Blog - First Observation of Antihelium

One the big questions that trouble cosmologists and particle physicists is the distribution of matter and antimatter in the Universe. It certainly looks is if matter dominates the cosmos but looks can be deceiving. We may just live in a corner of the universe that happens to be dominated by matter.

Today, we find there's a little extra antimatter in our corner thanks to the work of the STAR collaboration at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory in the US.

These guys banged together 10^9 gold nuclei at energies of 200 GeV and spotted 18 antinuclei of helium-4 in the ensuing wreckage. That's an impressive achievement by an standards--at the very least we now know antihelium-4 can exist.

These kinds of impacts create a hot blob of more or less equal numbers of quarks and antiquarks, a so-called quark gluon plasma. This cools down forming various particles and their antiparticles.

Of course, the bigger the antiparticle, the less likely we are to see it. In fact, each extra baryon in an antinucleus makes it 1000 times harder to make. So although positrons first cropped up in 1932, antiprotons and neutrons didn't appear until 1955 and we had to wait until 1970 for a Russian team to announce the first observation of antihelium-3.

Now, 40 years later, we have antihelium-4. (It seems unlikely that we'll see the next in line, antilithium-6, any time soon and, in fact, the STAR team admit it cannot be produced with current collider technology.)

What's important about this observation is that antihelium-4 seems to occur at exactly the rate predicted by thermodynamics. So unless there's some other mechanism for making it in vastly greater quantities, we're unlikely to see a naturally occurring version, no matter how hard we look.

So "any observation of antihelium or even heavier antinuclei in space would indicate the existence of a large amount of antimatter elsewhere in the Universe," say the STAR collaboration.

And, as it turns out, we are intending to look. The Space Shuttle Endeavour, currently scheduled for launch next month, is carrying the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer to the International Space Station for precisely this reason.

Alpha is specially designed to look for particles of antimatter in cosmic rays. If antihelium is made only by known mechanisms, it will be too rare to trouble Alpha. But if the experiment gets even a sniff of antihelium or anything heavier, expect an explosion of interest from cosmologists and particle physicists.

This is one of the few genuinely useful pieces of science that is planned for the space station. Let's hope it goes smoothly.

Ref: arxiv.org/abs/1103.3312: Observation Of The Antimatter Helium-4 Nucleus

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A Smoking Gun for Emphysema

Researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College have developed a blood test that may detect early signs of emphysema. The test measures levels of tiny endothelial microparticles that slough off from capillary walls into the bloodstream. Scientists found that these circulating fragments are higher than normal in smokers who have evidence of lung destruction but who have yet to develop symptoms of emphysema. The new blood test may be a cost-effective way to catch the disease early.

"It's easier to get people to stop smoking if they know they're developing a disease," says Ronald Crystal, chairman and professor of genetic medicine at the medical school, and lead author of the study. "This test tells people you are developing early emphysema, and it's like a smoke alarm?when it goes off, it doesn't necessarily tell you there's a fire, but you have to pay attention to it."

Fifteen to 20 percent of smokers develop emphysema, and the longer one smokes, the higher their risk of developing the disease. There is no cure for the disease, which, along with chronic bronchitis, contributes to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, the fourth leading cause of death in the United States. The most effective way to halt emphysema's progress is to stop smoking early on.

As the disease develops, it causes destruction to alveoli, the many air sacs that branch out from the lungs. These air sacs are the sites of vital gas exchange. When the lungs take in oxygen, it travels to the air sacs, into surrounding capillaries, which supply the rest of the body. Simultaneously, carbon dioxide flows from capillaries to the air sacs, and is expelled through the lungs. In emphysema, this gas exchange is severely cut off, making it difficult to breathe.

Recently, researchers found that in addition to the destruction of alveoli, emphysema may damage the surrounding network of capillaries, causing fragments of the inner lining to shed and get swept up in the bloodstream. "There have been attempts for 30 years to develop a biomarker for emphysema, but with not much success," says Crystal. "Endothelial microparticles have been looked at for other diseases, like diabetes and heart disease, but no one has ever looked at it for emphysema."

The findings suggest that the blood test could catch early signs of emphysema that would otherwise go unnoticed. Crystal's group is planning to perform more tests on larger groups of participants to verify the results.

