Formula One: I hope to race in Pakistan one day, says Vettel

ABU DHABI: With sports fans in Pakistan experiencing dearth of international action, Formula One’s youngest double world champion Sebastian Vettel has showered them with hopes of seeing him in action in the future.

Vettel, who, at the Yas Marina circuit in Abu Dhabi, equalled Nigel Mansell’s record of 14 pole position in a single season, has won 11 races this year including the inaugural Indian Grand Prix that marked the arrival of Formula One in the subcontinent.

With a huge following in the country – of the sport and the driver – the security situation and the infrastructure will hinder any possibilities of the sport coming to Pakistan but Vettel’s willingness may give authorities a push to get things moving.

“It is great to know that there are so many fans around the globe watching us race, especially if they don’t get a chance to see us live in action and on the track,” Vettel told The Express Tribune in Abu Dhabi.

“I hope that, one day in the future, there will be an opportunity for us to bring the sport closer to them. This will allow us to help them experience what it is all about.”

Vettel’s retirement in Abu Dhabi, his first since last year’s Korean Grand Prix over a year ago, ended his run as the only driver to finish every race in 2011.

The right rear puncture allowed on the opening lap allowed Briton Lewis Hamilton to take the lead, one that he maintained until the chequered flag to win one of his ‘best races’. Vettel’s unassailable lead in the championship, however, allowed him a smile despite such an early exit after a stunning qualifying lap that threatened another podium finish.

Massa issued warning

Meanwhile, Ferrari President Luca di Montezemolo has issued a warning to Brazilian driver Felipe Massa to improve in the next season.

Massa has failed to finish higher than fifth this season and has seen his teammate Fernando Alonso win at Silverstone and sit third in the drivers’ rankings, just 10 behind former world champion Jenson Button.

Alonso’s 245 points are more than double Massa’s 108 and has led to speculation over the Brazilian’s future.

“Let’s hope 2012 goes well,” Montezemolo told La Gazzetta dello Sport. “I have great confidence in our drivers and there seems to have been a clarification as regards the regulations.

“I’m sure we’ll have a more competitive car. We have a contract with Fernando until 2016 and he’s the best driver in the world.”

Montezemolo was not satisfied with the team’s performance in the season, terming its reluctance to take enough risks during the winter the biggest reason behind its downfall.

“I’d give the team a five on ten which I’ll raise to six considering the effort and the victory at Silverstone exactly 60 years after Ferrari’s first win in F1. But the season started badly, we didn’t interpret the regulations well and we didn’t take risks in the technology of our project.”

Vettel’s show this season

Australia       -         1^st

Malaysia       -         1^st

China            –         2^nd

Turkey          –         1^st

Spain            –         1^st

Monaco         –         1^st

Canada         –         2^nd

Valencia       –         1^st

Britain          –         2^nd

Germany      –         4^th

Hungary        –         2^nd

Belgium        –         1^st

Italy              –         1^st

Singapore     -         1^st

Japan            –         3^rd

Korea            –         1^st

India             –         1^st

Abu Dhabi     –         DNF

NASA's NPP Satellite Acquires First VIIRS Image

GREENBELT, Md. -- The Visible Infrared Imager Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) onboard NASA's newest Earth-observing satellite, NPP, acquired its first measurements on Nov. 21, 2011. This high-resolution image is of a broad swath of Eastern North America from Canada’s Hudson Bay past Florida to the northern coast of Venezuela. The VIIRS data were processed at the NOAA Satellite Operations Facility (NSOF) in Suitland, Md.

VIIRS is one of five instruments onboard the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System Preparatory Project (NPP) satellite that launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., on Oct. 28. Since then, NPP reached its final orbit at an altitude of 512 miles (824 kilometers), powered on all instruments and is traveling around the Earth at 16,640 miles an hour (eight kilometers per second).

"This image is a next step forward in the success of VIIRS and the NPP mission," said James Gleason, NPP project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

VIIRS will collect radiometric imagery in visible and infrared wavelengths of the Earth's land, atmosphere, and oceans. By far the largest instrument onboard NPP, VIIRS weighs about 556 pounds (252 kilograms). Its data, collected from 22 channels across the electromagnetic spectrum, will be used to observe the Earth's surface including fires, ice, ocean color, vegetation, clouds, and land and sea surface temperatures.

