NEW DELHI ? India's commerce minister said Friday that the decision to open the country's $400 billion retail sector to global chains such as Wal-Mart has a built-in safety net for small shops and farmers.
Anand Sharma told reporters that the Indian cabinet's decision late Thursday allowing 51 percent foreign ownership of supermarkets would vastly improve decrepit infrastructure that causes massive food waste in a country plagued by malnutrition and high inflation.
Sharma said the new rule would only apply in cities with more than 1 million people. The minimum investment would be $100 million and half of this would have to be invested in rural infrastructure and refrigerated transport and storage. Thirty percent of the produce sourced by the retailer would also have to come from small and medium enterprises.
Top retailers such as Wal-Mart and Tesco have lobbied for years for a chance to build stores in the nation of 1.2 billion people, and political deadlock on long-promised reforms in retail and other areas has helped cool foreign investor interest in India. Foreign retailers have Indian partners in wholesale operations, but no retail stores.
The Cabinet also allowed 100 percent foreign ownership of single-brand retail operations, up from 51 percent.
Advocates see the move as a way to strengthen India's creaking food distribution system.
The country suffers chronically high malnutrition and soaring inflation, but it's not for lack of food. It is the world's second-largest grower of fresh produce, yet an estimated 40 percent of fruit and vegetables rot because of a lack of refrigerated trucking and warehouses, poor roads, inclement weather and corruption. That means lower incomes for farmers and higher prices for consumers.
If companies like Wal-Mart and Tesco can open shops of their own, the investments they make in improving farming techniques and getting produce into stores more efficiently could lower food inflation and possibly raise rural incomes.
Sharma said the policy would have a "multiplier effect" and tens of millions of people would gain jobs.
Analysts say India's darkening economic prospects gave fresh urgency to the decadelong talks on opening up India's retail sector. Many see Thursday's move as an attempt by the ruling Congress Party to reassert its leadership, which has been weakened by corruption scandals, soaring inflation and slowing growth.
"When the government's credibility seems to be under significant question, this is one way to give a message that the government is still in business and it means business," said Arvind Singhal, chairman of retail consultancy Technopak Advisors.
The cabinet this month also indicated that it is open to allowing 26 percent foreign investment in pension fund management ? another headline item in the Congress Party's promised second wave of economic reforms, which follow a round of liberalization forced by a balance of payments crisis in the early 1990s.
The central bank has raised interest rates by 5.25 percentage points over the last 18 months but that hasn't been enough to control runaway inflation or the rupee's freefall. Food inflation, which quickly becomes a political issue in India, has been bouncing into the double digits since 2008 and now stands at 9.1 percent.
"Monetary policy interventions have not been able to control inflation," Singhal said. "Now they have to look into supply-side policy, which could have an impact."
International investors, who have grown increasingly wary of corruption, surprise tax bills and shifting regulations in India, have also put pressure on the government to make good on old promises to grant them greater access.
Rajan Bharti Mittal, vice chairman and managing director of Bharti Enterprises, said Friday that the retail move was a "major landmark in India's economic reforms process."
Bharti's joint venture with Wal-Mart has 13 wholesale outlets in India and sources produce from thousands of farmers.
"We have always stated that development of organized retail in India will bring immense benefits across the value chain ? from farmers to small manufacturers and above all to consumers, while creating enormous employment opportunities at the bottom of the pyramid," Mittal said in a statement.
Wal-Mart, British-based Tesco PLC and French-based retailer Carrefour welcomed the decision.
"This legal evolution should contribute to modernize the Indian food supply chain and to fight against food inflation for the benefit of Indian customers," Carrefour said in a statement.
The change, which does not require approval by India's fractious Parliament, was opposed by the Trinamool Congress Party, a key partner in the ruling coalition, and the main opposition BJP party. The country has struggled to find consensus because of concerns that competition from the foreign retail giants could hurt millions of small shopkeepers, as well as the poor.
Sharma said the new policy had been reached through a "transparent and democratic process of consultation with all the stake holders."
India's $400 billion retail sector is the nation's second-largest employer, after agriculture, according to consulting firm Deloitte.
Ashish Sanyal, managing director of retailing consultancy AMP Retail Services, said small businesses had nothing to fear from the big chains.
"At the end of the day this is like the high tide. All boats will rise. We will learn from the big retailers," he said.
___
AP Business Writer Erika Kinetz in Mumbai contributed to this report.
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MINSK (Reuters) ? A Belarussian court on Thursday jailed leading human rights activist Ales Belyatsky for 4 1/2 years on tax evasion charges, sparking an outcry in the European Union and particularly in EU neighboring countries which unwittingly aided his prosecution.
Belyatsky, 49, heads Vesna-96, the best known rights group in the former Soviet republic, which has campaigned for scores of opposition activists prosecuted by the government of President Alexander Lukashenko.
Cries of "Shame!" rang out in the Minsk courtroom from his supporters when judge Sergei Bondarenko handed down sentence, saying it was impossible for him to pass a lesser punishment.
The outcome, in the face of fierce condemnation of the trial in the West, supported the view that Lukashenko has written off relations with the European Union for a while and is not relying
much on Western help to see him through a financial crisis.
With fresh loans from Moscow in his pocket, Lukashenko, once dubbed Europe's last dictator by the United States, appears to be signaling that he will not relax his hardline policies toward the political opposition in exchange for Western help.
High-ranking Belarus financial officials have expressed concern that Lukashenko's hardline policies could endanger possible credit of up to $7 billion from the International Monetary Fund.
But in the past few weeks Belarus has found financial help more forthcoming from Russia. Last week Sberbank and regional lender Eurasian Development Bank announced they would put up a loan of $1 billion to help it over its crisis, which was caused by excessive pre-election public spending.
Russian gas giant Gazprom has also agreed to lower the price of Russian gas to Belarus from next year in exchange for acquiring ownership of Belarus's gas pipeline network Beltransgaz.
"SENTENCE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS"
"Sentencing Ales Belyatsky is a sentence for human rights in Belarus. It confirms that the current regime does not respect basic standards of civil rights and freedoms," Poland's foreign ministry said in a statement.
