morton sodding

spiveykassie58 · ScienceDaily (Dec. 6, 2012)

ScienceDaily (Dec. 6, 2012) ? Tiny sensors -- made of a potentially trailblazing material just one atom thick and heralded as the "next best thing" since the invention of silicon -- are now being developed to detect trace elements in Earth's upper atmosphere and structural flaws in spacecraft.

Technologist Mahmooda Sultana, who joined NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., two years ago and has since emerged as Goddard's go-to expert in the development of graphene-based technology, has expanded her portfolio to include two new research and development efforts aimed at creating nano-sized detectors that could detect atomic oxygen and other trace elements in the upper atmosphere and structural strains in everything from airplane wings to spacecraft buses.

"The cool thing about graphene is its properties," said Jeff Stewart, the acting assistant chief for technology for Goddard's Mechanical Systems Division. "It offers a plethora of possibilities. Frankly, we're just getting started."

Graphene, first discovered in 2004 by Russian-born scientists Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov, is just one atom thick and composed of carbon atoms arranged in tightly bound hexagons best visualized as atomic-scale chicken wire. Two hundred times stronger than structural steel, it not only is the strongest material ever measured, but also the most sensitive and stable at extreme temperatures, making it ideal for all types of uses. Since its discovery, hundreds of organizations worldwide have launched research efforts to take advantage of the material's unique properties.

Goddard is one in the growing contingent.

More than a year ago, Sultana and her team won research and development funding to set up production facilities and fine-tune processing techniques for fabricating graphene using a technique called chemical vapor deposition (CVD), a technique also used in manufacturing computer chips. With this approach, technicians place a metal substrate inside a vacuum chamber and inject gases that then react or decompose to produce the desired thin film.

Since then, the group has succeeded at manufacturing and processing relatively large, high-quality pieces of graphene, and is now ready to apply its expertise to advance other applications. "One of the most promising applications of this material is as a chemical sensor," Sultana said.

Chemical Sensors

She has teamed with retired Goddard scientist Fred Herrero, who is pursuing the research in an emeritus capacity, to develop a miniaturized, low-mass, low-power, graphene-based detector that could measure the amount of atomic oxygen in the upper atmosphere. Atomic oxygen in the upper atmosphere is created when ultraviolet radiation from the sun breaks apart oxygen molecule (O₂). The resultant reactive element is highly corrosive. As satellites fly through the upper atmosphere, the chemical strikes them at about five miles per second. The impacts destroy commonly used spacecraft materials, such as Kapton.

Although scientists believe atomic oxygen makes up 96 percent of the thin atmosphere in low-Earth orbit, Herrero is interested in measuring its density and determining more precisely its role in creating atmospheric drag, which can cause orbiting spacecraft to lose altitude prematurely and plunge to Earth. "We still don't know the impact of atomic elements on spacecraft in creating a drag force," he said. "We don't know how much momentum is transferred between the atom and the spacecraft. This is important because engineers need to understand the impact to estimate the lifetime of a spacecraft and how long it will take before the spacecraft reenters Earth's atmosphere."

Research has shown that graphene-based sensors offer a good solution, Sultana said. When graphene absorbs atomic oxygen, it oxidizes, producing a change in the material's electrical resistance that a graphene-based sensor could then quickly count to produce a more accurate density measurement. "I'm really excited about this material's possibilities," Herrero said, adding that graphene would greatly simplify the steps needed to measure atomic oxygen. "We'd be counting how often the resistance changes."

Atomic oxygen isn't the only element the chemical sensor could measure, Sultana said. She also believes it's ideal for measuring methane, carbon monoxide, and other gases on other planetary bodies and monitoring outgassing that sometimes contaminates instrument optics. She plans to fabricate and test the first generation of graphene-based chemical sensors by the end of the fiscal year, she said. "This is at a very early stage," Sultana added.

