NASA's Chandra helps describe the birth of a black hole

Friday, November 18, 2011

New details about the birth of a famous black hole that took place millions of years ago have been uncovered, thanks to a team of scientists who used data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory as well as from radio, optical and other X-ray telescopes.

Over three decades ago, Stephen Hawking placed -- and eventually lost ? a bet against the existence of a black hole in Cygnus X-1. Today, astronomers are confident the Cygnus X-1 system contains a black hole, and with these latest studies they have remarkably precise values of its mass, spin, and distance from Earth. With these key pieces of information, the history of the black hole has been reconstructed.

"This new information gives us strong clues about how the black hole was born, what it weighed and how fast it was spinning," said author Mark Reid of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) in Cambridge, Mass. "This is exciting because not much is known about the birth of black holes."

Reid led one of three papers -- all appearing in the November 10th issue of The Astrophysical Journal -- describing these new results on Cygnus X-1. The other papers were led by Jerome Orosz from San Diego State University and Lijun Gou, also from CfA.

Cygnus X-1 is a so-called stellar-mass black hole, a class of black holes that comes from the collapse of a massive star. The black hole is in close orbit with a massive, blue companion star.

Using X-ray data from Chandra, the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer, and the Advanced Satellite for Cosmology and Astrophysics, a team of scientists was able to determine the spin of Cygnus X-1 with unprecedented accuracy, showing that the black hole is spinning at very close to its maximum rate. Its event horizon -- the point of no return for material falling towards a black hole -- is spinning around more than 800 times a second.

An independent study that compared the evolutionary history of the companion star with theoretical models indicates that the black hole was born some 6 million years ago. In this relatively short time (in astronomical terms), the black hole could not have pulled in enough gas to ramp up its spin very much. The implication is that Cygnus X-1 was likely born spinning very quickly.

Using optical observations of the companion star and its motion around its unseen companion, the team made the most precise determination ever for the mass of Cygnus X-1, of 14.8 times the mass of the Sun. It was likely to have been almost this massive at birth, because of lack of time for it to grow appreciably.

"We now know that Cygnus X-1 is one of the most massive stellar black holes in the Galaxy," said Orosz. "And, it's spinning as fast as any black hole we've ever seen."

Knowledge of the mass, spin and charge gives a complete description of a black hole, according to the so-called "No Hair" theorem. This theory postulates that all other information aside from these parameters is lost for eternity behind the event horizon. The charge for an astronomical black hole is expected to be almost zero, so only the mass and spin are needed.

"It is amazing to me that we have a complete description of this asteroid-sized object that is thousands of light years away," said Gou. "This means astronomers have a more complete understanding of this black hole than any other in our Galaxy."

The team also announced that they have made the most accurate distance estimate yet of Cygnus X-1 using the National Radio Observatory's Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA). The new distance is about 6,070 light years from Earth. This accurate distance was a crucial ingredient for making the precise mass and spin determinations.

The radio observations also measured the motion of Cygnus X-1 through space, and this was combined with its measured velocity to give the three-dimensional velocity and position of the black hole.

This work showed that Cygnus X-1 is moving very slowly with respect to the Milky Way, implying it did not receive a large "kick" at birth. This supports an earlier conjecture that Cygnus X-1 was not born in a supernova, but instead may have resulted from the dark collapse of a progenitor star without an explosion. The progenitor of Cygnus X-1 was likely an extremely massive star, which initially had a mass greater than about 100 times the sun before losing it in a vigorous stellar wind.

In 1974, soon after Cygnus X-1 became a good candidate for a black hole, Stephen Hawking placed a bet with fellow astrophysicist Kip Thorne, a professor of theoretical physics at the California Institute of Technology, that Cygnus X-1 did not contain a black hole. This was treated as an insurance policy by Hawking, who had done a lot of work on black holes and general relativity.

By 1990, however, much more work on Cygnus X-1 had strengthened the evidence for it being a black hole. With the help of family, nurses, and friends, Hawking broke into Thorne's office, found the framed bet, and conceded.

"For forty years, Cygnus X-1 has been the iconic example of a black hole. However, despite Hawking's concession, I have never been completely convinced that it really does contain a black hole -- until now," said Thorne. "The data and modeling described in these three papers at last provide a completely definitive description of this binary system."