"The charge of tax evasion was merely an excuse to again attack the non-governmental sector, which the regime wants to take full control of," it said.
Lithuanian Foreign Minister Audronius Azubalis said: "This case must be seen as part of a broader pattern of harassment and intimidation of human rights defenders in Belarus." He called for Belyatsky's release.
Belyatsky was arrested and charged after officials in Poland and Lithuania unwittingly helped his prosecution by supplying information about bank accounts held in his name after a request by Belarus's financial authorities.
The furor that ensued led to a public apology in August by Warsaw and also caused high-level embarrassment in Lithuania.
Senior European Union officials had earlier called for Belyatsky's release, saying the charges against him were "a politically motivated pretext to target his important work to the benefit of victims of repression."
The prosecution had asked for a five-year sentence to be handed down on Belyatsky, who listened to his sentence from inside a metal cage in the courtroom.
Vesna-96 says the money held by Belyatsky in Poland and Lithuania belonged to the organization and was set aside for paying for human rights activities and supporting political prisoners and their families.
It had latterly been used to support families of opposition activists arrested in a police sweep last December after mass street rallies against Lukashenko's re-election for a fourth term.
Two opposition leaders are still in jail for their part in those protests.
The EU and the United States introduced travel restrictions and other sanctions against Lukashenko and other officials after an election widely criticised as rigged.
(Reporting by Andrei Makhovsky; Writing by Richard Balmforth; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
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MOSCOW ? Russia's state-controlled natural gas company bought the remaining stake in Belarus' gas pipeline system Friday to become its sole owner in a move that strengthens Moscow's control over gas exports to the West.
Russia is the main ally and sponsor of Belarus' authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko, but he had been reluctant to yield control over the pipeline network and other Belarusian economic assets in the past, accusing Russia of trying to erode his nation's sovereignty.
Lukashenko's stance, however, has been softened recently by a severe economic crisis that has weakened his power and made him more prone to compromise.
Russia's Gazprom already had owned 50 percent in Belarus' pipeline operator, Beltransgaz, and wanted to gain full control. It said in a statement after the signing that it agreed to pay $2.5 billion for the remaining 50 percent stake.
Russia provides about a quarter of the natural gas that Europe consumes, with 80 percent of it going through Ukraine. The rest is shipped through Belarus and Turkey.
Moscow has sought to win control of existing transit routes and build new export pipelines bypassing its neighbors in order to secure its hold on energy supplies to Europe, its main export market.
Past pricing disputes between Ukraine and Belarus have led to disruptions in energy supplies to customers in the European Union, prompting EU nations to intensify a search for alternative supply routes.
Russian Energy Minister Sergei Shmatko said after the signing Friday that the deal has brought an end to the energy wars between Russia and Belarus.
As part of the deal, Russia has also reduced the price of gas it sells to Belarus. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Friday that Gazprom will now charge Belarus $164 per 1,000 cubic meters of gas in the first quarter of next year, down from the $280 per 1,000 cubic meters it was paying in the third quarter of this year. The gas price for Gazprom customers in Europe hovers around $400 per 1,000 cubic meters .
"We are making a significant discount for our Belarusian friends and partners," Putin said. He added that Russia also agreed to restructure Belarus' debt for previous supplies.
The low gas price is essential for the Belarusian economy, most of which has remained in state hands. Belarus has been hit by its worst financial crisis since the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union, which has led to sharp devaluation of the national currency and triggered high inflation that has eroded public savings.
"Cheap gas and oil are like drugs for the Soviet-style Belarusian economy," said Alexander Klaskovsky, an independent analyst in the Belarusian capital, Minsk. "It's a lifebelt for Lukashenko who has driven the country into a deep crisis and 100 percent inflation."
Belarus' first post-Soviet leader, Stanislav Shushkevich, said that surrendering control of the pipelines "will mean the loss of a significant part of Belarus' sovereignty."
He described the gas deal with Belarus as part of efforts by Putin, who is all but certain to reclaim the Russian presidency in March's vote, to create a new, stronger alliance of ex-Soviet nations.
Putin, who has lamented the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, has recently proposed forming a "Eurasian Union" of former Soviet nations, saying the bloc could become a major global player competing for influence with the United States, the European Union and Asia.
"Putin is going to the vote with a geopolitical plan of a new empire, and he's ready to pay the devil or Lukashenko to achieve that," Shushkevich told The Associated Press.
Putin said Friday that Moscow will also provide Belarus with a $10 billion loan that will be spread over the next decade to help it pay for a nuclear power plant that will be built by Russia.
____
Nataliya Vasilyeva in Moscow and Yuras Karmanau in Minsk, Belarus, contributed to this report.
AMMAN?? Syrian forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad killed 23 civilians and five army deserters on Tuesday in a crackdown on an eight-month uprising against Assad's rule, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
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Among those killed were four children shot dead by troops near a school in the central region of Houla and a 12-year-old killed at a protest in the eastern city of Deir al-Zor, said the group, which is led by exiled dissident Rami Abdelrahman.
Four deserters were killed when troops stormed a farm where they were hiding near the southern city of Deraa on the Jordan border. The troops also shot dead six villagers at the farm.
A fifth deserter was killed in Qusair near the Lebanese border, the group said.
It was not possible to confirm the killings independently. The authorities, who blame the unrest on "armed terrorist groups," have barred most independent media.
A YouTube video purportedly showed one of the children, Abdelqader Maher Arslan, lying on the floor of a house in Houla with a bullet wound to the back of his head surrounded by members of his family.
Local activists said an armoured column entered the region overnight and troops erected roadblocks after a funeral for an activist turned into an anti-Assad protest. They added that tanks fired heavy machineguns and troops manning the roadblocks opened fire at random in the morning.
Four people were killed in raids on residential districts, including a disabled man in the neighborhood of Khalidiya, and firing from roadblocks in the provincial capital of Homs, 22 km (12 miles) southeast of Houla, the Observatory said.
Anti-Assad rallies were held during the evening in the district, together with protests in Bab Dreib, Bab Sbaa and al-Waar neighborhoods, activists said.
The Observatory said the other killings occurred in the northwestern province of Idlib near the border with Turkey, where two construction workers were killed by tank machinegun fire, and in the province of Hama, where protests have been growing since an assault three months ago.
