Gun Control Support Soars In New Polls

Support for tighter gun control laws continues to rise in the wake of the school shooting in Newtown, Conn., according to a new HuffPost/YouGov poll, and another new poll finds that support for stricter gun laws is at its highest point in years.

In the new HuffPost/YouGov survey of 1,000 adults conducted Dec. 21-22, 55 percent of Americans said that gun control laws should be made more strict, 13 percent said they should be made less strict, and 27 percent said there should be no change. Support for stricter laws in the new poll is even higher than it was in another HuffPost/YouGov poll conducted immediately after the shooting took place, when 50 percent of respondents said that that gun control laws should be made stricter.

A USA Today/Gallup poll released Thursday also found that American support for stricter guns laws is at its highest since 2004, but that blanket bans on some guns would remain a political challenge.

The Gallup poll of 1,038 adults, conducted Dec. 19-22, found 47 percent of Americans now favor passing new gun laws rather than simply ramping up enforcement of current law, a 12-year high. Fifty-eight percent of Americans would like to see stricter gun laws, a 15-point jump since October 2011. The poll had a 4 percentage point margin of error.

But underneath a broad openness to some changes, opinions on specific new restrictions varied sharply in the Gallup poll. Support for requiring background checks at gun shows, a measure proposed by President Barack Obama, is nearly unanimous, with 92 percent favoring the change. A proposed ban on semi-automatic guns, however, earns a much smaller majority of support. Public support for a ban on handguns has continued to drop, reaching a record low this year, with just a quarter in favor.

In spite of growing support for stricter gun laws, the HuffPost/YouGov survey found that the National Rifle Association, the leading gun rights advocacy group in the nation, receives higher positive than negative ratings, though negative views of the organization may be increasing in the wake its statement blaming the Newtown shooting on violence in the media and calling for armed guards to be placed in schools. Forty percent of respondents said they have a favorable opinion and 36 percent said they have an unfavorable opinion of the organization, while 24 percent said they were unsure. An earlier YouGov poll conducted in February for the Economist found that the NRA was ranked more favorably than unfavorably by a 36 percent to 28 percent margin, suggesting that unfavorable views of the organization may be increasing faster than favorable views.

Support for the NRA was highest among respondents who said that either they or members of their household belong to the group; 93 percent of NRA members and 71 percent of those with an NRA member in their household had a favorable opinion of the organization.

Overall, 10 percent of respondents said they or someone in their household is an NRA member, while 41 percent said they or someone in their household owns a gun. Among those in non-NRA households, 41 percent viewed the group unfavorably while 34 percent viewed it favorably. Views were more decidedly against the NRA among those living in households where nobody owns a gun, with 45 percent viewing it unfavorably and 26 percent viewing it favorably.

The poll also found mixed reviews of the NRA's proposal to place armed guards in every American school, but with support outpacing opposition. Overall, 45 percent of respondents said they either approved or strongly approved of the proposal, while 41 percent said they disapproved or strongly disapproved.

The survey found that both gun owners in general and NRA members in particular were much less likely than the general public to say that gun laws should be made more strict. Past surveys of NRA members and gun owners, however, including one conducted in July of this year by Republican pollster Frank Luntz, have found that NRA members do support certain gun control measures, such as increased use of background checks and requiring gun owners to complete gun safety training.

The HuffPost/YouGov poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.3 percentage points, though that inherent variation does not take into account other potential sources of error, including statistical bias in the sample. The poll used a sample selected from YouGov's opt-in online panel to match the demographics and other characteristics of the adult U.S. population. Factors considered include age, race, gender, education, employment, income, marital status, number of children, voter registration, time and location of Internet access, interest in politics, religion and church attendance.

The Huffington Post has teamed up with YouGov to conduct daily opinion polls. You can learn more about this project, and take part in YouGov?s nationally representative opinion polling.

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/27/gun-control-support-poll_n_2370265.html

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Transform Your Article Marketing Success With These Top Tips ...

Education in article marketing is key. There is a lot of available information you can read, however not all of it pertains to your particular situation. The below article provides lots of excellent advice on article marketing that is certain to be effective for you.

When you are done with your article, it?s important that you look it over for errors; mistakes can affect your credibility. Check over everything twice just to be sure everything is spelled right and that correct grammar is being used. In order to make the most money possible, you have to write well.

Constantly promote your affiliate business whenever you can. Identify problems and find products that address them. This will help create demand around your writing, which can improve your visibility. Make these activities second nature, and you will find that growing your business requires less effort over time and brings a higher success rate.

Put a question in your article titles. Our brains love the challenge and mystery of questions. Using a question allows you to grab your readers? frontal lobe and stops them to make them read your article. Follow the question with content that is equally as captivating.

Try using numbers in the titles of your articles if they relate to the content. Titles that have numbers in them will help to draw in people which will result in more viewers. To see which numbers seem to hit home, watch which articles get the most visitors.

Tools can be used to increase your visibility. There are a lot out there that can send in your article to a variety of directories, more than you could do on your own. Most of these tools cost a fee, but there are a select few that operate for free. Seek these out, as they are a cheap way to gain readership.

Write in a language you feel comfortable with. Though you may be comfortable speaking a different language, avoid the temptation to use it for article marketing purposes. You could still end up with horrifying sentence structure. You will also have a different view of the world than foreign readers, and that could end up confusing them.

Write concise, direct articles. There is no point in writing articles full of fluff or filler that no one wants to read. 250 to about 500 words should be your limit. Be sure to keep it interesting so that your reader will finish reading the entire thing before they get bored and move on to another site.

When it comes to article marketing, you must write quality content. Fluff and nonsense is not acceptable and will only hurt you. If something needs further explanation, don?t be afraid of devoting the extra space; however be brutal when it comes time to trim away the excess. Don?t forget to proofread! Look for irrelevant sentences, spelling errors and other potential pitfalls in your writing.

Any article you write to advertise your site should be entertaining to the reader. Always write in an informal style that?s friendly and warm. Introduce your technical information so everyone can understand if you want your complex articles to remain friendly. Avoid alienating readers by being boring.

Take full advantage of the opportunities of social media. Take advantage of your Facebook account or your Twitter account; they can be very good ways to attract new readers. All you need to do is post updates after each new article you write. You can also ask your followers to share your articles with their friends for an even higher boost in traffic.

There are many marketing ideas that are new and many that are standard practice. Take what you have learned here, and you will be an ?expert? in no time!

To your financial liberty,

Kyle Haycock

Article promotion Skilled

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About Kyle Haycock

Hello, I'm Kyle Haycock. I'm a former Staff Sergeant in the US Marines. I've married to my wonderful wife for almost 11 years and have two beautiful daughters (8 and 10 years old). I've been in business for myself for over six years and have been network marketing for two years. I am semi-retired now, but my dream is to make enough money for myself and for others that I can become a full-time philanthropist like Bill Gates. My true passion is teaching and believe that if we can teach youngsters properly while they're young that they can become productive and successful members of society (as they define it). With me making more money and inspiring others to do the same, I can gather a whole legion of people fighting for the same cause.

Source: http://articlemarketing2day.com/tips/transform-your-article-marketing-success-with-these-top-tips-2/

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Source: http://elapaedof.posterous.com/transform-your-article-marketing-success-with

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Daily Kos: My Grandmother has brain cancer

Her name is Margaret. She married my grandfather decades ago and they had a baby. His name was John Thomas Schehr. He was my father. Shortly after her husband died. He was a sailor in the Navy. He died of spinal meningitis when my father was a wee babe.

Margaret remarried to a man named Joseph LaGreca, and my father took his name. Joseph LaGreca and Margret than had another child whom they also named Joseph.

But Joesph the elder was a lout. He inflicted unimaginable abuse upon my father and my uncle, and it stayed with them for the course of their lives. I can't imagine what my Grandmother went through, but she stayed, she honored their vow and she endured. How she did so is beyond my reckoning.

