Thursday, April 25, 2013

Without calling a witness, defense rests in abortion doc's trial

(Editor's Note: This story contains graphic material that may upset some readers)

By Dave Warner

PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - Defense lawyers for a Philadelphia abortion doctor accused of killing babies in a clinic that mainly serves low-income women rested their case on Wednesday without calling any witnesses in the high-profile murder trial.

Dr. Kermit Gosnell, 72, is charged with killing four infants during botched abortions and a woman who underwent an abortion and died at a nearby hospital after the procedure at his Women's Medical Society clinic in urban West Philadelphia.

He could face the death penalty if convicted in the case in Common Pleas Court in Philadelphia.

Prosecutors said Gosnell ran a "house of horrors" in a West Philadelphia health clinic where women went for late-term abortions. The district attorney's office contends Gosnell delivered live babies during botched abortions and then deliberately severed their spinal cords, killing them.

Gosnell's defense lawyer, John McMahon, characterized the prosecution of his client, who is black, as "elitist, racist." He said there was no evidence that the babies were delivered alive, noting "the first rule of homicide is someone has to be alive."

The charges against Gosnell and nine of his employees have rekindled the debate in the United States about late-term abortions. Abortions are banned in Pennsylvania after 24 weeks of pregnancy.

Gosnell has been in jail since his January 2011 arrest. Eight other defendants have pleaded guilty to a variety of charges and are awaiting sentencing.

(Editing by Barbara Goldberg, Cynthia Johnston and Nick Zieminski)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/defense-rests-murder-trial-philadelphia-abortion-doctor-175544282.html

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Spurs Top Lakers 102-91 In Game 2 Of West Playoff Series

SAN ANTONIO ? The San Antonio Spurs kept insisting the playoffs were a new season and that their woeful finish to the regular season was not as grave as it appeared.

After 16 straight postseason appearances, San Antonio should know what it's talking about.

Tony Parker had 28 points and seven assists and the Spurs beat the Los Angeles Lakers 102-91 on Wednesday night to take a 2-0 lead in their Western Conference first-round playoff series.

Tim Duncan and Kawhi Leonard had 16 points each, Manu Ginobili added 13 points and Matt Bonner had 10 for San Antonio, which had lost three straight entering the series.

"I thought we played two pretty good games on the defensive end of the court back-to-back," Spurs coach Gregg Popovich said. "That was our goal at the beginning of the season and we did it for most of the year, as I said, until maybe the last three weeks of the season it dissipated. We got it back for these two games."

Dwight Howard and Steve Blake had 16 points each to lead Los Angeles. Metta World Peace and Pau Gasol added 13 points each, but no other player had more than nine as the Lakers shot 45 percent from the field.

Game 3 is Friday night in Los Angeles.

Los Angeles said a key to winning was shooting better, and they did - but so did San Antonio.

"They are just much more efficient than we are," Los Angeles coach Mike D'Antoni said. "They are playing better than we are right now."

The Spurs shot 51 percent from the field after shooting 38 percent in Game 1. San Antonio was 7 for 14 on 3-pointers, including 5 for 7 in the first half.

Parker had 15 points in the third quarter after going 1 for 6 in the first half. He scored 12 straight points on a series of layups and floating jumpers against Blake. Parker's run gave the Spurs a 75-65 lead with 3 minutes left in the third.

"You see Tony tonight and that's probably the best part of the whole game," Duncan said. "He's getting his rhythm back. He felt good tonight. He shot the ball well tonight. He looked like Tony of midseason tonight and that's great for us."

The Lakers shot 37 percent (9 for 24) in the first quarter, a slight improvement over their 7-for-20 performance (35 percent) in the opening quarter of Game 1.

Gasol posted early, tipping in a miss by Howard for the game's opening basket and missing a 5-footer before Duncan blocked his 5-foot hook.

Gasol was 5 for 14 overall, including 1 for 6 in the second half.

"I didn't get into a good rhythm out there," Gasol said. "This first half was better, but in the second half I struggled with my shot. I can't be short on my shots; fatigue kicked in a little bit and I'm fighting through some stuff myself physically. But at this point, we're in fight mode; we'll fight through whatever is on the table. Try to stay alive in this series and fight for our lives."

The Lakers went to the perimeter following the block, resulting in consecutive 3s by Blake and World Peace for an 8-6 lead with 8:23 left in the first quarter.

Ginobili once again energized the Spurs, sparking runs of 13-4 and 10-3 to close the first and second quarters. He had 12 points in the first half and was 3 for 4 on 3-pointers.

"He's playing very well right now," D'Antoni said. "There's not a whole lot of adjustments; we try to push him to his weak hand and try to get up in him, but at some point you just have to man up and just do the best you can."

Ginobili had six points with two assists and a block in 6 minutes to bridge the first and second quarters.

He hit two 3s in the final minute of the second quarter, including one off his initial pass that bounced off DeJuan Blair's head but eventually found its way back to him. He also fed a streaking Leonard for a dunk off a turnover.

"You have to give credit to them," D'Antoni said. "When the ball hits somebody in the head, bounced around and went over to the 3, that didn't help any. That's why they are good. They are a better team."

In the first quarter, Ginobili hit a step-back 3 and then drew the defense and fed Gary Neal for an open 3, which he made to give the Spurs a 28-23 lead at the close of the first quarter.

The Lakers went on a 9-2 run to close within 33-32 with 8 minutes left in the first half. Nash opened and closed the run with jumpers.

Nash continued to play after tweaking his hamstring, finishing with nine points in 31 minutes.

Bonner's 3 on an open look with 7 minutes left in the first half drew a cry of frustration from Gasol, who shouted at the bench and pointed at Bonner over an apparent missed assignment.

"(Bonner) was a key player for us today," Ginobili said. "He was very active defensively. Of course he's giving Dwight a big advantage in size, strength and quickness, and I could keep going. But he did a great job getting around him, fronting him from behind."

Howard had heated battles with Bonner and Duncan in the first half. After getting tied up midway through the second quarter, Duncan and Howard walked down the court glaring at each other with Howard jawing at Duncan.

"It is frustrating," Howard said of the defensive pressure. "I just have to trust my teammates to make shots. On whatever they do defensively, I have to be aware of my arms and try not to get tangled up."

Howard was later grabbed from behind by Bonner and his arm was pulled by Ginobili, but the Lakers All-Star still managed to bank in a layup, flexing his muscles after the shot. Howard even made the ensuing free throw, giving the Lakers a 44-43 lead with 3 minutes left in the first half.

Howard was 2 for 4 on free throws.

Bonner followed with a 3, however, to put the Spurs back on top at 46-44.