Strain Detection

Graphene's unique attributes also make it a viable candidate for detecting stresses in spacecraft components, she said. With her collaborators at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the team is using support from NASA's Office of the Chief Technologist to advance a small sensor that could be embedded in spacecraft materials, including composites. If the material underwent some type of stress, the tiny sensors would detect it.

The team has used CVD to manufacture and test a large piece of graphene, whose electrical properties are sensitive to detecting stresses, Sultana said. Her MIT collaborators now are fabricating graphene devices and her team is wiring them to read out measurements -- much like the medical electrodes used for certain medical tests. However, Sultana plans to eliminate the wiring so that it operates autonomously, she said.

"This could be deployed in a non-invasive way," Stewart said. "Right now, we use relatively large devices to detect damage or potential sources of failure, but with autonomous graphene-based sensors our hope is that we could put them into the material itself."

"We can employ a different combination of its extreme properties and use the same material for different sensing applications," Sultana added. "That's the beauty of graphene."

Share this story on Facebook, Twitter, and Google:

Other social bookmarking and sharing tools:

Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by NASA.

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

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

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/bJp1OevyNQY/121206104548.htm

Olympics 2012 Olympic Schedule 2012 NBC Olympics NBC Olympics schedule 2012 Olympics Chad Everett London Olympics

spiveykassie58

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) ? Afghanistan's intelligence chief was wounded Thursday in an assassination attempt in the capital, Kabul, Afghan officials said.

A senior government official said Asadullah Khalid suffered injuries on the lower part of his body when a bomb exploded at the intelligence chief's guest house as he was receiving a visitor. The house is used for private meetings that Khalid doesn't want to hold at the official compound of the National Directorate of Intelligence, the official said.

He official would not provide more details beyond saying the bombing was an attempt on Khalid's life.

Khalid was rushed to a medical facility run by the intelligence service, the government official said.

An Afghan police official also confirmed that Khalid was injured in a blast. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to disclose the information.

Khalid, a former minister of tribal and border affairs and ex-governor of two provinces, was appointed head of the service in September.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/bombing-wounds-afghan-intelligence-chief-114804978.html

gunner kiel gunner kiel groundhog soulja boy did the groundhog see his shadow punxsutawney phil groundhog day

spiveykassie58 · ScienceDaily (Dec. 6, 2012)

ScienceDaily (Dec. 6, 2012) ? Of the two bat species known to visit the flowers of the cardon cactus in Baja California, one depends entirely on nectar and is highly specialized to feed from the flowers, which are adapted for pollination by bats. The other is an insect-eating bat best known for its ability to hear the footsteps of large insects and scorpions and capture them on the ground.

In a surprising result, scientists at the University of California, Santa Cruz, have found that the insect-eating pallid bat is a more effective pollinator of the cactus flowers than the nectar-feeding specialist, the lesser long-nosed bat.

"The lesser long-nosed bat is highly specialized for nectar-feeding and was thought to be the primary pollinator of the cardon cactus. But when we measured their effectiveness, we found that the pallid bat actually delivers about 13 times as much pollen per visit," said Winifred Frick, a research scientist at UC Santa Cruz. Frick is first author of a paper on the new findings published online in American Naturalist.

The study highlights the complex nature of the mutually beneficial relationships between plants and their pollinators, which in most cases have evolved together over long periods of time. There are often conflicts of interest between the partners, according to coauthor Kathleen Kay, assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at UC Santa Cruz.

"What is actually happening in terms of how species are mutually interacting can be more complicated than what meets the eye," Kay said. "You would think the coevolved species would be a better pollinator than a naive interloper. But the adaptations for nectar-feeding of the lesser long-nosed bat are to enable it to get more nectar, not for it to do a better job pollinating."

