Wikinews interviews candidate for Minneapolis mayor Philip Sturm

Thursday, May 13, 2021

Wikinews extended invitations by e-mail in the first week of May to Philip Sturm, a candidate running in the mayoral election of the US city of Minneapolis, Minnesota set to take place November 2 alongside that for city council, two seats of the Board of Estimate and Taxation and nine seats of the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board. Sturm discussed information about his campaign and policies with Wikinews.

Sturm is a veteran who served from 1999 to 2003 in the US Marine Corps, stationed on Okinawa Island, Japan before performing operations in the US invasion of Afghanistan and 2003 invasion of Iraq. According to his web site, Sturm has a career in “manufacturing and operations”. According to his web site’s ‘civic vitae’ section, Sturm was co-chair for the DFL (Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party), District 62 in 2005 and a member of Veterans for Kerry.

He was a volunteer special deputy in Hennepin County, Minnesota, a member of the 9-1-1 emergency helpline workgroup for the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD), the 9/11 and GWOT (Global War on Terrorism) Remembrance Task Force with the Minnesota Department of Veterans Affairs and the racial equity fund with H.B. Fuller.

According to Minneapolis’ official website Jacob Frey won the last election in 2017 receiving 44.69% of the vote in the final round of voting. KSTP-TV reported Frey announced his run for re-election January 21. Sturm registered his candidacy on March 22.

Friday, February 26, 2010

Thailand’s Supreme Court today ruled that the family of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra be stripped of 46.3 billion baht (US$1.4 billion) in frozen assets, more than half of a contested $2.3 billion fortune. According to the court, the seized assets were illegally gained while Thaksin was Prime Minister; specifically, his familial involvement and connections with Shin Corporation.

In a statement released by the court, the judges said that Thaksin had adjusted government policies to favor telecommunications businesses, including Shin Corporation, a large telecommunications company owned by Thaksin, and his family, and sold to a Singapore investment firm in 2006. Additionally, Thaksin was alleged to have deposited shares held in Shin Corporation with family members whilst in office – a move to avoid, under Thai law, illegally holding any company stock while Prime Minister. Additionally, he was found to have unfairly promoted a $127 million loan to Burma – benefiting a satellite communications firm controlled by his family.

In a response from an undisclosed location outside Thailand, Thaksin contested the ruling, claiming the case was politically motivated and that, “the court was used to get rid of a politician.” In his remarks, he said that he came by his wealth legally, and he would continue his fight against both the ruling and the party that ousted him in 2008. In Thailand, Thaksin’s red-shirted supporters publicly opposed the verdict; although, no significant disturbances have been reported despite government warnings over the possibility violence. Instead, protesters say they plan a mass demonstration against the ruling sometime in March.

Saturday, January 14, 2006

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon remains in a coma after 10 days.

Medical experts on the outside say that Sharon’s failure to regain consciousness does not look well for his recovery.

On Wednesday, doctors began reducing the level of sedatives with the intent of drawing Sharon out of an induced coma. Hospital officials say that Sharon remains “lightly sedated”, but are not sure when he will wake up once they stop giving him the sedatives.

New reports say an EEG has shown that Sharon has activity on both sides of his brain and doctors say that’s the most “promising” signs they have had since they started to bring him out of the coma. Doctors also say that activity in both lobes doesn’t indicate anything about the extent of the brain damage. “It is another piece of information that on its own means nothing,” said Dr. Gal Ifergan, a neurologist at Soroka Medical Center in Beer Sheva, who is not treating Sharon.

Although he has activity on both sides of his brain, Sharon could still have extensive brain damage, Ifergan said. He also said that it’s “very worrisome that he hasn’t woken from his coma”, yet.