Activists in Damascus said security police arrested 40 people in the capital's northeastern suburb of Harasta, adding to several hundreds of people who have been detained since an attack by deserters last week on a police complex in the suburb. In Brussels, the European Union urged the Syrian opposition on Tuesday to work closely with the Arab League towards democratic transition and said anti-government groups needed an "inclusive" political platform.
EU talks with opposition group
The EU's foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton held talks with the Syrian National Council (SNC) as part of intensifying European contacts with opposition groups.
"She welcomed the ongoing efforts by the Syrian opposition to establish a united platform and to work for a shared vision for the future of Syria and the transition to a democratic system," Ashton's spokesman, Michael Mann, said.
"She also highlighted the importance of an inclusive opposition political platform taking in all religious and ethnic communities," he said.
The EU has not yet recognized the council or any other Syrian opposition group as representative of anti-government groups contesting the rule of al-Assad.
Young and restless: Demographics fuel Mideast protests
EU diplomats have argued opposition in Syria was too fragmented and lacked the clear political platform that allowed them to engage more closely this year with Libyan rebels who eventually toppled Moammar Gadhafi. There were also concerns about participation of Islamists groups in the opposition.
But EU governments have imposed extensive sanctions such as an oil embargo to put financial pressure on Assad to halt a violent crackdown on protests and give up power. The United Nations says 3,500 people have been killed since the protests erupted in March.
Further EU measures are likely to be formally approved at the next meeting of EU foreign ministers on Dec. 1.
The Arab League has also put pressure on Assad and its deadline for him to pull the military out of urban centres, free political prisoners and start a dialogue under the 22-member group's initiative to end the bloodshed in Syria expired at the weekend.
But Assad said in an interview published on Sunday he would not bow to international pressure to stop the crackdown.
"The High Representative encouraged the SNC to continue to engage with the Arab League to support its efforts towards a successful transition," her spokesman said.
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LONDON ? Author J.K. Rowling told a U.K. media ethics inquiry Thursday she felt "under siege" from intrusive journalists, who staked out her house, conned personal details from her husband and slipped a note into her 5-year-old daughter's school bag.
The creator of boy wizard Harry Potter said media interest began shortly after the publication of her first novel in 1997 and soon escalated, with photographers and reporters frequently stationed outside her home. She eventually moved after published photographs revealed the location of her house.
"I can't put an invisibility cloaking device over myself or my house, nor would I want to," Rowling said. "(But) it feels threatening to have people watching you."
Rowling said she had always tried to keep her three children out of the media glare, and was outraged when her eldest daughter came home from primary school one day with a letter from a journalist in her backpack.
"I felt such a sense of invasion," Rowling said. "It's very difficult to say how angry I felt that my 5-year-old daughter's school was no longer a place of complete security from journalists."
By the time her younger children were born in 2003 and 2005, Rowling said, the scrutiny was "like being under siege and like being a hostage."
She also described how, early on in their relationship, her now-husband Neil Murray gave personal details over the phone to a reporter who was pretending to be a tax official. An article about him duly appeared in a tabloid paper.
"That was a not-very-nice introduction to being involved with someone famous," Rowling said.
Rowling was the latest in a string of prominent people to tell the inquiry about the distressing effect on their lives of intense press interest. Prime Minister David Cameron set up the inquiry amid a still-unfolding scandal over illegal eavesdropping by the News of the World, a tabloid in Rupert Murdoch's media empire.
Earlier Thursday, actress Sienna Miller said she was left paranoid and scared by years of relentless tabloid pursuit that ranged from paparazzi outside her house to the hacking of her mobile phone.
Miller said the surveillance, and a stream of personal stories about her in the tabloids, led her to accuse friends and family of leaking information to the media. In fact, her cell phone voice mails had been hacked by the News of the World.
The 29-year-old actress became a tabloid staple when she dated fellow actor Jude Law. She said the constant scrutiny left her feeling "very violated and very paranoid and anxious, constantly."
"I felt like I was living in some sort of video game," she said.
She called the paparazzi attention terrifying.
"For a number of years I was relentlessly pursued by 10 to 15 men, almost daily," she said. "Spat at, verbally abused.
"I would often find myself, at the age of 21, at midnight, running down a dark street on my own with 10 men chasing me. And the fact they had cameras in their hands made that legal."
Miller, the star of "Layer Cake" and "Alfie," was one of the first celebrities to take the News of the World to court over illegal eavesdropping. In May, the newspaper agreed to pay her 100,000 pounds ($160,000) to settle claims her phone had been hacked.
The newspaper's parent company now faces dozens of lawsuits from alleged hacking victims.
Miller, who looked confident as she gave evidence at London's Royal Courts of Justice, said it was a difficult decision to challenge Murdoch's media conglomerate.
"I was very nervous about taking on an empire that was richer and far more powerful than I will ever be," she said. "It was very daunting."
Murdoch closed down the News of the World in July after evidence emerged that it had illegally accessed the mobile phone voice mails of celebrities, politicians and even crime victims in its search for scoops. More than a dozen News of the World journalists and editors have been arrested, and the scandal has also claimed the jobs of two top London police officers, Cameron's media adviser and several senior Murdoch executives.
The inquiry, led by Judge Brian Leveson, plans to issue a report next year and could recommend major changes to Britain's system of media self regulation.
Miller took the stand after another witness was allowed to give evidence in private. The courtroom was cleared of the press as the witness, identified only as HJK, testified about suffering intrusions while in a relationship with a well-known figure whose identity was also kept secret.
Also testifying Thursday was former Formula One boss Max Mosley, who has campaigned for a privacy law since his interest in sadomasochistic sex was exposed in the News of the World.
Mosley successfully sued the News of the World over a 2008 story headlined "Formula One boss has sick Nazi orgy with five hookers." Mosley has acknowledged the orgy, but argued that the story ? obtained with a hidden camera ? was an "outrageous" invasion of privacy. He said the Nazi allegation was damaging and "completely untrue."
Mosley said he has had stories about the incident removed from 193 websites around the world, and is currently taking legal action "in 22 or 23 different countries," including proceedings against search engine Google in France and Germany.