Frick said several factors may explain the difference between the two bat species in pollination effectiveness. The lesser long-nosed bat is able to hover at the open cactus flowers and uses its long tongue to extract the nectar, transferring pollen from one flower to another in the process. The pallid bat, in contrast, has to land on the flowers and plunge its head deep inside to get to the nectar, resulting in longer visits and more copious accumulations of pollen on its head. In addition, the lesser long-nosed bat relies on pollen as a source of protein and regularly grooms itself during a night of flower visits, removing some of the pollen from its fur and eating it.

Frick, a bat ecologist, had observed pallid bats visiting cardon cactus flowers during earlier research projects in the area and knew that the bats often had pollen on them. For the new study, she teamed up with Kay, an expert in pollination biology and plant evolution. They monitored cactus flowers at 14 study sites in Baja California, working with a team of student assistants from Mexico and UC Santa Cruz. The cardon cactus is a large columnar cactus and is the dominant plant species in the study area. When the researchers saw a bat visit a flower, they would identify the species, climb a ladder to the flower, remove the stigma, and count the number of pollen grains the bat had delivered. They also took data on the number of flower visits by each of the two species at each study site.

The results showed that the pallid bats not only delivered more pollen per visit on average, but in some areas were frequent enough visitors to be more effective pollinators overall than the lesser long-nosed bats.

Plants that are adapted for bat pollination have large, sturdy flowers that bloom at night. The lesser long-nosed bat belongs to a large family of nectar-feeding bats that are important pollinators, especially in tropical habitats. The pallid bat, in contrast, is the only nectar feeder known in its mostly insect-eating family, which is the largest and most widespread family of bats.

"A lot of pollinators come from lineages that are quite old and have been coevolving with plants for a long time," Kay said. "You might think that a new pollinator would not be a good pollinator, but in this case it's actually a better pollinator because it's not well adapted for nectar-feeding. It's exciting to get a glimpse of what the initial stages might be in the evolution of a novel feeding behavior."

Frick said she has video of a pallid bat attacking a large moth on a flower, so it's not hard to imagine how the insect-eating pallid bats might have discovered the sweet nectar hidden inside cactus flowers.

Kay noted that many animals that visit flowers are just feeding without pollinating the flowers or otherwise benefiting the plants. There are also examples of invasive pollinators that disrupt a coevolved plant-pollinator relationship and do a worse job of pollination. "In this case it's the evolutionarily newer pollinator doing a better job, and I haven't seen that before," she said.

The lesser long-nosed bats were effective pollinators of cardon cactus flowers at many of the study sites. But the study found considerable variation between sites, and because the lesser long-nosed bat is migratory, there may be variability from year to year as well, Frick said. The greater variability of the migratory lesser long-nosed bats could make the resident pallid bats especially important as pollinators of cardon cactus.

"The lesser long-nosed bat is an adequate pollinator, but there is a lot of variation in where they occur. We would like to look at that variation over several years," Frick said.

In addition to Frick and Kay, the coauthors of the paper include Ryan Price, who worked on the project for his senior thesis and graduated from UCSC with a degree in environmental studies, and Paul Heady of the Central Coast Bat Research Group. Funding for this project was provided by the UC Institute for Mexico and the United States (UC MEXUS) and the Central Coast Bat Research Group. Frick was supported by National Science Foundation grants (DBI 0905881 and DEB 1115895).

Share this story on Facebook, Twitter, and Google:

Other social bookmarking and sharing tools:

Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of California - Santa Cruz. The original article was written by Tim Stephens.

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

Journal Reference:

Winifred F. Frick, Ryan D. Price, Paul A. Heady, Kathleen M. Kay. Insectivorous Bat Pollinates Columnar Cactus More Effectively per Visit than Specialized Nectar Bat. The American Naturalist, 2012; : 000 DOI: 10.1086/668595

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

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_environment/~3/DQFOfYQyMYA/121206131827.htm

brock lesnar kentucky jayhawks wwe wrestlemania oakland shooting mega millions winning numbers autism speaks

spiveykassie58

Trailblazing anthropologist says Zora Neale Hurston among first to study Black Americans as anthropologist

December 03, 2012

Irma McClaurin Ph.D., who has blazed trails as an anthropologist, an author, poet and a university administrator, will give the keynote address at The Skanner Foundation?s 2013 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Breakfast.

