ODriscoll anticipates centre scuffle at Twickenham

Brian O"Driscoll believes Englands new-look centre partnership is commencement to thrive.

The Ireland captain will close horns with Riki Flutey and Mathew Tait in tomorrows consequential RBS 6 Nations strife at Twickenham.

O"Driscoll, who will begin to one side long-time Leinster and Ireland team-mate Gordon D"Arcy, admires the change of the partnership.

Tait is eventually being since a run in his elite on all sides of outward centre whilst Flutey has determined himself as the long-term resolution to the series twelve conundrum.

They"re both really great players, but both are really different, pronounced O"Driscoll.

Rikis a second distributor whilst Mathew Tait is really most a set upon curtain who has played a bit on the wing as well.

Hes a really discerning man with great feet who has matured.

They"ve proposed up a bit of a partnership that is customarily going to get improved the some-more they fool around together.

Ireland have won five of their prior 6 matches opposite England but were thumped 33-10 on their last revisit to Twickenham in 2008Eddie O"Sullivans last compare in charge.

Martin Johnsons side have finished with Wales and Italy so far but were stung by complicated critique for their one-dimensional gameplan opposite the Azzurri.

O"Driscoll, however, has full apply oneself for a side he insists is never easy to beat.

Irrespective of how well they"ve been playing, England have a outrageous pool of players to select from, he said.

England are never a bad side. Any time I"ve played opposite them and won, the customarily been by one measure or less.

That only shows you have to be on your diversion to kick them.

Two years ago at Twickenham they were 10 points down and scored 33 unanswered points to win comfortably.

They"re starting to set up a little certainty and have dual wins from dual matches.

O"Driscoll paid reverence to John Hayes, who will turn the initial player to win 100 caps for Irelandbeating his skipper to the symbol by one match.

Johns grant to Irish rugby has been huge, he said.

Hes been a outrageous member of Irish teams over the decade and a cornerstone of the scrum.

Hes managed to collect up 4 Trip Crowns and a Grand Slam along the way.

Its flattering considerable for any one to fool around for their nation 100 times. He"ll have all the boys at the back of him tomorrow.

New heart valve deputy technologies suggest goal for high-risk patients

The majority in effect diagnosis for aortic stenosis, a usual heart condition that shows with angina, loss of alertness due to miss of red blood flow, congestive heart failure, or remarkable death, is valve replacement. However, large cohorts of people are never referred for this surgery since they are deemed as well high-risk even though the augury is grave but the treatment.

New technologies such as stent-based transcatheter valve deputy can right away be achieved on high-risk patients but the need for sternotomy (an rent by the sternum), a heart-lung bypass appurtenance or interlude the heart. Patients can additionally redeem in a step-down section compared with monitoring and diagnosis in an complete caring unit.

This procession will good the 3% of the ubiquitous race over 75 years of age that have serious aortic stenosis, a bound obstruction, and in the future, could potentially provide reduce risk patients such as in the 2% of the ubiquitous race that have a forsake called bicuspid aortic valves.

Stent-based transcatheter worth deputy right away offers patients a less invasive pick with potentially marked down risks, that might be quite profitable for elderly, high-risk patients, write Dr. Michael W. A. Chu, Division of Cardiac Surgery, London Health Sciences Centre (London, Ontario) and coauthors.

Transcatheter valve replacements should be achieved by an experienced, technologically skilful group of cardiac surgeons, cardiologists and anesthesiologists.

The authors interpretation that transcatheter heart valve deputy is still evolving, nonetheless the some-more than 10 000 inclination ingrained worldwide have helped settle success of the procedure. More report on long-term formula is indispensable to establish the destiny expansion of these techniques.

Princeton scientists find an equation for materials innovation



Princeton engineers have done a new thing in an 80-year-old bewilderment in quantum physics, paving the approach for the growth of new materials that could have electronic inclination not as big and cars some-more appetite efficient.

By compliance a speculation initial due by physicists in the 1920s, the researchers detected a new approach to envision critical characteristics of a new element prior to it"s been created. The new regulation allows computers to indication the properties of a element up to 100,000 times faster than formerly probable and vastly expands the range of properties scientists can study.

