European XFEL – World's biggest X-ray laser – generates first light!

First Laser Light at the European XFEL, recorded by an X-ray detector at the end of the tunnel.
The X-ray laser light of the European XFEL was generated from an electron beam from a superconducting linear accelerator, the key component of the X-ray laser.

Providing scientists with an atomic level ability to view new materials, drugs and chemical reactions, the world's biggest X-ray laser has successfully generated its first beam of light.

The 3.4-kilometre-long European XFEL, most of which is located in underground tunnels in Germany, is being considered as a new beginning for European research, according to scientists.

Boasting of a wavelength of 0.8 nanometre – about 500 times shorter than that of visible light, the laser had a repetition rate of one pulse per second at first lasing, which will later increase to 27,000 per second.

The achievable laser light wavelength corresponds to the size of an atom, meaning that the X-rays can be used to make pictures and films of the nanocosmos at atomic resolution – such as of biomolecules, from which better understanding of the basis of illnesses or the development of new therapies could be developed.

"This is an important moment that our partners and we have worked towards for many years. The European XFEL has generated its first X-ray laser light," said Robert Feidenhans'l, Managing Director of the European XFEL.

"The facility, to which many countries around the world contributed know-how and components, has passed its first big test with flying colours," said Feidenhans'l.

"We can now begin to direct the X-ray flashes with special mirrors through the last tunnel section into the experiment hall, and then step by step start the commissioning of the experiment stations," he added.

"The first laser light produced today with the most advanced and most powerful linear accelerator in the world marks the beginning a new era of research in Europe," said Helmut Dosch, from the German research centre DESY.

"The European XFEL will provide us with the most detailed images of the molecular structure of new materials and drugs and novel live recordings of biochemical reactions," said Dosch.

The facility will enable research into chemical processes and catalytic techniques, with the goal of improving their efficiency or making them more environmentally friendly; materials research; or the investigation of conditions similar to the interior of planets.

The X-ray laser light of the European XFEL was generated from an electron beam from a superconducting linear accelerator, the key component of the X-ray laser.

The German research centre DESY, the largest shareholder of the European XFEL, put the accelerator into operation at the end of April.

In a 2.1 km long accelerator tunnel, the electron pulses were strongly accelerated and prepared for the later generation of X-ray laser light.

At near-light speed and very high energies, the intense electron pulses entered a photon tunnel containing a 210 metre long stretch of X-ray generating devices.

The European XFEL is the largest and most powerful of the five X-ray lasers worldwide, with the ability to generate the short pulses of hard X-ray light.

With more than 27,000 light flashes per second instead of the previous maximum of 120 per second, an extremely high luminosity, and the parallel operation of several experiment stations, it will be possible for scientists investigate more limited samples and perform their experiments more quickly.

Texas concealed gun owner kills gunman before he could murder more people

A shooting spree was prevented in an Arlington, Texas, sports bar when a man carrying a concealed firearm shot a gunman witnesses say was acting “incoherently.”

According to the Arlington Voice, the manager of the Zona Caliente Sports Bar and Grill, 37-year-old Cesar Perez, was shot dead by James Jones, 48, of Grand Prairie. Witnesses say Jones was acting very oddly when he confronted Perez.

“When the suspect came in, he walked up to the bar and started yelling,” said police spokesperson Lt. Christopher Cook. “Customers said he was yelling incoherent and strange things.”

With no warning, Jones drew his gun and fatally shot Perez. Police cannot establish any connection Jones may have had with the restaurant manager.

It was then that an unidentified man police are calling the “Good Samaritan” told his wife to get down, and drew his own concealed firearm. The “Good Samaritan” then opened fire on Jones, and hitting him.

“After he was struck once, the suspect started shooting at the front door,” Cook said. “We know people were trying to escape, but we’re not sure if he was just trying to harm others.”

The “Good Samaritan” hit Jones several more times before Jones would go down and die from his wounds.

Police later discovered that Jones had an additional firearm, and two knives on his person.

“Had the Good Samaritan not intervened, there could have further loss of life,” Cook said.

The unidentified “Good Samaritan” is being hailed as a hero by Arlington police, and will face no charges as he broke no laws being both a concealed carry license holder, and firing his weapon in a “blue sign” business. These “blue signs” allow certain establishments that serve alcohol to allow patrons to carry firearms with them on the premises.