###

Chandra X-ray Center: http://chandra.harvard.edu

Thanks to Chandra X-ray Center for this article.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/115333/NASA_s_Chandra_helps_describe_the_birth_of_a_black_hole

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Gay soldier shares reaction to GOP debate boos

In this Nov. 16, 2011 photo, Capt. Stephen Hill, left, and his partner, Joshua Snyder, pose for a photo in their home in Columbus, Ohio. Hill, the U.S. Army captain who was booed during a Republican presidential debate when he asked a question about "don't ask, don't tell," just returned from a year-long deployment in Iraq, and says he wasn't trying to score political points, just peace of mind for himself and his husband of four-and-a-half months. (AP Photo/Jay LaPrete)

In this Nov. 16, 2011 photo, Capt. Stephen Hill, left, and his partner, Joshua Snyder, pose for a photo in their home in Columbus, Ohio. Hill, the U.S. Army captain who was booed during a Republican presidential debate when he asked a question about "don't ask, don't tell," just returned from a year-long deployment in Iraq, and says he wasn't trying to score political points, just peace of mind for himself and his husband of four-and-a-half months. (AP Photo/Jay LaPrete)

In this Nov. 16, 2011 photo, Capt. Stephen Hill, left, and his partner, Joshua Snyder, pose for a photo in their home in Columbus, Ohio. Hill, the U.S. Army captain who was booed during a Republican presidential debate when he asked a question about "don't ask, don't tell," just returned from a year-long deployment in Iraq, and says he wasn't trying to score political points, just peace of mind for himself and his husband of four-and-a-half months. (AP Photo/Jay LaPrete)

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) ? Army Capt. Stephen Hill says he wasn't trying to score political points when he asked the Republican presidential candidates if they would reinstate the ban on gays serving openly in the U.S. military.

He wasn't worried that his debate question, posed via a YouTube video recorded in Iraq, would generate boos or reveal his sexual orientation to millions of people, including his superiors and fellow troops.

All Hill was thinking about in September was his husband of four-and-a-half months, Joshua Snyder, in Columbus, Ohio.

Now that "don't ask, don't tell" has been lifted, he needed to know if the military would take the next step and recognize his marriage, or if a new president would try to force soldiers like him back into the closet.

"I was looking forward to the future and hoping everybody would realize we are soldiers first, always," said Hill, 41, an Army reservist who returned last week from his yearlong deployment. "I was hoping 'don't ask, don't tell' would be a distant memory for everybody."

In an interview with The Associated Press, Hill reflected publicly for the first time on his reasons for submitting the pre-recorded question for the Sept. 22 debate, as well as his reaction to the heckles heard around the world; the answer that former Sen. Rick Santorum gave to thunderous applause; and the outrage expressed on his behalf by, among others, his commander in chief.

With Snyder on the telephone, Hill watched the debate live from Iraq at 4 a.m. And this is what he asked: "In 2010, when I was deployed to Iraq, I had to lie about who I was because I'm a gay soldier and I didn't want to lose my job. My question is, under one of your presidencies, do you intend to circumvent the progress that's been made for gay and lesbian soldiers in the military?"

Santorum replied that he would reinstitute the ban on open service by gay troops because "any type of sexual activity has absolutely no place in the military."

"What we are doing is playing social experimentation with our military right now. That's tragic," he continued. "Leave it alone. Keep it to yourself whether you are heterosexual or homosexual."

Hill says the fact that he just outed himself on national television had barely registered when he absorbed the boos and Santorum's answer followed by applause.

"When the actual booing occurred, my gut dropped out, because my first inclination was, did I just do something wrong?" he said. "The answer, obviously, wasn't very supportive of gay people, and there was a lot of fear of how the Army would take the question."

He did not have to wait long to find out. At breakfast later that morning, the segment was playing on the chow hall television. Hill immediately tracked down his commander, who told him she had no problem with what he'd done but that she would need to run it up the chain of command. She later relayed the response.

"She said, 'What the military's most concerned with is that you are OK, because it's a lot of pressure on you and we want to make sure if there is anything we can do to help,'" he recalled.

President Barack Obama, about a week later, chided the Republican contenders for staying silent when several people booed an American soldier. Santorum said he had not heard the booing but condemned the audience members who did it.

