Sebastian Vettel still sees room for improvement ? Formula 1 news
Red Bull Racing driver Sebastian Vettel has said that he still sees a room for improvement in his driving despite winning his third consecutive world drivers? championship title in the 2012 Formula 1 season.
Vettel has been considered as one of the most talented drivers in the world of F1 and has now even been compared with the legendary drivers like Manuel Fangio and Michael Schumacher. He became the youngest triple world champion this year, but he believes
that there is still potential to make improvements in certain areas.
?In terms of results, the last three years and winning the constructors' championship have been perfect but I still feel that there are little bits here and there we can improve on,? Vettel told AUTOSPORT. ?That's the philosophy and the spirit that we share
in the whole team. You can always do better.?
It will be important to mention that the veteran German driver faced immense difficulties during the start of the season because the Milton Keynes based squad failed to create full understanding about their car?s design.
Nevertheless, the chief technical officer of Red Bull, Adrian Newey successfully developed the most competitive car for Vettel towards the end of the season with which he performed remarkably well in the last few races and won the title from his main rival,
Fernando Alonso of Ferrari, just by 3 points after securing 6th place finish in the dramatic season finale held at Interlagos in Brazil.
The three-time world champion has expressed that he is feeling immensely happy after winning his third championship title in a row and is positively looking forward to maintain his winning streak in the future.
?At the moment, I don't really reflect too much on what has happened over the last three years,? said Vettel. ?I am extremely happy and extremely proud of what we have achieved.?
Besides, he admired the efforts of all his team members who worked really hard throughout the year to develop the fastest car.
?It's better not to put it into perspective and to carry on focusing on what we do,? he added.
Carin Gring's remains identified by researchers at Uppsala UniversityPublic release date: 21-Dec-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Marie Allen Marie.Allen@igp.uu.se 46-070-892-4444 Uppsala University
The putative remains of Carin Gring, wife of Nazi leader Herman Gring, were found in 1991 at a site close to where she had been buried. In a recently published article, Maria Allen, professor of forensic genetics at Uppsala University, Sweden, and her associates present evidence supporting that it is Carin Gring's remains that have been identified.
The Swedish Carin Gring was married to the well-known Nazi leader Herman Gring. When she died in 1931 she was buried in Stockholm, but three years later Herman Gring had her remains moved to his residence Karinhall outside Berlin. At the end of the war, Karinhall was destroyed, and thereafter it was unclear what had happened to her remains. In 1951 skeletal parts were found that were thought to come from Carin Gring, and they were cremated and buried in Sweden. Forty years later, in 1991, treasure hunters found a casket with remains that could also be Carin Gring's. They were sent to Sweden and the National Board of Forensic Medicine for identification.
Marie Allen and her colleagues, together with Anna Kjellstrm at the Stockholm University osteoarchaeological research laboratory, have now examined the remains to determine if they can come from Carin Gring. Analyses of the total of 26 bones showed that they are from an adult woman. DNA analyses confirmed that they are from a woman.
The researchers then performed two kinds of genetic analyses. A comparison of so-called mitochondrial DNA evinced identical DNA sequences between the skeleton and Carin Gring's son, indicating a mother-child relationship.
"The variant of mitochondrial DNA we saw in the bones is a relatively common one, occurring in about 10 per cent of all Europeans. Therefore we went on to study nuclear DNA," says Marie Allen.
Analyses of DNA from cell nuclei is difficult if the DNA is degraded, which is often the case in skeletons that have been buried. Nevertheless, the scientists managed to analyse several places in the nuclear DNA and thereby show probable mother-son kinship.
"The results of our anthropological and genetic analyses, together with historical data, provides several pieces of evidence in the identification of the remains of the former Nazi leader Hermann Gring's wife, Carin Gring.," says Marie Allen.
Carin Gring has now been reburied.
###
For more information please contact:
Marie Allen tel: +46 (0)18-471 4803, +46 (0)70-8924444, e-mail: Marie.Allen@igp.uu.se
The findings are published online in the journal PLoS ONE.
