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Friday, 7 December 2012

Vick's downfall has been startling

It was 6:30 p.m. on Aug. 14, 2009, and Katie Couric opened up the nightly national news with these words:

?We begin tonight with the return of a fallen sports star. Michael Vick returned to the NFL today, joining a new team, the Philadelphia Eagles. Two years ago, he was one of the league?s brightest stars, with the biggest contract, before losing it all when he was convicted of running a dogfighting ring. Now out of prison, he?s trying to turn his life around.?

The start of Michael Vick?s Eagles career was the biggest story in the United States that day.

The end of Michael Vick?s Eagles career -- at least the likely end of it -- wasn?t even the biggest Eagles story on Monday. That honor went to Jim Washburn?s firing.

In the span of 40 months, Vick has gone from the biggest story in the country to a sidebar on his own team.

Head coach Andy Reid?s announcement that rookie Nick Foles will start at quarterback the rest of the year, even when Vick is fully recovered from his concussion, quietly marked the likely end of Vick?s stay in Philadelphia.

There?s still a chance Vick will play again in an Eagles uniform. Reid said that when Vick does clear his concussion test and return to action, he?ll likely be No. 2, ahead of Trent Edwards, so if Foles gets hurt after Vick comes back, Vick could quarterback the Eagles at some point in the last four games of a disastrous season.

And it is conceivable that if Foles struggles the rest of the year, whoever?s coaching the Eagles next year -- whether it?s a new coach or in the unlikely event it?s Reid -- could decide that a 33-year-old Vick is the Eagles? best quarterback option, likely at a reduced rate than the $16.5 million he?s owed for 2013.

But the Eagles do have an escape hatch from Vick?s $100 million contract, which has four years at $62.5 million remaining after this season, including a base salary of $15.5 million in 2013. If the Eagles release Vick once the season ends in a month, they will owe him just $3 million.

So what is the takeaway from Vick?s four-year stay in Philadelphia?

Mixed.

On the one hand, this is where Vick was able to re-establish himself in the NFL and in the community following his prison stay. He?s been a model citizen since signing with the Eagles in the summer of 2009 -- cooperative with the media, active in the community, a supportive teammate, a reclusive family man.

On the field?

Vick won eight of his first 10 starts after replacing Kevin Kolb early in 2010, but since then he?s just 10-14, leaving him 18-16 as an Eagles quarterback, barely over .500. The only quarterback to start more than 10 games in an Eagles uniform the last 25 years and have a worse record is Ty Detmer, who went 9-9 in 1996 and 1997.

After his spectacular start, things started to turn for Vick Christmas week in 2010.

As Vick prepared to face the Vikings on Dec. 26, these were his stats: 63 percent completion percentage with 20 touchdowns, five interceptions and a 103.6 passer rating.

Then the Vikings game was postponed a couple days by a blizzard, Leslie Frazier and the Vikings provided the rest of the league a blueprint to neutralize Vick with a ferocious attack of blitzes, and the Vikings stunned the Eagles, 24-14.

And Vick was never really a special player again.

A few weeks later, with a chance to beat the Super Bowl-bound Packers in the Eagles? only home playoff game in the last six years, he threw a terrible game-ending end zone interception on first down, then he lost six of his first nine starts last year and six of nine starts this year before suffering a concussion against the Cowboys on Nov. 11.

He?s missed the last three games of this lost season and has now missed nine starts since he replaced Kolb early in 2010.

And in 24 games since that 8-2 start, these are Vick?s numbers: 54 percent completion percentage with 31 touchdowns, 25 interceptions and a 77.3 passer rating.

Vick didn?t throw an interception in his first seven games with the Eagles. Since then, he?s thrown 30 in 28 games.

His 103.6 passer rating the first 14 weeks of 2010 was third-best among all NFL quarterbacks, behind only Tom Brady and Phillip Rivers.

His 77.3 rating since the Vikings game in 2010 is 28th-best among NFL quarterbacks during that span.

Most importantly, his 10 wins over the past two years are only 19th-most in the league.

Average. At best.

Curiously, Vick?s overall stats since he got to Philly compare quite favorably with other Eagles quarterbacks, thanks to the overwhelming numbers he put up in his 2010 Pro Bowl season.

His 88.4 passer rating is highest in franchise history, breaking the record of 86.5 set from 1999 through 2009 by his former teammate, Donovan McNabb.

His 51 touchdown passes are actually sixth-most ever, behind McNabb (216), Ron Jaworski (175), Randall Cunningham (150), Norm Snead (111) and Sonny Jurgensen (70), and he?s also sixth in passing yards, behind the same five guys.

