Monday, April 1, 2013
Russia Not Obliged to Notify West of War Games
MOSCOW, April 1 (RIA Novosti) – Russia was not obligated to notify Western countries beforehand of its recent snap military exercises, a top Russian Defense Ministry official said Monday.
“The mechanism of checks today is such that we only need to notify Western countries when we hold planned events,” Sergei Ryzhkov, the chief of the ministry’s treaty implementation department, told journalists.
“If exercises occur suddenly, we may notify them [other countries] only when the exercises begin,” Ryzhkov said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered snap drills on Thursday, as concerns persist over the combat readiness of the armed forces in Russia.
The Black Sea exercise, which ended on Sunday, involved up to 7,000 military personnel, including rapid deployment, airborne and special task forces, more than 30 warships, about 250 armored vehicles, up to 20 pieces of artillery and 20 aircraft.
The unscheduled exercise was the second in the span of two months and followed a major shake-up at the top of a military establishment demoralized by persistent evidence of rampant corruption.
Ryzhkov added that in line with the 2011 Vienna Document on Confidence- and Security-Building Measures, other countries should be notified of war games only when at least 9,000 troops participate in the drills.
Furthermore, when the number of troops taking part in the drills equals or exceeds 13,000, such exercises should be subject to foreign observation, he said.
RIA Novosti
Farewell to the cash register
NEW YORK —
Ka-ching! The cash register may be on its final sale.
Stores across the U.S. are ditching the old-fashioned, clunky machines and having salespeople — and even shoppers themselves — ring up sales on smartphones and tablet computers.
Barneys New York, a luxury retailer, this year plans to use iPads or iPod Touch devices for credit and debit card purchases in seven of its nearly two dozen regular-price stores. Urban Outfitters, a teen clothing chain, ordered its last traditional register last fall and plans to go completely mobile one day. And Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, is testing a “Scan & Go” app that lets customers scan their items as they shop.
“The traditional cash register is heading toward obsolescence,” said Danielle Vitale, chief operating officer of Barneys New York.
That the cash register is getting the boot is no surprise. The writing has been on the wall for a long time for the iconic machine, which was created in the late 1800s. The register was essential in nearly every retail location by 1915, but it now seems outdated in a world in which smartphones and tablets increasingly are replacing everything from books to ATMs to cameras.
Stores like smartphones and tablets because they take up less floor space than registers and free up cashiers to help customers instead of being tethered to one spot. They also are cheaper: For instance, Apple’s iPads with accessories like credit card readers can cost a store $1,500, compared with $4,000 for a register. And Americans increasingly want the same speedy service in physical stores that they get from shopping online.
“Consumers want the retailer to bring the register to them,” said Lori Schafer, executive adviser at SAS Institute Inc, which creates software for major retailers.
J.C. Penney, a mid-price department-store chain, said the response by customers has been great since it started rolling out iPod Touch devices late last year in its 1,100 stores. The goal is to have one in the hands of every salesperson by May. The company said that about a quarter of purchases at its stores nationwide now come from an iPod Touch.
On a recent Thursday afternoon at a Penney store in the Manhattan borough of New York City, Debbie Guastella, 55, marveled after a saleswoman rang up three shirts she was buying on an iPod Touch.
“I think it’s great,” said Guastella, who lives in Huntington, New York. “The faster the better.”
It’s been a long fall for the cash register, which innovated retail as we know it. The first register was invented following the Civil War by a little known saloon owner. Before then, most store owners were in the dark about whether or not they were making a profit, and many suffered since it was easy for sales clerks to steal from the cash drawer unnoticed. But by 1915, cash registers were ubiquitous in stores across the country, with more than 1.5 million sold by then.
More recently, stores have been looking for ways to modernize checkout. Since 2003, self-checkout areas that enable customers to scan and bag their own merchandise have become commonplace in grocery and other stores. But recently, there’s been a push to go further.
As a result, companies that make traditional cash registers are racing to come up with new solutions. NCR Corp, formerly known as the National Cash Register Co, was the first to manufacturer the cash register on a large scale.
Last year, the company that also makes ATMS, self-service checkout machines and airport check-in kiosks, launched a program that merges its software with the iPad. This allows store clerks to detach the iPad from the keyboard at the counter and use it as a mobile checkout device
“Retailers have more flexibility and more opportunities to change the shopping experience,” said Mark Self, NCR’s vice president of retail solutions marketing.
Stores themselves also are taking their cues from the success of Apple. The nation’s most profitable retailer moved to mobile checkout in all of its stores in 2007. In 2011, Apple began allowing shoppers to check out their purchases using their iPhones.
Take upscale handbag maker Coach, which is using iPod Touch devices at half of its 189 factory outlet stores. The company also is testing them in a handful of its 350 regular stores.
The move has enabled Coach to start slimming down its registers to the size of small podiums, freeing up space on walls to build shelves to showcase more product, said Francine Della Badia, Coach’s executive vice president of merchandising.
Della Badia, who says the additional space will be used for new shoe salons and other purposes, said most importantly, the mobile devices allow store staff to build “a more intimate connection with the customer.”
