas' version of a stand-your-ground law allowed him to fatally shoot a neighbor after an argument about a noisy party, told jurors Monday he was not an abusive person and always stressed the importance of gun safety. He faces up to life in prison for the 2010 killing of Kelly Danaher. (AP Photo/Houston Chronicle, Mayra Beltran)

Raul Rodriguez sits in court in the beginning of his trial at Harris County Criminal Courthouse on Monday, June 25, 2012, in Houston. Relatives of Rodriguez, who claimed Texas' version of a stand-your-ground law allowed him to fatally shoot a neighbor after an argument about a noisy party, told jurors Monday he was not an abusive person and always stressed the importance of gun safety. He faces up to life in prison for the 2010 killing of Kelly Danaher. (AP Photo/Houston Chronicle, Mayra Beltran)

Raul Rodriguez, right, stands with his attorney Bill Stradley as he is found guilty of killing Kelly Danaher Wednesday, June 13, 2012, in Houston. A jury convicted Rodriguez of murdering his neighbor during a confrontation outside the neighbor's home two years ago, rejecting his claim that he was within his rights to fatally shoot the man under Texas' version of a stand-your-ground law. (AP Photo/Houston Chronicle, Brett Coomer) MANDATORY CREDIT

HOUSTON (AP) ? Attorneys for a Texas man convicted of murder despite claiming Texas' version of a stand-your-ground law allowed him to fatally shoot a neighbor will present more witnesses Tuesday as jurors consider his sentence.

Raul Rodriguez, 46, faces up to life in prison for the 2010 killing of Kelly Danaher.

Eleven witnesses, many of them relatives, testified Monday that Rodriguez was not an abusive person and always stressed the importance of gun safety.

Rodriguez, a retired Houston-area firefighter, was angry about the noise coming from a birthday party at his neighbor's home. He went over and got into an argument with Danaher, a 36-year-old elementary school teacher, and two other men who were at the party.

In a 22-minute video he recorded the night of the shooting, Rodriguez can be heard telling a police dispatcher "my life is in danger now" and "these people are going to go try and kill me." He then said, "I'm standing my ground here," and shot Danaher. The two other men were wounded.

Rodriguez's reference to standing his ground is similar to the claim made by George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer who is citing Florida's stand-your-ground law in his defense in the fatal February shooting of an unarmed teenager, Trayvon Martin. Rodriguez's case, however, was decided under a different kind of self-defense doctrine.

Jurors had not heard anyone testify for Rodriguez before Monday because defense attorneys did not present any witnesses before he was convicted June 13.

James Coleman, one of Rodriguez's stepsons, testified he had a good relationship with his stepfather.

"He was strict but he was fair with us. He was never abusive to us," he said. Several prosecution witnesses had testified that they saw Rodriguez hit his children, including one incident in 2008 where he got into a fight with his biological son Richard Rodriguez.

Richard Rodriguez told jurors that he started the fight, took the first punch and later regretted the incident.

"I love my father," Richard Rodriguez, 24, said as his father cried at the defense table. Rodriguez also has three other biological children and another stepson, Austin Coleman.

James Coleman, 20, said Rodriguez would reread his safety manual after getting his concealed handgun license in 2008 and that his stepfather taught his children to respect weapons.

While several prosecution witnesses told jurors Rodriguez intimidated neighbors by showing them his handgun, Austin Coleman, 16, testified he never saw his stepfather show off his handguns while out in public.

Richard Rodriguez said his father owned a few rifles and five or six pistols but wouldn't describe him as a gun fanatic.

Prosecution witnesses, including former co-workers and neighbors, told jurors during the punishment phase that Rodriguez was abusive, a bad neighbor and that he once shot a dog.

Rodriguez's 18-year-old son, Daniel Rodriguez, told jurors Monday that his father shot an aggressive dog after it wandered onto their property and threatened them.

Prosecutors called Rodriguez an aggressor who took a gun to complain about loud music and could have safely left his neighbor's driveway in Huffman, an unincorporated area about 30 miles northeast of Houston, any time before the shooting. Defense attorneys argued Rodriguez was defending himself when one of the men lunged at him and he had less than a second to respond.

Texas' version of a stand-your-ground law is known as the Castle Doctrine. It was revised in 2007 to expand the right to use deadly force. The new version allows people to defend themselves in their homes, workplaces or vehicles. It also says a person using force cannot provoke the attacker or be involved in criminal activity at the time. Legal experts say the expansion in general gave people wider latitude on the use of deadly force.

Associated Press

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SAFE.ID & Windows 7 issue

Hi All,

I am trying to recertify a user programatically by getting SAFE.IDS file from user.

User receives a mail with two buttons to send their SAFE.ID file for merging.

Button 1:
Using the Command "UserIDCreateSafeCopy" to create safe copy of the user ID. Here user can select his desired location to save the safe ID file.
Button 2: Using ''@RegQueryValues, search HKEYs in registry and get the last saved location (OPenSaveMRU) of this ID file.

In XP, it is working perfectly.

Problem:
When it comes to Windows7, HKEY values in registry are in HEX format.

I tried to combine the above two buttons functionalities in a single button using the below link.
http://www.botstation.com/code/filedialog.php

Again, in XP it is working fine, but in Windwos7, it fails, not sure what is going wrong.

