HTC First, the much ballyhooed 'Facebook phone,' gets massive price drop

AT&T has dropped the price of the HTC First from 100 bucks to 99 cents (with a contract, of course).?

By Matthew Shaer / May 9, 2013

The HTC First, pictured here, is now a whole lot more affordable.

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The HTC First, the first Android device to come pre-equipped with the Facebook Home software suite, originally launched with a price tag of $99.99. ?

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Six weeks later, and AT&T has slashed the price of the First to 99 cents ? an indication that the much ballyhooed "Facebook phone" may be off to a less than stellar start. Some caveats: AT&T has told CNET that one-off price drops are standard operating procedure. And HTC hasn't yet disclosed exactly how many First handsets it has sold ? we won't get those numbers until the release of the Q2 2013 earnings report.?

Still, it's extremely unlikely that AT&T would knock 99 bucks off the price of a solidly-performing smart phone. Analysts guess that sales are sluggish, if not really slow. Which is too bad, because the HTC First ? equipped as it was with a high-quality 4.3-inch display, a?1.4GHz dual-core processor, and the Android 4.1 operating system ??got a relatively warm critical reaction when it first hit shelves. For a mid-tier phone, this was one to check out.

"The HTC First is compelling for two reasons," Brad Molen of Engadget wrote in a generally positive review of the device. "For Facebook fans, it's now easier to maintain social connections with friends and family. For the tech-savvy crowd who has little interest in the service, the phone is a stock Android 4.1 device that comes with AT&T LTE, which is still something of a rarity."?

So why wasn't the HTC First a smash hit? Well, despite the specs we listed above, this is still a middle-of-the-road phone ? one that lags well behind powerhouses such as the iPhone 5 or the Samsung Galaxy S4. And as Roger Cheng notes in a piece over at CNET, there is also the fact that you can easily build your own "Facebook phone" on an HTC One or a Galaxy S4.?

"What was the point of a smartphone focused on Facebook Home when you can get Facebook Home on several different ? and superior ? phones?" Cheng writes. "I get that the First was a showcase phone for Facebook's new software. But consumers don't want to buy a showcase piece; they want a real product."

For?more tech news, follow us on?Twitter @venturenaut.

Source: http://www.csmonitor.com/Innovation/2013/0509/HTC-First-the-much-ballyhooed-Facebook-phone-gets-massive-price-drop

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Coumarin in cinnamon and cinnamon-based products and risk of liver damage

May 8, 2013 ? Many kinds of cinnamon, cinnamon-flavored foods, beverages and food supplements in the United States use a form of the spice that contains high levels of a natural substance that may cause liver damage in some sensitive people, scientists are reporting. Their study, published in ACS' Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, found similar results as those published in the European Union.

Ikhlas Khan and colleagues explain that cinnamon, which comes from the bark of certain trees, is one of the most important flavoring agents used in foods and beverages. "True," or Ceylon, cinnamon is expensive, so most breads, sticky buns and other products in the United States use dried cassia bark, or cassia cinnamon.

Ceylon cinnamon contains very little coumarin, a naturally occurring substance that has been linked to liver damage in people sensitive to the substance. However, cassia cinnamon can contain larger amounts. Khan's team decided to check on the coumarin content of a wide variety of food products.

"As found in this study, coumarin was present, sometimes in substantial amounts, in cinnamon-based food supplements and cinnamon-flavored foods," they say.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by American Chemical Society.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. Yan-Hong Wang, Bharathi Avula, N. P. Dhammika Nanayakkara, Jianping Zhao, Ikhlas A. Khan. Cassia Cinnamon as a Source of Coumarin in Cinnamon-Flavored Food and Food Supplements in the United States. Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, 2013; 61 (18): 4470 DOI: 10.1021/jf4005862

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/health_medicine/nutrition/~3/K1Yr8jXuLVs/130508123127.htm

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New mechanism converts natural gas to energy faster, captures CO2

Wednesday, May 8, 2013

North Carolina State University researchers have identified a new mechanism to convert natural gas into energy up to 70 times faster, while effectively capturing the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2).

"This could make power generation from natural gas both cleaner and more efficient," says Fanxing Li, co-author of a paper on the research and an assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at NC State.

