Russia. Moscow. A view from the windows of the house. 21.02.2010.

Car.

Russia, Sochi. Mountains! Skiing! Events beginning in February 2010. 18.02.2010.

In early February, was skiing in Sochi. It was wonderful!
I apologize for the bad quality. Photos at a phone.

Swiss swimmer was able to hold his breath about 20 minutes. 16.02.2010.

Swiss diver Peter Kolat was able to set a new world record for staying under water without air, the newspaper writes Swiss Info.

It is reported that 38-year-old athlete stayed under water 19 minutes 21 seconds. He said that "the first 12 minutes were not a problem."

The previous record belonged to the Italian Nicola Putignano, who hold their breath for 19 minutes and 2 seconds.

Achieving Swiss athlete falling into the Guinness Book of Records.

It should be noted that like the record set and a Russian swimmer Natalia Molchanov. In September last year it without breathing apparatus in flippers sank to a depth of 101 m. At the same time she managed to hold his breath for three and a half minutes.

Source: http://top.rbc.ru/society/15/02/2010/371130.shtml

Chinese bypassed Russian skaters on 2,5 points. 16.02.2010.

Russian figure skaters, Yuko Kawaguchi and Alexander Smirnov took the third position after the performance of his short program "The Swan" in the tournament sporting couples at the XXI Olympic Winter Games 2010 in Vancouver with a score of 74.16 points.

Thus, the backlog Russian athletes from the Chinese duo of Xue Shen and Hongbo Zhao (76.66 points) is 2.5 points. Second place the judge gave the German figure skaters Aliona Savchenko and Robert Szolkowy (75.96 points).

Source: http://top.rbc.ru/society/15/02/2010/370885.shtml

What you may not know about Presidents Day. CNN. 16.02.2010.

• Monday is a federal holiday but the name commonly used is not correct
• The day celebrates the nation's first president, George Washington
• While Lincoln's birthday is close to Washington's, it is not federally recognized

Washington (CNN) -- Retailers open their doors Monday and roll out big sales to entice customers. Government employees -- along with kids -- have the day off. But do you know why?

If you answered "Presidents Day," you're technically wrong.

The actual federal holiday is called "Washington's Birthday," after the nation's first president, George Washington.

According to the Gregorian calendar, adopted by England and its colonies after Washington was born, his birth date was February 22, 1732. (The Julian calendar has him born on February 11.) He is viewed as one of the greatest presidents in U.S. history and was also much adored during his lifetime.

"In the earlier years, when it was celebrated, it was more than celebrating his birth, it was celebrating what we liked about Washington: He walked away from power, a very poignant lesson for people," said presidential historian Doug Wead.

It wasn't until 1885, though, that February 22 became designated a federal holiday to honor Washington.

Presidential historian C.L. Arbelbide wrote in a 2004 article in the National Archives publication "Prologue" that succeeding generations found "significant ways to periodically resurrect his memory," as evidenced by the laying of the Washington Monument's cornerstone in 1848.

"The numerous tributes continued to reaffirm George Washington's place as the original 'American Idol,' " Arbelbide wrote in the article titled "By George, IT IS Washington's Birthday!"

Wead, who was special assistant to President George H.W. Bush, said Americans later fell in love with another president with similar attributes.

Abraham Lincoln, born on February 12, 1809, became a popular figure after freeing the slaves and ending the Civil War. But it wasn't until his assassination in April 1865 that Americans began to see Lincoln in a different light.

"Lincoln, because he was assassinated, he overnight became a beloved figure and suddenly a genius," Wead said.

Although he was considered "a buffoon and dumb during his time," after his death, everything he said was re-read and studied, Wead said.

In 1968, Congress debated whether to combine the two president's birthdays into one holiday, but decided against it. The legislative body passed the Monday Holidays Act that year, which said existing federal holidays would now be observed on Mondays to give government workers a long weekend.

The bill went into effect in 1971 and deemed that "Washington's Birthday" would be moved from February 22 to the third Monday in February.

But even today, Congress does not necessarily celebrate the day with the official title. While the House and Senate celebrate February 15 as "Washington's Birthday" this year, their weeklong recess is known as "President's Day District Work Period."

Though his birthday is a federal holiday, not all states celebrate it on the same day. While Congress has the authority to create federal holidays, states and the private sector do not have to observe them.