So, can anyone throw some light & provide your inputs or comments.
1. Is there a way to convert HEX into normal text like 'C:\Desktop\...' using Lotus script
2. Is there a way to create SAFE.IDS file using Lotus script ? (searched with no luck)
3. Is there any Notes.ini setting in Notes which captures the last saved file location from Notes? - 'FileDlgDirectory' in Notes.ini behaving weired, always shows 'Desktop' irrespective of the last file saved location.
4. Is it possible to store\detach\copy in a memo the SAFE.ID when save file dialog box opens from the Command "UserIDCreateSafeCopy"

Thank you in advance.

- Prasad

Feedback number WEBB8VJV7T created by Nagendra Prasad on 06/23/2012

Status: Open
Comments:

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Prettier tits (the bird!) get more help from their partners

After a long, cold winter, nothing says spring like the hopeful songs and dances of horny male birds looking for mates. Throughout Europe and western Asia, the blue tit is one of the most colorful birds to engage in this annual hormone-driven spectacle. The males bring their A game, flitting about, singing beautiful songs, and offering gifts, trying everything in their power to convince their potential mates they are the best man around. One thing is for certain when it comes to blue tit love: it?s ladies? choice. But, as a new study published today in Frontiers in Zoology found, the guys do have minds of their own: they?re better dads when they?ve landed an attractive mate.

While blue tit males will do their best to impress females, the females still rely heavily on looks when making their decisions. Male blue tits are ornamented with brilliant blue feathers that shine brightly in the UV range, while the girls? feathers are much duller. This difference isn?t meaningless; female tits strongly prefer males with the brightest UV crests. But not only does the guy?s looks matter in courtship: previous research has shown that if you dampen a male tit?s UV coloration after his chicks are born, his lovely mate will be derelict in her motherly duties, leading to weaker offspring.

Why should looks matter after the kids have been born? Well, from an evolutionary perspective, animals are attracted to individuals that make the best mates. Thus, in turn, attractiveness is a basic assessment of mate quality (though, certainly, other factors carry weight, too). Over a female tit?s life, she may mate with a number of different males that vary in their attractiveness. If the most attractive one she ever mates with is the healthiest, or the one with best genes, or in whatever way produces the best kids, it?s worth her while to make sure that any babies she makes with him are given the best odds of surviving ? which would mean putting more effort in to caring for her young when her partner is sexy, and less when he?s just so-so. This change in effort based on mate quality is known as the Differential Allocation Hypothesis (DAH).

Since the female tits are making the decisions, you might think their looks aren?t as important. But once the babies are born, both parents shoulder the burden of caring for their young ? and there?s reason to believe the guy?s parental care efforts may contribute more toward baby bird survival. While the female tits spend more time tidying their nest, evidence suggests that when it comes to bringing home the bacon, male blue tits bring in more food ? and specifically more high quality food ? than their mates. Furthermore, hungry baby tits beg dad for more instead of mom, suggesting that the young instinctively trust their father to feed them when times get rough. Which begs the question: do males slack on their fatherly duties if their mate isn?t pretty? That is exactly what Katharina Mahr and her colleagues at the Konrad Lorenz Institute of Ethology wanted to know.

To test the Differential Allocation Hypothesis, the research team took female blue tits and used UV-blocking chemicals in duck gland oil to dull their pretty color. On others, they placed the same oil, but no blocking chemicals, so their plumage still shone brightly. The UV-blocking chemicals didn?t alter the females behavior in any way, only made them look less ornate to their mates. So how did the males react?

While all males protected their mate and chicks with equal fervor, the males with the less attractive mates made significantly less foraging trips to feed their chicks. Less food means the young are not as strong, healthy and competitive as others, lessening their chance of surviving and reproducing themselves. ?The UV reflectance of the crown plumage of female blue tits significantly affected male investment in feeding nestlings,? explain the authors. This decreased parental investment wasn?t compensated for by the female, and thus the chicks are directly and negatively affected.

?This is the first study to show that male blue tit behavior depends on female ornamentation,? said Matteo Griggio, co-author of this study, in the press release. The male tits are likely using attractiveness as a measure of the health of their mate. ?Females in bad condition might not be able to provide sufficient parental care, which in turn affects nestling body mass and growth [of the young],? explain the authors. Since getting food for chicks costs the male both food and energy, the male can?t afford to waste his time feeding chicks that might not make it. Instead, he cuts his losses without completely sacrificing his young, and keeps himself healthy and strong for the next set of chicks that will hopefully be with more suitable mate.

Of course, it?s hard to resist the temptation to draw human parallels. After all, blue tits are considered monogamous, though they cheat on their partners and divorce bad matches like we do. However, no evidence for DAH in people has ever been presented, and designing such an experiment would be extremely difficult. Unlike many animals, though, humans are remarkable parents even in extreme biological circumstances. Adopted children and stepchildren receive a lot of parental care from their non-biological parents, for example. It?s unlikely that this kind of differential allocation plays a large role in human parenting. That said, this study of tits does make you wonder?

?
Citation: Katharina Mahr, Matteo Griggio, Michela Granatiero and Herbert Hoi. Female attractiveness affects paternal investment: experimental evidence for male differential allocation in blue tits. Frontiers in Zoology (in press)

Photo of blut tits ?kissing? from Wikimedia commons.
Photo of an adult blue tit feeding its young by David Friel via Flikr.

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Video: For-Profit Ed: No Good News

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American River College professor publishes first novel

When it comes to academia, it's a "publish or perish" world. With his debut novel, "The Infinite Tides" (Bloomsbury, $26, 400 pages), American River College professor of English Christian Kiefer has passed the test.

In the moving, symbol-heavy "Tides," Kiefer confronts the Big Issues ? life, death, loss, hope, redemption ? as experienced by Capt. Keith Corcoran and, by extension, Everyman.

