Barge Carrying Atlas Rockets Crashes Into Bridge (SPACE.com)

A barge ferrying two Atlas 5 rockets to their Florida launch site crashed into a Kentucky bridge late Thursday (Jan. 26), but the rockets appear to be undamaged, officials say.

The 312-foot (95-meter) cargo ship Delta Mariner smashed into a bridge over the Tennessee River in southwest Kentucky at 9:15 p.m. EST Thursday (0215 GMT Friday), causing a portion of the span to collapse. Though several cars were crossing the bridge at the time, the accident caused no injuries.

The Delta Mariner was carrying two Atlas 5 rockets from the United Launch Alliance (ULA) factory in Decatur, Ala., to Cape Canaveral, Fla., said Sam Sacco, spokesman for Foss Marine, the company that owns and operates the boat.

"There's no damage to the cargo," Sacco told SPACE.com. "Based on what we know right now, there's no real damage to the vessel itself, either."

ULA officials confirmed that the launch vehicles appear to have survived intact. [The World's Tallest Rockets]

"Initial inspections have shown that the flight hardware being transported was not damaged," officials said in a statement today. "The Coast Guard is conducting an investigation."

Sacco said he wasn't sure when the two rockets are due to lift off from Cape Canaveral. In its statement, ULA referenced an "upcoming" launch, without providing specifics.

According to the ULA's launch schedule, an Atlas 5 rocket is scheduled to blast off from the Cape on Feb. 16, carrying a tactical satellite for the United States Navy. Another one is slated to lift off on April 27 with a new military communications satellite on board.

The Delta Mariner, which was commissioned in 2002, transports flight hardware from ULA's Decatur factory to Cape Canaveral and another launch site, California's Vandenberg Air Force Base. It's capable of carrying up to three common booster cores, which are each as long as a 737 jet's fuselage.

The ship can ply both rivers and the open ocean, and it can navigate waterways as shallow as 9 feet (3 m), according to ULA officials. The trip to Cape Canaveral covers about 2,100 miles (3,380 kilometers) and takes eight to 10 days.

Sacco said the cause of the accident ? which apparently did not result in any fuel spills or other obvious environmental problems ? remains a mystery for now.

"The company's been doing it for over 10 years. Exactly why this happened, I can't tell you," he said. "The Coast Guard will lead an investigation into the cause, and that will be the definitive explanation as to what happened."

The Atlas 5 rocket is an expendable booster that first launched in 2002. Since then, it has logged about two dozen liftoffs, with 100 percent mission success, according to ULA officials. NASA's Curiosity Mars rover blasted off atop an Atlas 5 this past November.

You can follow SPACE.com senior writer Mike Wall on Twitter: @michaeldwall. Follow SPACE.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/science/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/space/20120127/sc_space/bargecarryingatlasrocketscrashesintobridge

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Russians win Australian Open women's doubles

AAA??Jan. 27, 2012?3:07 AM ET
Russians win Australian Open women's doubles
JUSTIN BERGMANJUSTIN BERGMAN, Associated Press??

Russia's Svetlana Kuznetsova, right, with her doubles partner Vera Zvonareva, bottom, serves to Italy's Sara Errani and Roberta Vinci in the women's doubles final at the Australian Open tennis championship, in Melbourne, Australia, Friday, Jan. 27, 2012. (AP Photo/Andrew Brownbill)

Russia's Svetlana Kuznetsova, right, with her doubles partner Vera Zvonareva, bottom, serves to Italy's Sara Errani and Roberta Vinci in the women's doubles final at the Australian Open tennis championship, in Melbourne, Australia, Friday, Jan. 27, 2012. (AP Photo/Andrew Brownbill)

Russia's Svetlana Kuznetsova, left, and with her doubles partner Vera Zvonareva plays a shot against Italy's Sara Errani and Roberta Vinci in the women's doubles final at the Australian Open tennis championship, in Melbourne, Australia, Friday, Jan. 27, 2012. (AP Photo/John Donegan)

Russia's Svetlana Kuznetsova, right, and Vera Zvonareva talk during a break as they play Italy's 'Sara Errani and Roberta Vinci in the women's doubles final at the Australian Open tennis championship, in Melbourne, Australia, Friday, Jan. 27, 2012. (AP Photo/Sarah Ivey)

Italy's Sara Errani, right, and Roberta Vinci, celebrate a point win against Russia's Svetlana Kuznetsova and Vera Zvonareva, in the women's doubles final at the Australian Open tennis championship, in Melbourne, Australia, Friday, Jan. 27, 2012. (AP Photo/Sarah Ivey)

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) ? Svetlana Kuznetsova and Vera Zvonareva of Russia have captured the Australian Open women's doubles title, beating the Italian duo of Sara Errani and Roberta Vinci 5-7, 6-4, 6-3 Friday.