What Hill remembers most was that a presidential candidate defined his marriage and military service in terms of sex. He holds that up against the times he hid Snyder's photograph because Army buddies were coming over to play video games, introduced his husband as his roommate or brother, and the legal vows they exchanged at the grave of Air Force Sgt. Leonard Matlovich, who was discharged in 1975 after becoming the first gay service member to challenge the U.S. military's ban on gay troops.

Snyder and Hill last month joined other same-sex military couples in suing the government for the same benefits as straight military couples, which the Pentagon denies them on grounds that federal law defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

"This is not about sex," Hill said. "A special privilege is not hiding pictures in my house or God forbid, taking mortar fire again and not knowing if Josh will be recognized. I'm fighting every day to protect everyone's rights as human beings, and it seems counterintuitive for me to be fighting for those rights and not have them."

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2011-11-18-Gays%20in%20Military/id-4f97d2b990904711bb05d073f45a344d

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Justin Bieber, Cee Lo Green To Play 'Christmas In Washington'

Jennifer Hudson, Victoria Justice will also perform at show, which airs December 16 on TNT.
By Gil Kaufman

Justin Bieber
Photo: Christopher Polk/ Getty Images

Justin Bieber will slip on his Santa hat next month for a command performance for the First Family when he takes the stage for TNT's annual "Christmas in Washington" holiday special.

JB will be joined by Cee Lo Green, Jennifer Hudson, Victoria Justice and the Band Perry on the show, which will be hosted by Conan O'Brien. The special will air on December 16 at 8 p.m. The 30th anniversary program — which will be taped at the National Building Museum in Washington on December 11 — will benefit the Children's National Medical Center. Among the attendees will be President Obama and the First Lady, along with other Washington VIPs, according to a release announcing the show.

While in England to promote the release of his Under the Mistletoe album, Bieber stopped by radio station Kiss FM, where he not only discussed his fans in the White House, but also spilled the beans that he would be performing at the annual show.

"President Obama ... his kids really like me, which is cool," Bieber said. "I'm actually doing 'Christmas in Washington,' and I'm performing for him and the whole Senate and all that."

Bieber previously performed at the event in 2009 — much to the delight of Sasha and Malia Obama — sharing the stage with the likes of Usher, Mary J. Blige and Sugarland. He also took the stage at the White House's annual Easter Egg Roll in 2010, and he's created a kind of bond with the commander-in-chief.

"[Obama] was really nice, and I was just happy to be [at the White House]," Bieber said last year. "We met [Sasha and Malia], took pictures with them, took pictures with the First Lady.

"The first time I met him was a couple months back," he continued. "I got to hang out with him in the Oval Office, which is pretty crazy, because no one really gets to go in there. It was pretty incredible. I got pictures with him."

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Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1674464/justin-bieber-cee-lo-green-christmas-in-washington.jhtml

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Bleed Pretty Cells: interview with Michele Banks

Multi-Cell Division ? Michele Banks / Artologica

Public spaces like national galleries have created a perception that art can be understood and appreciated by anyone, while the fine art world itself has grown ever-more self-referential and obscure to outsiders.

Here on Symbiartic, we sometimes cover artwork that?s?accessible?to a specific?audience, rather than everyone and no one. ?Artwork that speaks, evokes, and moves the scientifically literate. ?One of the best and sharpest artists in this new science-art movement is watercolour painter Michele Banks, a.k.a. Artologica. Banks has been having an excellent month online, her artwork appearing previously here on Symbiartic, then subsequently on the popular sites Brainpickings and io9.com.

At long last, I?m pleased to present an interview I knew I wanted to be doing way back when Scientific American first approached Kalliopi and myself about starting a blog.

- -

Hi Michele! ?Please tell us about yourself.

My name is Michele Banks. I?m a painter living in Washington, DC. I got here by the scenic route: I got a BA in Political Science from the George Washington University with a focus on Russia. ?I went on to get an MA from Harvard in Russian Studies and from there embarked on a career as a management consultant, working with big firms in London and Moscow on privatization and developing the post-Soviet markets. After five years of that, I was pretty bored and disillusioned, and I got married and came back to DC. Shortly after that, my husband got offered a job in Bermuda, so I went along but I was not given a work permit. I used the free time to have a baby and mess around with some artwork. After we moved back to Washington, I started showing my work in the usual places that beginning artists do ? coffee shops and community festivals. And I basically plugged away at it in a small way for years, until about two years ago, when I got online and kind of unleashed the kraken. (more below) You will probably have noticed that in all that background there is no art or science education. I?m entirely self-taught.

