College Press Conference Set Dec. 6 The LEAD Publications

By USLS Communications Department-CAS

Filed under News

By Pia Villahermosa & Karla Panganiban

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At least 300 students editors representing more than 50 college and university publications are expected to participate in the 38^th Western Visayas College Press Awards which will be held at Business Inn in Bacolod City on Dec. 6.

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COPRE , sponsored by the Philippine Information Agency in Western Visayas, is conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of PIA annual campus journalism program, which promotes development-oriented information dissemination and reporting.

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USLS SPECTRUM and LEAD editors: Top winners in
WV COPRE 2011.

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DEVELOPMENT JOURNALISM

Dr. Janet Mesa, PIA regional director, said the program promotes responsible and development journalism part of the campus journalism practice in the region.

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It will be the first time since 1998 for Bacolod City to host the event as it is usually held in Iloilo City.

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The conference includes individual and group writing contests as well as talks on the focus of the year?s thrusts, which include media convergence and eco tourism.

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SMART JOURN.PH,GROUP, INDIV IDUAL AWARDS

Also included in this year?s awards program are the 3^rd Annual Bloggers Competition through the journ.ph platform sponsored by Smart Communications, Inc.? and the Canadian Urban Institute?s eco-tourism writing contest.

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The LEAD Online writers: Two-year-in-a-row champion in
The SMART Communications ? sponsored journ.ph blogging competition

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Other major awards at stake? this year are the Best Wall News, Best Literary Folio, Best High School Newsletter, Best College Newsletter, Best Multi-lingual & Mother Tongue-based Publication and Best College Newsletter.

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Top Five individual writers will be recognized through on-the-spot writing competitions in English and Filipino in news, editorial, feature and sports writing, headlining and copyreading and photojournalism.

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USLS HARVEST

The University of St. La Salle claimed top honors in the 2011 COPRE edition with its SPECTRUM winning the best magazine award and The LEAD as the Best College Newspaper and Best Departmental Publication.

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Elsa Subong, PIA training officer and COPRE awards project officer, said both USLS? publications were also declared Gawad Graciano Lopez Jaena awardees for winning the three respective categories three years in a row.

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MR. & MS. COPRE

Another highlight of the one-day event is the selection of Mr. & Ms. College Press Conference.

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The reigning titlists are Gerhard Pagunsan of USLS MassComm, who gave The LEAD the plum for the third time in a row, ?and Josefa Castro of the University of San Agustin.

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The LEAD editors have figured well in the personality and intelligence competition with Joel Masadia and Peter Samson clinching Mr. COPRE titles in 2009 and 2010, respectively,? and Jemaimah Taladico? as Ms. COPRE 2010.

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The LEAD entries have been consistent finalists with Francine Marie Pacificador (2008), Lianne? Fernandez (2009) and Nadine Hautea (2011) taking? first runner-up honors.

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The Mr. COPRE selection was not held by PIA in 2010.

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Source: http://thelead-uslsmasscomm.journ.ph/2012/11/29/college-press-conference-set-dec-6/

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Thirsty Thursday: Satisfy Holiday Cravings with a Gingerbread Cocktail

Nov 29

by Kelsey Vala posted at 3:30 pm

Let?s face it. Building a gingerbread house is a lot of work. But the holiday season without gingerbread is like Rudolf without a red nose. Before you get your rolling pin ready and your gumdrops assembled, try consuming your gingerbread in liquid form with Alie and Georgia?s gently spiced Gingerbread Housed cocktail.

With just a few simple ingredients and a cocktail shaker, you?ll have a gingerbread treat that came together in just minutes. Start by infusing your rum the day before with cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg, and fresh ginger. Then the cocktail gets a dose of almond liqueur, vanilla extract and molasses, an essential component to anything gingerbread. Tame the robust mixture with a splash of heavy cream, and don?t forget the best part: the frosting and decorations. Rim the glass with snowy white frosting, and decorate with hot red cinnamon candies and gumdrops. It?s everything we love about gingerbread in a festive, holiday drink.

Bottoms up, folks:

Gingerbread Housed
Recipe courtesy Alie and Georgia

Ingredients:

• 2 oz. spiced infused rum
• 1 oz amaretto
• 1 oz heavy cream
• 1 tsp. molasses
• 1/2 tsp. Vanilla extract

Garnish:

• Vanilla frosting
• Red hots
• Gumdrops

Directions:

Infuse rum overnight by adding 10 whole cloves, a small sliced and peeled ginger root (or substitute with a teaspoon of powdered ginger), plus two whole nutmegs and two cinnamon sticks. In a shaker filled with ice, add the spiced rum, amaretto, heavy cream, vanilla, and molasses and shake vigorously. Set shaker aside and rim a glass tumbler or mug with icing and decorate with red hots and gumdrops. Pour the drink into the decorated mugs, and enjoy your liquid gingerbread house! Then make an appointment with your dentist.

Tags: Alie and Georgia Alie and Georgia Drink Recipes gingerbread holiday drink recipes

Source: http://blog.cookingchanneltv.com/2012/11/29/gingerbread-cocktail-recipe-for-your-holiday-party-menu/

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NASA's Phonesat Project Turns Smartphones Into Satellites

NASA engineers are chipping away at how best to lower the cost of their satellites ? and one off-the-shelf answer is by using smartphone electronics.

Dialing in on the idea has resulted in the PhoneSat project, a technology demonstration mission using a trio of tiny CubeSat satellitesto be launched next year.

The PhoneSat nanosatellites ? each weighing in at just three pounds (1.4 kilograms) ? will be ejected into Earth orbit during the maiden flight of Orbital Sciences' Antares rocket. The rocket will launch from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport , located at NASA?s Wallops Flight Facility in eastern Virginia.

Out-of-the-box

Quite literally out-of-the-box smartphones are imbued with capabilities comparable to a spacecraft's, like fast processors, multipurpose operating systems, miniature sensors, high-resolution cameras, GPS receivers, and several radios.

The three PhoneSats ? Alexander, Graham and Bell ? will be simultaneously deployed from a rocket-mounted dispenser. The latter two are PhoneSat 1.0s; they are battery-powered and make use of Nexus One smartphone technology from HTC Corp. and Google?s Android operating system.

A beta version of PhoneSat 2.0, Alexander is built around an updated Nexus S smartphone made by Samsung Electronics that runs Google?s Android operating system to provide a faster core processor, avionics and gyroscopes. It has solar cells for energy.

The attractive thing about PhoneSat is that it may make people more comfortable with the idea of using something almost directly off the shelf for a space mission, said Andrew Petro, program executive for the Small Spacecraft Technology Program within NASA's Office of the Chief Technologist. ?I?m excited about the potential here,? Petro told SPACE.com.

Nontraditional

PhoneSat is one of nine space technology programs in the Office of the Chief Technologist, according to Bruce Yost at the NASA Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif.

Ames is home for a small tiger team of engineers that conceived of, constructed, and tested PhoneSat, working on the project since early 2011, Yost told SPACE.com. "We?re exploring the use of nontraditional hardware and systems providers," trolling for technology beyond the traditional aerospace industry, said Yost, who is manager of the Small Spacecraft Technology Program.

PhoneSat engineers kept the total cost of the components to $3,500 for each of the three prototype satellites in the PhoneSat project. They used only commercial, off-the-shelf hardware and established minimum design and mission objectives for the first flight.

