Stupid friggin' Dots. Seriously. When Dots first came out, it felt like half of my team was telling me I just had to play it. "It's beautiful!", they said. "It's so addicting!", they said. I, being a grumpy ass gaming snob, wrote it off as the world's billionth Bejeweled clone. But they kept pushing. Eventually, I gave in. Just one round. No big deal, right?Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/9hLm46_7bI4/
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The New York Times? Andrew Revkin talks with Mark Tercek, the president of The Nature Conservancy and co-author of ?Nature?s Fortune: How Business and Society Thrive by Investing in Nature,? about the case for a profit motive in conserving the environment at an event organized by the Aspen Institute.
Stay Up-to-Date On Environmental Management, Energy & Sustainability News with EL's Free Daily Newsletter
Source: http://www.environmentalleader.com/2013/05/30/why-saving-nature-is-the-smartest-business-investment/
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An interactive, improvised circus for kids featuring Steve Scott, the improvising poodle.
Saturdays at 10 a.m.?
June 8, 15 and 22 and July 6, 13, 20 and 27, 2013?
(No show June 29th)
The cast of What?s the Story Steve presents the silliest summer circus on Earth!?Don?t just go see an elephant, become the elephant. Audience members are?invited to help create an original show each week, providing suggestions, creating?characters, and even jumping onstage to participate in the show.
Stay after the show on June 8th for a post-show carnival and dance party. Face?painting, circus games and the musical stylings of DJ Drew.
Source: http://www.freefuninaustin.com/2013/05/free-improv-shows-for-kids-teens.html
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A woman walks towards the entrance to Residencial Las Terrazas in the mountains near Santa Ana, Costa Rica, Tuesday, May 28, 2013. Costa Rican police raided one of residences of Las Terrazas as well as two other homes and five businesses related to Liberty Reserve and seized papers and digital documents that will be turned over to U.S. authorities. Costa Rican police said in a statement that Liberty Reserve founder Arthur Bodovsky, who became a Costa Rica national after giving up his U.S. citizenship, was arrested in Spain last week on money laundering charges, and that several properties linked to his company had been raided. (AP Photo/Enrique Martinez)
NEW YORK (AP) ? When an undercover agent posing as a new client sought to register at the currency transfer firm Liberty Reserve as ?Joe Bogus? from ?123 Fake Main Street? in ?Completely Made Up City,? no one at the company based in Costa Rica objected.
The same client recording digital currency transactions as ?ATM skimming work? and ?for the cocaine?? Still no problem.
In fact, federal prosecutors in Manhattan say anonymity and criminality were what Liberty Reserve was all about.
?The only liberty that Liberty Reserve gave many of its users was the freedom to commit crimes, as it became a popular hub for fraudsters, hackers, and traffickers,? U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said Tuesday in announcing charges against seven people in a $6 billion scheme that he billed as possibly the largest money-laundering scheme even seen in the United States.
?The coin of the realm ? was anonymity ? multiple layers of anonymity,? he added. ?As alleged, Liberty Reserve was deliberately structured and operated in a way to help other criminals remain anonymous, untraceable and untouchable.?
U.S. officials said the enterprise was staggering in scope: Over roughly seven years, Liberty Reserve processed 55 million illicit transactions worldwide for 1 million users, including 200,000 in the U.S. The network charged a 1 percent fee on transactions through ?exchangers? ? middlemen who converted actual currency into virtual funds and then back into cash.
In the indictment, prosecutors called Liberty Reserve ?one of the principal means by which cyber criminals around the world distribute, store and launder proceeds of their illegal activity ? including credit card fraud, identity theft, investment fraud, computer hacking, child pornography and narcotics trafficking.?
Alleged founder Arthur Budovsky ? an American who renounced his U.S. citizenship after deciding to set up in Costa Rica ? and another defendant, identified as Azzeddine el Amine, were arrested Friday at a Madrid airport while trying to return to Costa Rica, according to a Spanish court official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because court policy forbids him from speaking on the record. They were ordered jailed while they await a hearing on extradition to the U.S.
Two other men were arrested last week in New York City, including Liberty Reserve co-founder Vladimir Kats. There was no public record of their arraignment on Friday night, and there was no immediate response to phone messages left Tuesday with their attorneys.
Of the remaining defendants, one was in custody in Costa Rica and two were at large there.
Budovsky, 39, and Kats, 41, have previous convictions on state charges related to an unlicensed money-transmitting business, according to court papers. After that case, the pair decided to move their operation to Costa Rica, the papers said.
In an online chat captured by law enforcement, Kats admitted Liberty Reserve was illegal and noted that authorities in the United States knew it was ?a money-laundering operation that hackers use.?
Liberty Reserve appears to have played an important role in laundering proceeds from the recent theft of some $45 million from two Middle Eastern banks, according to documents made public by U.S. authorities earlier this month. In that scheme, thieves stole debit card information and then used it to drain cash from thousands of ATMs around the world in a matter of hours.