"The fundamental thing is that Google could stop this appearing but they don't or won't as a matter of principle," he said.
"You work all your life to try and achieve something or do something useful," Mosley added. "And suddenly something like this happens and that's what you're remembered for."
High-profile witnesses still to come include CNN celebrity interviewer Piers Morgan, who has denied using phone hacking while he was editor of the Daily Mirror newspaper.
The hearings have heard allegations of media malpractice and intrusion that extend far beyond the News of the World.
Witnesses have included celebrities like actor Hugh Grant and ordinary people pursued in times of grief, including the parents of murdered 13-year-old Milly Dowler, whose voice mails were accessed by the News of the World after she disappeared in 2002.
In May 2011, SPACE.com reporter Mike Wall visited NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., as scientists and engineers were wrapping up work on Curiosity, NASA's next Mars rover. With Curiosity's launch planned for Saturday (Nov. 26), this is his account.
It could be a scene from a James Bond film ? a glimpse into the archvillain's lair.
Anonymous white-clad workers, their faces obscured by surgical masks, cross a cavernous, high-ceilinged room. They pause to adjust or inspect large pieces of mysterious equipment, some of which is spangled with bright gold foil. It's obvious that they're building something complicated and important.
But they're not assembling a doomsday device, because this is no movie. The white-garbed technicians are employees at JPL, and they're putting the finishing touches on the space agency's next rover mission to Mars. This mission is called the Mars Science Laboratory, and the rover at the heart of it is a car-size robot named Curiosity.
I'm watching the technicians from a viewing gallery about 30 feet (9 meters) above a clean room at JPL's Spacecraft Assembly Facility in May 2011. JPL has been putting spaceships together for 50 years, so scenes like the one taking place below me are routine here.
But for me, taking all this in is a novel, surreal and thrilling experience. I'm looking at gear that, come next August, will be cruising around the surface of another planet. [Photos: NASA's Curiosity rover]
The next Mars rover, in pieces on the floor
The $2.5 billion Mars Science Laboratory ?is slated to launch Saturday (Nov. 26) and drop Curiosity onto the Red Planet's surface in August 2012. The rover's primary task will be to assess whether Mars is, or ever was, capable of supporting microbial life.
Most of the pieces of the mission are laid out beneath me in the clean room.
"Do you know what you're looking at?" asks MSL project manager Pete Theisinger. Theisinger has agreed to meet and chat with me, as part of a larger tour I'm taking of JPL.
Theisinger guides me through the various MSL components, starting with Curiosity, which sits near the far wall. It's tough to peg the craft as a rover at the moment; it's been flipped onto its back, and its six wheels are off. Two technicians are elbow-deep in its electronic guts, reworking some of the rover's avionics and cabling.
Farther along the back wall, close to the room's right-rear corner, is MSL's cruise stage. This ring-shaped structure, about 13 feet (4 m) wide, will propel Curiosity and its associated parts through space to Mars, taking over where the mission's launch vehicle, an Atlas 5 rocket, leaves off.
A white-clad worker sits inside the ring, making some inscrutable check or adjustment. He, like the other technicians, wears a white mask and head-to-toe coveralls to minimize the chances of contaminating MSL with dust or microbes.
A new landing system
In front of the cruise stage, between it and the rover, sits the entry-descent-landing system. This is a novel and fantastic-seeming piece of technology ? a rocket-powered sky crane that will lower Curiosity to the Martian surface on cables while hovering in mid-air.
Theisinger chuckles a bit when I say this sounds like something out of a sci-fi movie.
"I know, I know," he says. But he and the MSL team have faith in the system, which performed very well in full-up simulations.
"We're pretty confident that this will work," Theisinger says. "We've done everything that we know how to do" to test it. [Best (and Worst) Mars Landings of All Time]
Just in front of the cruise stage sits the backshell, a white, gumdrop-shaped structure that will encase the rover and landing system. The only MSL piece missing, aside from the launch vehicle, is the heat shield, which will protect the mission's components from the fiery temperatures experienced during entry into Mars' atmosphere. The heat shield is in Colorado at the moment, Theisinger says.
The work being done with Curiosity and other MSL parts consists of final tweaks and checks, to wrap up everything ahead of delivery to the Florida launch site, which occurred in late June.
Learning more about Curiosity
Curiosity is a big, burly rover that will allow scientists to learn much more about the Martian environment, both past and present. Curiosity weighs about 2,000 pounds (909 kilograms), compared to 375 pounds (170 kg) for each of its predecessors, the highly accomplished twin rovers Spirit and Opportunity.
Spirit and Opportunity landed on Mars in January 2004 to look for evidence of past water on Mars. They found a lot of it.
Curiosity will go a step further, assessing the Martian landscape for habitability during its planned two-year mission.
The rover will use 10 different science instruments to do this job, which will involve characterizing rock in minute detail and searching for organic molecules, among other tasks.
Curiosity boasts a five-jointed, 7-foot (2.1-m) robotic arm, which by itself weighs nearly half as much as Spirit or Opportunity. This arm will help in sample acquisition and analysis, and it has a drill that will be able to bore about 2 inches (5 centimeters) into Martian rock. No previous rover has had this deep-drilling ability, and the MSL team is pretty pumped about it.
"For geologists that study rocks, there's nothing better than getting inside," MSL deputy project scientist Joy Crisp told me, after I'd said goodbye to Theisinger and the clean room. During our meeting, she gave me in-depth information on Curiosity's science payload and objectives.
I also met with JPL's Kevin Burke, who has led much of the work in developing the tools on Curiosity's arm. Burke described the processes involved in designing, building and testing such a complex suite of equipment, which must work perfectly together on the frigid surface of an alien planet.
Burke also talked about some late re-work that had just been done on the drill's force sensor, which tells the rover how hard it's pressing on the drill.
It was a fascinating day. When I left JPL, my head was full of facts, diagrams and visions of Curiosity roving about the Martian surface. Burke said I should come back to JPL to watch MSL's landing in August. I've already got it circled on my calendar.