?We are delighted to have a speaker of her caliber come to Portland to talk to us about the impact of broadband and what is happening in other parts of the country, and the world,? said Bernie Foster, publisher of The Skanner News.

McClaurin?s storied career includes stints as a university administrator, academic and nonprofit administrator.

Among her many publications are: three books of poetry (Pearl?s Song, Song in the Night, and Black Chicago); The Civil Rights Movement The Future of Black America; and Women of Belize: Gender and Change in Central America. McClaurin also edited the landmark anthology: Black Feminist Anthropology: Theory, Politics, Praxis and Poetics.

As? culture and education editor for www.insightnews.com of Minneapolis, she has written about everything from Michelle Obama to her travels in Paris.

She?s also got more degrees than you have room to hang on your wall. First she earned her bachelor?s degree in American Studies from Grinnell College, then she went on to study for a master?s degree in English followed by a master?s and a doctorate in Anthropology from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

McClaurin plans to talk about Dr. King and the struggle for equality in the age of broadband technology, at the Skanner Foundation?s 27th Annual Martin Luther King Jr. Breakfast at the Hilton Hotel in Portland, Jan. 21. The Skanner News spoke to her Dec. 3.

TSN: You are on the road a lot. But where are you based?

IM: I?m based in Raleigh, N.C. Raleigh is a very modern city, while Durham is a little more old-fashioned. They both have their charms.

TSN: Did you start out wanting to be an anthropologist?

IM: I started out on the creative side as a poet and a writer, because my first love was literature. Then I did a stint as an academic administrator, before going back to study anthropology. So I like to think of myself as a born-again anthropologist.

It is the study of human culture and human variation, but for the most part is about helping us understand not only our own culture, but that of others. And I think what makes it unique is that it is comparative, and it tries to look at the human species. Basically anthropology is the study of what makes us human. That?s the fundamental question it?s trying to answer.

Eric Wolf, who has now passed away, used to say anthropology was the most humanist of the sciences and the most scientific of the humanities.

TSN: As a Black woman were you entering a field that was mostly White and male dominated? What is important about the perspective African Americans bring to the field of anthropology?

IM: Well since the 1800s and starting with Caroline Bond Day, we actually do have a history of African Americans being involved in anthropology. W.E.B. Dubois, for example, worked under the label of sociology, but in effect what he was doing was urban anthropology.

Caroline Bond Day

Anthropology as a discipline was an offshoot of sociology and the split was this: Sociologists would study, in quotes ??complex? societies, while anthropologists would study, quote, ?non-complex? societies, i.e the primitive. So what you had were people from industrialized, complex societies going into non-industrialized societies and trying to understand them. So it was always the study of ?the other.?

The perspective we bring is that those of us who historically have been the subjects and the objects of anthropological research ??the other,? are now the people doing the research. So we bring, to some extent an insiders? perspective.

TSN: Do anthropology and sociology divide along those lines now?

IM: Anthropologists now study complex, industrialized societies. There has been a borrowing on both sides. So during the 20th century we saw the rise of urban anthropology.

What we?re saying is that everyone is culturally grounded. And even if you?re studying someone else, you bring with you your cultural baggage. You see the world through your own cultural lens. So if that lens is one where you believe primitive people are, ?less than,? then that?s going to shape the way you interpret the data. Even the questions you choose to ask are still shaped by the culture you come from. So this notion of objectivity is what we really challenge.

?One of the most noted women anthropologists that most people know of course is Zora Neale Hurston. She was one of Franz Boas? students.