NOTES: The Spurs have the second-most playoff wins since selecting Duncan with the top overall pick in 1997. San Antonio is 119-77 since 1998, trailing only the Lakers' 133-81. ... Duncan has 139 double-doubles in the playoffs, fourth all-time behind Magic Johnson (157), Wilt Chamberlin (143) and Shaquille O'Neal (142). ... Lakers C Jordan Hill played for the first time since undergoing left hip surgery Jan. 23. He was listed as "out" for Game 2, but came off the bench with 3 minutes left in the game. . The Lakers had six players listed as probable, but all played. Gasol (foot), Howard (shoulder), Jamison (wrist), Jamal Meeks (ankle), Nash (hamstring) and World Peace (knee) all played at least 20 minutes. ... Ginobili and Duncan had their customary snack of red Lifesavers before the game, sending a trainer over to collect a handful from an official scorer before pre-game introductions.

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/25/spurs-lakers-game-2-playoffs_n_3151879.html

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Emma Stone Considering Lead Role In Woody Allen's Next Movie

Woody Allen is busy gathering together the cast for his next directorial effort, and it seems like Emma Stone could be his leading actor. Deadline is reporting that Stone is in talks to play the main role in Allen's latest. Little details are known about the movie beyond that it will shoot in the south [...]

Source: http://moviesblog.mtv.com/2013/04/24/emma-stone-woody-allen/

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Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Endangered African language explored

Endangered African language explored [ Back to EurekAlert! ] Public release date: 23-Apr-2013
[ | E-mail | Share Share ]

Contact: Eva-Marie Str?m
eva-marie.strom@sprak.gu.se
46-073-072-8555
University of Gothenburg

Children growing up in the Rufiji region along the coast of Tanzania are learning Swahili as their first language.

Consequently, their parents are expected to be the last generation to be fluent in the minority language Ndengeleko. A new doctoral thesis in African languages from the University of Gothenburg is the first, and maybe last, attempt ever to explore Ndengeleko grammatically.

More than 120 languages are spoken in Tanzania. Most are minority languages spoken by various ethnic groups in the country. Eva-Marie Strm, the author of the thesis, estimates that Ndengeleko, which belongs to the Bantu language family, is currently spoken by about 72 000 people.

'Although this is not an extremely low number in the context of minority languages, my conclusion is that Ndengeleko is indeed endangered and will most likely disappear within a few generations,' she says.

Strm's study is based on interviews and recordings and was carried out on-site with speakers of the language who are interested in preserving their knowledge for future generations.

'My research gives a good description of the phonology of the language, or of the sounds used. It turns out that it has a rather limited number of consonants and vowels. Moreover, some consonants have disappeared from some words over time, making combinations of vowels common.'

In Ndengeleko as in other Bantu languages in Africa morphemes are combined to form long words. Morphemes are the small building blocks of words, and they all have a meaning. Combinations of morphemes can appear differently in different words depending on which vowels and consonants are involved. A large part of the analysis concerned these complex processes.

Descriptions of languages are important in order to understand people's linguistic abilities and how languages evolve. Also, languages can reveal information about the people who speak them and how they approach life and the world around them.

'Traditional research on languages and cognition is still largely based on Western languages. My thesis contributes to our understanding of human languages,' says Strm, who is also hoping that her study will help strengthen the self-confidence and status of Ndengeleko speakers.

###

More information: Eva-Marie Strm, +46 (0)730 72 85 55, email: eva-marie.strom@sprak.gu.se

Title of the doctoral thesis: The Ndengeleko language of Tanzania

The thesis is available at: https://gupea.ub.gu.se/handle/2077/32111


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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.


Endangered African language explored [ Back to EurekAlert! ] Public release date: 23-Apr-2013
[ | E-mail | Share Share ]

Contact: Eva-Marie Str?m
eva-marie.strom@sprak.gu.se
46-073-072-8555
University of Gothenburg

Children growing up in the Rufiji region along the coast of Tanzania are learning Swahili as their first language.

Consequently, their parents are expected to be the last generation to be fluent in the minority language Ndengeleko. A new doctoral thesis in African languages from the University of Gothenburg is the first, and maybe last, attempt ever to explore Ndengeleko grammatically.

More than 120 languages are spoken in Tanzania. Most are minority languages spoken by various ethnic groups in the country. Eva-Marie Strm, the author of the thesis, estimates that Ndengeleko, which belongs to the Bantu language family, is currently spoken by about 72 000 people.

'Although this is not an extremely low number in the context of minority languages, my conclusion is that Ndengeleko is indeed endangered and will most likely disappear within a few generations,' she says.

Strm's study is based on interviews and recordings and was carried out on-site with speakers of the language who are interested in preserving their knowledge for future generations.

'My research gives a good description of the phonology of the language, or of the sounds used. It turns out that it has a rather limited number of consonants and vowels. Moreover, some consonants have disappeared from some words over time, making combinations of vowels common.'

In Ndengeleko as in other Bantu languages in Africa morphemes are combined to form long words. Morphemes are the small building blocks of words, and they all have a meaning. Combinations of morphemes can appear differently in different words depending on which vowels and consonants are involved. A large part of the analysis concerned these complex processes.

Descriptions of languages are important in order to understand people's linguistic abilities and how languages evolve. Also, languages can reveal information about the people who speak them and how they approach life and the world around them.

'Traditional research on languages and cognition is still largely based on Western languages. My thesis contributes to our understanding of human languages,' says Strm, who is also hoping that her study will help strengthen the self-confidence and status of Ndengeleko speakers.

###

More information: Eva-Marie Strm, +46 (0)730 72 85 55, email: eva-marie.strom@sprak.gu.se

Title of the doctoral thesis: The Ndengeleko language of Tanzania

The thesis is available at: https://gupea.ub.gu.se/handle/2077/32111


[ Back to EurekAlert! ] [ | E-mail | Share Share ]

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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.


Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-04/uog-eal042313.php

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How to unsubscribe from a podcast in the Podcasts app for iPhone and iPad

How to unsubscribe from a podcast in the Podcasts app for iPhone and iPad

The Podcasts app allows you to easily subscribe to podcasts that can automatically update when new episodes are available. Over time, you may decide that you don't want to follow a particular podcast as closely anymore. The Podcasts app allows you to unsubscribe just as easily as you subscribed.

  1. Launch the Podcasts app from the Home screen of your iPhone or iPad.
  2. Under the Podcasts tab, tap on the name of the podcast series you'd like to unsubscribe from.
  3. Towards the top, tap on the Settings button.
  4. There is a toggle to edit your subscription, turn the Subscription toggle to Off.

The Podcasts app will now stop updating when new episodes of that particular podcast is available. If you don't want any of the podcasts on your iPhone or iPad, you can also delete older episodes.

    


Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheIphoneBlog/~3/kXPFRVn1PrY/story01.htm

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Video: HBT Extra: Are Jays biggest disappointment so far?

Sorry, Readability was unable to parse this page for content.