There are 2 major types of stroke, and Sharon has had both. The first was a mild stroke Dec. 18 caused by a blood clot that lodged in an artery in the brain, cutting off blood flow and causing minor damage. The second occurred just one day before he was scheduled to undergo surgery to repair a hole in his heart. This one was a severe cerebral hemorrhage

“After nine days he has had very slow progress and that indicates more permanent injury to a level where his quality of life is affected,” Dr. Demetrius Lopes, a Rush University Medical Center neurosurgeon said. “And then decisions will have to be made,” he added.

Sharon’s condition is still critical but stable.

Monday, February 18, 2008

Volunteers and interested people could visit the Belgian Indymedia headquarters in Brussels on Sunday during their second open door day. Around 50 people came to hear about the organisation’s evolution during 2007 and what’s coming up for 2008. A book about citizen journalism, with contributions from both mainstream journalists and several alternative media experts, was also presented. And the Indymedians mingled, with loungy Creative Commons music in the background.

Indymedia.be was founded in 2000, only a few months after Indymedia’s inception at the alter-globalist protests at the World Trade Organisation‘s summit in Seattle. This made them the first Indymedia on the European mainland. The Independent Media Center’s trademark is politically left, social reporting. The initial growth was slow, but during 2007, the organisation grew to around 110 regular contributors, with the first steps towards regional groups in Brussels and Antwerp. The public today could also visit the brand new media centre with new equipment. And although readership has increased exponentially to around 7000 visitors per day (and with it, server costs), finances have not, leading to a fund raising campaign.

Several projects during 2007 aimed to increase the quality of the articles; research projects such as those on the Belgian elections and formation crisis centred on social issues, where the mainstream media itself recognised that the political debate was often monotonous and lacking content.

Nevertheless, bringing analysis and background will continue a challenge during 2008. During the photographer’s workshop, the possibilities for photo documentary and photo-based interviews vs. simple photo reporting were illustrated as an alternative to bringing “just a bunch of pictures from another street protest.”

As a central player in the field of alternative media in Belgium, Indymedia also wants to stir the debate about participatory journalism. This has led to their first ‘media reader’ about the topic, and the creators hope more versions will follow.

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

A new historic physics record has been set by scientists for exceedingly small writing, opening a new door to computing‘s future. Stanford University physicists have claimed to have written the letters “SU” at sub-atomic size.

Graduate students Christopher Moon, Laila Mattos, Brian Foster and Gabriel Zeltzer, under the direction of assistant professor of physics Hari Manoharan, have produced the world’s smallest lettering, which is approximately 1.5 nanometres tall, using a molecular projector, called Scanning Tunneling Microscope (STM) to push individual carbon monoxide molecules on a copper or silver sheet surface, based on interference of electron energy states.

A nanometre (Greek: ?????, nanos, dwarf; ?????, metr?, count) is a unit of length in the metric system, equal to one billionth of a metre (i.e., 10^-9 m or one millionth of a millimetre), and also equals ten Ångström, an internationally recognized non-SI unit of length. It is often associated with the field of nanotechnology.

“We miniaturised their size so drastically that we ended up with the smallest writing in history,” said Manoharan. “S” and “U,” the two letters in honor of their employer have been reduced so tiny in nanoimprint that if used to print out 32 volumes of an Encyclopedia, 2,000 times, the contents would easily fit on a pinhead.

In the world of downsizing, nanoscribes Manoharan and Moon have proven that information, if reduced in size smaller than an atom, can be stored in more compact form than previously thought. In computing jargon, small sizing results to greater speed and better computer data storage.

“Writing really small has a long history. We wondered: What are the limits? How far can you go? Because materials are made of atoms, it was always believed that if you continue scaling down, you’d end up at that fundamental limit. You’d hit a wall,” said Manoharan.

In writing the letters, the Stanford team utilized an electron‘s unique feature of “pinball table for electrons” — its ability to bounce between different quantum states. In the vibration-proof basement lab of Stanford’s Varian Physics Building, the physicists used a Scanning tunneling microscope in encoding the “S” and “U” within the patterns formed by the electron’s activity, called wave function, arranging carbon monoxide molecules in a very specific pattern on a copper or silver sheet surface.

“Imagine [the copper as] a very shallow pool of water into which we put some rocks [the carbon monoxide molecules]. The water waves scatter and interfere off the rocks, making well defined standing wave patterns,” Manoharan noted. If the “rocks” are placed just right, then the shapes of the waves will form any letters in the alphabet, the researchers said. They used the quantum properties of electrons, rather than photons, as their source of illumination.

According to the study, the atoms were ordered in a circular fashion, with a hole in the middle. A flow of electrons was thereafter fired at the copper support, which resulted into a ripple effect in between the existing atoms. These were pushed aside, and a holographic projection of the letters “SU” became visible in the space between them. “What we did is show that the atom is not the limit — that you can go below that,” Manoharan said.

“It’s difficult to properly express the size of their stacked S and U, but the equivalent would be 0.3 nanometres. This is sufficiently small that you could copy out the Encyclopaedia Britannica on the head of a pin not just once, but thousands of times over,” Manoharan and his nanohologram collaborator Christopher Moon explained.

The team has also shown the salient features of the holographic principle, a property of quantum gravity theories which resolves the black hole information paradox within string theory. They stacked “S” and the “U” – two layers, or pages, of information — within the hologram.

The team stressed their discovery was concentrating electrons in space, in essence, a wire, hoping such a structure could be used to wire together a super-fast quantum computer in the future. In essence, “these electron patterns can act as holograms, that pack information into subatomic spaces, which could one day lead to unlimited information storage,” the study states.

The “Conclusion” of the Stanford article goes as follows:

The team is not the first to design or print small letters, as attempts have been made since as early as 1960. In December 1959, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman, who delivered his now-legendary lecture entitled “There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom,” promised new opportunities for those who “thought small.”

Feynman was an American physicist known for the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics and the physics of the superfluidity of supercooled liquid helium, as well as work in particle physics (he proposed the parton model).

Feynman offered two challenges at the annual meeting of the American Physical Society, held that year in Caltech, offering a $1000 prize to the first person to solve each of them. Both challenges involved nanotechnology, and the first prize was won by William McLellan, who solved the first. The first problem required someone to build a working electric motor that would fit inside a cube ¹/₆₄ inches on each side. McLellan achieved this feat by November 1960 with his 250-microgram 2000-rpm motor consisting of 13 separate parts.

In 1985, the prize for the second challenge was claimed by Stanford Tom Newman, who, working with electrical engineering professor Fabian Pease, used electron lithography. He wrote or engraved the first page of Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, at the required scale, on the head of a pin, with a beam of electrons. The main problem he had before he could claim the prize was finding the text after he had written it; the head of the pin was a huge empty space compared with the text inscribed on it. Such small print could only be read with an electron microscope.

In 1989, however, Stanford lost its record, when Donald Eigler and Erhard Schweizer, scientists at IBM’s Almaden Research Center in San Jose were the first to position or manipulate 35 individual atoms of xenon one at a time to form the letters I, B and M using a STM. The atoms were pushed on the surface of the nickel to create letters 5nm tall.

In 1991, Japanese researchers managed to chisel 1.5 nm-tall characters onto a molybdenum disulphide crystal, using the same STM method. Hitachi, at that time, set the record for the smallest microscopic calligraphy ever designed. The Stanford effort failed to surpass the feat, but it, however, introduced a novel technique. Having equaled Hitachi’s record, the Stanford team went a step further. They used a holographic variation on the IBM technique, for instead of fixing the letters onto a support, the new method created them holographically.

In the scientific breakthrough, the Stanford team has now claimed they have written the smallest letters ever – assembled from subatomic-sized bits as small as 0.3 nanometers, or roughly one third of a billionth of a meter. The new super-mini letters created are 40 times smaller than the original effort and more than four times smaller than the IBM initials, states the paper Quantum holographic encoding in a two-dimensional electron gas, published online in the journal Nature Nanotechnology. The new sub-atomic size letters are around a third of the size of the atomic ones created by Eigler and Schweizer at IBM.

A subatomic particle is an elementary or composite particle smaller than an atom. Particle physics and nuclear physics are concerned with the study of these particles, their interactions, and non-atomic matter. Subatomic particles include the atomic constituents electrons, protons, and neutrons. Protons and neutrons are composite particles, consisting of quarks.

“Everyone can look around and see the growing amount of information we deal with on a daily basis. All that knowledge is out there. For society to move forward, we need a better way to process it, and store it more densely,” Manoharan said. “Although these projections are stable — they’ll last as long as none of the carbon dioxide molecules move — this technique is unlikely to revolutionize storage, as it’s currently a bit too challenging to determine and create the appropriate pattern of molecules to create a desired hologram,” the authors cautioned. Nevertheless, they suggest that “the practical limits of both the technique and the data density it enables merit further research.”

In 2000, it was Hari Manoharan, Christopher Lutz and Donald Eigler who first experimentally observed quantum mirage at the IBM Almaden Research Center in San Jose, California. In physics, a quantum mirage is a peculiar result in quantum chaos. Their study in a paper published in Nature, states they demonstrated that the Kondo resonance signature of a magnetic adatom located at one focus of an elliptically shaped quantum corral could be projected to, and made large at the other focus of the corral.

Sunday, March 11, 2007

Sidney Crosby became the youngest player in NHL history to score 100 points in two consecutive seasons, and the Pittsburgh Penguins defeated the New York Rangers in front of 17,132 at Mellon Arena in Pittsburgh, Saturday. The Rangers did manage, however, to pick up a precious point, as they managed to send the game into overtime.

The only goal of the first period was scored by the Rangers’ Karel Rachunek, his 6th of the season at 19:14. The goal was assisted by Michael Nylander and Petr Prucha. Rangers goalie Henrik Lundqvist stopped all 7 shots faced in the first.

In the second period, Lundqvist continued where he had left off in the first, stopping another 7 shots, and blanking the Penguins for a second consecutive period. Just 1:11 into the period, Matt Cullen scored his 13th of the season to increase the Rangers’ lead to 2-0. Cullen’s goal was assisted by Jed Ortmeyer.

The third period over the past several games had been where the Penguins had amassed most of their offence. This game would prove no different, as rookie Evgeni Malkin scored a power play goal at 3:32, his team leading 31st of the season. Malkin was assisted by Ryan Whitney and Sergei Gonchar. Gonchar would pick up his second assist of the game less than 4:00 later, when on another Penguins power play, he and Malkin would set up Sidney Crosby for his record-setting goal to tie the game at 2-2. With the score locked up at the end of regulation, the game would go into overtime.

The Penguins, quite familiar with overtime, would end the game just 1:19 into overtime. With Sidney Crosby in the locker room due to an equipment problem, Colby Armstrong scored against Lundqvist to lift the Penguins to victory. It was not a total loss for the Rangers, however, as they managed to pick up a point in the contest. The Penguins don’t play again until Tuesday night, when the Buffalo Sabres travel to Mellon Arena. The Rangers return to the ice tomorrow at home against the Carolina Hurricanes.

Sunday, September 4, 2005

In Louisiana, southeast of New Orleans, two storage tanks estimated to be filled with up to 160,000 barrels (6.7 million gallons) of oil are reported to be leaking into the Mississippi River. It was first noticed on September 1, 2005 by an aircraft flying overhead. Officials are not certain whether the tanks are the cause of the leak or how full the tanks are. Inspection of the storage tanks from the ground is impossible due to flooding in the area.

In comparison, the Exxon Valdez oil spill off Alaska leaked between 11 and 35 million gallons of oil.

Due to massive efforts directed toward search and rescue in New Orleans, the Coast Guard has not been able to look into the matter.