My father left home at a young age and joined the navy as his father before had done, but he stayed a devoted son and he never spoke against his grandfather in my presence. Each year we would get in the car and visit Grandma and Grandpa for Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter, my brother and sister with my mother and often the family dog would all make the trip upstate to Ulster County New York, and though our mother had told us of what our Step-Grandfather had put our father through my dad never once spoke of it, and he always dutifully made the trip up to his parents, to his mother and step father. Though my father honored his step-father I can only imagine the love he had for his mother, my grandmother, in staying a truly devoted son all those years.

And when my father died we grew distant. That was years and years ago, but though we stayed in touch by phone it was rare when I saw my grandmother.

And now she is almost gone.

The doctors say she has a tumor pressing up against her brain. She no longer responds to people, and only days ago she had troubling recognizing my sister when she had gone to visit. She has developed pneumonia and the fever is getting worse. The doctors have asked if we would sign a "Do Not Resuscitate" waiver, or something of that sort.

And then it all comes home. This is what we are fighting about. All politics is personal. It's not just about the ideas or the principles, it is about actual people and how to make their lives better. After all my advocacy for health care reform this is when it hits home, because we love people and we want them to be safe and cared for, and because sometimes those people are real people we know and love and sometimes we will never meet them at all, but goddamit we can do better for people, better than this, and that is worth fighting for. I see the nurse caring for my Grandmother and I ask myself what can we do for her to make her life better, I think of that nurse's family and I wonder if they struggle and I ask myself what can we do to make their lives better, more fulfilling, more prosperous, so that this short struggle we all endure on this silly spinning orb can be made slightly better, if only for a time. I saw my grandmother yesterday for perhaps the last time, and though she was never awake I told her I loved her and I wished her peace with my father at last. I believe she heard me.

I don't pray a lot, but I prayed, and I gave thanks for the little I have and for the people I love. Ours is to take what is and make it better, not just for ourselves but for everyone and for those who shall come after us. That is worth fighting for.

So I offer this as a way of expressing emotions and as a way to honor my grandmother, the mother of my father.

To make the world a better place, one small act of kindness at a time.

I give blessings for my Grandmother, and to each and every person out there.

Peace and love to all

9:35 AM PT: Big Love to everyone. Sorry for the lack of comments on my part, just hard to really know what to say, and yeah, that happens to me too. Giving mojo all around and sharing love with you and yours.

Bless this community

Source: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/12/27/1174146/-My-Grandmother-has-brain-cancer

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How climate shifts sparked human evolution

At Olduvai Gorge, where excavations helped to confirm Africa was the cradle of humanity, scientists now find the landscape once fluctuated rapidly, likely guiding early human evolution.

These findings suggest that key mental developments within the human lineage may have been linked with a highly variable environment, researchers added.

Olduvai Gorge is a ravine cut into the eastern margin of the Serengeti Plain in northern Tanzania that holds fossils of hominins ? members of the human lineage. Excavations at Olduvai Gorge by Louis and Mary Leakey in the mid-1950s helped to establish the African origin of humanity.

The Great Drying?
To learn more about the roots of humanity, scientists analyzed samples of leaf waxes preserved in lake sediments at Olduvai Gorge, identifying which plants dominated the local environment around 2 million years ago. This was about when Homo erectus, a direct ancestor of modern humans who used relatively advanced stone tools, appeared.

"We looked at leaf waxes, because they're tough, they survive well in the sediment," researcher Katherine Freeman, a biogeochemist at Pennsylvania State University, said in a statement.

After four years of work, the researchers focused on carbon isotopes ? atoms of the same element with different numbers of neutrons ? in the samples, which can reveal what plants reigned over an area. The grasses that dominate savannas engage in a kind of photosynthesis that involves both normal carbon-12 and heavier carbon-13, while trees and shrubs rely on a kind of photosynthesis that prefers carbon-12. (Atoms of carbon-12 each possess six neutrons, while atoms of carbon-13 have seven.)

Scientists had long thought Africa went through a period of gradually increasing dryness ? called the Great Drying ? over 3 million years, or perhaps one big change in climate that favored the expansion of grasslands across the continent, influencing human evolution. However, the new research instead revealed "strong evidence for dramatic ecosystem changes across the African savanna, in which open grassland landscapes transitioned to closed forests over just hundreds to several thousands of years," researcher Clayton Magill, a biogeochemist at Pennsylvania State University, told LiveScience. [Know Your Roots? Take Our Human Evolution Quiz]

The researchers discovered that Olduvai Gorge abruptly and routinely fluctuated between dry grasslands and damp forests about five or six times during a period of 200,000 years.

"I was surprised by the magnitude of changes and the rapid pace of the changes we found," Freeman told LiveScience. "There was a complete restructuring of the ecosystem from grassland to forest and back again, at least based on how we interpret the data. I've worked on carbon isotopes my whole career, and I've never seen anything like this before."

Losing water
The investigators also constructed a highly detailed record of water history in Olduvai Gorge by analyzing hydrogen isotope ratios in plant waxes and other compounds in nearby lake sediments. These findings support the carbon isotope data, suggesting the region experienced fluctuations in aridity, with dry periods dominated by grasslands and wet periods characterized by expanses of woody cover.

"The research points to the importance of water in an arid landscape like Africa," Magill said in a statement. "The plants are so intimately tied to the water that if you have water shortages, they usually lead to food insecurity."

The research team's statistical and mathematical models link the changes they see with other events at the time, such as alterations in the planet's movement. [50 Amazing Facts About Earth]

1. Science news from NBCNews.com

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      Science editor Alan Boyle's blog: As 2012 draws to a close, physicists are celebrating ? and being celebrated for ? the end of a quest to find a subatomic particle known as the Higgs boson.

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"The orbit of the Earth around the sun slowly changes with time," Freeman said in statement. "These changes were tied to the local climate at Olduvai Gorge through changes in the monsoon system in Africa."

Earth's orbit around the sun can vary over time in a number of ways ? for instance, Earth's orbit around the sun can grow more or less circular over time, and Earth's axis of spin relative to the sun's equatorial plane can also tilt back and forth. This alters the amount of sunlight Earth receives, energy that drives Earth's atmosphere.

"Slight changes in the amount of sunshine changed the intensity of atmospheric circulation and the supply of water," Freeman said. "The rain patterns that drive the plant patterns follow this monsoon circulation. We found a correlation between changes in the environment and planetary movement."

The team also found links between changes at Olduvai Gorge and sea-surface temperatures in the tropics.

"We find complementary forcing mechanisms ? one is the way Earth orbits, and the other is variation in ocean temperatures surrounding Africa," Freeman said.

These findings now shed light on the environmental shifts the ancestors of modern humans might have had to adapt to in order to survive and thrive.

"Early humans went from having trees available to having only grasses available in just 10 to 100 generations, and their diets would have had to change in response," Magill said in a statement. "Changes in food availability, food type, or the way you get food can trigger evolutionary mechanisms to deal with those changes. The result can be increased brain size and cognition, changes in locomotion and even social changes ? how you interact with others in a group."

This variability in the environment coincided with a key period in human evolution, "when the genus Homo was first established and when there was first evidence of tool use," Magill said.

The researchers now hope to examine changes at Olduvai Gorge not just across time but space, which could help shed light on aspects of early human evolution such as foraging patterns.

Magill, Freeman and their colleague Gail Ashley detailed their findings online Dec. 24 in two papers in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Follow LiveScience on Twitter @livescience. We're also on Facebook and Google+.

? 2012 LiveScience.com. All rights reserved.

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/50297765/ns/technology_and_science-science/

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Small lethal tools have big implications for early modern human complexity

ScienceDaily (Nov. 7, 2012) ? On the south coast of South Africa, scientists have found evidence for an advanced stone age technology dated to 71,000 years ago at Pinnacle Point near Mossel Bay. This technology, allowing projectiles to be thrown at greater distance and killing power, takes hold in other regions of Africa and Eurasia about 20,000 years ago. When combined with other findings of advanced technologies and evidence for early symbolic behavior from this region, the research documents a persistent pattern of behavioral complexity that might signal modern humans evolved in this coastal location.

These findings were reported in the article "An Early and Enduring Advanced Technology Originating 71,000 Years Ago in South Africa" in the November 7 issue of the journal Nature.