With the confusion over whose birthday it is and when it is celebrated, many Americans have simply lost interest in the day's true meaning, Wead said. The reason? Presidential nostalgia has been replaced by criticism and controversy.

"We don't have that [nostalgia] anymore. Part of that is cynicism about presidents today -- Nixon, Johnson, Carter, Clinton, Bush ... there's less respect," he said. "There was a lot of respect for Washington because he walked away from power. That was just unheard of."

Source: http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/02/15/presidents.day/index.html?hpt=C1

Bayh won't seek Senate re-election. CNN. 16.02.2010.

• Sen. Evan Bayh says, "Congress is not operating as it should"
• Bayh cites failure on jobs bill, deficit reduction panel as examples of broken system
• Indiana centrist is third Democratic senator to announce retirement
• Democrats must defend five open seats in midterm races; GOP will have six open seats

(CNN) -- Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Indiana, said Monday afternoon that he won't seek a third term in the Senate -- a major blow to Democrats worried about losses in the midterm elections.

"Congress is not operating as it should," Bayh said at a news conference in Indianapolis, adding there's too much partisanship and "the people's business is not getting done."

Bayh said he loves public service but does "not love Congress" and is "not motivated by strident partisanship or ideology."

He cited the Senate's recent failure to pass a jobs bill and legislation that would have created a deficit reduction commission as evidence of what he characterized as a broken political system.

Bayh, a former two-term governor, was first elected to the Senate in 1998, taking 62 percent of the vote. He won re-election with 64 percent six years later.

In his two terms in the Senate, Bayh cut a centrist path and worked across party lines, which at times frustrated liberal Democrats.

"He hates the Senate, hates the left bloggers," a friend and longtime adviser to Bayh said. "They are getting their wish, pure Democrats in the minority."

While Bayh had been mulling retiring for a "good part of last year," he made his final decision not to seek re-election Friday, said another source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Bayh was scheduled to appear Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union With Candy Crowley," but his office canceled the appearance Friday afternoon.

Bayh is the third Democratic senator to announce he is retiring when the curtain drops on the 111th Congress. Sens. Christopher Dodd of Connecticut and Byron Dorgan of North Dakota previously said they would not seek re-election.

Democrats will have to defend five open seats in November as Roland Burris of Illinois and Ted Kaufman of Delaware have said they will not run for their own six-year terms. Burris was appointed to President Obama's former Senate seat, while Kaufman was appointed to Vice President Joe Biden's old seat.

Meanwhile, Republicans will be forced to defend six seats in the midterm elections. Sens. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, Kit Bond of Missouri, Jim Bunning of Kentucky, George Voinovich of Ohio and Sam Brownback of Kansas are all retiring at the end of the year.

Sen. George LeMieux of Florida -- who replaced Sen. Mel Martinez after he resigned before the end of his term -- also will vacate his seat.

Former Republican Sen. Dan Coats recently announced a bid to challenge Bayh this year. Coats served from 1989 to 1999 but chose not to run for re-election. Bayh won that contest.

Former Rep. John Hostettler and state Sen. Marlin Stutzman also are bidding for the GOP Senate nomination in Indiana.

Bayh probably would have faced a difficult re-election due to the anti-incumbent political climate, but an Indianapolis Star/WTHR poll conducted in November indicated that 61 percent of Indiana voters approved of the job the senator he was doing, with 24 percent disapproving.

Bayh also had nearly $13 million in his campaign war chest.

He seemed to face the same frustration many former governors experience when they are elected to the Senate. Instead of being able to make singular decisions, they find themselves members of a slow-moving legislative body where political lines are dug deep.

"I'm an executive at heart," Bayh said. "I value my independence. I'm not motivated by strident partisanship or ideology. These traits may be useful in many walks of life, but they are not highly valued in Congress."

A source noted that Bayh is unclear about what his next step might be but said he would entertain the idea of becoming a university president, running a private business or heading up a charitable endeavor.

Another source added that Bayh could consider another bid for Indiana governor.

A White House source confirmed Bayh discussed his retirement with Obama well before announcing the decision.

However, a Democratic Party source said Bayh's announcement took national Democrats by surprise. The source added that Democratic Reps. Baron Hill and Brad Ellsworth and Evansville, Indiana, Mayor Jonathan Weinzapfel all may consider making bids for the Democratic Senate nomination.