Zora Neale Hurston

Boas is considered the father of American anthropology.
Zora Neale Hurston was a Black woman from Eatonville Florida, which was considered one of the first independent Black towns in the United States. And she was the first Black woman to graduate from Barnard College.? Boas trained Margaret Mead, He trained Ruth Benedict. He trained Alfred Kroeber, and he trained Edward Sapir? all anthropologists who went on to make a name for themselves. And he trained Zora Neale Hurston at the same time.

She collected folklore, and while she is most noted as a novelist, she actually trained as an anthropologist. She?s known as a novelist, which is why I am so drawn to her, but she has both a humanities perspective and a social scientist perspective.

The literary people have adopted her, but I?ve been trying to rescue her back and re-enshrine her in the canon of anthropology.
TSN: Have you visited Portland before?
IM: No I?ve visited Corvallis so I?m really looking forward to seeing Portland.

Article source: http://theskanner.com/article/Meet-Irma-McClaurin-Keynote-Speaker-at-The-Skanner-Foundations-Martin-Luther-King-Breakfast-2013-2012-12-03

Source: http://www.kisapps.net/MLK/2012/12/04/meet-irma-mcclaurin-keynote-speaker-at-the-skanner-foundations-martin/

oscars nba all star game 2012 academy awards 2012 nominations academy awards independent spirit awards 2012 jan brewer independent spirit awards

Source: http://adelinakitta.blogspot.com/2012/12/meet-irma-mcclaurin-keynote-speaker-at.html

justin timberlake michael dyer bachmann bachmann iowa caucus results sickle cell trait sugar bowl

Source: http://flormcavoy.typepad.com/blog/2012/12/adelinakitta-meet-irma-mcclaurin-keynote-speaker-at-the-skanner.html

joe paterno memorial service taco bell breakfast menu ener1 national chocolate cake day epstein

Source: http://harrington42.typepad.com/blog/2012/12/adelinakitta-meet-irma-mcclaurin-keynote-speaker-at-the-skanner.html

sean hannity bobby petrino fired buffett rule lollapalooza lineup joss whedon ronnie montrose melissa gilbert dancing with the stars

spiveykassie58

We already know that vitamins A, C, and E are good for your eyes. ?Getting them in your diet will help prevent cataracts, among other eye ills. ?The nutrients lutein and zeaxanthin also are helpful. ?So are the B vitamins.

The B vitamins, especially riboflavin and niacin, help prevent cataracts according the sites I studied.? You can get riboflavin from lean beef and lamb, yogurt, milk, mushrooms, almonds, eggs and coffee.? However, nearly every site cautions against caffeine for eye health, so better stick to the other sources.

Niacin comes from tuna, chicken, salmon, turkey, anchovies, kidney beans, peanuts, and sunflower seeds.? Of course, you can also get them from supplements ? if you choose a food-based vitamin from a reputable company.

A study with rats showed that those little critters who drank lots of tea had lower blood sugar than the non-tea-drinking rats? (and how did they get the rats to drink tea, I wonder?).? They also had a reduced level of glucose in the eye lens and about half the number of cataracts.? They haven?t done studies in people yet, but it makes sense to drink lots of tea.? It won?t hurt, at any rate.

And there is an eye-drop that has been shown in several studies to reverse cataracts.? The eyedrop contains the natural solution N-acetylcarnosine.? Why haven?t you heard about these studies?? Because it is a natural substance available over the counter.? Unless you have a doctor who is tuned in to holistic medicine, you won?t hear about it. Drug companies don?t profit from it, so doctors don?t hear about it ? but I won?t get on that soapbox for this post!

Once more, we find that the best thing? you can do is what you know to do already.? Eat a low glycemic diet with lots of fruits and vegetables.? Avoid sugar, grains, and transfats, which means stay away from junk foods and processed foods.? If you take care of your body, it will last as long as? you live.