Kjellstrm A, Edlund H, Lembring M, Ahlgren V, Allen M (2012) An Analysis of the Alleged Skeletal Remains of Carin Gring. PLoS ONE 7(12): e44366. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0044366
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Carin Gring's remains identified by researchers at Uppsala UniversityPublic release date: 21-Dec-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Marie Allen Marie.Allen@igp.uu.se 46-070-892-4444 Uppsala University
The putative remains of Carin Gring, wife of Nazi leader Herman Gring, were found in 1991 at a site close to where she had been buried. In a recently published article, Maria Allen, professor of forensic genetics at Uppsala University, Sweden, and her associates present evidence supporting that it is Carin Gring's remains that have been identified.
The Swedish Carin Gring was married to the well-known Nazi leader Herman Gring. When she died in 1931 she was buried in Stockholm, but three years later Herman Gring had her remains moved to his residence Karinhall outside Berlin. At the end of the war, Karinhall was destroyed, and thereafter it was unclear what had happened to her remains. In 1951 skeletal parts were found that were thought to come from Carin Gring, and they were cremated and buried in Sweden. Forty years later, in 1991, treasure hunters found a casket with remains that could also be Carin Gring's. They were sent to Sweden and the National Board of Forensic Medicine for identification.
Marie Allen and her colleagues, together with Anna Kjellstrm at the Stockholm University osteoarchaeological research laboratory, have now examined the remains to determine if they can come from Carin Gring. Analyses of the total of 26 bones showed that they are from an adult woman. DNA analyses confirmed that they are from a woman.
The researchers then performed two kinds of genetic analyses. A comparison of so-called mitochondrial DNA evinced identical DNA sequences between the skeleton and Carin Gring's son, indicating a mother-child relationship.
"The variant of mitochondrial DNA we saw in the bones is a relatively common one, occurring in about 10 per cent of all Europeans. Therefore we went on to study nuclear DNA," says Marie Allen.
Analyses of DNA from cell nuclei is difficult if the DNA is degraded, which is often the case in skeletons that have been buried. Nevertheless, the scientists managed to analyse several places in the nuclear DNA and thereby show probable mother-son kinship.
"The results of our anthropological and genetic analyses, together with historical data, provides several pieces of evidence in the identification of the remains of the former Nazi leader Hermann Gring's wife, Carin Gring.," says Marie Allen.
Carin Gring has now been reburied.
###
For more information please contact:
Marie Allen tel: +46 (0)18-471 4803, +46 (0)70-8924444, e-mail: Marie.Allen@igp.uu.se
The findings are published online in the journal PLoS ONE.
Kjellstrm A, Edlund H, Lembring M, Ahlgren V, Allen M (2012) An Analysis of the Alleged Skeletal Remains of Carin Gring. PLoS ONE 7(12): e44366. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0044366
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
TOKYO (Reuters) - The Bank of Japan delivered its third dose of monetary stimulus in four months on Thursday in a prelude to more aggressive action next year, as it faces intensifying pressure from the country's next leader for stronger efforts to beat deflation.
Shinzo Abe, whose opposition Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) won Sunday's election by a landslide, has put the central bank's independence on the line by repeatedly calling for a binding 2 percent inflation target, double its current price goal.
The BOJ expanded its asset-buying and lending program by 10 trillion yen ($119 billion) to 101 trillion yen, a widely expected move to ease monetary policy in response to the intense political pressure.
It also signaled a review of its current 1 percent inflation target at its next policy-setting meeting in January, when Abe will have a new cabinet in place ready to negotiate with the central bank.
"The Bank will discuss at the next meeting the medium- to long-term price stability it aims to achieve in the conduct of monetary policy," the central bank said in a statement after Thursday's meeting.
With the latest action, the BOJ has expanded asset purchases five times this year, the most frequent activity during single year in a decade. The last time it eased so many times was in 2001, when then Governor Masaru Hayami was battling a domestic banking crisis.
Markets had priced in BOJ action on Thursday, with 14 out of 19 economists polled by Reuters last week expecting further easing via an increase in asset purchases.
The yen has fallen almost 9 percent against the dollar since September, as Abe's emergence as the likely next prime minister raised market expectations of more expansionary policy and spending.
The dollar rose from about 84.23 yen to an intraday high of about 84.39 yen right after the BOJ's decision, but later sagged back down. It last stood at 84.21 yen, down 0.2 percent on the day.
Abe has said once he forms a cabinet on December 26 he will instruct his ministers to begin working with the BOJ on setting a shared inflation target.