"I appreciate the support of those Hoosiers who have already encouraged me to run for Sen. Bayh's seat," Ellsworth said in a statement.

"The next step will be taking a few days to talk to my wife and to folks in Indiana about where I can best serve our state."

The deadline for a candidate to submit the required number of signatures to have his or her name placed on the Indiana primary ballot is noon Tuesday.

But if no candidate meets that goal -- and no Democrat is expected to do so -- then the Indiana Democratic Party will be able to choose its nominee.

Bayh, a centrist Democrat, reportedly was considered a possible running mate for Obama in 2008. Bayh's father, Birch, served three terms in Senate.

Source: http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/02/15/bayh.retirement/index.html?hpt=T1

Russian fifth-generation fighter made a second flight. 13.02.2010.

Fifth-generation fighter T-50 (PAK FA), completed the second test flight, Interfax reported with reference to the representatives of the military-industrial complex of Russia.

Flight testing of fighter aircraft were held on Friday, February 12, at the airfield of Komsomolsk-on-Amur Aircraft Production Association (KnAAPO). The air fighter spent 57 minutes.

At the airport KnAAPO planned to perform a few more flights PAK FA (T-50), then the fighter moves to Zhukovsky near Moscow, where will the bulk of its flight tests. After the test will be held in the flight test center of the Defense Ministry in Akhtubinsk.

First flight PAK FA has committed 29 January 2010 and from the airport KnAAPO. Fighter spent in the air 47 minutes.

Specifications fifth-generation fighter T-50 still kept secret. Reported only that he can take off and landing on runways length of 300-400 meters, will be able to perform combat missions in any weather and time of day, and will differ maneuverability.

It is planned that the Defense Ministry will PAK FA, already in 2015, but did not specify on how many fighters in question.

Source: http://www.lenta.ru/news/2010/02/12/pakfa/

Sochi 12.2009: Road Adler - Krasnaya Polyana. 12.02.2010.

Begins with a brief series of notes on a trip to Sochi in December 2009 and February 2010. I'll start with a video of the road from the airport Adler in the direction of Krasnaya Polyana.

Levitating magnet brings space physics to fusion. 25.01.2010.

Tests on an experimental machine that mimics a planet’s magnetic field show that it may offer an ‘alternative path’ to taming nuclear fusion for power generation.

A new experiment that reproduces the magnetic fields of the Earth and other planets has yielded its first significant results. The findings confirm that its unique approach has some potential to be developed as a new way of creating a power-producing plant based on nuclear fusion — the process that generates the sun’s prodigious output of energy.

Fusion has been a cherished goal of physicists and energy researchers for more than 50 years. That’s because it offers the possibility of nearly endless supplies of energy with no carbon emissions and far less radioactive waste than that produced by today’s nuclear plants, which are based on fission, the splitting of atoms (the opposite of fusion, which involves fusing two atoms together). But developing a fusion reactor that produces a net output of energy has proved to be more challenging than initially thought.

The new results come from an experimental fusion reactor at the Plasma Science and Fusion Center on the MIT campus, inspired by observations from space made by satellites. Called the Levitated Dipole Experiment, or LDX, a joint project of MIT and Columbia University, it uses a half-ton donut-shaped magnet about the size and shape of a large truck tire, made of superconducting wire coiled inside a stainless steel vessel. This magnet is suspended by a powerful electromagnetic field, and is used to control the motion of the 10-million-degree-hot electrically charged gas, or plasma, contained within its 16-foot-diameter outer chamber.

The results, published this week in the journal Nature Physics, confirm the counter-intuitive prediction that inside the device’s magnetic chamber, random turbulence causes the plasma to become more densely concentrated — a crucial step to getting atoms to fuse together — instead of becoming more spread out, as usually happens with turbulence. This “turbulent pinching” of the plasma has been observed in the way plasmas in space interact with the Earth’s and Jupiter’s magnetic fields, but has never before been recreated in the laboratory.

Most experiments in fusion around the world use one of two methods: tokamaks, which use a collection of coiled magnets surrounding a donut-shaped chamber to confine the plasma, or inertial fusion, using high-powered lasers to blast a tiny pellet of fuel at the device’s center. But LDX takes a different approach. “It’s the first experiment of its kind,” says MIT senior scientist Jay Kesner, MIT’s physics research group leader for LDX, who co-directs the project with Michael E. Mauel, professor of applied physics at Columbia University's Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science.

