‘Apes’ swings to No. 1 spot with $54.8M weekend

LOS ANGELES: “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” evolved into Hollywood’s top weekend earner, debuting as the No. 1 film with $54.8 million.

The top 20 movies at U.S. and Canadian theaters Friday through Sunday, followed by distribution studio, gross, number of theater locations, average receipts per location, total gross and number of weeks in release, as compiled Monday by Hollywood.com are:

1. “Rise of the Planet of the Apes,” Fox, $54,806,191, 3,648 locations, $15,024 average, $54,806,191, one week.

2. “The Smurfs,” Sony, $20,702,415, 3,395 locations, $6,098 average, $75,904,246, two weeks.

3. “Cowboys & Aliens,” Universal, $15,729,455, 3,754 locations, $4,190 average, $67,349,520, two weeks.

4. “The Change-Up,” Universal, $13,531,115, 2,913 locations, $4,645 average, $13,531,115, one week.

5. “Captain America: The First Avenger,” Paramount, $13,021,922, 3,620 locations, $3,597 average, $143,203,967, three weeks.

6. “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2,” Warner Bros., $12,445,031, 3,175 locations, $3,920 average, $343,086,045, four weeks.

7. “Crazy, Stupid, Love,” Warner Bros., $12,017,146, 3,020 locations, $3,979 average, $42,102,252, two weeks.

8. “Friends With Benefits,” Sony Screen Gems, $4,687,883, 2,398 locations, $1,955 average, $48,526,287, three weeks.

9. “Horrible Bosses,” Warner Bros., $4,583,252, 2,025 locations, $2,263 average, $105,125,415, five weeks.

10. “Transformers: Dark of the Moon,” Paramount, $3,086,145, 1,854 locations, $1,665 average, $344,244,486, six weeks.

11. “Zookeeper,” Sony, $2,168,776, 1,724 locations, $1,258 average, $73,613,540, five weeks.

12. “Cars 2,” Disney, $1,222,836, 926 locations, $1,321 average, $184,807,330, seven weeks.

13. “Midnight in Paris,” Sony Pictures Classics, $981,867, 399 locations, $2,461 average, $48,486,541, 12 weeks.

14. “Winnie the Pooh,” Disney, $806,782, 716 locations, $1,127 average, $2,440,628, four weeks.

15. “Bridesmaids,” Universal, $555,400, 374 locations, $1,485 average, $166,499,055, 13 weeks.

16. “Sarah’s Key,” Weinstein Co., $547,883, 67 locations, $8,177 average, $1,279,891, three weeks.

17. “Kung Fu Panda 2,” Paramount, $500,339, 290 locations, $1,725 average, $162,695,957, 11 weeks.

18. “Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides,” Disney, $448,837, 274 locations, $1,638 average, $239,048,698, 12 weeks.

19. “Mr. Popper’s Penguins,” Fox, $407,111, 327 locations, $1,245 average, $65,426,969, eight weeks.

20. “X-Men: First Class,” Fox, $369,568, 235 locations, $1,573 average, $145,292,351, 10 weeks. AGENCIES

Fresh BA cabin crew strike takes off

LONDON: Thousands of air travellers faced renewed disruption on Monday as British Airways cabin crew began a five-day strike, grounding many flights to and from its main London hub.

BA said its services were “off to a good start” despite the latest walk-out in the long-running and increasingly hostile dispute between the airline and Unite, Britain”s biggest trade union.

The strike, which began at midnight (2300 GMT Sunday), affects BA”s hub operations at London Heathrow, the world”s busiest international passenger airport. BA flights from London”s Gatwick and City airports were not disrupted.

Flights to and from Glasgow, Manchester, Amsterdam, Paris, Milan and Munich were among those most affected in a reduced timetable. Three of nine scheduled flights to New York were cancelled.

Striking workers mounted pickets outside Heathrow, many wearing badges reading “Brutish Airways” and chanting slogans attacking BA chief executive Willie Walsh.