"Every time we excavate a new site in coastal South Africa with advanced field techniques, we discover new and surprising results that push back in time the evidence for uniquely human behaviors," said co-author Curtis Marean, project director and Arizona State University professor in the Institute of Human Origins, a research center of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change.

The reported technology focused on the careful production of long, thin blades of stone that were then blunted (called "backing") on one edge so that they could be glued into slots carved in wood or bone. This created light armaments for use as projectiles, either as arrows in bow and arrow technology, or more likely as spear throwers (atlatls). These provide a significant advantage over hand cast spears, so when faced with a fierce buffalo (or competing human), having a projectile weapon of this type increases the killing reach of the hunter and lowers the risk of injury. The stone used to produce these special blades was carefully transformed for easier flaking by a complex process called "heat treatment," a technological advance also appearing early in coastal South Africa and reported by the same research team in 2009.

"Good things come in small packages," said Kyle Brown, a skilled stone tool replicator and co-author on the paper, who is an honorary research associate with the University of Cape Town, South Africa. "When we started to find these very small carefully made tools, we were glad that we had saved and sorted even the smallest of our sieved materials. At sites excavated less carefully, these microliths may have been discarded in the back dirt or never identified in the lab."

Prior work showed that this microlithic technology appear briefly between 65,000 and 60,000 years ago during a worldwide glacial phase, and then it was thought to vanish, thus showing what many scientists have come to accept as a "flickering" pattern of advanced technologies in Africa. The so-called flickering nature of the pattern was thought to result from small populations struggling during harsh climate phases, inventing technologies, and then losing them due to chance occurrences wiping out the artisans with the special knowledge.

"Eleven thousand years of continuity is, in reality, an almost unimaginable time span for people to consistently make tools the same way," said Marean. "This is certainly not a flickering pattern."

The appearance and disappearance is more likely a function of the small sample of well-excavated sites in Africa. Because of this small sample, each new site has a high probability of adding a novel observation. The African sample is a tiny fraction of the known European sample from the same time period.

"This is why continued and well-funded fieldwork in Africa is of the highest scientific priority if we want to learn about what it means to be human, and where and when it happened," said Marean.

The site where this technology was discovered is called Pinnacle Point 5-6 (PP5-6). This spectacular site preserves about 14 meters of archaeological sediment dating from approximately 90,000 to 50,000 years ago. The documentation of the age and span of the technology was made possible by an unprecedented fieldwork commitment of nine, two-month seasons (funded by the National Science Foundation and Hyde Family Foundation) where every observed item related to human behavior was plotted directly to a computer using a "total station." A total station is a surveying instrument that digitally captures points where items are found to create a 3D model of the excavation. Almost 200,000 finds have been plotted to date, and excavations continue. This was joined to over 75 optically stimulated luminescence dates by project geochronologist Zenobia Jacobs at the University of Wollongong (Australia), creating the highest resolution stone-age sequence from this time span.

"As an archaeologist and scientist, it is a privilege to work on a site that preserves a near perfect layered sequence capturing almost 50,000 years of human prehistory," said Brown, who codirected excavations at PP5-6. "Our team has done a remarkable job of identifying some of the subtle but important clues to just how innovative these early humans on the south coast were."

Research on stone tools and Neanderthal anatomy strongly suggests that Neanderthals lacked true projectile weapons.

"When Africans left Africa and entered Neanderthal territory they had projectiles with greater killing reach, and these early moderns probably also had higher levels of pro-social (hyper-cooperative) behavior. These two traits were a knockout punch. Combine them, as modern humans did and still do, and no prey or competitor is safe," said Marean. "This probably laid the foundation for the expansion out of Africa of modern humans and the extinction of many prey as well as our sister species such as Neanderthals."

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Arizona State University.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. Kyle S. Brown, Curtis W. Marean, Zenobia Jacobs, Benjamin J. Schoville, Simen Oestmo, Erich C. Fisher, Jocelyn Bernatchez, Panagiotis Karkanas, Thalassa Matthews. An early and enduring advanced technology originating 71,000 years ago in South Africa. Nature, 2012; DOI: 10.1038/nature11660

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_science/~3/4iOuSnvz_JI/121107132904.htm

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Global Relief Group Says Radicals Blocking Aid in Myanmar ...

November 7, 2012, 10:20 am

Humanitarian charity Doctors Without Borders says threats from radical Buddhist groups in Myanmar are preventing workers from providing medical care for victims of sectarian clashes in the country?s Rakhine State, writes The New York Times.

?Our own staff are simply scared and unwilling to work after receiving direct threats,? said Joe Belliveau, operations manager for Doctors Without Borders.

Violence directed against the Muslim minority in the region on the Bangladesh border has killed dozens of people and forced more than 100,000 to flee their homes since June.

This entry was posted in News-updates. Bookmark the permalink.

Source: http://philanthropy.com/blogs/philanthropytoday/global-relief-group-says-radicals-blocking-aid-in-myanmar/57236

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Server Error in '/' Application.

Description: An application error occurred on the server. The current custom error settings for this application prevent the details of the application error from being viewed remotely (for security reasons). It could, however, be viewed by browsers running on the local server machine.

Details: To enable the details of this specific error message to be viewable on remote machines, please create a <customErrors> tag within a "web.config" configuration file located in the root directory of the current web application. This <customErrors> tag should then have its "mode" attribute set to "Off".

<!-- Web.Config Configuration File --> <configuration> <system.web> <customErrors mode="Off"/> </system.web> </configuration>

Notes: The current error page you are seeing can be replaced by a custom error page by modifying the "defaultRedirect" attribute of the application's <customErrors> configuration tag to point to a custom error page URL.

<!-- Web.Config Configuration File --> <configuration> <system.web> <customErrors mode="RemoteOnly" defaultRedirect="mycustompage.htm"/> </system.web> </configuration>

Source: http://www.rssmicro.com/rss.web?q=Microsoft

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Lake Norman Real Estate&#39;s October 2012 Sales Analysis; Did We ...

Lake Norman?s?October 2012 residential real estate sales number should?makes it?ten months in a row that we have exceeded all prior months? sales since 2007.? However, as of today, we are tied with last year?s 88 total sales.?As always a few more agents will be late in recording their sales.?When all the numbers are for?October we should have recorded at least 90 or more. So, yes, we will make it 10 but it will be a squeaker!? However, because October 2011?s sales were unusually high beating that number still supports my belief that we hit bottom in 2011 here in the?Lake Norman housing market and have had fairly robust sales?consistently in 2012. ?Yes, we are clearly seeing our typical seasonal slowdown but the fact that October sales will most likely equal September?s,?at this point it still looks like our Lake Norman real estate market has moved?into sustained positive territory.

Let?s take a closer look at the numbers to glean some insight into the short term future and exactly where the Lake Norman housing market stands right now.

Here are the?October 2012 numbers from our Charlotte Multiple Listing Service for our Lake Norman Area 13 real estate market:

?

?

* Note that the Charlotte Regional Multiple Listing Service has created two new categories, Under Contract Showings (UCS) to continue and Under Contract no showings (UCNS). These replace the Contingent, Conditional and Pending categories.?? Contingent Sales are now joined with Conditional sales in my reports.

?

Some significant additional interesting statistics for you:

• ?Distressed sales? ( Foreclosures (REOS), defaults, Short Sales) comprised only 13.6% of our totals, down from 19.3% last month.?? The average price for distressed sales was $473,583? Distressed active listings currently make up only 6.2% of our inventory of Lake Norman homes for sale. Clearly we are not being bombarded by foreclosures and shortsales so far in 2012 as some had predicted. While buyers are looking for bargains they simply don?t exist in the numbers we experienced in the past several years.
• 26% of our closed sales were waterfront homes which was?down slightly from 27% last month.? (There were only 3 distressed waterfront sales out of 23).
• We had 12 new construction homes sold which represents 13.6%!? We actually had as many brand new homes sold as distressed sales?what a turn around for Lake Norman!
• 49% of Lake Norman?s?October home sales were under $400,000 compared to 53% last month.
• 67% of our?October home sales were under $500,000 compared to 70% last month, 66% in August,? 60% in July,? 72 % in June, 70% in May, 49% in April, 61% in March sales. Clearly our lower price ranges are still dominating our Lake Norman housing market.
• Our ?Under Contract Show? AND ?Under Contract No show?/Pending numbers?were up substantially?from last October. (See chart above). This serves as further support that Lake Norman?s housing market is on the mend and that our late fall/winter sales will?remain robust.?Another very positive sign?is that our average days homes were on market before selling were down again in every category but one. Properties are definitely selling more quickly.
• As of today, the number of active listings for all of Lake Norman total 834 down from 876 last month, 917 last month and 10% lower than?October 2011.? The number of homes for sale in Lake Norman has been lower than 2011 every month this year.? Ask any home buyer or Realtor and you will hear complaints about how few homes are on the market.?? To put this number in even greater context, back in June of 2008 we had 1789 active listings!