The deployment mechanism is of a size tagged "3U" volume, said Jim Cockrell, PhoneSat 1.0 project manager, "so it holds three CubeSats ? all three stacked up into the dispenser." (Each PhoneSats is built to standard dimensions? of 10x10x11 centimeters, about 4 inches cubed, or 1U ? for unit, he said.)

Citizen exploration

Once in Earth orbit, the PhoneSat Project comes alive. Amateur ground stations will receive health and status information as well as images, uploading packets of data onto amateur-run websites.

An early leader in the PhoneSat concept was Jasper Wolfe, technical lead of attitude determination and control, launch vehicle, at NASA Ames. He underscores multiple benefits in the project ? for one, leveraging hardware and software from the non-aerospace industry.

"I see PhoneSat as inspiring a new area of people to get involved in space," Wolfe said. "The actual building of a satellite is something we?re trying to develop and demonstrate as a really cheap and easy thing to do."

The battery-powered PhoneSats will orbit for 10 days or two weeks before re-entering the Earth?s atmosphere, while the solar-paneled PhoneSat 2.0 will have a longer stay in space, said Alberto Guillen Salas, technical lead of communications and electrical design of the PhoneSat Project.

The mission will demonstrate use of small satellites for space commerce, educational activities and citizen exploration ? all well within the reach of ordinary Americans because of the lower-cost, commercially available components involved, said Michael Gazarik, director of NASA?s Space Technology Program at NASA headquarters in Washington.

Oriol Tintore Gazulla, technical lead of software and mechanical design for the PhoneSat Project at Ames, said next year?s mission is likely to be a forerunner of things to come. "This is a first step. Maybe in the future we could think of going farther ? going to the moon."

Leonard David has been reporting on the space industry for more than five decades. He is a winner of last year's National Space Club Press Award and a past editor-in-chief of the National Space Society's Ad Astra and Space World magazines. He has written for SPACE.com since 1999.

Copyright 2012 SPACE.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/nasas-phonesat-project-turns-smartphones-satellites-123958421.html

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iPad Mini Magazine Ad - Business Insider

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Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/ipad-mini-magazine-ad-2012-11

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Scarlett Johansson Delivers Weather Forecast on Today Show

Source:

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Canada: BC leading the way in HIV-AIDS fight, but other provinces slow to follow

Via The Globe and Mail, an important story by Andr? Picard:?B.C. leading the way in HIV-AIDS fight, but other provinces slow to follow. Excerpt (but read the whole thing):

B.C. is the only province where the rate of new HIV infections is falling steadily and markedly. B.C. is also the only province that offers highly active anti-retroviral therapy (HAART) free of charge and aggressively promotes its use.?

Coincidence? Not at all.?

New research published in Wednesday?s edition of the medical journal Public Library of Science One shows that for every 10-per-cent increase in the number of HIV-positive patients taking HAART, new HIV diagnoses fell 8 per cent ? pretty close to a perfect correlation.?

These are some of the most compelling data to date demonstrating the soundness of the ?treatment as prevention? theory, an approach conceived at the B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV-AIDS and now being embraced worldwide.?

Treatment as prevention ? or TaP for short, because in the world of HIV-AIDS, acronyms are de rigueur ? is so successful, from Zimbabwe to Abbotsford, that policy-makers now talk openly about the possibility of freezing the epidemic in its tracks and creating an AIDS-free generation.?

As is too often the case though, Canadians are slow to embrace Canadian innovation.?

Consider that a young man diagnosed today as HIV-positive at age 20 and placed on HAART can expect to live to age 73, a life expectancy near normal.?

By taking a cocktail of medication that suppresses replication of the virus, this man will have little likelihood of passing it on to his sexual partner(s).?

That, of course, is the goal: To stop new infections, in addition to keeping those who are already infected from falling prey to killer opportunistic infections.?

Development of an AIDS vaccine is proving to be bedevilling, so TaP remains the closest thing we have. Of course, it is an adjunct, not a replacement for other preventive actions such as use of condoms and harm-reduction measures like supervised drug injection.?

Treating HIV-positive pregnant women with HAART is nearly 100-per-cent effective in preventing transmission of the AIDS virus to their babies. In discordant couples ? where one partner is infected and the other is not ? infection rates fall 95 per cent if the HIV-positive partner takes HAART. But if treatment as prevention is going to be fully effective, it is essential to get as many HIV-positive people as possible on it.?

For that to happen, two measures are required : Universal testing and free treatment.

Source: http://crofsblogs.typepad.com/h5n1/2012/11/canada-bc-leading-the-way-in-hiv-aids-fight-but-other-provinces-slow-to-follow.html

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Bring 'Minecraft' creations to life with augmented-reality app

Featured

9 days

Video

In-Game

The 'Nintendo Wii U' is a great device now, but it might not hold up over time. NBCNews.com's Todd Kenreck reviews the device. Play video

25 min.

Devin Coldewey , NBC News

Building?forts and objects in "Minecraft" may be fun, but sharing them with non-player friends can be difficult. A new augmented-reality iOS app lets you bring your blocky little creations?to the real world, though it's a bit limited.

The app is called Minecraft Reality, and was developed by 13th Lab and "Minecraft" creator Mojang. Objects from the game can be brought in, or you can browse others already available. Then you drop them?right into the scene wherever you happen to be.

Using what the developers call "Simultaneous Localization and Mapping," the device's camera gets a sense of the space around you, at which point you can adjust the "real world" position of your object ? you could put a car at full size in a parking space, or at?the size of?a toy on your desk.

The app is still in beta, so the input process isn't very streamlined (you have to use the clunky website), and it may take some fiddling to get your creation positioned correctly. But it should get better, and once a few more people download and use the app, you'll be able to find objects and worlds others?have placed.

Minecraft Reality is available now for $1.99 at the App Store. You'll need a fairly recent Apple device: An iPhone 4S, iPad 3, or anything later will do the trick.

Devin Coldewey is a contributing writer for NBC?News Digital. His personal website is?coldewey.cc.

Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/ingame/bring-minecraft-creations-life-augmented-reality-app-1C7289186

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Target Partners with CNET for Electronics Product Reviews ...

Posted Date:11/11/2012
Target Partners with CNET for Electronics Product Reviews

Target shoppers can now find electronics and technology reviews from CNET, via on-shelf signage and by clicking the Expert Review tab on Target.com. In the store, customers can scan a QR code to access full product reviews on the website. CNET Editors Picks for Target will feature 25 product reviews rating products on ease of use, style and value.

We know our guests find expert reviews helpful when making purchasing decisions, said Scott Nygaard, Targets vice president of merchandising for electronics in a statement. As the respected industry expert, CNET was a clear choice to provide this expertise to Targets guests.

The reviews, part of a larger partnership between the retailer and the technology news website, became available November 11, in time for holiday shopping.

CNET editors review hundreds of tech products each year, and weve built a reputation as the most trusted and expert tech reviewers, said CNET reviews editor in chief Lindsey Turrentine. Were thrilled to help Target guests enjoy gadget shopping this holiday season.

