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Friday, April 26, 2013
Thursday, April 25, 2013
UPS profit rises 7 percent on strong post-holiday season
(Reuters) - United Parcel Service Inc
Daily package volume in the United States grew 4.4 percent, led by UPS Ground, which delivered 531,000 more packages per day.
As cost-conscious consumers shift from air express to slower and cheaper modes of shipping, UPS's stronger North American domestic network puts it in a better position than rival FedEx Corp
UPS's international package revenue was flat in the quarter, while sales in the United States rose 3.4 percent. Total revenue rose 2.2 percent to $13.43 billion.
Net income rose to $1.04 billion, or $1.08 per share, in the first quarter, from $970 million, or $1 per share, a year earlier.
Excluding items, UPS earned $1.04 per share.
Analysts on average expected earnings of $1.01 per share, excluding items, on revenue of $13.46 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
UPS on Thursday said it would buy Hungarian pharmaceutical logistics company, CEMELOG Zrt, to strengthen its healthcare reach in Europe. It did not disclose the terms of the deal.
UPS dropped its $7 billion bid for Dutch delivery firm TNT Express
The company's shares have gained 5 percent in the last 12 months but have underperformed the wider S&P 500 <.spx> index, which has risen 15 percent. UPS shares closed at $83.50 on the New York Stock Exchange on Wednesday.
(Reporting by Sagarika Jaisinghani in Bangalore; Editing by Supriya Kurane)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/ups-profit-rises-7-percent-strong-post-holiday-120835550--sector.html
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Researchers discover new explanation for diabetes and poor growth
Apr. 23, 2013 ? A group of researchers from the University of Copenhagen has taken a significant step towards understanding the reasons for both diabetes and growth hormone deficiency. Their new discoveries centre on the body's ability to regulate certain hormones, and their findings have just been published in the scientific journal PLOS Biology.
Some people suffering from diabetes or affected by poor growth most likely have problems with the so-called PICK1 protein, a protein that plays a decisive role in the formation of both growth hormone and insulin in the human body.
"We have studied the role played by PICK1 when growth hormone is released by the brain and insulin by the pancreas. Our experiments show that PICK1 deficiency leads to growth hormone and insulin deficiency in both fruit flies and mice. In mice, we can clearly see that the animals become small and fat and less tolerant to sugar when deficient in PICK1. We have reason to believe that the same is true for humans," says Professor Ulrik Gether from the Department of Neuroscience and Pharmacology, who has made the new discoveries together with his research colleagues Ole Kj?rulff, Birgitte Holst and Kenneth Madsen.
"Different cells produce different kinds of hormones, and store the hormones for secretion into the bloodstream when required. Up until now, this has been a poorly understood mechanism which, among other things, plays a key role in the development of diabetes and poor growth. However, given what we now know about the PICK1 protein, we are in a position to say far more about what might have gone wrong when someone is suffering from the two diseases," says Professor Birgitte Holst, explaining that the group wishes to continue looking at whether changes in the PICK1 protein can lead to some people being short, overweight, and diabetic.
Advanced transport system
Hormones are chemicals that regulate the body's functions via the blood in an ingenious transport system. In the so-called Golgi complex -- an organelle made up of four to eight flat discs or cisternae arranged in a stack -- traffic is bustling with proteins and hormones being modified, sorted and packaged so they can be sent out to destinations both within and outside the cells. These proteins and hormones include insulin and growth hormone. The proteins and hormones are packed into small transport particles called vesicles, and they remain there until the cells receive a signal to send the hormones off. The molecular dynamics that has been mapped through identifying PICK1 has shown itself to be a critical component in relation to diabetes and poor growth.
"The process is comparable to a factory where Lego bricks are packed. If the boxes are not packed properly and cannot be sent out at the right time to the right recipient, it causes problems. In this case with growth hormone and insulin," says Birgitte Holst.
From fruit flies to humans
Ole Kj?rulff and his employees started by looking at PICK1 in fruit flies' brains, and then brought in Birgitte Holst, Ulrik Gether and Kenneth Madsen, who all possess expertise within this field of research. Birgitte Holst has looked at how PICK1 deficiency in mice affects their body weight and metabolism, while Ulrik Gether and Kenneth Madsen have been responsible for aspects to do with cell biology.
