U.S. And Russia Sign Historic Nuclear Treaty

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U.S. And Russia Sign Historic Nuclear Treaty
Thursday, April 8, 2010

••• U.S. President Barack Obama and the Russian President, Dmitry Medvedev, have signed a landmark nuclear arms treaty in the Czech capital, Prague.

The treaty commits the former Cold War enemies to each reduce the number of deployed strategic warheads to 1 550 – 30 percent lower than the previous ceiling.

It also limits the number of deployed “launchers” – ballistic missiles and heavy bombers – to no more than 700.

The deal replaces the expired Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) of 1991.

After it was agreed, Obama hailed the deal as the most comprehensive weapons control agreement in nearly two decades.

“With this agreement, the United States and Russia – the two largest nuclear powers in the world – also send a clear signal that we intend to lead,” he said.

The treaty must be ratified by the U.S. Senate and the Russian Duma.

The U.S. and Russian leaders signed the New START treaty at 12:00 pm CET (8:00 am EDT) in Prague Castle (Spanish Hall), the Czech president’s residence.
Speaking after the signing ceremony, President Obama said the treaty demonstrated that both countries had halted the deterioration of their relations, which had prevented agreement on mutually important issues in the past.

“When the United States and Russia are not able to work together on big issues, it’s not good for either of our nations, nor is it good for the world. Together we’ve stopped that drift and proven the benefits of co-operation,” he added.

Mr. Obama said the pact was “an important milestone for nuclear security and non-proliferation” and set the stage for further arms cuts.

“While the New Start treaty is an important first step forward, it is just one step on a longer journey. This treaty will set the stage for further cuts, and going forward, we hope to pursue discussions with Russia on reducing both our strategic and tactical weapons, including non-deployed weapons.”

He said the talks – beginning this summer – would cover missile defence, threat assessments, and the completion of a joint assessment of emerging ballistic missiles.

For his part, President Medvedev said the negotiating process had not been simple, but the treaty represented a “win-win situation” that would enhance strategic stability and bilateral relations.

“The result we have obtained is good,” he said. “We have got a document that fully maintains the balance of interests between Russia and the U.S. The main thing is that there are no victors or losers here.”

But Mr. Medvedev said disagreements remained between Moscow and Washington over U.S. plans for a missile defence shield, which have been modified by Mr. Obama.

On Tuesday, Russia’s foreign minister warned that it could abandon the New Start treaty “if a quantitative and qualitative build-up of the U.S. strategic anti-missile potential begins to significantly affect the efficiency of Russia’s strategic forces”.

It was Moscow’s concerns over Washington’s plans to base interceptor missiles in Poland and a radar station in the Czech Republic that helped delay the new treaty. President Obama shelved the idea in September, although new plans include ground-based interceptor missiles in Romania.

The White House has said it hopes and expects the U.S. Senate to ratify the New Start treaty this year. Senate ratification requires 67 votes, which means it must include Republicans.

The Russian lower house of parliament must also approve the treaty, but as long as the Kremlin supports it, ratification there is expected to be a formality.

During private talks before the signing ceremony, Mr. Obama and Mr. Medvedev also discussed Iran’s nuclear programme.

The U.S. wants the U.N. Security Council to approve tougher sanctions against Tehran, over its refusal to halt uranium enrichment.

“Unfortunately Tehran is not reacting to an array of constructive compromise proposals. We cannot close our eyes to this,” Mr. Medvedev said afterwards.

Large Hadron Collider research programme gets underway

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Large Hadron Collider research programme gets underway
Tuesday, March 30, 2010

••• Physicists at the CERN research center collided sub-atomic particles in the Large Hadron Collider on Tuesday at the highest speeds ever achieved. “It’s a great day to be a particle physicist,” said CERN Director General Rolf Heuer. “A lot of people have waited a long time for this moment, but their patience and dedication is starting to pay dividends.” Already, the instruments in the LHC have recorded thousands of events, and at this writing, the LHC has had more than an hour of stable and colliding beams.

This is an attempt to create mini-versions of the Big Bang that led to the birth of the universe 13.7 billion years ago, providing new insights into the nature and evolution of matter in the early Universe.

Beams collided at 7 TeV in the LHC at 13:06 CEST. This marks the first long run at an energy three and a half times higher than previously achieved at a particle accelerator.

“With these record-shattering collision energies, the LHC experiments are propelled into a vast region to explore, and the hunt begins for dark matter, new forces, new dimensions and the Higgs boson,” said ATLAS collaboration spokesperson, Fabiola Gianotti. “The fact that the experiments have published papers already on the basis of last year’s data bodes very well for this first physics run.”

Scientists say the first results from this high collision rate may be published within a few months, more likely by the end of 2010.

“We’ve all been impressed with the way the LHC has performed so far,” said Guido Tonelli, spokesperson of the CMS experiment, “and it’s particularly gratifying to see how well our particle detectors are working while our physics teams worldwide are already analysing data. We’ll address soon some of the major puzzles of modern physics like the origin of mass, the grand unification of forces and the presence of abundant dark matter in the universe. I expect very exciting times in front of us.”

CERN will run the LHC for 18-24 months with the objective of delivering enough data to the experiments to make significant advances across a wide range of physics channels. As soon as they have “re-discovered” the known Standard Model particles, a necessary precursor to looking for new physics, the LHC experiments will start the systematic search for the Higgs boson. With the amount of data expected, called one inverse femtobarn by physicists, the combined analysis of ATLAS and CMS will be able to explore a wide mass range, and there’s even a chance of discovery if the Higgs has a mass near 160 GeV. If it’s much lighter or very heavy, it will be harder to find in this first LHC run.