Keith is an astronaut on the International Space Station who gets word that his teenage daughter has been killed in a car wreck, and his adulterous wife is demanding a divorce. Back on Earth, he goes on hiatus from NASA and tries to cope with losing everything.

Kiefer is a published poet ("Feeding Into Winter"), musician (the Christian Kiefer band) and now novelist ("I like to keep busy"). He and wife Macie live with their five children near Newcastle, "on a ridge on a couple acres with some chickens. It's a little empire of awesomeness."

Kiefer, 41, grew up in Auburn, earned a master's degree from California State University, Sacramento, and a Ph.D. in American literature from the University of California, Davis.

He will host a book-signing at 7 p.m. Thursday at Time Tested Books, 1114 21st St., Sacramento; (916) 447-5696. I caught up with him by phone at his campus office.

What do you teach at ARC?

Composition, creative writing and literature ? the whole gamut.

What do your students think about you as novelist?

They're interested and excited. A good many of them are in college for the first time, so to have a faculty member who has published a novel ? and he's teaching them how to write sentences ? is a big thing for them.

What sparked the story?

Part of it was listening to the news and beginning to feel I might be the only man in America who still had a job.

Then sitting at Starbucks (grading papers), watching other men at other tables looking through the want ads, then drifting to the sports pages, then to the funnies, then finally to the front page. Basically using the hunt for a job as a way to fill the endless hours of their otherwise vacant days.

That's certainly cheerful.

Men ? and I guess women, too ? define themselves by what they do. When a large swath of them end up with no answer to the question, "What do you do (for work)?" it presents an interesting social and cultural situation.

How so in the book?

(The story is) about imagining oneself as a vector, which has direction and momentum. Then learning you're not a vector, you're a point, which sits in one spot and has no mass. Keith is completely focused on himself moving forward in the world on a path he has envisioned. When the moment comes when he is derailed from that path, he slowly becomes aware of all the things he has missed in his life.

What about the theme of isolationism?

All of our lives are containerized. We go from the container of our car to the container of our house. Keith's mission is flying on a container ? the space shuttle ? to another container ? the International Space Station ? and climbing in to a space suit ? another container. He's seen most of his life from (various) containers.

His house and the neighbors' houses are basically the same. The Starbucks are all purposely the same. In terms of the novel, every container is the same as the next container. The significant events in the book are when he's outside.

The question becomes, "How do you locate yourself as a unique individual in the context of such self-similartiy?"

Your skill as a poet must have informed the book.

The poetry made me hyper-sensitive to word choice. And reading mid 19th century literature ? Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville ? has given me a real sense of focus on the flow of sentences. William Faulkner, too, though from a later period but very much coming out of that tradition. I carried Faulkner's "Absolom, Absolom!" with me in my backpack, and still refer to it when I want to remind myself what a sentence can really do.

What are the "infinite tides"?

I don't want to give away the symbology of the book, but ? Keith is a character who moves forward all the time, but (can't because) the ebb and flow (of life) is part of its process. There's an infinite kind of circularity, and it takes Keith a long time to realize that it's essentially what life is.

After a loss such as Keith suffers, how does one move on?

The famous text on that is "On Death and Dying" by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, who (explains) the steps you go through in the grieving process. There's a moment when Keith realizes he's stuck in one of these grief stages and it pisses him off that he is so ordinary in the end. He's thought of himself as a super-genius his whole life. But when it comes to these types of emotional resonances, we are all the same at heart.

What does Keith finally learn?

As simple as it sounds, he learns to stop and accept the fact that the things around him and the people around him are enough.

? Copyright The Sacramento Bee. All rights reserved.

---

Call The Bee's Allen Pierleoni, (916) 321-1128.

? Read more articles by Allen Pierleoni

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Technology ? Sony, Sumitomo Electric develop world's 1st green semiconductor laser

Technology Jun. 24, 2012 - 06:07AM JST ( )

TOKYO ?

Sumitomo Electric Industries and Sony Corp have successfully developed the world?s first semiconductor laser diode with an optical output power of over 100 mW in the true green region at a wavelength of 530 nm.

This laser diode can be mounted on laser projectors and many other display devices. The new laser diode features twice the luminosity compared with conventional gallium nitride (GaN) green laser diodes, and a color gamut broadened by 182% based on the NTSC standard (CIE 1976 color gamut). As a result, these significantly improve the performance of laser projectors and other display devices to reproduce vibrant video and images.

Red and blue laser diodes have been commercially available among the primary red-green-blue (RGB) colors, but there has been greater need for high output green laser diodes towards the development of high performance laser projectors and display devices. Currently, green lasers are generated by converting the wavelength of infrared laser light from a light source using optical materials, but the light source is large and expensive. In addition, conventional GaN-based green lasers have difficulties achieving sufficient luminosity as their performance is limited to an output power of several tens of milliwatt at a wavelength of 520 nm or less.

To overcome these challenges, Sumitomo Electric and Sony collaborated in the development of a true green semiconductor laser for practical use, drawing on Sumitomo Electric?s semi-polar GaN substrate, crystal growth, and wafer processing technologies, as well as Sony?s GaN-based laser technology, acquired through the Blu-ray development.

By introducing new techniques and improving the entire semiconductor laser production process, including structural design, crystal growth, wafer processing, and electrode configuration, Sumitomo Electric and Sony were able to successfully develop true green semiconductor laser with an optical output power of more than 100 mW at a wavelength of 530 nm. This true green semiconductor laser diode is highly reliable as it realizes wall-plug efficiency of over 8%.

