caner scanner: February 2013

Monday, February 4, 2013

Hangover Helper: Soup Dumplings from Dim Sum Garden in ...

[Photographs: Hawk Krall]

When you think of great soup dumplings, Philadelphia doesn't immediately spring to mind. But this grimy looking spot (at least on the outside) under a parking garage and next to the recently closed Chinatown Bus Station is one of the best hangover dining options in the city. Philly has some good dim sum palaces around the corner in Chinatown, where the lines stretch down the block on weekends, but the blazing neon red decoration and carts slamming into the back of your chair might not do too much to help your hangover.

Dim Sum Garden's no frills atmosphere and attentive, no-nonsense service is perfect for sweating out a few bottles of bourbon, and the food is amazing, whether you're in pain or not.

Mapo Tofu and greens sauteed with garlic are both must-orders: the tofu just hot enough, the greens bright and still slightly crunchy for some much needed vegetables to counteract the 17 beers and 3 a.m. tacos from the night before. The cold cucumber, slightly sweet with rice wine marinade, is refreshing and costs about 3 dollars. I could eat it every day.

But this place is really about the dumplings. All of the different varieties are hand made, usually in the dining room, and all are delicious, but the pork Xiao Long Bao, known as "Juicy Buns" on the menu, will blow your mind. Piping hot, each pouch is filled with fatty, rich broth that rivals some of the more intense ramen I've had, plus juicy knobs of pork. After about four of these, you'll be ready to go back to bed.

Dim Sum Garden

59 N 11th Street, Philadelphia, PA 19107 (map); 215-627-0218

Hawk Krall is a Philadelphia-based illustrator who has a serious thing for hot dogs. Dig his dog drawings? Many of the illustrations he has created for Hot Dog of the Week are available for sale: hawkkrall.net/prints/.

Source: http://drinks.seriouseats.com/2013/02/hangover-helper-best-soup-dumplings-philadelphia-dim-sum-garden-11th-st.html

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Sunday, February 3, 2013

Clean a Dry Erase Board with Baby Wipes

Clean a Dry Erase Board with Baby Wipes If you've ever left dry erase ink on the board for a few days, you know it can sometimes be difficult to remove. Cleaning weblog How to Clean Things shares several methods for removing old dry erase ink, but being a parent my favorite is using baby wipes.

It may take a bit of scrubbing, but the moist wipe will remove the ink easily enough and is more convenient for me than pulling out vinegar or baking soda. Keep in mind that you can also use baby wipes to erase deodorant marks from dark clothes. If you don't have baby wipes on hand, check out the source link below for several other methods. Photo by Timothy Krause

How to Clean a Dry Erase Board | How to Clean Things

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/GFYeffWiUyM/clean-a-dry-erase-board-with-baby-wipes

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Saturday, February 2, 2013

Jobs report: why the recovery has stalled

Friday's jobs report shows that?the government is heading in exactly the wrong direction by raising taxes on the middle class and cutting spending, Reich writes.

By Robert Reich,?Guest blogger / February 1, 2013

Perspective job seekers talk with employers during a job fair in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio. Close to 20 million Americans remain unemployed or underemployed, Reich writes.

Tony Dejak/AP/File

Enlarge

We are in the most anemic recovery in modern history, yet our political leaders in Washington aren?t doing squat about it.

Skip to next paragraph Robert Reich

Robert is chancellor?s professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Clinton. Time Magazine?named him one of the 10 most effective cabinet secretaries of the last century. He has written 13 books, including ?The Work of Nations,? his latest best-seller ?Aftershock: The Next Economy and America?s Future," and a new?e-book, ?Beyond Outrage.??He is also a founding editor of the American Prospect magazine and chairman of Common Cause.

Obama a skeet shooter? See new White House photo

In this photo released by the White House, President Barack Obama shoots clay targets on the range at Camp David, Md., Saturday, Aug. 4, 2012. The White House released a photo of Obama firing a gun, two days before he heads to Minnesota to discuss gun control. In a recent interview with The New Republic magazine, Obama said yes when asked if he has ever fired a gun. He said "we do skeet shooting all the time," except for his daughters, at Camp David. (AP Photo/The White House, Pete Souza)

FILE - In this Sept. 1, 1994 file photo, George W. Bush looks to the sky during a dove hunt in Hockley, Texas during his first Texas gubernatorial campaign. Anticipating some dove hunting on a 100-plus degree day during Sept. 2000, Bush explained that the birds could be marinated, but "I'm probably just going to throw them right on the grill." (AP Photo/File, David J. Phillip, file)

FILE - In this April 25, 1994 file photo, President Bill Clinton holds a Colt AR-15 rifle during a ceremony in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, where he launched efforts to pass the assault weapons ban. Dayton, Ohio Police Lt. Randy Bean, whose fellow officer Steve Whalen was gunned down with an AR-15 in 1991, looks on at left. (AP Photo/Dennis Cook)

FILE - In this Oct. 25, 1992 file photo, U.S. President George H. Bush displays a rifle given to him as a gift, in Billings, Mont., as his chief of staff James Baker, left, watches during the campaign stop. Bush will continue campaigning at morning on Monday in Montana. (AP Photo/Ron Edmonds, file)

FILE - In this Feb. 28, 1944 file photo, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Allied invasion chief, fires a Browning light machine gun using his hip as a mount, during an inspection of an infantry unit in England. (AP Photo/file)

WASHINGTON (AP) ? Two days before President Barack Obama's first trip outside Washington to promote his gun-control proposals, the White House tried to settle a brewing mystery when it released a photo to back his claim to be a skeet shooter.

Obama had set inquiring minds spinning when, in an interview with The New Republic magazine, he answered "yes" when asked if he had ever fired a gun. The admission came as a surprise to many.

"Yes, in fact, up at Camp David, we do skeet shooting all the time," Obama said in the interview released last weekend, referring to the official presidential retreat in rural Maryland, which he last visited in October while campaigning for re-election. Asked whether the entire family participates, the president said: "Not the girls, but oftentimes guests of mine go up there."

Few could recall Obama ever talking about firing a gun or going skeet shooting "all the time."

The official White House photo released Saturday is dated Aug. 4, 2012. The caption says Obama is shooting clay targets on the range at Camp David. Obama is seen holding a gun against his left shoulder, his left index finger on the trigger and smoke coming from the barrel. He is wearing jeans, a dark blue, short-sleeved polo shirt, sunglasses and headphones.

Asked at Monday's press briefing how frequently Obama shoots skeet and whether photos of the outings existed, White House press secretary Jay Carney said he didn't know how often. Pictures may exist, he said, but he hadn't seen any.

"Why haven't we heard about it before?" Carney was asked.

"Because when he goes to Camp David, he goes to spend time with his family and friends and relax, not to produce photographs," Carney said.

Obama is accompanied almost everywhere by at least one White House photographer.

Carney did not immediately respond Saturday when asked to comment on the decision to release the photo. But it could be part of an effort to portray Obama as sympathetic to gun owners and opponents of his gun-control measures who argue the proposals would infringe on an individual's Second Amendment right to bear arms.

In the interview, which appears in the Feb. 11 issue of The New Republic, Obama said gun-control advocates should be better listeners in this latest debate over firearms in the U.S. He also declared his deep respect for the tradition of hunting in this country, which dates back generations.

"I have a profound respect for the traditions of hunting that trace back in this country for generations," Obama said. "And I think those who dismiss that out of hand make a big mistake. Part of being able to move this forward is understanding the reality of guns in urban areas are very different from the realities of guns in rural areas. And if you grew up and your dad gave you a hunting rifle when you were 10, and you went out and spent the day with him and your uncles, and that became part of your family's traditions, you can see why you'd be pretty protective of that."

"So it's trying to bridge those gaps that I think is going to be part of the biggest task over the next several months. And that means that advocates of gun control have to do a little more listening than they do sometimes," Obama said.

His gun control measures, which include a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines, as well as universal background checks for anyone who wants to buy a firearm, have met some resistance on Capitol Hill and from opponents of tighter restrictions on access to guns, including the powerful National Rifle Association.

In Minneapolis on Monday, Obama plans to make remarks as well as discuss his proposals with local and law enforcement officials during a stop at the police department's special operations center. He's also expected to visit with community members to hear about their experiences with gun violence, the White House said.

Obama announced his proposals in mid-January, about a month after the Dec. 14 shooting deaths of 20 children and six adults at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn.

___

Follow Darlene Superville on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/dsupervilleap

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/89ae8247abe8493fae24405546e9a1aa/Article_2013-02-02-US-Obama-Guns/id-fd091cb9525843beb91d276630648a6c

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25 die in Mexico oil company office building blast

An emergency responder carries a piece of concrete as emergency workers and firefighter dig for survivor at the site on an explosion at an adjacent building to the executive tower of Mexico's state-owned oil company PEMEX, in Mexico City, Thursday Jan. 31, 2013. The explosion killed more than 10 people and injured some 80 as it heavily damaged three floors of the building, sending hundreds into the streets and a large plume of smoke over the skyline. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo)

An injured person is carried into an ambulance after an explosion at an adjacent building to the executive tower of Mexico's state-owned oil company PEMEX, in Mexico City, Thursday Jan. 31, 2013. An explosion at the main headquarters of Mexico's state-owned oil company in the capital killed more than 10 people and injured some 80 as it heavily damaged three floors of the building, sending hundreds into the streets and a large plume of smoke over the skyline. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo)

Rescue workers, firefighters and military search for survivors at the site of an explosion in a building at Mexico's state-owned oil company PEMEX complex, in Mexico City, Thursday Jan. 31, 2013. The explosion killed more than 10 people and injured some 80 as it heavily damaged three floors of the building. According to civil protection and local media some people remained trapped in the debris from the explosion, which occurred in the basement of an administrative building next to the iconic, 52-story tower of Petroleos Mexicanos, or PEMEX. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo)

MEXICO CITY (AP) ? Rescuers searched the rubble for survivors and authorities promised a thorough investigation after an office building blast killed 25 people and injured 101 at the headquarters of Mexico's state-owned oil company, Petroleos Mexicanos.

The cause of the basement explosion in an administrative building next to the iconic, 51-story Pemex tower in Mexico City remained a mystery early Friday, with President Enrique Pena Nieto urging people not to speculate. Theories ranged from an electrical fire to an air conditioning problem to a possible attack.

"We have no conclusive report on the reason," Pena Nieto told reporters. "We will work to get to the bottom of the investigation to find out, first, what happened work, and if there are people responsible in this case, that we apply the full weight of the law against them."

Some 46 people remained hospitalized after the Thursday afternoon blast, some gravely injured and others with cuts, fractures and burns. Authorities said the dead were 17 women and eight men.

More than 500 firefighters, soldiers and rescue workers dug through chunks of concrete with dogs, trucks and a Pemex crane.

Interior Minister Miguel Osorio Chong said it was uncertain if any of the roughly 10,000 people who work in the five-building headquarters were still trapped, but that the search would continue. The explosion occurred at about 3:45 p.m., just as the administrative shift was about to end. It hit the basement and first two floors, which rescuers said all collapsed onto each other.

"There is a lot of risk," rescuer German Vazquez Garcia said of working on the site.

Pemex first said it had evacuated the tower and 14-story administrative building because of a problem with the electrical system. The company later tweeted that the Attorney General's Office was investigating the explosion.

Ana Vargas Palacio was distraught as she searched for her missing husband, Daniel Garcia Garcia, 36, who works in the building where the explosion occurred. She said she last talked to him a couple hours earlier.

"I called his phone many times, but a young man answered and told me he found the phone in the debris," Vargas said. The two have an 11-year-old daughter. His mother, Gloria Garcia Castaneda, collapsed on a friend's arm, crying "My son. My son."

Gabriela Espinoza, 50, a Pemex secretary for 29 years, was on the second floor of the tower when she said she heard two loud explosions and a third smaller one.

"There was a very loud roar. It was very ugly," she said.

Espinoza's co-worker, Tomas Rivera, 32, worked on the ground floor where the explosion occurred and said the force knocked him to the basement, fracturing his wrist and jaw. The injured were taken to two Pemex hospitals and other facilities, including the Red Cross hospital in the Polanco neighborhood near the oil company's office headquarters, where relatives huddled in the waiting room for news of their loved ones. Some walked out of meetings with the hospital social worker joyous, while others came out crying.

"We were talking and all of sudden we heard an explosion with white smoke and glass falling from the windows," said Maria Concepcion Andrade, 42, who lives on the same block as the Pemex building. "People started running from the building covered in dust. A lot of pieces were flying."

Streets surrounding the building were closed as evacuees wandered around, and rescue crews loaded the injured into ambulances.

Pemex, created as a state-owned company in 1938, has nearly 150,000 employees and in 2011 produced about 2.5 million barrels of crude oil a day, according to its website, with $111 billion in sales. Pena Nieto, who took office in December, has made Pemex reform the center of his platform, with a plan to pump new investment into a company whose profits feed much of Mexico's federal budget, but which has fallen behind other oil companies in production, technology and exploration.

Shortly before the explosion, Operations Director Carlos Murrieta reported via Twitter that the company had reduced its accident rate in recent years. Most Pemex accidents have occurred at pipeline and refinery installations.

A fire at a pipeline metering center in northeast Mexico near the Texas border killed 30 workers in September, the largest-single toll in at least a decade for the company.

______

Associated Press writers Adriana Gomez Licon and Katherine Corcoran contributed to this report.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2013-02-01-Mexico-Pemex-Explosion/id-11eca051e7dd415aa1ac1451f5f9bbf4

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Seeing the aurora in a new light: Sounding rocket to help scientists study Northern Lights

Feb. 1, 2013 ? On a cold February night in Poker Flat, Alaska, a team of scientists will wait patiently for the exotic red and green glow of an aurora to illuminate the sky. Instead of simply admiring the view, this group from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center of Greenbelt, Md., and The Aerospace Corporation of El Segundo, Calif. will launch a sounding rocket up through the Northern Lights. The rocket could launch as early as the night of Feb. 2, 2013, but the team has a two-week window in order to find the perfect launch conditions.

Armed with a series of instruments developed specifically for this mission, the VISIONS (VISualizing Ion Outflow via Neutral atom imaging during a Substorm) rocket will soar high through the arctic sky to study the auroral wind, which is a strong but intermittent stream of oxygen atoms from Earth's atmosphere into outer space. Although the rocket will survive only fifteen minutes before splashing down in the Arctic Ocean, the information it obtains will provide answers to some long-standing questions, says Doug Rowland, who is the VISIONS principal investigator at Goddard.

VISIONS will study how oxygen atoms leave Earth's atmosphere under the influence of the aurora. Most of the atmosphere is bound by Earth's gravity, but a small portion of it gets heated enough by the aurora that it can break free, flowing outwards until it reaches near-Earth space. The atoms that form this wind initially travel at about 300 miles per hour -- only one percent of the speed needed to overcome gravity and leave Earth's atmosphere.

"This oxygen would normally never gain enough energy to leave the atmosphere," says Rowland. "On the other hand, at very high altitudes, satellite experiments have measured oxygen atoms moving faster than 50 miles per second. These experiments have shown that if oxygen can reach these high altitudes, there are plenty of ways for it to gain even more energy, in which case the oxygen atoms can escape near-Earth space entirely. What we don't know is how the oxygen gets enough energy to fight against gravity and reach the higher altitudes where these slingshots are active."

To find out what is doing the heavy lifting to kick start the oxygen, Rowland and his team are waiting to launch the rocket during the active phase of an aurora, which only lasts from 20 to 30 minutes. Auroras indicate a dramatic increase in the energy input to the upper atmosphere, creating a golden opportunity for the rocket to study the escaping oxygen, and learn more about what gives the oxygen the energy it needs to escape from Earth.

The VISIONS mission will highlight the advantages of using a sounding rocket instead of a satellite to gather the new information. In addition to being smaller and less expensive, sounding rockets provide vertical profiles of the auroral environment, on both the upleg and downleg portions of their parabolic trajectory, with speeds much less than those of orbiting satellites. Further, rockets can be launched from the right place at just the right time to study the aurora -- unlike a satellite that can only encounter an aurora when it flies through it by chance.

To solve the mystery behind the auroral wind, the sounding rocket will use four unique instruments. The key instrument is Goddard's MIniaturized Low-energy Energetic Neutral Atom imager, known as MILENA, which will directly observe the oxygen flowing out of the atmosphere.

In the past, scientists have only been able to study the up-flowing oxygen on a small scale -- because the oxygen is electrically charged, it is confined by Earth's magnetic field, and instruments can only measure the oxygen close to its source region. The revolutionary MILENA instrument, however, contains twin imagers that can observe the oxygen further along on its journey, after it has stolen an electron from a neutral gas atom in the atmosphere. This allows the oxygen to break free from its magnetic prison and travel a long distance, where it can be detected remotely. By mapping the oxygen, MILENA acts as a type of camera that builds up a picture of the auroral wind using oxygen atoms instead of light.

Although the MILENA instrument itself is new, it already has a successful history. The instrument was modeled after a similar imager known as MINI-ME (for Miniature Imager for Neutral Ionospheric Atoms and Magnetospheric Electrons) that flew on the NASA/U.S. Dept. of Defense FASTSAT (Fast Affordable Science and Technology Satellite) mission, which ended in Nov., 2012, after two years on-orbit.

The other instruments aboard VISIONS, including the Rocket-borne Auroral Imager (RAI), the Fields and Thermal Plasma (FTP) instrument, and the Energetic Electron Analyzer/Energetic Ion Analyzer (EEA/EIA), will work with MILENA to detect where the auroral activity occurs and measure the auroral energy that heats the oxygen. Goddard is providing MILENA and the FTP, while the RAI and EEA/EIA instruments are provided by The Aerospace Corporation of El Segundo, Calif.

NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Va., including the NASA Sounding Rocket Operations Contract (NSROC), is providing the rocket and payload support systems. The Poker Flat launch range is operated by the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, under contract to NASA.

Although the VISIONS mission will last only 15 minutes, Michael Collier, a planetary scientist at Goddard who is the MILENA instrument lead, said the information gathered in its short trip will be crucial.

"What we're doing is launching into a specific period of intense geomagnetic activity," Collier said. "With VISIONS, it may be the case we're not getting a whole lot of data, but we get the data we want."

All they have to do is wait.

For more information about NASA's Sounding Rocket program, visit: www.nasa.gov/soundingrockets

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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/B_y5isQDy6Q/130201093128.htm

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Toronto to pass New York in commercial property boom | Property ...

Toronto has more high rises under construction than any other metropolis in the world

Toronto will add more prime office space in 2014 than almost any other city in the Americas as developers take advantage of low borrowing costs to meet demand from companies such as Google Inc.

2012 was a big year for REITs

Last year was the best ever for deals in the real estate investment trust sector. Find out more

More than 1.59 million square feet of so-called triple-A space will be added in Toronto next year, according to data from Cushman & Wakefield Inc., the world?s largest closely held real estate brokerage firm. That?s more than in New York and trails only Mexico City, Cushman said. Investments from pension funds and real estate investment trusts, as well as borrowing costs in some cases more than 2 percentage points lower than in 2007 have helped fund development as well as acquisitions.

Rising demand led to a record high price for an office building in Canada when a group of pension funds paid $749 a square foot for the Brookfield Place-TD Canada Trust Tower on Bay Street in December, according to RealNet Canada Inc., a Canadian real estate data firm.

It?s about location, location, location and when we looked around, that?s always at the top of our list

?It?s expensive right now and this kind of office space should command a premium for the next few years until much more supply comes onto the market,? Pierre Bergevin, chief executive officer of Cushman & Wakefield in Canada, said in a phone interview. ?The Toronto market, let?s face it, is relatively closed.?

Commercial real estate prices have been rising in Toronto as companies tap an urban workforce living among the 51 condominiums that have been built since 2009. The city, home to the country?s five biggest lenders, which control about 80% of the nation?s bank assets, has more high rises under construction than any other metropolis in the world. It?s the second-largest North American financial services center after New York.

Cheap Funding

Canada?s REITs and pension funds are taking advantage of low-cost funding to purchase and finance development of commercial real estate. Dundee REIT and H&R REIT bought Scotia Plaza, Canada?s second-tallest office building, from Bank of Nova Scotia for a record $1.27 billion in May.

Dundee said it financed the purchase in part with a $650 million 3.45% seven-year mortgage bond. By comparison, H&R, Dundee?s partner in the deal, paid 5.66% for 10 years of mortgage financing in September, 2007. Toronto-based Dundee also raised $300 million with an equity offering, adding to the $5.12 billion that was raised by REITs in 51 initial public offerings and secondary sales in Canada last year. The $500 million raised from seven REIT IPOs in 2012 was the most for any industry, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

The Standard & Poor?s/TSX Capped REIT Index of 15 Canadian REITs has climbed 9.9% in the past 12 months, compared with a 1.9% gain for the S&P/TSX Composite Index.

CMBS Comeback

Real estate developers also are benefiting from a rebound in the commercial mortgage-backed security market. Brookfield Office Properties Canada LP raised $525 million of bonds using the leases on the Bay-Wellington Tower, adjacent the Canada Trust Tower on Bay Street. The December deal was the second of 2012 and only the third since 2007, after the CMBS market slammed shut in 2008.

Ten glass-encased high-rise office towers are slated to open by the end of 2017, financed by pension funds, real estate investment trusts, and private developers. RBC Waterpark Place, which will be the headquarters of Toronto-based Royal Bank of Canada?s consumer-lending unit, is being developed by Oxford Properties and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, the country?s biggest pension fund.

The largest prime office tower opening in the next decade is the Richmond Adelaide Centre, also developed by Oxford Properties, a unit of Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System. The futuristic-designed building will have Deloitte & Touche LLP occupy some of its almost one million square feet. A smaller office block at 134 Peter St. is under development by Allied Properties REIT.

Additional Supply

There was no additional supply of Class-A office space in 2012 and only 100,000 square feet is due this year, according to Cushman & Wakefield. That pushed Toronto?s prime vacancy rate to 5.1% last year, close to its 2000 record low of 3.4%, according to the data. The vacancy rate will reach 7.6% in 2014, Cushman said. New York?s rate, at 7.2% last year, will remain unchanged at 7.4% in 2014. The city is adding 916,000 square feet of space in 2014.

Last year was a record for commercial sales transactions in Toronto. Investment in office, retail, and industrial properties reached $13 billion, up 73% from 2009, according to RealNet data. About a third of that was office space. Total transactions were about 2,000 while the number of sales worth more than $100 million reached a record 14 deals.

South Core

The most expensive deals are in the south core of the city. The Standard Life Tower at 121 King St. West sold for $587 per square foot, or $306 million, while the RBC Centre was $495 per square foot, or $300 million.

?What the area of the south financial district brings to the city of Toronto is the whole live, work, play environment,? said Peter Menkes, president of the commercial and industrial division of closely held Menkes Development Ltd. at One York?s ground breaking in January. The developer is also part owner of the $375 million building.

The communications industry, including Google Canada?s marketing team, accounted for 16% of total tenants in Toronto for the past three years, according to data supplied by Cushman. The health of the country?s banking sector has largely sustained this demand at 26% of total tenants.

Google Canada and Coca-Cola Co. are among companies moving closer to the Toronto core.

Downtown Core

?It?s about location, location, location and when we looked around, that?s always at the top of our list,? Chris O?Neill, managing director of Google Canada, said in a phone interview from his office on Richmond Street West. ?The bottom line is that we?re fast-paced and a connected company and we really want to thrive in the downtown core.?

Google opened the new space in October, moving to five floors of an office building one block away from the Exchange Tower, home to the Toronto Stock Exchange. The tech giant outgrew its previous office in the city and wanted to find somewhere even more central for its 150 regular employees.

?Of course we look at the cost but to us, at the core of our culture is creativity and our people,? O?Neill said. ?And it?s certainly worth it for us to make these types of investments.?

The company is leasing 89,000 square feet and occupies less than half of that, leaving room for growth in this location, with its meeting rooms in tents, free healthy snacks, and a mini outdoor golf course.

Prime property is not the only type set to hit the market. More than five million square feet of all office space, including prime, is forecast to be constructed in Toronto this year, according to CBRE Group Inc., the world?s largest commercial real estate services firm. That could mean higher vacancy offsetting high demand for years to come.

?Lackluster? Leasing

?Lackluster? office leasing in 2013 will affect current development in Canada?s downtown office markets, said Ross Moore, national director of research for CBRE Group Inc. in Canada, in a research note. ?Overbuilding is merely an emerging concern at this point, but this possibility should never be underestimated.?

?Where the sales prices may get affected is in vacant or newly-constructed buildings, or buildings with near-term lease expirations,? Dan Fasulo, managing director of Real Capital Analytics, Inc., said in a phone interview from New York. ?Firms may get squeamish with an increasing vacancy rate and new space. They may lower sales prices in that case.?

The sale price for the 51-floor TD tower, located at Bay and Front streets with a view of the Toronto Islands and waterfront, is not likely to be repeated in the coming years, said Richard Vilner, commercial researcher for Toronto at RealNet, a Canadian real estate information firm.

?Can this record sustain itself?? Vilner said in an interview on Jan. 21. ?It would be a huge surprise if it does. The additional square footage slated for release over the next few years would raise vacancy, driving office property prices down from the 2012 high.?

Bloomberg.com

Source: http://business.financialpost.com/2013/02/01/toronto-to-pass-new-york-in-commercial-property-boom/

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Friday, February 1, 2013

Missile Defense's Real Enemy: Math

An anonymous reader writes "Since the 1960s until the present day, missile defense has been a hot topic. Ronald Reagen popularized the concept with his 'Star Wars' multi-billion dollar plan to use lasers and various technologies to destroy incoming Soviet warheads. Today, America has a sizable sea-based system, dubbed AEGIS, that has been deployed to defend against rogue states missiles, both conventional and nuclear. However, there is one thing missile defense can't beat: simple math. 'Think about it ? could we someday see a scenario where American forces at sea with a fixed amount of defensive countermeasures face an enemy with large numbers of cruise and ballistic weapons that have the potential to simply overwhelm them? Could a potential adversary fire off older weapons that are not as accurate (PDF), causing a defensive response that exhausts all available missile interceptors so more advanced weapons with better accuracy can deliver the crushing blow? Simply put: does math win?'"

Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotScience/~3/e9lP2M1vBII/story01.htm

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