AP source: Pineda, Montero in Yanks-Mariners swap (AP)

SEATTLE ? The Seattle Mariners agreed to trade right-hander Michael Pineda to the New York Yankees for catcher Jesus Montero on Friday, a swap involving two of baseball's top young talents.

A person familiar with the deal confirmed the trade to The Associated Press. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because no one was authorized to discuss the trade that will be completed pending physicals.

As part of the trade, the Yankees also sent 24-year-old pitcher Hector Noesi to Seattle for 19-year-old righty Jose Campos.

The deal addresses needs for both sides. The Yankees were looking for another starter, preferably young, to add to their rotation, while the Mariners were desperate for a slugger to add to an offense that was among the worst historically the last few seasons.

In addition, another person familiar with the agreement told the AP the Yankees had reached a deal with free agent pitcher Hiroki Kuroda on a $10 million contract for one season. The 36-year-old righty was 13-16 with a 3.07 ERA for the Dodgers last season. Kuroda's contract is pending a physical.

After losing in the first round of the playoffs, the Yankees kept looking for pitching this winter after they passed on bidding for the top free agents in what was a weak year for starters.

They could part with the 22-year-old Montero because they have several catchers in their system who are considered far better defensively. They have Austin Romine at Triple-A, plus Russell Martin earned an All-Star appearance in his first year with New York and was praised for his work with the Yankees' pitching staff.

In just 69 plate appearances, Montero hit four homers, drove in 12 runs and batted .328 for New York in a September call-up that earned him a spot on their playoff roster. He showed patience at the plate and an ability to hit with power to the opposite field.

Montero hit .288 with 18 homers and 67 RBIs at Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre last year. Montero nearly came to Seattle back in 2010 as part of a deal for Cliff Lee that fell apart. Lee was later traded to Texas.

Pineda, who turns 23 later this month, earned his way into the Mariners' rotation with his performance last spring. By the end of the season, he was in place as Seattle's No. 2 starter for the future behind ace Felix Hernandez.

Pineda went 9-10 with a 3.74 ERA in his rookie season that started fast, then endured typical rookie struggles as the season progressed. One of Pineda's high points was starting at home against the Yankees on May 27 when he was already 6-2. Pineda threw five innings that night of a 4-3 Seattle victory.

But Pineda's rookie problems started soon after. Over his final 17 starts, Pineda was 3-8 and his ERA ballooned to 4.74. Overall, he struck out 173 in 171 innings.

Pineda was expendable because of Seattle's rich depth of starters. The Mariners have Hernandez at the top of their rotation and just signed Japanese pitcher Hisashi Iwakuma. Those two, combined with lefty Jason Vargas and young prospects Charlie Furbush and Blake Beavan, will likely make up Seattle rotation to begin the season.

In the minors, three of Seattle's top prospects all project as starting pitchers: right-hander Taijuan Walker, lefty Danny Hultzen ? the No. 2 pick in last year's amateur draft ? and righty James Paxton.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/sports/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120114/ap_on_sp_ba_ne/bba_yankees_mariners_trade

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Give Packers' D some love

Green Bay did collect 31 INTs ? here are the key plays for the Pack and 49ers this weekend

By Mike Tanier

NBCSports.com contributor

updated 1:52 p.m. ET Jan. 12, 2012

Mike Tanier

Our NFC diagrams focus on running and defense. No one runs the ball like the 49ers, and the Packers defense should get its due after an up-and-down season. Don?t worry, Aaron Rodgers fans: he also makes an appearance as we break down one of the many reasons the Packers offense is so special.

Green Bay Packers
Let?s give the Packers defense a little love. Sure, they gave up almost 5,000 passing yards. But they also recorded 31 interceptions. Dom Capers has not been able to blitz as frequently or as creatively as he did last year because of injuries, but his schemes still force opponents to worry more about pass protection than getting receivers down the field. And Capers is not afraid to use his best players in surprising ways, even if it means dropping Clay Matthews into coverage.

Figure 3 (below) shows the Packers facing the Giants early in the second quarter of Week 13. It?s first-and-10. You probably remember this play: a pick-6 by Matthews which turned out to have a major impact on a very close game. Let?s take a closer look. Why was Matthews in pass coverage, not chasing Eli Manning? And why didn?t Manning see him?