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Toshiba Thrive and Thrive 7 won't be getting ICS until the fall

Toshiba may have been aiming for a spring release of ICS for the original Thrive line of tablets, but apparently they missed the bullseye and have set things back until the fall. Users across the Internet are understandably upset, and rumblings speculate that they Thrive and Thrive 7 may never get ICS, but that's not what Toshiba said.

We are working hard to bring Android 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich to our Thrive tablets. While we originally estimated it would be ready this spring, we now estimate the update will be delivered to all Thrive 10” and 7” tablets by early fall. Apologies for any inconvenience and thank you for your patience.

They don't give any reason for the delay, and we're not about to second guess them -- we're just here to deliver the news, good or bad. 

Source: Toshiba; via Phandroid

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Forgotten star cluster now found useful in studies of Sun and hunt for Earth-like planets

ScienceDaily (June 23, 2012) ? A loose group of stars, known for over 180 years but never before studied in detail, has been revealed to be an important new tool in the quest to understand the evolution of stars like the Sun, and in the search for planets like Earth. "We have discovered that a previously unappreciated open star cluster, which is a little younger than our Sun, holds great promise for use as a standard gauge in fundamental stellar astrophysics," said Jason T. Wright, an assistant professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State University, who conceived and initiated the research.

Wright's research team's first paper on the cluster, known as Ruprecht 147 or NGC 6774, has been submitted to the Astronomical Journal for publication. Team member Jason Curtis, a graduate student in Wright's lab, led the work for this paper and will present the team's project in Barcelona, Spain, later this month at the 17th Cambridge Workshop on Cool Stars, Stellar Systems, and the Sun.

When searching for planets with an Earth-like mass and an orbit that allows liquid water to exist on the surface, astronomers often search around stars the mass of the Sun and smaller. "The Ruprecht 147 cluster is very unusual and very important astrophysically because it is close to Earth and its stars are closer to the Sun's age than those in all the other nearby clusters," Wright said. "For the first time, we now have a useful laboratory in which to search for and study bright stars that are of similar mass and also of similar age as the Sun. When we discover planets around Sun-like and lower-mass stars, we will be able to interpret how old those stars are by comparing them to the stars in this cluster."

Penn State University astronomers have determined that 80 of the stars in this photo are members of the long-known but underappreciated star cluster Ruprecht 147. In this image, the brightest of these stars are circled in green, and the less-bright ones are circled in red. These stars were born out of the same cloud of gas and dust approximately 2-billion years ago, and now are traveling together through space, bound by the force gravity. The astronomers have identified this cluster as a potentially important new reference gauge for fundamental stellar astrophysics. Credit: Chris Beckett and Stefano Meneguolo, Royal Astronomical Society of Canada. Annotations by Jason Curtis, Penn State University.

Wright's team has shown that Ruprecht 147 is 800 to 1,000 light years from Earth, which is so close that it is bright enough to be seen with binoculars in late-summertime skies in the constellation Sagittarius. "All of the other nearby clusters astronomers study contain stars much younger than the Sun, and all of the older stars are more than 3,000 light years away. So this cluster, being both old and close, provides a unique opportunity," Wright said. Although it appears to be relatively large on the sky, the cluster can be difficult to spot because it is not very compact and it is located in the densest, brightest region between Earth and the center of the Milky Way galaxy.

To study the Ruprecht 147 cluster, which is much larger on the sky than most objects astronomers study, the Wright's team had to use some specialized, wide-field cameras -- including those on the MMT telescope in Arizona and the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawaii -- in order to get its many stars within the frame of view. "Even with these wide-field cameras, we've had to build mosaics of images to cover the whole cluster and to take very quick snapshots so that we don't overexpose the brightest stars, Wright said. "Most modern telescopes weren't designed for clusters so bright and close."

When the object was first discovered in 1830 by British astronomer John Herschel, he described it as "a very large straggling space full of loose stars." He subsequently included it in the General Catalog of astronomical objects, which he compiled based on the observations of his father William Herschel. "The cluster was rediscovered in the 1960s by Jaroslav Ruprecht, which is how it got its current name, but until now no astronomers paid it any special attention, probably because many presumed it was an asterism -- a chance alignment of unrelated stars," Wright said.

Wright's team's work has proven, for the first time, that the Ruprecht 147 cluster is only a bit younger than the Sun on the astronomical time scale. The stars in Ruprecht 147 are about 2.5-billion years old, or about half the age of the Sun, and about the age the Sun was when the first multicellular life emerged on Earth.

The team's initial observations also have measured the distance to Ruprecht 147, as well as the directions and velocities of its stars to verify that they are moving together through space in three dimensions, both across the sky and in the same angle away from Earth. These observations confirm that these stars are members of a true cluster, not just a random pattern on the sky. Wright's team already has identified 100 stars as members of the cluster, and is working to find more.

Wright said that most of the work for this initial paper was done by Jason Curtis as part of his dissertation research. Curtis's work includes observations with the Canada France Hawaii Telescope (CFHT) and the Keck telescope in Hawaii, the Lick Observatory in California, and the MMT Observatory in Arizona. "This project is exciting for me as a graduate student because it gives me the opportunity to use the latest astronomy techniques and instrumentation to explore a star cluster that has never before been investigated to this extent," Curtis said. "While this project has given me training in well-established, fundamental methods of astronomy observation and analysis, it also is opening up new doors to cutting-edge astrophysics research." For further studies, Curtis is participating in observations with the Magellan telescope in Chile and NASA's orbiting Chandra X-Ray Telescope.