While BA and Unite have reached broad agreement on pay, the spat is now focused on the heavily discounted flights available to off-duty cabin crew — key perks which have been taken away from striking workers.

“Our operations around the world have got off to a good start,” BA said in a statement.

“The numbers of cabin crew reporting at Heathrow are currently at the levels we need to operate our published schedule.

“At Heathrow, our aim is to fly as many customers as we can during the strike period and we will be operating more than 60 percent of our long-haul programme and more than 50 percent of our short-haul flights.”

BA said they had leased up to eight staffed aircraft from other British or European airlines.

Discussions broke down Saturday after dozens of socialist protestors stormed the talks venue.

BA chief Walsh has faced accusations that he is trying to break the unions at the airline. Unite accuses the flag carrier of imposing changes on cabin crew and refusing to negotiate openly and fairly.

Walsh insists that the airline is struggling for its very existence.

The on-running dispute soured further Monday as Tony Woodley, Unite”s joint leader, accused Walsh of wanting “regime change” in the union”s cabin crew branch.

Striking workers rallied near Heathrow in west London, waving flags from an open-top bus.

One 42-year-old cabin crew member from south London said: “It”s personal now.”

Speaking on condition of anonymity, he said: “I was happy that we were allowed to strike, but I”m devastated that we have to.

“We want to keep BA as a premium airline…. We don”t want this to be a race to the bottom.”

After touring picket lines, Woodley and co-leader Derek Simpson were to address the strikers later Monday.

Britain”s Transport Secretary Philip Hammond said the strike would not resolve the outstanding issues and urged a resumption of talks.

“The jobs of all BA staff depend on the airline”s future competitiveness and the loyalty of all its customers and, in order to protect both, I now urge BA cabin crew to keep flying and keep talking,” he said.

Prime Minister David Cameron”s spokesman said the new premier “wants to see as little disruption to passengers as possible.

“The best way to achieve this is for the two parties to resolve the situation as soon as possible,” he told reporters.

The new strike comes after BA posted a record annual pre-tax loss of 531 million pounds (763 million dollars, 616 million euros) on slumping sales.

The airline, which is slashing costs and merging with Spanish rival Iberia in a bid to return to profitability, has been hit hard by the global economic downturn which has decreased demand for air travel.

Unite are planning two further five-day strikes, starting on May 30 and June 5.

Hubble catches planet being devoured by its star

WASHINGTON: The Hubble space telescope has discovered a planet in our galaxy in the process of being devoured by the star that it orbits, according to a paper published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

The doomed planet, dubbed WASP-12b, has the highest known surface temperature of any planet in the Milky Way — around 1,500 degrees Celsius (2,800 degrees Fahrenheit).

But it could be enveloped by its own parent star over the next ten million years, the paper”s authors have concluded.

Using a new instrument called the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph that was installed on Hubble in 2009, the researchers observed how the planet was whipped into an elongated shape by gravitational forces.

“We see a huge cloud of material around the planet, which is escaping and will be captured by the star. We have identified chemical elements never before seen on planets outside our own solar system,” team leader Carole Haswell of The Open University in Great Britain said.

Discovered in 2008, WASP-12b is located about 600 light-years from Earth in the Auriga Constellation and is more than 300 times the size of Earth.

It also has a mass 40-percent greater than that of Jupiter, the biggest planet in our solar system.

It is so close to its parent star that it orbits it in little more than 24 hours.

Astronomers already knew that stars will swallow a planet that comes too close to it, but this is the first time that the phenomenon has been observed so clearly.

The paper, which was published in the May 10 edition of The Astrophysical Journal Letters, confirms a theoretical paper published in the journal Nature last Friday by Shu-lin Li, an astronomer at Peking University in Beijing.

Shu-lin had predicted that the planet”s surface would be distorted by the star”s gravitational pull, and that gravitational tidal forces would make the interior so hot that it would greatly expand its outer atmosphere.