As part of the Liberty Reserve investigation, authorities raided 14 locations in Panama, Switzerland, the U.S., Sweden and Costa Rica. In Costa Rica, investigators recovered five luxury cars, including three Rolls-Royces. Bharara said authorities also seized Liberty?s computer servers in Costa Rica and Switzerland.
The businesses that were raided in Costa Rica on Friday as part of the investigation into Liberty Reserve are dedicated to Web hosting services, website development and Internet business consulting.
In Costa Rica, all online businesses are legal and there aren?t any laws regulating them, so the country has been attracting entrepreneurs setting up Internet-based companies that do everything from e-commerce to gambling banned in other countries.
___
Associated Press writers Raphael Satter in London, Alan Clendenning and Jorge Sainz in Madrid, and Javier Cordoba in San Jose, Costa Rica, also contributed to this report.
This entry was posted on May 29, 2013, 2:15 am and is filed under Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
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By Philip Pullella
ROME (Reuters) - An Italian professor said on Wednesday he has identified what he believes is the world's oldest complete scroll of the Torah, containing the full text of the first five books of Hebrew scripture.
Mauro Perani, professor of Hebrew at the University of Bologna, said experts and carbon dating tests done in Italy and the United States dated the scroll as having been made between 1155 and 1225.
The scroll, which has been in possession of the Bologna University Library for more than 100 years, had been previously thought to be from the 17th century. It had been labeled "scroll 2".
There are many fragments of the Torah that are older but not complete scrolls with all five books.
"A Jew who was a librarian at the university examined the scroll in 1889 for a catalogue and wrote '17th century followed by a question mark,'" Perani said in a telephone interview.
But in preparation for a new catalogue of the university's Judaica collection, Perani, 63, studied the scroll and suspected that the librarian had made too cursory an examination in 1889 and not recognized its antiquity.
"I realized that the style of the writing was older than the 17th century so I consulted with other experts," he said of the scroll, which measures 36 meters by 64 cm (39 yards by 25 inches).
He said the scroll showed many graphical features and scribal devices that were no longer used by copyists of Hebrew scripts in the 17th century.
The scroll is made up of 58 sections of soft sheep leather each sewn together, most of them with three columns of script.
CARBON DATING TESTS
After the experts he consulted agreed that the scroll was probably several centuries older than previously believed, Perani had fragments of it subjected to carbon-14 dating tests.
The tests, at the University of Salento in southern Italy and the Radiocarbon Dating Laboratory at the University of Illinois, dated the scroll as from the second half of the 12th century to the first quarter of the 13th century.
The Torah, also known as the Hebrew Pentateuch, consists of the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy.
The complete version of the Torah that was previously considered the oldest was from the late 13th century, Perani said.
He said that before the scroll came into possession of the University of Bologna in the 18th or 19th century it had been in the custody of the Dominican convent in the city that is home to the world's oldest university.
Perani said it was not clear where the Torah had been copied but most likely it was not in Italy. It was probably made by a copyist trained in the oriental tradition and likely done in the Middle East.
Perani has for two decades been head of the Italian Genizah project, which locates and catalogues fragments of Hebrew manuscripts in Italy. Genizah is the Hebrew word for the room in a synagogue where religious books or papers are stored.
The Genizah project has found, photographed and catalogued some 13,000 fragments of Jewish compositions from various branches of Talmudic literature, Biblical commentary, Jewish thought, the Hebrew language and Jewish history.
For his work in Jewish studies, Perani is due to be given an honorary degree from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem next month.
(Reporting By Philip Pullella, editing by Paul Casciato)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/italy-professor-says-found-worlds-oldest-complete-torah-145302347.html
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Bieber is a 19-year-old pop star 'having to live his life in front of a camera,' mentor Usher says on 'Ellen.'
By Christina Garibaldi
Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1708168/usher-defends-justin-bieber-ellen-degeneres.jhtml
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All Critics (74) | Top Critics (31) | Fresh (67) | Rotten (7)
The dialogue and editing are zippy and generally charming, combining with the tart observations of 20-something culture to create a nice frisson.
A black-and-white salute to the French New Wave (the score is borrowed from Georges Delerue, composer of many a Truffaut and Godard film) that manages to be very much of this moment ...
The movie's a love letter to an actress and her character, but by the end you may feel like an intervention is more in order.
The obvious love of New York City echoes Woody Allen at his best. But "Frances Ha" is very much its own film, a story of life and love and messy rooms.
Baumbach ... makes the film a celebration of Gerwig's coltish, goofball appeal.
Late-blooming 20-somethings have never been so perfectly captured -- and Gerwig has never been more appealing -- than in this funny, tender, life-affirming movie.
One of the most appealing films of the year to date -- and it may well end up being the most appealing indie release of the entire year
This is a tough one, but I must recommend it, if you are at all inclined to witness creativity at its unconventional best.
"Frances Ha"? More like Frances Bah!