Ex-Fox News staffer says she was fired after following company policy on sexual harassment reporting

Former Fox News Radio correspondent Jessica Golloher filed a gender discrimination lawsuit against Fox News this week, claiming that the network fired her after she used their company hotline to report “sexist” harassment.

Golloher’s suit claims that she was fired 24 hours after reporting gender harassment — or as the suit put it, “marginalized and subject to discrimination based on her gender.”

“Putting aside the fact that very few employees were even aware that a hotline existed prior to its mention in recent press accounts, Jessica Golloher, Fox News Radio Network’s Middle East/North Africa correspondent, did summon the courage, on April 17, 2017, to email 21st Century Fox’s purported independent investigator and request an opportunity to speak with her regarding issues at Fox,” court documents obtained by The Wrap read.

“Within 24 hours of sending this email, and knowing that Ms. Golloher had previously made internal complaints about gender discrimination,” the documents continued, “Ms. Golloher was, without any prior warning, fired — effective August 2017. The decision to terminate Ms. Golloher can only be described as a blatant act of retaliation.”

The lawsuit also turned its sights to the shake-up that’s been occurring within the network’s organization since 2016.

“Simply put,” the suit continued, “any purported desire on the part of Fox to clean up its culture and actually encourage employees to come forward with complaints about discrimination in the workplace is nothing more than a move to salvage its reputation.”

The lawsuit stated that Gollaher was refused a lead reporter position at the 2014 Olympics because she was a female and also claimed that she was treated disrespectfully by male staffers because she was a woman.

Golloher alleged that after she filed the complaint with the company hotline, Fox terminated her employment citing “budgetary” reasons.

Golloher’s attorney, Douglas Wigdor, had this to say in a statement:

As we allege in the complaint, terminating an employee within 24 hours of utilizing the “hotline” that Fox has touted as a defense to the O’Reilly sexual harassment matters is yet another indication of its lack of oversight and retaliatory animus for those that are brave enough to report unlawful conduct. What is even more dumbfounding, however, is that Fox Radio’s Vice President and General Manager, who conducted the termination in question was, according to media reports, fired from his prior job at ABC, after ABC learned of his improper use of on-line material that included a sexually explicit photograph that was turned over to the FBI.

A 21st Century Fox representative told Deadline on Wednesday that Gollaher’s case is “without merit,” and that the former employee’s claims of “discrimination or retaliation” are “baseless.”

“We will vigorously defend the matter,” the Fox representative maintained.

Dad says Delta threatened jail if his son, 2, wasn’t removed from paid-for seat on overbooked flight

On video you can hear what sounds like a woman’s voice speaking to Brian Schear as he sits on a Delta Airlines flight readying for takeoff from Hawaii to Los Angeles last week.

The individual speaking to Schear — who can’t be seen on the clip — says he’ll face “a federal offense, and you and your wife will be in jail.” The person adds something about Schear’s “kids,” but the rest of what was said isn’t audible.

But here’s what Schear told KABC-TV  an airline staffer said to him: “You have to give up the seat, or you’re going to jail, your wife is going to jail, and they’ll take your kids from you.”

And who was occupying the seat in question? Schear’s 2-year-old son.

See, Delta wanted the boy out of the seat and in the lap of his mom or dad during the overbooked, red-eye flight, KABC said.

Brittany Schear told the station hearing a jail threat “put fear in me.”

Her husband argued that their son needed the seat so he could sleep in a car seat — and besides, cash was already doled out for that purpose.

“You’re saying you’re gonna give that away to someone else when I paid for that seat?” Brian Schear is heard asking on the video. “That’s not right.”

One airline employee argues back to Brian Schear, KABC reported, “With him being 2, he cannot sit in the car seat. He has to sit in your arms the whole time.”

But Delta’s website says, “We want you and your children to have the safest, most comfortable flight possible. For kids under the age of two, we recommend you purchase a seat on the aircraft and use an approved child safety seat.”

An airline staffer also told Brian Schear that the seat his 2-year-old was sitting in was originally designated for a different passenger, KABC noted — but Dad tried explaining that the original passenger was his 18-year-old son who he sent home on an earlier flight expressly so his 2-year-old son could use it and sleep.

He even pointed out that there was no problem with his 2-year-old occupying a seat on the Delta flight to Hawaii.

“You need to do what’s right,” Brian Schear is heard telling an airline employee. “I bought the seat, and you need to just leave us alone.”