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 @Spacedotcomand on Facebook
ScienceDaily (Nov. 22, 2011) ? Conventional wisdom would say that blocking a hole would prevent light from going through it, but Princeton University engineers have discovered the opposite to be true. A research team has found that placing a metal cap over a small hole in a metal film does not stop the light at all, but rather enhances its transmission.
In an example of the extraordinary twists of physics that can occur at very small scales, electrical engineer Stephen Chou and colleagues made an array of tiny holes in a thin metal film, then blocked each hole with an opaque metal cap. When they shined light into the holes, they found that as much as 70 percent more light came through when the holes were blocked than when they were open.
"The common wisdom in optics is that if you have a metal film with very small holes and you plug the holes with metal, the light transmission is blocked completely," said Chou, the Joseph Elgin Professor of Engineering. "We were very surprised."
Chou said the result could have significant implications and uses. For one, he said, it might require scientists and engineers to rethink techniques they have been using when they want to block all light transmission. In very sensitive optical instruments, such as microscopes, telescopes, spectrometers and other optical detectors, for example, it is common to coat a metal film onto glass with the intention of blocking light. Dust particles, which are unavoidable in metal film deposition, inevitably create tiny holes in the metal film, but these holes have been assumed to be harmless because the dust particles become capped and surrounded by metal, which is thought to block the light completely.
"This assumption is wrong -- the plug may not stop the leakage but rather greatly enhance it," Chou said.
He explained that in his own field of nanotechnology, light is often used in a technique called photolithography to carve ultrasmall patterns in silicon or other materials. Thin metal film patterns on a glass plate serve as a mask, directing light through certain locations of the plate and blocking other locations. Given the new finding, engineers ought to examine whether the mask blocks the light as expected, Chou said.
Conversely, Chou said, the newly discovered "blocking" technique might be used in situations when a boost in light transmission is desired. In near-field microscopy, for example, scientists view extremely fine details by passing light through a hole as tiny as billionths of a meter in diameter. With the new technique, the amount of light passing through the hole -- and thus the amount of information about the object being viewed -- can be increased by blocking the hole.
Chou and colleagues stumbled on the phenomenon of enhanced light transmission through a blocked hole in their research on developing ultrasensitive detectors that sense minute amounts of chemicals, with uses ranging from medical diagnostics to the detection of explosives. These detectors use a thin metal film with an array of holes and metal disks to boost faint signals produced when laser light encounters a molecule, allowing much greater sensitivity in identifying substances.
In one of their experimental detectors, the researchers studied transmission of light through an array of tiny holes that were 60 nanometers (billionths of a meter) in diameter and 200 nanometers apart in a gold film that was 40 nanometers thick. Each tiny hole was capped with a gold disk that was 40 percent larger than the hole. The disks sat on top of the holes with a slight gap between the metal surface and the disks.
The researchers pointed a laser at the underside of the film and tested to see if any of the laser light went through the holes, past the caps, and could be detected on the other side. To their surprise, they found that the total light transmission was 70 percent higher with the holes blocked by the metal disks than without blockers. The researchers repeated the same experiment shining the light in the opposite direction -- pointing at the side with the caps and looking for transmitted light under the film -- and found the same results.
"We did not expect more light to get through," Chou said. "We expected the metal to block the light completely."
Chou said the metal disk acts as a sort of "antenna" that picks up and radiates electromagnetic waves. In this case, the metal disks pick up light from one side of the hole and radiate it to the opposite side. The waves travel along the surface of the metal and leap from the hole to the cap, or vice versa depending on which way the light is traveling. Chou's research group is continuing to investigate the effect and how it could be applied to enhance the performance of ultrasensitive detectors.
The researchers published their findings Oct. 7 in the journal Optics Express, and it quickly became one of the most downloaded papers. In addition to Chou, the team included graduate student Wen-Di Li and postdoctoral researcher Jonathan Hu in the Department of Electrical Engineering. The work is sponsored in part by the Defense Advanced Research Agency and the National Science Foundation.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Princeton University, Engineering School. The original article was written by Steven Schultz.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
Wen-Di Li, Jonathan Hu, Stephen Y. Chou. Extraordinary light transmission through opaque thin metal film with subwavelength holes blocked by metal disks. Optics Express, 2011; 19 (21): 21098 DOI: 10.1364/OE.19.021098
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Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
Depression during pregnancy has been linked with a number of complications for children once they're born. However, it may not be depression itself, but rather a change in a mother's mental state that is harmful to the baby, new research suggests.
The findings show babies did best on tests of mental and motor abilities if their mother's mood remained consistent before and after she gave birth, even if the mother's mood was depressive. But if a mother's mood changed ? from either depressed to healthy, or from healthy to depressed ? babies did less well.
The results suggest infants' brains may somehow detect their mother's psychological state while in the womb, and this affects their development as their bodies prepare for life after birth, the researchers said.
If an infant in the womb is exposed to a challenging environment, such as his mother's depression, he may be better able to respond to challenges later on. But if an infant is born into an environment he has not confronted, he may not react as well, the researchers said.
"The fetus is paying an active part in its own development," said study researcher Curt Sandman, a professor emeritus in the department of psychiatry and human behavior at the University of California, Irvine. "It will then thrive in an environment that is like the one it is preparing for."
Baby development
Sandman and colleagues studied 221 pregnant women. The mothers were evaluated for depression both before and after pregnancy. The babies periodically underwent tests designed to assess mental and motor development during their first year of life.
At 6 months, babies who were exposed to congruent conditions before and after birth (their mothers were either depressed or not depressed at both time periods) had significantly higher scores on the tests of mental and motor development than babies who were exposed to incongruent conditions.
At a year, babies exposed to congruent conditions had higher mental development scores, but not motor development scores, than babies in incongruent conditions.
It's not clear what the effect of incongruent conditions will be over the long term, Sandman said.
A similar phenomenon has been found in the field of nutrition. A 2005 study showed babies who were exposed to near-starving conditions while in the womb, and then provided sufficient nutrition after birth, were at increased risk of metabolic disease.
Screening for prenatal depression
Pregnant women should be screened for depression so that they can be treated, Sandman said. He emphasized that the new findings do not mean that if mothers are depressed during pregnancy, they should be left alone, Sandman said. .