Eating to live and living for Christ,

Susan Jordan Brown

Source: http://blog.beliefnet.com/beyondgorgeous/2012/12/foods-and-drink-to-avoid-cataracts.html

doug hutchison larry brown thomas kinkade pat summit brewers matt cain adastra

spiveykassie58

Twitterrific 5 brings gorgeous new design, vicious new speed to iPhone and iPad

Twitterrific is the Star Trek of iOS. Not only is it the original, but more than any other app, it has proven its ability to re-invent and re-invigorate itself, over an and over again, from one generation to the next. From the Jailbreak days before the App Store to now, post Twitter API crackdowns, post-iPhone 5 and iPad mini, the Iconfactory, and with the team of Sean Herber, David Lanham, Craig Hockenberry, Gedeon Maheux, Tyler Anderson, and Cheryl Culling have continually moved Twitterrific forward while never losing what made it great to begin with. Old and yet new, simple and yet deep, Twitterrific 5 is startlingly beautiful and viciously fast, and represents nothing more or less than a re-imagining of the app and the genre.

(We'll have a full interview with Gedeon Maheux and David Lanham as part of this week's episode of the Iterate podcast, look for it shortly!)

The new look is incredibly clean. The themes are white as day and black as night, the text incredibly crisp, and the interface filled with space and color. There are no gradients, no parallax, and almost no chrome to speak of. It'a authentically, proudly digital. A lot of that has to do with designer David Lanham, who began work on the look even before Iconfactory decided to go ahead with the new version of the app. In a very real way, Lanham painted it into existence, and it shows.

When you launch Twitterrific 5 you're prompted to grant permission for it to use your Twitter accounts, and then for you to add an account or accounts to Twitterrific 5. It's done simply and elegantly. And then you're in the app.

Twitterrific has always been about reading Twitter, and Twitterrific 5 is all about reading. Period. Everything else gets out of your way, and content is treated as the star.

Well, almost. Twitterrific's iconic Ollie, the bright blue bird responsible for even Twitter's own avian branding, has become the most delightful pull-to-refresh animation to date. Pull down and an egg breaks open, Ollie appears, flaps his wings to bring in fresh content, and then spins and pops out. It's outstanding. And addicting.

Here's the Ollie-to-refresh.

If and when you can bring yourself to stop playing with Ollie, you'll be in the timeline. As tradition demands, it's a unified timeline, which means the tweets of the people you follow, all your @mentions, and all your direct messages (DMs) are all sorted together in chronological order. Some people love this. Others don't. The Iconfactory recognizes that and, for the first time you can disable the unified timeline in settings (see below). Other timeline tabs here include @mentions and DMs, separate and distinct, just as you'd expect.

In the timeline, avatars are shown in roundrects, with usernames beside them and @names smaller and just beneath the usernames. Beneath that is the content of the tweet, brighter, and the time beneath that. Tap a tweet and the time is instantly replaced with reply, retweet, favorite, and more actions. Tap the more icon and you get a set of options including show discussion, translate tweet, email tweet, and retweet with comment.

Tap an avatar and you're taken to the person's profile page. All the stats are there, but if you dig deeper into followers or following, instead of the usual table view with avatars on the left and details on the right, you get a collection view of of avatars in a grid, with details below them.

If you're more into gestures than buttons, you can nudge the tweet from left to right to immediately switch to reply mode. Awesomely, the complete tweet you're replying to is show in tiny, low contrast type beneath the reply space, so you can immediately refer back to it You can also nudge from right to left to immediately switch to conversation view. In conversation view, you can choose between two tabs at the top, the default thread view, or an alternate replies view.

Instead of a hamburger button and basement, you get your own mugshot top left and tapping it takes you to an options screen where, aside from seeing your lists, you can switch from the tweets view to your favorites or to search. Search gives you the option of searching for keywords in either tweets, or in usernames.