You work in watercolour, which is a deceptively unforgiving and challenging medium. What about it appeals to you?

The things I really love about watercolor are its transparency and the amazing things it does when it?s wet. Most of my paintings use a wet-in-wet technique, which means that I put down a background color and then add another color while the first one is still wet. The paint ?bleeds? naturally and forms amazing fractal patterns, just like tree branches, blood vessels and brain cells. This particular quality makes it ideal for mimicking forms in science and nature. In fact, I got into science art backward ? I started out making abstract paintings using the wet-in-wet technique and so many people told me they looked like things under a microscope that I decided to investigate. Then I studied up and started doing it on purpose.

Exploration 6 ? Michele Banks - Etsy"

The other thing about watercolor that appeals to me is speed. Some people like to work on a painting for months, but I am not one of them! ?I like to finish a painting in a single session. So while it?s true that it?s harder to fix things in watercolor than in other media, it?s OK, you just let it go and make another one.

Another thing ? that clich? that necessity is the mother of invention has a lot of truth. I started out with watercolor when I had a small child at home. I didn?t want dangerous solvents around, or acrylic paint that was going to stain everything. So watercolor it was. And all the little squares in my work ? partly I make those because the contrast between the regular shapes with hard edges and the crazy, free, soft shapes inside them attracts me visually and intellectually. Partly I came up with it because it?s very hard to control wet-in-wet watercolor in larger spaces. If you go too big, the water pools, the paper buckles, and bad things happen.

Artery ? Michele Banks / Artologica - Etsy"

Tell me about displaying work for sale on Etsy. ?What made you decide to take your images online? Is feedback from the Etsy community helpful?

After a number of years of showing and selling my work locally, I was in a rut. I needed to find a way to get to the next level and reach a bigger audience. I actually started on a site called Makers Market, a kind of joint venture between the Make blog and BoingBoing.net, which was trying to position itself as an ?Etsy for geeks?. Unfortunately, the site didn?t survive, but while it lasted, my work was featured on both Make and BoingBoing, which have huge online audiences, so that instantly raised my profile. ?When Makers Market shut down, I moved over to Etsy, which has been great. It?s harder to stand out because of the huge numbers of sellers, but I joined some teams focusing on science art ? Astro & Neutrino and Mad Scientists of Etsy ? ?that promote each other and all things geek.

I think it?s much easier to reach a niche audience online than in the traditional art world. I mean, in any gallery or festival crowd, how many people are going to be interested in biological watercolors? Probably not a great percentage. Whereas online, if you target the right blogs and websites, you can find lots of them. Maybe they?re scattered all over the world, but they?re all coming to those sites.

That?s how I feel about art online too. I think a lot of artists make the mistake of linking only to other artists, instead of finding their audience the way you have done.

You?re easily one of the most active science-artists on Twitter [?@artologica ]- how has being on Twitter changed your approach to your art?

Twitter has been an amazing resource for me in so many ways. I follow all these fascinating scientists and science bloggers, so just by reading their blogs and the things they link to, I?ve learned a lot more about science in the last couple of years than in the rest of my life put together. I?ve gotten specific ideas for paintings from my tweeps, too ? Streptomyces from @twistedbacteria, ?Slime Molds from @rpg7twit, and the Tree of Life from @phylogenomics, to name a few. ?All of these smart, hardworking people are always talking about their brains and their need for coffee, so I put that together to make my coffee-stain brains.

Latte Brain ? Michele Banks / Artologica - Etsy". These popular paintings are partially 'painted' using actual coffee cup rings, the sort that stain many desks during late night benchwork.

My twitter followers have been really supportive in terms of passing my work along to their networks. I mean, who knew that Twitter had a Pathogen Posse? There are people out there who are crazy about nasty microbes ? you just have to find them. I also learned about the ScienceOnline2012 conference via Twitter. I am so excited to attend in January and finally meet in person a lot of people that I?ve come to know online. All in all, Twitter has had a great impact on my work ? it provides me with inspiration and support, and it?s definitely helped to expand my audience.