For related content: Winning the Social Engagement Wars: Target, Macys, Walmart

Target Has the Gift of Giving

Target Supports New Apple Passbook App for Mobile Coupons

Source: http://www.innovativemoneymethod.com/?p=4666

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Source: http://emilpugh27.typepad.com/blog/2012/11/target-partners-with-cnet-for-electronics-product-reviews.html

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Iron Giant Designs iPhone docks are crazy gorgeous and crazy expensive

Do you charge your iPhone with a boring old cable? What the heck is the matter with you? Are you a gadgeteer or what? I bet these docks from Iron Giant Designs will make you drool. They offer a limited number of docks that are made from a solid hunk of metal or clear material [...]

Source: http://the-gadgeteer.com/2012/11/28/iron-giant-designs-iphone-docks-are-crazy-gorgeous-and-crazy-expensive/

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Senate takes up UN disability treaty

WASHINGTON (AP) ? A U.N. treaty promoting equal rights for the disabled faced an uncertain future in the Senate Tuesday as Republicans objected to taking up an international treaty during a lame-duck session of Congress and expressed concerns about ceding authority to the United Nations.

Supporters of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which was signed by the George W. Bush administration in 2006, stressed that it was modeled after the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act and required no changes in U.S. law.

But 36 Republicans in September signed a letter opposing any action on international treaties during the post-election session. The opposition has more than enough to defeat the treaty, which needs a two-thirds majority to be ratified.

The Senate voted 61-36 to move the treaty to the floor for debate.

The convention has been signed by 154 nations and ratified by 126 of those nations. President Barack Obama signed it in 2009.

Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the impact of the treaty "will echo around the world." He said the Americans with Disabilities Act is the gold standard for protecting the rights of the disabled and the treaty would "take that gold standard and extend it to countries that have never heard of disability rights." He said that it would benefit disabled American veterans who want to travel or work abroad.

The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, which represents more than 210 national organizations, said ratification "will reflect U.S. commitment to disability rights and core American values such as the dignity of the individual, access to justice and the right to education."

But opponents, led by Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, say that international treaties are by their nature a threat to American sovereign authority. Lee also says treaty provisions referring to the "best interests of the child" could lead to the state, and not parents, deciding what is in a child's best interest and that language stating that the disabled should have equal rights to reproductive health services could lead to abortions.

That, said Kerry, was "absolutely, positively, factually inaccurate." He said the treaty only states that a country's laws permitting or banning health procedures should apply to the disabled as well.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/senate-takes-un-disability-treaty-202954549--politics.html

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Bitter struggle over Internet regulation to dominate global summit

7 hrs.

Reuters

An unprecedented debate over how the global Internet is governed is set to dominate a meeting of officials in Dubai next week, with many countries pushing to give a United Nations body broad regulatory powers even as the United States and others contend such a move could mean the end of the open Internet.

The 12-day conference of the International Telecommunications Union, a 157-year-old organization that's now an arm of the United Nations, largely pits revenue-seeking developing countries and authoritarian regimes that want more control over Internet content against U.S. policymakers and private Net companies that prefer the status quo.

Many of the proposals have drawn fury from free-speech and human-rights advocates and have prompted resolutions from the U.S. Congress and the European Parliament, calling for the current decentralized system of governance to remain in place.

While specifics of some of the most contentious proposals remain secret, leaked drafts show that Russia is seeking rules giving individual countries broad permission to shape the content and structure of the Internet within their borders, while a group of Arab countries is advocating universal identification of Internet users. Some developing countries and telecom providers, meanwhile, want to make content providers pay for Internet transmission.

Fundamentally, most of the 193 countries in the ITU seem eager to enshrine the idea that the U.N. agency, rather than today's hodgepodge of private companies and nonprofit groups, should govern the Internet. The ITU meeting, which aims to update a longstanding treaty on how telecom companies interact across borders, will also tackle other topics such as extending wireless coverage into rural areas.

If a majority of the ITU countries approve U.N. dominion over the Internet along with onerous rules, a backlash could lead to battles in Western countries over whether to ratify the treaty, with tech companies rallying ordinary Internet users against it and some telecom carriers supporting it.

In fact, dozens of countries including China, Russia and some Arab states, already restrict Internet access within their own borders, but those governments would have greater leverage over Internet content and service providers if the changes were backed up by international agreement.

Amid the escalating rhetoric, search king Google last week asked users to "pledge your support for the free and open Internet" on social media, raising the specter of a grassroots outpouring of the sort that blocked American copyright legislation and a global anti-piracy treaty earlier this year.

Google's Vint Cerf, the ordinarily diplomatic co-author of the basic protocol for Internet data, denounced the proposed new rules as hopeless efforts by some governments and state-controlled telecom authorities to assert their power.

"These persistent attempts are just evidence that this breed of dinosaurs, with their pea-sized brains, hasn't figured out that they are dead yet, because the signal hasn't traveled up their long necks," Cerf told Reuters.

The ITU's top official, Secretary-General Hamadoun Tour?, sought to downplay the concerns in a separate interview, stressing to Reuters that even though updates to the treaty could be approved by a simple majority, in practice nothing will be adopted without near-unanimity.

"Voting means winners and losers. We can't afford that in the ITU," said Tour?, a former satellite engineer from Mali who was educated in Russia.

Tour? predicted that only "light-touch" regulation on cyber-security will emerge by "consensus," using a deliberately vague term that implies something between a majority and unanimity.

He rejected criticism that the ITU's historic role in coordinating phone carriers leaves it unfit to corral the unruly Internet, comparing the Web to a transportation system.

"Because you own the roads, you don't own the cars and especially not the goods they are transporting. But when you buy a car you don't buy the road," Tour? said. "You need to know the number of cars and their size and weight so you can build the bridges and set the right number of lanes. You need light-touch regulation to set down a few traffic lights."

Because the proposals from Russia, China and others are more extreme, Tour? has been able to cast mild regulation as a compromise accommodating nearly everyone.

Two leaked Russian proposals say nations should have the sovereign right "to regulate the national Internet segment." An August draft proposal from a group of 17 Arab countries called for transmission recipients to receive "identity information" about the senders, potentially endangering the anonymity of political dissidents, among others.

A U.S. State Department envoy to the gathering and Cerf agreed with Tour? that there is unlikely to be any drastic change emerging from Dubai.

"The decisions are going to be by consensus," said U.S. delegation chief Terry Kramer. He said anti-anonymity measures such as mandatory Internet address tracing won't be adopted because of opposition by the United States and others.

"We're a strong voice, given a lot of the heritage," Kramer said, referring to the U.S. invention and rapid development of the Internet. "A lot of European markets are very similar, and a lot of Asian counties are supportive, except China."

Despite the reassuring words, a fresh leak over the weekend showed that the ITU's top managers viewed a badly split conference as a realistic prospect less than three months ago.

The leaked program for a "senior management retreat" for the ITU in early September included a summary discussion of the most probable outcomes from Dubai, concluding that the two likeliest scenarios involved major reworkings of the treaty that the United States would then refuse to sign. The only difference between the scenarios lay in how many other developed countries sided with the Americans.

ITU officials didn't dispute the authenticity of the document, which was published by Jerry Brito, a researcher at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University as part of a continuing series of ITU-related leaks.

Tour? said that because the disagreements are so vast, the conference probably will end up with something resembling the ITU's earlier formula for trying to protect children online ? an agreement to cooperate more and share laws and best practices, perhaps with hotlines to head off misunderstandings.

"From Dubai, what I personally expect is to see some kind of principles saying cyberspace is a global phenomenon and it can only have global responses," Tour? said. "I just intend to put down some key principles there that will lay the seeds for something in the future."