Kuznetsova, a two-time Grand Slam singles champion, and Zvonareva are both known primarily for their singles play, although each has one previous Grand Slam doubles title with a different partner.

The unseeded duo hadn't played together since the French Open last year.

Errani and Vinci were playing in their first Grand Slam final together. Their previous best result was reaching the quarterfinals of the U.S. Open last year.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/347875155d53465d95cec892aeb06419/Article_2012-01-27-TEN-Australian-Open-Women's-Doubles/id-6f5701c87c3e49f8a6ae34d26a033abf

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Actress' claim to be gay by choice riles activists

FILE - This is a Tuesday, May 25, 2010 file photo of actress Cynthia Nixon attending the Designing Women Awards in New York. Gay rights activists say actress Cynthia Nixon's insistence she chose to be a lesbian gives fodder to those who argue gays don't deserve marriage rights. (AP Photo/Peter Kramer, file)

FILE - This is a Tuesday, May 25, 2010 file photo of actress Cynthia Nixon attending the Designing Women Awards in New York. Gay rights activists say actress Cynthia Nixon's insistence she chose to be a lesbian gives fodder to those who argue gays don't deserve marriage rights. (AP Photo/Peter Kramer, file)

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) ? Cynthia Nixon learned the hard way this week that when it comes to gay civil rights, the personal is always political. Very political.

The actress best known for portraying fiery lawyer Miranda Hobbes on "Sex and the City" is up to her perfectly arched eyebrows in controversy since The New York Times Magazine published a profile in which she was quoted as saying that for her, being gay was a conscious choice. Nixon is engaged to a woman with whom she has been in a relationship for eight years. Before that, she spent 15 years and had two children with a man.

"I understand that for many people it's not, but for me it's a choice, and you don't get to define my gayness for me," Nixon said while recounting some of the flak gay rights activists previously had given her for treading in similar territory. "A certain section of our community is very concerned that it not be seen as a choice, because if it's a choice, then we could opt out. I say it doesn't matter if we flew here or we swam here, it matters that we are here and we are one group and let us stop trying to make a litmus test for who is considered gay and who is not."

To say that a certain segment of the gay community "is very concerned that it not be seen as a choice" is an understatement. Gay rights activists have worked hard to combat the idea that people decide to be physically attracted to same-sex partners any more than they choose to be attracted to opposite-sex ones because the question, so far unanswered by science, is often used by religious conservatives, including GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum and former candidate Michelle Bachman, to argue that homosexuality is immoral behavior, not an inherent trait.

Among the activists most horrified by Nixon's comments was Truth Wins Out founder Wayne Besen, whose organization monitors and tries to debunk programs that claim to cure people of same-sex attractions with therapy. Besen said he found the actress' analysis irresponsible and flippant, despite her ample caveats.

"Cynthia did not put adequate thought into the ramifications of her words, and it is going to be used when some kid comes out and their parents force them into some ex-gay camp while she's off drinking cocktails at fancy parties," Besen said. "When people say it's a choice, they are green-lighting an enormous amount of abuse because if it's a choice, people will try to influence and guide young people to what they perceive as the right choice."

Nixon's publicist did not respond to an e-mail asking if the actress wished to comment on the criticism.

While the broader gay rights movement recognizes that human sexuality exists on a spectrum, and has found common cause with transgender and bisexual people, Nixon may have unwittingly given aid and comfort to those who want to deny same-sex couples the right to marry, adopt children and secure equal spousal benefits, said Jennifer Pizer, legal director of the Williams Institute on Sexual Orientation and the Law, a pro-gay think tank based at the University of California, Los Angeles.

One of the factors courts consider in determining if a law is unconstitutional is whether members of the minority group it targets share an unchangeable or "immutable" trait, Pizer noted. Although the definition of how fixed a characteristic has to be to qualify as immutable still is evolving ? religious affiliation, for example, is recognized as grounds for equal protection ? the U.S. Supreme Court still has not included sexual orientation among the traits "so integral to personhood it's not something the government should require people to change," she said.