Gerwig dances the Millennial Limbo
...caters to the Gerwig persona while also sanding off the edges of Baumbach's usual bitterness.
"Frances Ha" is about the inevitability of adulthood; it can be postponed, but it can't be avoided.
[a] fresh-faced and spirited black and white comedy...
If Frances has a chance, there's hope for us all.
The near-incomparable Greta Gerwig gives Frances a fire, an exuberance, and a three-dimensional uniqueness that ensures the viewer never sways from her side.
It gives you two choices: find it delightful or don't: there is no unique, self-guided option. As frustrating as that conundrum may be, it's still hard not to take option one.
Without Gerwig, this story of a hopeful young woman making her way in New York would have been just like all the rest. Instead, it's a work of art.
But there's just something so relentlessly likable about put-upon, impoverished Frances (Greta Gerwig) that it almost doesn't matter that her New York is just one big Williamsburg.
Improbable yet engaging, this arrested development serio-comedy should be particularly endearing to those who can't quite get their lives together.
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Source: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/frances_ha_2013/
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Many of the Pentagon's most advanced weapon systems -- including the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and PAC-3 Patriot missile system -- were compromised by Chinese hackers, according to a classified document obtained by the Washington Post. The list of weapons was part of an earlier DoD report condemning Chinese cyber-espionage activities, but had been confidential until now. Other systems hacked are said to include the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), the Navy's Aegis ballistic-missile defense system, the F/A-18 fighter, V-22 Osprey and the Littoral Combat Ship used for shore patrol. Many of these form the foundation of defense systems from Europe to the Persian Gulf -- and their breach goes a long way toward explaining Washington's unprecedented dressing-down of China.
Filed under: Misc
Via: The Verge
Source: Washington Post
Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/nlOdA5ALYFk/
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Source: http://thecatholictimes.com/aquinas-baseball-field-dedicated-to-former-athletic-director-p1637-1.htm
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Public release date: 28-May-2013
Share ] Contact: Joan Robinson
joan.robinson@springer.com
49-622-148-78130
Springer
A new study highlights the 'parasitism by theft' of bumblebees that invade birds' nests and claim them as their own. Their warning buzz helps bumblebees to "scare" the bird away from the nest. The work by Piotr Jablonski and colleagues, from the Laboratory of Behavioral Ecology and Evolution at Seoul National University in South Korea, is published online in Springer's journal, Behavioral Ecology & Sociobiology.
Conspicuous warning signals - visual, auditory or mixed - help prey to deter predators by signaling the presence of defenses (chemical, mechanical, etc). These warning signals help the predator to remember how to recognize the distasteful or poisonous prey that should be avoided.
Birds are predators of bumblebees. In temperate forests, birds and bees use tree cavities for their nesting activities. Because bumblebees prefer cavities filled with plant materials for insulation, they may benefit from stealing freshly built nests from the birds.
Jablonski and team studied the interactions between bumblebees and cavity-nesting Oriental and Varied tits in nestboxes. They were particularly interested in whether bumblebees attempted to settle in those boxes to which the birds brought fresh nest materials, and whether their warning signals provided an advantage in taking over the nests from birds.
In the slopes of the Gwanak Mountain that surround Seoul National University Campus, the researchers observed that bumblebees were detected in up to 21 percent of freshly built nests of tits and were not detected in nestboxes without any bird nests.
The researchers conducted experiments in which they played a bumblebee buzz to the incubating birds. To do this, they built a little device through which they could play the buzzing sound inside of a tit nest. They glued a dead bumblebee onto a toothpick, and they glued the toothpick onto a flat miniature speaker. The device was then hidden inside of the nest material with the bumblebee just under the upper layer of mosses. When a bird arrived at a nestbox, the researchers played the bumblebee buzz and observed the bird's response through a small camera inside the nestbox.
The birds were distressed and often flew out of the nest. For control, they played songs of common birds. Incubating birds were less stressed by the control sound, indicating that the bumblebee buzz indeed may help the insects to take over the nest.
The authors conclude: "The bumblebees' buzz appears to help them oust birds from their freshly built nests. We have provided evidence that a warning signal, known to help deter predatory attacks on a potentially harmful prey, may also help the prey to win ecological competition with its predators."
###
Reference
Jablonski, P.G. et al (2013). Warning signals confer advantage to prey in competition with predators: bumblebees steal nests from insectivorous birds. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology; DOI 10.1007/s00265-013-1553-2
The full-text article, a photo and video clip are available to journalists on request.
[ | 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.
Public release date: 28-May-2013 Share ] Contact: Joan Robinson
joan.robinson@springer.com
49-622-148-78130
Springer
A new study highlights the 'parasitism by theft' of bumblebees that invade birds' nests and claim them as their own. Their warning buzz helps bumblebees to "scare" the bird away from the nest. The work by Piotr Jablonski and colleagues, from the Laboratory of Behavioral Ecology and Evolution at Seoul National University in South Korea, is published online in Springer's journal, Behavioral Ecology & Sociobiology.