Vick is also third in career completion percentage at 60.2 percent, behind Kolb (60.8) and Bubby Brister (60.3).

Vick is one of only eight quarterbacks in the franchise?s 80-year history to lead the Eagles to the playoffs, and his 95.1 career postseason passer rating -- boosted by a 76-yard touchdown pass to Jeremy Maclin on a trick play in 2009 -- is second to Rodney Peete on the all-time Eagles? postseason list.

Incredibly, Vick is also in the all-time Eagles? top-20 list in rushing with 1,667 yards and 17th with 13 rushing touchdowns, and his 6.5 per-carry average is second-best in Eagles history, behind only Cunningham, who averaged 6.6.

But ultimately, barring a surprise return to action and a change in fortune, Vick?s Eagles years will be remembered as largely disappointing ones.

Vick was a three-year starter without a playoff win to his name, and the only other Eagles quarterbacks to start eight or more games three straight years without delivering at least one postseason victory since 1945 are Snead, Jurgensen and Roman Gabriel, all in the 1960s and 1970s.

Vick gave us 2? months of thrills and a few other scattered moments of brilliance, including a season-ending four-game winning streak last year and last-minute comebacks this September against the Browns and Ravens.

But there were too many fumbles at crucial points, too many interceptions with the game on the line, too many costly mistakes when just one more big play would have won the game.

Would things have been different if Vick had a more consistent offensive line, a respectable defense, and an offensive coordinator who made more of a commitment to the running game?

Maybe. But it?s too late to wonder what if.?

Vick was briefly a superstar, briefly on top of the world. But his moment was fleeting. The Eagles were a home win over a 5-9 Vikings team away from a likely first-round bye two years ago this month, but Joe Webb was better than Vick that day, and Vick has won 10 of 24 starts since.

Ultimately, Vick?s Eagles career will go down in the books as one that brought tons of excitement, numerous brilliant plays, unforgettable electrifying runs and boundless promise.

For a while, he gave us hope. But in the end, he gave us little else.

Source: http://www.csnphilly.com/12/05/12/After-hot-start-Vicks-time-as-an-Eagle-d/nbcsportseagles.html?blockID=810079&feedID=692

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Thursday, 6 December 2012

Numerical study suggests subsea injection of chemicals didn't prevent oil from rising to sea surface

Wednesday, December 5, 2012

The 2010 blowout of the Macondo well in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico resulted in the region's largest oil spill in U.S. history. As the Deepwater Horizon (DWH) incident unfolded, in an effort to prevent the oil from coming to the surface and reaching coastal and marsh ecosystems, chemical dispersants were injected at the wellhead. These powerful dispersants, typically used to break up oil slicks at the sea surface had never been used in such large quantities and over such a prolonged period of time in the deep ocean.

A new study published in Environmental Science & Technology, led by University of Miami (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine & Atmospheric Science Associate Professor of Applied Marine Physics Claire Paris, is the first to examine the effects of the use of unprecedented quantities of synthetic dispersants on the distribution of an oil mass in the water column, based on a modeling approach. The team of researchers included UM Rosenstiel School Assistant Scientist Matthieu Le Henaff and Research Associate Professor Villy Kourafalou, UM Center for Computational Science (CCS) Scientist Judith Helgers and Research Associate Professor Ashwanth Srinivasan, Ph.D. Candidate Zachary Aman from Colorado School of Mines, Research Associate Professor Ajit Subramaniam from Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University, and Professor Dong-Ping Wang from the School of Marine and Atmospheric Science of SUNY at Stony Brook. Together they developed and tested models to show that the application of oil-dispersing chemicals had little effect on the oil surfacing in the Gulf of Mexico.

"Deepwater drilling into large, high-pressure reservoirs of oil and gas located far offshore and hundreds of meters below the ocean's surface involves risks for which we were not adequately prepared," said Paris. "As the oil gushed uncontrolled into the Gulf, injection of chemical dispersant into the deep ocean may have had little effect because the oil was coming out with such pressure that it was already dispersed in small droplets. It is impossible to know whether the synthetic dispersant was well mixed with the oil as it was injected. Our models treat both scenarios, and regardless of whether you have the dispersant in the water mixture or not, the amount of oil reaching the sea surface remained relatively unchanged."