The results of the experiment show that this approach “could produce an alternative path to fusion,” Kesner says, though more research will be needed to determine whether it would be practical. For example, though the researchers have measured the plasma’s high density, new equipment still needs to be installed to measure its temperature, and ultimately a much larger version would have to be built and tested.

A new approach to a tough problem

Kesner cautions that the kind of fuel cycle planned for other types of fusion reactors such as tokamaks, which use a mixture of two forms of “heavy” hydrogen called deuterium and tritium, should be easier to achieve and will likely be the first to go into operation. The deuterium-deuterium fusion planned for devices based on the LDX design, if they ever become practical, would likely make this “a second-generation approach,” he says.

When operating, the huge LDX magnet is supported by the magnetic field from an electromagnet overhead, which is controlled continuously by a computer based on precision monitoring of its position using eight laser beams and detectors. The position of the half-ton magnet, which carries a current of one million amperes (compared to a typical home’s total capacity of 200 amperes) can be maintained this way to within half a millimeter. A cone-shaped support with springs is positioned under the magnet to catch it safely if anything goes wrong with the control system.

Levitation is crucial because the magnetic field used to confine the plasma would be disturbed by any objects in its way, such as any supports used to hold the magnet in place. In the experimental runs, they recreated the same conditions with and without the support system in place, and confirmed that the confinement of the plasma was dramatically increased in the levitated mode, with the supports removed. With the magnet levitated, the central peak of plasma density developed within a few hundredths of a second, and closely resembled those observed in planetary magnetospheres (such as the magnetic fields surrounding Earth and Jupiter).

Summarizing the difference between the two approaches, Kesner explains that in a tokamak, the hot plasma is confined inside a huge magnet, but in the LDX the magnet is inside the plasma. The whole concept, he says, was inspired by observations of planetary magnetospheres made by interplanetary spacecraft. In turn, he says, for planetary research the experiments in LDX can yield “a lot more subtle detail than you can get by launching satellites, and more cheaply.”

The work ahead

The MIT and Columbia scientists say that if the turbulence-induced density enhancement exhibited by the LDX could be scaled up to larger devices, it might enable them to recreate the conditions necessary to sustain fusion reactions, and thus may point the way toward abundant and sustainable production of fusion energy.

“Fusion energy could provide a long-term solution to the planet’s energy needs without contributing to global warming,” says Columbia’s Mauel.

The LDX project, led by Mauel and Kesner and funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, has been through more than 10 years of design, construction and testing, and produced its first experimental results in its levitated configuration last year, which are being reported in the analysis published this week. A newly installed microwave interferometer array, developed by MIT graduate student Alex Boxer PhD ‘09, was used to make the precision measurements of the plasma concentrations that were used to observe the turbulent pinch.

“LDX is one of the most novel fusion plasma physics experiments underway today,” says Stewart Prager, director of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. Because of the unique geometry of the system, he says, “theoretical predictions indicate that the confinement of energy might be very favorable” for producing practical fusion power, but the theory needs to be confirmed in practice. “For these benefits to be realized, the somewhat bold theoretical predictions must be realized experimentally,” he says.

Source: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2010/fusion-ldx-0125.html

Russia, Austria urge states to expedite South Stream deal. 11.11.2009.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann urged both their governments to expedite work on an agreement to build the Austrian section of a gas pipeline to southeast Europe.

"A special agreement is now being drafted between our countries on the project's implementation and the federal chancellor and I spoke for finishing the work on the document within a short period of time," Putin said after talks in Moscow with Faymann.

The South Stream gas project, scheduled to be completed by 2015, is part of Russia's efforts to cut dependence on transit nations. It is a rival project to the EU-backed Nabucco, which would bypass Russia.

The 25 billion-euro ($36.5 bln) project is designed to annually pump 31 billion cubic meters of Central Asian and Russian gas to the Balkans and on to other European countries, bypassing Ukraine, which has frequent disputes with Russia over gas supplies and transits. The pipeline's capacity is expected to be eventually increased to 63 billion cubic meters.

On May 15, Russian energy giant Gazprom signed a package of project-related documents with Bulgaria, Greece and Serbia. Similar agreements are now being coordinated with Slovenia and Austria.

Source: http://en.rian.ru/russia/20091111/156797045.html