Steven Shapiro, chairman of the department of medicine at the University of Pittsburgh, says that the blood test may one day be easily integrated into a doctor's office. "We've been wanting general practitioners to screen for emphysema, and it's getting easier, but lots of patients go undiagnosed and untreated, and we don't have any treatments that are disease-modifying yet," says Shapiro. "Part of the reason is because we don't have good biomarkers. So having a biomarker like this would really be beneficial."

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Kinect hacked to work on the PlayStation 3

Hacker Shantanu Goel has got his Microsoft Xbox 360 Kinect accessory to work with the Sony PlayStation 3. He achieved the feat by connecting the Kinect to his laptop, which is running PrimeSense's Kinect drivers (as well as the OpenNI Libraries and the NITE Libraries). The movement is converted into raw tracking data and reconverted into PS3-compliant data via the DIYPS3Controller.

The result is being able to use the Kinect to control your PS3 via your PC, albeit it's very shaky because the information is sent in the form of normal PS3 controller movements. The hack is still in a very early development phase, but it definitely shows that that the pairing is possible.

"Now, of course, kinect doesn't work with PS3 obviously but then if we can't break the rules, we can at least bend them a little towards our way," Goel said in a statement. "I've created a mashup that allows you to use kinect as an input controller for the PS3. Please note that this is pre-alpha quality software currently. I haven't updated to a lot of recent code for the below libraries and also haven't done most of the performance/feature improvements yet. The axis performance specially needs lot of tweaking and it works well only while sitting. Putting this out purely as a proof of concept."

Here's his current to-do list:

  • Full menu and game profiles
  • Skeletal tracking for better game profiles
  • Switching back to menu profiles from game profiles
  • Easier way to specify user custom profiles instead of changing code for the same
  • Performance improvement for game profiles

We're wondering if anyone has attempted to get the PlayStation Move to work on an Xbox 360, or if it's not even worth the effort. If you own a PS3, does this hack get you excited with the potential possibilities?

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Airstrikes in Libya; Questions Back Home

As the air assault continued for a second day in Libya, Mr. Obama sought to project an air of normalcy and play down the role of the United States. He continued his visit to South America without altering his schedule, and barely mentioned, in a televised speech from Brazil, that allied forces were engaged in another military intervention in a Muslim world.

But some Republicans suggested that Mr. Obama had waited too long to protect the rebels against Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, had been too reluctant to employ American power and had not clearly explained the objectives of the action. Their comments maintained a pattern of attacking Mr. Obama as a weak leader at home and abroad.

?I don?t know what finally got the president to act, but I?m very worried that we?re taking the back seat rather than a leadership role,? Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said on ?Fox News Sunday.?

The action against Colonel Qaddafi?s forces drew support from many Democrats, but also concern. A coalition of liberal Democrats voiced objections, arguing that the president overstepped his authority by not seeking Congressional approval before authorizing the airstrikes.

The airstrikes against the Libyan government crystallized the complexities and risks of addressing the multifaceted uprisings in the Arab world and could leave the administration stretched thin as its heads toward a budget showdown with Republicans in Congress and a decision by summer about how quickly to reduce the American military presence in Afghanistan. Even for a president whose term has been filled with unforeseen events, the commencement of a military action that held the risk of becoming a third war at a time of upheaval in the Middle East created a new dynamic whose consequences were especially hard to predict.

Mr. Obama had intended for the third year of his presidency to be devoted to showing that he had learned the lessons of the midterm election, was able to rise above partisanship and focus on solutions to unemployment and the nation?s long-term economic problems. For the most part, he has stuck doggedly to his message about preparing the nation for the challenges of the future, often choosing to stay out of day-to-day political battles and legislative maneuvering on Capitol Hill as he lays the groundwork for his re-election campaign and seeks to regain the support of independent voters and moderates.

But with the developments in Libya, a man who reached the White House on the strength of a forceful antiwar sentiment four years ago now has three major military conflicts under his command, with polls showing a limited appetite for increased American intervention.

The White House brushed aside criticism on Sunday, particularly assertions from leading Republicans that Mr. Obama was too slow taking action in Libya. The president made only a passing reference to Libya near the end of a 20-minute address in Rio de Janeiro, where he hailed the democratic uprisings taking place across the Middle East.

?The future of the Arab world will be determined by its people,? Mr. Obama said. ?No one can say for certain how this change will end, but I do know that change is not something that we should fear.?

Mr. Obama, who inherited the Iraq and Afghanistan wars when he took office, has spoken repeatedly during the last two years about demanding a multilateral approach to conflicts. The decision to join in a military assault against Colonel Qaddafi seemed sure to prompt further debate about whether there is a consistent Obama doctrine for defining national interest and the need for the use of force, could strain relations with liberals who are already uneasy about the president?s escalation of the war in Afghanistan and, should it not go well or continue for weeks or months, divert attention from his domestic policy and political initiatives.