"If gay people in this country had more confidence that their individual freedom was going to be respected, then the temperature would lower a bit on the immutability question because the idea of it being a choice wouldn't seem to stack the deck against their rights," Pizer said.

Nixon stirred the identity politics pot further when she explained in a follow-up interview with The Daily Beast this week that she purposefully rejected identifying herself as bisexual even though her history suggested it was an accurate term.

"I don't pull out the "bisexual" word because nobody likes the bisexuals. Everybody likes to dump on the bisexuals," she said. "But I do completely feel that when I was in relationships with men, I was in love and in lust with those men. And then I met (her fianc?) Christine and I fell in love and lust with her. I am completely the same person and I was not walking around in some kind of fog. I just responded to the people in front of me the way I truly felt."

Although science has not identified either a purely biological or sociological basis for sexual orientation, University of California, Davis psychologist Gregory Herek, an expert on anti-gay prejudice, said Nixon's experience is consistent with research showing that women have an easier time moving between opposite and same-sex partners.

A survey Herek conducted of gay men, lesbians and bisexuals of both genders bore this out. Sixteen percent of the lesbians surveyed reported they felt they had had a fair amount of choice in their sexual orientations, while only five percent of the gay men did. Among bisexuals, the figures were 40 percent for men and 45 percent for women.

What remains to be teased out, Herek said, is how a representative national sample of heterosexuals would answer the same question, and what people mean when their sexual orientation was a choice or not. Are they talking about their sexual desires? Acting on those desires? Or simply the identity they choose to show to the world?

"The nature vs. nurture debate really is pass?," he said. "The debate is not really an either/or debate in the vast majority of cases, but how much of each. We don't know how big a role biology plays and how big a role culture plays. A possibility not often discussed is it's not the same for everybody."

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/4e67281c3f754d0696fbfdee0f3f1469/Article_2012-01-27-Cynthia%20Nixon-Gay%20By%20Choice/id-8736ceef075044c58f7fbfe6992b3b12

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Obama???s Education Pledges: Worthy Concepts, Sticky Implementation (ContributorNetwork)

President Obama spoke forcefully on education in his State of the Union last night. I just hope he means what he said and has the political support to follow through. These are the four points that provoked an immediate reaction:

* Promising to give schools the flexibility to teach with creativity and passion instead of teaching to the test is something parents and teachers have long wanted to hear. But how many educators are willing to admit they've been teaching to the test? How are schools going to get them to stop as long as the tests continue to proliferate and as long as merit pay proposals are tied to student performance?

* Having seen too many political manipulations involving threatened teacher layoffs, I have doubts about the President's commitment to give schools the resources to keep teachers on the job and reward the best. When every county employee was subject to furloughs in Montgomery County, Md., teachers demanded a free pass. When Baltimore was cutting back teacher jobs for supposed lack of funds, the city came up with a salary in excess of $200,000 for a new deputy superintendent. Instead of pouring more resources into schools when we already lead the nations in educational spending, we should stop doling out funds and instead work to ensure the money devoted to education is spent wisely.

* Changing the laws so that all students are required to stay in school until they graduate or turn 18 is an initiative long overdue. The social and economic costs of dropping out affect not only the dropouts themselves, but society at large. Those costs include 5 percent higher unemployment than the general population, higher rates of imprisonment, and an estimated $26 billion in lost tax revenues, according to a study discussed on Incipit Vita Nova.

* Demanding that colleges keep costs down and refusing to endlessly increase the monies spent on higher education is also a long overdue plan, but likely a hollow one. Profiteers in higher education have overtaken the traditional colleges. For-profit schools graduated an average of 22 percent of their enrollees in 2008-2009, while laying claim to some $24 billion in federal education funds. Congress has not found the strength to shut down this shameful industry and it's not likely to do so in the future thanks to the entrenched education lobby. President Obama's own words- "Higher education can't be a luxury -- it is an economic imperative that every family in America should be able to afford"- will be turned against him sooner than he realizes as parties accustomed to raking in big money extend their hands even further.

Carol Bengle Gilbert worked as an education attorney and navigates the public school system with three children of her own.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/obama/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ac/20120126/us_ac/10883951_obamas_education_pledges_worthy_concepts_sticky_implementation

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Ice-T weighs in on presidential race from Sundance (AP)

PARK CITY, Utah ? Regardless of the outcome of the presidential primaries, Ice-T already has his mind made up about the forthcoming election.