The researchers estimated the distribution of oil droplet sizes with and without injection of dispersant at the wellhead. They then applied a novel oil-mass tracking model of the Connectivity Modeling System (CMS) developed shortly after the DWH incident with a RAPID award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and presented a three-dimensional simulation of the DWH spill showing the unfolding of the disaster to examine the effect the synthetic dispersant may have had on the oil transport in the water column. The model indicated that the dispersant injected at BP's Macondo wellhead was not necessary to break up the oil. The subsea application of dispersant did not have its expected outcome.

"This study is notable because it presents a comprehensive estimate of the Macondo blowout from the microscopic oil-water interface through the macroscopic transport of crude oil." said chemical engineer Aman. The work served as a milestone in assessing the three dimensional transport of oil in the water column.

"Since the beginning of the spill our model accurately predicted the decoupling between the surface and subsea oil transport, and was unique in showing the southwest extension of the deep plume," said physical oceanographer Le Henaff. "Correct assessment of upwelling and downwelling currents for the circulation model created a realistic scenario that we then used to test the effect of the injection of dispersant on the oil partition."

As global deep-sea oil exploration expands, the model will be helpful in quantifying the utility of synthetic dispersants for deep water oil leaks. "The CMS oil model was able to predict the strange layering of oxygen deficit anomalies that we observed during our field sampling and provided us a three dimension view of a phenomena that was constantly changing in time. For us, it was like being able to track the ghosts of the oil plume because the oil itself had been consumed by the microbes and all that was left were the oxygen anomalies and the model was critical for us to understand what we were observing in the field," said biological oceanographer Subramaniam.

These findings expand on a previous study published earlier this year in which the team studied the crucial role of wind-induced surface drift on the fate of the oil in the Gulf of Mexico. "This current study reveals unexplored pathways of the oil transport by underwater currents and highlights the importance of topographic interactions and vertical flows in moving the deep plume toward deep waters or up the water column." said physical oceanographer Wang.

###

University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine & Atmospheric Science: http://www.rsmas.miami.edu

Thanks to University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine & Atmospheric Science for this article.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/125719/Numerical_study_suggests_subsea_injection_of_chemicals_didn_t_prevent_oil_from_rising_to_sea_surface

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Panel seeks accountability after Benghazi attacks

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - After a car bomb struck the U.S. ambassador's residence in Lima in 1992, the State Department convened a special panel to answer the same questions now hovering over a review of the September attacks in Benghazi, Libya: How much security is enough? What is the right role for U.S. diplomats?

The Lima panel, known as an Accountability Review Board, issued a final report "that didn't find anybody had been delinquent," former U.S. Ambassador to Peru Anthony Quainton said. That report was never made public.

Whether the report by the Benghazi Accountability Review Board, expected to be completed in mid-December, comes to the same conclusion could affect the arc of a controversy that has seen the Obama White House subjected to withering criticism over security arrangements in Libya and the administration's shifting explanations of the violence.

The attacks on the diplomatic mission and a nearby CIA annex in Benghazi, in eastern Libya, killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans, and raised questions about the adequacy of security in far-flung posts.

The panel, led by veteran diplomatic heavyweight Thomas Pickering, is expected to consider whether enough attention was given to potential threats and how Washington responded to security requests from U.S. diplomats in Libya.

A determination that top State Department officials turned down those requests, as Republican congressional investigators allege, could refuel criticism - and possibly even end some officials' careers.

Also in the balance is the future of funding for embassy security and of a policy, known as "expeditionary diplomacy," under which envoys deploy to conflict zones more often than in the past.

Central questions raised after the Benghazi attack include why the ambassador was in such an unstable part of Libya on the anniversary of the September 11 attacks.

The board, which meets at the State Department, could determine whether security was at fault or whether Stevens and the State Department emphasized building ties with the local community at the expense of security concerns in a hostile zone.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has pledged to make some of the report's findings public.

NO. 19

Benghazi is the 19th accountability review board convened by the State Department since 1988 to investigate attacks on U.S. diplomatic facilities. Until now, only the report on the deadly 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania has been made public.

Attacks in Pakistan and Iraq triggered the most review boards - three each - followed by Saudi Arabia with two. In addition to Kenya and Tanzania, there was one each for violence in Peru, Honduras, Greece, the Philippines, Bolivia, Jordan, Gaza, and Sudan.

The five-person independent board usually includes retired ambassadors, a former CIA officer and a member of the private sector. It has the power to issue subpoenas, and members are required to have appropriate security clearances to review classified information.

"The board is meeting and is hard at work. We have decided to keep the deliberations confidential to preserve the integrity and objectivity of the board's work in accordance with the statute providing for its activity," Pickering said in a statement.