Even vague terms could be used as a pretext for more oppressive policies in various countries, though, and activists and industry leaders fear those countries might also band together by region to offer very different Internet experiences.

In some ways, the U.N. involvement reflects a reversal that has already begun.

The United States has steadily diminished its official role in Internet governance, and many nations have stepped up their filtering and surveillance. More than 40 countries now filter the Net that their citizens see, said Ronald Deibert, a University of Toronto political science professor and authority on international conflicts in cyberspace.

Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt said this month that the Net is already on the road to Balkanization, with people in different countries getting very different experiences from the services provided by Google, Skype and others.

This month, a new law in Russia took effect that allows the federal government to order a website offline without a court hearing. Iran recently rolled out a version of the Internet that replaced the real thing within its borders. A growing number of countries, including China and India, order sites to censor themselves for political, religious and other content.

China, which has the world's largest number of Internet users, also blocks access to Facebook, YouTube and Twitter among other sites within its borders.

The loose governance of the Net currently depends on the non-profit ICANN, which oversees the Web's address system, along with voluntary standard-setting bodies and a patchwork of national laws and regional agreements. Many countries see it as a U.S.-dominated system.

The U.S. isolation within the ITU is exacerbated by it being home to many of the biggest technology companies???and by the fact that it could have military reasons for wanting to preserve online anonymity. The Internet emerged as a critical military domain with the 2010 discovery of Stuxnet, a computer worm developed at least in part by the United States that attacked Iran's nuclear program.

Whatever the outcome in Dubai, the conference stands a good chance of becoming a historic turning point for the Internet.

"I see this as a constitutional moment for global cyberspace, where we can stand back and say, `Who should be in charge?' said Deibert. "What are the rules of the road?"

(Reporting by Joseph Menn; Editing by Jonathan Weber, Martin Howell and Ken Wills)

(c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2012. Check for restrictions at: http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp

Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/technolog/bitter-struggle-over-internet-regulation-dominate-global-summit-1C7276578

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Seeing the world through the eyes of an orangutan

ScienceDaily (Nov. 27, 2012) ? A captive bred Sumatran orangutan and a University of Nottingham neuroscientist in Malaysia are hoping to explain some of the mysteries of the visual brain and improve the lives of captive bred animals.

She is a captive bred Sumatran orangutan. He is a neuroscientist specialising in cognitive and sensory systems research. With the help of specially adapted eye tracking equipment they are hoping to explain some of the mysteries of the visual brain and improve the lives of captive bred animals.

Dr Neil Mennie, from The University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus (UNMC), has received funding from Ministry of Science and Technology and Innovation, Malaysia (MOSTI) to study the eye movements of Tsunami -- a seven year old orangutan at The National Zoo of Malaysia (Zoo Negara). Not only will Dr Mennie's research address vital questions about the visual cognition of humans and apes in natural tasks, it will also provide valuable enrichment for the juvenile captive-born orangutan.

Dr Mennie said: "Orangutans are particularly interesting because to survive in the treetops they must be very spatially aware of their surroundings. I hope to investigate their ability to search for food and to compare their progress with humans in 3D search and foraging tasks."

Dr Mennie, who is from the Cognitive and Sensory Systems Research Group in the School of Psychology at UNMC, is interested in how humans and apes use their brains to learn and make predictions about our surroundings. With the help of Tsunami's keeper, Mohd Sharullizam Ramli, and the special eye tracking equipment that is worn over her head and shoulders, Dr Mennie has spent the last year recording Tsunami's eye and body movements during the performance of complex actions such as locomotion, foraging for food and manipulation of small objects.

Tracking the eyes of an Orangutan

Tsunami was slowly introduced to the idea of wearing the eye tracking equipment that consists of a back pack containing a wireless transmitter. This pack back transmits data from two video cameras mounted on her head-band. As Tsunami performs various natural tasks -- foraging for food, using tools, moving around -- one camera films what she sees and the other camera films the movements of her right eye. Afterwards Dr Mennie and his students sit down and look at each video frame from this camera and write down the timing and location of these eye movements over the environment. As we make 3 eye movements per second, this is a very time consuming procedure.

Dr Mennie said: "I'm interested in the way we make predictive eye movements to places in the world where the stimulus is yet to appear and whether these predictive eye movements are there to assist the timing and placement of actions or whether they also help high-level mechanisms such as memory for our immediate space and the location of objects within it."

As part of his research Dr Mennie is also hoping to shed light on how these endangered animals navigate to help other scientists who seek to conserve the orangutan habitat. Knowledge of their foraging and search behaviour may help in the design and conservation of forest corridors.

Improving the life of captive animals

Orangutans are a critically endangered species -- they are also among the most intelligent primates. The Sumatran orangutan is on the IUCN Critically Endangered list. At Zoo Negara they are hoping Dr Mennie's research will help them develop their Enrichment Programme that is designed to get captive animals behaving as they would in the wild.

In the wild Tsunami would use her vision and her hands to guide her through the environment -- to find food, to use tools, to move and climb. To make Dr Mennie's task even harder, orangutans can grasp equally well with their feet. Faradilla Ain Roselan, Zoology Officer at Zoo Negara Enrichment Centre, said: "We want to keep our animals occupied so they don't display stereo typical behaviour such as pacing. We also want them to be able to exhibit any natural behaviour. Apes are highly intelligent animals and we don't want them to get bored. If we predict what they want to do maybe we can think of an enrichment that would suit their intelligence."

Long term goals

Currently Tsunami is in a specially built enclosure and this is proving to be a very useful beginning. Eventually he hopes to track this young orangutan when she is allowed to join her fellow red apes and Dr Mennie's long term goal is to record animals in the wild.

Dr Mennie said: "I could have done this research at any zoo. But the orangutan is a flagship symbol of Malaysia and I think it is fitting that this research is done here in Malaysia at The University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus."

With funding from the Malaysian Ministry of Higher Education (MOHE) Dr Mennie has already studied Orangutan eye movements in free ranging behaviour. MOHE has also funded a project that looked at the predictive eye movements of humans when they play the Malaysian game Congkak.

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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/~3/2gm1FhC64Lk/121127130155.htm

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Bernie: A True Life Tale of a Most Unlikely Killer

No one ever believed town treasure Bernie could have killed his companion, the insufferable snake woman Marjorie Nugent. Oh, well! More »

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/QCLeiJfzwL4/bernie-a-true-life-tale-of-a-most-unlikely-killer

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Gaza cease-fire raises hopes for reconstruction

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) ? Mohammed Falah Azzam has been through this before.

His mother's home was bombed in the 2008-09 Israeli military offensive in the Gaza Strip, which left hundreds dead and thousands of homes destroyed. In renewed fighting last week, an entire block of buildings housing his extended family was badly damaged in an airstrike that Israel said was aimed at a militant.

While none of his relatives was hurt, the 61-year-old retired schoolteacher once again has to worry about providing shelter for his family. Some relatives are sleeping in an empty shop, squeezed in with other family members. Others are spending their nights in rooms covered in plastic wrap to shield them from the winter rain because all the windows were blown out.

"This is going to cost thousands," Azzam said. "The longer I wait, the more damage will happen," he added, pointing to a heavily damaged building sitting atop tilting concrete columns.