For supersymmetry, ATLAS and CMS will each have enough data to double today’s sensitivity to certain new discoveries. Experiments today are sensitive to some supersymmetric particles with masses up to 400 GeV. An inverse femtobarn at the LHC pushes the discovery range up to 800 GeV.

“The LHC has a real chance over the next two years of discovering supersymmetric particles,” explained Heuer, “and possibly giving insights into the composition of about a quarter of the Universe.”

Even at the more exotic end of the LHC’s potential discovery spectrum, this LHC run will extend the current reach by a factor of two. LHC experiments will be sensitive to new massive particles indicating the presence of extra dimensions up to masses of 2 TeV, where today’s reach is around 1 TeV.

Following this run, the LHC will shutdown for routine maintenance, and to complete the repairs and consolidation work needed to reach the LHC’s design energy of 14 TeV following the incident of 19 September 2008. Traditionally, CERN has operated its accelerators on an annual cycle, running for seven to eight months with a four to five month shutdown each year. Being a cryogenic machine operating at very low temperature, the LHC takes about a month to bring up to room temperature and another month to cool down. A four-month shutdown as part of an annual cycle no longer makes sense for such a machine, so CERN has decided to move to a longer cycle with longer periods of operation accompanied by longer shutdown periods when needed.

“Two years of continuous running is a tall order both for the LHC operators and the experiments, but it will be well worth the effort,” said Heuer. “By starting with a long run and concentrating preparations for 14 TeV collisions into a single shutdown, we’re increasing the overall running time over the next three years, making up for lost time and giving the experiments the chance to make their mark.”
• Source: CERN
• Information for: Kids
• CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is the world’s leading laboratory for particle physics. It has its headquarters in Geneva. At present, its Member States are Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. India, Israel, Japan, the Russian Federation, the United States of America, Turkey, the European Commission and UNESCO have Observer status.

Former U.S. presidents Bush, Clinton visit Haiti

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Former U.S. presidents Bush, Clinton visit Haiti
Tuesday, March 23, 2010

••• Former Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton clasped hands with residents of one of Haiti’s massive tent cities Monday on a tour of its quake-devastated capital – a visit intended to remind donors of the immense needs facing the recovery effort.

The two former leaders, who were tapped by President Barack Obama to spearhead U.S. fundraising for the crisis, made their first joint visit as part of the mission to raise aid and investment for the impoverished Caribbean nation.

At a news conference with President René Préval on the grounds of the collapsed national palace, Bush said he was struck by the devastation caused by the Jan. 12 earthquake.

“It’s one thing to see it on TV, it’s another to see it firsthand,” said Bush, who was making his first visit to Haiti. “Hopefully our visit will remind people that Haiti needs help.”

Clinton and Bush later greeted quake survivors camped on the Champ de Mars, the national mall filled with 60,000 homeless people.

While many of the homeless welcomed the visit as a sign that the U.S. would continue to supply aid, some said they were disappointed the presidents did not bring anything more tangible.

“The visit is like no visit at all. They walked inside, it’s to show off,” said René Pierre, a 35-year-old homeless man.

About 100 supporters of ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide staged a protest outside the national palace, burning tires and demanding the return of their exiled leader.

Clinton and Bush visit as the country struggles to feed and shelter victims of the magnitude-7 quake, which killed an estimated 230,000 people. Another 1.3 million quake survivors are homeless, with many living in camps prone to dangerous flooding in the April rainy season.

The former presidents also visited the Maxima SA woodworking plant where manager Evelien Degier, a native of the Netherlands, said they can build houses for $2,000. She said she hopes the presidents help direct investment to companies like hers that employ Haitians as part of the reconstruction effort.

“It’s wonderful to have the handouts and the food,” she said. “But now people need to go back to work to real life to earn real money.”

Risk of flooding

The 7.0-magnitude quake is believed to have killed at least 200,000 people and left another 1.3 million people homeless, with many living in makeshift camps at risk of flooding during the April rainy season.

Bush and Clinton’s visit aims to spotlight the dramatic need ahead of a critical March 31 U.N. donors conference in New York, where Haitian officials will ask for $11.5 billion U.S. in reconstruction help.

Bush’s trip to Haiti on Monday is his first to the Caribbean country. Clinton, who is the U.N. special envoy to the country, has made two visits since the quake and five in the past two years. He also visited as president.

The non-profit Clinton Bush Haiti Fund has raised roughly $37 million from 220,000 individuals, including Hollywood actor Leonardo DiCaprio, who gave $1 million, and Obama, who among other donations gave $200,000 of the $1.4 million he got with his Nobel Peace Prize.

About $4 million has gone to such organizations as Habitat for Humanity, the University of Miami/Project Medishare mobile hospital in Port-au-Prince and the U.S. branch of the Irish charity Concern Worldwide. The rest of the money has yet to be distributed.

The two former presidents have arguably shaped Haiti’s history as much as anyone alive today.

Clinton presided over a refugee crisis born of the 1991 ouster of Aristide, Haiti’s first democratically elected president. He returned Aristide to power in 1994 with a force of 20,000 U.S. troops.

Bush is remembered by many Haitians – especially the thousands in Port-au-Prince’s teeming slums – as the U.S. leader whose administration chartered the plane that flew Aristide back into exile during a 2004 rebellion.