Conspicuous warning signals - visual, auditory or mixed - help prey to deter predators by signaling the presence of defenses (chemical, mechanical, etc). These warning signals help the predator to remember how to recognize the distasteful or poisonous prey that should be avoided.
Birds are predators of bumblebees. In temperate forests, birds and bees use tree cavities for their nesting activities. Because bumblebees prefer cavities filled with plant materials for insulation, they may benefit from stealing freshly built nests from the birds.
Jablonski and team studied the interactions between bumblebees and cavity-nesting Oriental and Varied tits in nestboxes. They were particularly interested in whether bumblebees attempted to settle in those boxes to which the birds brought fresh nest materials, and whether their warning signals provided an advantage in taking over the nests from birds.
In the slopes of the Gwanak Mountain that surround Seoul National University Campus, the researchers observed that bumblebees were detected in up to 21 percent of freshly built nests of tits and were not detected in nestboxes without any bird nests.
The researchers conducted experiments in which they played a bumblebee buzz to the incubating birds. To do this, they built a little device through which they could play the buzzing sound inside of a tit nest. They glued a dead bumblebee onto a toothpick, and they glued the toothpick onto a flat miniature speaker. The device was then hidden inside of the nest material with the bumblebee just under the upper layer of mosses. When a bird arrived at a nestbox, the researchers played the bumblebee buzz and observed the bird's response through a small camera inside the nestbox.
The birds were distressed and often flew out of the nest. For control, they played songs of common birds. Incubating birds were less stressed by the control sound, indicating that the bumblebee buzz indeed may help the insects to take over the nest.
The authors conclude: "The bumblebees' buzz appears to help them oust birds from their freshly built nests. We have provided evidence that a warning signal, known to help deter predatory attacks on a potentially harmful prey, may also help the prey to win ecological competition with its predators."
###
Reference
Jablonski, P.G. et al (2013). Warning signals confer advantage to prey in competition with predators: bumblebees steal nests from insectivorous birds. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology; DOI 10.1007/s00265-013-1553-2
The full-text article, a photo and video clip are available to journalists on request.
[ | 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/2013-05/s-btb052813.php
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Editor?s note: Freelance War Reporter Alex Quade embedded long-term with Operational Detachment Alpha Teams of the 10th Special Forces Group in Diyala province, Iraq in 2007 and 2008. One of those ?A- Teams? was ODA-072. Quade covered their pre-mission training at Fort Carson, Colorado and followed up with them and their families through the years. Per Special Operations Command embed guidelines: no last names of operators were used; military public affairs officers in Iraq, as well as at Fort Carson reviewed every frame of Quade?s video to ensure no techniques, tactics & procedures are revealed. Also, 10th Special Forces Group Operational Detachment number designations changed after 2007. Most Team members retired or moved on. They shared their personal photos. Alex Quade returned to Diyala Province repeatedly to cover U.S. troop movements and progress. Six years later, she is allowed to share more information and locations, since U.S. forces and bases are no longer there, after the U.S. military departure.
(Read Part 1 here.)
Reporting from DIYALA, Iraq and COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. ?
GOLD STAR FAMILY
U.S. Army Special Operations Command holds a ceremony for families of fallen operators at Fort Bragg, N.C. every Memorial Day. Gold Star families from the past year meet each other and learn they are not alone, as the command gives them tours and lunches. They learn more about what their sons, brothers, husbands, and fathers did.
In May 2008, Staff Sgt. Robert R. Pirelli?s father, Bob, invited me to attend the ceremony with him and his daughter Stacey. His son, Rob, a Green Beret, was killed in action in 2007. Rob?s Special Forces A-Team, ODA-072, was already redeployed to Iraq ? and I was heading back over to cover them again.
The Pirellis braced themselves by reiterating that Rob was a hero.
?His captain summed it up by saying, ?Rob never turned back; he never ran. He served forward.? And they [his A-Team] didn?t stop: they finished the mission for Rob,? the senior Pirelli told me.
Earlier that day, I?d given Bob a photo of Rob?s team in front of the cement T-wall in Diyala, Iraq, with ?Combat Outpost Pirelli? painted on it. Bob took that photo to a tattoo parlor and ?got inked? before the ceremony. The insignia showed on the length of his calf ? just as Medic Tim had done on his arm.
It was pouring at the solemn ceremony. An honor guard stood at attention while rivulets streamed down the faces of Green Berets, Rangers, and ?Night Stalkers? (members of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment). A bell rang after every name killed in action. Team liaisons escorted families to the remembrance wall to read the name of their loved one freshly engraved in the dark marble, and to leave carnations.
As team liaisons Chief Warrant Officer Jim and Engineer Aaron escorted Bob and Stacey Pirelli to the wall, Bob froze. He turned back to me with tears in his eyes.
?I can?t do it,? he said and hugged me. Chief Jim looked at me annoyed.
?Yes,? I whispered in his ear firmly, ?You can.?