Apple IPhone To Get Multitasking

Apple Inc.’s iPhone and iPad devices will soon be able to run more than one program at a time, an ability that phones from Apple’s rivals already offer and that iPhone owners have long sought.

Currently, users must return to Apple’s home screen, effectively quitting the open program, before starting a new task.

“We weren’t the first to this party, but we’re going to be the best,” Apple CEO Steve Jobs said. The iPhone already permits some multitasking, but that’s largely limited to Apple’s own programs. Apple had not given users ways to seamlessly switch among all the software “apps” available from outside software companies, the way phones from rivals Palm Inc. and Google Inc. already do.

Jobs said that the company waited so long because it wanted to offer multitasking in a way that didn’t drain the iPhone’s battery or reduce the phone’s performance.

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Apple IPhone To Get Multitasking was first posted on April 10, 2010 at 12:13 pm.
Copyright @ A Pakistan News.Com

Venus Volcanoes Could Be Alive

Researchers suggest that Venus may still be active for volcanoes eruption as it is one of the few places in the solar system to have experienced volcanism.

Relatively young lava flows have been identified on the planet’s surface by the spacecraft’s infrared instrument. The flows show up as having a different composition to the surrounding surface material.

Researchers estimate that they may have been erupted as recently as 2.5 million years ago – and probably much nearer in time than that. The team reports its assessment of lava flows in the Imdr, Themis and Dione regions of Venus.

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Venus Volcanoes Could Be Alive was first posted on April 12, 2010 at 11:21 am.
Copyright @ A Pakistan News.Com

Mary Lynn Rajskub

Mary Lynn Rajskub’s has never been one to stick to convention, and the 24 star’s wedding to personal trainer Matthew Rolph over the weekend at the Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino in Las Vegas was no exception.

The actress, wearing an ivory wedding gown with lace overlay by Nicole Miller, was walked down the aisle Saturday by the couple’s 1-year-old son Valentine to Elvis’s “A Little Less Conversation.” The groom wore a white Hugo Boss suit.

“We didn’t know that getting married at a casino in Vegas with Elvis could be so romantic.

After the ceremony, the couple and their 20 guests, among them It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia costars and real-life husband and wife Kaitlin Olson and Rob McElhenney, continued the celebration into the wee hours at the restaurant Koi Las Vegas.

Rajskub, 38, and Rolph, 29, who met while she was performing a stand-up comedy gig, welcomed their son on July 24 last year.

“We are so excited to officially be husband and wife,” Rajskub adds.

The actress is currently shooting the eighth season of 24 and will next be seen in the feature film Julie and Julia opening Friday. Rolph is the co-owner of Pilates Plus Malibu

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Mary Lynn Rajskub was first posted on January 16, 2010 at 12:27 pm.

Google Earth Dives into ocean Exploration

Google launched a new service on Monday to allow Internet users to explore the depths of the world’s oceans from the comfort of their homes on dry land. The “Ocean in Google Earth” feature allows users to virtually dive beneath the water surface, explore 3D underwater terrain and browse ocean-related content contributed by marine scientists. Nearly four years after Google Earth enabled users to zoom in to view streets, and later explore galaxies in the sky, the latest version of the software allows virtual travelers to cross miles of unchartered territory underwater.

Ocean in Google Earth was unveiled formally at the San Francisco Academy of Sciences by former vice president Al Gore, acclaimed oceanographer Sylvia Earle and Google executives. “With this version of Google Earth… you can now dive into the world’s oceans that cover almost three quarters of the planet and discover new wonders,” said Gore, a champion in the battle against climate change. Gore pointed out a history feature at Google Earth that lets people see how parts of the planet are changing over time, often due to human influences. “This is an extremely powerful educational tool,” Gore said.