In addition to Wright and Curtis, other co-authors of the team's first scientific paper include Angie Wolfgang, of the University of California, Santa Cruz; John Brewer, of Yale University; and John Asher Johnson of the California Institute of Technology. The U. S. National Science Foundation provided financial support for this research.

"Our project with this important cluster is just beginning," Wright said "Eventually, it is going to let us find and study nearby stars with a mass like the Sun's, to help in the hunt for Earth-like planets, and to test and improve the models astronomers use to understand the evolution of stars including our own Sun."

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Penn State. The original article was written by Barbara K. Kennedy.

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Analysis: Goldman judge cuts Wells notice disclosure burden

(Reuters) - A federal judge's decision that otherwise went against Goldman Sachs Group Inc has made it easier for companies to defeat shareholder claims that litigation threatened by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission should be disclosed.

U.S. District Judge Paul Crotty in Manhattan said Goldman could not be sued under federal law for securities fraud for failing to disclose it had received a Wells notice from the SEC, though news of a notice often causes a negative market reaction.

The case related to Goldman's alleged failure to disclose conflicts of interest in its sale of risky collateralized debt obligations such as Abacus 2007 AC-1, which led to a $550 million settlement between the bank and the SEC.

A Wells notice shows that SEC staff intend to recommend civil charges and lets a recipient mount a defense. But it is SEC commissioners themselves who decide whether to bring a case.

"At best, a Wells notice indicates not litigation, but only the desire of the enforcement staff to move forward," Crotty wrote. "When the regulatory investigation matures to the point where litigation is apparent and substantially certain to occur, then ... disclosure is mandated."

Goldman got its Wells notice in July 2009, but that was not revealed until the SEC accused it of fraud the following April. Two employees, Fabrice Tourre and Jonathan Egol, also got Wells notices, and the SEC eventually charged Tourre with fraud.

Peter Henning, a law professor at Wayne State University, said Crotty's decision is the first to conclude that receipt of a Wells notice does not trigger an automatic disclosure obligation, including for companies that like Goldman may have earlier made general disclosures about regulatory probes.

"The tension is that investors want to know everything, and companies want to reveal nothing," Henning said. "Judge Crotty's decision pushes the trigger point for when disclosure is required to a later date. That's good for companies. From an investor transparency point of view, this is not helpful."

A 2009 study by Cornerstone Research found that 17 of 58 Wells notice disclosures from April 2002 to January 2007 triggered large stock price declines. It also found that these 58 announcements, when analyzed collectively, triggered statistically significant stock price declines.

MARKET MOVING, BUT NOT DISCLOSABLE

Goldman shares fell 12.8 percent on April 16, 2010 when the SEC announced its civil fraud lawsuit over Abacus, wiping out more than $12 billion of the Wall Street bank's market value.

By the end of June, after more details had emerged about Goldman's CDO, the shares had fallen nearly 29 percent.

Another U.S. regulator, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, in November 2010 fined Goldman $650,000 for failing to reveal the Wells notices that Tourre and Egol had received.

In his decision, Crotty did let the Goldman shareholders pursue claims that the bank failed to disclose it had bet against some CDO it was selling, and let billionaire hedge fund manager John Paulson bet against securities he chose for Abacus.

Still, the judge said that while companies have a duty to make "accurate and complete" disclosures, this did not mean they needed to disclose everything, but rather enough such that what was revealed "would not be so incomplete as to mislead."

He explained: "A corporation is not required to disclose a fact merely because a reasonable investor would very much like to know that fact."

Robert Daines, a professor and governance specialist at Stanford Law School, said the judge tied his holding close to the facts of the case, making the broader impact unclear.

"Because a Wells notice is issued before the SEC knows much about the case, the notice may or may not turn out to be important," he said, "and so the SEC has long taken the position that a Wells notice may or may not be material information."

Henning said Crotty's decision could prompt an SEC review of Regulation S-K, which sets out reporting requirements for public companies. But he also said greater disclosure obligations could backfire on the agency by forcing more disputes into the open.

"A Wells notice serves a purpose for the SEC, to prod companies to settle," he said. "But if it is something companies must disclose immediately, the SEC may become more reluctant to issue a notice, and that could reduce its flexibility."

SEC spokesman John Nester declined to comment.

The Tourre case remains unresolved. Egol was not charged.

The case is Richman v. Goldman Sachs Group Inc, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 10-03461.

(Reporting By Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Phil Berlowitz)

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Running Scared, Democrats Resort to Hysteria (Powerlineblog)

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Senator sees Goodell, calls off bounty hearing

WASHINGTON (AP) ? A high-ranking senator is calling off a proposed hearing on bounties in professional sports because he is satisfied with NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell's response to the issue, including setting up an anonymous hotline.

Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Senate Democrat, met with Goodell on Wednesday. The meeting came about three months after Durbin first said he wanted Congress to examine whether federal law should make it a crime to have a bounty system such as the one the NFL says the New Orleans Saints ran from 2009-11.

"What I hear from them now is, it's going to be clear: The actions that have been taken against some are going to be taken against others if they violate these basic rules that are being established," Durbin said. "What more could I accomplish with a law? This is better."

Among the steps that persuaded Durbin to abandon a hearing: Posters will be put in locker rooms about bounties and will include information for a hotline so players can report bounty-related activity, and there will be a new bounty section in the players' handbook.