I think some artists don?t get the best out of Twitter or other social media because they mostly write about their own work. I talk about everything ? art and science, sure, but also football, music, politics, kids, cats, whatever. If you think of it as a great free-flowing conversation that you can jump into any time, and you both listen and respond, then it?s amazing. If you just talk about yourself, then you?re that guy at the party that just talks about himself, and you?re not going to be very popular.

Good advice, yeah. ?It?s the social part of media: you?re not only selling your work, you?re part of a community. Art-blogs should not be television commercials.

Let?s talk about the aesthetics of your artwork. The first thing I notice when I look at your gallery is the lack of defined contours, and bright colours. ?You are doing scientifically-informed work, yet it appears close to minimalist in execution. How did this style develop?

I?ve noticed a pattern when it comes to things in nature, that there?s a sort of continuum, or maybe curve is a better word, of abstraction as you get farther away and closer up. Here?s an example. If you look at, say, a fly from a distance of six feet, it looks like a black speck ? very abstract. Then you get closer, and more details appear ? like wings and legs. If you get really close, you?ll see tons of detail ? all the little hairs and the patterns in the wings and so on. And that?s where a lot of science artists and illustrators like to be ? in that zone where you can see all the little stuff. I like to take it even further, so when you?re looking at the fly?s eye or leg, for example, at a super high magnification it becomes abstract again ? just a pattern of basic shapes.

I mentioned before about the wet watercolor making patterns like tree or blood vessels. You see these same types of branching patterns everywhere in science and nature, on every scale ? from rivers to trees to the veins in leaves to the tiny structures inside cells. It?s one of the things that makes biology such a compelling subject for me is that link between things at different levels. There?s an intense relationship between your bloodstream and a creek progressing toward the ocean ? it?s magical.
I can?t explain the prevalence of bright color very well, so let?s just say I like bright color. But even I get sick of super-saturated color sometimes ? I do a lot of work in just blue and white as a sort of visual palate cleanser.

Indigo Neuron ? Michele Banks / Artologica

I really enjoy your use of blue. My stand-out favourite in your gallery is Indigo Neuron, above. ?It?s mysterious and lonely, and the colours are so rich.

Tell us about the image that?s made the most impact.

The paintings I?m best known for are my images of mitosis, or cell division. I just love the amazing patterns and the sense of movement in these pieces. Plus, mitosis is just such a deep, basic thing ? it?s the engine driving living beings, so how could it not be compelling?

My coffee-stain brains have been very popular too ? those are definitely the ones I?ve sold most of to my online friends. They?re fun ? they have that little bit of science mixed with pop culture. Everyone can relate.

My favorite recent piece is my Tree of Life collage. I took a form that I?ve used before ? a ?recycled? collage of pieces of other paintings, and filled it with science. I love the way it pulls together different strands of my work.

Why or how did you get into this field? ?What do you hope to do with your work?

I moved sideways from being an abstract artist to incorporating more and more scientific imagery in my work. Not to be all profound about it, but I think scientists and artists are doing the same thing. They?re both finding ways to explore and explain the world. So that?s really what I want for my work ? for people to feel like it expresses something essential about life, especially about what makes living beings go ? and sometimes what makes them stop.

As far as my art career, I?d of course like to show my work in more places ? online is fine but seeing paintings in person is a much more satisfying experience. And I?d like people to buy my paintings and hang them on their walls!

Impossible EKG ? Michele Banks / Artologica Etsy

Where can interested science-art fans and institutions find you online?

Any upcoming shows?

My work is on display until January 20 at Johns Hopkins University Montgomery County campus in Rockville, MD and will be featured in a joint show with Kendall Nordin from January ? March 2012 at the Cafritz Foundation Arts Center at Montgomery College in Silver Spring, MD.

Michele, what?s your favourite colour?

Manganese blue, how I love you.

Thanks for the interview, Michele!

Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=debbfd6f56a363a3cd84eac304fdeca6

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The BMW i3: Advancing Automotive Sustainability

The following post is a part of TriplePundit?s coverage of the 2011 Opportunity Green Conference in Los Angeles, California. To read all the posts in the series, click here.

By Kara Scharwath

When I think about the companies that are leading in the corporate social responsibility space, I have to admit that the automobile industry doesn?t generally make it onto my short list. Despite the success of the Nissan LEAF and the Chevy Volt, I still have some reservations about just how much greener electric cars really are. In my mind, the materials and energy intensive nature of automobile manufacturing seems like an impossible hurdle to overcome. However, a presentation given by BMW?s Manuel Sattig at Opportunity Green 2011 has me rethinking my assumptions.