Azzam finds himself caught again in a pile of paperwork to seek assistance, trying to secure hard-to-get construction materials. This time, he hopes the process will be smoother, thanks to both Israel's pledges to ease its longstanding border blockade and the newfound political clout of Gaza's Hamas rulers in the region.

Israel promised to ease the blockade as part of a cease-fire last week that ended eight days of intense fighting. But difficult negotiations lie ahead, and there is no firm timeline for lifting the restrictions.

Israel launched its offensive Nov. 14 in response to months of rocket fire out of Gaza. It carried out some 1,500 airstrikes during the fighting, while Palestinian militants lobbed a similar number of rockets into Israel.

The damage to buildings in Gaza appears less extensive than it was four years ago. The United Nations estimates 10,000 homes were destroyed or damaged, while Hamas has put the number at about 8,000, including 500 that were destroyed or heavily damaged. In comparison, U.N. relief agencies said as many as 40,000 homes were affected in the earlier round of fighting.

Israel says its airstrikes are aimed at militants, and it blames Hamas for the damage, accusing the group of using residential areas for cover.

Reconstruction since the 2008-9 fighting has been slow, in large part because of Israel's blockade. Israel imposed the restrictions in 2007, after Hamas, a militant group sworn to its destruction, wrested power over the coastal strip from the government of Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Under international pressure, Israel loosened the blockade in 2010 but maintained tight restrictions on imports of glass, cement, metal and other construction materials, saying they could be diverted for military use. Only U.N agencies and international organizations in the Palestinian territory are allowed to import such material from Israel for their own projects.

To make up the shortage, a bustling smuggling industry through underground tunnels along the Egyptian border has sprung up. While prices for key construction goods have come down, they still remain expensive for the majority of the population in Gaza, where the unemployment rate is over 30 percent and 80 percent of the people rely on U.N. handouts.

"The blockade in terms of housing impacts us primarily ? the U.N. ?and the people who are most vulnerable who don't have access to jobs or economic opportunity," said Scott Anderson, deputy director of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency. "People who have money, it is easily available."

In the short term, there is no relief in sight. During the recent offensive, Israel heavily targeted the tunnels, which are also used to bring weapons into Gaza. Residents along the border say that smugglers and tunnel owners are still inspecting the damage but that many of the tunnels still operate, though at reduced capacity.

An Egyptian security official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media, estimated that half the tunnels are not functioning.

With a sullied face and wearing only his undergarments, Azzam gave up his search for valuables in the rubble of his destroyed home on a recent day. He sat down to take a break and do some math.

His mother's house was destroyed by an Israeli airstrike in 2009. Since then, he has barely managed to rebuild one of its two floors. A $25,000 grant he received from an Arab fund did not cover the costs, and materials for the project have been hard to come by.

The Hamas government has given him $1,000 to find a place to live for now, and each member of the extended family received a similar amount. With housing in tight supply and rents skyrocketing, Azzam said the money will not last long.

"As we look there are no places to begin with," he said. "If we find a place, rent will be around $300 or $400. Before it was $200."

Yasser al-Shanti, deputy of the ministry of public works and housing in the Hamas government, said construction materials will start flowing into Gaza again once the tunnels are up and running again.

But Hamas' real hope is that Israel and Egypt will lift border restrictions to allow large quantities of goods into the territory through proper border crossings. Hamas has high hopes for Egypt's new Islamist government, which is far more sympathetic to the Islamic group than the ousted regime of Hosni Mubarak.

The Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt is currently limited to foot traffic. Hamas, an offshoot of Egypt's ruling Muslim Brotherhood, wants Egypt to turn the crossing into a bustling cargo terminal.

"We expect that international and Arab institutions are ready to help. We don't expect to have a problem," al-Shanti said.

Hamas has put the damage to Gaza's civilian infrastructure at roughly $750 million, a sum that will probably have to be raised through special U.N. emergency appeals and donations from wealthy Arab countries.

The future of the crossing will be a central issue in indirect, Egyptian-brokered negotiations between Israel and Hamas. Under the cease-fire, Israel made a vague commitment to ease its closing of Gaza. But the details must be negotiated.

With Hamas rejecting Israel's key demand ? that arms smuggling into Gaza be halted ? it remains far from certain whether Hamas will get what it wants. Egypt also has not been clear how far it is willing to open its border, fearing that this will allow Israel to "dump" Gaza on Egypt and undermine hopes for reconciliation between Hamas and Abbas' rival government in the West Bank.

Ayman el-Kholi, whose two-story home was destroyed in an Israeli airstrike aimed at militants, said Hamas government representatives and fighters, including Hamas strongman Mahmoud Zahar, visited him and promised compensation.

"They promised that after things calm down, they will begin to reconstruct all homes destroyed and not just ours," he said.

In the meantime, the 41-year-old banker has sent his six children to sleep at various relatives' homes, and he is staying with a friend. The rubble from the destroyed building was still in a heap on Sunday as he waited for the only government tractor to come remove it.

The entire block was damaged by airstrike. Shops were buried and a nearby workshop for electrical appliances was severely damaged.

"We don't save in banks. All my money was in the house. All of it is now under the rubble, around $10,000 plus my wife's gold," el-Kholi said. "We are waiting for an opening of the crossing. We are waiting for donor countries, from Arab countries, to help us rebuild the house again."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/gaza-cease-fire-raises-hopes-reconstruction-192757289.html

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Guardly Partners With Desire2Learn To Bring Campus Safety Features To The Blackboard Competitor

I've seen a lot of pivots, but few continue to impress as much as Guardly's shift from a personal safety app aimed at consumers, to a comprehensive security suite designed to be used by educational institutions and other organization-level clients. Today, the Toronto-based startup announced that it has been accepted by Desire2Learn's partner program, putting its product in front of over 8 million learners.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/hUykpxWNDlM/

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Falcons overcome mistakes to beat Buccaneers 24-23

TAMPA, Fla. (AP) ? No one has led more late game-winning drives during the past five seasons than Matt Ryan, who has kept the Atlanta Falcons flying high with five fourth-quarter rallies this year alone.

Matty Ice did it again Sunday, throwing for 353 yards and overcoming two critical turnovers to stop Tampa Bay's four-game winning streak with a 24-23 victory.

The Falcons (10-1) kept pace with the Houston Texans for the NFL's best record, and Ryan had plenty of help in withstanding a challenge from the up-and-coming Buccaneers (6-5).

"They are playing with a lot of confidence," said Ryan, who has won seven of his past eight starts against the Bucs. "It's always been a tough place for us to come play. They play with great effort, and I think they have a good football team."

Ryan teamed with Julio Jones on an 80-yard TD midway through the third quarter, but the Falcons found themselves trailing 23-17 after the Bucs marched for a touchdown, then used a sack-fumble to set up a field goal that left Atlanta needing another strong finish from their quarterback.

Ryan obliged by a leading a six-play, 64-yard march that Michael Turner finished with a 3-yard TD run that put the NFC South leaders ahead for good with 7:55 remaining.

Connor Barth missed a 56-yard goal for Tampa Bay (6-5) in the closing minutes, and the winning streak that's helped the Bucs climb back into playoff contention following a slow start ended when Josh Freeman's desperation pass fell incomplete in the end zone on the final play.

"The last drive, that's something we've done before this season," Falcons tight end Tony Gonzalez said. "I really think that's a positive for us to be able to come up with plays like that when we have to like that. ... I'm really happy with the way we responded."