"The equation scientists were utilizing prior to was emasculate and used up outrageous amounts of computing power, so we were singular to displaying usually a couple of hundred atoms of a undiluted material," pronounced Emily Carter, the engineering highbrow who led the project.

"But majority materials aren"t perfect," pronounced Carter, the Arthur W. Marks "19 Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and Applied and Computational Mathematics. "Important properties are essentially dynamic by the flaws, but to assimilate those you need to see at thousands or tens of thousands of atoms so the defects are included. Using this new equation, we"ve been equates to to indication up to a million atoms, so we get closer to the genuine properties of a substance."

By charity a breathtaking perspective of how substances handle in the genuine world, the speculation gives scientists a apparatus for construction materials that can be used for conceptualizing new technologies. Car frames done from lighter, clever steel alloys, for instance, competence have vehicles some-more appetite efficient, and smaller, faster electronic inclination competence be constructed utilizing nanowires with diameters tens of thousands of times not as big than that of a human hair.

Paul Madden, a chemistry highbrow and provost of The Queen"s College at Oxford University, who creatively introduced Carter to this margin of research, described the work as a "significant breakthrough" that could concede researchers to almost enhance the range of materials that can be complicated in this manner. "This opens up a new category of element production problems to picturesque simulation," he said.

The new speculation traces the origin to the Thomas-Fermi equation, a judgment due by Llewellyn Hilleth Thomas and Nobel laureate Enrico Fermi in 1927. The equation was a elementary equates to of relating dual elemental characteristics of atoms and molecules. They theorized that the appetite electrons retain as a outcome of their suit -- nucleus kinetic appetite -- could be distributed formed how the electrons are distributed in the material. Electrons that are cramped to a small segment have higher kinetic energy, for instance, whilst those widespread over a large volume have reduce energy.

Understanding this attribute is critical given the placement of electrons is simpler to measure, whilst the appetite of electrons is some-more utilitarian in conceptualizing materials. Knowing the nucleus kinetic appetite helps researchers establish the make up and alternative properties of a material, such as how it changes figure in reply to earthy stress. The catch was that Thomas and Fermi"s judgment was formed on a fanciful gas, in that the electrons are widespread uniformly throughout. It could not be used to envision properties of genuine materials, in that nucleus firmness is less uniform.

The subsequent vital allege came in 1964, when an additional span of scientists, Pierre Hohenberg and Walter Kohn, an additional Nobel laureate, valid that the concepts due by Thomas and Fermi could be unsentimental to genuine materials. While they didn"t get a final, operative equation for without delay relating nucleus kinetic appetite to the placement of electrons, Hohenberg and Kohn laid the grave grounds that valid such an equation exists. Scientists have been acid for a operative speculation ever since.

Carter began operative on the complaint in 1996 and constructed a poignant allege with dual postdoctoral researchers in 1999, construction on Hohenberg and Kohn"s work. She has one after another to make afar at the complaint since. "It would be smashing if a undiluted equation that explains all of this would usually tumble from the sky," she said. "But that isn"t going to happen, so we"ve kept acid for a unsentimental resolution that helps us investigate materials."

In the deficiency of a solution, researchers have been operative out the appetite of each atom from blemish to establish the properties of a substance. The difficult routine bogs down the majority absolute computers if some-more than a couple of hundred atoms are being considered, exceedingly tying the volume of a element and sort of phenomena that can be studied.

Carter knew that utilizing the concepts introduced by Thomas and Fermi would be far some-more efficient, given it would equivocate carrying to routine report on the state of each and each electron.

As they worked on the problem, Carter and Chen Huang, a doctoral tyro in physics, resolved that the key to the nonplus was addressing a inconsistency noticed in Carter"s progressing work. Carter and her organisation had grown an correct operative indication for presaging the kinetic appetite of electrons in elementary metals. But when they attempted to request the same indication to semiconductors -- the conductive materials used in complicated electronic inclination -- their predictions were no longer accurate.

"We indispensable to find out what we were blank that done the formula so opposite in between the semiconductors and metals," Huang said. "Then we satisfied that metals and semiconductors reply otherwise to electrical fields. Our indication was blank this."

In the end, Huang said, the resolution was a compromise. "By anticipating an equation that worked for these dual sorts of materials, we found a indication that functions for a far-reaching range of materials."

Their new model, published online Jan. twenty-six in Physical Review B, a biography of the American Physical Society, provides a unsentimental routine for presaging the kinetic appetite of electrons in semiconductors from usually the nucleus density. The investigate was saved by the National Science Foundation.

Coupled with advances published last year by Carter and Linda Hung, a connoisseur tyro in unsentimental and computational mathematics, the new indication extends the range of elements and quantities of element that can be fairly simulated.

The researchers goal that by relocating over the concepts introduced by Thomas and Fermi some-more than 80 years ago, their work will speed destiny innovations. "Before people could usually see at small pieces of materials and undiluted crystals," Carter said. "Now we can fairly request quantum mechanics at beam of make a difference never probable before."

&

http://engineering.princeton.edu/

Constance McMillen shall go to the promenade Richard Adams World headlines

Constance McMillen wanted to take her girlfriend to prom – and now she can

The sad case of Constance McMillen, the Mississippi student whose high school cancelled its prom after she asked to take her girlfriend and wear a tuxedo, has a happy ending. A federal judge has ruled that McMillen"s rights were violated by the school"s decision, and a replacement prom hosted privately can also go ahead after its organisers promised to open it to all students, including McMillen.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which backed McMillen"s lawsuit, quoted her in its announcement celebrating the legal decision:

"It feels really good that the court realised that the school was violating my rights and discriminating against me by cancelling the prom. All I ever wanted was for my school to treat me and my girlfriend like any other couple that wants to go to prom," said McMillen, an 18-year-old senior at Itawamba Agricultural High School in Fulton, Mississippi. "Now we can all get back to things like picking out our prom night outfits and thinking about corsages."

Another prom is also being organised by the Mississippi Safe Schools Coalition, a support group for gay and lesbian students. The event will be open to all students in the state, gay as well as straight. Last week McMillen was a guest on Ellen DeGeneres"s talkshow and received a $30,000 university scholarship.

And the bigger issue at stake – helping future gay and lesbian students avoid similar discrimination – was also resolved. "This ruling clearly tells school districts there is a first amendment right to bring same-sex dates to the prom," ACLU lawyer Kristy Bennett told the Jackson Clarion-Ledger newspaper. The Clarion-Ledger also reported:

Kenneth Sherrill, a political science professor at Hunter College in New York City, said the international attention drawn by the story is remarkable, as is the outpouring of support for McMillen.

Sherrill, who studies social and political attitudes toward gays and lesbians, said the response shows "a cultural shift in the country toward greater tolerance." People blaming McMillen or condemning her lifestyle are "an embattled minority," he said. "That"s not mainstream anymore. Twenty years ago it might have been," he said.

Not everyone is happy with the court"s ruling. The conservative Christian lobbying group American Family Association said: "This is not about speech at all, but about the homosexual agenda. It"s about the schoolyard bullies at the ACLU using an activist federal judge to force schools to normalise sexually aberrant behaviour."

Canada sees medium expansion assisting close bill opening

Fri Mar 5, 2010 1:04pm EST

OTTAWA, March 5 (Reuters) - The Canadian economy willcontinue to grow modestly in coming years and that, combinedwith spending restraint, will help eliminate the budgetdeficit, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said on Friday.

Currencies&&&&Bonds

"We"re not anticipating dramatic growth in the Canadianeconomy but modest, moderate growth as we go forward which isall we need in order to get a balanced budget in the mediumterm," Flaherty said in a speech in London, Ontario.