At issue is a process called chemical looping, in which a solid, oxygen-laden material ? called an "oxygen carrier" ? is put in contact with natural gas. The oxygen atoms in the oxygen carrier interact with the natural gas, causing combustion that produces energy.

Previous state-of-the-art oxygen carriers were made from a composite of inert ceramic material and metal oxides. But Li's team has developed a new type of oxygen carrier that include a "mixed ionic-electronic conductor," which effectively shuttles oxygen atoms into the natural gas very efficiently ? making the chemical looping combustion process as much as 70 times faster. This mixed conductor material is held in a nanoscale matrix with an iron oxide ? otherwise known as rust. The rust serves as a source of oxygen for the mixed conductor to shuttle out into the natural gas.

In addition to energy, the combustion process produces water vapor and CO2. By condensing out the water vapor, researchers are able to create a stream of concentrated CO2 to be capture for sequestration.

Because the new oxygen carrier combusts natural gas so much more quickly than previous chemical looping technologies, it makes smaller chemical looping reactors more economically feasible ? since they would allow users to create the same amount of energy with a smaller system.

"Improving this process hopefully moves us closer to commercial applications that use chemical looping, which would help us limit greenhouse gas emissions," Li says.

###

The paper, "Iron Oxide with Facilitated O2 ? Transport for Facile Fuel Oxidation and CO2 Capture in a Chemical Looping Scheme," was chosen as part of the cover page story in the March issue of ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering.

North Carolina State University: http://www.ncsu.edu

Thanks to North Carolina State University for this article.

This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/128174/New_mechanism_converts_natural_gas_to_energy_faster__captures_CO_

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Death certificate: Boston bombing suspect died of gunshot wounds, blunt trauma to head, torso

BOSTON - A suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings died from gunshot wounds and blunt trauma to his head and torso, a funeral director said Friday.

Funeral home owner Peter Stefan has 26-year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev's body and read details from his death certificate. The certificate cites Tsarnaev's "gunshot wounds of torso and extremities" and lists the time of his death as 1:35 a.m. on April 19, four days after the deadly bombing, Stefan said.

Tsarnaev died after a gunfight with authorities who had launched a massive manhunt for him and his brother, ethnic Chechens from Russia who came to the United States about a decade ago. Police have said he ran out of ammunition before his younger brother dragged his body under a vehicle while fleeing.

Tsarnaev's family on Friday was making arrangements for his funeral as investigators searched the woods near a college attended by 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was captured less than a day after his brother's death.

The funeral parlour is familiar with Muslim services and said it will handle arrangements for Tamerlan Tsarnaev, whose body was released by the state medical examiner Thursday.

The body initially was taken to another funeral home, where it was greeted by about 20 protesters.

Stefan, owner of Graham Putnam and Mahoney Funeral Parlors, said everybody deserves a dignified burial service no matter the circumstances of his or her death and he is prepared for protests.

"My problem here is trying to find a gravesite. A lot of people don't want to do it. They don't want to be involved with this," said Stefan, who said dozens of protesters gathered outside his funeral home, upset with his decision to handle the funeral. "I keep bringing up the point of Lee Harvey Oswald, Timothy McVeigh or Ted Bundy. Somebody had to do those, too."

Meanwhile, two U.S. officials said Dzhokhar Tsarnaev told interrogators that he and his brother initially considered setting off their bombs on July Fourth, American Independence day.

As part of the bombing investigation, federal, state and local authorities were searching the woods near the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth campus, where Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was a student. Christina DiIorio-Sterling, a spokeswoman for U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz, could not say what investigators were looking for but said residents should know there is no threat to public safety.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was found hiding in a tarp-covered boat in a suburban Boston backyard, faces a charge of using a weapon of mass destruction to kill. Three of his college classmates were arrested Wednesday and accused of helping after the bombing to remove a laptop and backpack from his dormitory room before the FBI searched it.

The April 15 bombing, using pressure cookers packed with explosives, nails, ball bearings and metal shards, killed three people and injured more than 260 others near the marathon's finish line.

The brothers decided to carry out the attack before Independence Day when they finished assembling the bombs, the surviving suspect told interrogators after he was arrested, according to two U.S. officials briefed on the investigation. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the ongoing investigation.