Note that the Giants have six offensive linemen in the game: backup center Jim Cordle (63) is lined up as the left tight end. Right off the bat, the Giants are worried about the blitz. The Packers are not really blitzing: one linebacker is running a stunt behind the three defensive linemen, but four rushers do not a blitz make. Matthews (52) and the other linebacker threaten to rush but drop into soft zones. A deep safety also charges the line in an apparent blitz, but then stops in a middle zone. This is well disguised coverage, and what Manning sees after he play-fakes to Ahmad Bradshaw (44) is nothing like what he expected in his pre-snap read.

So what exactly is this coverage? The wide receivers are covered man-to-man. There?s a deep safety in zone. The three linebackers are assigned to watch Bradshaw and the tight ends. When Bradshaw breaks to the right, he becomes Matthews? responsibility. Rookie D.J. Smith (51), filling in for A.J. Hawk (the Packers have a thing for initials), realizes that he has no one to cover: the tight ends are blocking, the receivers are deep, and Bradshaw is in the flat. So he delayed-blitzes. This is heads up play by Smith, because he rushes Manning?s decision making process. Manning really wants to throw deep, but he cannot do that with Smith in his face.

Manning turns and tosses to Bradshaw in the flat for a ?safe? pass. Matthews is a full seven yards downfield from Bradshaw when Manning cocks to throw, but he reacts instantly, and Matthews is one of the quickest linebackers in the NFL. Manning probably knew that Matthews was lurking nearby; he just thought he could deliver the pass and Bradshaw could get three or four yards out of nothing. As great an individual effort as this was by Matthews, it started with Capers? defense, and the fact that the Giants were so concerned about the blitz that they limited their passing options.

As for the Packers offense, well, we could sit here all day diagramming touchdowns. Let?s focus on the unique problems Aaron Rodgers and Jordy Nelson cause for opposing defenses. Rodgers and Nelson have established such excellent timing that a defense can do just about everything right and still give up a big play.

Figure 4 (left) takes us to the final seconds of the Giants-Packers shootout. The score is tied, and there are 50 seconds on the clock. The Packers are near midfield, and they still have a timeout left, so they can safely throw short and over the middle. Their entire playbook is essentially open, and the Giants know that they must force a stop.

That?s no ?prevent? defense the Giants are running. They are in tight man coverage, something they would prefer to avoid against the Packers, but they must do something to take away the short pass. The middle linebacker blitzes, and Justin Tuck (91) throws his blocker aside and quickly gets into Rodgers? face. Meanwhile, most of the Packers receivers run short routes. Nelson (87) makes an inside move at the line to get away from Will Blackmon (36), then breaks outside on a fly pattern. Blackmon catches up quickly and is just a half-step behind Nelson.

With Tuck closing for the kill and the passing window open just a crack, a play like this should be a ?win? for the Giants. But Rodgers has uncanny accuracy, and Nelson has excellent timing when turning and addressing the ball. This 27 yard catch puts the Packers in field goal range, though another completion two plays later makes it a chip shot.

Why was Blackmon, a nickel defender, covering Nelson? The Packers force those kinds of mismatches on offense. Greg Jennings (85) is their most dangerous all-purpose receiver, so he must be covered by a starting cornerback. Donald Driver (80) draws the other starter, though the Giants? decision to keep the deep safety on Drivers? side of the field is a little curious. Jermichael Finley (88) draws coverage from a safety. There just aren?t enough good cornerbacks to go around when facing the Packers, especially for the Giants, who usually can?t get through a game without a starter getting hurt.

The Giants did many, many things perfectly against the Packers, and still lost. They must be better than perfect on Sunday. Giants fans can take solace in the fact that they have done that before.

San Francisco 49ers
All inside runs are not created equal. For a team like the Ravens, a run up the middle is an attempt to beat the opponent in old-fashioned trench warfare and set up later aerial strikes. For the Texans, a run up the middle is an exercise in textbook zone-blocking techniques. For the Eagles, a run up the middle is something to watch other teams do while resting on the bench after passing six million times.

For Jim Harbaugh and the 49ers, an inside run is a feat of engineering. No team uses more elaborate blocking schemes on superficially simple plays than the Niners. The intricate blocking patterns make the Niners offense difficult to read before the snap, and they allow some otherwise ordinary personnel on the offensive line to use the element of surprise to win matchups.

Figure 1 (left) shows ? rainbow psychedelic spaghetti! No, it is really a Niners running play, taken from a 2nd-and-13 play in the third quarter of their victory over the Lions. The Lions have an excellent, and aggressive, front four, and this play is designed to use a defense?s eagerness against itself.