At the bottom you can access accounts, change formatting, and adjust you preferences. Accounts lets you add other @usernames you might own. Formatting is something you usually find in ereaders, not Twitter apps, and certainly not in a Twitter app from a company with the generational taste of the Iconfactory. But here's the thing, Gedeon Maheux says they were inspired by iBooks and by the reading experiences that have flourished on iOS since Twitterrific first launched, and they've embraced the idea of options, if carefully selected, eminently tasteful ones. Formatting choices include several fonts, from the default Helvitica to Proxima Nova, Signika, Museo Slab, and Calluna. You can also select avatar size, between small and large, and increase or decrease the font size and line spacing. Lastly, you can choose between the dark (black) and light (white) theme, and adjust its brightness right there, right then. (I keep it on the dark theme. Black on a black-on-black iPhone or iPad mini is just fantastic looking.)

Preferences let you choose between sync services, including iCloud and Manton Reese's Tweet Marker, and sync behavior, including none, show marker, and scroll to marker. You can also turn sounds off and on, and turn the unified timeline on or off (off means no @mentions from people you don't follow, and no DMs, in your main timeline). You can set the dark theme to automatically turn on at night (based on time, Apple doesn't allow developers to tap into the ambient light sensor yet). And you can clear bookmarking logins.

There's also a help button which tells you all about Twitterrific's new gesture support. In addition to the Ollie-to-refresh, and the swipe-to-reply, swipe-to-view-conversation gestures, you can hide the status bar by pushing up with two fingers, and show it again by pulling down with two fingers. (And by some Hockenberry-ian magic, scroll-to-top still works even when the status bar is hidden. Brilliant.)

To attach the latest photo from Camera Roll, tap and hold the camera icon. To clear all text, tap and hold the counter. To switch accounts, tap and hold your mugshot at the top left. To get more options, tap and hold tweets, links, and avatars.

That's the brilliance of Twitterrific 5, and why it strikes the best balance of any version to date. It presents all the basic features clearly and obviously, with buttons and spatial mapping and all the bells and whistles new users not only expect, but really need. Yet for advanced users, tons of shortcuts and edge features are tucked neatly away in gestures and pref sheets.

Twitterrific 5 doesn't have all the features of some other Twitter clients. There are no mute filters. There are no push notification support... yet. Gedeon Maheux says the Iconfactory has architected for it, and is certainly open to it, and they'll listen to feedback from Twitterrific 5 users and use that to help determine their priorities for Twitterrific 5 going forward. It's a true tabula rasa approach, and just like when Apple re-inevents their software, they're starting with the core and will build from that going forward.

For some people that'll be a deal breaker. For others, it'll just means another app will handle Twitter push, and perhaps Twitter triage, and Twitterrific will be the go-to reader for when tweets over time are more important than tweets right now.

Speaking of right now, however.. Twitterrific 5 is fast. It's Star Wars blast door crashing closed an inch behind your head fast. It's action at the speed of smash cut fast. I don't know how much that has to do with a lot of the interface being produced programmatically -- according to David Latham, aside from the avatars and button icons, almost all of it is done in code -- and how much is fiendishly clever coding, but it's one of the fastest apps I've had the joy of using. It's so fast, I enjoy using it just to experience the speed.

I enjoy using it period.

It's Twitterrific, the Next Generation. Again. It has everything that made the original great, torn down to its essence, and built back up for today's iOS devices and iOS device users. It remains the best reading experience on Twitter, and in that regard, Twitterrific 5 is better even than its predecessors.

Note: Twitterrific 5 has been redesigned and recoded from pixel to bit, and as such -- and because Apple doesn't allow upgrade pricing -- it's being offered as a completely new app (not an update). However, the Icon Factory is offering Twitterrific 5 at 50% off at launch, so in effect, everyone who acts fast gets heavily discounted upgrade pricing. Also, just like every other third-party Twitter app, Twitterrific faces user token limits as well, which means they can only ever sell a limited amount of copies. That creates scarcity, and eventually scarcity increases prices. In other words, third-party Twitter apps will only get more expensive over time, as tokens run out. If you enjoy using Twitterrific, want to support the developers so they can afford to keep working on it and making it even better, and secure your tokens for posterity, grab it now.