n2doc
n2doc's JournalAmerica is home to more dollar stores than McDonald’s
Is there a dollar store near you? The answer is probably “several.”
Family Dollar FDO, -1.19% on Friday rejected the buyout proposal from Dollar General because of antitrust regulatory concerns.
In an attempt to ease those concerns, Dollar General DG, -2.28% had said it was willing to divest 1,500, or 7.7%, of the combined total of stores. But considering all the overlap seen on the map, especially east of the Mississippi, Family Dollar’s concerns are pretty clear.
Family Dollar continues to support the lower buyout offer from smaller rival Dollar Tree DLTR, +1.07% which has about 5,100 stores in the U.S. and Canada. Dollar Tree said Friday it would “divest as many stores as necessary or advisable” to obtain antitrust clearance.
more (graphs are worth looking at)
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/america-is-home-to-more-dollar-stores-than-mcdonalds-2014-09-05
Sunny Northwest day stuns ISS astronaut
Reid Wiseman
This never happens – perfectly clear from California to British Columbia. #Seattle in the middle.
It's also nearing kicking 1967 out of the record books. Saturday will be Seattle's 41st day at 80 or warmer (with nary a cloud to be found on the satellite image, or seen by the ISS.) The record is 47 days at 80 or warmer. (2nd is 46, 3rd is 45 days.) Long range models suggest the record is not out of reach.
more
http://www.komonews.com/weather/blogs/scott/Sunny-Northwest-day-stuns-ISS-astronaut-274214881.html
What It's Like to Be a Black Cop in St. Louis County
BY ALEXIA FERNÁNDEZ CAMPBELL
PASADENA HILLS, Mo—Martise Scott had made it. He escaped the inner-city ghetto of north St. Louis, went to college, and got hired as a police officer for the St. Louis County Police Department. It was 1985, and he was one of about 50 black officers in a force of about 700.
"We were the lucky few," says Scott, who was first assigned to patrol the wealthy white suburbs in west St. Louis County.
He still remembers the looks he got from homeowners when he responded to calls. And the comments police officers made about African-American defendants. It wasn't long before he realized that the black crack dealers and users he arrested would get longer prison sentences than the predominantly white cocaine dealers and users.
"It's a thin line for a black officer," says Scott, now 49. "Nobody understands what it's like to be on both sides. You walk a tight rope."
more
http://www.nationaljournal.com/next-america/population-2043/i-was-still-just-a-black-man-20140905
Mother of Higgs boson found in superconductors
by Michael Slezak
A weird theoretical cousin of the Higgs boson, one that inspired the decades-long hunt for the elusive particle, has been properly observed for the first time. The discovery bookends one of the most exciting eras in modern physics.
The Higgs field, which gives rise to its namesake boson, is credited with giving other particles mass by slowing their movement through the vacuum of space. First proposed in the 1960s, the particle finally appeared at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN near Geneva, Switzerland, in 2012, and some of the theorists behind it received the 2013 Nobel prize in physics.
But the idea was actually borrowed from the behaviour of photons in superconductors, metals that, when cooled to very low temperatures, allow electrons to move without resistance.
Near zero degrees kelvin, vibrations are set up in the superconducting material that slow down pairs of photons travelling through, making light act as though it has a mass.
This effect is closely linked to the idea of the Higgs – "the mother of it actually," says Raymond Volkas at the University of Melbourne in Australia.
more
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn26158-mother-of-higgs-boson-found-in-superconductors.html
Profile Information
Gender: Do not displayMember since: Tue Feb 10, 2004, 01:08 PM
Number of posts: 47,953
