As of this morning, PS3 owners should notice a new icon under the video section of the menu: Netflix. The PS3 gained the ability to stream Netflix back in November of 2009, but it required using a special Netflix disc and the user interface now looks outdated compared to newer offerings from Apple TV and Xbox 360. (The Nintendo Wii can also stream Netflix without a disc now as well.)
Photo credit: Matthew Moskovciak/CNET
Alan Boyle writes:This year's Nobel Prize for chemistry was awarded for decades-old breakthroughs in the use of palladium to help synthesize useful compounds — a process that took the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences 13 pages to explain. The easy way to explain it is to say palladium is a rare metal that acts as a catalyst or "matchmaker," marrying ingredients to produce all sorts of useful things for flat-screen displays, cancer drugs, asthma medicines and more.
"Any undergraduate who's taken chemistry is starting to see this in textbooks as really important chemistry," Joseph Francisco, president of the American Chemical Society, told me today. Francisco is a chemistry professor at Purdue University and hence a colleague of one of the laureates named today, Purdue's Ei-Ichi Negishi.
Negishi, along with the University of Delaware's Richard Heck and Hokkaido University's Akira Suzuki, were honored for their work in the 1960s and '70s to develop a technique called palladium-catalyzed cross coupling in organic synthesis. That's quite a mouthful, but it simply means they found a way to use palladium atoms to build smaller molecules into larger ones, The atoms act as "marriage brokers," in the words of Inside Science News Service's Steve Miller. Here's what Francisco told Miller:
"Think of palladium as the mutual friend who brings two people together for a handshake," Francisco said. "Palladium brings the right carbon atoms from two molecules together, performs the introduction, and then moves on."
The palladium atoms themselves emerge unchanged by the process, ready to introduce more carbon atoms to each other.
"The beautiful thing about this chemistry is it's very fundamental ... it can create new carbon bonds and certain functional groups that normally would be very difficult to create, in a very easy, very facile, very efficient way," Francisco told me.
Francisco said most chemists knew it was just a matter of time before Heck, Suzuki and Negishi won a Nobel for their work. "At the time, I don't think the Nobel laureates really anticipated just how broadly that chemistry would be applied, but it was," he said.
So what kinds of products have been created through palladium-catalyzed cross coupling?
Pharmaceuticals: Painkillers ranging from synthetic morphine to naproxen (which is marketed under brand names such as Aleve or Midol Extended Relief). Asthma medicines such as montelukast (marketed as Singulair). Anti-cancer drugs such as synthetic Taxol as well as the candidate drug discodermolide (a synthetic version of a poison found in a Caribbean marine sponge) and diazonamide A (which appears to be effective in fighting colon cancer). Potential anti-viral drugs such as dragmacidin F (which affects the herpes virus and HIV). Antibiotics such as modified vancomycin (to fight MRSA infections).
Plastics: Heck developed the chemical reaction that now bears his name in order to create styrene, a major component in polystyrene plastic.
Electronics: Reactions involving palladium are used to optimize the blue light in organic light-emitting diodes, or OLEDs, which have found their way into ultra-thin flat-screen displays. The Heck reaction also comes into play for producing resins used in electronic fabrication (such as Dow Chemical's Cyclotene).
... And more: The Heck reaction is a key step in the production of the herbicide Prosulforon. The Suzuki reaction is used to manufacture a fungicide known as Boscalid. And strangely enough, researchers reported just this year that they put palladium together with graphene, the one-atom-thick form of carbon that earned two other researchers the Nobel Prize in physics this week. Palladium-graphene hybrids could be used as catalysts for the Suzuki reaction, to produce new strains of polymer circuitry and liquid crystals.
"What's exciting about this is it's a case where fundamental chemistry has led to innovations in the chemical and pharmaceutical industries that bring benefit to the general public," Francisco said. "What can be more exciting than using fundamental chemistry to improve the lives of people worldwide? That's cool stuff."
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The Philadelphia Phillies must have thought that was the greatest game he could pitch; after all, Halladay did not allow a base runner. But considering the setting Wednesday, he found a way to top himself.
Halladay threw the second no-hitter in postseason history and the first since Don Larsen’s perfect game for the Yankees in the 1956 World Series. He thwarted the Cincinnati Reds, the top-scoring team in the National League this season, in a 4-0 victory in Game 1 of their division playoff series.