PONDERING ACTION
Some in the BOJ, particularly officials close to the conservative Governor Masaaki Shirakawa, had wanted to delay any action until January, when there is more clarity on the new government's policies and when the central bank conducts a quarterly review of its long-term growth projections.
But that was too costly with business sentiment already slumping and companies delaying capital spending plans on weak global demand, adding to evidence that any rebound from recession early next year will be minor, analysts say.
Abe made a rare, direct push for a higher inflation target when Shirakawa visited the LDP's headquarters on Tuesday, saying that the central bank must pay heed to the fact that he won an election campaigning for bolder monetary stimulus.
The LDP and its coalition partner, the New Komeito, together won a two-thirds majority in the powerful lower house that would allow them to overrule parliament's upper house in most matters, including on any bill to revise the law guaranteeing the central bank's independence from government interference.
Abe, who plans to compile a big stimulus package to revive the economy, may use that threat to nudge the central bank into buying bonds more aggressively to finance the costs.
Politicians kept up the heat with a senior LDP official telling Reuters hours before the policy decision that it would make a difference if the BOJ showed its willingness to ease policy aggressively.
Shirakawa has consistently argued that setting a 2 percent inflation target would be counter-productive in a country that has not seen consumer inflation exceed 1 percent for most of the past two decades.
The central bank governor was due to hold an embargoed news conference later, with his comments expected some time after 0715 GMT.
($1 = 84.2600 Japanese yen)
(Additional reporting by Tetsushi Kajimoto; Editing by Alex Richardson and John Mair)
HOLLIDAYSBURG, Pa. (AP) ? A man fatally shot a woman decorating for a children's Christmas party at a tiny church hall and killed two men elsewhere in a rural township on Friday before he was shot dead in a gunfight with state troopers.
Three troopers in patrol cars were injured in a pursuit that began after the gunman, driving a pick-up truck, fired at them, police said. One trooper injured a wrist and then was hit in the chest but was saved by a bulletproof vest.
The gunman was killed during a final exchange of gunfire after ramming his truck head-on into another police cruiser, authorities said.
The shootings began in Frankstown Township, in central Pennsylvania, at about 9 a.m., and investigators were processing five crime scenes within about a 1.5-mile radius, authorities said at a news briefing Friday afternoon. Troopers were responding to a 911 call of a shooting in the township when they heard calls reporting at least one other shooting elsewhere, state police said.
"It's going to take us some time to put this all together ... and know exactly what occurred," said Lt. Col. George Bivens, deputy state police commissioner.
Authorities did not release the names of the victims or the shooter, though they did say the man lived in Blair County.
State police said they were still trying to piece together a timeline and motive. The gunman and the victims weren't related, though the victims may have been, at least distantly, Blair County District Attorney Rich Consiglio said.
Besides the woman, Bivens said, one man was shot at a residence, and the other man was shot at a crash site where the gunman "used his truck and also struck that vehicle much in the same manner that he did to our state police officer."
But family members of the victims said they were told the woman at the church was the first victim shot, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reported. The gunman then shot two men in the driveway of a home after a confrontation at a stop sign, one of the men's cousins, Marie Brenneman, told the newspaper.
"This person went to their driveway with a pistol, pointed at them and started shooting," Brenneman said.
She said both men were the shooter's neighbors in the tiny village of Geeseytown, about 70 miles west of Harrisburg, the state capital.
"They were uneasy around him," she said.
The woman at Juniata Valley Gospel Church had cooked food the day before for the funeral of the church's longtime pastor, said the Rev. James McCaulley, his brother. The church was still reeling from the Rev. David McCaulley's death when the woman returned to decorate its hall ? named after the pastor of 58 years ? and bullets ripped through a window, he said.
The gunman then entered and shot one of two women before he left, the reverend said.
Police identified the five crime scenes as the church; a home and ground around the home; a crash site where another victim was killed; the point in the road where the gunman opened fire on the troopers; and where the final encounter occurred after the truck collided with the police cruiser.
Bivens said investigators don't know if the victims were picked at random.
Besides the trooper wounded twice, a second trooper was injured by glass fragments in his eye and bullet fragments that hit him in the forehead, Bivens said. The third trooper suffered minor injuries from the head-on crash, he said.
"I think we have three very fortunate state police members tonight," Bivens said. "We are very thankful for the fact that they survived this attack. Someone was watching over them."
McCaulley, who is the pastor of another church about 50 miles away from the site of Friday's carnage, said his older brother began leading the Frankstown church in 1954.
"He preached his last sermon at the church in October before he fell ill," McCaulley said.
The church, which lists about 150 members in an online want ad posted this month for an associate pastor, is close-knit, and the woman killed Friday was among its more active members, McCaulley said. She had made food for him to take home Thursday since his wife had died this year, he said.
"The only thing I can say good at this time is that (the gunman) didn't do this 24 hours earlier when there was a big crowd in the church hall," McCaulley said. "We're devastated."
Friday's shootings were the second involving a rural Pennsylvania church this month.
An elementary school teacher is jailed on charges he fatally shot his ex-wife, a church organist, during a service in Coudersport on Dec. 2. The pastor and church members subdued him until police arrived.
As one of the world?s most frequent fliers, Tom Stuker will receive an annual mileage statement many travelers won?t see after a lifetime of globetrotting ? he is the first passenger to fly 1 million miles on United Airlines in a calendar year, reaching the milestone earlier this month.
LISBON (Reuters) - Angola plans announce the investment policy for its new $5 billion sovereign wealth fund in the first quarter of next year, the fund's management board said in a statement on Wednesday.
The fund was launched in October to invest in domestic and overseas assets by funneling Angola's vast oil wealth into infrastructure, hotels and other high-growth projects.
Angola, Africa's second-largest crude producer, is looking to diversify its oil-dependent economy by developing infrastructure outside the energy industry. The country was devastated by a 27-year civil war that ended a decade ago.
The locked-out NHL players didn't say anything intstructive about their labour impasse at a charity game Wednesday night in Toronto, which left Ryerson University goalie Louie George the most compelling story of the night.
Three things were clear from the RBC Charity Challenge that was fronted by NHLPA members P.K. Subban and Steven Stamkos at the new Maple Leaf Gardens on Wednesday.
First, after the game the players' responses to questions about the 95-day-old NHL lockout and the ongoing vote to authorize the NHLPA executive board to file the disclaimer of interest - if the players chose that route - were well scripted.
There were no Evander Kane-like brush fires to put out (see his Twitter photo from earlier this week) and there were no more verbal darts tossed in the direction of NHL commissioner Gary Bettman. The players obviously didn't want to take away from the charity game's cause, raising money for grass roots hockey.
Secondly, Eric Lindros must be a lousy coach. His Team Subban was badly beaten. Only a late-game comeback made the 13-10 affair appear closer than it was before a sellout of 2,600 at $30 a seat.
"I don't know if it was all his fault," Team Subban goalie Martin Biron said, jokingly. "Maybe [assistant coach] Rob Zamuner was to blame, too. I do know we needed a timeout there when we got down early."
The third development was the guy who had the most fun was Louie George. Who is Louie George? He is a 25-year-old, fifth-year goalie with Ryerson University.
Earlier this week, he switched on his computer to find an email from Ryerson head coach Graham Wise. The message read that the NHLPA needed a fourth goalie for its charity game, was he interested?
"It didn't take me long to answer that one," George said. He spelled Biron in the second period, played well and enjoyed the experience.
"It was so much fun," George continued. "This is something that I'll never forget."
George found P.K. Subban, Brad Boyes, David Clarkson, Joffrey Lupul, Chris Campoli and the others on Team Subban extremely welcoming.
"I sat beside Tom Kostopoulos in the dressing room and he could not have been nicer," George said. "He asked a lot of questions and wanted to know how my season was going."
Was there much chatter in the dressing room about the lockout among the NHLPA members?
"They talked about it a little, but not much," George said. "Mostly they were catching up with each other, finding out what they have been up. How much they have been working out or skating. That sort of stuff."
Predictably, George said he supports the players in their dispute with the owners. Back home in Waterloo, Ont., George has skated with some pros in the summertime.
The Ryerson hockey team is on a break right now. In fact, during some informal morning skates George has played out in recent sessions with his teammates. But he returned to his natural position the past couple of days once he found out of his evening with the pros.
"I think so," George replied, when asked if this was an experience he can build off when his league resumes in the New Year.
"These guys are so fast. They're threats from much farther out than I'm used to. I had to be ready."
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Public release date: 21-Dec-2012
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