ARBs, as they are known, are not expected to take cookie-cutter approaches but to review issues specific to each diplomatic post.

"In the case of Lima, the issue that arose above all those other issues was what was the purpose of the attack? I guess this is also a Benghazi question," Quainton said.

"Was it an attempt to assassinate the ambassador - meaning me - or was it an attack on one of the official symbols of U.S. power flying the U.S. flag, the ambassador's residence in my case, and the consulate in Benghazi. And that is partly a question of intelligence," he said.

Quainton added that he "happily was some distance away" at the time of the Lima attack, which killed three Peruvian policemen. Stevens by contrast was in the lightly defended Benghazi post, became separated from his security men, and died of apparent smoke inhalation.

FIXING PROBLEMS OR ASSIGNING BLAME?

The Africa accountability boards did not single out any U.S. government employee as culpable, but found "an institutional failure of the Department of State and embassies under its direction to recognize threats posed by transnational terrorism and vehicle bombs worldwide."

The report recommended improving security and crisis management systems and procedures.

Philip Wilcox, a member of the Nairobi board, said the State Department took its recommendations to heart.

"Security is never something that can be absolutely achieved. And to provide absolute security for American embassies and American diplomats abroad would be to shut down our overseas operations," said Wilcox, now president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace.

"There is no way to enable diplomats to do their work, to meet with foreign officials, foreign citizens, to move around the country, with total security," he said.

Lawmakers and administration officials have praised Stevens for being the type of diplomat who ventured out to meet with Libyans of all walks of life.

The job, diplomats say, is always a balancing act between trying to forge local ties and heeding security concerns.

One former U.S. diplomat, who would speak only on the condition of anonymity, said the underlying concept of accountability review boards from the beginning was a belief that it had to be somebody's fault and to assign blame.

But Wilcox sees value in the process.

"As a result of the accountability review board that I served on, more money was appropriated, a great many steps were taken to fulfill the recommendations in the report," he said. "So it's not true these are vain, useless exercises."

(Editing by Warren Strobel and Mohammad Zargham)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/u-panel-seeks-accountability-benghazi-attacks-060612157.html

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From kidnapping and bribery to insurance comparison: Leaky is ...

By Erin Griffith
On December 5, 2012

leaky 1 PM Jason Traff?s first go at entrepreneurship was slightly more exciting than his current one. I?m referring to Copycat Paintings, the e-commerce company he started in Hong Kong. Traff was living in Hong Kong at the time, working as a private equity executive with his e-commerce business on the side. Copycat used a network of drivers to deliver the orders, which turned out to be a liability. One kidnapped Traff?s co-founder. The driver took him out into the country and threatened to leave him if he didn?t hand over some money. Traff?s co-founder managed to get away by hitting the driver with a golf club and running back to town. In another instance, a driver tried to extort the company by holding several valuable paintings hostage in exchange for a payoff, Traff says.

The thrill and drama of running Copycat gave Traff a thirst for more entrepreneurial adventures. So he dropped out of grad school at MIT to start a new company. Only this one is decidedly less thrilling or adventuresome. In fact, it?s the complete opposite. To most entrepreneurs, it?s a total snooze, which is precisely why his company is positioned for success. The company solves a problem that is, to use a banker word, ?unsexy.? It?s one that few people want to tackle: insurance buying.

That company, called Leaky, launched nationwide today to help people shop for insurance. Most online price comparison tools for insurance are just lead generation for the various providers, so Leaky provides value with its unbiased comparison, Traff says.

It?s fairly dry stuff. For example, did you know there are more than 150 kinds of Ford F-1 50s? They have different trims and colors and editions, and there is a two wheel drive and a four wheel drive, leading to endless combinations. Leaky has to match those up with VIN numbers and it?s all very meticulous.

?We find its tough to talk about Leaky with our peers because the problems we tackle are so boring,? Traff says. ?No one wants to hear about that.?

It?s more interesting in terms of time and money. In private beta in California only, Leaky has already saved $25 million in insurance for its users and five years in time, Traff says. Investors like the sound of that: The company raised a $670,000 seed round from 500 Startups, Box Group, Start Fund and Y Combinator. The company will monetize by selling insurance itself and also through affiliate fees to insurers. ?We can lower customer acquisition costs by 75 percent for an insurance company,? he says.