“My hope is that people around the world will use Google Earth to see for themselves the reality of the climate crisis.” Google Earth users can click icons on sea maps to see video of creatures that thrive in those locations. Internet surfers can opt to swim virtually undersea as though they are sharks, dolphins or turtles. Ocean was inspired in part by a teasing comment Earle made to Google Maps and Earth director John Hanke. Earle was at an event when she praised the California firm’s online mapping service but suggested it be called “Google Dirt” because it ignored the 71 percent of the planet covered by water, Hanke recounted.

“Talk about a dream coming true,” Earle said as she stood behind an aquarium lectern and demonstrated Ocean on a large wall screen. “They compressed what it took me 50 years to understand; that the world is really blue. People talk about the world being green, but without the blue there wouldn’t be any green.” Google Earth users will be able to record videos of undersea adventures, overlay their own voices or sound tracks, and then share them with friends, according to Hanke. Musician Jimmy Buffett, whose hits include “Margaritaville” and “Son of a Son of a Sailor,” is collaborating with Google to use Earth and Ocean to let fans travel with him on a coming concert tour starting in the Hawaiian Islands. Buffett joked that he has lived by the bumper sticker motto: “Without geography, you are nowhere.” “You will see the travels of Jimmy,” Buffett said. “It’s fun, but it makes people aware of what we need to do to protect this beautiful planet and its blue heart.”

By allowing users to explore underwater volcanoes, hunt for whales and learn more about shipwrecks, Google says Ocean offers a platform for everyday Internet browsers to link up with the scientific community. The feature includes 20 different layers of content contributed by leading ocean explorers, scientists and researchers, such as photos and videos of “hot spots” around the world and information on marine protected areas.

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Google Earth Dives into ocean Exploration was first posted on February 4, 2009 at 11:18 am.

Kepler Mission Overview

NASA’s first mission capable of finding Earth-size and smaller planets around other stars.

Importance of Planet Detection

The centuries-old quest for other worlds like our Earth has been rejuvenated by the intense excitement and popular interest surrounding the discovery of hundreds of planets orbiting other stars.

There is now clear evidence for substantial numbers of three types of exoplanets; gas giants, hot-super-Earths in short period orbits, and ice giants. The following websites are tracking the day-by-day increase in new discoveries and are providing information on the characteristics of the planets as well as those of the stars they orbit: Extrasolar Planets Encyclopedia, New Worlds Atlas, and Current Planet Count Widget.

The challenge now is to find terrestrial planets (i.e., those one half to twice the size of the Earth), especially those in the habitable zone of their stars where liquid water and possibly life might exist.

The Kepler Mission, NASA Discovery mission #10, is specifically designed to survey our region of the Milky Way galaxy to discover hundreds of Earth-size and smaller planets in or near the habitable zone and determine how many of the billions of stars in our galaxy have such planets.

Results from this mission will allow us to place our solar system within the continuum of planetary systems in the Galaxy.

Page Contents:

* Introduction
* Science Objectives
* The Transit Method of Detecting Extrasolar Planets
* Mission design
* Expected Results
* Flight System Characteristics
* Mission Characteristics

The Extended Solar Neighborhood

The figure shows what we believe to be the local structure of our Galaxy, the Milky Way. The stars sampled are similar to the immediate solar neighborhood. Young stellar clusters, ionized hydrogen (HII) regions and the neutral hydrogen (HI) distribution define the arms of the Galaxy.

To Page Contents
Kepler Mission Scientific Objective:

The scientific objective of the Kepler Mission is to explore the structure and diversity of planetary systems. This is achieved by surveying a large sample of stars to:

1. Determine the percentage of terrestrial and larger planets there are in or near the habitable zone of a wide variety of stars;
2. Determine the distribution of sizes and shapes of the orbits of these planets;
3. Estimate how many planets there are in multiple-star systems;
4. Determine the variety of orbit sizes and planet reflectivities, sizes, masses and densities of short-period giant planets;
5. Identify additional members of each discovered planetary system using other techniques; and
6. Determine the properties of those stars that harbor planetary systems.

The Kepler Mission also supports the objectives of future NASA Origins theme missions Space Interferometry Mission (SIM) and Terrestrial Planet Finder (TPF),

* By identifying the common stellar characteristics of host stars for future planet searches,
* By defining the volume of space needed for the search and
* By allowing SIM to target systems already known to have terrestrial planets.

To Page Contents
The Transit Method of Detecting Extrasolar Planets:

When a planet crosses in front of its star as viewed by an observer, the event is called a transit. Transits by terrestrial planets produce a small change in a star’s brightness of about 1/10,000 (100 parts per million, ppm), lasting for 2 to 16 hours. This change must be absolutely periodic if it is caused by a planet. In addition, all transits produced by the same planet must be of the same change in brightness and last the same amount of time, thus providing a highly repeatable signal and robust detection method.

Once detected, the planet’s orbital size can be calculated from the period (how long it takes the planet to orbit once around the star) and the mass of the star using Kepler’s Third Law of planetary motion. The size of the planet is found from the depth of the transit (how much the brightness of the star drops) and the size of the star. From the orbital size and the temperature of the star, the planet’s characteristic temperature can be calculated. From this the question of whether or not the planet is habitable (not necessarily inhabited) can be answered.

To Page Contents
The Kepler Mission Design

For a planet to transit, as seen from our solar system, the orbit must be lined up edgewise to us. The probability for an orbit to be properly aligned is equal to the diameter of the star divided by the diameter of the orbit. This is 0.5% for a planet in an Earth-like orbit about a solar-like star. (For the giant planets discovered in four-day orbits, the alignment probability is more like 10%.) In order to detect many planets one can not just look at a few stars for transits or even a few hundred. One must look at thousands of stars, even if Earth-like planets are common. If they are rare, then one needs to look at many thousands to find even a few. Kepler looks at 100,000 stars so that if Earths are rare, a null or near null result would still be significant. If Earth-size planets are common then Kepler should detect hundreds of them.

Considering that we want to find planets in the habitable zone, the time between transits is about one year. To reliably detect a sequence one needs four transits. Hence, the mission duration needs to be at least three and one half years.

The Kepler instrument is a specially designed 0.95-meter diameter telescope called a photometer or light meter. It has a very large field of view for an astronomical telescope — 105 square degrees, which is comparable to the area of your hand held at arm’s length. The fields of view of most telescopes are less than one square degree. Kepler needs that large a field—105 square degrees—in order to observe the necessary large number of stars. It stares at the same star field for the entire mission and continuously and simultaneously monitors the brightnesses of more than 100,000 stars for the life of the mission—3.5 years.

The diameter of the telescope needs to be large enough to reduce the noise from photon counting statistics, so that it can measure the small change in brightness of an Earth-like transit. The design of the entire system is such that the combined differential photometric precision over a 6.5 hour integration is less than 20 ppm (one-sigma) for a 12th magnitude solar-like star including an assumed stellar variability of 10 ppm. This is a conservative, worse-case assumption of a grazing transit. A central transit of the Earth crossing the Sun lasts 13 hours. And about 75% of the stars older than 1 Gyr are less variable then the Sun on the time scale of a transit.

The photometer must be spacebased to obtain the photometric precision needed to reliably see an Earth-like transit and to avoid interruptions caused by day-night cycles, seasonal cycles and atmospheric perturbations, such as, extinction associated with ground-based observing.

Extending the mission beyond three and one half years provides for:

1. Improving the signal to noise by combining more transits to permit detection of smaller planets
2. Finding planets in orbits with larger periods
3. Finding planets around stars that are noisier either due to being fainter or having more variability

Expected Results:

Based on the mission described above, including conservative assumptions about detection criteria, stellar variability, taking into account only orbits with 4 transits in 3.5 years, etc., and assuming that planets are common around other stars like our Sun, then we expect to detect:

From transits of terrestrial planets in one year orbits:

* About 50 planets if most are the same size as Earth (R~1.0 Re) and none larger,
* About 185 planets if most have a size of R~1.3 Re,
* About 640 planets if most have a size of R~2.2 Re,
* About 12% with two or more planets per system.