Goodell will also write a letter to all league and team employees and an email to registered NFL fans regarding bounties. And a bounties section will be part of the new NFL Players Handbook, which is given to each NFL player.

"The results that we've come up with in 90 days are better than anything we could have achieved with a congressional hearing, the markup of a bill, an amendment on the floor and everything that might have followed," Durbin said.

The NFL Players Association, in a written statement, called for a hearing.

"We thank the Senator for his interest on these important issues. Given this keen interest, the players hope and expect that the Commissioner and the Senator will commit to a hearing on health and safety in the NFL in the near future," the statement said.

Though the process didn't escalate to a hearing, Durbin's and Goodell's involvement drew criticism from a fellow senator.

"Senator Durbin and Roger Goodell both have more pressing matters than this public relations stunt," Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) said in a statement.

Durbin defended his role.

"Some people question, 'Well, what does Congress have to do with this?'" Durbin said. "It's a federal crime to bribe somebody to influence the outcome of a professional sporting event. This bounty program is as close to bribery to influence the outcome of an event as I can think of."

Durbin was asked whether the NFL had taken substantial enough steps to warrant not having a hearing.

"Unlike many issues that come before us, this issue was discovered by the NFL. The investigation was initiated by the NFL. And the actions that were taken against coaches and players was taken by the NFL," Durbin said. "There was no denial here."

Said Goodell: "We will continue to work with the Senator and his office. We will continue to evaluate our policies at every step. . We give the Senator our assurance on that, my personal assurance that I will do that."

Goodell's handling of bounty-related suspension has drawn criticism from the NFLPA, which has cited a lack of due process and fairness.

"I have no place to judge the process," said Durbin, who noted he spoke with many players, former players and coaches.

Durbin said NCAA president Mark Emmert also came to Washington to discuss the issue, and the NCAA will set up an anonymous phone number to report bounty programs.

"Today's announcement by the NFL, and further activities with the NCAA and other leagues in the future, will help ensure that bounties are finished in football," Durbin said. "The NFL's players are protected, and its audiences can know the game will be played fairly, honestly and safely."

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Bishops take religious freedom fight to each state

NEW YORK (AP) ? Roman Catholic groups on Thursday embarked on a two-week campaign of prayer vigils, rallies and other events to draw attention to what they consider government attacks on religious freedom.

Called the "Fortnight for Freedom," bishops organized the education campaign during liturgical feasts for martyred defenders of the faith. Independent advocacy groups such as CatholicVote.org and Women Speak For Themselves, have joined the effort with TV ads, videos, Facebook appeals and petition drives.

While the religious freedom campaign includes protests against state laws and policies, the bishops' immediate target is the mandate President Barack Obama announced in January that most employers provide health insurance that covers birth control. Federal officials said the rule was critical to women's health by helping them space out pregnancies.

Critics have accused the bishops of organizing the campaign as a partisan assault on Obama in an election year. But church leaders insist they have no partisan agenda and blame the timing on when federal officials approved the rule.

"In only the past few years, we've experienced rampant disregard for religious beliefs in this country," wrote New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan, in an e-book released for the "Fortnight" effort. Among the examples he cites are approval for embryonic stem cell research, legal justification for torturing prisoners and support for same-sex marriage.

"We can see that there is a loss here of a sense of truth and objective moral norms_rules of conduct that apply always, to everyone, everywhere_an infringement of religious liberty and an 'eclipse of the sense of God and of man,'" wrote Dolan, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Opponents are unconvinced. "This bishops' project isn't about religious freedom ? it's about privilege," said the Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. "They are asking for preferential treatment from the government, and if they are successful, it would undercut the rights of millions of Americans."

The "Fortnight for Freedom" schedule kicked off Thursday night with a Mass at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption in Baltimore, celebrated by Baltimore Archbishop William Lori. Local activities are planned across the country leading up to Independence Day.

The Diocese of Pensacola-Tallahassee, Fla., plans Masses and repeat screenings of the film "A Man for All Seasons," about Sir Thomas More, the 16th-century martyr whose feast day is this week. The Kansas Catholic Conference, the public policy arm of the state's bishops, plans a June 29 religious freedom rally at the Statehouse in Topeka. The Archdiocese of Detroit plans Masses and lectures by religious liberty experts in English and Spanish. The Archdiocese of Denver has asked Catholics to fast on the two Fridays during the initiative.

Lori leads the bishops' new religious freedom committee. The panel was formed last September in response to what church leaders viewed as inadequate religious exemptions in many state laws that authorized gay marriage and mandated contraception coverage in employers' health insurance or prescription drug plans.

The Obama mandate on contraception coverage included a religious exemption that generally allowed houses of worship to opt-out, but not religiously affiliated hospitals, charities, universities and social service agencies. Many Catholics from across the political spectrum protested that the Health and Human Services department chose the narrowest religious exemption available and urged Obama to reconsider. Liberal-leaning religious groups generally supported Obama, while more conservative leaders from other traditions backed the Catholic bishops.

In response, the president said he would require insurance companies to cover the cost instead of religious groups. However, even some Catholic allies whose support was critical to passage of the administration's health care law, including the Catholic Health Association, have called the compromise inadequate.

Last month, Catholic dioceses, charities and schools, including the University of Notre Dame, filed a dozen lawsuits against the administration over the mandate. The law firm Jones Day, which is also representing businesses challenging Obama's health care law in court, is handling the cases for the Catholic groups pro bono.