In reality, insurance isn?t a problem that truly no one wants to solve: Leaky has at least one peer in MetroMile, which Richard Nieva covered this morning. It is, as he put it, the car insurer of choice for Portlandia characters. Clients pay on a per-mile basis, so those who drive less end up paying less for their insurance. Leaky competes in a way by providing insurance itself ? Traff is a legit insurance agent ? but its real value is in helping users find the cheapest quote without trying to push its own policies.

I would argue that to really fix the insurance industry, Leaky should take a page from Traff?s past and find a way to kidnap every single one of the insurance agency?s horrible spokespeople. For now, the company is sticking with the boring stuff.

Erin Griffith

Erin Griffith covers New York startups for PandoDaily. She's worked as staff writer for?Adweek and?a private equity blogger for peHUB. Her writing has appeared in VCJ, Time Out New York,?Huffington Post, FT.com, and BUST. She plays keyboard in a band called Team Genius and Tweets as @Eringriffith.

Source: http://pandodaily.com/2012/12/05/from-kidnapping-and-bribery-to-insurance-comparison-leaky-is-boring-and-thats-okay/

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Bloomberg urged Hillary Clinton to run for New York City mayor

Clinton and Bloomberg in 2009 (Joe Kohen/WireImage via Getty Images)One of the biggest political mysteries in the country is what Hillary Clinton will do once she leaves her post as President Barack Obama's secretary of state next month. Will she run for president in 2016? Or will she take a lower-profile position, like president of Yale, her alma mater?

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg apparently has his own ideas for Clinton's future: He reportedly told the former New York senator she should consider running for his job as he prepares to leave office next year.

Sources tell The New York Times' Michael Barbaro that Bloomberg made the pitch directly to Clinton in a recent phone call, insisting she would be a "perfect fit" to oversee one of the country's biggest cities.

According to the Times, Clinton told Bloomberg she wasn't interested. Philippe Reines, a spokesman for Clinton, declined to comment, saying he would not discuss his boss's "private conversations." Bloomberg's office didn't respond to a request for comment.

Bloomberg's suggestion seems to be less about Clinton and more about his desire to extend his political influence as he prepares to leave office next fall. The outgoing mayor launched a super PAC in October aimed at backing candidates, state referendums and ballot initiatives around the country, and has indicated he has no desire to leave the political spotlight. By urging Clinton to enter the race, Bloomberg would have a role in handpicking a high-profile successor who reflects many of his own political values, including his support for gun control measures.

But as the Times notes, Bloomberg's pitch to Clinton infuses plenty of political intrigue into New York City's mayoral race next year. Many believed Bloomberg would back the expected mayoral bid of New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, a longtime ally of the mayor who backed a rule change that allowed Bloomberg to run for a third term at City Hall. But Bloomberg's pitch to Clinton apparently is a sign that the mayor believes his successor should be a more prominent figure?as he was when he ran to succeed Rudy Giuliani in 2001.

But even if Clinton were interested, she doesn't meet one requirement for New York's mayoral candidates: She would have to be an official resident of New York City. Clinton, who owns homes in Washington, D.C., and Chappaqua, N.Y., is not. But that's a hurdle Clinton has jumped before: She moved to New York in 1999 while still serving as first lady in order to meet residency requirements for her 2000 Senate run?a race she won.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/bloomberg-urged-hillary-clinton-run-york-city-mayor-141956629--election.html

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Wednesday, 5 December 2012

Observatory: Early Mediterranean Settlers Ate Little Seafood

Sicilian cuisine is famous for the bounty of the Mediterranean: fish, clams, mussels, shrimp. But 20,000 years ago, around the time of the last ice age, the first modern humans who arrived in the region ate very little seafood, researchers report after studying the remains of human skeletons.

?The source of the dietary protein consumed mainly originated from the meat of medium to large terrestrial herbivores,? said the report?s first author, Marcello Mannino, an archaeologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany.

The remains were found in a cave on the small island of Favignana, which thousands of years ago was part of Sicily. Sicily itself was connected to the mainland by a land bridge, allowing humans to cross over.

Dr. Mannino and his colleagues did an isotopic analysis of the remains to determine what the settlers were eating. They reported their findings in the journal PLoS One.

By the time they arrived in Sicily, modern humans had yet to develop sophisticated fishing techniques. Moreover, Dr. Mannino said, the Mediterranean is an enclosed sea, poor in nutrients compared with oceanic regions. By now, he continued, overfishing has taken its toll on the sea?s marine resources.

?Modern fishing methods essentially wipe out anything that is present in a given area and then essentially destroy the sea bottom,? he said.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/04/science/early-mediterranean-settlers-ate-little-seafood.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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