All of the color coding should make the play easier to explain. First, look at the thick line representing a block by Delanie Walker (46). Walker is executing a variation on the old-school trap block on Ndamukong Suh (90). When the blockers in front of Suh veer off to take on other assignments, Suh can be counted on to rush straight into the backfield in search of sacks, glory, and future heart-to-heart chats with the commissioner. Walker?s job is to crunch him and trap him to the inside as Frank Gore (21) takes a handoff off right tackle. The block does not have to be pretty, because Suh?s own momentum is working against him, and Walker nudges him just wide of the play.

Next, check out the blue blocks by guards Mike Iupati (77) and Adam Snyder (68). These are called reach blocks, as both guards engage a defender one full position to the left of the ones they face at the snap. Like Walker, Iupati and Snyder just have to make enough contact to keep those defenders pinned to Gore?s left as he hits the hole. The red blocks by center Jonathan Goodwin (59), Joe Staley (74) and Anthony Davis (76) are second-level blocks that knock out linebackers and safeties. There?s a lot of criss-crossing going on, and at first glance this play looks like total mayhem. But it creates a huge hole for Gore on the right side. Not only did he gain 55 yards on this run, but he gained 47 yards on a slight variation on the same play earlier in the same game.

The reverse is another tactic Harbaugh often uses to feint defenders out of position and generate big plays in the running game. The Niners have used a wide assortment of reverses and misdirection plays this season, even ?tight end around? plays to Walker or Vernon Davis. Their favorite weapon on the reverse is Ted Ginn Jr., one of the league?s fastest players.

Figure 2 (left) shows the Niners in first-and-10, trailing by four, midway through the fourth quarter against the Lions. The Niners only abandon the run when they absolutely have to, and the Lions are not surprised when this play starts out as a standard off-tackle run. Walker motions inside and seals the edge, Hunter (32) takes the pitch with his fullback lead-blocking, and life is good.

Ginn takes two quick steps downfield to get the cornerback off his tail, then turns to the backfield and takes a pitch from Hunter. So far, everything is going as planned for the Niners: the right defensive end crashed hard in pursuit of Hunter, so he is in no position to stop Ginn.

The Lions outside linebacker, however, escapes from Staley?s block and gets into the backfield. No matter: Alex Smith is happy to block him! Not shown in the diagram, Staley keeps going downfield in search of a safety. Ginn gains 14 yards, partly because of his speed, partly because of play design, and partly because his quarterback is willing to mix it up.

The Saints like to dictate on defense, with Gregg Williams sending blitzers from all directions. Plays like this exploit over-aggressiveness and force defenders to take a more disciplined approach. Once defenders are worried about reverses and trap blocks, Harbaugh can mix in some passing plays, knowing that Smith will have time to get rid of the football.

Mike Tanier writes for NBCSports.com and Rotoworld.com and is a senior writer forFootball Outsiders.

? 2012 NBC Sports.com? Reprints

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Give Packers' D some love

Tanier: Green Bay did collect 31 interceptions ? here are the key plays for the Pack and 49ers this weekend.

Source: http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/45971695/ns/sports-nfl/

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Morra Aarons-Mele: Tweeting the Huntsman Daughters: Social Media #Fail

Tuesday night, as I monitored the #FITN (first in the nation) New Hampshire primary Twitter stream, I noticed some unsettling and -- what I found to be -- rather inappropriate remarks being tossed around about Jon Huntsman's daughters.

It's not unusual for people of the Twittersphere to say rude, racist, or misogynist things; like any other mostly unmoderated corner of the internet, users can spew what they want at whomever they please. And certainly, during an uneventful primary night, the twits quickly run out of meaningful things to say. Conversation tends to veer towards the snark.

I was troubled by what people were saying about the Huntsman women, but more troubled by who was saying these things. These remarks weren't coming from run-of-the-mill users, but rather journalists who we hope are held to a higher standard.

Jon Huntsman's three oldest daughters, Abby, Liddy, and Mary Anne rose to internet fame last year for their witty (and sometime off-message) tweets from their shared account, @jon2012girls, and goofy YouTube videos. Their social media smarts made them highly visible and refreshingly authentic. Regardless of the high profile their social media use has resulted in, the Huntsman women cannot be blamed for the odd types of scrutiny that have come their way.