It's getting to be a way of life. Ryan has also led late marches to beat Carolina, Washington, Oakland and Arizona this season and has put together 21 game-winning drives in the fourth quarter or overtime since entering the league in 2008 ? four of them against the division rival Bucs.

The Falcons won't have long to celebrate this one. The host the New Orleans Saints Thursday night in a rematch of the only game they've lost.

"Ten-and-1 is great, but I'll tell you what I've said since the beginning of the season: We're just jockeying for position," Gonzalez said. "We just want to put ourselves in the best position, playing the best football. Right around this time is when you want to start gelling as a team and take it on into the playoffs because that's the most important thing."

The win stopped the Bucs, who've won five or seven following a 1-3 start, from tightening the NFC South standings. Turner also scored a fourth-quarter TD that helped the Falcons overcome six turnovers to beat Arizona 23-19 last week.

Doug Martin scored on a pair of 1-yard run for the Bucs, however the rookie who began the day leading the NFL in total yards from scrimmage was limited to 50 yards rushing on 21 carries.

Barth kicked field goals of 22, 42, and 48 yards, the latter giving the Bucs their six-point lead after cornerback E.J. Biggers sacked Ryan to force a fumble. Ryan threw a second-quarter interception ? his sixth pick in two weeks ? that led Barth's field goal that made it 10-10 at the half.

Ryan completed 26 of 32 passes, including four straight on the drive that Turner finished with his TD run. Jacquizz Rodgers had a 5-yard TD run in the first quarter, and Jones finished with six receptions for 147 yards despite playing on a sore right ankle that limited him in practice.

Ryan started the game with 10 straight completions before Ronde Barber's interception and 28-yard return to the Atlanta 31 led to Barth's first field goal.

The Falcons drove to the Tampa Bay 4 in the closing seconds of the half, but wasted an opportunity to regain the lead when Matt Bryant hooked a 22-yard field-goal attempt wide left as time expired. The Atlanta kicker missed a 48-yarder with 8 seconds left, giving the Bucs one more chance to pull out what would have been their first signature victory under first-year coach Greg Schiano.

"It was a hard-fought game by both teams, a very physical game," Schiano said. "But I do think missed opportunities were a big part of it. There were some chances both offensively and defensively, and in the kicking game."

Freeman finished 19 of 30 for 256 yards, and Vincent Jackson had five catches for 96 yards. A big factor in the loss, though, was Atlanta's held the Bucs to field goals after each of Ryan's turnovers, once after Tampa Bay had 1st-and-goal at the Atlanta 3.

"I thought our defense did an outstanding job again. They were put in some tough situations after turnovers," Falcons coach Mike Smith said, adding that slowing Martin was one of the keys to the game as well.

"We knew it was going to be one of our 'musts,' and I thought we did a nice job," Smith added. "I thought we played the run extremely well, controlled the line of scrimmage. That is an outstanding running back."

Notes: Falcons starting cornerbacks Asante Samuel (shoulder) and Dunta Robinson (head) left the game with injuries in the third quarter. ... Barber, who made his 210th straight start to tie Jim Otto for the seventh-most consecutive starts in NFL history, has 47 career interceptions. ... Martin has 1,050 yards rushing yards, eighth-most in a season by a Tampa Bay running back. ...Gonzalez had five receptions for 62 yards, and Roddy White had six for 57 yards for Atlanta.

___

Online: http://pro32.ap.porg/poll and http://twitter.com/AP_NFL

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/falcons-overcome-mistakes-beat-buccaneers-24-23-211827070--spt.html

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Learning Math The Fun And Exciting Way

Children often say that they don't complete their homework or don't pass their tests because the subject in question is "too boring." While children will eventually have to accept that not everything in life is extremely fun, you can help to make math a bit more intriguing to them.

Using Math in Everyday Life

The next time you're out to dinner, let your child be responsible for figuring out the bill. Show him or her how to use a calculator or how to figure out the numbers mentally. You can also have children help you bake at home and ask them to measure out the ingredients. Make a couple of cookies that have the wrong amount of ingredients in them to show how important math is in daily life.

Interdisciplinary Connections

Sometimes, children become bored because they would rather be studying a different subject. You could talk to the teacher(s) about his or her plans for making interdisciplinary connections. Chat with your child's English tutor and maths tutor too. For example, they might be able to come up with some word problems together that stress the importance of both reading skills and mathematical skills.

Math Games

Children generally love to play games, so invest in a few for your home game closet. They do not necessarily have to be all about math, but they can involve math components such as counting money. You could purchase some math flashcards or math trivia, and ask your children to quiz one another. You could also hold a weekly math trivia session in which all of your offspring compete. Offer a prize, one day off from chores for example, to the person who gets the most questions correct.

Field Trips

Even if the school doesn't have any such field trips scheduled, you can go on them independently. Find the home of a famous mathematician that is open for tours, or head to the local science museum. You'll find plenty of displays and experiments that rely upon math. Museums designed for children will likely have interactive activities for them as well.

If you feel that your child is struggling in math, have a talk with the teacher. Maybe he or she has suggestions for what you could do at home to improve your child's experience in math. Essentially, you want to create more of an interest in the subject to encourage your child to learn.

This article was provided to you by Numberworks Maths and English Tutoring. If you need any help on finding the right Maths and English tutor for your child, please visit us at our website for more information.

Source: http://articles.submityourarticle.com/learning-math-the-fun-and-exciting-way-303992

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Source: http://forums.ferra.ru/index.php?showtopic=53143

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Chemical "Soup" Clouds Connection between Toxins and Poor Health

From plastics to flame retardants, the ubiquitous chemicals of our daily lives have raised public health concerns like never before. Inside the Beltway, however, data-crunching scientists are often no match for industry lobbyists and corporate lawyers. The exception, no doubt, is Linda Birnbaum, the toxicologist who leads, two little-known scientific agencies, the National Institute of Environmental Health Services (NIEHS) and the National Toxicology Program (NTP).

Last April, Birnbaum sat inside a Capitol Hill conference room packed with poker-faced chemical industry executives ready for a showdown. The NTP had recently issued its report on carcinogens?a sort of name-and-shame list of chemicals on which no company wants to find its products. Charles Maresca of the Small Business Administration?taking a stand for the maligned styrene industry?argued that the report was "based on inaccurate scientific information" and faulty peer review.

North Carolina congressman Brad Miller (D) was unimpressed. He took the microphone and described Birnbaum's resume of more than 700 publications in public health, toxicology and environmental science. Removing his black reading glasses, he glanced at Maresca, and delivered the fatal blow with relish: "And you're a lawyer. Isn't that right?"

If Birnbaum got a kick out of the put-down, she didn?t show it. After 33 years working as a federal scientist at both the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the NIEHS, Birnbaum's career is a study in the way science becomes law and the ways lobbyists subvert science. She has watched her contributions to an EPA report on dioxin sit in limbo for 20 years, she has worked to study the health impacts of types of asbestos that are not legally recognized as asbestos and she has challenged the chemical industry in her pursuit for answers about the controversial chemical bisphenol A (BPA).

Through her leadership at NIEHS and NTP over the past three years, she has pursued a broad vision of environmental health that incorporates gene?environment interactions along with the impacts of disease, diet, stress and other factors. She has also tried to make the NIEHS quick on its feet: After the 2010 BP oil spill, she initiated the Gulf Long-Term Follow-Up (GuLF) study, the first extended review of the health effects of an oil spill.