"PICK1 is part of the basic cellular process which is vital for fruit flies, mice and probably also humans being able to form and store important hormones such as insulin and growth hormone. We don't yet know exactly what our discoveries mean for the development of diabetes and poor growth in humans, but hopefully our new knowledge will lead to better prevention and treatment in the future," says Ulrik Gether.
Background information on hormones
The hormonal system regulates many bodily functions, including the metabolism. Special glands (endocrine glands) secrete hormones directly into the blood. Hormones are signaling molecules , and they are quickly carried by the blood to the target organs, whose function they regulate.
The hormones are recognised by receptors (receptor molecules) on the target organ cells. In just the same way that a key fits a lock, a particular hormone precisely matches its receptor. The receptor therefore only recognises 'its own' hormone and not other kinds of hormones. Hormone binding stimulates the receptor, triggering biochemical processes in the cell. Which processes are triggered depends on which receptor is activated. For example, the endocrine glands in the pancreas secrete insulin after a meal. Insulin binds to receptors on muscles, fat tissue and the liver, thereby increasing the ability of these target organs to absorb and deposit sugar. Another hormone is growth hormone, which is secreted by the pituitary gland. Growth hormone stimulates the growth of a wide range of organs.
Background information on the endocrine cell -- a hormone factory
Hormones such as insulin and growth hormone are formed in special glands, insulin in a special part of the pancreas (the islets of Langerhans) and growth hormone in the pituitary gland, which is the size of a pea and sits at the base of the brain. Each gland contains thousands of endocrine cells, which each represent a small hormone-producing factory. Insulin and growth hormone are peptide hormones which are formed in the cell's rough endoplasmic reticulum (rER). Subsequently, the peptide hormones are transported to the Golgi complex, which acts as a kind of packaging and refinement factory. Small hormone-filled discs -- secretory vesicles -- bud off from the Golgi complex, after which a large store of hormone builds up in the cell, ready to be released into the bloodstream when the body needs the hormone.
Until now, very little has been known about how the vesicles are formed, and how the cell builds up its hormone stores. The new research findings suggest that the PICK1 protein is crucial to the actual vesicle formation by being able to form the vesicles and provoke their budding-off from the Golgi complex, thereby ensuring sufficient storage capacity of the hormones.
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Story Source:
The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Copenhagen.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
- Birgitte Holst, Kenneth L. Madsen, Anna M. Jansen, Chunyu Jin, Mattias Rickhag, Viktor K. Lund, Morten Jensen, Vikram Bhatia, Gunnar S?rensen, Andreas N. Madsen, Zhichao Xue, Siri K. M?ller, David Woldbye, Klaus Qvortrup, Richard Huganir, Dimitrios Stamou, Ole Kj?rulff, Ulrik Gether. PICK1 Deficiency Impairs Secretory Vesicle Biogenesis and Leads to Growth Retardation and Decreased Glucose Tolerance. PLOS Biology, 23 Apr 2013 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.1001542
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_health/~3/qFlLoD6pJog/130423172714.htm
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Velodyne vTrue
Velodyne is more known for its subwoofers than it is for making headphones, but the Velodyne vTrue takes the company's expertise in deep bass in a new direction. Velodyne refers to the $399.00 (direct) vTrue as a pair of "studio headphones," although we found them to be far too leaky to be considered for serious recording applications. In every other regard, they are solid, though, so we'll review them here as simply high-end, powerful headphones. In that regard, they perform quite well?if you love gobs and gobs of boosted bass and crisp, sculpted highs. Audio purists can probably stop reading now, but if you're looking for a powerful, bass-heavy headphone pair, the vTrue is a strong option.
Design
The vTrue headphones are strikingly designed, with an aluminum contour on the earcups and a brown padded leather headband and earpads. Everything from the precision-friendly headband slide adjuster to the deep blue padding over the 50mm drivers inside the earcups feels thoughtfully designed. The vTrue strikes out only on a comfort level?these headphones are bulky, and after a while, you're likely to feel some pressure on your scalp.
The audio cables are detachable, and split to connect to each earcup. One included cable has an inline remote and microphone designed for use with Apple iOS devices and all iPods 3rd-generation and up. Both cables are clothbound in deep blue and measure four feet in length.