The rapper and actor, who is making his directorial debut at the Sundance Film Festival with the documentary "Something From Nothing: The Art of Rap," says he expects President Barack Obama to be re-elected. After that, he predicts Hillary Clinton will be the next president.

The 53-year-old entertainer said, "She did the Secretary of State job, she was a G, she held it down, she didn't cry," referring to the former New York Senator with the hip-hop term for gangster (a positive thing).

"Obama will support her," he said, "and she'll be the first woman president."

Ice-T's documentary premiered at the Sundance festival, which continues through Sunday in Park City, Utah.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/music/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120126/ap_en_mu/us_film_sundance_ice_t

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Safety regulator: 'We pulled no punches' on Volt

General Motors CEO Dan Akerson listens on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Jan. 25, 2012, during the House Regulatory Affairs, Stimulus Oversight and Government Spending subcommittee hearing about the safety of the all-electric car, the Chevy Volt. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

General Motors CEO Dan Akerson listens on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Jan. 25, 2012, during the House Regulatory Affairs, Stimulus Oversight and Government Spending subcommittee hearing about the safety of the all-electric car, the Chevy Volt. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration chief David Strickland testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Jan. 25, 2012, before the House Regulatory Affairs, Stimulus Oversight and Government Spending subcommittee hearing on the safety of the all-electric car, the Chevy Volt. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

General Motors CEO Dan Akerson, second from left, listens as National Highway Traffic Safety Administration chief David Strickland, right, fields testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Jan. 25, 2012, before the House Regulatory Affairs, Stimulus Oversight and Government Spending subcommittee hearing about the safety of the all-electric car, the Chevy Volt. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

General Motors CEO Dan Akerson, center, flanked by GM staff , listens to opening statements by the House Regulatory Affairs, Stimulus Oversight and Government Spending subcommittee, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Jan. 25, 2012, as it held a hearing on the safety of the all-electric car, the Chevy Volt. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

General Motors CEO Dan Akerson testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Jan. 25, 2012, before the House Regulatory Affairs, Stimulus Oversight and Government Spending subcommittee hearing entitled, "Volt Vehicle Fire: What did NHTSA Know and When Did They Know It?" (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

WASHINGTON (AP) ? The government "pulled no punches" in investigating battery fires in the Volt, General Motors' prized electric car, the head of the federal auto safety agency told Congress on Wednesday.

At a combative House hearing, Republicans questioned whether the government's partial ownership in the automaker created a conflict of interest for the Obama administration in the Chevrolet probe, which began after a test car caught fire in June, three weeks after a side-impact test.

The government still owns 26.5 percent of GM's shares.

"We pulled no punches" during the investigation, said David Strickland, who heads the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Then asked if the company got a pass from his agency, he replied, "No, absolutely not."

But Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, who led the hearing by the House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee, said he found it "deeply troubling" that the agency waited until November to notify the public about the fire.

Strickland said he would have gone public immediately if there were an imminent safety risk. He said it would have been irresponsible to tell people that something was wrong with the Volt while experts looked into the cause of the fire.

In response, the committee chairman, Republican Darrell Issa, R-Calif., said, "I hear you, I don't believe you."

Issa added: "The fact is, your administration is not up to speed to maintain safety in an electric age."

Republicans questioned whether the delay was because of new mileage standards that were negotiated last year. Strickland insisted there was no connection and said he had not been pressured by anyone from the administration on the investigation.

After the first fire, two others occurred later related to separate safety tests, and the agency opened an official investigation on Nov. 25. That ended last week, with the government concluding that the Volt and other electric cars don't pose a greater fire risk than gasoline-powered cars. The agency and General Motors know of no fires in real-world crashes.

GM chairman and CEO Daniel F. Akerson said sarcastically that while the company designed the Volt to be a great car, "unfortunately, there is one thing we did not engineer. Although we loaded the Volt with state-of-the-art safety features, we did not engineer the Volt to be a political punching bag. And that, sadly, is what the Volt has become.

"For all of the loose talk about fires, we are here today because tests by regulators resulted in battery fires under lab conditions that no driver would experience in the real world."