Scientific American sat down with Birnbaum in Washington, D.C., to learn more about environmental health, toxic chemistry and the politics of chemical regulation.

[An edited transcript of the interview follows.]

How did you become interested in toxicology?
When I was in eighth grade at Benjamin Franklin Junior High School in Teaneck, New Jersey, I had a science teacher who was an attractive, peppy, young blonde woman who was also the cheerleading coach. I was a cheerleader, and that positive reinforcement made it okay to like science.

I became interested in thyroid hormones. I can't tell you exactly why, but I had written to a local pharmaceutical company and asked if they could give me some rats and some chemicals. That's something that would never happen easily today?but they did it! I got a letter from them that said, "Please come. We'd like to talk to you." The next thing I knew, I had 40 rats in four cages and feed and bedding and everything else, along with thyroid hormone and chemicals that block thyroid hormone.

They let you keep the rats at your house?
Yeah. We had them in my basement.

What did your parents say about that?
My parents were really incredibly supportive?even when one escaped. I eventually found its body and put it in the freezer figuring I'd dissect it at some point. But my grandmother went in thinking it was a package of ground beef. She had a little bit of a fright.

How much of human disease is due to environmental exposures?
The estimates vary, and it depends on how you define environment. People often say it's about 30 percent. I think that's defining environment fairly narrowly, considering only environmental chemical exposures, but your environment includes the food you eat, the drugs you take, the psychosocial stress you're exposed to and so forth. After all, what's the difference between a drug and an environmental chemical? One you intentionally take and the other one you don't. Considering all that, I would say then the environment is much more than 30 percent.

We also know?especially from studies of identical versus fraternal twins?that for many different diseases, genetics is not the whole story. Actually, I think it's time to stop asking, "Is this caused by genes or is this caused by the environment?" because in almost all cases, it's going to be both.

Why has it been so difficult to link environmental exposures to specific health consequences?
Nobody is exposed to one chemical at a time, right? I mean we live in a soup of chemicals and we live in a soup of exposures. Here, I'm having a lemonade. Well, it's not only lemon in here. I'm sure there's some sugar. There might be a preservative or something. I don't know what's in this. So think of all those things interacting, but when we test chemicals in the lab we tend to test them one at a time.

I guess we don't consider these other types of exposures.
Right. A high-fat diet, for example, can completely change the way your body handles chemicals. Exposure to a certain chemical may lower your ability to respond to an infection. At EPA we did a lot of studies exposing rats and mice to air pollutants and then to bacterial infections or influenza infections. Those who were exposed to pollution were more likely to die, whereas those in clean air recovered.

We see the same thing with individual kinds of chemical exposures as well. One of our NIEHS grantees, Philippe Grandjean of Harvard University, followed women during their pregnancy, and then he followed their children. So he had blood samples before they were born from the mother. He had blood samples at birth, and he continued to follow the kids. What he found is that if those children had elevated exposure to PCBs [polychlorinated biphenyls used in electronics], they were less able to mount a normal response to a vaccination.

PCBs are considered likely carcinogens, but they are also endocrine disruptors, like bisphenol A or dioxin, which is something we've heard a lot about in the media lately. What is your definition of an endocrine disruptor?
An endocrine disruptor is anything that affects the synthesis of a hormone, the breakdown of a hormone or how the hormone functions. We used to think it had to bind with a hormone receptor but endocrine disruptors can perturb hormone action at other stages in the process.

Why are they such a big deal?
They're all around us, and I think they can affect us at very low levels. Our hormones control our basic homeostasis, our basic physiology. If you alter your hormone levels, you're not going to behave the same way physiologically, and that includes mentally and everything else. I think that there's growing evidence that some of the chemicals to which we are exposed are doing that to the population right now.

So we have this soup of endocrine disruptors, air pollution and other exposures, which has made epidemiology so difficult. What have you been doing at NIEHS to get to the bottom of these issues?
There are ways statistically that you can control for some of these factors, but I think we have to go beyond that and say, "Well, wait a minute. That's not real life." Maybe we need to look at whether there are interactions. In animal systems, from work that I did starting in the '80s and have continued ever since, we showed that for chemicals that have the same mechanism of action you can basically add up those chemicals to predict the toxicity. This is the toxic equivalency factor approach.

We've been finding with a lot of endocrine disruptors that if they impact the same health effect, such as decreased sperm production, you can just kind of add up chemicals. They may have a different mechanism, but they all affect sperm count. A lot of data show that if chemicals are estrogenic, you can add up their potency. If chemicals are anti-androgenic, you can add them up. If chemicals affect thyroid, you can add them up, too.

Nobody has tried to look even more broadly and say, "Well, I'm gonna take all these chemicals that somehow block male reproduction, and I'm also gonna add that to the chemicals that do something totally different." The way I think we're going to have to eventually get at that is through what we're calling "Tox21," which is this rapid-screening approach being developed with high-throughput screening of in vitro assays. They are cell-based assays looking at many, many, many different kinds of responses. Basically, we can screen up to 10,000 chemicals a year at 15 different dose levels for at least 70 or more different kinds of responses. We can begin now to do this with mixtures where we can make many different kinds of mixtures because we can test so many at a time.

How has spending 33 years studying toxic chemicals affected your outlook on the environment?
We do know that there are many chronic health conditions, non-communicable health conditions, which have increased too rapidly in the last 20 to 40 years. These are things like autism, ADHD and, of course, obesity and diabetes. We have identified chemicals clearly at play in the obesity epidemic. I am not in any way saying to people you can stop exercising and you don't have to watch what you eat, but the question I have is: Are we setting people up to fail because they're exposed to something that alters their ability to metabolize fats or sugars?

Overall, I'd say I'm a pragmatist. I think our air in this country is cleaner than it was, but it's not as clean as it needs to be. Our water is cleaner, but again not as clean as it needs to be. We've taken care of the really blatant environmental problems. We're concerned now about low levels of lead, not the very high levels that there used to be in our environment.?That's a good thing.

Follow Scientific American on Twitter @SciAm and @SciamBlogs. Visit ScientificAmerican.com for the latest in science, health and technology news.
? 2012 ScientificAmerican.com. All rights reserved.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/chemical-soup-clouds-connection-between-toxins-poor-health-120000044.html

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Library of Congress shows diaries from Civil War

WASHINGTON (AP) ? Letters and diaries from those who lived through the Civil War offer a new glimpse at the arguments that split the nation 150 years ago and some of the festering debates that survive today.

The Library of Congress, which holds the largest collection of Civil War documents, pulled 200 items from its holdings to reveal both private and public thoughts from dozens of famous and ordinary citizens who lived in the North and the South. Many are being shown for the first time.

Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, for one, was grappling with divided federal and state allegiances. He believed his greater allegiance was to his native Virginia, as he wrote to a friend about resigning his U.S. Army commission.

"Sympathizing with you in the troubles that are pressing so heavily upon our beloved country & entirely agreeing with you in your notions of allegiance, I have been unable to make up my mind to raise my hand against my native state, my relatives, my children & my home," he wrote in 1861. "I have therefore resigned my commission in the Army."

Lee's handwritten letter is among dozens of writings from individuals who experienced the war. They are featured in the new exhibit "The Civil War in America" at the library in Washington until June 2013. Their voices also are being heard again in a new blog created for the exhibition.