While there has been increased awareness about postpartum depression, prenatal depression receives less attention, Sandman said.
The researchers aren't sure how infants "sense" the mother's psychological state while in the womb, but it could be through hormones, such as stress hormones, released in the mothers' body.
The study is will be published in an upcoming issue of the journal Psychological Science.
Pass it on: Babies may be able to sense their mothers' psychological state while in the womb, and prepare for life after birth.
This story was provided by MyHealthNewsDaily, a sister site to LiveScience. Follow MyHealthNewsDaily staff writer Rachael Rettner on Twitter @RachaelRettner. Find us on Facebook.
Posted: 7:30 am Tue, November 22, 2011 By Burl?Gilyard Tags: Bob Peltier, Daisy Kong, Edina Realty, Georg Gerstenfeld, Leonard MacKinnon, National Association of Realtors, Realtor.com, Trulia.com
Edina Realty President and CEO Bob Peltier. (File photo: Bill Klotz)
Listings will be removed from Trulia and Realtor.com
Edina Realty Home Services, the largest local residential real estate agency, is yanking its property listings from two national websites, one of which is affiliated with the National Association of Realtors (NAR).
Bob Peltier, president and chief executive officer of Edina-based Edina Realty, said the company has provided its listings for years to Realtor.com (the NAR site) and Trulia.com. But now, he said, both are asking real estate companies and agents to pay for ?enhanced listings? on their sites.
?They want to charge us to enhance the listing. It doesn?t seem right to me,? Peltier said.
San Francisco-based Trulia.com says Edina Realty is ?costing their agents future business opportunities.? So far, NAR says, other Realtors aren?t following Edina Realty?s lead.
Peltier claims that companies like Trulia are not really in the real estate business.
?They?re an advertising online company, and the only thing they have to advertise is our data,? Peltier said. ?We?re seeing many aggregators using our information to support their own business model. They?re not Realtors.?
He said that the information supplied to Trulia.com and Realtor.com from Edina Realty is accurate, but that those companies then work with other aggregators and syndicators. Peltier said local agents routinely field calls about out-of-date listings on national websites.
?Our agents get calls all the time about listings that they sold two months ago, six months ago, eight months ago,? said Peltier, who added that he has been weighing the decision for several months. ?I?ve talked to our agents about this. I had the analytics run. This is not a decision we came to lightly.?
Edina Realty announced the move at the end of business Friday. Asked for comment, Trulia spokeswoman Daisy Kong referred to a statement posted on the company?s blog on Friday:
?Edina [Realty] is costing their agents future business opportunities. By removing listings from Trulia, Edina will shut their agents off from millions of potential buyers searching Trulia each month. Edina agents will receive fewer leads from Trulia once their listings are removed.?
Kong also sent a statement from Georg Gerstenfeld, vice president of business services at Trulia: ?Once this change is made, homeowners selling their homes with Edina will not be able to reach 17 [million] potential U.S. buyers who search Trulia each month. Online exposure for a home is paramount in today?s real estate market, and Edina?s decision to remove their listings from Trulia only creates fewer opportunities for their agents to find buyers. While we respect Edina?s decision, we have already seen a strong reaction from concerned consumers and hope Edina?s management recognizes this is not the right move for their clients.?
Peltier said Edina Realty will stop supplying data to Trulia on Nov. 30. He said that individual agents can still choose to list their properties on Trulia. No date has been set for when the company will stop supplying information to Realtor.com, but it is expected to be soon.
?We?re working through that,? Peltier said.
Another large local realty company, Edina-based Coldwell Banker Burnet, has no plans to pull listings from third party websites.
?The objective is to get our seller?s home sold,? said Leonard MacKinnon, director of marketing for Coldwell Banker Burnet. The company has 1,800 sales agents in the region.
MacKinnon said the company?s philosophy has been to get as much exposure as possible for homes on the market.
?The sites that are considered to be the most powerful nationally are Trulia, Realtor.com, Zillow and Yahoo Real Estate. We?ve got a strategic relationship with those four on a national basis,? MacKinnon said. ?We?ve got a little more than a dozen websites that we feed our listing data to.?
MacKinnon said the Internet has significantly changed the business of selling homes.
?It changed our industry quite a bit,? MacKinnon said. ?It certainly gave the consumer access to a lot more information than they had in the old days.?
Peltier said that Realtor.com is a joint venture between the Chicago-based NAR and Move Inc. Campbell, Calif.-based Move Inc. operates a number of real estate-related websites.
Peltier acknowledged that agents are all members of NAR, but he isn?t concerned about ruffling any feathers.
?I don?t care, honestly, if it?s tricky or not,? Peltier said of the potential for political fallout.
A representative of NAR did not have much to say about Edina Realty?s decision.
?Any firm can choose to not have its listings displayed,? said Ralph Holmen, associate general counsel for NAR. ?I don?t think it?s a common thing,? he said about other real estate businesses opting out.
Peltier said Edina Realty has never had a contract with Trulia.com or Realtor.com. The company simply supplied its data for the websites to use.
?We get paid nothing, and we pay nothing,? Peltier said.
Peltier said Edina Realty has never provided data to Zillow.com.
Edina Realty is owned by Minneapolis-based HomeServices of America Inc., which is ultimately owned by Omaha, Neb.-based Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Famed investor Warren Buffet is the chief executive officer of Berkshire Hathaway. Edina Realty was founded in 1955.
Peltier acknowledged that given the size of Edina Realty, the company is less reliant on other websites.
?We have the number one website in Minnesota. We know we get more hits and searches on our site than anybody else,? Peltier said of local real estate websites.
Peltier said Edina Realty has approximately 2,250 real estate agents.
Statistics from the Minnesota Department of Commerce showed more than 23,000 real estate brokers and sales professionals in January 2011. That tally includes both residential and commercial agents, but most are residential agents.
Peltier doesn?t buy the argument that Edina Realty?s agents will lose business over the decision.
?It?s easy to say we should be everywhere in marketing, but that?s never worked in the past,? Peltier said. ?Our site gives you everything.?
Peltier noted that several years ago, Edina Realty decided to drop print advertising as a company. Individual agents can still buy print ads, he said.