Halladay allowed one base runner, on a walk to Jay Bruce with two out in the fifth inning, and few hard-hit balls. He struck out eight, with exceptional command of his two-seam fastball, cutter, curveball and changeup.
“It’s hard to explain, but pitching a game like that, being able to win the game comes first,” Halladay said. “That’s kind of your only focus until after it’s over with. I think once it ends, it’s a little bit surreal.”
The game was bound to be memorable for Halladay, a decorated right-hander who had labored for 12 years with the also-ran Toronto Blue Jays until a trade to the Phillies last December. His 320 career starts were the most of any active pitcher who had never appeared in the postseason.
As Halladay walked across the outfield to the bullpen before Wednesday’s game, his pitching coach, Rich Dubee, gave him a simple instruction.
“Go out there and try to be good,” Dubee said he told Halladay. “If you go out there and try to be good, you’ve got a chance to be great.”
Halladay, whose perfect game came on the road against the Florida Marlins on May 29, made the most of that chance. He is the fifth pitcher in major league history to throw two no-hitters in the same season, joining Johnny Vander Meer of the 1938 Cincinnati Reds, Allie Reynolds of the 1951 Yankees, Virgil Trucks of the 1952 Detroit Tigers and Nolan Ryan of the 1973 California Angels.
It also continued a trend in the majors this season. Halladay’s gem was the sixth no-hitter since opening day, one shy of the single-season major league record. Another potential no-hitter — a perfect game, in fact, by Detroit’s Armando Galarraga — was ruined by an umpire’s blown call with two out in the ninth inning.
Halladay, 33, went 21-10 this season, leading the league in innings and complete games, and he is likely to win his second Cy Young Award. He has been everything the Phillies hoped for when they traded three prospects to Toronto to get him, then signed him to a contract extension that could be worth $80 million over four years.
It was something of a gamble for the Phillies, who simultaneously traded their best 2009 starter, Cliff Lee, to Seattle. Lee had beaten the Yankees twice last fall for the Phillies’ only World Series victories, but he was not signed to a long-term contract.
Lee has remained an ace — now with Texas, he beat Tampa Bay in his playoff start Wednesday — but Halladay lent a sense of desperation to the Phillies’ two-time reigning N.L. champions. If there was ever a danger of their growing complacent, his presence erased it.
“He has a lot of hunger,” Phillies Manager Charlie Manuel said on Tuesday. “I think he’s starving, all right. He’s intense and he wants it.”
Halladay ran alone on the warning track in a downpour before the Phillies’ workout on Tuesday, then played catch in the outfield with his fellow starter Cole Hamels. His work ethic and mental sharpness are revered around baseball, as is his wide repertory of weapons.
“He’s got probably four of the best pitches in baseball,” another Phillies starter, Roy Oswalt, said on Wednesday afternoon. “All four of his pitches he can throw at any time. When you can do that in the big leagues, you’re going to create a lot of havoc for the opposing hitter.”
Even, as Halladay showed, when facing the team that led the league in average, runs, hits and homers. The Reds battered him for 13 hits on June 30, but even that day there were signs that Halladay could dominate them. He struck out 10 without a walk, and tossed nine shutout innings against the Reds two starts later.
“Anytime you’re facing a good team, I think the more aggressive you can be early in the count — get yourself in pitcher’s counts — the more the numbers play into your favor,” said Halladay, who threw first-pitch strikes to 25 of his 28 hitters. “So that was definitely a priority.”
The Reds remain hitless in the postseason since Eddie Taubensee’s eighth-inning single in Game 4 of the 1995 N.L. Championship Series, when they were swept by the Atlanta Braves. It was a dispiriting way to return to the playoffs.
“You’ve got to put that one behind us, figure we got beat by a great performance tonight,” Reds Manager Dusty Baker said. “The thing about it is, I don’t think he threw anything down the heart of the plate. Everything was on the corners and moving.”
The Reds’ hardest hit might have been a lineout to right by pitcher Travis Wood in the third inning. The final out came on a dribbler in front of the plate by Brandon Phillips, who raced to first as the ball nicked his bat in the dirt. Catcher Carlos Ruiz dropped to his knees to field it, threading a throw over Phillips’s left shoulder.
The out secured, Ruiz embraced a beaming Halladay as teammates mobbed them. The Phillies and Halladay hope it was only the first celebration of an already magical postseason.