?

A closer look:

• The number of Active Listings in Lake Norman dropped 5% from last month?s and are 10% lower than September 2011?s.? Our absorption rate/months of supply of active listings now stands at 9.5.??While we?are once again above the goal of a balanced 6-8 months of supply in Lake Norman area (MLS area 13) we are?not nearly as high as the past few years!

?

• Conditional Sales, which are now called Under Contract Show, increased for the ninth month in a row, this time by a healthy 37% compared to last year.? These are homes that just went under contract and still have financial and inspection conditions. They represent future closed sales most likely in late November/December. Based upon these numbers our sales in?November and December?should be stronger than 2011.

?

• Pending/Under Contract No Show sales?were 23%?higher than October 2011?s.? ? These are the contracts that are past inspections and are just waiting to close.?They are usually the best indication of closed sales in the next few weeks.? Given that we had only 75 closed sales last?November I am pretty confident that we will exceed this number.??It looks like we will close out 2012 with at least 20% higher sales than 2011 and 12 months of increases in a row!

?

• The number of closed home sales in Lake Norman in?October 2012 were just about equal to September?s and October 2011?s.??

?

The total number of Lake Norman homes under contract (but not yet closed) on the first of each month are as follows:

• November 7, 2012: 214 (Good, solid number considering we are heading into our slowest months of the year).
• October 8, 2012: 218
• September 6, 2012: 206
• August 6, 2012: 228
• July 6, 2012: 234
• June 6, 2012: 235
• May 7, 2012: 246
• April 1, 2012: 227
• March 1, 2012: 178
• February 1, 2012: 155
• January 1: 134 (the lowest ALL year)
• December 1: 147
• November: 169
• October: 193
• September: 183

Here is a breakdown by price-range of our October 2012 closed sales in Lake Norman?s area 13-1 to 13-5:

• $40,500 ? $199,999: 11
• $200,000 ? $299,999: 17
• $300,000 ? $399,999: 15

(These price ranges represented 48.9% of October?s sales.)

• 400,000 ? $499,999: 16
• $500,000 ? $599,999: 9

(These price ranges represented 28.4% of our sales)

• $600,000 ? $699,999:? 8
• $700,000 ? $799,999:? 2
• $800,000 ? $899,999: 0
• 900,000 ? $999,999:??2

(Solds for $600,000 ? $1mill = 13.6 % )

• $1,000,000 ? $1,499,999: 5
• $1,500,000 ? $1,999,999: 2
• $2 million+ : 1

(Solds $1million+ =? 9% which is double last month?s 4.5%)

The most improved price range was the $1,000,000 ? $1,499,999.

?

Higher-end home sales in Lake Norman

Sales in the $700,000- $999,000 range continued to be extremely slow all over Lake Norman as they had been?for most of 2012.? In my opinion the good waterfront bargains? in the $600,000s peaked two years ago and in the $700,000-$900,000 last summer.??At the same time,?there has been a significant spike in activity in properties $700,000+ in the past 6 weeks.? Of our 214 homes currently under contract, 32 are over $700,000 and 11 are $1 million-$1.5 million .

?

8-Year Comparison of Lake Norman Home Sales By Month

* Please note that all of my numbers are for single family homes. They come from the Charlotte Region Multiple Listing Service and will not include sales that took place outside of our MLS.

**I have made an adjustment of? the totals reflecting the ACTUAL? sales? every month in 2009, 2010 and the totals in the prior calendar years.? The columns may not add up but I do my best with what I have to work!? I also adjust past months when I do the monthly update as a few more sales are usually input late by agents.

?

Summary and My Insight

Good signs:

• Lake Norman is experiencing consistently improved closed sales as well as stabilizing?average prices and lower days on the market.
• Lake Norman home sales year-to-date are up 20.6% over 2011!!!
• Lake Norman?s inventory of homes for sale remains low.
• The number of properties currently under contract indicates that our Lake Norman housing market will sustain our?strong closed sales numbers for the next several months.
• The number of distressed homes for sale has dropped to 6.2% of our overall inventory?clearly no longer playing a significant role in our housing market.
• New construction is back! Not only did we sell 12 new homes last month but as I drive and cycle around I am amazed at how many new construction homes are breaking ground.
• Serious home buyers are out looking around all of the Lake Norman area. Properly priced listings in very good ?condition are selling more quickly and sometimes with multiple offers even in our $1 million+ price ranges.
• Interest rates?remain low.
• Because of higher rental prices and low interest rates, it is now better financially for most to buy rather than rent.
• Positive national housing news this month was pervasive.? Almost every economist and pundit has now declared that the national housing market is improving and even seeing small price increases:?In the Wall Street Journal, ? The housing market overcame a listless economy this summer, and several data points? on Wednesday (September 19th) show it is finally beginning a long climb out of a deep hole?. Inman News:? ?Economists bullish on housing recovery?, CNN Money: ?Economists: Housing recovery finally here?.

?

Challenges/Weaknesses:

• Sales prices, while improving,? remain historically low
• Our mid to higher-end property sales are still inconsistent and relatively weak despite some recent activity.
• With a shrinking inventory of active listings, buyers have fewer options.? There aren?t that many ?good? homes on the market so buyers are watching the new listings and jumping on most of the good ones if they are priced properly. So, Lake Norman has a lot of ?leftovers? on the market that have been reduced a number of times and have more negatives including being dated. are in less desirable locations or not having good water.
• Home loans, especially jumbo and construction loans, are still a very challenging process, particularly underwriting and appraisals.
• Global economic turmoil and US economic uncertainty.

?

The gossip among Realtors is how dramatically our activity has increased.? Despite low inventories, the number of buyers out actively looking has increased substantially.? Real estate firms are touting their sales increases and talk as if we are going to sustain these strong numbers. I am a bit more cautious.? While the worst is most likely behind us, we have a long way to go and most expect that it will be a very slow recovery.

My advice to Lake Norman home buyers remains this: Look for homes that are in good locations and have most of the priorities on your list.? While your perfect home might come along, don?t wait too long and don?t dismiss a property if it isn?t perfect.? Prioritize: Location, quality and depth of water (if waterfront buyer) and floorplan. Then, to determine a realistic price, use VERY RECENT comparable sales in your specific market niche.? The selection may not be great but with interest rates near all time lows and prices low it is a good time to buy.? With less than 7% of Lake Norman?s current listings being ?distressed sales? don?t expect the perfect foreclosure or shortsale to come along at an unrealistic price.? If you insist on low-balling, at least have some comparable sales to justify your number.? Don?t focus as much on the price as on the future marketability of the property.? A bargain that has incurable issues that will make it difficult to resale, really isn?t a bargain at all.? Be smart!

?

OTHER ARTICLES of? INTEREST?

Lake Norman Relocation Resources

Lake Norman? Sports Resource Guide

How to get the Lastest Lake Norman News, Events and Coupon Savings!

Relocating to Lake Norman

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Learning a new sense

Monday, November 5, 2012

Rats use a sense that humans don't: whisking. They move their facial whiskers back and forth about eight times a second to locate objects in their environment. Could humans acquire this sense? And if they can, what could understanding the process of adapting to new sensory input tell us about how humans normally sense? At the Weizmann Institute, researchers explored these questions by attaching plastic "whiskers" to the fingers of blindfolded volunteers and asking them to carry out a location task. The findings, which recently appeared in the Journal of Neuroscience, have yielded new insight into the process of sensing, and they may point to new avenues in developing aids for the blind.