Lori has said that funding for the religious freedom campaign has come from the Knights of Columbus, the Catholic fraternal organization and life insurance agency; the Order of Malta, a Catholic order that aids the sick; and the conservative Catholic publisher Our Sunday Visitor.

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Avian flu virus a few mutations away from spreading easily, report says

The controversial studies, held up for eight months after the U.S. government raised concerns about the potential misuse of the information, were released in full to help raise awareness, spur greater surveillance for changes in the virus and highlight the need to prepare for a potential pandemic, officials said.

The reports were released today in a special section of the journal Science with all of the details about the specific mutations that caused the avian influenza A H5N1 to become more easily transmissible in ferrets, a stand-in animal model for humans in influenza studies.

?It is our hope that (today?s) publication will help to make the world safer ... by stimulating many more scientists and policy-makers to focus on preparing defenses,? said Dr. Bruce Alberts, editor-in-chief of Science. ?This is going to require a great deal of new innovation and making the new data as widely available as we are (now) greatly increases the chances that this innovation will happen.?

Since the 1990s, the avian influenza A H5N1 has led to the destruction of millions of birds in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Europe as the virus has spread. Since 2003, the virus has infected more than 600 people, resulting in 357 deaths, for a fatality rate of almost 60 percent, according to data from the World Health Organization. But there has been little human-to-human transmission of the virus, in part because it did not appear to be able to infect mammals through airborne droplets, a key characteristic of pandemic influenza strains, according to the Science study.

Dr. Ron A.M. Fouchier and colleagues at the Erasmus Medical Center in the Netherlands took a strain of influenza A H5N1 from Indonesia and then reverse engineered into it three mutations that helped lead to pandemic influenza outbreaks in 1918, 1957 and 1968. With these three mutations, however, the virus still did not spread by airborne transmission. The researchers then infected one group of ferrets, then infected the next group of ferrets with a virus from the first group, and so on through 10 cycles of infection as a way to force the virus to evolve to a new host.

?Such experiments are well known in the virology field to lead to further adaptation of viruses based on the theory of natural selection,? Fouchier said.

After 10 cycles, that mutant H5N1 virus was found to have at least two new mutations not known to be involved previously in airborne transmission, in addition to the original three, he said. And when ferrets infected with that strain were placed near but not in contact with uninfected ferrets, the virus was able to infect the new ferrets through airborne droplets.

?Our main conclusion is that the H5N1 bird flu virus can acquire the ability of aerosol transmission between mammals,? Fouchier said. ?And we show that as little as five mutations but certainly less than 10 are sufficient to make H5N1 virus airborne.?

However, not one of the ferrets who were infected by airborne transmission was killed by the virus, perhaps because it is less likely to cause a deep infection in the lungs that can lead to pneumonia, he said. And the airborne virus seemed to be susceptible to the antiviral oseltamivir and antigenically similar to the H5N1 vaccine, Fouchier said.

The big question is how quickly and how easily the necessary mutations to become airborne will happen, said Dr. Derek Smith of the University of Cambridge, who is also involved in the Erasmus lab. In studying nearly 4,000 avian influenza genetic sequences, ?we found that two of the mutations are already seen frequently, including in combination with each other,? he said. If only five of the mutations are needed to become airborne, ?it?s possible that it could be as few as three? new mutations.

Smith likened the ability to gauge when or if that would ever happen as similar to trying to forecast earthquakes, but ?we now know that we are living on a fault line,? he said. The research published in Science and an earlier study show ?that it is an active fault line,? Smith said. ?It really could do something.?

The probability of hitting that right combination might also work against the airborne virus, he said.

?If it takes four or five mutations, then of course it is more difficult,? Smith said. ?And at five mutations, it really does look like it is pretty difficult. But we don?t yet know how likely it is.?

Some of the mutations appear to be more common in human cases of avian influenza than the bird strains, Fourchier said.

?So there might be a link between bird to human transmission and some of these mutations,? he said.

All of this points toward greater need for increased surveillance for the mutations, particularly in human cases where a mutation might be hidden in a lesser strain than the dominant one causing the infection, Smith said. It points toward the need for greater surveillance in general, particularly if the virus does begin to spread more easily, said Dr. Rino Rappuoli of Novartis Vaccines and Diagnostics in Siena, Italy.

?Once the pandemic comes, I think it would be very important to have a very active surveillance that would pick the virus before it spreads,? he said. ?Detecting the virus early is very important.?

It also points to the need to change vaccine manufacturing, from the egg-based approach to cell-based processes that are much quicker and can respond more rapidly to an unknown strain, Rappuoli said. That could also mean changing the process that regulates how vaccines are licensed and distributed, he said.

The decision to make all of the information public came after much debate and is not without some risk, said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health. The benefit of full disclosure ?in my mind far outweighs the risk of nefarious use of this information,? he said. ?Being in the free and open literature would make it much more easy to get a lot of the good guys involved than the risk of getting the rare bad guy involved.?