But the Republicans' aim was on the safety agency, as Issa told Strickland, "You guys screwed up by keeping a secret."

Democrats came to the administration's defense.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, said there was no evidence that politics played a role in NHTSA's handling of the case, and he was concerned that the hearing could undermine electric car technology.

Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings, the committee's top Democrat, told Strickland he believed him.

"Your integrity has been questioned, your honesty has been questioned," Cummings said. "And then the question becomes, what is that all about?" He accused Republicans of "swatting" at things to make a political point.

Jordan took exception. "That's not what this hearing's about."

Cummings responded: "This hearing is not about safety. This hearing is about an attack" on the Obama administration's support for GM and the electric car industry.

At first, GM blamed the safety agency for the June fire, saying NHTSA should have drained the battery to prevent any fires after the test. But the company quickly retreated and said it never told the agency to drain the battery. GM executives also said there was no formal procedure in place to drain batteries after crashes involving owners.

Now the company sends out a team to drain the batteries after being notified of a crash by its OnStar safety system.

The Volt has a T-shaped, 400 pound battery pack that can power the car for about 35 miles. After that, a small gasoline generator kicks in to run the electric motor. The car has a base price of about $40,000.

Issa told reporters that the committee will continue its investigation.

"It won't be on General Motors," he said. " It will be primarily on the government that we oversee that has once again been less than as good they should have been in public safety on automobiles."

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/f70471f764144b2fab526d39972d37b3/Article_2012-01-25-Volt%20Fires/id-6f3a4223ccae445595734c711fadeb08

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Women Feel Pain More Intensely Than Men

News | Health

Future research is needed to find out the exact causes of pain perception differences, and which ones would be best to target for more effective pain control

By Rachael Rettner and MyHealthNewsDaily ?| January 23, 2012?|

When a woman falls ill, her pain may be more intense than a man's, a new study suggests.

Across a number of different diseases, including diabetes, arthritis and certain respiratory infections, women in the study reported feeling more pain than men, the researchers said.

The study is one of the largest to examine sex differences in human pain perception. The results are in line with earlier findings, and reveal that sex differences in pain sensitivity may be present in many more diseases than previously thought.

Because pain is subjective, the researchers can't know for sure whether women, in fact, experience more pain than men. A number of factors, including a person's mood and whether they take pain medication, likely influence how much pain they say they're in.

"Whatever the reason, I think it's important to be aware of this pain discrepancy between men and women and look into it further," said study researcher Linda Liu, a doctoral student in Stanford University Biomedical Informatics program.

Future studies, in both people and animals, should analyze their results to see whether sex differences in pain may be present, Liu said. Many studies in animals do not include females, or fail to report the sex of animals used, Liu said.

The study was published online Jan. 12 in the Journal of Pain.

Sex differences

Most human studies examining gender differences in reported pain have compared the number of women with the number of men with a given condition who say they are in pain. But most haven't looked at how intense the pain is, and many have not included enough people to be able to detect differences between the sexes in pain perception, the researchers said.

The new study included information from more than 11,000 patients whose pain scores were recorded in electronic medical records at Stanford Hospital and Clinics between 2007 and 2010. Patients were asked to rate their pain on a scale of zero (no pain) to 10 (worst pain imaginable).

In all, the researchers assessed sex differences in reported pain for more than 250 diseases and conditions.

For almost every diagnosis, women reported higher average pain scores than men. Women's scores were, on average, 20 percent higher than men's scores, according to the study.

Women with lower back pain, and knee and leg strain consistently reported higher scores than men. Women also reported feeling more pain in the neck (for conditions such as torticollis, in which the neck muscles twist or spasm) and sinuses (during sinus infections) than did men, a result not found by previous research.

Pain perception

It could be that women assign different numbers to the level of pain they perceive compared with men, said Roger B. Fillingim, a pain researcher at the University of Florida College of Dentistry, who was not involved with the new study.

But the study was large, and the findings are backed up by previous work, Fillingim said.

"I think the most [simple] explanation is that women are indeed experiencing higher levels of pain than men," Fillingim said.

The reason for this is not known, Fillingim said. Past research suggests a number of factors contribute to perceptions of pain level, including hormones, genetics and psychological factors, which may vary between men and women, Fillingim said. It's also possible the pain systems work differently in men and women, or women experience more severe forms of disease than men, he said.

Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=a4cc6d8ea32ccecd2e453aa04f25720b

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