"VIIRS heralds a brightening future for continuing these essential measurements of our environment and climate," said Diane Wickland, NPP program scientist at NASA headquarters in Washington. She adds that all of NPP's five instruments will be up and running by mid-December and NPP will begin 2012 by sending down complete data.

"NPP is right on track to ring in the New Year," said Ken Schwer, NPP project manager at NASA Goddard. "Along with VIIRS, NPP carries four more instruments that monitor the environment on Earth and the planet's climate, providing crucial information on long-term patterns to assess climate change and data used by meteorologists to improve short-term weather forecasting."

NPP serves as a bridge mission from NASA's Earth Observing System (EOS) of satellites to the next-generation Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS), a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) program that will also collect weather and climate data. NASA Goddard manages the NPP mission for the Earth Science Division of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. The JPSS program provides the NPP ground system and NOAA provides operational support.

During NPP's five-year life, the mission will extend more than 30 key long-term datasets that include measurements of the atmosphere, land and oceans. NASA has been tracking many of these properties for decades. NPP will continue measurements of land surface vegetation, sea surface temperature, and atmospheric ozone that began more than 25 years ago.

"The task now for the science community is to evaluate VIIRS performance and determine the accuracy of its data products," said Chris Justice a professor of geography at the University of Maryland, College Park, who will be using VIIRS data in his research.

"These long-term data records are critical in monitoring how the Earth's surface is changing - either from human activity or through climate change."

CLICK HERE TO SEE LARGE IMAGE

Need For Speed: The Run

Adrenaline junkies and speed fiends will find themselves on the wrong side of the law in Need for Speed: The Run.

Players will take control of Jack, a driver on the run from cops and crims alike in a cross-country race from San Francisco to New York after a prize of US$25 million.

Players will blow across borders, weave through dense urban traffic, rocket down icy mountain passes and navigate narrow canyons at breakneck speeds.

Powered by DICE’s Frostbite 2 engine, Need for Speed: The Run aims to take the action racing genre to new heights with stunning visuals and car physics that hug the road even at top speeds all built around a gripping storyline.

“This is the year that Need for Speed goes to the next level,” says Jason DeLong, Executive Producer at EA.

“We think that Need for Speed The Run is going to surprise people with its intense, thrilling story and big action feel. But the game would be nothing without hot cars and crazy-fast chases. So that is what we’re delivering - explosive racing that will have players flirting with disaster at 200-miles an hour.”

Need for Speed: The Run is the 18^th title in the NFS franchise, and will be released for PC, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Nintendo Wii and 3DS on November 17.

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MULTI PLAYER

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Even though it’s one of the best-selling franchises of all time, some may have missed that Need for Speed: The Run is coming out in less than two weeks on November 15 aka retail apocalypse for games. Despite competition from Assassin’s Creed Revelation, Mario 3D Land, and Saints Row: The Third that week (among a hundred other games), The Run keeps looking good every time we see it. This newest trailer details how the racers online works, with the races looking nice and on foot missions thankfully absent.

The cross-country multiplayer races are promising, and the graphics are top of the line, but can it beat the great online of last year’s Hot Pursuit? And if you need anything else to sell you on the game, The Run will soon have a fancy new commercial that involves the director of all things shiny and fast, Michael Bay. Once enough people like or share a teaser for it on the official Facebook for the game, EA will release the Transformers director's ad to the world. And if you don’t think Michael Bay knows commercials, you never saw this.
 
Watch the Official Teaser Trailer.

Climate Change and the Developing World

The United Nations Development Program delivered some dire news Wednesday in its annual Human Development Report. By midcentury, it said, the development progress of the poorest countries will be halted or even reversed if bold steps are not taken to forestall the effects of climate change.

“The poorest countries’ really remarkable and often overlooked progress in recent decades now faces this calamity down the road,” said William Orme, a spokesman for the agency. “If their progress is stopped because we developed countries didn’t do things that we could have, it adds a huge moral imperative to take action sooner rather than later on climate change.”