He finally agreed to hold his son on his lap for the flight, KABC said, but by then Delta said he and his family, from Huntington Beach, California, had to leave the flight. It was about midnight, KABC reported, and the Schears had no place to stay.

The response from the official standing in the aisle talking to the beleaguered dad?: “At this point, you’re on your own.”

“You guys are unbelievable,” Brian Schear is heard saying before exiting the plane. “Great customer service. Awesome. Great job.”

So the Schears — who also had their 1-year-old in tow — were forced to leave the flight, scramble for hotel accommodations and shell out $2,000 to fly back to Los Angeles the next day on United Airlines, the station reported.

After the Schears posted video of their encounter with Delta on Facebook and YouTube, the couple told KABC that the airline contacted them Wednesday for more information. Delta’s two-sentence statement to the station reads: “We’re sorry for what this family experienced. Our team has reached out and will be talking with them to better understand what happened and come to a resolution.”

TheBlaze on Thursday asked a Delta corporate communications representative if an airline employee, in fact, threatened the Schears with jail, but the Delta official couldn’t answer and said the question would be passed along for a response.

The airline industry has been hammered of late for its treatment of passengers. The Delta incident involving the Schear family comes in the wake of a Delta airline pilot allegedly striking a female who was fighting someone else. An American Airlines employee was removed from duty after being caught on video challenging a passenger to a fight. And, of course, the United Airlines passenger who was dragged off a flight is likely still fresh in most people’s minds.

In order to push space mining, NASA seeks information on commercial cargo service to Moon

In a possible advancement towards space mining, NASA has started to seek information on commercial payload delivery services to moon.

This week, NASA issued a Request for Information (RfI) to the private industry for proposals related to cargo transportation to the lunar surface, as well as a potential mission to collect lunar samples and deliver them back to Earth, Inverse.com reported on Wednesday.

The exact purpose of such a request for information (RFI), like most of the agency`s RFIs, remains ambiguous, the report said.

"NASA has identified a variety of exploration, science, and technology demonstration objectives that could be addressed by sending instruments, experiments, or other payloads to the lunar surface," the RFI reads.

"To address these objectives as cost-effectively as possible, NASA may procure payloads and related commercial payload delivery services to the Moon," it said.

NASA said it is interested in assessing the availability of payload transit and delivery services from Earth to the lunar surface as early as fiscal year 2018 and through the next decade.

Black conservative woman’s column suspended by major paper after she blasts NRA-ISIS comparisons

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch suspended an opinion column by Stacy Washington, a black conservative commentator, after she blasted an op-ed in another newspaper that compared the National Rifle Association to the Islamic State.

The Post-Dispatch didn’t mention Washington’s opinion as a reason for suspending her column, but it did contend that her “active promotional activities and professional association with the National Rifle Association represented an unacceptable conflict of interest in her most recent column, which resulted in our suspension of her work.” After the suspension, “Washington chose to terminate her contract” with the paper, the Post-Dispatch said.

In Washington’s April 28 column — “Guns and the media” — she targeted an op-ed in the Columbia Missourian by George Kennedy, a professor emeritus of the Missouri School of Journalism. His big question was, “Which organization is more dangerous to Americans — ISIS or the NRA?”

Kennedy argued that 15,000 Americans were killed by guns in 2016 and that each year since 9/11 an average of 11,737 Americans were killed by other Americans — but that each year since 9/11 an average of nine Americans were killed by Islamic jihadist terrorists.

In rebuttal, Washington offered a different kind of comparison between ISIS and the NRA: “[W]hen has a member of the NRA ever decapitated, set on fire, tossed from a rooftop or otherwise terrorized another American? The linkage is not only rife with improper context; it is false on its face. Yet the Missourian saw fit to publish it without question, I believe, because it suits the ideological bent of the opinion editor.”

More from Washington’s column:

This failure to represent the opposing, especially conservative, view is an increasingly apparent deficit in the news reporting apparatus in our country. Republicans seek other news outlets that don’t demonize them or compare them to terrorists, simply because they own a gun or support an organization founded to give blacks the right to own guns and use them to defend themselves. The NRA stood in opposition to the Ku Klux Klan. This clarifying historical detail on the founding of the NRA rarely makes it into news media characterizations of the organization.