Call clarity through the inline mic is strong enough that your call partner will understand you, and you'll understand them just fine, but it's not excellent?the mic sounds a bit muffled at times, and we're also dealing with cellular fidelity.
Also included with the vTrue: a ?-inch adapter for larger headphone jacks and a black drawstring carrying pouch.
Performance
On tracks with deep, sub-bass content, like the Knife's "Silent Shout," the vTrue is able to show off a bit. Audiophiles seeking flat, accurate response should look elsewhere, as the vTrue is a bass-boosted powerhouse. At maximum volume, the vTrue sounds as if it is just about to distort, but never really reaches the breaking point?and these headphones get quite loud. At safer, more reasonable listening levels, the bass response is intense and clean.
Luckily, Velodyne has the good sense to add some serious mid-high and high frequency tweaking so the sound signature isn't a muddy, undefined mess. On Bill Callahan's "Drover," the vTrue graces his vocals with a nice treble edge which helps it stand front and center in the mix. This is important, because the boosted bass response arms the constant drumbeat with some serious low-end thunder, making it also stand out quite a bit. Without the sculpted treble, his vocals would get lost and the mix would be too focused on the low-mids and lows.
Jay-Z and Kanye West's "No Church in the Wild" benefits from the high frequency sculpting, as well?the kick drum loop has a nice punchy attack, while the sub-bass synth hits that sit beneath the loop in the mix are delivered with some serious throttle. The vocals in this dense mix stand out in the same way Callahan's do on his track?the crisp edge they get from the vTrue helps separate them from the powerful lows and mids.
Classical tracks, like John Adams' "The Chairman Dances," can sound a tad too tweaked and sculpted. The highs are boosted, which occasionally makes the higher register strings and brass sound a bit too bright, but the lower register strings absorb the added bass response nicely. The large drum hits at the end of track sound a bit too bass-boosted, however?almost as if they are amplified instead occurring naturally in a concert hall.
In other words, these headphones don't offer a flat response in any sense?there's tons of bass, and lots of liberties are taken with the high-mids and highs, as well. The result is something bass lovers will enjoy and purists will probably want to avoid. If you're looking for headphones in the price range with a bit less boosting in the lows, the?Sennheiser Momentum?is a solid option and less bulky, while the TDK ST750 is a powerful pair that focuses more on the high-mids and highs.?If you like big bass, but the vTrue's price tag is too high, the?Denon Urban Raver AH-D320?offers a similar sound signature for a significantly lower price. And if it's a true studio headphone pair you seek, you can spend quite a bit less and still have top quality?Sennheiser's HD 280 Pro?is an excellent flat response option. The Velodyne True offers clean, bold performance with booming low-end, and it comes with two top-notch, detachable cables?if it were less expensive, it would get a higher rating.
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/kJz9ceGXD9g/0,2817,2417924,00.asp
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Mysterious hot spots observed in cool red supergiant
Apr. 24, 2013 ? Astronomers have released a new image of the outer atmosphere of Betelgeuse -- one of the nearest red supergiants to Earth -- revealing the detailed structure of the matter being thrown off the star.
The new image, taken by the e-MERLIN radio telescope array operated from the Jodrell Bank Observatory in Cheshire, also shows regions of surprisingly hot gas in the star's outer atmosphere and a cooler arc of gas weighing almost as much as the Earth.
Betelgeuse is easily visible to the unaided eye as the bright, red star on the shoulder of Orion the Hunter. The star itself is huge -- 1,000 times larger than our Sun -- but at a distance of about 650 light years it still appears as a tiny dot in the sky, so special techniques combining telescopes in arrays are required to see details of the star and the region around it.
The new e-MERLIN image of Betelgeuse -- published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, shows its atmosphere extends out to five times the size of the visual surface of the star. It reveals two hot spots within the outer atmosphere and a faint arc of cool gas even farther out beyond the radio surface of the star.