Some retailers have decided to go completely mobile. Urban Outfitters, which operates more than 400 stores under its namesake brand, Anthropologie and Free People, announced in late September that all sales eventually will be rung up on iPods and iPads on swivels located at counters. The company didn’t give a timeframe for when it would go completely mobile.
Urban Outfitters had given iPod Touch devices to its sales staff two years ago and the move has been very well received by shoppers, said Calvin Hollinger, the company’s chief information officer in his address to investors.
Nordstrom, an upscale department-store chain that’s considered within the retail industry to be the gold standard in customer service, also plans to get rid of registers altogether.
The company handed out iPod Touch devices to its staff at its 117 department stores nationwide in 2011. And by late last year, it did the same for its 110 Nordstrom Rack stores that sell lower-priced merchandise. Nordstrom, which already has removed some of the registers at its Rack stores, said it aims to phase out registers by next year.
Colin Johnson, a Nordstrom spokeswoman, said it’s too early to draw any conclusions on how mobile checkout has influenced buying, but the company is learning about which technologies work best.
“We see the future as essentially mobile,” Johnson said. “We don’t see departments in our store as being defined by a big clunky cash register.”
Not every retailer is quick to ditch registers, though. After all, there are still logistics to figure out. For instance, most retailers don’t accept cash payments on mobile devices. But if they start to do so, where will they put the cash that would normally go into a register?
Additionally, sales staff walking around stores armed with mobile devices could turn off shoppers who would prefer to be left alone in aisles. Richard Robins, a 67-year-old semi-retired investment fund manager from Redonda Beach, California, says he would like the convenience of mobile checkout but wouldn’t want to be pressured from a sales clerk while he’s in the aisle.
“I don’t want to be hustled,” he said.
To guard against making customers uncomfortable, some retailers including Penney are training their salespeople on when to approach shoppers — and when not to. For its part, Wal-Mart is putting checkout in the hands of the shoppers themselves.
The retailer is testing its “Scan & Go” app, which can be used on Apple devices such as iPads, in more than 200 of its more than 4,000 stores nationwide.
The app, which is aimed at reducing long checkout lines, requires that shoppers pay at self-checkout areas. So as it tests the app, Wal-Mart also is expanding the number of self-checkout areas in its stores.
“Our goal is to give choices to all of our customers however they want to shop,” said Gibu Thomas, senior vice president of mobile and digital initiatives at Wal-Mart’s global e-commerce division.”
Japan Today
What Are North Korea’s Intentions?
The U.S. denounced North Korea for its “long history of bellicose rhetoric” after the totalitarian state said a state of war exists with neighboring South Korea, and threatened to close a joint industrial zone.
“We take these threats seriously and remain in close contact with our South Korean allies,” White House spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said in an e-mailed statement on March 30. “But we would also note that North Korea has a long history of bellicose rhetoric and threats” and the latest statement “follows that familiar pattern.”
North Korea threatened March 30 to shut a jointly run industrial zone in its border city of Gaeseong in response to flights over the south by U.S. stealth bombers. Tensions have risen since North Korea detonated a nuclear device in February, defying global sanctions.
“It seems there are no more cards left for North to pressure South now, and Gaeseong seems to be the last resort,” Yang Moo Jin, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul, said by phone yesterday. “Chances of them closing it are very slim, almost impossible.”
About 200,000 North Koreans, including workers and their families, depend on the Gaeseong industrial zone for income, Yang said.
North Korea, with an economy of about $29 billion according to the latest estimate by the South’s central bank, generates about $100 million profit annually from the joint project, Yang said. The South’s economy, some 38 times larger, makes quadruple that amount, according to Yang.
KCNA via KNS / The Associated Press fileNorth Korean leader Kim Jong Un, center, walks with military personnel as he arrives for a military unit on Mu Islet, located in the southernmost part of the southwestern sector of North Korea's border with South Korea.
Warship Sinking
Tensions last rose to this level between the two sides in 2010, following the sinking of the South Korean warship Cheonan, which killed 46 sailors, and North Korea’s shelling eight months later of a South Korean border island, in which four people died.
“Every issue raised between the North and South will be dealt with in a war-time manner,” the state-run Korean Central News Agency said March 30, citing what it called a special statement. U.S. stealth bomber flights over South Korea this week are “unacceptable” and North Korea’s statement is a “final warning” to the U.S. and its allies, KCNA said.
The North Korean news agency said in a statement yesterday that “nuclear armed forces represent the nation’s life which can never be abandoned as long as the imperialists and nuclear threats exist on earth.”
HONG JIN-HWAN/AFP/Getty ImagesA giant floating crane lifts the stern of a South Korean warship to place it on a barge on April 15, 2010. The 1,200-tonne patrol combat corvette PCC-772 Cheonan was split in two by a big external explosion on March 26 near a disputed Yellow Sea border, with the loss of 46 lives.
Hot Line Cut
Kim Jong Un’s regime last month cut off a military hot line with South Korea, put artillery forces on high alert and threatened pre-emptive nuclear strikes, drawing condemnation from U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel.