?We made that choice to benefit our sellers because they weren?t looking for homes in the paper,? Peltier said.
The company remains concerned about misuse of its data, he said.
?This isn?t really about Edina Realty as much as it is about the integrity of the data,? Peltier said. ?We?re trying to figure out what other aggregators are out there scraping our data. Unfortunately, there?s not many rules on the Internet.?
This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 22nd, 2011 at 7:30 am and is filed under Real Estate. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
CAIRO?? Egyptian soldiers and police set fire to protest tents in Cairo's Tahrir Square and fired tear gas and rubber bullets in a major assault Sunday to drive out thousands demanding that the military rulers quickly transfer power to a civilian government. At least 11 protesters were killed and hundreds were injured.
It was the second day of clashes marking a sharp escalation of tensions on Egypt's streets a week before the first elections since the ouster of longtime authoritarian leader Hosni Mubarak in February. The military took over the country, promising a swift transition to civilian rule. But the pro-democracy protesters who led the uprising have grown increasingly angry with the ruling generals, and suspect they are trying to cling to power even after an elected parliament is seated and a new president is voted in.
Street battles continued throughout the day and long into the night, spreading to side streets and sending a wave of injuries to makeshift clinics on the streets.
The military-backed Cabinet said in a statement that elections set to begin on Nov. 28 would take place on time and thanked the police for their "restraint," language that is likely to enrage the protesters even more.
"We're not going anywhere," protester Mohammed Radwan said after security forces tried unsuccessfully to push the crowds out of Tahrir, the epicenter of the uprising. "The mood is good now and people are chanting again," he added after many of the demonstrators returned.
The two days of clashes were some of the worst since the uprising ended on Feb. 11.
They were also one of only a few violent confrontations to involve the police since the uprising. The black-clad police were a hated symbol of Mubarak's regime and after the uprising, they have largely stayed in the background while the military took charge of security.
The military, which took over from Mubarak, has repeatedly pledged to hand power to an elected civilian government, but has yet to set a specific date. The protests over the past two days have demanded a specific date be set.
According to one timetable floated by the army, the handover will happen after presidential elections late next year or early in 2013. The protesters say this is too long and accuse the military of dragging its feet. They want a handover immediately after the end of the staggered parliamentary elections, which begin on Nov. 28 and end in March.
Story: Egypt protesters return to Tahrir Square to protest military 'dictatorship'
The protesters' suspicions about the military were fed by a proposal issued by the military-appointed Cabinet last week. It would shield the armed forces from any civilian oversight and give the generals veto power over legislation dealing with military affairs.
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But other concerns are also feeding the tensions on the street. Many Egyptians are anxious about what the impending elections will bring. Specifically they worry that stalwarts of Mubarak's ruling party could win a significant number of seats in the next parliament because the military did not ban them from running for public office as requested by activists.
The military's failure to issue such a ban has fed widely held suspicion that the generals are reluctant to dismantle the old regime, partly out of loyalty to Mubarak, their longtime mentor.
The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces issued a statement expressing "regret for the events."
The council doesn't intend "to extend the transitional period and will not permit by any means hindering the process of democratic transition," it said a statement read out on state TV.
The violence began Saturday when security forces stormed a sit-in at Tahrir Square staged by protesters wounded in clashes during the 18-day uprising in January and February and frustrated by the slow pace of bringing those responsible to justice.
The wounded, some on crutches, ran away when police attacked, but some fell down and were beaten by police.
One of those injured on Saturday was dentist Ahmed Hararah, who lost the sight in his right eye on Jan. 28 and now thinks he lost the sight in his left eye despite treatment at an eye hospital in Cairo.
The violence resumed Sunday, when police fired tear gas and rubber bullets to try to clear about 5,000 protesters still in Tahrir. Many chanted "freedom, freedom" as they pelted police with rocks and a white cloud of tear gas hung in the air.
"We have a single demand: The marshal must step down and be replaced by a civilian council," said protester Ahmed Hani, referring to Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, head of the ruling military council and Mubarak's longtime defense minister. "The violence yesterday showed us that Mubarak is still in power," said Hani, who was wounded in the forehead by a rubber bullet.
Many of the protesters had red eyes and coughed incessantly. Some wore surgical masks to ward off the tear gas. A few fainted, overwhelmed by the gas.
Around sundown, an Associated Press reporter in Tahrir said police and troops briefly chased the protesters out of most of the square. They set at least a dozen of the protesters' tents, along with blankets and banners, ablaze after nightfall and a pall of black smoke rose over the square as the sound of gunshots rang out.
Story: Egypt in uproar after blogger posts nude photos
"This is what they (the military) will do if they rule the country," one protester screamed while running away from the approaching security forces.
Protesters initially ran away in panic while being chased by army soldiers and police hitting them with clubs. But they later regrouped at the southern entrance of the square next to the famed Egyptian museum and began to walk back to the square. Hundreds made their way back, waving the red, white and black Egyptian flags and chanting "Allahu akbar," or God is great.
Both sides then began pelting each other with rocks.
Security forces pulled back to the outskirts of the square, where clashes continued into the night.
A video posted on social networking sites showed a soldier dragging the motionless body of a protester along the street and leaving him in a garbage-strewn section of Tahrir Square.
A medical official at Cairo's main morgue said at least 11 protesters were killed on Sunday. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to reporters.
Doctors at two field hospitals in the square said that among the dead was one man killed by a blow to his head and another by gunshots.
Rocks, shattered glass and trash covered Tahrir Square and the side streets around it. The windows of the main campus of the American University in Cairo, which overlooks the square, were shattered and stores were shuttered.
"The marshal is Mubarak's dog," read freshly scrawled graffiti in the square.
An Interior Ministry statement said some of the protesters were using firearms, firebombs and knifes to attack security forces.
Clashes also took place in the city of Suez east of Cairo, the coastal city of el-Arish in the Sinai Peninsula, the city of Alexandria and Assiut in southern Egypt.
___
Associated Press writer Aya Batrawy contributed to this report from Cairo.