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GOP, Holder open to talks before contempt vote

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, led by Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., considers whether to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, June 20, 2012. In a showdown with President Barack Obama?s administration, House Republicans are pressing for more Justice Department documents on the flawed gun-smuggling probe known as Operation Fast and Furious that resulted in hundreds of guns illicitly purchased in Arizona gun shops winding up in the hands of Mexican drug cartels. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, led by Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., considers whether to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, June 20, 2012. In a showdown with President Barack Obama?s administration, House Republicans are pressing for more Justice Department documents on the flawed gun-smuggling probe known as Operation Fast and Furious that resulted in hundreds of guns illicitly purchased in Arizona gun shops winding up in the hands of Mexican drug cartels. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., right, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, manages a series of amendments as they consider a vote to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, June 20, 2012. Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., the ranking member, watches from left. In a showdown with President Barack Obama's administration, House Republicans had pressed for more Justice Department documents on the flawed gun-smuggling probe known as Operation Fast and Furious that resulted in hundreds of guns illicitly purchased in Arizona gun shops winding up in the hands of Mexican drug cartels. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, left, confers with Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., right, as the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee considers a vote to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, June 20, 2012. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

WASHINGTON (AP) ? Both House Republican officials and Attorney General Eric Holder say they're willing to negotiate an end to a potential constitutional confrontation in a dispute related to the botched "Fast and Furious" gun-tracking operation.

The conflict heated up Wednesday, when a House committee voted to hold the attorney general in contempt and President Barack Obama invoked executive privilege to avoid turning over some documents related to the operation.

However, House Republican leaders said they were willing to negotiate if the administration turned over more emails and memos. And Holder said Thursday that resolving the conflict through negotiation was still a possibility.

Holder, in Copenhagen, Denmark, for meetings with European Union officials, said the administration had given the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee a proposal to negotiate an end to the conflict.

"I think the possibility still exists that it can happen in that way," Holder said. "The proposal that we have made is still there. The House, I think, the House leadership, has to consider now what they will do, so we'll see how it works out."

But he called the contempt vote "unwarranted, unnecessary and unprecedented."

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., said the full House would vote next week on accepting the Oversight and Government Reform Committee's contempt of Congress vote.

Committee officials who would conduct any negotiations in the coming days for Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., said they are looking for at least some additional documents on Fast and Furious ? plus some "signs of good faith."

The latter could include substantive responses to future committee requests for documents; reforming the approval process for wiretap applications; acknowledging mistakes in misleading Congress about Fast and Furious; taking whistle-blowers seriously; and producing a log of documents to be turned over, according to the officials, who spoke only on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to discuss the issue by name.

The administration would have to abandon the president's assertion of executive privilege ? a legal position that attempts to protect internal executive branch documents from disclosure. If the administration maintains that stance, it could lead to court fights that could take years to resolve.

The last Cabinet member to be cited by a congressional committee for contempt was Attorney General Janet Reno in President Bill Clinton's administration. That was never brought to a follow-up vote in the full House.

Technically, if the full House approves the Holder contempt citation, there could be a federal criminal case against him, but history strongly suggests the matter won't get that far.

Democrats contended that the 23-17 party-line contempt vote Wednesday was just political theater. The committee's top Democrat, Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, called the vote "an extreme, virtually unprecedented action based on election-year politics rather than fact."

While Boehner and Cantor would make the final decision on postponing a vote, aides to the speaker and Issa said the chairman and his staff would conduct any upcoming negotiations ? as they have been doing throughout the year.

During the committee's year-and-a-half-long investigation, the Justice Department has turned over 7,600 documents about the conduct of the Fast and Furious operation. Justice initially told the committee the operation did not use a risky investigative technique known as "gun-walking" ? but later acknowledged that it did.

Agents of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in Arizona abandoned the agency's usual practice of intercepting all weapons they believed to be illicitly purchased. Instead, the goal of gun-walking was to track such weapons to high-level arms traffickers, who had long eluded prosecution, and to dismantle their networks.

Gun-walking has long been barred by Justice Department policy, but federal agents in Arizona experimented with it in at least two investigations during the George W. Bush administration before Fast and Furious. These experiments came as the department was under widespread criticism that the old policy of arresting every suspected low-level "straw purchaser" was still allowing tens of thousands of guns to reach Mexico. A straw purchaser is an illicit buyer of guns for others.

The agents in Arizona lost track of several hundred weapons in Operation Fast and Furious. Two of the guns that "walked" in the operation were found at the scene of the slaying of U.S. border agent Brian Terry.

The panel has turned its attention from the details of the operation and is now seeking documents that would show how Justice Department headquarters responded to the committee's investigation.

The Issa aides believe that a few hundred pages of documents may satisfy them, providing that those records tell the story of how the Justice Department came to understand that it gave Congress false information on Feb. 4, 2011. The department said at that time that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives had made every effort to interdict weapons moving from Arizona to Mexico.

More than 10 months later, the department retracted that statement after it became clear that the guns were not intercepted but allowed to enter Mexico in hopes that officials could track them to drug lords.

The flaws were exposed by whistle-blowers who contacted Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa.

Holder offered to give lawmakers a briefing on the withheld documents but insisted that this action satisfy Issa's subpoena for the records and negate the need for a committee contempt vote. Issa rejected the offer, saying it was an attempt to force an end to the committee's investigation.

The wiretap approval process is important to Issa because, he contends, the Justice Department gave only a cursory look at applications for wiretaps on targets in Fast and Furious.

One Issa aide said the committee negotiators were looking for the administration to "generate good will that will potentially change the atmosphere on getting a deal."

Another aide added, "But we have to see the documents."

Associated Press

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Confirmed: The New iPhone Will Have A 19-Pin ?Mini? Connector

Although the form factor and actual size are still unknown, TechCrunch has independently verified that Apple is working on adding a 19-pin port, replacing the current 30-pin port, to the new iPhone. It is a move that will surly send shocks through the iPhone accessory ecosystem. The new port, partially shown in this Mobilefun post as well as in this video, is similar in size to the Thunderbolt port available on many MacBook devices but I've been told by three independent manufacturers that the pin-out will be different.

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