These numbers come out substantially higher, when one takes into consideration all orbits from a few days to more than one year.

From modulation of the reflected light from giant inner planets:

* About 870 planets with periods less than one week.

From transits of giant planets:

* About 135 inner-orbit planet detections,
* Densities for 35 inner-orbit planets, and
* About 30 outer-orbit planet detections.

Detection of the short-period giant planets should occur within the first several months of the mission.

The sample size of stars for this mission is large enough to capture the richness of the unexpected. Should no detection be made, a null result would still be very significant.

To Page Contents
System Characteristics:

Spacebased Photometer: 0.95-m aperture

Primary mirror: 1.4 meter diameter, 85% light weighted

Detectors: 95 mega pixels (42 CCDs with 2200

Karen Cunagin Sypher Video

Karen Sypher Tapes/Karen Sypher Tapes-Here is the videotaped interview of Karen Cunagin SypherKaren Sypher’s tape was released by police to press prompting Rick Pitino to fume to press thereafter.

Rick Pitino would expect that the police would release the Karen Sypher Tapes (video footage of the complaint of Karen Sypher who is accusing Rick Pitino of rape) which could add more damage to his name? If you have been following the Rick Pitino extortion case, you know that Pitino and Sypher have been trying to destroy each other, making a feast for the media in the process.

Pitino called an immediate press conference.

“If you all showed up thinking I am resigning you are going to be disappointed.  On the day Ted Kennedy died we broke into news here in Louisville with Karen Sypher tapes….Believe me I will suffer for that mistake. My wife and children should not suffer for these lies, and believe me these are lies.”

University of Louisville president James Ramsey issued the following statement thereafter:

“Several months ago, Coach Pitino informed me about the alleged extortion attempt. I’ve now been informed that there may be other details which, if true, I find surprising”.

Reports claim Pitino’s contract with Louisville provides “dishonesty” and “moral depravity” as basis for firing.

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Karen Cunagin Sypher Video was first posted on August 27, 2009 at 1:19 pm.
©2009 “Pakistan News“.

Mars August 27-Two Moons On 27th August

The two moons of August 27 2009 is just a hoax! Dos Lunas Cielo (2 moons in the sky) is impossible. Many people are expecting to see two moons tonight while looking at the sky but let me break you sweet dream by telling you it is fake and is not even possible. This is just a worldwide forward email spam which started the rumor and it is nothing more than that. I don’t know if you got one of those forward emails during the last 3 years stating that today 27 August 2009 there will be an exceptional event in the sky. That is people will be able to see 2 MOONS instead of the usual one we normally see. In fact, since 2006 there is a spam email being forwarded worldwide.

I remember I got that last year and that one in fact caught my attention and I had read it. Normally I simply send of these forward emails to the spam box but that one was interesting but the fact is it is fake and stupid. The email explained that today 27 August 2009, the planet Mars will be very near to Earth and this event will not happen until the year 2287!

So due to this close encounter we will see two moon size objects in the sky! Well if we use our little brain a bit it is easy to see this is not possible. Even with a normal telescope we cannot see planet Mars so big. Now to be able to see Mars as the same size of the moon, the planet will have to approach Earth over millions of KM!

This is not possible. Fernando Jáuregui, Astrophysicist from the Planetarium of Pamplona-Iruña back this argument on IETB today. Well if you were the one who forwarded the email to your friends too, then be sure you got fooled lol. So if you wanna watch the sky tonight, enjoy the sight of stars and the moon, do it but do not wait till midnight to see two moons.

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Mars August 27-Two Moons On 27th August was first posted on August 27, 2009 at 3:04 pm.
©2009 “Pakistan News“.