It turns out that among auto manufacturers, BMW is one of the most sustainable in the world. It was ranked as the second most sustainable global vehicle manufacturer by Newsweek this year, and is the only car company that has been ranked on the Dow Jones Sustainability Index every year since the index?s inception. Now BMW is using it?s expansion into the electric vehicle business as an opportunity to question and rethink their entire business. According to Sattig, BMW is pursing ?electro-mobility,? a concept that goes beyond just producing greener cars by redefining the meaning of personal mobility.

BMW hasn?t rushed their launch into the EV market. They have been conducting field tests on multiple iterations of EV models. The company began their foray into EV?s with the MINI E, a 100?percent electric two-seater. BMW used scientific monitoring during field trials to study the impact of the range of the car, how people behave when they are driving it, and how they use EV infrastructure to recharge it. The learning from the trials was then incorporated into the design of the ActiveE, a BMW-branded full size sedan which is currently in field trials in the US.

BMW?s first mass produced electric vehicle will be the BMW i3 which is scheduled for release in 2013, and will be followed by a sporty plug-in hybrid, the i8 in 2014. In designing these two vehicles, BMW looked at its entire value chain to identify ways to reduce its environmental impacts. To address the issue of raw materials sourcing, the company replaced 80?percent of the aluminum and 25 percent?of the plastics used in the car with either recycled material or new material produced using renewable energy. BMW worked with the SGL Group for the cars? carbon fiber components which are manufactured using hydropower, reducing the associated carbon emissions by 50 percent. Both cars will be produced in BMW?s Leipzig plant in Germany using 100 percent?renewable energy. This plant has the leanest production system in the European auto industry. As part of the expansion of the factory, BMW improved the space as a working environment by incorporating more natural light and reduced sound levels 50 percent?by eliminating the need for a steel press.

In addition to revamping the i3?s production, BMW transformed the body of the car into an elegant if not futuristic looking design optimized for electric powered mobility. The lightweight architecture of the car increases both its range and driving performance. The streamlined interior ? the so-called ?Life? module ? has been enhanced in terms of both space and connectivity. BMW?s integrated mobility services provide drivers with a variety of smartphone applications and an intelligent navigation system that creates a more meaningful connection between the car and the driver?s life outside it.

Instead of taking a car and simply swamping out the combustion engine for an electric drive system, BMW has rethought and redesigned the entire vehicle for it?s most promising application ? as an emission-free urban mode of transport that?s just as innovative and intelligent as it?s owner is likely to be.

[Image credit: Claudio N??ez, Flickr]

***

Kara Scharwath is a corporate social responsibility professional, marketing consultant and Sustainable Management MBA Candidate. She is currently working as a Graduate Associate in Corporate Citizenship at the Walt Disney Company while pursuing her degree at Presidio Graduate School.

Source: http://www.triplepundit.com/2011/11/bmw-i3-advancing-automotive-sustainability/

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Review: Kindle Fire sacrifices to get under $200 (AP)

NEW YORK ? The Kindle was always an odd product name. Amazon used a verb to name a thing, raising the question: Kindle what? Now we have the answer: Kindle Fire.

The Kindle Fire is the first full-color, touch-screen Kindle. It's available in the U.S. starting Monday for $199.

A price like that for what's essentially a small iPad is bound to light the flames of desire this holiday season. I want to cool those down a bit, or some of you will buy the Fire and feel burned.

The Fire is the best Kindle yet, no doubt about it. It's amazing that it costs half of what the first Kindle cost, just four years ago, yet does so much more than display books.

It's more of an all-purpose computer than an e-reader. It shows movies, TV shows and Web pages. It does email and lets you play games. You'll be lucky to get any reading done, with so many other things to do.

But it has to be weighed against the competition. When you do that, it becomes apparent just how spare Amazon had to keep the device to limbo under that $200 price level.

The Kindle's design is even starker than the iPad's. It's a black monolith with only one button ? the power switch ? and two jacks, for headphones and power. All the controls are on the screen.

The screen measures 7 inches diagonally. It's much smaller than the iPad by surface area, making the Fire more portable. It will fit nicely into a handbag, for instance.