The president?s national security adviser, Thomas Donilon, told reporters on Sunday that Libya was different from Bahrain and other countries where uprisings have taken place in the Middle East, particularly because the Arab League asked for intervention in Libya. He declined to speculate how long the military action there would last, but added, ?This is a targeted mission.?

The split-screen optics of Mr. Obama ? appearing in Brazil, even as military action intensified in Libya and the prospect of a government shutdown in Washington remained a possibility ? brought to life one of his selling points in the 2008 presidential race. When Senator John McCain suspended his campaign to focus on the economy, Mr. Obama said, ?It is going to be part of the president?s job to deal with more than one thing at once.?

That axiom has been tested multiple times during the first two years of his presidency.

?The effort is to find a balance between the foreign policy crisis of the moment and the long-term domestic challenges,? Dan Pfeiffer, the White House communications director, said in an interview. ?The challenge is to not let events you can?t control overwhelm the presidency.?

The prospective 2012 Republican presidential contenders, who are quick to dispense criticism of Mr. Obama on nearly every topic, were quiet on Sunday about Libya. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich was the only prospective candidate to issue a statement, criticizing the military action as ?opportunistic amateurism without planning.?

?What is the Obama standard?? Mr. Gingrich said. ?What is success? What are we prepared to do to achieve that success??

Mr. Obama has pledged that no American ground troops would be deployed to Libya, but some Republican leaders said he needed to be clearer about the goals of the United States.

Jackie Calmes contributed reporting from Rio de Janeiro.

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France hands record fine to Google over Street View privacy breach

France?s privacy watchdog has handed Google its largest fine ever for breaching the privacy of French citizens by collecting and storing sensitive data from neighbourhood Wi-Fi networks using its Street View cars.

CNBC reports that the ?100,000 ($141,300) fine is the first of its kind for Google. Over 30 countries have complained about the way Google went about collecting personal data which included emails, visited websites and other sensitive information including banking details and passwords.

Google came under fire in May 2010 when it admitted it had collected ?fragments of payload data?, even though it had explicitly denied to EU regulators that it was doing so. Soon after the first lawsuits began to emerge ? one such case arising in Oregon ? before 244,000 German citizens opted-out of having their residences listed on the Street View service.

Two other countries are said to be considering handing Google fines, whilst the majority have opted against penalising the search giant.

Google has apologised and says it will delete the data it has collected.

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Source: http://thenextweb.com/google/2011/03/21/france-hands-record-fine-to-google-over-street-view-privacy-breach/

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Blog - First Observation Of AntiHelium

One the big questions that trouble cosmologists and particle physicists is the distribution of matter and antimatter in the Universe. It certainly looks is if matter dominates the cosmos but looks can be deceiving. We may just live in a corner of the universe that happens to be dominated by matter.

Today, we find there's a little extra antimatter in our corner thanks to the work of the STAR collaboration at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory in the US.

These guys banged together 10^9 gold nuclei at an energies of 200 GeV and spotted 18 antinuclei of helium-4 in the ensuing wreckage. That's an impressive achievement by an standards--at the very least we now know it can exist.

These kinds of impacts create a hot blob of more or less equal numbers of quarks and antiquarks, a so-called quark gluon plasma. This cools down forming various particles and their antiparticles.

Of course, the bigger the antiparticle, the less likely we are to see it. In fact, each extra baryon in an antinucleus makes it 1000 times harder to make. So although positrons first cropped up in 1932, antiprotons and neutrons didn't appear until 1955 and we had to wait until 1970 for a Russian team to announce the first observation of antihelium-3.

Now, 40 years later, we have antihelium-4. (It seems unlikely that we'll see the next in line, antilithium-6, any time soon and, in fact, the STAR team admit it cannot be produced with current collider technology.)

What's important about this observation is that antihelium-4 seems to occur at exactly the rate predicted by thermodynamics. So unless there's some other mechanism for making it in vastly greater quantities, we're unlikely to see a naturally occurring version, no matter how hard we look.

So "any observation of antihelium or even heavier antinuclei in space would indicate the existence of a large amount of antimatter elsewhere in the Universe," say the STAR collaboration.