?Do it for Rob,? I said. ?Rob would want you to do it for his team who is back over there [in Iraq] right now.? The father immediately pulled himself together and walked forward with his daughter to the wall.
After the ceremony, Bob told me that he believed his son was watching over his Team re-deployed to Iraq.
?I know that every day they must think of Rob, because I hear it in their telephone calls and emails,? Bob said.
?We trusted Rob with everything; trusted him with our lives,? Chief Jim said. ?He was the guy who you knew would be there to support you no matter what was going on. We?re always looking out for each other, that?s the way pretty much all SF is. It?s a team,? he added.
Months later, at home in Franklin, Mass., Bob Pirelli had developed the daily habit of visiting Rob?s gravesite to drink his morning coffee and talk to his son.
One morning, he found it vandalized.
Someone had backed into it with a truck, knocking over the headstone.
Bob blasted photos and angry notes over the internet: Who would do something like this? Desecrate a hero?s resting place?
An investigation found a family member involved. As often happens after deaths: tragedy, grief and stress can bring families closer together ? or deepen already established rifts.
?Rob told me in a dream to ?Just let it go,? Bob said. No charges were filed.
He moved to Albuquerque, N.M. to start over. Other family members made the closest thing they could to replicate the ?Combat Outpost Pirelli? cement T-wall in Iraq for Bob?s front yard: a four foot tall, 300-pound slab of rock with ?Combat Outpost Pirelli? engraved into it.
?I want to see the real Combat Outpost Pirelli,? Bob told me on the phone before I left for Iraq to link up with 10th Special Forces Detachment Teams again. ?I?m talking to my congressman about trying to get over there,? Pirelli said. He asked me to check on his son?s Outpost while I was back in Iraq.
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ROCHESTER, N.Y. (AP) ? Canadian drugmaker Valeant Pharmaceuticals says it will buy eye-health company Bausch + Lomb for $8.7 billion in cash in a massive expansion of its ophthalmology business.
Valeant says the deal will help it capitalize on increasing demand for contact lenses and other products because of aging populations, growing demand in emerging markets and increasing rates of diabetes.
Investment firm Warburg Pincus, which leads an investment group that owns Bausch + Lomb, will receive $4.5 billion in cash. The remaining $4.2 billion will be used to repay Bausch + Lomb's debt.
Rochester, N.Y.-based Bausch + Lomb Holdings Inc. makes contact lenses, eye drugs and ophthalmic surgical devices.
Bausch + Lomb will keep its name and become a division of Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc., based in Laval, Quebec.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/valeant-buy-bausch-lomb-8-7b-134026586.html
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Evolution could now favor cockroaches with an aversion to glucose, the sugary flavoring that disguises the taste of the poison in roach bait.
This image made from video provided by Ayako Wada-Katsumata shows glucose-averse German cockroaches avoiding a dab of jelly, which contains glucose, and favoring the peanut butter.
Ayako Wada-Katsumata/AP
EnlargeThanks to natural selection, some cockroaches have rapidly evolved the ability to check out of Roach Motels.
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Since the 1970s, bait traps that use glucose to disguise the taste of a deadly toxin have been a popular way to rid the bugs from homes. But beginning in the 1990s, the traps began losing their effectiveness. Scientists found that some roaches had evolved an aversion to the glucose. The pest-control industry moved on to new types of bait, but exactly how the insects lost their sweet tooth has remained a mystery.
Now a team of biologists at North Carolina State University say that they have uncovered the neural mechanism behind the cockroaches' adaptation. A study published in the current issue of Science reports that for some roaches, glucose activates taste receptors normally associated with bitter compounds, such as caffeine, that the insects don't care for.
The scientists performed experiments on groups of normal and glucose-averse German cockroaches, a species that makes its home in apartments, hotels, and restaurants worldwide.
Like many other insects, cockroaches taste with tiny hairs around their mouths and other parts of their bodies that can distinguish between sweet and bitter flavors by firing specialized taste neurons. In normal German cockroaches, glucose activates the sweet neurons. But the scientists discovered that, in the glucose-averse roaches, the bitter neurons were also firing.?
It's well known that populations of pests can often develop resistance to insecticides. But in this case, poison is triggering a behavioral change.?
?Most times, genetic changes, or mutations, cause the loss of function,? said NC State entomologist and study co-author Coby Schal, in a press release. ?In this case, the mutation resulted in the gain of a new function ? triggering bitter receptors when glucose is introduced. This gives the cockroach a new behavior which is incredibly adaptive. These roaches just got ahead of us in the arms race.?
This adaptation comes at a cost, however: The glucose-averse roaches tend to grow and reproduce more slowly than their less-picky counterparts.?
As you can see in this video below, the normal cockroaches seem to enjoy both jelly that contains glucose and peanut butter that doesn't. But the glucose-averse roaches ignore the jelly and flock to the peanut butter. ??
If looking at all these roaches crawling on a plate gives you the willies, just remind yourself that your aversion to the roaches ? just like their aversion to glucose ?is in part an adaptive trait that helped your ancestors flourish.?
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Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology.
When Microsoft introduced the original Xbox, the company had a lot to prove. The console newcomer promised that it was laser-focused on building a great system for games. There wasn't much to distract it. In a time of DVDs and dial-up, "convergence" in the space was focused on the ability for consoles to play back movies rented at Blockbuster.
But everyone knew that the new kid on the box had an agenda beyond taking its share of industry profits away from Nintendo and Sony. Particularly versus the latter, Microsoft knew it would be engaged in a war for the living room and the future of digital entertainment distribution including, but beyond, games. Nothing came close to matching the processing power that consoles had brought to the living room, but no one had really cracked the broader application beyond disc-based games. It surely wasn't web browsing, as Nintendo and Sony had tried. Still, as streaming services from Netflix, Hulu, Pandora and others began to proliferate across lots of different add-on boxes, it made sense to add them onto Xbox Live (even if the programming wasn't) as well as the PlayStation Network.
Filed under: Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo
Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/LX_rC-GcYHU/
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PARIS (AP) ? A French soldier was stabbed in the throat in a busy commercial district outside Paris on Saturday, and France's president said authorities are investigating any possible links with the recent slaying of a British soldier.
President Francois Hollande said the identity of the attacker was unknown and cautioned against jumping to conclusions about the assault on the uniformed soldier in the La Defense shopping area. The life of the 23-year-old soldier was not in danger, the Interior Ministry said in a statement.
The stabbing follows the slaying Wednesday of a British soldier, who was brutally stabbed on a London street in broad daylight in a suspected terrorist attack that has raised fears of potential copycat strikes.
"There could be a link, but we will look at all the elements," Hollande said during a news conference in Ethiopia, where he was traveling.
The British soldier, 25-year-old Lee Rigby, was attacked while walking outside the Royal Artillery Barracks in the Woolwich area of south London.
The gruesome scene was recorded on witnesses' cellphones, and a video has emerged in which one of the two suspects ? his hands bloodied ? boasted of their exploits and warned of more violence as the soldier lay on the ground. Holding bloody knives and a meat cleaver, the suspects waited for the arrival of police, who shot them in the legs, according to witnesses.
In the video, one of the suspects declared, "We swear by almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you ... We must fight them as they fight us."
Two Muslim hard-liners have identified that suspect as Michael Adebolajo, a Christian who converted to Islam and attended several London demonstrations organized by banned British radical group al-Muhajiroun.
French security forces have been on heightened alert since their country launched a military intervention in the African nation of Mali in January to regain territory seized by Islamic radicals.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/french-soldier-stabbed-throat-outside-paris-175831453.html
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SEATTLE (AP) ? Thousands of bridges around the U.S. may be one freak accident or mistake away from collapse, even if the spans are deemed structurally sound.
The crossings are kept standing by engineering design, not supported with brute strength or redundant protections like their more modern counterparts. Bridge regulators call the more risky spans "fracture critical," meaning that if a single, vital component of the bridge is compromised, it can crumple.
Those vulnerable crossing carry millions of drivers every day. In Boston, a six-lane highway 1A near Logan airport includes a "fracture critical" bridge over Bennington Street. In northern Chicago, an I-90 pass that goes over Ashland Avenue is in the same category. An I-880 bridge over 5th Avenue in Oakland, Calif., is also on the list.
Also in that category is the Interstate 5 bridge over the Skagit River north of Seattle, which collapsed into the water days ago after officials say an oversized truck load clipped the steel truss.
Public officials have focused in recent years on the desperate need for money to repair thousands of bridges deemed structurally deficient, which typically means a major portion of the bridge is in poor condition or worse. But the bridge that collapsed Thursday is not in that deficient category, highlighting another major problem with the nation's infrastructure: Although it's rare, some bridges deemed to be fine structurally can still be crippled if they are struck hard enough in the wrong spot.
"It probably is a bit of a fluke in that sense," said Charles Roeder, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Washington.
While the I-5 truck's cargo suffered only minimal damage, it left chaos in its wake, with two vehicles catapulting off the edge of the broken bridge into the river below. Three people involved escaped with non-life threatening injuries.
The most famous failure of a fracture critical bridge was the collapse of the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis during rush hour on Aug. 1, 2007, killing 13 people and injuring more than 100 others. The National Transportation Safety Board concluded that the cause of the collapse was an error by the bridge's designers ? a gusset plate, a key component of the bridge, was too thin. The plate was only half of the required one-inch thickness.
Because the bridge's key structures lacked redundancy, where if one piece fails, there is another piece to prevent the bridge from falling, when the gusset plate broke, much of the bridge collapsed.
Mark Rosenker, who was chairman of the NTSB during the I-35W bridge investigation, said the board looked into whether other fracture critical bridges were collapsing. They found a few cases, but not many, he said.
"Today, they're still building fracture critical bridges with the belief that they're not going break," Rosenker said.
Fracture critical bridges, like the I-5 span in Washington, are the result of Congress trying to cut corners to save money rather than a lack of engineering know-how, said Barry B. LePatner, a New York real estate attorney and author of "Too Big to Fall: America's Failing Infrastructure and the Way Forward."
About 18,000 fracture critical bridges were built from the mid-1950s through the late 1970s in an effort to complete the nation's interstate highway system, which was launched under President Dwight Eisenhower, LePatner said in an interview. The fracture critical bridge designs were cheaper than bridges designed with redundancy, he said.
Thousands of those bridges remain in use, according to an AP analysis.
"They have been left hanging with little maintenance for four decades now," he said. "There is little political will and less political leadership to commit the tens of billions of dollars needed" to fix them.
There has been little focus or urgency in specifically replacing the older "fracture critical" crossings, in part because there is a massive backlog of bridge repair work for thousands of bridges deemed to be structurally problematic. Washington state Rep. Judy Clibborn, a Democrat who leads the House transportation committee, has been trying to build support for a tax package to pay for major transportation projects in the state. But her plan wouldn't have done anything to revamp the bridge that collapsed.
National bridge records say the I-5 crossing over the Skagit River had a sufficiency rating of 57.4 out of 100 ? a score designed to gauge the ability of the bridge to remain in service. To qualify for federal replacement funds, a bridge must have a rating of 50 or below. A bridge must have a sufficiency rating of 80 or below to qualify for federal rehabilitation funding.
Hundreds of bridges in Washington state have worse ratings than the one that collapsed, and many around the country have single-digit ratings.
Clibborn said the Skagit River crossing wasn't even on the radar of lawmakers because state officials have to prioritize by focusing on bridges with serious structural problems that are at higher risk of imminent danger.
Along with being at risk of a fatal impact, the I-5 bridge was deemed to be "functionally obsolete," which essentially means it wasn't built to today's standards. Its shoulders were narrow, and it had low clearance.
There are 66,749 structurally deficient bridges and 84,748 functionally obsolete bridges in the U.S., including Puerto Rico, according to the Federal Highway Administration. That's about a quarter of the 607,000 total bridges nationally. States and cities have been whittling down that backlog, but slowly. In 2002, about 30 percent of bridges fell into one of those two categories.
Spending by states and local government on bridge construction adjusted for inflation has more than doubled since 1998, from $12.3 billion to $28.5 billion last year, according to the American Road and Transportation Builders Association. That's an all-time high.
"The needs are so great that even with the growth we've had in the investment level, it's barely moving the needle in terms of moving bridges off these lists," said Alison Premo Black, the association's chief economist.
There is wide recognition at all levels of government that the failure to address aging infrastructure will likely undermine safety and hinder economic growth. But there is no consensus on how to pay for improvements. The federal Highway Trust Fund, which provides construction aid to states, is forecast to go broke next year. The fund gets its revenue primarily from federal gas and diesel taxes. But revenues aren't keeping up because people are driving less and there are more fuel-efficient cars on the road.
Neither Congress nor the White House has shown any willingness to raise federal gas taxes, which haven't been increased since 1993. Many transportation thinkers believe a shift to taxes based on miles traveled by a vehicle is inevitable, but there are privacy concerns and other difficulties that would preclude widespread use of such a system for at least a decade.
Transportation spending got a temporary boost with the economic stimulus funds approved by Congress after President Barack Obama was elected. Of the $27 billion designated for highway projects under the stimulus program, about $3 billion went to bridge projects, Black said.
States are looking for other means to raise money for highway and bridge improvements, including more road tolls, dedicating a portion of sales taxes to transportation and raising state gas taxes. Clibborn, the Washington state lawmaker, has proposed a 10-cent gas hike to help pay for projects, though the effort has been held up by a dispute over how to rebuild the Columbia River bridge connecting Vancouver, Wash., and Portland, Ore.
"We can't possibly do it all in the next 10 years, but we're going to do the first bite of the apple," Clibborn said.
___
Lowy reported from Washington, D.C. AP Writers Manuel Valdes and Gene Johnson contributed to this report.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/thousands-bridges-risk-freak-collapse-145103945.html
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Magnetars ? the dense remains of dead stars that erupt sporadically with bursts of high-energy radiation ? are some of the most extreme objects known in the Universe. A major campaign using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and several other satellites shows magnetars may be more diverse ? and common ? than previously thought.
When a massive star runs out of fuel, its core collapses to form a neutron star, an ultradense object about 10 to 15 miles wide. The gravitational energy released in this process blows the outer layers away in a supernova explosion and leaves the neutron star behind.
Most neutron stars are spinning rapidly ? a few times a second ? but a small fraction have a relatively low spin rate of once every few seconds, while generating occasional large blasts of X-rays. Because the only plausible source for the energy emitted in these outbursts is the magnetic energy stored in the star, these objects are called "magnetars."
Most magnetars have extremely high magnetic fields on their surface that are ten to a thousand times stronger than for the average neutron star. New observations show that the magnetar known as SGR 0418+5729 (SGR 0418 for short) doesn't fit that pattern. It has a surface magnetic field similar to that of mainstream neutron stars.
"We have found that SGR 0418 has a much lower surface magnetic field than any other magnetar," said Nanda Rea of the Institute of Space Science in Barcelona, Spain. "This has important consequences for how we think neutron stars evolve in time, and for our understanding of supernova explosions."
The researchers monitored SGR 0418 for over three years using Chandra, ESA's XMM-Newton as well as NASA's Swift and RXTE satellites. They were able to make an accurate estimate of the strength of the external magnetic field by measuring how its rotation speed changes during an X-ray outburst. These outbursts are likely caused by fractures in the crust of the neutron star precipitated by the buildup of stress in a relatively strong, wound-up magnetic field lurking just beneath the surface.
"This low surface magnetic field makes this object an anomaly among anomalies," said co-author GianLuca Israel of the National Institute of Astrophysics in Rome. "A magnetar is different from typical neutron stars, but SGR 0418 is different from other magnetars as well."
By modeling the evolution of the cooling of the neutron star and its crust, as well as the gradual decay of its magnetic field, the researchers estimated that SGR 0418 is about 550,000 years old. This makes SGR 0418 older than most other magnetars, and this extended lifetime has probably allowed the surface magnetic field strength to decline over time. Because the crust weakened and the interior magnetic field is relatively strong, outbursts could still occur.
The case of SGR 0418 may mean that there are many more elderly magnetars with strong magnetic fields hidden under the surface, implying that their birth rate is five to ten times higher than previously thought.
"We think that about once a year in every galaxy a quiet neutron star should turn on with magnetar-like outbursts, according to our model for SGR 0418," said Jos? Pons of the University of Alacant in Spain. "We hope to find many more of these objects."
Another implication of the model is that the surface magnetic field of SGR 0418 should have once been very strong at its birth a half million years ago. This, plus a possibly large population of similar objects, could mean that the massive progenitor stars already had strong magnetic fields, or these fields were created by rapidly rotating neutron stars in the core collapse that was part of the supernova event.
If large numbers of neutron stars are born with strong magnetic fields then a significant fraction of gamma-ray bursts might be caused by the formation of magnetars rather than black holes. Also, the contribution of magnetar births to gravitational wave signals ? ripples in space-time ? would be larger than previously thought.
The possibility of a relatively low surface magnetic field for SGR 0418 was first announced in 2010 by a team with some of the same members. However, the scientists at that time could only determine an upper limit for the magnetic field and not an actual estimate because not enough data had been collected.
SGR 0418 is located in the Milky Way galaxy at a distance of about 6,500 light years from Earth. These new results on SGR 0418 appear online and will be published in the June 10, 2013 issue of The Astrophysical Journal. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., manages the Chandra program for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory controls Chandra's science and flight operations from Cambridge, Mass.
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Chandra X-ray Center: http://chandra.harvard.edu
Thanks to Chandra X-ray Center for this article.
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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/128390/A_hidden_population_of_exotic_neutron_stars
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HuffPost Live:
A fake kidnapping, an elderly drug dealer and a Pop Tarts theft? We bring you these stories and more from the world of local news.
Read the whole story at HuffPost Live
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HTC's Desire line of mid-range Android smartphones have typically used the alphabet to denote different models, but the company is now switching to numerals. At least according to a Taiwanese certification page, we can expect a Desire 200. Some leaked benchmark results also indicate that a Desire 600 will head to market.
We don't know much about the Desire 200 apart from its name. It's listed as the HTC 102e on the certification page, and there's plenty of speculation that this handset is the G2 we heard about earlier this year. It's a different story for the Desire 600: the benchmark results indicate this device sports a 960 x 540 (qHD) display with an unspecified 1.2GHz chip. The benchmark sheet also reveals this is a dual-SIM model destined for Europe. That's it for now, but more details are sure to follow shortly.
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, HTC
Via: Pocketnow
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With back-to-school season upon us and Intel's Haswell launch just around the corner, now's a great time for PC makers to start unveiling their summer lineups. Two weeks ago we heard from Sony and today it's HP's turn: the company just refreshed everything from its mainstream notebooks to its high-performance machines. Heck, even the pint-sized dm1 got a makeover. With the exception of that machine (now called the Pavilion TouchSmart Notebook), everything here will be offered with Haswell. There's a little something for everybody, and it's all waiting for you in a neat summary after the break. Join us as we break it down.
Update: We've added one more model to the list, and we think you're going to like it: an Ultrabook with a 3,200 x 1,800 display. HP hadn't meant to announce it today, but you know the internet -- sometimes the cat gets out of the bag anyway. In any case, we've added a quick blurb, as well as hands-on photos. Enjoy!
Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/t2dwtxULg-Y/
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