On Tuesday night, Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post tweeted:

Kind of creepy, right? This got me curious -- were other journalists and commentators saying equally strange things about Huntsman's daughters? At least two reporters from the Boston Herald tweeted questionable remarks as well. Boston Herald reporter and NECN commentator Joe Battenfeld tweeted: And Boston Herald reporter Hillary Chabot tweeted this: ?

Yes, there were comments about the "Abercrombie" quality of some of the Romney boys.

But more strange than gazing at the GOP candidates' attractive spawn is the media's preoccupation with these women's dating lives. Despite the fact that Huntsman's daughter Abby has been married for over a year, all three still receive the question regularly. In an interview with the Daily Beast late last year, each daughter's status was discussed, along with what dating sites they've signed each other up for.

Then there was Wolf Blitzer's interview of the three women on primary day. Blitzer asked viewers to tweet him their questions. Instead of picking a question about their father, or the campaign, or one of the other candidates, Blitzer decided to spend the entire segment talking about the Huntsman daughters' love lives, telling them that he is an exceptional matchmaker. As Mediaite so keenly put it, "There was something in the way Blitzer asked the question which caused the ladies to recoil like their creepy uncle just said they were 'developing well.'"

It seems this campaign season the sexism is not just reserved for the candidates themselves. I find it troubling when any candidate's family comes under scrutiny, but the comments being casually tossed out by prominent members of the media is even more disconcerting. We hear a lot of talk these days about the evolution of journalism in the 24-hour news cycle of the digital age. If the media are serious about good, responsible journalism, it seems this would be a logical place to start.

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/morra-aaronsmele/jon-girls-2012-twitter_b_1201918.html

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Iraq demands Kurds hand over Sunni vice president (AP)

BAGHDAD ? Iraq's Shiite-led government on Sunday demanded that authorities in the semiautonomous Kurdish region hand over the country's top Sunni official to face terrorism charges, turning up the heat in a political crisis that is stoking sectarian tensions.

Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi traveled to the Kurdish north in December just as the last American troops were leaving the country and charges against him were being drawn up.

The government accuses him of running a hit squad that assassinated government and security officials years ago ? allegations he denies. Fellow Sunnis, who made up the dominant political class under Saddam Hussein, see the charges as part of an effort to sideline them.

The resulting political crisis has been accompanied by a rise in coordinated car bomb and suicide attacks targeting Shiites that have claimed dozens of lives in recent weeks.

A judicial spokesman for the Kurds, Dadyar Hameed, said authorities there received a request from Baghdad on Sunday to hand over al-Hashemi and 14 of his associates.

Although the Kurdish region is part of Iraq, it enjoys considerable autonomy. The Kurds have their own security force, and police under the control of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki do not operate there.

As long as al-Hashemi remains a guest of his boss, Iraq's Kurdish President Jalal Talabani, he is effectively out of Baghdad's reach.

Hameed declined to say if the Kurds would comply with the Interior Ministry request, citing the sensitivity of the issue.

A senior official in the Kurdish region's Interior Ministry was less diplomatic.

"We are not policemen working for al-Maliki to hand over al-Hashemi," the official said. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

Shortly before the arrest warrant was issued in December, state-run television aired what it said were confessions by men said to be working as bodyguards for al-Hashemi. The men said they killed Baghdad police officers and officials working in the health and foreign ministries in exchange for payoffs from al-Hashemi.

The hits allegedly began during the height of the war in 2006 and 2007, when widespread violence between Iraq's Sunnis and Shiites pitted neighbors against neighbors and killed thousands of Iraqi civilians.

Al-Hashemi has dismissed the charges as politically motivated and an effort to embarrass him, and says the supposed confessions implicating him were fabricated. He has said he cannot get a fair trial in Baghdad.

President Talabani came to the defense of his deputy in an interview with Al-Arabiya television that aired Sunday.

"Tariq al-Hashemi is not a fugitive. He is still the vice president. He is only accused, not convicted," Talabani said. He added that al-Hashemi is prepared to face trial in the ethnically mixed city of Kirkuk.

The dispute has paralyzed Iraq's government. Most of al-Hashemi's Sunni-backed Iraqiya bloc is boycotting parliament and Cabinet meetings over what it sees as an effort by al-Maliki to further consolidate power and sideline them now that American troops are gone.

