Brandi Glanville's book Drinking & Tweeting: And Other Brandi Blunders has only just been released, but she's already got big plans for it. The 40-year-old Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star says the tell-all book is potentially being considered for the big -- or small -- screen.
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Drawbridge, a Kleiner Perkins- and Sequoia-backed startup aiming to improve mobile and cross-device ad targeting, has raised $14 million in Series B funding. AdAge actually broke the news earlier this week, but a source with knowledge of the deal told me that the story got one crucial detail wrong ? the new funding actually valued Drawbridge at $99 million, more than double the $45 million that AdAge reported. I trust my source more than I trust AdAge's unidentified "executive familiar with the deal," but then I would, wouldn't I? For those of you following along at home, this might seem like a classic he-said she-said situation. I will point out, however, that $45 million seems like a pretty low valuation for a company that has raised a total of $20.5 million in funding. Plus, raising $14 million at that valuation would mean giving away a lot of the company. Since Drawbridge is a young startup that only raised its Series A and launched its first products last year, it probably isn't so cash-strapped that it needs to take money on such unfavorable terms.Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/iZ-PsgXRNlM/
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Pinterest, the content discovery website that has achieved massive mainstream popularity by letting people clip and share their favorite photos and videos online with virtual "pinboards," is making it very clear that it is much more than just a pretty face -- it's a big business. Pinterest confirmed today that it has secured approximately $200 million in a new funding round led by new investor Valiant Capital Management. Also participating in the round, which serves as Pinterest's Series D, were existing investors Andreessen Horowitz, Bessemer Venture Partners, and FirstMark Capital. The news was first reported this afternoon by AllThingsD's Kara Swisher, Pinterest subsequently confirmed the funding round and valuation in an email to TechCrunch.Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/gB9-tJhCD6I/
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The meteor that exploded over Russia was much smaller than the asteroid that will buzz Earth Friday. But it shows how destructive Earth impacts can be ? and how unexpected.
A simulation of asteroid 2012 DA14 approaching from the south as it passes through the Earth-moon system on Friday. The 150-foot object will pass within 17,000 miles of the Earth.
JPL-Caltech/NASA/AP
EnlargeAs scientists prepared to watch a massive asteroid zip past Earth Friday, a?10-ton meteor lit up the sky over the Russian region of Chelyabinsk before exploding into fragments high above the ground. And just like that, a day of one flying space rock became a day of two.?
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Asteroid 2012 DA14 will buzz within 17,200 miles of Earth ? a record for a known object of that size"This is a big deal," says Kaliat Ramesh, a professor of mechanical engineering at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. "You really should view this meteoroid we saw in Russia as a wake-up call" regarding the hazards even small objects can present, he adds.
Indeed, it's a day of multiple wake-up calls.
At 2:24 p.m. EST today, asteroid 2012 DA14 passed within a scant 17,200 miles of?Earth ? a whisker in cosmic terms.
The asteroid is about 150 feet across and poses no threat to Earth, astronomers say, although an object of that size could take out a major metropolitan area if it collided with the planet. But the asteroid's close approach provides a unique opportunity for researchers to track and study it in ways that could improve their ability to distinguish truly hazardous asteroids in near-Earth orbits from the more benign objects.
Russia's meteor, however, has been anything but benign.
The first reports of the meteor came in a 7:55 a.m. local time, with many people capturing the event using video cameras installed in their cars.
The meteor, perhaps the size of a small cargo truck, was traveling at about 33,000 miles per hour. It exploded into fragments somewhere between 18 and 30 miles above the Earth. The shock wave from the blast ? heard in the central Russian cities of Chelyabinsk, Yekaterinburg, and Tyumen ? blew out windows at locations closest to the meteor's path. At least 950 people were injured, mostly from flying glass, according to the Moscow Times.
In addition, a zinc factory was damaged, and cell-phone service was knocked out in some areas.
Although the event occurred as asteroid 2012 DA14 was on its final approach to its close encounter with Earth, the different paths the two objects traveled make it unlikely the meteor was a 2012 DA14 cast-off.?
Astronomers will have a better sense of the meteor's final orbit once they study the video that's available from the event, says Gareth Williams, an astronomer and associate director of the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Mass..
He explains that the video will allow researchers to reconstruct the meteor's path through the atmosphere in three dimensions. They can use this information to calculate the meteor's most probable orbit before its demise.
This was one of countless objects in near-Earth orbits that had eluded detection, despite efforts over the past 15 years to take a detailed census of these objects.?
The meteor "was not seen before it entered the atmosphere," Mr. Williams says. Had it been detected and reported to the center, it would have received a designator, similar to 2012 DA14, and we all could be describing this event as a collision with a small asteroid, he suggests.
Researchers say that objects the size of the Chelyabinsk meteor?enter the atmosphere once every few years but tend to go unheralded outside the asteroid-hazard community because they enter over oceans or vast stretches of uninhabited land.?
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This NOAA satellite image taken Friday, Feb. 8, 2013 at 1:45 p.m. EST shows a major winter storm south of New England with heavy snow across the Northeast. A cold front extends back into the southeastern United States with rain showers. (AP Photo/Weather Underground)
This NOAA satellite image taken Friday, Feb. 8, 2013 at 1:45 p.m. EST shows a major winter storm south of New England with heavy snow across the Northeast. A cold front extends back into the southeastern United States with rain showers. (AP Photo/Weather Underground)
A warning sign flashes for motorists on the expressway into Boston as snow starts to fall on Friday, Feb. 8, 2013. A major winter storm is heading toward the U.S. Northeast with up to 2 feet of snow expected for a Boston-area region that has seen mostly bare ground this winter. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola)
WASHINGTON (AP) ? You can call it a snowstorm of historic proportions. You can call it the return of New England's blizzard of 1978. You can call it simply dangerous. And you can even call it Nemo.
But don't call it hype.
The new director of the National Weather Service says some may be getting carried away in describing the winter storm bearing down on the Northeast. But he says the science is simple and chilling.
Louis Uccellini is an expert on snowstorms. He says meteorologists are telling people that this is a dangerous storm because it is.
Jeff Masters, meteorology director of the private Weather Underground, said the storm deserves the attention it's getting. "This is a serious life-threatening storm if you're trying to travel in it and getting stuck."
One of the big differences between this one and the 1978 blizzard is that back then, it caught people by surprise, leaving many stranded on the highways, said Keith Seitter of the Boston-based American Meteorological Society. This time preventive steps, like closing schools and an early order for people to be off Massachusetts roads before dark, should save lives and make road-clearing easier, experts said.
For more than a week, forecasters have seen this one coming. Meteorologists put it in the category of those that earned nicknames like the East Coast "storm of the century" in 1993. In size, that one topped the 1978 blizzard. The Weather Channel is even giving this storm a name ? Nemo.
The National Weather Service has rejected the cable TV network's naming system. The weather service uses names for hurricanes and tropical storms created by the World Meteorological Organization, but not other types of storms.
Snowbound MIT meteorology professor Kerry Emanuel agrees that forecasters are telling it like it is. But he adds that extreme weather like this fascinates not just weather geeks, but the media and everyone.
"People sort of like it," says Emanuel, who is stuck in his Lexington, Mass., home. "It's the weather porn phenomena. There are people glued to The Weather Channel."
Experts aren't too worried about future weather warnings being ignored if this storm fizzles, because fizzling seems unlikely.
Decades ago, storms like this would come with at most a day or two warning. But now because of satellite technology, high-powered computers and better data and modeling, forecasters are seeing storms several days in advance, says Uccellini, co-author of two books on snowstorms.
Computer model forecasts accurately predicted last fall's Superstorm Sandy about a week in advance and with this blizzard, the first models were showing trouble brewing 10 days out, Uccellini says.
With so much warning, there are days of waiting for a storm with little news to report, sometimes leading to exaggeration. On occasion someone will overemphasize one of the scarier computer model simulations ? there are dozens? while the weather service and others use a combination that's more conservative and has more scientific consensus, Uccellini says.
"The longer you to have the watch the storm, the more anticipation you're going to get, the more interest it's going to generate," Masters says.
In that way, the lead-up to the storm has been the atmospheric equivalent of the week before the Oscars or Super Bowl.
And now it even has the catchy Nemo name thanks to The Weather Channel.
"By definition when we give things a name, it does allow us to connect with it," says Heidi Cullen, chief climatologist at Climate Central, a nonprofit science journalism group. She's also a former Weather Channel expert. "It gives it a narrative. We're hard-wired for stories and we can turn these weather events into stories."
But Uccellini and others don't like it because it's arbitrary and leads to confusion. This storm is the product of two systems, one coming from the west, dumping snow over the Great Lakes and one moving north from the southeast coast. Which of those were Nemo, if either, he asks. And what makes some storms name-worthy and others not?
The name Nemo was getting significant use, trending Friday on Twitter. The Huffington Post website fully embraced the name, trumpeting "Nemo Cometh" in a morning headline. But it was an easy target for jokes, too. CBS News' Major Garrett mused on Twitter: "I thought only Dairy Queen named Blizzards."
___
Seth Borenstein can be followed at http://twitter.com/borenbears
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With tears in her eyes, Pirscilla Arena, 41, from Mount Sinai, N.Y., reads letters she wrote to her two children as she spent the night in her car on North Ocean Avenue in Farmingville after the car got stuck in the snow while she was traveling home after work during the snow storm. Arena was at the Brookhaven Town Hall on Saturday after being rescued by a New York state trooper.
By Frank Eltman, The Associated Press
FARMINGVILLE, N.Y. -- Stranded for hours on a snow-covered road, Priscilla Arena prayed, took out a sheet of loose-leaf paper and wrote what she thought might be her last words to her husband and children.
She told her 9 1/2-year-old daughter, Sophia, she was "picture-perfect beautiful." And she advised her 5 ?-year-old son, John: "Remember all the things that mommy taught you. Never say you hate someone you love. Take pride in the things you do, especially your family. ... Don't get angry at the small things; it's a waste of precious time and energy. Realize that all people are different, but most people are good. "
"My love will never die ? remember, always," she added.
Full coverage from The Weather Channel
Arena, who was rescued in an Army canvas truck after about 12 hours, was one of hundreds of drivers who spent a fearful, chilly night stuck on highways in a blizzard that plastered New York's Long Island with more than 30 inches of snow, its ferocity taking many by surprise despite warnings to stay off the roads.
Even plows were mired in the snow or blocked by stuck cars, so emergency workers had to resort to snowmobiles to try to reach motorists. Four-wheel-drive vehicles, tractor-trailers and a couple of ambulances could be seen stranded along the roadway and ramps of the Long Island Expressway. Stuck drivers peeked out from time to time, running their cars intermittently to warm up as they waited for help.
With many still stranded hours after the snow stopped, Gov. Andrew Cuomo urged other communities to send plows to help dig out in eastern Long Island, which took the state's hardest hit by far in the massive Northeast storm.
In Connecticut, where the storm dumped more than 3 feet of snow in some places, the National Guard rescued about 90 stranded motorists, taking a few to hospitals with hypothermia.
The scenes came almost exactly two years after a blizzard marooned at least 1,500 cars and buses on Chicago's iconic Lake Shore Drive, leaving hundreds of people shivering in their vehicles for as long as 12 hours and questioning why the city didn't close the crucial thoroughfare earlier.
Cuomo and other officials were similarly asked why they didn't act to shut down major highways in Long Island in advance of the storm, especially given the sprawling area's reputation for gridlock. The expressway is often called "the world's longest parking lot."
"The snow just swallowed them up. It came down so hard and so fast," explained Suffolk County Executive Steven Bellone.
"That's not an easy call," added Cuomo, who noted that people wanted to get home and that officials had warned them to take precautions because the worst of the snow could start by the evening rush hour. Flashing highway signs underscored the message ahead of time: "Heavy Snow Expected. Avoid PM Travel!"
"People need to act responsibly in these situations," Cuomo said.
But many workers didn't have the option of taking off early Friday, Arena noted. The 41-year-old sales account manager headed home from an optical supply business in Ronkonkoma around 4 p.m. She soon found her SUV stuck along a road in nearby Farmingville.
"Even though we would dig ourselves out and push forward, the snow kept piling, and therefore we all got stuck, all of us," she recalled later at Brookhaven Town Hall, where several dozen stranded motorists were taken after being rescued. Many others opted to stay with their cars.
Related story: Boy killed by carbon monoxide as dad shovels out car
Richard Ebbrecht left his Brooklyn chiropractic office around 3 p.m. for his home in Middle Island, about 60 miles away, calculating that he could make the drive home before the worst of the blizzard set in. He was wrong.
As the snow came rushing down faster than he'd foreseen, he got stuck six or seven times on the expressway and on other roads. Drivers began helping each other shovel and push, he said, but to no avail. He finally gave up and spent the night in his car on a local thoroughfare, only about two miles from his home.
"I could run my car and keep the heat on and listen to the radio a little bit," he said.
He walked home around at 8 a.m., leaving his car.
Late-shifters including Wayne Jingo had little choice but to risk it if they wanted to get home. By early afternoon, he'd been stuck in his pickup truck alongside the Long Island Expressway for nearly 12 hours.
He'd left his job around midnight as a postal worker at Kennedy Airport and headed home to Medford, about 50 miles east. He was at an exit in Ronkonkoma ? almost home ? around 1:45 a.m. when another driver came barreling at him westbound, the wrong way, he said. Jingo swerved to avoid the oncoming car, missed the exit and ended up stuck on the highway's grass shoulder.
He rocked the truck back and forth to try to free it, but it only sank down deeper into the snow and shredded one of his tires. He called 911. A police officer came by at 9:30 a.m. and said he would send a tow truck.
At 1 p.m. Saturday, Jingo was still waiting.
"I would have been fine if I didn't have to swerve," he said.
In Middle Island, a Wal-Mart remained unofficially open long past midnight to accommodate more than two dozen motorists who were stranded on nearby roads.
"We're here to mind the store, but we can't let people freeze out there," manager Jerry Greek told Newsday.
Officials weren't aware of any deaths among the stranded drivers, Cuomo said. Suffolk County police said no serious injuries had been reported among stuck motorists, but officers were still systematically checking stranded vehicles late Saturday afternoon.
While the expressway eventually opened Saturday, about 30 miles of the highway was to be closed again Sunday for snow removal.
Susan Cassara left her job at a Middle Island day care center around 6:30 p.m., after driving some of the children home because their parents couldn't get there to pick them up.
She got stuck on one road until about 2:30 a.m. Then a plow helped her get out ? but she got stuck again, she said. Finally, an Army National Guardsman got to her on a snowmobile after 4 a.m.
"It was so cool. Strapped on, held on and came all the way here" to the makeshift shelter at the Brookhaven Town Hall, she said. "Something for my bucket list."
Related stories:
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? 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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Feb. 6, 2013 ? Using publicly available data from NASA's Kepler space telescope, astronomers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) have found that six percent of red dwarf stars have habitable, Earth-sized planets. Since red dwarfs are the most common stars in our galaxy, the closest Earth-like planet could be just 13 light-years away.
"We thought we would have to search vast distances to find an Earth-like planet. Now we realize another Earth is probably in our own backyard, waiting to be spotted," said Harvard astronomer and lead author Courtney Dressing (CfA).
Dressing presented her findings today in a press conference at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass.
Red dwarf stars are smaller, cooler, and fainter than our Sun. An average red dwarf is only one-third as large and one-thousandth as bright as the Sun. From Earth, no red dwarf is visible to the naked eye.
Despite their dimness, these stars are good places to look for Earth-like planets. Red dwarfs make up three out of every four stars in our galaxy for a total of at least 75 billion. The signal of a transiting planet is larger since the star itself is smaller, so an Earth-sized world blocks more of the star's disk. And since a planet has to orbit a cool star closer in order to be in the habitable zone, it's more likely to transit from our point of view.
Dressing culled the Kepler catalog of 158,000 target stars to identify all the red dwarfs. She then reanalyzed those stars to calculate more accurate sizes and temperatures. She found that almost all of those stars were smaller and cooler than previously thought.
Since the size of a transiting planet is determined relative to the star size, based on how much of the star's disk the planet covers, shrinking the star shrinks the planet. And a cooler star will have a tighter habitable zone.
Dressing identified 95 planetary candidates orbiting red dwarf stars. This implied that at least 60 percent of such stars have planets smaller than Neptune. However, most weren't quite the right size or temperature to be considered truly Earth-like. Three planetary candidates were both warm and approximately Earth-sized. Statistically, this means that six percent of all red dwarf stars should have an Earth-like planet.
"We now know the rate of occurrence of habitable planets around the most common stars in our galaxy," said co-author David Charbonneau (CfA). "That rate implies that it will be significantly easier to search for life beyond the solar system than we previously thought."
Our Sun is surrounded by a swarm of red dwarf stars. About 75 percent of the closest stars are red dwarfs. Since 6 percent of those should host habitable planets, the closest Earth-like world is likely to be just 13 light-years away.
Locating nearby, Earth-like worlds may require a dedicated small space telescope, or a large network of ground-based telescopes. Follow-up studies with instruments like the Giant Magellan Telescope and James Webb Space Telescope could tell us whether any warm, transiting planets have an atmosphere and further probe its chemistry.
Such a world would be different from our own. Orbiting so close to its star, the planet would probably be tidally locked. However, that doesn't prohibit life since a reasonably thick atmosphere or deep ocean could transport heat around the planet. And while young red dwarf stars emit strong flares of ultraviolet light, an atmosphere could protect life on the planet's surface. In fact, such stresses could help life to evolve.
"You don't need an Earth clone to have life," said Dressing.
Since red dwarf stars live much longer than Sun-like stars, this discovery raises the interesting possibility that life on such a planet would be much older and more evolved than life on Earth.
"We might find an Earth that's 10 billion years old," speculated Charbonneau.
The three habitable-zone planetary candidates identified in this study are Kepler Object of Interest (KOI) 1422.02, which is 90 percent the size of Earth in a 20-day orbit; KOI 2626.01, 1.4 times the size of Earth in a 38-day orbit; and KOI 854.01, 1.7 times the size of Earth in a 56-day orbit. All three are located about 300 to 600 light-years away and orbit stars with temperatures between 5,700 and 5,900 degrees Fahrenheit. (For comparison, our Sun's surface is 10,000 degrees F.)
These results will be published in The Astrophysical Journal.
Headquartered in Cambridge, Mass., the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) is a joint collaboration between the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and the Harvard College Observatory. CfA scientists, organized into six research divisions, study the origin, evolution and ultimate fate of the universe.
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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/space_time/astronomy/~3/mhHwJpUcfAc/130206110916.htm
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