And, as it turns out, we are intending to look. The Space Shuttle Endeavour, currently scheduled for launch next month, is carrying the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer to the International Space Station for precisely this reason.

Alpha is specially designed to look for particles of antimatter in cosmic rays. If antihelium is made only by known mechanisms, it will be too rare to trouble Alpha. But if the experiment gets even a sniff of antihelium or anything heavier, expect an explosion of interest from cosmologists and particle physicists.

This is one of the few genuinely useful pieces of science that is planned for the space station. Let's hope it goes smoothly.

Ref: arxiv.org/abs/1103.3312: Observation Of The Antimatter Helium-4 Nucleus

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News Analysis: President Underscores Similarities With Brazilians, but Ignores One

But Mr. Obama, on the second day of a five-day tour of Latin America, once again seemed to sidestep mentioning his own racial background in appearances here, even as Brazilians who gathered at a plaza trying to catch a glimpse of him said that he had inspired millions in this country because of his African heritage.

?Because he knows the reality of discrimination against blacks, it would be very important for him to pass on the message that it is possible to get somewhere, to be someone, in spite of all the difficulties,? said Célio Frias, a 46-year-old businessman. ?He is an inspiration.?

From their first public comments together on Saturday in the capital, Brasília, Mr. Obama and Dilma Rousseff, Brazil?s first female president, have been a study in contrasts in how they handle the historic nature of their presidencies.

On Saturday, Ms. Rousseff, speaking with some passion, celebrated that the election last October made her the first woman to serve as Brazil?s president, and that Mr. Obama is the first African-American president of the United States, lauding what it said about the progress and tolerance of their respective countries.

The people in the United States and in Brazil, Ms. Rousseff said, had ?dared to take at the highest level someone of African descent and a woman, demonstrating that the basis of democracy allows to overcome the largest barriers to build societies that will be more generous and live more in harmony.?

At a luncheon in Brasília attended by officials and business leaders Ms. Rousseff noted that the United States and Brazil have the largest black populations outside Africa and ?a long track record of the struggle of the minorities.? Lifting her glass, she said, ?I propose that we should raise a toast to you and to the dream of Martin Luther King, the same dream of Brazilians and Americans, the dream of freedom, the dream of hope.?

Mr. Obama, characteristically, did not overtly address his race, or race in general, in several joint appearances with Ms. Rousseff on Saturday.

He came closest in their meeting with business executives from American and Brazilian corporations, but Mr. Obama spoke indirectly, more in terms of social and economic status than race. He hailed ?the American dream? as appropriate for both the United States and Latin America, defining it as ?the idea that no matter who you are, or where you come from, or how you start out, you can overcome the greatest obstacles and fulfill the greatest hopes.?

?I?m a testament to that dream,? he said.

Through his long presidential campaign and since, Mr. Obama has often seemed to address the issue only when forced to by outside events ? like the campaign controversy over racially divisive sermons by his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., or a 2009 furor over the arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr., a black Harvard professor and friend, as Mr. Gates tried to enter his own home.

Senior advisers to Mr. Obama have in the past suggested that he does not want to be defined in racial terms, but as president for all Americans.

But Brazilians see the issue differently. Brazil was the last country in the Western world to abolish slavery, having done it in 1888. Yet unlike the United States, Brazil never passed Jim Crow segregation laws, and despite the persistence of racism here, many Brazilians take pride in having intermarried more than whites and blacks in the United States.

In the months leading up to his election, Mr. Obama?s popularity soared in Brazil with a wide cross-section of Brazilians. Many proclaimed that Mr. Obama?s gregarious personality made him seem like a Brazilian masquerading as an American, even as many Americans see him as too cool and detached.

?I was moved by his election, I followed everything, saved magazines, newspapers, everything that came out about him,? said Maria Helena Reis, 62, a nurse. ?He gives a lot of pride to blacks.?

Opinion polls in the region show that Mr. Obama?s election has also improved Latin American countries? opinion of the United States as a whole. Among Brazilians, those with a favorable view increased by 16 percentage points from 57 percent in 2008 to 73 percent in 2009, according to Latinobarometer, a polling company in Santiago, Chile. The increase was higher among blacks and those of mixed race surveyed than among whites.

Mr. Obama?s activities on Sunday in Rio ? first, his visit to the sprawling City of God favela, or slum, made famous the world over in the 2002 movie that bears its name, followed by a televised speech to a large audience at a historic theater ? illustrated the White House?s efforts to take advantage of the president?s unique appeal to the broad and heavily mixed-race Brazilian public.