Talabani said he expects talks between the country's feuding blocs aimed at resolving the crisis to get under way in Baghdad later this week.

___

Associated Press writers Mazin Yahya in Baghdad and Yahya Barzanji in Sulaimaniyah contributed to this report.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/iraq/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120108/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_iraq

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Diminutive Data: IBM Scientists Store a Bit on Just 12 Atoms

Magnets are great for keeping the messy musings of kids? art posted on your refrigerator doors, but they can hold so much more. Magnetic discs and tapes are used to store information in hard drives and portable devices, but by tinkering with a different kind of magnetism, a team of researchers says, they?ve discovered how to store data in the space of just a few atoms.

"We have answered the question, how small can we make a magnetic structure and still be able to use it?" Andreas Heinrich, an IBM researcher who worked on the project, says. The answer that the scientists give in the journal Science today: You can make a bit of data from just 12 atoms.

A bit, the most basic unit of digital computing, stores information as either a 1 or a 0. In a typical hard drive today, a single bit is made up of nearly 1 million atoms, and companies are in a constant race to make that number smaller, compressing information into smaller and smaller areas each year.

"Our mission is to start with the ultimate end of Moore?s law and do something interesting," Heinrich says. Moore?s law is the prediction made by Intel?s Gordon Moore in the 1960s that the number of transistors on a computer chip would double every two years. Transistors aren?t bits, but the rate of shrinkage in storage size is similar to that of computer chips. So the researchers went with the prediction to its logical conclusion?atoms.

Heinrich and colleagues started off with a single iron atom and tried to see if they could reliably store information on it. One atom alone was too unreliable, but when they got up to 12 atoms in a bit, they were able to store information for hours at a time in assemblages of 8 bits (a typical byte). By reversing the configuration of the electron spins within a 12-atom bit, the team could differentiate between a 1 and a 0.

The key to this experiment is that the iron particles weren?t magnetized in the same way your refrigerator magnet is. Those kinds of magnets, and the ones used in modern hard drives, are ferromagnets, materials made of atoms whose electrons are all spinning in the same way. In Heinrich?s tiny bits, though, the iron atoms are lined up in rows and linked by antiferromagnetism, which just means that each atom is spinning in the opposite direction from its neighbors.

Antiferromagnets have distinct benefits when it comes to digital storage. Because the atoms have opposite spins, the magnetic fields at the atomic level cancel out, leaving the material itself without a distinct outside magnetic field. In an ordinary storage device made of ferromagnets, the device can only get so small before the magnetic field around each bit starts interfering with its neighbors. But with antiferromagnets, there are no pesky overarching magnetic fields to worry about at that small scale. That means that computer engineers could pack more bits into smaller spaces, and that antiferromagnetic storage would be less susceptible (though not totally impervious) to influence from outside magnetic fields. (Powerful magnets can destroy the memory on a normal hard drive.)

Ramamoorthy Ramesh, an engineering professor at UC Berkeley who has worked with antiferromangets, said he was impressed with the new study. "If you look at storage devices everyone wants to do more with a very small amount of area," Ramesh says.

As huge as this tiny development is in the world of computing, don?t expect atomic hard drives to appear in the store at any point soon. The bytes that the scientists assembled were only stable for a few hours at temperatures barely above absolute zero: about 0.5 Kelvin, or -458 degrees Fahrenheit.

"At low temperatures the atoms hold still and you can move them where you want them," says Sebastian Loth, lead author of the paper.

The magnetic bonds between the atoms, which were spaced out on a copper nitride base to make them easier to detect, got weaker at warmer temperatures. But Loth and Heinrich think that this problem would be overcome with simply a larger volume of atoms. If they scaled up from 12 to about 150 atoms in a bit, they estimate, then the bit could be stable at room temperature. (Assembling a bit out of 150 atoms would take more time than the bit they built from a dozen atoms, a process the researchers estimated at two days with their scanning tunneling microscope.)

Heinrich acknowledges that this small-scale production is far from the mass market. "If you really want to build something like this you need to figure out how to manufacture something atomically, cheaply," he says. But while atomic-scale hard drives are a thing for the future, Heinrich predicts that larger antiferromagnets could be used in storage devices much sooner, even as early as they next 5-10 years.

Maybe someday, dropping a magnet near your computer won?t incite panic.

Source: http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/gadgets/news/diminutive-data-ibm-scientists-store-a-bit-on-just-12-atoms-6638094?src=rss

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