Source: http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/21134540/vp/51637896#51637896

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AMD details $999 Radeon HD 7990 graphics card, says it handles all top games at 4K

AMD details Radeon HD 7990 any game at 4K resolution for $999

We've seen plenty of the Radeon HD 7990 in action with Battlefield 4, but it's taken AMD a little while to furnish us with full specs and pricing. Now that all the info is here, in the run-up to commercial availability in two week's time, it's finally possible to judge the pros and cons of what is arguably a very niche product. Read on past the break and we'll do just that.

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Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/yEkZba7tL2w/

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Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Kerry: NATO needs plan for Syrian chemical weapons

Greek Foreign Minister Dimitrios Avramopoulos, left, talks with Turkish counterpart Ahmet Davutoglu, during a NATO foreign ministers meeting at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Tuesday, April 23, 2013. NATO foreign ministers meet in Brussels to discuss the situation in Syria and Afghanistan. (AP Photo/Yves Logghe)

Greek Foreign Minister Dimitrios Avramopoulos, left, talks with Turkish counterpart Ahmet Davutoglu, during a NATO foreign ministers meeting at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Tuesday, April 23, 2013. NATO foreign ministers meet in Brussels to discuss the situation in Syria and Afghanistan. (AP Photo/Yves Logghe)

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, left, talks with Italy's Foreign Minister Mario Monti, during a NATO foreign ministers meeting at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Tuesday, April 23, 2013. NATO foreign ministers meet in Brussels to discuss the situation in Syria and Afghanistan. (AP Photo/Yves Logghe)

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, left, talks with Italy's Foreign Minister Mario Monti, during a NATO foreign ministers meeting at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Tuesday, April 23, 2013. NATO foreign ministers meet in Brussels to discuss the situation in Syria and Afghanistan. (AP Photo/Yves Logghe)

Greek Foreign Minister Dimitrios Avramopoulos, center, talks to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, right, and NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, as they pose for a group photo, during the NATO-Russia Council during a NATO foreign ministers meeting at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Tuesday, April 23, 2013. (AP Photo/Yves Logghe)

Italy's Foreign Minister Mario Monti, left, talks with German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle prior to the NATO-Russia Council during a NATO foreign ministers meeting at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Tuesday, April 23, 2013. (AP Photo/Yves Logghe)

(AP) ? U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry urged NATO on Tuesday to prepare for the possible use of chemical weapons by Syria on the same day that a senior Israeli military intelligence official said Syrian President Bashar Assad had used such weapons last month in his battle against insurgents.

It was the first time Israel had accused the embattled Syrian leader of using his stockpile of nonconventional weapons.

The assessment, based on visual evidence, could raise pressure on the U.S. and other Western countries to intervene in Syria. Britain and France recently announced that they had evidence that Assad's government had used chemical weapons.

President Barack Obama has warned that the use of chemical weapons by Assad would be a "game changer" and has hinted that it could draw intervention.

But White House spokesman Jay Carney said while the administration is continuing to monitor and investigate whether the Syrian regime has used chemical weapons, it has "not come to the conclusion that there has been that use."

"But it is something that is of great concern to us, to our partners, and obviously unacceptable as the president made clear," Carney said.

Despite the deteriorating situation, NATO officials say there is virtually no chance the alliance will intervene in the civil war. More than 70,000 people have died in the conflict, according to the United Nations. The violence also has forced more than 1 million Syrians to seek safety abroad, and more are leaving by the day, burdening neighboring countries such as Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey and Iraq.

On Tuesday, Brig. Gen. Itai Brun, the head of research and analysis in Israeli military intelligence, told a security conference in Tel Aviv that Assad had used chemical weapons multiple times. Among the incidents were attacks documented by the French and British near Damascus last month.

He cited images of people hurt, but gave no indication he had other evidence, such as soil samples, typically used to verify chemical weapons use.

"To the best of our professional understanding, the regime used lethal chemical weapons against the militants in a series of incidents over the past months, including the relatively famous incident of March 19," Brun said. "Shrunken pupils, foaming at the mouth and other signs indicate, in our view, that lethal chemical weapons were used."

He said sarin, a lethal nerve agent, was probably used. He also said the Syrian regime was using less lethal chemical weapons. And he appeared to lament the lack of response by the international community.

"The fact that chemical weapons were used without an appropriate response is a very disturbing development because it could signal that such a thing is legitimate," he said.

Israel, which borders Syria, has been warily watching the Syrian civil war since fighting erupted there in March 2011. Although Assad is a bitter enemy, Israel has been careful not to take sides, partly because the Assad family has kept the border with Israel quiet for 40 years and partly because of fears of what might happen if he were toppled.

Israeli officials are concerned that Assad's stockpile of chemical weapons and other advanced arms could reach the hands of his ally, the Hezbollah militant group in Lebanon, or Islamic extremist groups trying to oust him from Syria.

Kerry, attending his first meeting of NATO's governing body, the North Atlantic Council, as America's top diplomat, said contingency plans should be put in place to guard against the threat of a chemical strike. Turkey, a member of the military alliance, borders Syria and would be most at risk from such an attack. NATO has already deployed Patriot missile batteries in Turkey.

"Planning regarding Syria, such as what (NATO) has already done, is an appropriate undertaking for the alliance," Kerry told NATO foreign ministers. "We should also carefully and collectively consider how NATO is prepared to respond to protect its members from a Syrian threat, including any potential chemical weapons threat."

Speaking at a news conference after the meeting, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said the alliance is "extremely concerned about the use of ballistic missiles in Syria and the possible use of chemical weapons." However, he also noted that NATO has not been asked to intervene.

"There is no call for NATO to play a role, but if these challenges remain unaddressed they could directly affect our own security," he told reporters. "So we will continue to remain extremely vigilant."

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, in Brussels to talk with his counterparts from NATO countries, said Russia would want any investigation of whether chemical weapons have been used to be conducted by experts and concern only the specific report being investigated.

Speaking through a translator in a press conference at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Lavrov said that, in March, after each side in Syria's civil war accused the other of using chemical weapons in northern Aleppo province, the U.N. investigation became politicized and overly broad. Instead of sending experts to study the specific area and the specific allegation, Lavrov said investigators demanded access to all facilities in the country and the right to interview all Syrian citizens.

In Washington, Pentagon spokesman George Little said the U.S. "continues to assess reports of chemical weapons use in Syria."

"The use of such weapons would be entirely unacceptable," he added.

Later in the day, Kerry appeared to try to soften his earlier remarks, saying he had no way of knowing what the facts were.

"I didn't ask for additional planning," he said. "I think it might have been the secretary general or somebody who commented that we may need to do some additional planning. But there is no specific request. What there was from me was a very clear statement about the threat of chemical weapons and the potential for chemical weapons generically to fall into bad hands."

He also said the Obama administration is "looking at every option that could possibly end the violence and usher in a political transition" and that plans need to be made now to ensure that there is no power vacuum when that takes place. He said increasing aid to the Syrian National Coalition and its military command, the Supreme Military Council, would be critical to that effort.

Many of NATO's 28 members also belong to the European Union, which on Monday lifted its oil embargo on Syria to provide more economic support to the rebels and is now considering easing an arms embargo on the country to allow weapons transfers to those fighting the Assad regime.

Kerry did not mention the possible easing of the EU embargo but he did say that NATO should begin to think about taking on a larger role in planning for a post-Assad Syria, particularly in dealing with the country's chemical weapons stockpiles.

The NATO ministers were also working Tuesday on defining how the alliance would support Afghan forces after 2014, when NATO will no longer have a combat role.

With next year's transition date looming, Kerry will host three-way talks in Brussels on Wednesday with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and top Pakistani officials aimed at speeding possible reconciliation talks with the Taliban and improving trust and cooperation between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

On the sidelines of the NATO meeting, Kerry met Lavrov to discuss a range of issues, including Syria. He also thanked Lavrov for Russian President Vladimir Putin's statement of condolence to the U.S. for last week's bombings at the Boston Marathon blamed on two ethnic Chechen brothers.

___

Associated Press writers Ariel David in Tel Aviv, Peter James Spielmann at the United Nations, and Kimberly Dozier and Julie Pace in Washington contributed to this report.

___

Don Melvin can be reached at https://twitter.com/Don_Melvin

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/apdefault/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2013-04-23-EU-NATO-Foreign-Ministers/id-dd2e82fbc10840768174e2a2cac78612

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Rivers act as 'horizontal cooling towers,' study finds

Rivers act as 'horizontal cooling towers,' study finds [ Back to EurekAlert! ] Public release date: 22-Apr-2013
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Contact: David Sims
david.sims@unh.edu
603-862-5369
University of New Hampshire

DURHAM, N.H. - Running two computer models in tandem, scientists from the University of New Hampshire have detailed for the first time how thermoelectric power plants interact with climate, hydrology, and aquatic ecosystems throughout the northeastern U.S. and show how rivers serve as "horizontal cooling towers" that provide an important ecosystem service to the regional electricity sector but at a cost to the environment.

The analysis, done in collaboration with colleagues from the City College of New York (CCNY) and published online in the current journal Environmental Research Letters, highlights the interactions among electricity production, cooling technologies, hydrologic conditions, aquatic impacts and ecosystem services, and can be used to assess the full costs and tradeoffs of electricity production at regional scales and under changing climate conditions.

Lead authors of the study are Robert Stewart of the UNH Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space (EOS) and Wilfred Wollheim of the department of natural resources and environment and EOS.

Thermoelectric power plants boil water to create steam that in turn drives turbines to produce electricity. They provide 90 percent of the electricity consumed nationwide and an even a greater percentage in the Northeast a region with a high density of power plants.

Cooling the waste heat generated during the process requires that prodigious volumes of water be withdrawn and makes the thermoelectric sector the largest user of freshwater in the U.S. withdrawing more than the entire, combined agricultural sector. Water withdrawals are either evaporated in cooling towers or returned to the river at elevated temperatures. Rivers can help mitigate these added heat loads through the ecosystem services of conveyance, dilution, and attenuation essentially acting as horizontal cooling towers as water flows downstream.

Says Stewart, a research scientist in the EOS Earth Systems Research Center, "Our modeling shows that, of the waste heat produced during the production of electricity, roughly half is directed to vertical, evaporative cooling towers while the other half is transferred to rivers."

The study also shows that, of the waste heat transferred to rivers, only slightly more than 11 percent wafts into the atmosphere with the rest delivered to coastal waters and the ocean.

"We were surprised to find that relatively little of the heat to rivers is exchanged back to the atmosphere," notes Wollheim, an assistant professor and co-director of the Water Systems Analysis Group at EOS. Wollheim adds, "Reliance on riverine ecosystem services to dispense waste heat alters temperature regimes, which impacts fish habitat and other aquatic ecosystem services."

The researchers quantified the various dynamics using a spatially distributed hydrology and water temperature model developed at UNH known as the Framework for Aquatic Modeling in the Earth System, or FrAMES model, coupled with the Thermoelectric Power and Thermal Pollution Model developed by collaborators at CCNY.

The combined models showed that there are roughly 4,700 river miles in the region potentially impacted by power plants. The study found that, in general, the impact to river temperatures, and thus fish habitat, is "considerable" and disruptions in river flow "minimal," in part because so many of the region's power plants are located well down river near coastal areas.

But the study also noted that in the face of changing climate and increasing energy demand, "it is essential to assess the capacity and associated environmental trade-offs of heat regulating ecosystem services that support the electricity sector."

Indeed, last summer a reactor at the Millstone nuclear power plant in Waterford, Conn. was shut down because the water in Long Island Sound was too warm to cool itsomething utterly unanticipated when the plant was designed in the 1960s. And in July 2012, a nuclear plant in Illinois had to obtain special permission to continue operations because its cooling water pond reached 102 degrees in the wake of low rainfall and high air temperatures.

By means of the study, notes Wollheim, "We can better understand the unintended consequences to other ecosystem services as we rely on rivers to support generation of electricity. Integrative, regional approaches will be needed to help plan as society adapts to changing climate and hydrology while demand for power continues to increase."

###

The work was funded by the National Science Foundation through the Earth System Modeling Program and NSF's Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) program, and by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Project collaborators and co-authors on the Environmental Research Letters paper include UNH's Richard Lammers, and Ariel Miara, Charles Vrsmarty, Balazs Fekete, and Bernice Rosenzweig of CCNY.

To read the paper, visit http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/2/025010

Watch an interview with UNH researchers Robert Stewart and Wilfred Wollheim about this research: http://bcove.me/8b5ohckf

Photograph to download: http://www.eos.unh.edu/newsimage/coolingtowers_lg.jpg

Caption: Coal-fired power plant on the Merrimack River in Bow, N.H. The plant discharges warmed water to the river which then transports, dilutes, and re-equilibrates heat. Courtesy of ASSIST Aviation Solutions.

The University of New Hampshire, founded in 1866, is a world-class public research university with the feel of a New England liberal arts college. A land, sea, and space-grant university, UNH is the state's flagship public institution, enrolling 12,200 undergraduate and 2,300 graduate students.


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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.


Rivers act as 'horizontal cooling towers,' study finds [ Back to EurekAlert! ] Public release date: 22-Apr-2013
[ | E-mail | Share Share ]

Contact: David Sims
david.sims@unh.edu
603-862-5369
University of New Hampshire

DURHAM, N.H. - Running two computer models in tandem, scientists from the University of New Hampshire have detailed for the first time how thermoelectric power plants interact with climate, hydrology, and aquatic ecosystems throughout the northeastern U.S. and show how rivers serve as "horizontal cooling towers" that provide an important ecosystem service to the regional electricity sector but at a cost to the environment.