The study tracks 187 countries and territories in the U.N.’s human development index, which is based on composite measurements of health, education and income, and has tracked global living standards since 1990.

From 1970 to 2010, countries in the lowest 25 percent of the rankings improved their scores by a striking 82 percent, twice the global average. If this pace of improvement continues over the next 40 years, the report says, most of these countries would achieve standards equal to or better than those now enjoyed by the top 25 percent.

But models of future scenarios cast doubt that this progress will come to pass.

Factoring in the effects of global warming on weather, food production and pollution, the index’s average score drops 8 percent worldwide from what would otherwise be predicted (and it drops by 12 percent in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia). In the more adverse “disaster” scenario — which entails vast deforestation, dramatic biodiversity declines and increasing extreme weather — the global index falls by 15 percent, with the deepest losses felt in poor regions.

Providing electricity to the 1.5 billion people — 45 percent of them in Africa — who currently live without it would be a step in the right direction, Mr. Orme says. Electricity means children can study at night, electric stoves can be used instead of pollution-emitting coal, and people can have access to a wider community through television or radio. “We can do this without increasing global CO2 by even 1 percent,” he says.

The agency proposes an international tax on foreign exchange trading to raise $40 billion toward that goal. And it says reducing carbon-dioxide emissions in developed nations — Denmark, for example, has pledged to cut emissions by 40 percent within the decade — can be achieved without lowering living conditions.

As for the United States, it ranked fourth over all in the development index. But when the rankings were adjusted for “internal inequalities,” the United States fell to 23rd, from 13th last year, mainly because of inequalities in income and health care, the report says.

Downloadable content: Click Here

YouTube Launches Entertainment Venture

YouTube is making a bold step into original programming in an entertainment venture with some 100 content creators, from Madonna to The Wall Street Journal.
The Google-owned video site said that it's launching more than 100 new video channels.
The partners include an array of Hollywood production companies, celebrities and new media groups that will produce mainly niche-oriented videos.
YouTube is shelling out US$100 million to producers, according to people familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The money is an advance on advertising money the videos will bring in, and Google will recoup its portion first before splitting the proceeds.
 Advances are as high as US$5 million per channel, said another person familiar with the arrangement, also speaking on condition of anonymity.
Neither person was authorized to comment publicly on the matter.
Google declined to offer financial details of the deals, but said the majority of revenue will go to partners.
Participants include Madonna, former NBA star Shaquille O'Neal, comedian Amy Poehler, actor Ashton Kutcher, "Office" star Rainn Wilson, spiritual doctor Deepak Chopra and "Modern Family" actress Sofia Vergara. Most are creating channels through their production companies. Madonna is a partner with the dance channel DanceOn, while O'Neal plans the Comedy Shaq Network.
Lionsgate is presenting a fitness channel, and other channels will be launched by news satire the Onion, professional wrestling's WWE, online magazine Slate and news service Thomson Reuters.
The channels will roll out beginning this month, though most will premiere next year.
YouTube says the channels will add 25 hours of new original content daily, with dozens of Web series debuting at scheduled times.
Ultimately, YouTube is aiming to create a new digital video platform that will rival television programming.
In a blog posting YouTube said the channels are being developed "specifically for the digital age." The video site compared the expanded video offerings to the advent of cable television.
YouTube has tried to build a more advertiser-friendly product of professional-quality video, as opposed to simply user-created videos.
Advertisers generally prefer to have their ads matched with known quantities. YouTube has also previously tried to urge viewers to stay longer with TV-like services like the YouTube Leanback, which continuously plays a personalized selection of videos.
Google is also looking to add professionally produced content to its huge roster of user-generated videos, to give users of its Google TV platform something to watch.
Major Hollywood networks such as News Corp.'s Fox and The Walt Disney Co.'s ABC have blocked their content from being shown on Google TV because the sides have been unable to come to a licensing deal that the networks believes pays them fairly.
Networks also don't want to jeopardize their lucrative relationship with pay TV distributors like Comcast Corp. and DirecTV.
Google is a platform that has been adopted by set-top box maker Logitech, which makes a device called a Logitech Revue that sells for US$100.