Investigators believe some of the explosives used in the attack were assembled in Tamerlan Tsarnaev's home, though there may have been some assembly elsewhere, one of the officials said. It does not appear that the brothers ever had big, definitive plans, the official said.

The brothers' mother insists the allegations against them are lies.

Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security ordered border agents to immediately begin verifying that every international student who arrives in the U.S. has a valid student visa, according to an internal memorandum obtained Friday by The Associated Press. The new procedure is the government's first security change directly related to the Boston bombings.

The order from a senior official at U.S. Customs and Border Protection, David J. Murphy, was circulated Thursday and came one day after President Barack Obama's administration acknowledged that one of the students accused of hiding evidence, Azamat Tazhayakov, of Kazakhstan, was allowed to return to the U.S. in January without a valid student visa.

Tazhayakov's lawyer has said he had nothing to do with the bombing and was shocked by it.

A benefit concert featuring Aerosmith, James Taylor and Jimmy Buffett is scheduled for May 30 at the TD Garden in Boston. The proceeds will go to The One Fund, which has taken in more than $28 million for those injured and the families of those who were killed.

The fund's administrator, Kenneth Feinberg, said Friday he plans to hold meetings with victims next week and begin cutting checks by the end of June.

___

Associated Press writers Bridget Murphy and Mark Pratt in Boston and Pete Yost, Eileen Sullivan and Alicia A. Caldwell in Washington contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/death-certificate-boston-bombing-suspect-died-gunshot-wounds-235901215.html

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China April official services PMI at 54.5 vs 55.6 in March

BEIJING (Reuters) - Expansion in China's services sector slowed in April, an official survey showed on Friday, in line with slower factory activity and reinforcing views that recovery in the world's second-largest economy remains modest and faces risks.

China's official purchasing managers' index(PMI) for the non-manufacturing sector fell to 54.5 in April from 55.6 in March, the National Bureau of Statistics(NBS) said on Friday.

Slowing growth in services showed that subdued expansion in manufacturing has begun to feed through to the rest of the economy, though the services industry has so far weathered the global slowdown much better than the factory sector.

"New orders for the services industry dropped below 50, lower than the historical average levels. The prices index also declined relatively sharply, showing operating activity is moderating," said Cai Jin, a vice president at CFLP, the China Federation of Logistics and Purchasing. (The 50 level separates contraction from expansion.)

The CFLP conducts the official survey together with China's National Bureau of Statistics.

"We should pay attention to supporting service industries and expanding consumption demand to enhance their role in supporting overall stable economic growth," Cai said in a statement accompanying the data.

Two recent PMIs showing cooling in manufacturing sector growth have already suggested the euro zone recession and sluggish U.S. demand may be risks to China's economic recovery, though economists see a mild pickup this year, aided by government support.

The official PMI's sub-index for construction fell to 62.4 in April from 62.5 in March.

The new orders sub-index fell to 50.9 from 52, while the index for new orders excluding construction dropped to 49.8 from 51.4 in March.

Firms in catering, transport and maintenance had fewer new orders in April, while new orders for hotels, telecommunications, broadcasting, television and satellite transmission services fared better, the NBS said.

China's economic growth unexpectedly stumbled in the first quarter, slipping to 7.7 percent versus 7.9 percent in the previous three month period, as factory output and investment slowed.

(Reporting by Xiaoyi Shao and Jonathan Standing)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/china-april-official-services-pmi-54-5-vs-023939705.html

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Pakistan's lead prosecutor in Bhutto case killed

Troops of Pakistan's paramilitary force stand guard as Pakistan's former President and military ruler Pervez Musharraf arrives at the Anti-Terrorist Court under tight security in Rawalpindi, Pakistan Friday, April 26, 2013. Musharraf appeared in a case connected to the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto in 2007, a government prosecutor said. (AP Photo/B.K. Bangash)

Troops of Pakistan's paramilitary force stand guard as Pakistan's former President and military ruler Pervez Musharraf arrives at the Anti-Terrorist Court under tight security in Rawalpindi, Pakistan Friday, April 26, 2013. Musharraf appeared in a case connected to the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto in 2007, a government prosecutor said. (AP Photo/B.K. Bangash)

FILE - In this April 20, 2013, file photo, Pakistan's former President and military ruler Pervez Musharraf arrives at an anti-terrorism court in Islamabad, Pakistan. Gunmen shot to death the Pakistani government?s lead prosecutor in a high-profile case involving Musharraf on Friday, May 3, as he drove to court in the capital Islamabad, police said. (AP Photo/Anjum Naveed, File)

ISLAMABAD (AP) ? Gunmen killed Pakistan's lead prosecutor investigating the assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto as he drove to court in the capital on Friday, throwing the case that also involves former ruler Pervez Musharraf into disarray.