Roberta Nápolis contributed reporting.

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TNW Review of GarageBand for iPad

Last week Apple released an iPad version of its popular music creation software GarageBand, bringing both non-musicians and professional artists a gorgeous, organic way to compose music.

This review is written by a non-musician tech enthusiast and is aimed at the average iPad user.

Creating a Project

The user interface is elegant and it organizes the tools and elements beautifully, we?d really expect no less from Apple on the design front.

When you launch the app, your multiple projects (or songs) are displayed in a Cover Flow-like view, allowing you to swipe through visual previews of each song. Once a new project is created, users are presented with a series of instruments including keyboards, guitars, drums, guitar amps, an audio recorder and samples.

After selecting an instrument, you?ll need to record something in order to receive access to the project timeline, a screen where the track editing is done. But before we explain editing and recording, we?ll take you through the instruments.

Instruments and Samples

For non-musical folks, any instrument labeled as ?smart? provides a bank of auto-play features that will enable you to create bass lines, drum beats and melodies without much effort. And, it comes with various options to change the pitch, notes and chords.

Smart Guitars

Smart Bass Guitar: There are 4 types of bass guitars available to help you achieve the the sound you?re looking for; Liverpool, muted, picked (rock guitars) and an upright bass guitar.

Smart Guitar: Like the smart bass, there are multiple guitars all capable or producing different sounds; acoustic, classic clean, hard rock and roots rock. The Smart Guitar also uses digital foot pedals (stompbox effects) to creative specific tones for your instrument. Artists often use real foot pedals, most notably (on guitar) for producing distortion sounds and delay.

Recording with auto-play: Both of the smart guitars offer options to record an auto-play melody that comes with 4 different sounding samples/patterns. Users can alter the (auto-play) tune by tapping on notes that results in changing the melody. For someone who can?t play guitar, the auto-play option makes it simple to come up with a solid bass line or riff.

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The Pencil vs. Camera collection could change your worldview

Ben Heine has been taking photos and drawing for nearly 10 years. The artist mashes up illustrations and photography in his Flickr series titled ?Pencil Vs. Camera?, overlaying pencil drawing on top of actual photographs to create unconventional and creative images of the world around us.

In an interview with Newslite.tv, Heine discusses his ideas and technique.

How did you come up with the idea for Pencil Vs Camera?

?The real idea came while I was watching television and writing a letter at the same time a few weeks ago. Reading my letter before putting it in the envelope, I saw in transparency the television behind the paper. I then realize it would be great to make something similar in a single image showing 2 different actions?


How do you pick the photos you use?

The photos and drawings always come from my own stock/production. I somehow consider the surface of the image as a battle between drawing and photography and the tools of this fight are my « pencil » and my « camera ». So I usually choose photos with a striking subject and a specific action. It can also be nice to use a background scenery with a very simple or low semantic effect and make everything happen inside the small piece of paper.

The great thing is that photo and drawing are 2 different ways of expression but they go well together and they definitely have the same purpose: share an idea, an emotion, a concept or a message.

How do you pick what to add?

There are no rules. There mustn?t be. Imagination and creativity are the leitmotif. This is why this series is so amusing to do for me. You can choose to draw something in a realistic way or to rather go crazy. I personally prefer to show unreal things on the paper because the photo is a mere reflection of the world we live in?.

For more quirky art, check out Ben Heine?s Flickr collection. All rights reserved by Ben Heine.

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Amid Crises, Obama Lands in South America

BRASÍLIA ? Behind the scenes here, President Obama on Saturday performed the most profound act of a commander in chief: sending American forces into conflict. Publicly, however, he kept to the schedule of his first visit to South America, hailing the United States? growing economic and political ties with Brazil and predicting ?a path toward even greater cooperation for decades to come.?

The two countries? differences were also aired, if gently, as Mr. Obama met with the newly elected president of Brazil, Dilma Rousseff, who has signaled a desire for closer relations with the United States.

Each president criticized the trade barriers of the other?s country even as they celebrated improvements in their relations, including an increase in trade that has created jobs in both places.

Mr. Obama praised Brazil as ?a global leader? but declined to endorse its bid for a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council, which is considering a reorganization to give permanent membership and a greater voice to emerging powers like Brazil. Last fall, in a visit to India, Mr. Obama lent support to that country?s hopes for a permanent seat.