The hot spots are separated by roughly half the visual diameter of the star and have a temperature of about 4,000-5,000 Kelvin, much higher than the average temperature of the radio surface of the star (about 1,200 Kelvin) and even higher than the visual surface (3,600 Kelvin). The arc of cool gas lies almost 7.4 billion kilometres away from the star -- about the same distance as the farthest Pluto gets from the Sun. It is estimated to have a mass almost two thirds that of the Earth and a temperature of about 150 Kelvin.
Lead author Dr Anita Richards, from The University of Manchester, said that it was not yet clear why the hot spots are so hot. She said: "One possibility is that shock waves, caused either by the star pulsating or by convection in its outer layers, are compressing and heating the gas. Another is that the outer atmosphere is patchy and we are seeing through to hotter regions within. The arc of cool gas is thought to be the result of a period of increased mass loss from the star at some point in the last century but its relationship to structures like the hot spots, which lie much closer in, within the star's outer atmosphere, is unknown."
The mechanism by which supergiant stars like Betelgeuse lose matter into space is not well understood despite its key role in the lifecycle of matter, enriching the interstellar material from which future stars and planets will form. Detailed high-resolution studies of the regions around massive stars like the ones presented here are essential to improving our understanding.
Dr Richards, who is based in Manchester's School of Physics and Astronomy, added: "Betelgeuse produces a wind equivalent to losing the mass of the Earth every three years, enriched with the chemicals that will go into the next generation of star and planet formation. The full detail of how these cool, evolved stars launch their winds is one of the remaining big questions in stellar astronomy.
"This is the first direct image showing hot spots so far from the centre of the star. We are continuing radio and microwave observations to help decide which mechanisms are most important in driving the stellar wind and producing these hot spots. This won't just tell us how the elements that form the building blocks of life are being returned to space, it will also help determine how long it is before Betelgeuse explodes as a supernova."
Future observations planned with e-MERLIN and other arrays, including ALMA and VLA, will test whether the hotspots vary in concert due to pulsation, or show more complex variability due to convection. If it is possible to measure a rotation speed this will identify in which layer of the star they originate.
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Story Source:
The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Manchester University.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
- Anita Richards et al. e-MERLIN resolves Betelgeuse at wavelength 5 cm: hotspots at 5R. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 2013
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/strange_science/~3/fD3_AjYgtT4/130424222432.htm
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Wednesday, April 24, 2013
Astrophysicists to probe dark matter in sunny California
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Public release date: 23-Apr-2013[ | E-mail |
Share ] Contact: Susan Gawlowicz
smguns@rit.edu
585-475-5061
Rochester Institute of Technology
RIT professor brings together leaders in the field for American Astronomical Society conference
Uncloaking the secrets of dark matter in the universe is a cosmological conundrum puzzling some of the brightest astrophysicists.
An upcoming conference, sponsored by the American Astronomical Society and organized by Rochester Institute of Technology professor Sukanya Chakrabarti, will probe the mass that does not absorb or emit light, and which is never seen, only inferred by its gravitational effects on other objects.
Probes of Dark Matter on Galaxy Scales 2013, will be held July 14-19 in Monterey, Calif. Chakrabarti, conference organizer and chair, and co-chair Leo Blitz, professor of astronomy at University of California at Berkeley, have invited leaders of the field to meet and discuss their techniques for solving the riddle of dark matter.
"The idea is to bring together people working on different probes of dark matter from dynamics, which is my area, to gravitational lensing, to indirect probes of dark matter like gamma ray radiation and to get everyone together," says Chakrabarti, assistant professor in RIT's School of Physics and Astronomy.
Computational astrophysicist Chakrabarti developed the "tidal analysis" method for probing dark matter while on a post-doctoral fellowship at UC Berkeley in 2009. An observational data set of the Milky Way compiled by a graduate student inspired her current research.
"When I saw this map of our own galaxy, it was clear to me that the structures we see at the outskirts of our galaxy could not have been produced in a purely isolated context," she says. "I started doing computer simulations of our galaxy interacting with neighboring dwarf galaxies."
Chakrabarti's method started simply. "I was asking the question: If the structures that you see in the gas disk of our galaxy are due to a satellite of our galaxy, how massive does the satellite have to be and where does it have to be?"