Flaherty presented a budget on Thursday that outlinedspending curbs to help close the budget gap. (Reporting by Louise Egan; Editing by Jeffrey Hodgson)

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EURO BONDS-HSBC Holdings SAP Abengoa BCP RZD Matalan SCBC

Tue Mar 23, 2010 11:39am EDT Related News EURO BONDS-Banco Popolar Espanol, SocGen, SCBC, BNG, LloydsMon, Mar 22 2010EURO BONDS-La Caixa, Eutelsat, Santander, PohjolaThu, Mar 18 2010EURO BONDS-Vale, BHH, Ineos, Vicat, Nordea, Merck, LloydsWed, Mar 17 2010EURO BONDS-Nomura, Italcementi, Sparebank, Credit AgricoleTue, Mar 16 2010EURO BONDS-NIBC, Vestas, ING, BFCM, Abu Dhabi Bank, AarealMon, Mar 15 2010 Stocks & &

LONDON, March 23 (Reuters) - News, details on corporate bondissues in the European markets on Tuesday:

Stocks&&&&Currencies&&&&Bonds

SAP (SAPG.DE)

Issue: The German business software maker is planning adebut euro benchmark bond, an official at one of the banksmanaging the sale said. Roadshow planned for March 29-30.

Managing banks: BNP Paribas, Deutsche Bank, ING and JPMorgan.

Ratings: unrated.

ABENGOA SA (ABG.MC)

Mandate: Unrated Spanish engineering and bioenergy group hasset the final size of a 6-year bond at 500 million euros, asreported by IFR Markets, a Thomson Reuters online news andmarket analysis service.

Guidance: Final yield set at 8.625 percent from around 8.75percent initially.

Managing banks: BNP Paribas, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank.

HSBC HOLDINGS (HSBA.L)

Issue: The UK bank sets size of 30-year Lower Tier 2sterling bond at 900 million pounds, as reported by IFR Markets.Order books in excess of 1.5 billion pounds.

Guidance: Gilts plus 150 basis points from initial 150-155bps range.

Managing bank: HSBC

Ratings: SP AA-, Fitch AA

RZD CAPITAL LIMITED

Issue: The Russian state-owned rail transport monopoly plansto sell a 7-year dollar-denominated benchmark bond, said anofficial at one of the banks managing the deal.

Managing banks: Barclays, JP Morgan, VTBC

Expected ratings: Moody"s Baa1, SP BBB, Fitch BBB

BANCO COMERCIAL PORTUGUES (BCP.LS)

Issue: The Portuguese bank has opened books on a 3-year eurobenchmark floating rate note, as reported by IFR Markets.

Managing banks: Barclays, Millennium Investment Banking, BNPParibas, Goldman Sachs.

Ratings: Moody"s A1, SP A-, Fitch A+

SWEDISH COVERED BOND CORP [SBAB.UL]

Issue: The Swedish state-owned mortgage lender sets size onplanned 7-year covered bond at 1 billion euros, as reported byIFR. Books have closed at around 1.1 billion euros.

Guidance: Mid-swaps plus 48 basis points from an initialmid-swaps plus 45-48 bps range.

Managing banks: Citi, Credit Suisse, HSBC, Nordea andSociete Generale.

MATALAN

Issue: The British budget fashion retailer is due to price aplanned 7-year 225 million pound high-yield bond, callable after3 years, on March 24, a source familiar with the matter said.

Guidance: Yield around 9.75 percent.

Managing bank: Goldman Sachs

WESTDEUTSCHE IMMOBILIENBANK

Issue: The German bank is doing a 500 million euro fixedrate mortgage covered bond, an official at one of the banksmanaging the sale said.

Managing banks: LBBW, Morgan Stanley, UniCredit, WestLB andWGZ

Ratings: SP AAA

DEUTSCHE POSTBANK (DPBGn.DE)

Mandate: The German bank plans a 1 billion euro 10-yearjumbo covered bond, IFR reported. The issue is expected in thenear future subject to market conditionns.

Managing banks: BayernLB, BNP Paribas, Deutsche Bank, DZBank and HSBC.