“It’s part of what I call March Madness on the Korean Peninsula,” said Kenneth Quinones, professor of Korean studies at Akita International University in Japan. “Every March when the U.S. and South Korea hold military maneuvers, North Korea goes on full alert and makes similar threats. The only difference is the rhetoric has intensified, and the situation certainly merits concern and close monitoring.”
North Korea may “ban the south side’s personnel’s entry into the zone and close it,” an unidentified spokesman for the General Bureau for Central Guidance to the Development of the Special Zone said March 30 in a statement carried by KCNA.
National Post
The dawn of biological computers is at hand
The dawn of biological computers is at hand. In a major first for synthetic biology, Stanford engineers have used genetic material to create a biological transistor. Called the "transcriptor," the creation is the final, missing component necessary for the creation of a biological computer that could enable researchers to program functions into living cells.
Modern computers rely on three standard functions. One: they must be able to store information. Two: they have to be able to transmit information. Three: they need a basic system of logic – a set of rules that governs how they should function given one or more forms of input. A biological computer would implement all three on a cellular level, using proteins and DNA in place of silicon chips.
The first two functions have been demonstrated with cellular materials before. Several labs have now demonstrated the ability to store digital data in DNA, some of them at jaw-dropping densities; and last year, a team led by Stanford bioengineer Drew Endy developed a system for transmitting genetic information between cells. Now, in a study recounted in the latest issue of Science, Endy's team has developed what it calls a "transcriptor" – the biological equivalent of a digital transistor – and with it a system of logic that can control cellular function.
In your standard computer, transistors govern the flow of electricity by playing red light/green light with electrons along a circuit. Similarly, a transcriptor regulates the flow of a protein called RNA polymerase along a strand of DNA. Transistors and transcriptors are, at their most basic, on/off switches – the gatekeepers of information transmission, storage, amplification, and so forth.
The rules that these gatekeepers follow give rise to the logic systems that dictate what problems a computer can solve. A transcriptor gatekeeper that lives by a code of "AND," for example, might allow RNA polymerase to continue along a strand of DNA when two predetermined conditions are "true" – if, for example, the transcriptor detects the presence of Enzyme-A ANDEnzyme-B inside the cell.
A transcriptor that abides by the code of "OR," on the other hand, would allow RNA polymerase to continue when either or both of the enzymes are present. In computer science, transistors that abide by AND-/NAND-/OR-/XOR-/NOR-/XNOR-rules (which you can read all about here) are called Boolean logic gates. Endy calls his transcriptor equivalents Boolean Integrase Logic gates. Or "BIL" gates, for short. Below, Endy provides an in-depth explanation of Transcriptors and BIL gates.
Here's the takeaway: if you line a bunch of these logic gates up, you form a logic circuit. Get enough logic circuits together, and you have a computer that can handle just about any computation you throw at it – whether it's addition and subtraction on a calculator, or gene expression inside a cell.
Endy plans on starting small. For now, he's working with bacteria, helping other researchers use his BIL gates to engineer E. coli that can be programmed to change color. And in a refreshingly practical take on the potential applications of his team's creation, Endy told NPR's Morning Edition that he doubts these DNA computers will ever outwit your iPhone; but this, he said, is missing the point.
"We're building computers that will operate in a place where your cellphone isn't going to work."
IO9
Russia Launches Surprise Military Exercise in Black Sea
Russian President Vladimir Putin surprised his defense minister in the wee hours of Thursday morning last week with an order for surprisemilitary drills to test battle readiness in the Black Sea. Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu was awakened at 4:00 a.m. local time with sealed orders to activate 7,000 troops, 36 ships, up to 20 fighter jets and helicopters and 50 pieces of artillery.
Aviation, paratroopers and special forces are involved in the exercises, which were launched immediately according to Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, who said “We are talking about major exercises, intended as a check,” according to Russian news agencies.
“According to international practice, exercises involving up to 7,000 people do not require us to inform our partners in advance,” Peskov noted. He added that the drills would take place on three military test ranges on Russian territory and are expected to last about a week.
Russia has been heavily involved in protecting Syria's President Bashar al-Assad from international ire at the United Nations Security Council, but as Assad's grip on power has increasingly weakened, and fragmented rebel forces gain control over more territory in the country, Moscow has begun to quietly evacuate its citizens from Damascus and surrounds. Likewise Putin has joined discussions over what may become of Syria's lethal arsenal of chemical weapons of mass destruction, a rising concern in the international community.
The Black Sea is a strategic waterway bounded by Europe, Anatolia and the Caucasus, and connects to the Atlantic Ocean via the Mediterranean and Aegean Seas and two straits known as the Turkish Straits – the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles. The Bosphorus Strait, which flows through the middle of Turkey, connects it to the Sea of Marmara. The Strait of the Dardanelles connects that sea to the Aegean Sea region of the Mediterranean, which separate eastern Europe and western Asia. Countries with shoreline along the Black Sea include Turkey, Ukraine, Bulgaria and Romania, in addition to Russia.
Late last year Turkey requested -- and received -- authorization to deploy a number ofbatteries of Patriot missile defense systems along its border with Syria. The batteries, contributed by NATO allies that included the United States, were installed in January 2013.
Israel National News
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