In 2011, she analyzed disturbances in a dwarf galaxy in nearby Galaxy M51, or the "Whirlpool Galaxy," which has an optically visible dwarf satellite. Dwarf or satellite galaxies contain only a fraction of stars found in the larger spiral galaxy and are dim in comparison. Charkabarti's method successfully tracked the gravitational imprints of the satellite and allowed her to infer its mass and relative position.
"Tidal analysis gives us a way of hunting for dark-matter dominated dwarf galaxies," Chakrabarti says. "And the reason this is useful is that most of them are very dim. It's hard to see them if you are just looking for the optical light they emit. It's sort of like looking for a car with dim headlights in a fog. If we knew approximately where to look, that would give observers an advantage."
A few dozen dwarf galaxies are known to surround the Milky Way. The current cosmological paradigm predicts more satellite galaxies than have been observed, Chakrabarti says.
"The question we're trying to address is, can we find these predicted satellite galaxies by looking for their gravitational footprints on the outer gas disks of galaxies?"
Following her initial success with Galaxy M51, Chakrabarti is applying her method to the outer edges of the Milky Way. Her current work analyzes the structures in the outskirts of the hydrogen gas disk to uncover new dwarf galaxies. She will present her latest research in an invited talk at the American Astronomical Societymeeting in Indianapolis, Ind., June 2-6.
Chakrabarti focuses mostly on the dynamics of gas flow in galaxies. She appeared on the Weather Channel series Deadliest Space Weather earlier this year to talk about the gas giant Jupiter and the reason why the centuries-old hurricane that forms the Great Red Spot has not dissipated.
"The basic physical principles are the same whether you are talking about turbulence as applied to aircraft, if you're studying planes going through turbulent flows on earth; or whether you're looking at Jupiter's Great Red Spot; or whether you're looking at gas flows on even larger scalesgalaxies," Chakrabarti says. "That's the really exciting thing about astrophysics. You can use the same physical principles to understand a very wide range of phenomena from the earth to the solar system to galaxies."
###
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Public release date: 23-Apr-2013[ | E-mail |
Share ] Contact: Susan Gawlowicz
smguns@rit.edu
585-475-5061
Rochester Institute of Technology
RIT professor brings together leaders in the field for American Astronomical Society conference
Uncloaking the secrets of dark matter in the universe is a cosmological conundrum puzzling some of the brightest astrophysicists.
An upcoming conference, sponsored by the American Astronomical Society and organized by Rochester Institute of Technology professor Sukanya Chakrabarti, will probe the mass that does not absorb or emit light, and which is never seen, only inferred by its gravitational effects on other objects.
Probes of Dark Matter on Galaxy Scales 2013, will be held July 14-19 in Monterey, Calif. Chakrabarti, conference organizer and chair, and co-chair Leo Blitz, professor of astronomy at University of California at Berkeley, have invited leaders of the field to meet and discuss their techniques for solving the riddle of dark matter.
"The idea is to bring together people working on different probes of dark matter from dynamics, which is my area, to gravitational lensing, to indirect probes of dark matter like gamma ray radiation and to get everyone together," says Chakrabarti, assistant professor in RIT's School of Physics and Astronomy.
Computational astrophysicist Chakrabarti developed the "tidal analysis" method for probing dark matter while on a post-doctoral fellowship at UC Berkeley in 2009. An observational data set of the Milky Way compiled by a graduate student inspired her current research.
"When I saw this map of our own galaxy, it was clear to me that the structures we see at the outskirts of our galaxy could not have been produced in a purely isolated context," she says. "I started doing computer simulations of our galaxy interacting with neighboring dwarf galaxies."
Chakrabarti's method started simply. "I was asking the question: If the structures that you see in the gas disk of our galaxy are due to a satellite of our galaxy, how massive does the satellite have to be and where does it have to be?"
In 2011, she analyzed disturbances in a dwarf galaxy in nearby Galaxy M51, or the "Whirlpool Galaxy," which has an optically visible dwarf satellite. Dwarf or satellite galaxies contain only a fraction of stars found in the larger spiral galaxy and are dim in comparison. Charkabarti's method successfully tracked the gravitational imprints of the satellite and allowed her to infer its mass and relative position.
"Tidal analysis gives us a way of hunting for dark-matter dominated dwarf galaxies," Chakrabarti says. "And the reason this is useful is that most of them are very dim. It's hard to see them if you are just looking for the optical light they emit. It's sort of like looking for a car with dim headlights in a fog. If we knew approximately where to look, that would give observers an advantage."
A few dozen dwarf galaxies are known to surround the Milky Way. The current cosmological paradigm predicts more satellite galaxies than have been observed, Chakrabarti says.
"The question we're trying to address is, can we find these predicted satellite galaxies by looking for their gravitational footprints on the outer gas disks of galaxies?"
Following her initial success with Galaxy M51, Chakrabarti is applying her method to the outer edges of the Milky Way. Her current work analyzes the structures in the outskirts of the hydrogen gas disk to uncover new dwarf galaxies. She will present her latest research in an invited talk at the American Astronomical Societymeeting in Indianapolis, Ind., June 2-6.
Chakrabarti focuses mostly on the dynamics of gas flow in galaxies. She appeared on the Weather Channel series Deadliest Space Weather earlier this year to talk about the gas giant Jupiter and the reason why the centuries-old hurricane that forms the Great Red Spot has not dissipated.
"The basic physical principles are the same whether you are talking about turbulence as applied to aircraft, if you're studying planes going through turbulent flows on earth; or whether you're looking at Jupiter's Great Red Spot; or whether you're looking at gas flows on even larger scalesgalaxies," Chakrabarti says. "That's the really exciting thing about astrophysics. You can use the same physical principles to understand a very wide range of phenomena from the earth to the solar system to galaxies."
###
[ | E-mail | Share ] ?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-04/riot-atp042313.php
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Tuesday, April 23, 2013
AP IMPACT: Congress slows military efforts to save
WASHINGTON (AP) ? Parked around the airstrip at Lackland Air Force Base are more than a dozen massive C-5A Galaxy transport planes. There is no money to fly them, repair them or put pilots in the cockpits, but Congress rejected the Air Force's bid to retire them.
So every now and then, crews will tow the planes around the Texas tarmac a bit to make sure the tires don't rot, then send them back into exile until they can finally get permission to commit the aging aircraft to the boneyard.
It's not an unfamiliar story.
Idle aircraft and pricey ship deployments underscore the contradictions and conflicts as Congress orders the Pentagon to slash $487 billion in spending over the next 10 years and another $41 billion in the next six months. Yet, at the same time, lawmakers are forcing the services to keep ships, aircraft, military bases, retiree benefits and other programs that defense leaders insist they don't want, can't afford or simply won't be able to use. The Associated Press interviewed senior military leaders involved in the ongoing analysis of the budget and its impact on the services and compiled data on the costs and programs from Defense Department documents.
The Pentagon long has battled with Congress over politically sensitive spending cuts. But this year, military officials say Congress' refusal to retire ships and aircraft means the Navy and Air Force are spending roughly $5 billion more than they would if they were allowed to make the cuts. In some cases Congress restored funds to compensate for the changes, but the result overall was lost savings.
In other cases, frustrated military leaders quietly complained that they were being forced to furlough civilians, ground Air Force training flights and delay or cancel ship deployments to the Middle East and South America, while Congress refuses to accept savings in other places that could ease those pains.
Along the eastern seaboard, two Navy cruisers ? the USS Anzio in Norfolk, Va., and the USS Vicksburg in Mayport, Fla. ? were scheduled for retirement this year but both are now sitting pierside. Navy leaders will soon schedule the ships for significant repairs and begin readying their crews so they can go back into service.
Altogether, Congress is requiring the Navy to keep seven cruisers and two amphibious warships in service, eliminating the $4.3 billion the retirements would have saved over the next two years.
"A lot of it comes down to parochial political interests," said Todd Harrison, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. "No member of Congress wants to have a base closed in their district or to have a fighter squadron relocated out of their district."
Members of Congress argue that they believe the Pentagon sometimes makes bad decisions and other times may purposely target programs that have broad support.
"Certainly that has been a pattern, they've cut Guard and Reserves in areas where it's clearly unwise and Congress steps in to put the money in," said Rep. Michael Turner, R-Ohio, chairman of the House Armed Services air and land forces subcommittee.
While the Navy sought to retire the seven ships, the Air Force wanted to save more than $600 million by retiring C-130 and C-5A cargo aircraft, three B-1 bombers and 18 high-altitude Global Hawk surveillance drones.
Congress disagreed, adding various requirements that the Navy and Air Force maintain the ships and aircraft, and in some cases added money to the budget to cover them. Fifteen of the C-5A Galaxy aircraft no longer set to retire are at Lackland, while 11 are at Martinsburg, W.Va., and are flown by the Air National Guard there.
A senior Air Force official said the service determined that it didn't need all of the aging aircraft. And it pushed to cut the Global Hawks because defense officials determined that the U-2 spy plane, first produced more than 50 years ago, was better suited for the high-altitude surveillance job and would cost less money.
The official also noted that while lawmakers rejected plans to retire the Galaxy aircraft, congressional appropriators did not add back money to pay for the fuel or the manpower to fly them. Similarly, the three B-1 bombers will move into backup status and likely will be used infrequently. The official was not authorized to speak publicly about the budget, so requested anonymity.
The decision to block retirement of some C-130s, however, reveals how narrow, yet critical, the political interests can be. Pennsylvania lawmakers declared victory last month when they reversed the decision to retire eight C-130s and shut down the 911th Airlift Wing near Pittsburgh. Local officials and business owners argued that the base, which uses space at Pittsburgh International Airport, provides an economic boost to the entire community.
Sens. Pat Toomey, a Republican, and Bob Casey, a Democrat, lobbied Pentagon leaders and fellow lawmakers to keep the wing. They argued in a letter to then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta that "the 911th is a very efficient and cost effective installation" and that closing it could be a waste of taxpayer dollars.
Pentagon officials have also been thwarted in their broader efforts to shut down costly and underused military facilities around the country. Congress rejected the department's request last year for two more rounds of base closings, as lawmakers objected not only to the prospect of taking jobs and dollars out of a region's economy, but also questioned whether closing the facilities actually achieves the promised savings.
Pentagon budget chief Robert Hale acknowledged earlier this month that the department spent $35 billion on the base closure round in 2005, and while it saves $4 billion a year, officials won't break even until 2018. The expense is largely because a number of new facilities were built even as some were merged and closed.
"Would a (base closings) round be effective in providing rapid savings? Unfortunately, history has emphatically told us, no," Rep. Rob Wittman, R-Va., said during a recent hearing on the Base Realignment and Closures program. "I believe that aggressively moving forward with the BRAC round could significantly harm our military power and their ability to project power."
Currently, the department saves about $8 billion a year on the four rounds that were carried out before 2005. The Pentagon has proposed another round in 2014 that Hale said would save $1 billion to $2 billion a year. Pentagon leaders insist that the military still has nearly 20 percent too many bases and facilities.
"There is still excess infrastructure," Assistant Army Secretary Katherine Hammack told the House Armed Services Committee last month. "I was just on one (base) that had 800 buildings and we were utilizing 300 of them."
Perhaps the most significant cost savings historically opposed by Congress are Pentagon efforts to scale back military retirement benefits, including proposals to increase premiums or co-pays for retirees.
"I think there's a misunderstanding in Congress about what it is that would change," Harrison said. "They tend to associate changes in retirement benefits with changes to veterans benefits."
But changes to retiree health care would only affect the approximately 17 percent of the service members who stay in the military long enough to qualify for retirement, and those are usually more senior officers who already have a higher income. Veterans' benefits more often help those with lower incomes, and they are included in the Veterans Affairs Department budget, not the Pentagon's.
Turner faulted department leaders for some of the problems with those broader issues.
"I think on policy shifts you need a more holistic approach, and the Pentagon usually doesn't engage Congress in discussions of finding cuts or program changes. They send them up as missiles for Congress to deal with, instead of using a deliberative approach."
Harrison said the Pentagon needs to do a better job explaining and selling its arguments for such politically unpalatable spending cuts.
"If you actually try to do smart targeted reductions, like closing bases, like actually reducing the size of the workforce, targeted cuts have winners and losers," Harrison said. "And Congress has not been willing to make those tough decisions."
As a result, he said, lawmakers resort to broader, across-the-board cuts, such as the furloughs.
"It spreads pain across evenly," he said. "So everyone can wash their hands of it."
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