The analysis, done in collaboration with colleagues from the City College of New York (CCNY) and published online in the current journal Environmental Research Letters, highlights the interactions among electricity production, cooling technologies, hydrologic conditions, aquatic impacts and ecosystem services, and can be used to assess the full costs and tradeoffs of electricity production at regional scales and under changing climate conditions.

Lead authors of the study are Robert Stewart of the UNH Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space (EOS) and Wilfred Wollheim of the department of natural resources and environment and EOS.

Thermoelectric power plants boil water to create steam that in turn drives turbines to produce electricity. They provide 90 percent of the electricity consumed nationwide and an even a greater percentage in the Northeast a region with a high density of power plants.

Cooling the waste heat generated during the process requires that prodigious volumes of water be withdrawn and makes the thermoelectric sector the largest user of freshwater in the U.S. withdrawing more than the entire, combined agricultural sector. Water withdrawals are either evaporated in cooling towers or returned to the river at elevated temperatures. Rivers can help mitigate these added heat loads through the ecosystem services of conveyance, dilution, and attenuation essentially acting as horizontal cooling towers as water flows downstream.

Says Stewart, a research scientist in the EOS Earth Systems Research Center, "Our modeling shows that, of the waste heat produced during the production of electricity, roughly half is directed to vertical, evaporative cooling towers while the other half is transferred to rivers."

The study also shows that, of the waste heat transferred to rivers, only slightly more than 11 percent wafts into the atmosphere with the rest delivered to coastal waters and the ocean.

"We were surprised to find that relatively little of the heat to rivers is exchanged back to the atmosphere," notes Wollheim, an assistant professor and co-director of the Water Systems Analysis Group at EOS. Wollheim adds, "Reliance on riverine ecosystem services to dispense waste heat alters temperature regimes, which impacts fish habitat and other aquatic ecosystem services."

The researchers quantified the various dynamics using a spatially distributed hydrology and water temperature model developed at UNH known as the Framework for Aquatic Modeling in the Earth System, or FrAMES model, coupled with the Thermoelectric Power and Thermal Pollution Model developed by collaborators at CCNY.

The combined models showed that there are roughly 4,700 river miles in the region potentially impacted by power plants. The study found that, in general, the impact to river temperatures, and thus fish habitat, is "considerable" and disruptions in river flow "minimal," in part because so many of the region's power plants are located well down river near coastal areas.

But the study also noted that in the face of changing climate and increasing energy demand, "it is essential to assess the capacity and associated environmental trade-offs of heat regulating ecosystem services that support the electricity sector."

Indeed, last summer a reactor at the Millstone nuclear power plant in Waterford, Conn. was shut down because the water in Long Island Sound was too warm to cool itsomething utterly unanticipated when the plant was designed in the 1960s. And in July 2012, a nuclear plant in Illinois had to obtain special permission to continue operations because its cooling water pond reached 102 degrees in the wake of low rainfall and high air temperatures.

By means of the study, notes Wollheim, "We can better understand the unintended consequences to other ecosystem services as we rely on rivers to support generation of electricity. Integrative, regional approaches will be needed to help plan as society adapts to changing climate and hydrology while demand for power continues to increase."

###

The work was funded by the National Science Foundation through the Earth System Modeling Program and NSF's Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) program, and by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Project collaborators and co-authors on the Environmental Research Letters paper include UNH's Richard Lammers, and Ariel Miara, Charles Vrsmarty, Balazs Fekete, and Bernice Rosenzweig of CCNY.

To read the paper, visit http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/2/025010

Watch an interview with UNH researchers Robert Stewart and Wilfred Wollheim about this research: http://bcove.me/8b5ohckf

Photograph to download: http://www.eos.unh.edu/newsimage/coolingtowers_lg.jpg

Caption: Coal-fired power plant on the Merrimack River in Bow, N.H. The plant discharges warmed water to the river which then transports, dilutes, and re-equilibrates heat. Courtesy of ASSIST Aviation Solutions.

The University of New Hampshire, founded in 1866, is a world-class public research university with the feel of a New England liberal arts college. A land, sea, and space-grant university, UNH is the state's flagship public institution, enrolling 12,200 undergraduate and 2,300 graduate students.


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Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-04/uonh-raa042213.php

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Monday, April 22, 2013

The Master Has Arrived

No, but seriously I'm the kinda guy who plays either major badasses or innocent naive people. It's fun either way for me, so if either of those seems like your cup of tea ht me up! I'm also looking for people for a yugioh RP, and this site seems perfect for it.

I've been around for awhile but never really active, and I wanna try and get more activity!

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/RolePlayGateway/~3/I1qg9tx8fvo/viewtopic.php

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Five days of fear: What happened in Boston

FILE - This Monday, April 15, 2013 file photo provided by Bob Leonard shows second from right, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who was dubbed Suspect No. 1 and third from right, Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev, who was dubbed Suspect No. 2 in the Boston Marathon bombings by law enforcement. This image was taken approximately 10-20 minutes before the blast. Since Monday, Boston has experienced five days of fear, beginning with the marathon bombing attack, an intense manhunt and much uncertainty ending in the death of one suspect and the capture of the other. (AP Photo/Bob Leonard, File)

FILE - This Monday, April 15, 2013 file photo provided by Bob Leonard shows second from right, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who was dubbed Suspect No. 1 and third from right, Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev, who was dubbed Suspect No. 2 in the Boston Marathon bombings by law enforcement. This image was taken approximately 10-20 minutes before the blast. Since Monday, Boston has experienced five days of fear, beginning with the marathon bombing attack, an intense manhunt and much uncertainty ending in the death of one suspect and the capture of the other. (AP Photo/Bob Leonard, File)

FILE - In this Monday, April 15, 2013 file photo, an emergency responder and volunteers, including Carlos Arredondo, in the cowboy hat, push Jeff Bauman in a wheelchair after he was injured in one of two explosions near the finish line of the Boston Marathon. Since Monday, Boston has experienced five days of fear, beginning with the marathon bombing attack, an intense manhunt and much uncertainty ending in the death of one suspect and the capture of the other. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa, File)

FILE - In this Monday, April 15, 2013 file photo provided by Ben Thorndike, people react to an explosion at the 2013 Boston Marathon in Boston. Since Monday, Boston has experienced five days of fear, beginning with the marathon bombing attack, an intense manhunt and much uncertainty ending in the death of one suspect and the capture of the other. (AP Photo/Ben Thorndike, File)

FILE - In this Monday, April 15, 2013 file photo, Bill Iffrig, 78, lies on the ground as police officers react to a second explosion at the finish line of the Boston Marathon in Boston. Iffrig, of Lake Stevens, Wash., was running his third Boston Marathon and near the finish line when he was knocked down by one of the two bomb blasts. Since Monday, Boston has experienced five days of fear, beginning with the marathon bombing attack, an intense manhunt and much uncertainty ending in the death of one suspect and the capture of the other. (AP Photo/The Boston Globe, John Tlumacki, File) MANDATORY CREDIT: THE BOSTON GLOBE, JOHN TLUMACKI

FILE - In this Tuesday, April 16, 2013 file photo, Tammy Lynch, right, comforts her daughter Kaytlyn, 8, after leaving flowers and some balloons at the Richard home in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston. Kaytlyn was paying her respects to her friend, 8-year old Martin Richard who was killed in Monday's bombings at the finish line of the Boston Marathon. Since Monday, Boston has experienced five days of fear, beginning with the marathon bombing attack, an intense manhunt and much uncertainty ending in the death of one suspect and the capture of the other. (AP Photo/Michael Dwyer, File)

BOSTON (AP) ? In the tight rows of chairs stretched across the Commonwealth Ballroom, the nervousness ? already dialed high by two bombs, three deaths and more than 72 hours without answers ? ratcheted even higher.

The minutes ticked by as investigators stepped out to delay the news conference once, then again. Finally, at 5:10 p.m. Thursday, a pair of FBI agents carried two large easels to the front of the Boston hotel conference chamber and saddled them with display boards. They turned the boards backward so as not to divulge the results of their sleuthing until, it had been decided, they could not afford to wait any longer.

Now the time had come to take that critical, but perilous step: introducing Boston to the two men believed responsible for an entire city's terror.

"Somebody out there knows these individuals as friends, neighbors, co-workers or family members of the suspects," said Richard DesLauriers, the FBI agent in charge in Boston. As he spoke, investigators flipped the boards around to reveal grainy surveillance-camera images of the men whose only identity was conferred by the black ball cap and sunglasses on one, the white ball cap worn backward on the other.

"Though it may be difficult, the nation is counting on those with information to come forward and provide it to us."

Photographers and TV cameras pushed forward, intent on capturing the images, even as people in the lobby stared into computers and smart phones, straining to recognize the faces. In living rooms and bars and offices across the city, and across the country, so many people looked up and logged on to examine the faces of the men deemed responsible for the bombing attack of the Boston Marathon, that the FBI servers were instantly overwhelmed.

At the least, Bostonians told each other, the photos proved that the monsters the city had imagined were responsible for maiming more than 170 were nothing more than ordinary men. But even as that relief sank in, the dread that had gripped the city since Monday at 2:50 p.m. was renewed.

If everyone had seen these photos, then that had to mean the suspects had seen them, too.

What desperation might they resort to, marathoner Meredith Saillant asked herself, once they were confronted with the certainty that their hours of anonymity were running out?

On the morning after the marathon, Saillant had fled the city for the mountains of Vermont with three friends and their children, trying to escape nightmares of the bombs that had detonated on the sidewalk just below the room where they'd been celebrating her 3:38 finish. Now, she put aside her glass of wine, reaching for the smart phone her friend offered and scrutinized the photos of the men who had defeated her city on what was supposed to be its day of camaraderie and strength.

"I expected that I would feel relief, 'OK, now I can put a face to it,' and start some closure," Saillant says. "But I think I felt more doom. I felt, I don't know, chilled. Knowing where we are and the era in which we live, I knew that as soon as those pictures went up that it was over, that something was going to happen ... like it was the beginning of the end."

There was no way she or the people of Boston could know, though, just when that end would come ? or how.

___

Marathon Monday dawned with the kind of April chill that makes spectators shiver and runners smile ? the ideal temperature for keeping a body cool during 26.2 miles of pounding over hills and around curves. By the four-hour mark, more than 2/3 of the field's 23,000 runners had crossed the finish line, and the crowds of onlookers were beginning to thin a little. But the growing warmth made it an afternoon to relish.

Passing the 25-mile mark, Diane Jones-Bolton, 51, of Nashville, Tenn., picked up the pace, relishing the effort and the sense of accomplishment of her 195th marathon.

Near the finish line, Brighid Wall of Duxbury, Mass., stood to watch the race with her husband and children, cheering on the competitors laboring through the race's final demanding steps.

In the post-race chute Tracy Eaves, a 43-year-old controller from Niles, Mich., proudly claimed her medal and a Mylar blanket, and took a big swig from a bottle of Gatorade.

And at the corner of Newbury Street and Gloucester, cab driver Lahcene Belhoucet pulled over, relishing the overabundance of paying passengers on an afternoon that traditionally gives almost as much of a boost to Boston's economy as it does to the city's spirits.

But the blast ? so loud it recalled the cannon fire heard on summer nights when the Boston Pops plays the 1812 Overture ? brought the celebration crashing down.

"Everyone sort of froze, the runners froze, and then they kept going because you weren't sure what it was," Wall said. "The first explosion was far enough away that we only saw smoke." Then the second bomb exploded, this time just 10 feet away.

"My husband threw our kids to the ground and lay on top of them," Wall said. "A man lay on top of us and said, 'Don't get up! Don't get up!' "

From her spot beyond the finish, a "huge shaking boom" washed over Eaves.

"I turned around and saw this monstrous smoke," she said. She thought it might be part of the festivities, until the second blast and volunteers began rushing the runners from the scene.

"Then you start to panic," she said.

Back in the field, Jones-Bolton noticed runners turning around and coming back at her. Then she realized most were wearing the blankets given to those who'd already completed the race. Suddenly the race came to halt, but nobody could say why. When word began to spread, Jones-Bolton panicked at the thought of her husband standing at the finish line, but was reassured by other runners.

At the finish, Wall, her husband and children raised their heads after a minute or two of silence. Beside them, a man was kneeling, looking dazed, blood dripping from his head. A body lay on the ground nearby, not moving at all. But in a landscape of blood and glass and twisted metal, they were far from alone.

"We grabbed each other and we ran but we didn't know where to run to because windows were blown out so another man helped me pick up my daughter," and they ran into a coffee shop, out the back door into an alley and kept going.

Meanwhile, the instincts of Dr. Martin Levine, a Bayonne, N.J., physician who has long volunteered to attend to elite runners at the finish line, told him to do just the opposite. Looking up at the plume of smoke, he estimated it was about two storefronts wide and quickly calculated how many spectators might be located in such an area.

"Make room for casualties ? about 40!," he yelled into the runners' relief tent. "Get the runners out if they can!" And he took off. Just then the second bomb went off. He reached the site to find a landscape resembling a battlefield, littered with severed limbs.

"The people were still smoking, their skin and their clothes were burning," he said. "There were lower extremity body parts all over the place ... and all of the wounds were extreme gaping holes, with the flesh hanging from the bones ? if there was any bone left."

Back in his cab, Belhoucet said he mistook the first blast for an earthquake. Fearing that a building might collapse, he considered running. But then people came pouring down the street and he beckoned a family into the car. He grabbed the wheel, then turned momentarily to ask where they wanted to go.

Only then did he notice the man's face, dripping with blood.

___

Now, three days after the bombing, investigators had made significant headway in deciphering the method behind the terror.

Armies of white-suited agents had spent many hours sifting through the evidence littering Boylston Street, climbing to nearby rooftops to make sure no clue would go overlooked. Their efforts revealed that the bombers had constructed crudely assembled weapons, using plans easily found on the Internet, from pressure cookers, wires and batteries popular at hobby shops. But investigators still did not know why. And, more importantly, they had only the haziest idea of whom to hold responsible.

It all came down to the photos, culled after a painstaking search of hundreds of hours of videotape and photographs gathered from surveillance cameras and spectators. But if they were unable to identify the men, that left the investigators with a difficult choice: They could keep them to law enforcement officers who so far had had no luck, prolonging the search and risking letting the men slip away or attack again. Or they could ask the public for help. But then, the suspects would know the net was closing in.

When they decided to release them, it would only put Bostonians further on edge.

"There was this kind of strange tension," said Brian Walker of Boston. "You walk by people and you just kind of look at them out of the corner of your eye and check them out. I was conscious that I didn't feel comfortable walking around with a backpack. It was like I just want to be safe here and everybody is kind of jumpy."

But as investigators pored over tips in the hours before the photos were made public, the city, at least, was struggling to right itself.

On Monday, the bombs had exploded just a half-block before Brian Ladley crossed the Marathon finish line. But, feeling lucky to be alive, he was out at 7 a.m. Thursday to join the line at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross, hoping to hear President Barack Obama speak at an interfaith service to honor the victims. The event was still hours away, but when tickets ran out, authorities spotted his marathon jacket and plucked him and some other runners out of line to watch the service in a nearby school auditorium.

"If they sought to intimidate us, to terrorize us ... it should be pretty clear right now that they picked the wrong city to do it," Obama told the crowd of more than 2,000 inside the church. "We may be momentarily knocked off our feet. But we'll pick ourselves up. We'll keep going. We will finish the race."

After it ended, Ladley found himself shaking hands with the president, too awestruck to remember their conversation. But what meant the most was the camaraderie of the crowd.

"It was wonderful to have a moment with other runners and be able to share our stories," he said.

Less than a mile away, 85-year-old Mary O'Kane strained at the bell ropes in the steeple of historic Arlington Street Church, imagining the sounds spreading a healing across her city ? and the land. Sprinkled amid hymns like "Amazing Grace" and "A Mighty Fortress," patriotic tunes like "America the Beautiful" and "God Bless America" wafted down from the 199-foot steeple and over Boston Common across the street.

"I feel joyful. I feel worshipful. I feel glad to be alive," she said. The city's response to the bombing had revealed its strength and brotherhood, attributes she was certain would carry it through. But her belief in Boston was tinged with sadness. Now she understood a little bit about how New Yorkers who experienced 9/11 must feel.

"I mean, it happened ? it finally happened," O'Kane said. "We were feeling sort of immune. Now we're just a part of everybody...The same expectations and fears."

___

In the hours after investigators released the photos of the men known only as Suspect No. 1 and Suspect No. 2, the city went on about the business of a Thursday night, a semblance of normality restored except for the area immediately surrounding the blast site. Restaurants that had closed in the nights just after the bombing reopened for business. At Howl at the Moon, a bar on High Street downtown, the dueling pianists took the stage at 6 p.m., almost as if nothing had changed.

But across the Charles River in Cambridge, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, and his brother Dzhokhar, 19, were arming up.

Later, friends and relatives would recall both as seemingly incapable of terrorism. The brothers were part of an ethnic Chechen family that came to the U.S, in 2002, after fleeing troubles in Kyrgyzstan and then Dagestan, a predominantly Muslim republic in Russia's North Caucasus. They settled in a working-class part of Cambridge, where the father, Anzor Tsarnaev, opened an auto shop.

Dzhokhar did well enough in his studies at prestigious Cambridge Rindge and Latin to merit a $2,500 city scholarship for college.

Tamerlan, though, could be argumentative and sullen. "I don't have a single American friend," he said in an interview for a photo essay on boxing. He was clearly the dominant of the two brothers, a former accounting student with a wife and daughter, who explained his decision to drop out of school by telling a relative, "I'm in God's business."

It's not that Tamerlan Tsarnaev didn't have options. For several years he'd impressed coaches and others as a particularly talented amateur boxer.

"He moved like a gazelle. He could punch like a mule," said Tom Lee, president of the South Boston Boxing Club, where Tsarnaev began training in 2010."I would describe him as a very ordinary person who didn't really stand out until you saw him fight."

But away from the gym, Tamerlan swaggered around his parents' home like he owned it, those who knew him said. And he began declaring an allegiance to Islam, joined with increasingly inflammatory views.

One of the brothers' neighbors, Albrecht Ammon, recalled an encounter in which the older brother argued with him about U.S. foreign policy, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and religion. The Bible, Tamerlan told him, was a "cheap copy" of the Quran, used to justify wars with other countries. "He had nothing against the American people," Ammon said. "He had something against the American government."

Dzhokhar, on the other hand, was "real cool," Ammon said. "A chill guy."

Since the bombing, the younger brother had maintained much of that sense of cool, returning to classes at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth and attending student parties.

On the day of the bombing, he wrote on Twitter: "There are people that know the truth but stay silent & there are people that speak the truth but we don't hear them cuz they're the minority."

But by Tuesday, when he stopped by a Cambridge auto garage, the mechanic, accustomed to long talks with Dzhokhar about cars and soccer, noticed the normally relaxed 19-year-old was biting his nails and trembling.

The mechanic, Gilberto Junior, told Tsarnaev he hadn't had a chance to work on a car he'd dropped off for bumper work. "I don't care. I don't care. I need the car right now," Junior says Dzhokhar Tsarnaev told him.

Now, with the photos out, it was time to move. Already, one of Dzhokhar's college classmates had taken to studying the photo of Suspect No. 2 ? nearly certain it was his friend, although others were skeptical. It wouldn't take long for others to notice.

___

The call to the police dispatcher came in at 10:20 p.m. Thursday: shots fired on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus in Cambridge. Ten minutes later, when police arrived to investigate, they found one of their own, university officer Sean Collier, shot multiple times inside his cruiser. He had been monitoring traffic near a campus entrance, said Cambridge Police Commissioner Robert Haas.

The baby-faced 26-year-old Collier, in just a year on patrol, had impressed both his supervisors and the students as particularly dedicated to his work. A few days earlier, he'd asked Chief John DiFava for approval to join the board at a homeless shelter, in a bid to steer people away from problems before they developed. Now he was being pronounced dead at the hospital.

Witnesses reported seeing two men. Fifteen minutes later, another call came in of an armed carjacking by two men. That was on Brighton Avenue, Haas said. For the next half-hour, the carjacking victim was kept in his car, had his bank card used to pocket $800 from an ATM and was told by his captors that they'd just killed a police officer and were responsible for the bombing, Watertown Police Chief Edward Deveau said. Haas said the man escaped from the car when his captors went into a Cambridge gas station, and he called police.

Investigators had their break.

Although police had previously said the carjacking victim had left his cellphone in the Mercedes SUV, enabling police to track its location via GPS, Haas said Sunday the phone was found on Memorial Drive near the gas station. It was past 11 p.m. now, and as the Mercedes sped west into Watertown, one of Deveau's officers spotted it and gave chase, realizing too late he was alone against the brothers driving two separate cars. When both vehicles came to a halt, Deveau said, the men stepped out and opened fire. Three more officers arrived, then two who were off-duty, fending off a barrage. When a Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority officer, Richard Donohue, pulled up behind them, a bullet to the groin severed an artery and he went down.

"We're in a gunfight, a serious gunfight," Deveau said. "Rounds are going and then all of the sudden they see something being thrown at them and there's a huge explosion. I'm told it's exactly the same type of explosive that we'd seen that happened at the Boston Marathon. The pressure cooker lid was found embedded in a car down the street."

In the normally quiet streets of Watertown, residents rushed to their windows.

"Now I know what it must be like to be in a war zone, like Iraq or Afghanistan," said Anna Lanzo, a 70-year-old retired medical secretary whose house was rocked by the explosion.

As the firefight continued, Tamerlan Tsarnaev moved closer and closer to the officers, until less than 10 feet separated them, continuing to shoot even as he was hit by police gunfire, until finally he ran out of ammunition and officers tackled him, Deveau said. But as they struggled to cuff the older brother, he said Dzhokhar Tsarnaev jumped back in the second vehicle.

"All of the sudden somebody yelled 'Get out of the way!' and they (the officers) look up and here comes the black SUV that's been hijacked right at them. They dove out of the way at the last second and he ran over his brother, dragged him down the street and then fled," he said.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev was rushed to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

A few blocks over, Samantha England, was heading to bed when she heard what sounded like fireworks. When she called 911, the dispatcher told her to stay inside, lock the doors and get down on the floor. She reached for the TV, trying to figure out what was going on.

"As soon as they said it on the news, that's when we started to freak out and realize they were here," England said.

But after all the gunfire, the younger Tsarnaev had vanished. Officers, their guns drawn, moved through the neighborhood of wood-frame homes and cordoned off the area as daylight approached.

At Kayla DiPaolo's house on Oak Street, she scrambled to find shelter in the door frame of her bedroom as a bullet came through the side paneling on her front door. At 8:30 a.m., Jonathan Peck heard helicopters circling above his house on Cypress Street and looked outside to see about 50 armed men.

"It seemed like Special Forces teams were searching every nook and cranny of my yard," he said.

Unable to find Tsarnaev, authorities announced they were shutting down not just Watertown, but all of Boston and many of its suburbs, affecting more than 1 million people. Train service was cancelled. Taxis were ordered off the streets. Filming of a Hollywood movie called "American Hustle" ? the tale of an FBI sting operation ? was called off. In central Boston, streets normally packed with office workers turned eerily silent.

"It feels like we're living in a movie. I feel like the whole city is in a standstill right now and everyone is just glued to the news," Rebecca Rowe of Boston said.

But as the hours went by, and the house-to-house search continued, investigators found no sign of their quarry. Finally, at about 6:30 p.m., they announced the shutdown had been lifted.

At the Islamic Society of Boston, Belhoucet, the cab driver who'd fled the bombing scene, arrived for evening prayer only to find it shuttered. But he told himself the city's paralysis could not continue much longer. "Because there is no place to hide," Belhoucet said. "His picture is all over the world now."

Across Watertown, people ventured out for the first time in hours to enjoy the day's unusually warm air. They included a man who took a few steps into his Franklin Street backyard, then noticed the tarp on his boat was askew. He lifted it, looked inside and saw a man covered in blood.

He rushed back in to call police. And again, the neighborhood was awash in officers in fatigues and armed with machine guns. The man hunkered down inside the boat, later identified as Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, traded fire with police for more than an hour, until at last, they were able to subdue him.

Around 8:45 p.m., police scanners crackled:

"Suspect in custody."

On the Twitter account of the Boston police department, the news was trumpeted to a city that had been holding its collective breath over five days of fear: "CAPTURED!!! The hunt is over. The search is done. The terror is over. And justice has won."

With that, Boston poured into the streets. In Watertown, officers lowered their guns and grasped hands in congratulation. Bostonians applauded police officers and cheered as the ambulance carrying Tsarnaev passed. Under the flashing lights from Kenmore Square's iconic Citgo sign, Boston University sophomore Will Livingston shouted up to people hanging out of open windows: "USA! USA! Get hyped, people!"

But on Boylston Street, where the bombing site remained cordoned off, there was silence even as the crowd swelled, and tears were shed.

"I think it's a mixture of happiness and relief," said Matt Taylor, 39, of Boston, a nurse who drove to Boylston Street as soon as he heard of the arrest.

Nearby, Aaron Wengertsman, 19, a Boston University student, who was on the marathon route a mile from the finish line when the bombs exploded, stood wrapped in an American flag. "I'm glad they caught him alive," Wengertsman said. "It's humbling to see all these people paying their respects."

They included 25-year-old attorney Beth Lloyd-Jones, who was 25 blocks from the bombings and considers them deeply personal, a violation of her city. She is planning her wedding inside the Boston Public Library, adjacent to where the bombs exploded.

"Now I feel a little safer," she said. But she couldn't help but think of the victims who suffered in the explosions that started it all: "That could have been any one of us."

___

EDITOR'S NOTE ? This reconstruction of events is based on reporting and interviews by Associated Press journalists across Boston and elsewhere from Monday through Saturday. AP writers Bridget Murphy, Michael Hill, Allen G. Breed, Denise Lavoie, Jeff Donn, Meghan Barr, Jay Lindsay, Katie Zezima, Pat Eaton-Robb, Rodrique Ngowi, Bob Salsberg, Marilynn Marchione and Geoff Mulvihill in Boston; Michelle Smith in Providence, R.I., Michael Rubinkam in Scranton, Pa.; and Trenton Daniel in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, contributed to this report. Follow Adam Geller on Twitter at http://twitter.com/AdGeller

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2013-04-22-Boston%20Marathon-Five%20Days%20of%20Fear/id-fd044213e23149b1aad6d78252e9ae1a

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