Brazil and India, both temporary members of the Security Council, were among the five nations that abstained in Thursday?s vote to authorize force against Libya. They said the resolution was too broad, illustrating a desire to act independent of the traditional big powers.

While Mr. Obama and Ms. Rousseff did not announce any major agreements after their private meeting and subsequent sessions with business leaders from the United States and Brazil, they did announce accords for further talks toward cooperation on economic, financial, energy and trade issues.

?It?s time for the United States to treat our engagement with Brazil on economic issues as seriously as we do with nations like China and India,? Mr. Obama said to applause at a forum of American and Brazilian corporate executives.

Mr. Obama came here with his family and top advisers to open a five-day trip to Brazil, Chile and El Salvador that was intended to underscore economic opportunities in the region, especially in Brazil. But his visit was overshadowed from the start by the approach of the multinational military campaign to defend the Libyan opposition against attack by Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi?s forces. By late afternoon, Mr. Obama interrupted his appearances to announce to reporters that American troops had joined those from European and Arab nations in carrying out the Security Council resolution.

Even in a presidency that has been defined by crises inherited and new, Mr. Obama?s day stood out for the mix of long-planned diplomacy and unexpected crisis management. Besides the situation in Libya, administration officials were monitoring events in Japan.

The Obama administration has long described the trip, especially its Brazil leg, in terms of its potential economic benefits for the United States ? in keeping with Mr. Obama?s main domestic theme.

So White House officials remained confident that his absence from Washington was easily justifiable in terms most Americans could support ? especially given the ever-present communications available to a traveling president.

In his weekly address carried Saturday on radio and the Internet, Mr. Obama spoke of the hundreds of thousands of American jobs owing to exports to Brazil and Chile. And in remarks here, he said: ?Brazil?s extraordinary rise has captured the attention of the world. The United States doesn?t simply recognize Brazil?s rise; we support it enthusiastically.?

For all of the mutual praise, Mr. Obama and Ms. Rousseff were direct in their criticisms, particularly Ms. Rousseff.

She said the two countries? relationship had in the past been marked by ?empty rhetoric? from the United States. A ?deeper relationship? with Brazil, which now has the world?s seventh-largest economy, ?has to be a construct amongst equals,? she said.

She objected to what she called American protectionism in some areas, saying that she understood that the United States had to take ?tough measures? to restore growth after the global financial crisis, which Brazil largely escaped. But, she added, stronger ties would require the United States to lower trade barriers for Brazilian products like ethanol, beef, cotton, orange juice and aircraft.

Mr. Obama had a similar complaint against Brazil. ?As the World Bank has noted, there are still too many obstacles in the way of doing business in Brazil,? he told a business group. ?And I know Brazil has issues with certain policies in the U.S.

?But I also know that there is no country that has more to gain than Brazil from expanded trade and open markets.?

Repeatedly, Mr. Obama said the United States wanted to help Brazil in building infrastructure for the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympics, and in developing Brazil?s recently discovered deepwater oil reserves, and then buying the oil.

?At a time when we?ve been reminded how easily instability in other parts of the world can affect the price of oil,? Mr. Obama said, ?the United States could not be happier with the potential for a new, stable source of energy.?

He and Ms. Rousseff also agreed to form a ?Green Economy Partnership? to develop and help finance biofuels and other clean energy sources.

Brazil is expected to spend about $200 billion on public works related to the World Cup and Summer Olympics. ?American companies stand ready to help you meet this challenge, on everything from engineering to manufacturing to construction,? Mr. Obama said.

The presidents announced an open-skies accord, a sort of free-market agreement liberalizing commercial aviation between their countries. But Mr. Obama said the two sides had not reached agreement on waiving visa requirements, as the Brazilians and the American tourist industry want.

Aside from its potential for better economic ties, the trip had also been promoted by the administration as a way for Mr. Obama to connect more generally with Latin Americans, especially in Brazil, a multiracial society where he has been wildly popular since his presidential campaign.

But the White House?s plans to stage a speech in a plaza where thousands of Brazilians could see him were aborted in favor of one indoors, at the Theatro Municipal in Rio de Janeiro on Sunday, because of Secret Service security concerns.

To the delight of the Brazilians, Mr. Obama is traveling with his family: his wife, Michelle; his daughters, Malia and Sasha, who are on spring break; his mother-in-law, Marian Robinson; and Eleanor Kaye Wilson, his daughters? godmother.

Mrs. Obama is holding public events of her own, mostly to promote better education among South America?s large youth population.

Alexei Barrionuevo contributed reporting.

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