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(London Corporate Finance: +44 207 542 8389)

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FOREX-Euro hits jot down low vs Swissie 10-mth low vs dollar

Wed Mar 24, 2010 2:52am EDT

* Euro breaks $1.3430, hits 10-month trough vs dollar * Hits 1.4232 Swiss francs before caution on SNB sets in * Germany signals support of European aid for Greece * But investors doubt quick Greece resolution at EU summit By Satomi Noguchi TOKYO, March 24 (Reuters) - The euro fell to an all-time lowagainst the Swiss franc on Wednesday after triggering a wave ofsell orders, and also hit a 10-month low on the dollar as doubtsthat any solution for Greece would be smooth kept it locked in adowntrend. Selling against the Swiss franc quickly lost momentum once ithit a record low of 1.4232 francs EURCHF=R, as traders grewwary that the Swiss National Bank may step in to slow its fall. Speculative accounts and a big German bank were said to havesold, setting off stops, before caution set in with talk that themarket could be getting quite short on euros which would make itvulnerable to a snap back if the SNB were to intervene. But a later wave of selling against the dollar plunged theeuro to $1.3403 EUR=, its lowest since early May, and itsmashed support at $1.3430 before buying linked to an optionsbarrier said to be at $1.3400 gave it a temporary floor. "The euro"s heaviness stems from concerns about the euro zonesystem -- whether it is functioning properly to back thecredibility of the single currency -- and this is an even biggerproblem than Greek debt woes," said a sales trader for a Japanesebank. The euro dropped 0.6 percent to $1.3416 EUR=. Traders saidthere had been stop-loss sell orders at $1.3430, which oncetriggered extended the euro"s losses in a downtrend that has seenit shed 6 percent against the dollar this year. EU leaders hold a summit on Thursday and Friday, and Germanyhas signalled for the first time that it may accept Europeanfinancial aid for Greece as a last resort. But it has pegged its support to several conditions,including the need for the International Monetary Fund to make a"substantial contribution". [ID:nLDE62M130] Analysts said uncertainty over aid for Greece, combined withlacklustre euro zone economic growth, could prevent the EuropeanCentral Bank from raising interest rates until well into nextyear, a prospect also likely to weigh the single currency down. "Be it the EU or the IMF, how either of them would rescueGreece remains uncertain. The euro looks set to trade defensivelyin the near term," said Masafumi Yamamoto, chief forex strategistat Barclays Capital in Tokyo. EURO/SWISS GIVES WAY The euro fell 0.2 percent on the day to 1.4246 francs. Dealers said the euro could eventually slide further, eventhough many expected the SNB would step in at some point, andsome reported loss-cutting sell orders down to just below 1.42. "The SNB will likely continue to intervene, but that will nowbe used to smooth levels rather than change them," Tsutomu Soma,senior manager at Okasan Securities in Tokyo. "At this rate, despite some rebounds, the pair looks to beheaded toward 1.40." The Swiss central bank is suspected of intervening in theforex market over the past year as part of its efforts to protectthe Swiss economy.<^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ euro/Swiss, suspected intervention r.reuters.com/sud94j ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^> SNB Chairman Philipp Hildebrand said on Tuesday it would keepfighting excessive appreciation of the franc to prevent deflationsurfacing, but analysts said it would probably shy away fromlarge-scale intervention as the economy recovered and it movedtowards normalisation of monetary policy. [ID:nLDE62M0D9] Against the yen, the euro dropped 0.5 percent to 121.60 yenEURJPY=R, and the Japanese currency edged up against thehigher-yielding Australian and New Zealand dollars. The greenback firmed 0.2 percent to 90.52 yen JPY= and onits broader index .DXY, a gauge of its performance against sixother major currencies, it rose 0.4 percent to 81.210, comingwithin sight of February"s eight-month high of 81.342. The New Zealand dollar dropped against the greenback afterdata showed the country"s annual current account deficit narrowedin the fourth quarter, but the improvement was not as strong asexpected. [ID:nSGE62K02P] The kiwi fell 0.3 percent to $0.7032 NZD=D4. (Additional reporting by Kaori Kaneko and Charlotte Cooper)

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