The size of the screen wasn't much of an issue on the monochrome Kindles because they were mainly good for showing text anyway. But the responsive color screen of the Fire opens up a lot of possibilities, such as showing magazine and comic-book pages.

Here, the small size of the screen gets in the way. It's just too far from standard page sizes to do them justice. Magazine pages look tiny. Amazon has to jump through some hoops to make them readable, like including a mode that shows just the text. But flicking through a magazine is still a lot of work ? and that's one thing that should not be like work.

Barnes & Noble's Nook Color, launched last year, has the same problem ? a nice color screen that's too small. The iPad gets it right, for a few hundred dollars more.

While we're on the subject of "too small," let's talk about the Fire's memory. It has 8 gigabytes of storage. That's enough for more books than you'll ever read, but 10 movies will eat up the whole thing.

The cheapest iPad, which costs $499, has twice as much memory. The Nook Color, which costs $199, also has 8 gigabytes, but it comes with a slot for memory expansion with cheap cards. I don't understand why the Fire doesn't have a slot like that. The very first Kindle did. There's no step-up model of the Fire with more memory.

Amazon says the Fire doesn't need more memory because the company provides an online storage locker, where you can stuff all your music and other content. That works when you have Wi-Fi coverage, but not otherwise ? the Fire doesn't have the ability to use cellular networks, as some of the monochrome models do.

The Fire also lacks a camera and a microphone. Those aren't things you'd expect in an e-reader (the Nook also lacks them). But they are standard features on tablets and are quite useful, particularly for videoconferencing. Their absence is forgivable at $199.

The color screen means, inevitably, that battery life suffers compared with e-readers that use power-sipping monochrome screens. Amazon puts the reading time at eight hours, compared with about 30 hours for the new $99 Kindle Touch, which has a monochrome, touch-sensitive screen and is designed just for reading.

The Fire's software is based on Google Inc.'s Android software, used in smartphones and a bevy of tablets that compete with the iPad. None has really caught on, except to some extent the Nook Color. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos says this is because the other tablets lack an ecosystem of the kind Apple provides in iTunes: an integrated market for books, movies, music and applications.

Amazon has done a good job of setting up its own store. Buying and downloading books and movies is a quick process ? as long as you're buying them from Amazon.

People complain about how Apple dictates the terms of access to the iPhone and iPad, but Amazon's Kindles have always been more restrictive, and the Fire is only a slight departure from that strategy.

You can't buy copy-protected books from anyone but Amazon and expect to read them on the Fire, as you can on the iPad. Even the Nooks allow third-party books. Amazon achieves this control by operating its own app store, separate from the Android Market run by Google. Clever people will figure out a way to bypass this and install any app they want, but most people won't want to bother.

To Amazon's credit, it's allowing the excellent Comixology comics app onto the Fire. That means you don't have to buy your comics from Amazon, and you aren't restricted to the Fire's built-in (and inferior) comics browser. It's also letting the apps for the Netflix and Hulu streaming services onto the device, in competition with Amazon's own streaming service.

So the Fire does justice to fiction and movies, but the iPad does better in almost every way, particularly in the selection of apps, which is about 50 times greater than the Fire's.

If the step up to $499 is too much, you might want to consider the Nook Tablet, which comes out Friday. At $249, it will be the same size as the Fire, but with twice the memory, plus a memory expansion slot. It won't access all of Amazon's goodies and apps, but it will have Netflix and Hulu. Take a look at it before jumping to the Fire.

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Peter Svensson can be reached at http://twitter.com/petersvensson

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/tech/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111115/ap_on_hi_te/us_tec_digital_life_tech_test_kindle_fire

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Pink Floyd guitarist's son released from jail (AP)

LONDON ? The son of Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour has been released from prison after he was sentenced for violent disorder during student protests last year.

Charlie Gilmour was one of thousands who protested against rising university fees in December. He was among a group who attacked a convoy carrying Prince Charles and his wife, Camilla, and he was photographed hanging from a Union flag on the Cenotaph, a British war memorial.

Lawyer Robert Brown said Tuesday the 21-year-old student has been released from jail, subject to compliance with a home detention curfew for the next few months.

Brown says Gilmour's early release from his 16-month sentence is not special treatment but normal procedure for prisoners serving a similar period.

Gilmour was jailed in July.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/music/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111115/ap_en_mu/eu_britain_pink_floyd

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