? 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Last week, President Obama forcefully declared that the United States would not withdraw from the Asia-Pacific, telling the Australian Parliament that he was dispatching 2,500 Marines as well as ships and aircraft to serve at a base in the Australian port of Darwin. The message, in case anybody missed it, was unmistakably directed at China.
But while Obama was making symbolic military gestures, his administration was doing nothing serious to contest China's growing threat to America's economic base. That threat is spelled out in an official government document that should be mandatory reading for all of us -- the annual report of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, released last Thursday.
What's noteworthy is that this is a bipartisan commission created by Congress, and that all of its 12 commissioners, six Republicans and six Democrats, signed off on the report.
The basic findings: China is a mercantilist and authoritarian state that is determined to appropriate not only U.S. jobs but also U.S. advanced technology through illegal subsidies, suppression of worker rights, and deals with U.S. industry that are one part lucrative carrot (cheap wages, state capital) and one part illegal stick (if you want to do business in China, take a Chinese partner and share your trade secrets). Even then, you must produce mainly for export back to the U.S., not for sale in China.
Worse still, U.S. industry has been happy to take these deals, which makes them a domestic ally of the China lobby. While our government periodically makes half-hearted complaints that the Chinese currency, the Renminbi, is seriously undervalued, American corporations like that just fine -- because it makes their exports to the U.S. from Chinese factories even cheaper. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which fights industrial policy at home, lobbies fiercely against any pressure from Washington against Beijing's mercantilism.
So while the Obama administration flails around with small-bore military gestures and bipartisan free trade deals with smaller countries, it does not dare to challenge the grand bargain America's corporations have made with China, or China's own illicit policies.
Among the Commission's more important findings:
The U.S.-China trade gap continues to widen, especially in advanced technology. China sold the US $81 billion in advanced technology products in the 12 months ending last August, and imported just $13.4 billion worth. The total trade deficit with China was a record $273 billion, more than half of America's total trade deficit with the world. By mid-2011, China's overall trade surplus of $3.2 trillion was up $800 billion in just a single year.
Although China agreed in 2001 to stop explicitly requiring foreign companies to surrender their technology to China in return for market access and investment opportunities, the government in Beijing still employs several tactics to coerce foreign firms to share trade secrets with Chinese competitors. China's industrial policy in general and its indigenous innovation policy in particular seek to circumvent accepted intellectual property protections and to extort technology from U.S. companies.
These requirements and extortions explicitly violate prohibitions of the World Trade Organization.
China is becoming a national security threat, both because it is an increasingly important player in the supply chain for advanced components no longer made in the U.S., and because of its sophistication in cyber-warfare:
The U.S. government, foreign governments, defense contractors, commercial entities, and various nongovernmental organizations experienced a substantial volume of actual and attempted network intrusions that appear to originate in China. Of concern to U.S. military operations, China has identified the U.S. military's reliance on information systems as a significant vulnerability and seeks to use Chinese cyber capabilities to achieve strategic objectives and significantly degrade U.S. forces' ability to operate.
Despite the threatening and unpredictable conduct of North Korea, the Chinese Communist Party appears to have calculated that its interests are better served by the support of the [North Korean] regime than by its removal. Likewise, China's relationship with Iran undermines international efforts to curtail Iran's pursuit of weapons of mass destruction and support of international terrorism.
China continues to be an autocratic, one-party state that brutally represses dissent, even as it becomes a more effective state-led, pseudo-capitalist world power. Despite China's increasing productivity, the Chinese government suppresses domestic consumption so that it can have ultra-low wages and cheap capital to build its economic machine and bribe American industry to collaborate with its mercantilism. Its state-owned industry sector is still immense, as its favoritism for domestic companies in its public procurement.
Because of the American reliance on Chinese capital to finance the U.S. public debt and American capital markets and because so many of our largest corporations have made their separate peace with the Chinese regime, we may have already reached a tipping point where Washington is unwilling to make more than token complaints that Beijing knows not to take seriously. Though China's suppression of the value of its currency has been thoroughly documented, Treasury Secretary Geithner has repeatedly refused to formally cite China as a currency manipulator, which would compel the U.S. government to pursue sanctions.
While the West teeters on the brink of a second recession and perhaps a collapse of the Euro, China's autocratic state capitalism is largely unchallenged by either the U.S. or Europe. After the most recent European summit meeting desperately sought to cobble together a new bailout fund, European leaders went hat in hand to Beijing, where they were told in no uncertain terms that if they wanted China's help, they needed to stop pressing trade complaints and change China's status from "non-market" to "market" economy. This is how China exercises its immense leverage to tilt the playing field even more extremely in Beijing's favor.
As the Commission reports, this is the 10th year of China's provisional membership in the World Trade Organization. Though the U.S. government and others still have some leverage to change China's behavior, if they choose to use it, the Commission reports that China hopes gradually to "strong-arm its way into market economy status, and shake free of restrictive terms and obligations in its [WTO] accession agreement."
Many Americans naively emphasize China's great progress in improving its educational system. While we can only applaud the social strides China has made, the source of America's growing economic disadvantage vis-?-vis Beijing lies elsewhere.
While Republicans and Democrats elsewhere agree on nothing, all commission members after extensive testimony and study agreed on the mounting threat of Chinese mercantilism. The problem is that other Republicans and Democrats -- such as those in Congress and in the White House, have a much more benign view of the Chinese government and continue to naively promote a "free trade" that China doesn't practice.
And while U.S. industry occasionally complains about the outright theft of intellectual property, for the most part the largest corporations like the deal they have with its outsourcing, its cheap and docile labor and its capital subsidies by the Chinese government. The Commission reports that this costs the U.S. between 600,000 and 2.4 million jobs.
It is ironic that both the Republican jingoism, support for expanded democracy overseas, and saber rattling against other perceived threats, and the Obama administration's desire to look credibly tough in the Pacific, both stop well short of defending America's real national interests against Beijing.
As for those 2,400 Marines soon shipping out to Australia, they just might have the sweetest posting of any U.S. servicemen and women anywhere. Reenlistments should be no problem. Our newly truculent policy toward China might as well be called "Throw another shrimp on the barbie."
Robert Kuttner is co-editor of The American Prospect and a senior fellow at Demos. His latest book is A Presidency in Peril.
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