The scientific team, including Drs. Avraham Saig and Goren Gordon, and Eldad Assa in the group of Prof. Ehud Ahissar and Dr. Amos Arieli, all of the Neurobiology Department attached a "whisker" ? a 30 cm-long elastic "hair" with position and force sensors on its base ? to the index finger of each hand of a blindfolded subject. Then two poles were placed at arm's distance on either side and slightly to the front of the seated subject, with one a bit farther back than the other. Using just their whiskers, the subjects were challenged to figure out which pole ? left or right ? was the back one. As the experiment continued, the displacement between front and back poles was reduced, up to the point when the subject could no longer distinguish front from back.

On the first day of the experiment, subjects picked up the new sense so well that they could correctly identify a pole that was set back by only eight cm. An analysis of the data revealed that the subjects did this by figuring the spatial information from the sensory timing. That is, moving their bewhiskered hands together, they could determine which pole was the back one because the whisker on that hand made contact earlier.

When they repeated the testing the next day, the researchers discovered that the subjects had improved their whisking skills significantly: The average sensory threshold went down to just three cm, with some being able to sense a displacement of just one cm. Interestingly, the ability of the subjects to sense time differences had not changed over the two days. Rather, they had improved in the motor aspects of their whisking strategies: Slowing down their hand motions ? in effect lengthening the delay time ? enabled them to sense a smaller spatial difference.

Saig: "We know that our senses are linked to muscles, for example ocular and hand muscles. In order to sense the texture of cloth, for example, we move our fingers across it, and to seeing stationary object, our eyes must be in constant motion. In this research, we see that changing our physical movements alone ? without any corresponding change in the sensitivity of our senses ? can be sufficient to sharpen our perception."

Based on the experiments, the scientists created a statistical model to describe how the subjects updated their "world view" as they acquired new sensory information ? up to the point at which they were confident enough to rely on that sense. The model, based on principles of information processing, could explain the number of whisking movements needed to arrive at the correct answer, as well as the pattern of scanning the subjects employed ? a gradual change from long to short movements . With this strategy, the flow of information remains constant. "The experiment was conducted in a controlled manner, which allowed us direct access to all the relevant variables: hand motion, hand-pole contact and the reports of the subjects themselves," says Gordon. "Not only was there a good fit between the theory and the experimental data, we obtained some useful quantitative information on the process of active sensing."

"Both sight and touch are based on arrays of receptors that scan the outside world in an active manner," says Ahissar, "Our findings reveal some new principles of active sensing, and show us that activating a new artificial sense in a 'natural' way can be very efficient." Arieli adds: "Our vision for the future is to help blind people 'see' with their fingers. Small devices that translate video to mechanical stimulation, based on principles of active sensing that are common to vision and touch, could provide an intuitive, easily used sensory aid."

###

Weizmann Institute of Science: http://www.weizmann.ac.il

Thanks to Weizmann Institute of Science for this article.

This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.

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Superstorm Sandy Liveblog: Did the White House respond too quickly? (+video)

Some Republicans, such as New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, have praised Obama's response to the hybrid superstorm, but former FEMA chief Michael Brown, who?coordinated?the federal response to Hurricane Katrina, say that the White House has acted too quickly.?

By Staff,?CSMonitor.com / October 29, 2012

Tuesday, 2:15 p.m.

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Subscribe Today to the Monitor

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The Christian Science Monitor
Weekly Digital Edition

Los Angeles Times reporters Kathleen Hennessey and Christi Parsons write that President Obama has told his team that he wants to see them "leaning forward" on their response to Sandy.

?I don?t want to hear that we didn?t do something because bureaucracy got in the way,? said Obama in a Situation Room meeting, according to an unnamed?White House official.

?Obama has suspended campaigning to focus on storm response a strategy that the Hennessey and Parsons says?"seems to run counter to the White House?s previous repeated assertions that the president can conduct official business on the road as easily as at the White House."?

"But in this case, the Obama team has clearly determined that it is good politics to show the president hard at work using the power of the federal government," they write.

The White House's response to Sandy has drawn praise from one unexpected quarter: As the Washington Post reports, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a fierce critic of Obama and enthusiastic campaigner for Mitt Romney, called the president's efforts "outstanding."

The Post reports that on MSNBC's Morning Joe, Christie ?said "the President has been all over this and he deserves great credit? and that?"it?s been very good working with the President and his administration.?

Not all Republicans are pleased with Obama's attempts to provide timely relief to those afflicted by the storm. In an interview with the alt-weekly Denver Westword, former FEMA chief Michael Brown worried that Obama may have jumped the gun.?"Why was this so quick?" asked Brown.

As head of FEMA from 2003 to 2005, Brown coordinated the federal response to Hurricane Katrina. He was famously praised by President Bush for doing a "heck of a job," although he resigned shortly afterward.

Tuesday, 1:30 p.m.

In Washington, Reagan National and Dulles International airports "weathered Hurricane Sandy without (major) damage or flooding. We will monitor the water level of the Potomac River at Reagan National as runoff from the storm makes its way downstream," reports the
The Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority. Flights are expected to resume this afternoon.

But the MWAAT urges travelers to check with their airlines.

Any further updates will go out on the MWAAT twitter feed

Also, the Associated Press is reporting that The New York Stock Exchange will reopen on Wednesday.

Tuesday, 12:30 p.m.

West Virginia is dealing with snow today, which is causing power outages to at least 243,000 customers and closing dozens of roads. At least one death was reported.

The storm not only hit higher elevations hard as predicted, communities in lower elevations got much more than the dusting of snow forecasters had first thought from a dangerous system that also brought significant rainfall, high wind gusts and small-stream flooding.

President Barack Obama early Tuesday approved a state of emergency declaration sought by Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin. It authorizes federal assistance for storm-related issues in the state.

Blizzard warnings remained in effect for more than a dozen counties. Webster Springs received 17 inches of snow, while 15 inches was on the ground in Fayetteville Tuesday morning, the National Weather Service said.

At least 33 roads were closed by snow, ice, high water, and downed trees and power lines. Interstate 68 was closed from Morgantown to the Maryland line. Other major road closures included U.S. 250 in Barbour and Randolph counties and U.S. 219 in Tucker County, said state Department of Transportation spokeswoman Leslie Fitzwater, according to the Associated Press.

IN PICTURES: Tracking Sandy

Tuesday 12:05 pm

In the Great Lakes region, Sandy has halted shipping operations, and wave action is building in places like Michigan?s "Thumb Area" near Port Huron. Lake Huron?s low water levels, however, mean that officials aren?t overly concerned about shoreline flooding. In Chicago, officials are warning residetns and bicyclists to stay away from Lakeshore Drive, as massive waves began to crash against the breakwaters, reports The Christian Science Monitor.

Tuesday 9:25 a.m.

Sandy continues to churn and covers almost half the United States. In Chicago and Wisconsin, meteorologists are warning of high waves churning up in Lake Michigan today ? as high as 27 feet.

The center of Sandy is moving at about 15 mph through western Pennsylvania in a west-northwesterly direction, and slowing. It is expected to turn north into western New York state tonight and into Canada on Wednesday.

The National Hurricane Center is warning of gale force (39 to 54 mph) winds Tuesday across a swath of the US from Virginia to New England. East Coast storm surges could still be as much as four feet at high tide, which may not sound like much given the surges of the past 24 hours but remember that the peak surge in Battery Point in NYC during Hurricane Irene was just over four feet.?

?Sandy's still got a load of precipitation, according to the National Weather Service.

RAINFALL TOTALS OF 3 TO 6 INCHES ARE EXPECTED OVER FAR NORTHEASTERN NORTH CAROLINA WITH ISOLATED MAXIMUM TOTALS OF 8 INCHES POSSIBLE. RAINFALL AMOUNTS OF 4 TO 8 INCHES ARE EXPECTED OVER PORTIONS OF THE MID-ATLANTIC STATES...INCLUDING THE DELMARVA PENINSULA...WITH ISOLATED MAXIMUM AMOUNTS OF 12 INCHES POSSIBLE. RAINFALL AMOUNTS OF 1 TO 3 INCHES WITH ISOLATED MAXIMUM AMOUNTS OF 5 INCHES ARE POSSIBLE FROM THE SOUTHERN TIER OF NEW YORK STATE NORTHEASTWARD THROUGH NEW ENGLAND.

And snow too.

SNOWFALL TOTALS OF 2 TO 3 FEET ARE EXPECTED IN THE MOUNTAINS OF WEST VIRGINIA WITH LOCALLY HIGHER TOTALS TODAY THROUGH WEDNESDAY. SNOWFALL TOTALS OF 1 TO 2 FEET ARE EXPECTED IN THE MOUNTAINS OF SOUTHWESTERN VIRGINIA TO THE KENTUCKY BORDER...WITH 12 TO 18 INCHES OF SNOW EXPECTED IN THE MOUNTAINS ALONG THE NORTH CAROLINA/TENNESSEE BORDER AND IN THE MOUNTAINS OF FAR WESTERN MARYLAND.

SNOWFALL TOTALS TO DATE:

NORTH CAROLINA...?

BAKERSVILLE 8 INCHES

?LANSING 5 INCHES

FAUST 6 INCHES ...

PENNSYLVANIA...

MOUNT DAVIS 9 INCHES ..

VIRGINIA...?

TAZEWELL 5 INCHES ..

WEST VIRGINIA...
BOWDEN 14 INCHES

CANVAS 12 INCHES

COAL CITY 12 INCHES

SUMMERSVILLE 10 INCHES

ELKINS 7 INCHES

KITZMILLER 6 INCHES

?BLUEFIELD 6 INCHES

Tuesday 12:15 a.m.

The National Hurricane Center has issued its final public advisory for Sandy, the hybrid storm that has shut down stretches of the US East Coast from Virginia to Maine.

New York City is still reeling. The Associated Press reports that powerful storm surges have overwhelmed the financial district and inundated the city's subway system. More than one million people in the city's metro area are without power.

At a press conference, Mayor Michael Bloomberg has warned residents not to call 911 unless it is a life-threatening emergency, and has told New Yorkers to stay put. "You have to stay wherever you are. Let me repeat that. You have to stay wherever you are," he said.

The National Hurricane Center still warns of 75 mph maximum sustained winds, with gusts of even higher speeds. Over the next two days, Sandy is expected to weaken as she creeps across Pennsylvania and then turns north into western New York State.

"The worst of the weather has come," said Bloomberg.

Monday 10:45 p.m.

As Hurricane Sandy bears down on the East Coast, many are asking if the so-called Frankenstorm was caused by ? or at least fueled by ? global warming.

The Huffington Post's Tom Zeller quotes Kevin Trenberth, head of the Climate Analysis Section at the USA National Center for Atmospheric Research, who describes Sandy as representing "the new normal."

"The past few years have been marked by unusually severe extreme weather characteristic of climate change." Trenberth told HuffPo. "The oceans are warmer and the atmosphere above the oceans is warmer and wetter. This new normal changes the environment for all storms and makes them more intense and with much more precipitation."

At the New Yorker, journalist Elizabeth Kolbert points to a press release by the German reinsurance giant Munich Re, titled "Severe weather in North America." It shows a nearly five-fold increase in the number of damaging weather-related events in North America over the past three decades, compared with a four-fold jump in Asia, a 2.5-fold leap in Africa, and two-fold increase in Europe and 1.5-fold in South America.

"It is, at this point, impossible to say what it will take for American politics to catch up to the reality of North American climate change," writes Kolbert.

Definitively blaming manmade climate change for Hurricane Sandy's size and intensity is impossible. After all, the world has experienced damaging hurricanes long before humans began burning fossil fuels. At most, we can say climate change simply increases the odds of such storms.

Still, one odd signal jumps out. Sandy, which has been dubbed a Frankenstorm by forecasters, is a hybrid storm created when a slow-moving, unusually wavy Arctic jet stream from the north wrapped itself around a tropical storm from the south. A study published in January 2012 found that, as Arctic ice melts, the darker water absorbs more heat, which causes the jet stream, which is propelled by north-south temperature differentials, to slow down and become wavier.

Is Superstorm Sandy a result of climate change? Nobody knows. But what we do know is that Sandy is an example of what climate change looks like.

Monday 10:05 p.m.

Police, fire, and EMS scanners in New York City reveal that Sandy is keeping emergency responders very busy tonight. There are widespread reports of flooding throughout the city, people stranded, and at least one death. Here are some recent incidents:

TRAUMA ALERT 10/29/12 20:02	(QUEENS - ) UNITS ON SCENE OF A TREE DOWN ON A PERSON, AIDED DEAD ON SCENE/DECEASED [NYC055]
TECHNICAL RESCUE 10/29/12 20:00	(BROOKLYN - ) MALE STUCK ON TOP OF GARBAGE TRUCK DUE TO HIGH WATER, NATIONAL GUARD ENRTE [BCC022]
TECHNICAL RESCUE 10/29/12 19:49	(BROOKLYN - 154.370) L-168 REQ. IMMEDIATE ASSISTANCE - PEOPLE TRAPPED IN FLOOD WATERS, COLD RESCUE SUITS REQ. [NZL111]
1 ALARM FIRE 10/29/12 19:34	(QUEENS - 154.400) E-268 REPORTS WORKING FIRE IN A DWELLING, EXPOSURE PROBLEM BUT UNABLE TO COMMIT DUE TO FLOODING. [NZL111]
TECHNICAL RESCUE 10/29/12 19:33	(QUEENS - ) NYPD 100PCT SURROUNDED BY WATER- REQ. ESU & BOATS TO EVACUATE OCCUPANTS. [MAS163]

These reports are delayed up to two hours. You can listen to the scanner bands yourself at radioreference.com

Monday 9:30 p.m.

The latest update from??the National Hurricane Center reports huge storm surges in New York Bay: 13.3 feet at Kings Point on Long Island, 13.7 feet at the Battery in New York City, and 13.3 feet at Sandy Hook, New Jersey.

Reuters is reporting that Con Ed shut down power for two areas in Lower Manhattan to protect electrical equipment. The news agency reports that there are some 156,000 customers in New York City and Westchester County now without electricity.

More dire safety concerns could mean that power could be turned off for many more: The Associated Press reports that nuclear power regulators are keeping a close eye on wind speeds near reactors in five states. If sustained winds top 74 mph, the plants will go offline, per safety procedures.

Monday 8:30 pm

Sandy's eye?is now over land, according to the National Hurricane Center, with sustained winds of 80 miles per hour.?

From here we can expect Sandy to lose intensity, but the East Coast is by no means out of the woods yet. ?According to the NHC, tide guages have measured storm surges of almost 12 feet at Kings Point on Long Island, 8.4 feet at the Battery in New York City, and 8.6 feet at Sandy Hook, New Jersey.

Monday 7:15 pm

The National Hurricane Center is now designating Sandy as a "post-tropical cyclone," albeit one that still has hurricane-force winds:

SATELLITE...RADAR...AND AIRCRAFT DATA INDICATE THAT SANDY HAS CONTINUED TO LOSE TROPICAL CHARACTERISTICS. ?NHC IS NOW DESIGNATING SANDY AS A POST-TROPICAL CYCLONE. ?IN ADDITION...THE MAXIMUM WINDS HAVE DECREASED SLIGHTLYAND ARE NOW NEAR 85 MPH...140 KM/H.

As Sandy transitions from a hurricane to a tropical low, it will stop powering itself primarily by extracting heat from the oceans; instead it will churn as a result of horizontal?temperature differences in the atmosphere.?

Fox News reports that Sandy has made landfall?in southern New Jersey just after 6 p.m., but this has not yet been confirmed by the National Hurricane Center, which reported at 7 p.m. that the storm will hit land within the next hour or so. ?

When Sandy arrives, it is very likely that it will be at or near Atlantic City. New Jersey On-Line reports that the Garden State's governor, Chris Christie, has issued an angry rebuke to Atlantic City mayor?Lorenzo Langford, who did not require residents to evacuate.

The Monitor's Mark Clayton reports that, by 6 p.m., some 2.1 million people were already without power in nine eastern states.

Monday 5:20 pm

With sustained winds of up to 90 miles per hour, Hurricane Sandy is expected to make landfall somewhere along New Jersey's southern coast sometime within the next "couple of hours," according to the most recent update from the National Hurricane Center.?

Sandy is big. The NHC update says to expect hurricane-force winds, that is, winds of more than 55 mph, up to 175 miles from her center, along all portions of the East Coast between?Chincoteague, Va. and Chatham, Mass. Tropical-storm-force winds?(35 mph to 55 mph) are forecast for 485 miles from the center.

Sandy, which is approaching the shore at 28 mph, is not expected to weaken before it makes landfall, although it will very likely become less intense once its eye is over land.?

The NHC warns of storm surges from North Carolina to New Hampshire, with particularly strong surges ? up to 11 feet ??occurring?in Long Island Sound, Raritan Bay, and New York Harbor. ?

Writing from New York City, the Monitor's Ron Scherer reports that?Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy?predicts that Sandy would bring two times more water into Long Island Sound than Hurricane Irene, which caused about $19 billion in damages.?

Monday 4:15 pm

The eye of Hurricane Sandy is now 2-3 hours from the coast of New Jersey, according to the latest National Hurricane Center advisory. Winds are still at 90 mph, and Sandy's still moving at about 28 mph. Some have speculated that since Sandy is arriving sooner than forecast, and ahead of the high tide (between 8-9 p.m. tonight), that the storm surge won't be as bad as predicted. But that reasoning may be wrong.

Already the storm surge at New York City's Battery is at 6.1 feet, well above last year's peak during Hurricane Irene. Atlantic City is reporting a 5- foot storm surge. New Haven, Conn. is at 5 feet, and Boston has seas 4.2 feet above normal.

As previously reported, the expected storm surge in the NYC area is 6 to 11 feet. Even if Sandy makes landfall before the high tide, the winds whip around the backside of Sandy will push sea levels higher.

Monday 3:05 p.m.

Hurricane Sandy's barometric pressure has dropped to 940 millibars. Wind speeds are holding at 90 mph, according to the 2 p.m. National Hurricane Center update.?

Sandy is turning toward the East Coast and has sped up to 28 mph. Even as it makes a left turn, "it also is swapping energy sources to become an extratropical cyclone.

The shift from tropical to extratropical tends to intensify the storm for a period, as well as redistribute winds and rainfall in ways that can shift the regions most heavily affected by wind and rain,"?writes Pete Spotts, the science writer for The Christian Science Monitor.

If Sandy retains the current barometric pressure, or it drops further, at landfall, the location would go into the record books as experiencing the lowest barometric pressure of any spot in the US north of Cape Hatteras, according to data compiled by the Weather Underground.

Monday 2:50 p.m.?

Google has put together a crisis map for Hurricane Sandy, which overlays lots of different data about the storm ? including its current position and forecast track, storm surge probabilities, traffic conditions, and emergency shelter locations ? into a single interactive image. ?

Also, be sure to check out this mesmerizing map of wind conditions across the United States. It was developed a few weeks by Google data visualization experts Fernanda Vi?gas and Martin Wattenberg, in part to help people conceptualize the potential of wind energy, but the map is particularly striking on a day like today.?

How does Hurricane Sandy compare with Irene, which battered the East Coast from South Carolina to Maine last year? Take a look at this interactive image from the Wall Street Journal.

Irene was the fifth costliest hurricane in US history.

If you're interested in how Sandy compares to every cyclones recorded since 1851, check out this graphic from the Guardian.?

Finally, if you haven't had enough scenes of reporters getting pelted by sea foam, people buying bottled water, or Fox News weathercaster Janice Dean throwing air quotes, have a look at Poynter's collection of animated gifs of hurricane clich?s.

Monday 1:45 pm

What's all the buzz about Hurricane Sandy's barometric pressure? (And does it have anything to do with inducing labor in pregnant women?)

Hurricane Sandy's barometric pressure is really low, especially for a Category 1 (winds between 74-95 mph) hurricane.

Generally, the lower the barometric pressure, the higher the winds.

Barometric pressure is a measurement of the weight of the air. "Baros" is Greek for weight, and the Greek word for measure is "metron."?A barometer measures the weight of a column of air directly above a given point in terms of inches or milibars of mercury displaced.

The normal sea level pressure is 1013.25 millibars.

Hurricane Sandy's barometric pressure was 943 milibars Monday morning, according to the Hurricane Hunters, the US Air Force pilots that regularly fly into the eye of hurricanes. That reading was a drop from the previous reading, indicating an intensification of the hurricane.

Hurricane Sandy's barometric pressure is now roughly equivalent to the typical Category 3 or Category 4 storm on Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale. But Sandy is not a typical hurricane; it is, in the words of ?Weather Channel meterologist Stu Ostro,?a?"meteorologically mind-boggling combination of ingredients."

But we digress from role of barometric pressure. Suffice it to say, Sandy's barometric numbers are low, and they are helping make it a very big storm.

How low are Sandy's barometric readings??The storm isn't (yet) in the US Top 10 most intense (as measured by low barometric pressure) hurricanes. But Sandy's getting close. No. 10 on the list was a Hurricane Carla, a 1961 Category 4 storm with 931 millibars.

The lowest barometric pressure ever measured in a US hurricane was 882 millibars, in Hurricane Wilma in 2005. Wilma had sustained winds of more than 185 mph, making it a Category 5 storm.? The cyclone with the lowest recorded barometric pressure in the world was the 1979 storm Typhoon Tip, in the western Pacific Ocean, with a measurement of 869.9 millibars.

Why does a lower barometric pressure in the eye of the storm produce higher winds?

"Wind is a result of forces attempting to balance. As the pressure lowers in the center, the air spiraling around the eye must spin faster to offset the greater ?slope? (gradient) of the pressure surface," according to Steve Lanore, who uses the analogy of a ball spinning around the edge of a bowl to explain this.

There's also a good graphic of that explains the correlation between barometric pressure and hurricane wind speeds from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Oh yes, is Hurricane Sandy likely to induce labor?

Most obstetricians who have looked at this say no. But the theory has some logic to it. Some have put forth the idea that as the atmospheric pressure drops, there's less pressure on the amniotic sac membrane, and it spontaneously ruptures ? causing the woman's water to break.

But Dr. Salih Yasin, a practicing obstetrician for 25 years in Miami, who told My Health News Daily that he has not seen any increase in women going into labor during hurricanes. And Florida gets its fair share of hurricanes and tropical storms. He mentions two studies ? one in Houston and one in Miami ? that show no correlation between falling barometric pressure and births.

Monday 12:15 p.m.

?
Forecasters are warning that storm surges will be particularly strong thanks to the high tide, which coincides with the full moon.?
What does the amount of light reflecting off the moon have to do with the tides? Our friends at OurAmazingPlanet explain that the tides are influenced not just by the gravitational pull of the moon, but also that of the sun:

At full moon, the Earth, sun and moon are arranged in a line, with Earth in the middle. Tidal ranges are especially high at this time because the gravitational tugs of the sun and moon on our planet reinforce each other. The same effect is felt at new moon, when the three bodies all line up, with the moon between Earth and the sun.

During periods of high winds, a spring tides makes storm surges more severe. AccuWeather quotes MIT atmospheric scientist Kerry Emanuel, who calls storm surges "interesting," a word that scientists often use as a synonym for "very bad."

"They are one of the major sources of damage caused by hurricanes," says Emanuel. "They are like tsunamis but they are not generated by earthquakes but by hurricane winds."

Monday 11:15 a.m.

Hurricane Sandy is strengthening, and moving a little slower as it starts its turn west, according to the 11 a.m. National Hurricane Center advisory.
Sandy now has maximum sustained winds of 90 mph, up from 85 mph at the 8 a.m.

It has slowed its north-northwestern movement from 20 mph, to 18 mph. And is expected to make landfall this evening "just south of the Southern New Jersey coast."

Monday 10:50 am

If high winds and storm surge weren't enough, several states are now experiencing snow as Sandy mixes with the low pressure ridge along the East Coast, in the Appalachian range, some higher elevations of North Carolina and Tennessee are already getting snow.

?And the National Weather Service expect blizzard conditions in some higher elevations of West Virginia.

NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE CHARLESTON WV
625 AM EDT MON OCT 29 2012
...FIRST WINTER STORM IS A BLIZZARD FOR THE HIGH TERRAIN...
.THE REMAINS OF HURRICANE SANDY WILL COMBINE WITH AN UPPER LEVEL
LOW TO PRODUCE HEAVY SNOW AND STRONG WINDS ACROSS THE MOUNTAINOUS
COUNTIES.
...BLIZZARD WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM NOON TODAY TO 4 PM EDT
WEDNESDAY...
* LOCATIONS...VERY ELEVATION DEPENDENT WITH THE BEST CHANCES
? ACROSS HIGH TERRAIN...BUT CAN NOT BE RULED OUT IN THE VALLEYS.
* HAZARD TYPES...HEAVY WET SNOW...AND STRONG GUSTY WINDS.
* SNOW ACCUMULATIONS...RANGING FROM 1 TO 6 INCHES BELOW 2000
? FEET...TO 1 TO 3 FEET ABOVE 3000 FEET.

At 8 a.m. snow was falling in Boone, N.C., according to?WRAL.com.

In the Great Smokey Mountains, there are reports that 6.5 inches had fallen in places and that Highway 441 near the Newfound Gap was now closed. The headline on?Knoxnews.com:
"Snow from 'Frankenstorm' already hitting Smokies; 441 closed."

The National Weather Service report for Morristown, Tenn. in eastern Tennessee, has a Winter Storm Warning through Wednesday morning. The report includes:

_ A deep plume of moister will move over the spine of the Appalacians, result in in the potential for rain showers and snow showers in the valleys and some locally heavier snowfall across the higher elevations.
- Gusty northwesterly winds associated with this strengthening storm system will increase to 25-35 mph, and may gust up to 40-50 mph across the mountains.

The greatest potential for significant snowfall will be along the higher mountains ? with 6-12 inches possible above 3,000 feet.

But the National Hurricane Center is still predicting larger snowfalls in some areas of the Appalachians.

SNOWFALL..SNOW ACCUMULATIONS OF 2 TO 3 FEET ARE EXPECTED IN THEMOUNTAINS OF WEST VIRGINIA WITH LOCALLY HIGHER TOTALS TODAY THROUGHWEDNESDAY. SNOWFALL OF 1 TO 2 FEET IS EXPECTED IN THE MOUNTAINS OFSOUTHWESTERN VIRGINIA TO THE KENTUCKY BORDER...WITH 12 TO 18 INCHESOF SNOW EXPECTED IN THE MOUNTAINS NEAR THE NORTH CAROLINA/TENNESSEEBORDER AND IN THE MOUNTAINS OF WESTERN MARYLAND.

Atlantic City flooding as storm surge begins

Monday 9:10 a.m.

With the arrival of the morning high tide, flooding has begun in the streets of Atlantic City. There are unconfirmed reports that parts of Atlantic City's boardwalk have collapsed.

In Atlantic City, winds are gusting to tropical storm strength. All 12 casinos were shut down at 4 p.m. Sunday after Gov. Chris Christie declared a state of emergency for the entire state.

By 7:30 a.m., the streets immediately around the new Revel casino and hotel were covered with more than a foot of water, witnesses said.
Parts of Black Horse Pike in West Atlantic City, Route 30 and Route 9 in Absecon, Route 559 in Somers Point and Route 322 in Hamilton are already flooded, county officials said. Roads in Hamilton Township and Mays Landing were also impassable, reports NJ.com.

In Cape May the ocean has also breached the main oceanfront drive, Ocean Avenue, near the city's southern end, the Associated Press reports

New Jersey is also seeing power outages. As of 3:30 a.m., PSE&G is reporting 829 customers without power due to the early effects of Hurricane Sandy. Of that total, 794 of the outages are located in Deptford Township in Gloucester County. As of 5 a.m., JCP&L reported about 5,000 customers without power in Burlington and Ocean county, including more than 4,000 in Toms River, reports NJ.com.

RECOMMENDED: Five ways to prep for a hurricane

Monday 8:40 am.

The National Hurricane Center 8 a.m. report indicates that Hurricane Sandy is now starting to pick up speed (moving at 20 mph) and turn west. The blocking high pressure area in the north Atlantic will send Sandy on a sharper turn toward the coast later Monday morning.

Air Force hurricane hunter aircraft have clocked Sandy's sustained winds at 85 mph, with higher gusts, as far as way as 175 miles from the eye of the hurricane. As we've said this is a BIG storm. Tropical storm force winds (above 39 mph) extend almost 500 miles from the center of the storm. That means tropical force winds are now pummeling the coasts of New Jersey, Delaware, and Easter Virginia.

From the National Hurricane Center report: WIND...TROPICAL STORM CONDITIONS...OR GALE FORCE WINDS...ARE ALREADY OCCURRING OVER PORTIONS OF THE MID-ATLANTIC STATES FROM NORTH
CAROLINA NORTHWARD TO LONG ISLAND.? GALE FORCE WINDS ARE EXPECTED
TO CONTINUE TO SPREAD OVER OTHER PORTIONS OF THE MID-ATLANTIC
COAST...NEW YORK CITY...AND SOUTHERN NEW ENGLAND LATER THIS
MORNING.? WINDS OF HURRICANE FORCE COULD REACH THE MID-ATLANTIC
STATES...INCLUDING NEW YORK CITY AND LONG ISLAND...LATER TODAY.
WINDS AFFECTING THE UPPER FLOORS OF HIGH-RISE BUILDINGS WILL BE
SIGNIFICANTLY STRONGER THAN THOSE NEAR GROUND LEVEL.

Storm Surge Outlook

?

Monday 8:15 a.m.

As predicted, Hurricane Sandy has strengthened in the last 24 hours. It has begun it's turn toward the? East Coast. The barometric pressure has dropped to record levels, the winds have picked up to about 85 miles per hour, and Sandy has grown in size. Sandy now spans 1,000 miles. While it's still at least 300 miles from landfall, tropical storm strength winds (sustained winds above 39 mph) are already being felt on shore.

Record storm surges are expected, which is why hundreds of thousands of residents from Maryland to Connecticut were ordered to leave low-lying coastal areas. Some 375,000 people were ordered to leave lower Manhattan and other parts of New York City.

NOAA and the National Hurricane Center are predicting storm surges of 6-11 feet in the New York City area. How bad is that? For context, during Hurricane Irene last year, the storm surge at Battery Park hit 4.4 feet. The maximum surge during Irene was 4.5 feet in the New York City area, at Kings Point.

Currently, the storm surge is already at 4 feet at Kings Point, according to the Weather Channel.

Here's the National Hurricane Center 8 a.m. outlook on storm surge:

NC NORTH OF SURF CITY INCLUDING PAMLICO/ALBEMARLE SOUNDS...4 TO 6 FT SE VA AND DELMARVA INCLUDING LOWER CHESAPEAKE BAY...2 TO 4 FT UPPER AND MIDDLE CHESAPEAKE BAY...1 TO 3 FT LONG ISLAND SOUND...RARITAN BAY...AND NEW YORK HARBOR...6 TO 11 FT ELSEWHERE FROM OCEAN CITY MD TO THE CT/RI BORDER...4 TO 8 FT CT/RI BORDER TO THE SOUTH SHORE OF CAPE COD INCLUDING BUZZARDS BAY AND NARRAGANSETT BAY...3 TO 6 FT CAPE COD TO THE MA/NH BORDER INCLUDING CAPE COD BAY...2 TO 4 FT MA/NH BORDER TO THE U.S./CANADA BORDER...1 TO 3 FT

Check out the predicted storm surge map at Wundergrund.com.

SEE YESTERDAY'S HURRICANE SANDY LIVEBLOG: SUNDAY OCT. 28

RECOMMENDED: Are you scientifically literate? Take the quiz

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/science/~3/2YfPpQCxFWc/Superstorm-Sandy-Liveblog-Did-the-White-House-respond-too-quickly-video

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