For a limited time in 2013, the extensive display will feature the original draft of President Abraham Lincoln's preliminary Emancipation Proclamation and rarely shown copies of the Gettysburg Address.

Beyond the generals and famous battles, though, curators set out to tell a broader story about what Lincoln called "a people's contest."

"This is a war that trickled down into almost every home," said Civil War manuscript specialist Michelle Krowl. "Even people who may seem very far removed from the war are going to be impacted on some level. So it's a very human story."

Curators laid out a chronological journey from before the first shots were fired to the deep scars soldiers brought home in the end.

While some still debate the root causes of the war, for Benjamin Tucker Tanner in 1860, the cause was clear, as he wrote from South Carolina in his diary.

"The country seems to be bordering on a civil war all on account of slavery," wrote the future minister. "I pray God to rule and overrule all to his own glory and the good of man."

A personal letter from Mary Todd Lincoln in 1862 was recently acquired by the library and is being publicly displayed for the first time.

In the handwritten note on stationery with a black border, Mary Lincoln reveals her deep grief over the death of her son Willie months earlier. Krowl said Mary Lincoln's grief is also evident in the new movie, "Lincoln."

"When you read this letter ... you just get a palpable feeling of how in the depth that she's been and she's now finally coming out of her grief, at least to resume public affairs," Krowl said.

All the documents in the exhibit are original. They include a massive map Gen. Stonewall Jackson commissioned of Virginia's Shenandoah Valley to prepare for a major campaign.

The library also is displaying personal items from Lincoln, including the contents of his pockets on the night he was assassinated, and the pocket diary of Clara Barton who would constantly record details about soldiers she met and later founded the American Red Cross.

Some of the closing words come from soldiers who lost their right arms or hands in battle and had to learn to write left-handed. They joined a left-handed penmanship contest and shared their stories.

"I think this exhibition will have a lot of resonance for people," said exhibit director Cheryl Regan. "Certainly soldiers returning home from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are going to be incredibly moved by these stories."

___

Civil War in America: http://myloc.gov/exhibitions/civil-war-in-america/

___

Follow Brett Zongker on Twitter at https://twitter.com/DCArtBeat

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/library-congress-shows-diaries-civil-war-184302028.html

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Canadian Military History ? Friday Roundup: News, Archives, and ...

The Friday Roundup is a weekly feature that offers a look at news,?archive, and worthwhile links around the web on the study?of War and Society. This week?s documentary delves into the impact of wikileaks and some of the revealing information that has come to light about American actions in the Iraq war.?Iraq?s Secret War Files? looks into the hidden files and reveals what actually occurred and was hidden from the public eye. It raises the question of how much is hidden from the public during war and what roles do organizations such as wikileaks have in the future of modern conflict.

Research

International Committee of the Red Cross Archives

?If there is one things that many wars in the 20th century have in common it is most likely that the Red Cross was there. The ICRC?s archives include a host of publications, press releases, reports, and other materials on numerous conflicts that often are difficult to dig up research on. On top of the wealth of documents are the photo galleries which are quite impressive. Galleries featuring glimpses into conflicts in Somalia, Columbia, and other war torn nations offer a glimpse into modern war. The historical photographs are also invaluable dating back to the Great War. Although most of the material tends to focus on the operations of the ICRC, the material assists in helping to provide a real sense of what conditions are like in war.

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News

Historical Amnesia and the War of 1812

?An independent press article that attempts to debunk many of the government?s assertions about the War of 1812. Specifically challenging what the Government wishes to achieve through its commemorative program, such as French and English unity, the significance of the ?coloured corps?, and the black eye of broken promises to Britain?s native allies during the war. The article also addresses the issue of using the past as propaganda in modern Canada. This article presents a very different version of history in comparison to what Heritage Canada and the Canadian government are presenting.

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General Interests- Provided by H-Net

General?s Writing Gives Insight to Lincoln, Gettysburg?

?With the recent release of Hollywood?s newest Biopic,?Lincoln, this article is an appropriate feature. Investigating the writings of Henry Cochrane, who was on hand when Abraham Lincoln gave his most famous speech from the back of a train at Gettysburg. The writings depict Cochrane? experience riding on the train with the president to Gettysburg and conveys a?fascinating?view of the famed politician. This unique look is?definitely?worth reading.

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Documentary of the Week

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Source: http://www.canadianmilitaryhistory.ca/friday-roundup-news-archives-and-useful-links-on-the-study-of-war-and-society-november-23rd-2012/

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Rookies Ideas For Web Hosting | gillistern.com

Focused Internet hosting is exactly where an internet site has a full server to itself. So, compared with shared hosting, it?s the only web-site hosted on the server. Without entering into the technical stuff regarding the way dedicated internet hosting is effective, let us see why it can be beneficial on the ordinary business enterprise.

Overall flexibility

Committed internet hosting might be more adaptable. To be a web page is by itself server it will not get impacted by any other online sites. With shared internet hosting there are numerous online sites relating to the exact same server, which can induce them being impacted by one another. When you?ve got your own server you?ve entire deal with and much more solution is a good number of many places. You will have a solution through operating device, hardware and various other variables.

Security

Once more, not becoming effect by other online resources is helpful. The more internet sites that discuss a server the greater variables usually there are. And with additional variables arrives the increasing chances of a thing likely inappropriate. This can produce stability dilemmas. With dedicated internet hosting only purposes applicable for you are uploaded with the server as well as the full hosting of this web page is by and large way more steady.

Higher Page views Internet sites

For higher website visitors sites committed hosting is usually roughly key. The greater site traffic you possess the more immensely important it turns into. The rationale is simple ? devoted hosting can deal with more traffic. For one thing, there tends to be a bit more bandwidth attainable. A server can simply cope with a specific number of simultaneous targeted traffic. There is certainly a modest volume of bandwidth to be found as well as more online websites there?re for the server, the considerably less bandwidth is available to each. Relying for the hosting setup, one other blog within the exact same server as yours encountering a very high quantity of traffic can indicate significantly less bandwidth is offered to yours. If there can be then a variety of most people making an attempt to accessibility your internet site they might not give you the option to. Where by a server is specialized in your internet site this is simply not a difficulty except if your site alone exceeds the server?s ability. It?s not necessarily just if guests can accessibility the web site that is certainly an issue right here, even so the pace at which the web site operates. The closer to ability the server is running at the significantly more likely it?s that there may be speed complications.

Significantly better Quality Service

Devoted hosting deals constantly offer you a much better program. You might be employing an entire server with the web site internet hosting supplier this means you could be a more key consumer. You happen to be having to pay a good deal more therefore you have a more desirable services. This implies the assistance is better so any conditions are in all likelihood to be solved shortly. For example, 24/7 monitoring is commonly built-in so difficulties are recognized quickly. For a lot of internet site entrepreneurs help is very important, and with committed internet hosting support is of the bigger outstanding.

Scalability

When you have your own devoted server it has a tendency to be simple to switch to a several deal or up grade. So, when your web site abruptly develops into further well known with more people, you could improve into a needed offer.

Dedicated hosting isn?t necessary for all online websites. It is just a more suitable superior quality style of internet hosting than shared hosting, though, so for many it is really beneficial.

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Source: http://gillistern.com/1164/rookies-ideas-for-web-hosting/

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