Chaudhry Zulfikar was at the helm of a number of highly controversial cases, including the 2007 Bhutto assassination in which Musharraf is accused of involvement. He was also prosecuting militants linked to the 2008 terror attack in the Indian city of Mumbai.

Zulfikar was on his way to a court in Islamabad when gunmen fired at him from a taxi, hitting him in the head, shoulder and chest, said police officer Mohammed Ishaq.

Zulfikar then lost control of his car, which hit a woman passer-by and killed her, said another police officer, Mohammed Rafiq.

Zulfikar's guard, Farman Ali, returned fire and is believed to have wounded at least one of the attackers, Rafiq said. Ali also was injured in the attack.

Police official Yasin Farooq said the attackers fled after killing Zulfikar, and that a massive search has been launched to find them.

A motive for the killing was unclear, but Zulfikar's involvement in the two particularly high-profile cases will likely be scrutinized closely.

Government prosecutors have accused Musharraf of being involved in the Bhutto assassination and not providing enough security to Pakistan's first female prime minister. Musharraf, who was in power when was killed, has denied the allegations. At the time of the attack, he blamed the assassination on the Pakistani Taliban.

The Bhutto case has lingered for years in the Pakistani court system. A number of alleged assailants are on trial but no one has been convicted. The case burst into the headlines when Musharraf returned in March after four years in exile.

Zulfikar was also the government's lead prosecutor in a case related to the 2008 terrorist attack on the Indian city of Mumbai that killed 166 people. The attack was blamed on the Pakistan-based militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba.

Pakistan has put seven men on trial on charges they assisted in the Mumbai siege, but the trial has made little progress. India has criticized Pakistan for not doing more to crack down on the militants blamed for the attack. Hafiz Saeed, the head of a group believed to be a front for Lashkar-e-Taiba, remains free, and many believe he enjoys the protection of the government. Lashkar-e-Taiba was founded years ago with the help of Pakistani intelligence to put pressure on India over the disputed territory of Kashmir.

Musharraf returned to Pakistan to make a political comeback despite Taliban death threats and a raft of legal cases against him. But his fortunes have gone from bad to worse since he arrived.

Judges barred him from running in the May 11 parliamentary election not long after he arrived because of his actions while in power. A court in the northwestern city of Peshawar went further this week and banned Musharraf from running for public office for the rest of his life ? a ruling the former military strongman plans to appeal.

Musharraf is currently under house arrest on the outskirts of Islamabad in connection with several cases against him, including the Bhutto case. He also faces allegations of treason before the Supreme Court.

Zulfikar was headed to a hearing related to Musharraf and the Bhutto case at a court in Rawalpindi, next to Islamabad, when he was killed, said Ishaq, the police officer.

Musharraf seized power in a military coup in 1999 when he was serving as army chief and ruled for nearly a decade until he was forced to step down in 2008 because of growing discontent with his rule.

Though Pakistan has experienced repeated violence, it's rare for such an attack to happen in the capital, which is home to high-ranking government and military officials, diplomats and international aid workers.

Friday's killing comes at a sensitive time for Pakistan, which is preparing for nationwide elections on May 11. The vote will mark the first time that an elected civilian government has fulfilled its term and handed off power to another civilian government in the country.

Pakistan has experienced three coups, including the one led by Musharraf in 1999.

President Asif Ali Zardari strongly condemned the prosecutor's killing and called for a thorough investigation.

__

Associated Press writer Rebecca Santana contributed to this report.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2013-05-03-AS-Pakistan/id-bc6476c3dd2a4180bc7fd03b0edda190

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