It’s understandable that we seek out opinions and news that support our viewpoint. Confirmation bias is a very real part of how people consume news and media. However, we should be appalled to see neighbors with whom we work, attend church, people who have children defending this country through military service — in other words, good decent people — portrayed in the same light as demonic murderers for the simple act of owning a firearm.

Here’s the Post-Dispatch’s statement on its suspension of Washington’s column:

Stacy Washington’s column will no longer appear in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Her active promotional activities and professional association with the National Rifle Association represented an unacceptable conflict of interest in her most recent column, which resulted in our suspension of her work. Ms. Washington chose to terminate her contract. Columnists are expected to fully disclose conflicts of interest when writing about topics where such a conflict might arise. We apply this standard regardless of the lobbying or advocacy group being written about in a column.

Most commenters weren’t pleased with the paper’s suspension of Washington’s column — which she said occurred Friday — nor with its reason for doing so.

“Stacy has been a public figure for years. You didn’t know her affiliations? You call yourselves a news paper? … Another good example of why I cancelled my subscription,” Cathy Taylor McAfee wrote.

“This action by the Post Dispatch is just as bad or worse than the confrontations taking place at Berkeley,” James Hessler said. “Shut down conservative speech by any means necessary, even by thinly veiled attempts of explanations that do not ring true. HYPOCRITES.”

Linda Purk wrote, “This is exactly why most people don’t trust the media anymore. The left is always complaining about the free press being under attack…what about free speech? The tolerant left again…lol.”

Barbara J. T. Easom asked, “So what if she has ties with them? She’s sharing her opinion, which was well-argued. Have another writer share an opposing view if you don’t like it, but this just looks like you don’t agree with the NRA so had her fired.”

“What a cowardly way to deal with a truth you do not like,” Aebe Mac Gill offered.

After the Post-Dispatch published a letter to the editor calling Washington a “shill” for the NRA, she shot back with a tweet saying she informed the paper’s editorial editor that she’s not paid by the group.

And clearly her sense of humor hasn’t been squashed:

Washington also had this to say about the Post-Dispatch:

Principal resigns after making ‘smash space’ where teachers pummeled frustrations with baseball bats

Barbara Liess — principal of Kensington Parkwood Elementary School in Montgomery County, Maryland — said she got the idea “after reading some business articles” about companies creating them for stressed-out employees, WTOP-TV reported.

Typically called an “anger room” or “rage room,” the spot that Liess created on the school’s loading dock was dubbed a “smash space,” the station said. There, teachers could use baseball bats to pound away at their daily frustrations. The smashee? A rocking chair set for the scrap heap, Bethesda Magazine reported.

Well, Liess — who’s logged 10 years at her post — fell under criticism for her “smash space” and issued an apology about a week ago, WTOP said, adding that Liess called the idea “a lapse in judgment.”

But on Tuesday, she took things a step further, telling parents in a letter that she’s stepping down effective June 30, the magazine reported. She  noted that “recent events have been a distraction from the positive things we have been able to achieve.”

Liess started the “smash space” in March, Bethesda Magazine reported in an earlier article, where a sign warned partakers to wear goggles and closed-toed shoes before exacting punishment on the rocking chair. The school district indicated in late April that the “smash space” — which Liess said students couldn’t see or hear — no longer exists, the magazine reported.

It appears the “anger room” phenomenon has been growing in popularity, as some businesses have set them up for employees to destroy objects to their hearts’ content for stress relief. It’s also been reported that smash spots have popped up as businesses, and folks can pay for a few minutes of demolition.

While some say the rage venting is beneficial, others argue it’s not psychologically helpful.

“I absolutely regret my decision to provide staff with an opportunity to ‘smash’ the rocking chair. This decision was not in response to any teacher comment or behavior, rather a misguided attempt by me to provide staff with an outlet,” Liess wrote in her apology letter, the magazine said. “Our staff is committed to modeling for students and one another productive and appropriate ways for handling stress. I recognize that while well-intended, this scenario is counter to what we teach students and has no place in a school.”

PTA President Jessica Chertow noted that a rocking chair smashing took place during a staff meeting, the magazine added, but she wasn’t sure how many teachers participated.

At least one parent had no issue with Liess’ “smash space.”

“It’s a better thing to do than to take frustrations out on my kid,” Damjan Jevtic told the magazine, noting how difficult teachers’ jobs are.

Here’s a report on the “anger room” trend: