Part 7 of each of the Income Tax Act 2007 and the Corporation Tax Act 2010 provide for community investment tax relief for investments made by individuals and companies in any body which is accredited as a community development finance institution (?CDFI?) under the Community Investment Tax Relief (Accreditation of Community Development Finance Institutions) Regulations 2003 (?the 2003 regulations?). Go to Source
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Firefighters already use infrared cameras to find people in burning buildings, but the technology can't distinguish between a person's heat and that of the surrounding fire. That's because a zoom lens is needed to concentrate the infrared rays in a way that enables the apparatus to form a human-readable image. Fortunately, a team of researchers from the Italian Institute of Optics has developed a system that ditches the lens in favor of digital holography that produces detailed 3D images in the darkness. The hardware isn't out of short trousers just yet, but the team is planning to develop a portable version for field work -- and chief Pietro Ferraro hopes that the idea will be co-opted by the aerospace and biomedical industries, too. Curious to see what all the fuss is about? Head on past the break for a video.
Spotify gave its Android app a very overdue interface overhaul last year. The iOS version wasn't in quite as dire straits, but we'd still call today's redesign a long-needed modernization that pulls out some of the clutter. Its 0.6 update mostly brings in useful concepts from the Android version, including the always-on Now Playing strip and the seemingly inescapable navigation sidebar. The update also solves a handful of stand-out flaws, such as reflecting the right track on the lock screen -- about time, really. Listeners will need a Premium subscription for more than just radio, but everyone in Spotify-supported countries can grab the update today.
Two distinct cultures were fused together last Wednesday in a public reading of poetry by Roger Sedarat as a part of the first Visiting Writers event presented by the Department of English and World Languages.
Roger Sedarat is an Iranian-American poet and translator. His translations have appeared in such publications as ?World Literature Today? and the ?Drunken Boat.?
Roger Sedarat
Sedarat merges traditional Persian verse with post-modern American poetic tradition to create a style of poetry that reflects his own unique heritage. Sedarat often incorporates political themes in his poetry that confronts the oppressive government of Iran.
Jonathan Fink, associate professor and director of creative writing, introduced Sedarat to a full room of students in the Argonaut Athletic Club on Feb. 20.
?One of the great pleasures of Roger Sedarat?s poetry resides in Roger?s ability to combine political and social indictment with the ambiguity and complexity of personal experience,? Fink said. ?Roger?s work goes beyond the familiar role of the poet that is witnessed and instead investigates the paradoxical powers and inadequacies of both social justice and language itself.?
Sedarat, an associate professor in the Master of Fine Arts program at Queens College, City University of New York, is the author of two poetry collections, ?Dear Regime: Letters to the Islamic Republic,? which was published in 2007 and received the Hollis Summers Poetry Prize, and ?Ghazal Games,? published in 2011. Sedarat is currently translating a collection of poems by the 14th century Persian poet, Hafez.
During the poetry reading, Sedarat read excerpts from his collections. The excerpts included ?Unknown Aboth,? profound letters addressing the politics of Iran and erotic expressions of love and hysterical poems that mocked the invention of Facebook and a Persian rendition of the nursery rhyme ?This Little Piggy,? instead called ?This Little Hagi.?
Sedarat also shared personal stories related to his poetry and engaged the audience in a poetry game that taught them how to write a ghazal. A ghazal is a traditional Persian form of poetry that is composed of five to fifteen couplets that are the same length but can contain different themes and emotions.
Sedarat told the audience that imitation works best when developing their own personal writing style.
?The best teacher for you is the books you are going to read and rhetorical models of the masters,? he said.
After the poetry reading, Sedarat answered questions from students in the audience about everything from the craft of literary translation to the difference between writing free verse poetry and poetry that follows a form.
Fink said that he met Sedarat years ago while attending the Breadloaf Writer?s Conference, a prestigious writing workshop held in Middlebury, Vt.
Fink also said that the Visiting Writers series encourages students to become familiar with the work of current writers.
?A lot of times students will have the misconception that no one who writes poetry is still alive,? he said. ?So I think it?s great that you can have writers who are currently practicing and are relevant at what they?re doing, and they can answer a lot of the questions from a practical perspective that students are working with themselves.?
Fink said that he invited Sedarat because he admired his talent as a writer and translator.
?When you work as a translator, you?re not just creating your own work, but you?re acknowledging the previous work that came before you and helping to carry that material to a new audience.?
Christy Slack, a senior English major, said that she attended the event because she is interested in the art of translation and can relate to Sedarat.
?I just love listening to creative writers,? she said. ?I read their work. It?s definitely different to listen to them read their own work because it flows differently from when I read it. Also, he definitely had a different appeal to me from the other creative writers that we?ve invited, especially since he has dual citizenship, and I have dual citizenship in Japan.?
The next writer in the Visiting Writers series will be United States Poet Laureate Natasha Trethaway, who will speak at the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition March 28 at 6 p.m.
It's no wonder Jennifer Hudson's "Smash" character Veronica Moore is a Broadway sensation. She's got a bona fide Broadway star as a mother -- or at least as the actress playing her mother. Sheryl Lee Ralph made her debut this week as Veronica's overbearing mother/manager, Cynthia, and she immediately started to spar with Derek.
Veronica was wanting to overhaul her image, and Derek certainly had a more sexually charged vision for her. But this show was going to be broadcast on television, so Cynthia had some serious concerns about Veronica going more mature. So she basically threatened Derek into keeping Veronica's image pure.
"What if it gets out that you were fired because you pushed her in a sexual direction that she didn?t like?" Cynthia asked him. "Now what?s that gonna do for your career?"
But Veronica wanted to change her image into something more mature, and so she pushed for Derek's vision despite her mother's protests. Instead, she simply encouraged her mother to watch and hoped she would enjoy. In the end, her mother was giving her the loudest applause in the audience.
Entertainment Weekly loved Ralph's guest spot, writing that she helped bring back some of the magic "Smash" has been missing this season. But it's viewers the show really needs. After debuting with ratings lower than Season 1, the show's viewership has only continued to drop.
The music and drama continues on "Smash" every Tuesday at 10 p.m. EST on NBC.
TV Replay scours the vast television landscape to find the most interesting, amusing, and, on a good day, amazing moments, and delivers them right to your browser.
In "Spiderman 2," the superhero uses his webbing to stop a runaway train from plunging off its track. The feat seems improbable, but the toughest of spider silks really are up to the task, according to a group of British college students.
James Forster, Mark Bryan and Alex Stone, fourth-year physics students at the University of Leicester, took it upon themselves to model the forces upon the webbing in such a situation and compared it to measured values on the stiffness and strength of real spider?s webbing.
Given a fully loaded train carrying nearly 1,000 passengers barreling down the track at top speed, they found that a spider web would have to stand up to 300,000 Newtons of force. This figure then allowed them to calculate the toughness of the web at 500 megajoules per cubic meter.
The students said this toughness is in line with the web from a Darwin?s Bark Spider ? an orb weaver with the strongest known webbing of any spider.
?Having determined these parameters, it can be stated that Spiderman?s webbing is a proportional equivalent of that of a real spider,? the trio conclude in a paper published in the University of Leicester?s Journal of Physics Special Topics.
The journal is published once a year by the university and is filled with short papers written by students in the final year of their physics degree program. It is an exercise meant to teach them about publishing and the peer-review process.
"Spiderman has always been claimed to have the scaled up abilities of a spider and spiderweb has oft been quoted to be stronger than steel," Stone told NBC News via email. "We wanted to see whether or not Spiderman's web, when pushed to its limits, was a reasonable facsimile of a real spider's web."
"In so doing, we also show what real spider's webs would be capable of if used on a larger, human scale," he added, noting that humans have recently gained the ability to produce spider-silk-like material at scale.
The three are far from the first physicists to get tangled up in the science of superheroes. James Kalkalios, a professor at the University of Minnesota, for example, recently created a new algorithm for cell regeneration that appeared in "The Amazing Spiderman." He served as a science consultant for the film, released last year.
?Hollywood creators appreciate our contributions, for they realize that when the audience is questioning the physics of what they are watching or the authenticity of the laboratory set, that's a moment when they are not paying attention to the story,? he explained in an article for NBC News.
?The goal is not to ensure that everything on the screen is 100 percent scientifically accurate ? which would, after all, defeat the purpose of the escapist fantasy we have paid our money to watch ? but rather to get it just right enough to maintain the audience?s suspension of disbelief.?
John Roach is a contributing writer for NBC News. To learn more about him, check out his website. For more of our Future of Technology series, watch the featured video below.
As the country inches closer to the March 1 sequester deadline, President Barack Obama on Tuesday travels to Newport News, Va., to illustrate what he and the administration believe will be the devastating economic impacts of the spending cuts.
Obama will use Newport News Shipbuilding, which supplies materials to all 50 states, to press his case for Republicans to compromise on tax increases for the wealthiest Americans and some corporations, and pass a budget to avoid the sequester?across-the-board cuts set to occur in the absence of a budget.
Newport News is a place "where workers will sit idle when they should be repairing ships, and a carrier sits idle when it should be deploying to the Persian Gulf," Obama told governors gathered at the White House on Monday for the National Governors Association annual meeting.
Tuesday's trip is the latest effort by the White House to argue against the sequester. Some Republicans have indicated they would allow it to go into effect should Congress fail to agree on a federal budget that they feel adequately reduces spending and the deficit.
In addition to Obama's speech on Monday to the nation's governors?during which he implored them to urge their congressional delegations to find a budget compromise?the sequester was tackled by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano during Monday's White House briefing. There, she warned that lines for customs and border crossings will significantly increase and trade will slow down due to spending cuts necessitated by the sequester.
The president is set to speak in Virginia at 1:05 p.m. ET.
Feb. 23, 2013 ? A study, published by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), shows that just like humans love getting stuck into a crossword, chimpanzees get the same feeling of satisfaction from completing tricky puzzles.
Scientists set up a challenge for six chimpanzees at ZSL Whipsnade Zoo using plumbing pipes from a DIY store. The challenge involved moving red dice through a network of pipes until they fell into an exit chamber. This could only be achieved by the chimps prodding sticks into holes in the pipes to change the direction of the dice. The same task was also carried out with Brazil nuts, but the exit chamber removed so that the nuts fell out as a tasty treat for the chimps.
The paper was published February 24 in the American Journal of Primatology.
ZSL researcher Fay Clark says: "We noticed that the chimps were keen to complete the puzzle regardless of whether or not they received a food reward. This strongly suggests they get similar feelings of satisfaction to humans who often complete brain games for a feel-good reward."
The adult family group of chimpanzees at ZSL Whipsnade Zoo consist of two females and four males, three of which are half-brothers: Phil, Grant and Elvis. This study allowed them to solve a novel cognitive problem in their normal social grouping, by choice. In addition, the chimpanzees were not trained on how to use the device.
"For chimps in the wild, this task is a little bit like foraging for insects or honey inside a tree stump or a termite mound; except more challenging because the dice do not stick to the tool," Fay added.
The challenge, which only cost about ?40 to make, was made more intricate by connecting many pipes together, and the level further increased by making pipes opaque so chimpanzees could only see the dice or nuts through small holes.
The chimps took part in the cognitive challenge as part of their normal daily routine and doing the brain teaser was completely voluntarily. As part of the Zoo's enrichment programme, they also receive tasty treats hidden in boxes, as well as pillows and blankets every night to make up their own beds. Chimps build their own nests every night in the wild, and this enrichment encourages the animals' natural behaviours.
This study suggests that like humans, chimpanzees are motivated to solve a puzzle when there is no food reward. They do so for the sake of the challenge itself. It also suggests that chimpanzee cognition can be measured on social groups under more naturalistic conditions.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Zoological Society of London, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
Fay E. Clark, Lauren J. Smith. Effect of a Cognitive Challenge Device Containing Food and Non-Food Rewards on Chimpanzee Well-Being. American Journal of Primatology, 2013; DOI: 10.1002/ajp.22141
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
Video: Scientists find genes linked to human neurological disorders in sea lamprey genome
Monday, February 25, 2013
Scientists at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) have identified several genes linked to human neurological disorders, including Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease and spinal cord injury, in the sea lamprey, a vertebrate fish whose whole-genome sequence is reported this week in the journalNature Genetics.
"This means that we can use the sea lamprey as a powerful model to drive forward our molecular understanding of human neurodegenerative disease and neurological disorders," says Jennifer Morgan of the MBL's Eugene Bell Center for Regenerative Biology and Tissue Engineering. The ultimate goals are to determine what goes wrong with neurons after injury and during disease, and to determine how to correct these deficits in order to restore normal nervous system functions.
Unlike humans, the lamprey has an extraordinary capacity to regenerate its nervous system. If a lamprey's spinal cord is severed, it can regenerate the damaged nerve cells and be swimming again in 10-12 weeks.
Morgan and her collaborators at MBL, Ona Bloom and Joseph Buxbaum, have been studying the lamprey's recovery from spinal cord injury since 2009. The lamprey has large, identified neurons in its brain and spinal cord, making it an excellent model to study regeneration at the single cell-level. Now, the lamprey's genomic information gives them a whole new "toolkit" for understanding its regenerative mechanisms, and for comparing aspects of its physiology, such as inflammation response, to that of humans.
The lamprey genome project was accomplished by a consortium of 59 researchers led by Weiming Li of Michigan State University and Jeramiah Smith of the University of Kentucky. The MBL scientists' contribution focused on neural aspects of the genome, including one of the project's most intriguing findings.
Lampreys, in contrast to humans, don't have myelin, an insulating sheath around neurons that allows faster conduction of nerve impulses. Yet the consortium found genes expressed in the lamprey that are normally expressed in myelin. In humans, myelin-associated molecules inhibit nerves from regenerating if damaged. "A lot of the focus of the spinal cord injury field is on neutralizing those inhibitory molecules," Morgan says.
Jennifer Morgan and Ona Bloom are using an ugly fish with a beautiful spinal cord, the sea lamprey, to study mechanisms of recovery from spinal cord injury at the MBL in Woods Hole, Mass. Credit: Diana Kenney/MBL
"So there is an interesting conundrum," Morgan says. "What are these myelin-associated genes doing in an animal that doesn't have myelin, and yet is good at regeneration? It opens up a new and interesting set of questions, " she says. Addressing them could bring insight to why humans lost the capacity for neural regeneration long ago, and how this might be restored.
At present, Morgan and her collaborators are focused on analyzing which genes are expressed and when, after spinal cord injury and regeneration. The whole-genome sequence gives them an invaluable reference for their work.
Morgan, Bloom, and Buxbaum collaborate at the MBL through funding by the Charles Evans Foundation. Bloom is based at the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research/Hofstra North Shore-Long Island Jewish in New York. Buxbaum is from Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York.
###
Smith JJ et al (2013) Sequencing of the sea lamprey (Petromyzon marinus) genome provides insight into vertebrate evolution. Nature Genetics: DOI: 10.1038/ng.2568
Marine Biological Laboratory: http://www.mbl.edu
Thanks to Marine Biological Laboratory for this article.
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One Purim, shortly before my second daughter, Hallel, turned 5-years-old, she sat rapt, listening to the Book of Esther. The story opens with King Ahashverosh hosting a banquet, and demanding that his wife, Queen Vashti, come dance for the male merry-makers. She refuses. When Hallel heard Vashti say no to the king, she sat up straight, her eyes widened, and she called out, "Like Rosa Parks!"
Again it is Purim, and again Hallel will celebrate a birthday. Now she is turning 18. She spent the past summer in Ghana with the American Jewish World Service, volunteering at a school for children who had been slaves in the fishing industry. These children were rescued or purchased to freedom by the organization, Challenging Heights, that runs the school. Its founder was a child slave himself, the only survivor of his sibling group of four. Some of the children at Challenging Heights are orphans, some have families who were too poor to protect them from such evil.
Hallel's two sisters, Aliza, 19, and Ashira, 9, are also my husband's and my biological children. Her two brothers, our sons, were once orphans in Ethiopia. Our older son, Adar, now 14, came home when he was 9-months-old. Our younger son, Zamir, now 11, came home more recently, when he was 4-years-old. We were matched with Adar on Purim in 1999 and he's named for the month in which Purim falls. Zamir came home to us one week before Purim in 2006. It was the first Jewish holiday he celebrated.
Our family has a deep and joyful connection to Purim. Even though it is a day of hafuch-al-hafuch -- everything upside down and inside out -- of games and costumes and hidden identities, it's been, for us, a time of transcendence and purpose. Of clarity. After all, Purim bought the revelation of our two sons.
Esther is an orphan who is also revealed, or reveals herself. But in kind of the opposite -- hafuch! -- way from our sons. While being Jewish was something that my sons grew openly and joyful into, it was something Esther hid. Raised by her older cousin, Mordecai, she competed with many Persian women to replace Queen Vashti after her abrupt departure from the palace. Once there, she discovered a plot by Ahashverosh's right-hand-man, Haman, to slaughter the Jews.
"Mi yodea?" Mordecai asks his younger cousin, his ward. Perhaps, he suggests, saving our people is the reason you were brought here. Mi yodea? Who knows?
This Purim season, on the first day of the month of Adar, Hallel and I joined more than 100 women on the women's side of the sex-segregated courtyard of the Western Wall, praying, singing, dancing, blessing. And immediately after, along with eight other women, getting taken away by the police and detained for four hours. Our crime? Wearing prayer shawls and singing joyfully at the Western Wall.
You can find the details of the law preventing Jews from practicing Judaism in Jerusalem, and all over Israel, frankly, online. Let me give you my experience of this phenomenon. First, the coalition political system here in Israel gives small, extreme groups, specifically religious ones, disproportionate power. The Knesset could be compared to Achashverosh, the King in our Purim story, who was a wuss. He leaned toward evil when Haman had his ear, and toward good when Mordecai and Esther had his ear. Too many in the Kneset will bow toward those who can bring them power. But I want to look at theological power, at religious abuses of power. Some in the Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) community has Kneset Ahashverosh's ear. And they claim authority, authority over Jewish religious practice, over holy sites, over what women wear and where we sit on buses. Power for all Jewish practice to conform to their understanding alone.
All Jews who take Sinai as their paradigm for authority and purpose -- God's command that we become a Kingdom of Priests, each one of us in direct relationship with and an interpreter of God -- are obligated to reveal ourselves as brave and proactive Jews, like Esther. And the few who seek to hoard God, idol-like, for themselves, in their own images, are obligated to learn from Mordecai's humilty and ask: Who knows?
Some Jews will prioritize care for the orphan and the stranger, and ignore Jewish ritual practice. Some will keep kosher and the Sabbath to varying degrees and in various ways, while seeking justice in society. Some will take the smallest, most extreme and skewed rules and make them into the whole of Judaism. And everything betwixt and between. It is an endless variety, as it should be. That is the democratic power of Judaism that somehow and eventually manages to allow the highest ideals to gain momentum.
We end public readings of the Scroll of Esther with a blessing. "Blessed are you, God, who takes up our grievance, judges our claim and avenges the wrongs against us. You bring retribution on our enemies and vengeance on our foes." It's a tragedy when those we have in mind are other Jews.
Wrapped in Jewish prayer shawls, Rabbi Susan Silverman, second left, the sister of comedian Sarah Silverman, not seen, along with her teenage daughter Hallel Abramowitz, second right, are detained by police officers in Jerusalem's Old City, Monday, Feb. 11, 2013. The head of the Women of the Wall organization, a liberal Jewish women?s group, said 10 women were detained for wearing religious garb which Orthodox Judaism reserves for men only. About 300 people gathered at the Western Wall Monday to protest the Orthodox Jewish control of the site. (AP Photo/Tali Mayer)
Israeli police arrest American Rabbi Susan Silverman (L), sister of comedian Sarah Silverman, and her teenage daughter Hallel Abramowitz (C), after performing Rosh Hodesh prayers at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, on February 11, 2013. The prayer was organized by the Women of Wall, a group which calls for rights of women to pray at Judaism's holiest site without restriction. (Janos Chiala/AFP/Getty Images)
American Rabbi Susan Silverman (L), sister of comedian Sarah Silverman, hugs her teenage daughter Hallel Abramowitz, after being arrested by Israeli police for performing Rosh Hodesh prayers at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, on February 11, 2013. The prayer was organized by the Women of Wall, a group which calls for rights of women to pray at Judaism's holiest site without restriction. (Janos Chiala/AFP/Getty Images)
Israeli police arrest American Rabbi Susan Silverman (L), sister of comedian Sarah Silverman, and her teenage daughter Hallel Abramowitz (C), after performing Rosh Hodesh prayers at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, on February 11, 2013. The prayer was organized by the Women of Wall, a group which calls for rights of women to pray at Judaism's holiest site without restriction. (Janos Chiala/AFP/Getty Images)
Israeli police arrest American Rabbi Susan Silverman (L), sister of comedian Sarah Silverman, and her teenage daughter Hallel Abramowitz (C), after performing Rosh Hodesh prayers at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, on February 11, 2013. The prayer was organized by the Women of Wall, a group which calls for rights of women to pray at Judaism's holiest site without restriction. (Janos Chiala/AFP/Getty Images)
Israeli women of the Women of the Wall organization hold a Torah scroll during a prayer just outside the Western Wall, the holiest site where Jews can pray in Jerusalem's old city, Friday, Dec. 14, 2012. Security guards at the Western Wall, the holiest place where Jews can pray, usually search worshippers for weapons upon entering. But on Friday, they were on the lookout for a seemingly inoffensive possession: Jewish prayer shawls. The shawls are ubiquitous at the holy site, and under Orthodox tradition, are worn only by men. When several dozen women draped in them attempted to enter the area, their multicolored garments were confiscated. (AP Photo/Dan Balilty)
Israeli women of the Women of the Wall organization pray just outside the Western Wall, the holiest site where Jews can pray, in Jerusalem's old city, Friday, Dec. 14, 2012. Security guards at the Western Wall, the holiest place where Jews can pray, usually search worshippers for weapons upon entering. But on Friday, they were on the lookout for a seemingly inoffensive possession: Jewish prayer shawls. The shawls are ubiquitous at the holy site, and under Orthodox tradition, are worn only by men. When several dozen women draped in them attempted to enter the area, their multicolored garments were confiscated. (AP Photo/Dan Balilty)
Israeli women of the Women of the Wall organization pray just outside the Western Wall, the holiest site where Jews can pray in Jerusalem's old city, Friday, Dec. 14, 2012. Security guards at the Western Wall, the holiest place where Jews can pray, usually search worshippers for weapons upon entering. But on Friday, they were on the lookout for a seemingly inoffensive possession: Jewish prayer shawls. The shawls are ubiquitous at the holy site, and under Orthodox tradition, are worn only by men. When several dozen women draped in them attempted to enter the area, their multicolored garments were confiscated. (AP Photo/Dan Balilty)
Israeli women of the Women of the Wall organization pray just outside the Western Wall, the holiest site where Jews can pray in Jerusalem's old city, Friday, Dec. 14, 2012. Security guards at the Western Wall, the holiest place where Jews can pray, usually search worshippers for weapons upon entering. But on Friday, they were on the lookout for a seemingly inoffensive possession: Jewish prayer shawls. The shawls are ubiquitous at the holy site, and under Orthodox tradition, are worn only by men. When several dozen women draped in them attempted to enter the area, their multicolored garments were confiscated. (AP Photo/Dan Balilty)
An ultra-Orthodox Jewish man tries to pray louder than the Israeli women of the Women of the Wall group in an attempt to drown them out, as they pray at the Western Wall, the holiest site where Jews can pray, in Jerusalem's Old City, Friday, Oct. 28, 2011. Since its founding in 1989, Women of the Wall has fought a legal battle asserting a right to conduct organized prayer at the Western Wall. The group has included women reading from the Torah and wearing prayer accessories that in Orthodox Judaism are used only by men. (AP Photo/Tara Todras-Whitehill)
A Jewish man wearing tefillin, a leather strapped box containing Torah scripture, prays in solidarity with the women of the Women of the Wall group, not pictured, as they pray at the Western Wall, the holiest site where Jews can pray, in Jerusalem's Old City, Friday, Oct. 28, 2011. Since its founding in 1989, Women of the Wall has fought a legal battle asserting a right to conduct organized prayer at the Western Wall. The group has included women reading from the Torah and wearing prayer accessories that in Orthodox Judaism are used only by men. (AP Photo/Tara Todras-Whitehill)
Israeli women of the Women of the Wall group pray at the Western Wall, the holiest site where Jews can pray, in Jerusalem's Old City, Friday, Oct. 28, 2011. Since its founding in 1989, Women of the Wall has fought a legal battle asserting a right to conduct organized prayer at the Western Wall. The group has included women reading from the Torah and wearing prayer accessories that in Orthodox Judaism are used only by men. (AP Photo/Tara Todras-Whitehill)
A member of the Women of the Wall, a group of religiously-observant Jewish women, wears a talit (traditional Jewish prayer shawl for men) during a prayer service at the women's section of the Western Wall, Judaism holiest site, in Jerusalem's old city on Nov. 8, 2010 to mark one year since a woman was arrested for carrying a Torah and wearing a prayer shawl in what is considered an illegal act. (GALI TIBBON/AFP/Getty Images)
(FILES)--In this November 08, 2010 file photo, Women of the Wall, a group of religiously-observant Jewish women, wear kippas (Jewish skullcap) as they hold a prayer service at the Western Wall, Judaism holiest site, in Jerusalem's old city to mark one year since a woman was arrested for carrying a Torah and wearing a prayer shawl in what is considered an illegal act. Israel's cabinet on Nov. 21, 2010, approved plans to invest millions of shekels in a five-year project to expand the plaza next to the Western Wall, one of Judaism's holiest sites in Jerusalem's Old City. (GALI TIBBON/AFP/Getty Images)
Women of the Wall, a group of religiously-observant Jewish women, wear kippas (Jewish skullcap) as they hold a prayer service at the Western Wall, Judaism holiest site, in Jerusalem's old city on Nov. 8, 2010 to mark one year since a woman was arrested for carrying a Torah and wearing a prayer shawl in what is considered an illegal act. (GALI TIBBON/AFP/Getty Images)
A member of the Women of the Wall, a group of religiously-observant Jewish women, holds a Torah scroll during a prayer service outside the Western Wall plaza, Judaism holiest site, in Jerusalems old city on Nov. 8, 2010 to mark one year since a woman was arrested for carrying a Torah and wearing a prayer shawl in what is considered an illegal act. (GALI TIBBON/AFP/Getty Images)
Mideast Israel Palestinians Conversion
Rabbi Susan Silverman lives with her husband, Yosef Abramowitz, and their five children in Jerusalem, Israel. She just completed a book, Casting Lots: A Memoir of Family, Adoption and God.
Well, this might just be the biggest news to come out of Mobile World Congress. Long after discontinuing the TouchPad (and the rest of its mobile devices, for that matter) HP is back with a new tablet. This time, though, it runs not webOS, but an old safety: Android. Interestingly, though, HP is returning to the tablet space not with a high-end flagship, but a lower-end device priced to sell. The Slate 7 is priced at $169, with modest specs that include a dual-core A9 processor, 1GB of RAM, 16GB of built-in storage, a 7-inch, 1,024 x 600 display and dual 3MP / VGA cameras. All that said, it could be worth a second look when it goes on sale in April. Meet us past the break to see what we mean.
Hundreds of thousands of jobs are at risk. Delays await at airports. Padlocks are ready at national parks.
The nation will suffer greater risk of wildfires, workplace deaths, and even surprise weather events, if government predictions are to be believed. Our entire military readiness and superiority are at risk.
What if nobody cares?
President Obama sure does. He's making the case, aggressively and comprehensively, that the automatic spending cuts set to go into effect at the end of the month will have a devastating impact, both on the economy and on essential government services.
"They will slow our economy. They will eliminate good jobs. They will leave many families who are already stretched to the limit scrambling to figure out what to do," the president said Saturday in his weekly radio address.
But there are few signs to suggest the public is listening. A poll out late last week found that barely one in four Americans said they'd heard much about the automatic spending cuts - known unhelpfully for public-comprehension purposes as "sequestration" - and four in 10 said they were comfortable with the cuts going into effect.
"Here's yet another deadline, and everyone's telling us everything will be destroyed if we go past it," said Michael Dimock, director of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, which conducted the poll. "It's very hard to get the same sense of urgency for a third time in a row, just two months after the last one."
Call it cliff fatigue. After a series of dramatic confrontations with congressional Republicans, an American electorate that has little trust in Washington - and that's seeing a soaring stock market, plus a recovering housing market - looks to be tuning out the latest round of fiscal fighting, at least for now.
That's troublesome news for Obama, and not just for the recurring fights over spending and deficits. As his second-term agenda gets cranking with Congress' return this week, the president needs to convince the public not just on the merits of his priorities but also on the urgency.
This may be the only time in his presidency where heavy legislative lifts are realistic. That period is starting with a rough stretch: The spending cuts Obama once guaranteed would never take place now almost definitely will.
The fight is displaying Washington at its worst - all accusations and finger-pointing, no real attempts at problem-solving. Both sides have plans, but the president is spending far more energy explaining why the sequester is the Republicans' fault, and how bad the consequences of those cuts will be, than he is trying to negotiate something that would stop it.
"It really is sad. The president's stock in trade is political games, and this is another political game he's playing," Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., vice chairman of the House Budget Committee, told ABC News. "It results in greater cynicism on the part of the public, and none of the things he's saying are true. And people recognize this - it's 2-and-a-half cents on every dollar."
Price said the president is exaggerating the impact of cuts that amount to less than 2.5 percent of federal spending - an estimated $85 billion this year, out of a federal budget in the neighborhood of $3.5 trillion.
Moreover, Price said, the public will wind up blaming the president - notwithstanding polling that suggests the opposite for now. While many Republicans are on record preferring alternatives to the across-the-board cuts, they also argue that the president could mitigate their impact if he so chose.
"People know that if bad things occur, it's because the president wants them to occur," Price said. "The president is the president. He's in charge of the government. He has the authority right now to make sure bad things don't happen."
The White House disputes that such flexibility exists, given the blunt mechanisms in a law that was designed to never be implemented because it was so draconian.
"Only Congress can avoid this self-inflicted wound to our economy and middle class families," White House communications director Jennifer Palmieri wrote in an official blog posting last week.
Lawmakers may wind up explicitly granting the administration flexibility in distributing the cuts as part of a compromise that would only be passed after they go into effect. Beyond that, however, one side will have to give to avoid the once-unthinkable from being reality.
In the meantime, the president will continue to make the case that the sequester is Republicans' doing. He'll be at a shipyard in Newport News, Va., on Tuesday, to highlight the particular impact on defense programs.
The president needs the public to care deeply about budget cuts. If the sequester doesn't register in the national consciousness, airport lines will be nothing compared to the wait for Republicans to join the president at a negotiating table again.
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The Agriculture Department's Food Safety and Inspection Service reports that the Virginia company recalled certain containers of a product called "Gwaltney mild pork?sausage?roll."
The?sausage?was produced on Jan. 11 and was distributed in Alabama, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, North Carolina, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Texas. The problem was discovered after the company received two consumer complaints. There have been no reports of injury.
Consumers with questions about the recall should call 877-933-4625.
iOS (Jailbroken): The lock screen on the iPhone hasn't changed much since its inception, but if you're looking to give it a slight overhaul without changing everything, SubtleLock is a simple little jailbreak tweak that gives your lock screen a lot more room to breath.
SubtleLock reduces the size of the clock, stuffs the date into the corner, and shrinks down the "slide to unlock" area. The benefit here is that it offers a heck of a lot more room for notifications when they come in. It also fully supports other apps like LockInfo and Dashboard X to give you more room to display useful info on your lock screen.
Chris Sharp, of Indio, got the news on Wednesday that he along with more than 20 employees at the 3-year-old business R&R Golf Cars in Rancho Mirage were being laid off.
"The owner came up and said we're closing the doors. We went bankrupt. We're done," said Sharp.
Sharp tells us the business closed shop only a week after he was promoted from delivery to parts manager.
"There's a lot of pissed off customers and a lot of angry employees. They have no communication. Everyone's confused on about what's going on out here," said Sharp.
Many of them showed up on Thursday in search of answers from the owner Rory Royston, 23. They also involved the sheriff's department while they could only watch as inventory was loaded up and towed away to be locked down in storage.
"They had trucks lined up. You couldn't even drive in here last night. You couldn't drive in here this morning. They were loading up the golf carts," said Christian Reyes, an employee at neighboring business Patios Plus.
A sign posted on the door reads that the business is closing and "current customers will recieve a call next week."
"They were angry. They wanted to know where their stuff was. They have people's golf carts that they paid for. And they rightfully should get some answers and they don't have that," said Reyes.
We called Royston. He says he laid off nearly two dozen employees at his Rancho Mirage show room and Palm Desert service department, admitting that his business went under and he's filing for bankruptcy.
It was a shock to some, however others felt it coming.
"I've been calling it that they were going out of business just because you couldn't order parts for weeks," said Geoffrey Benedetto, a former employee.
"He tried to grow too fast. He's a young owner, he's really young. He's 23 years old and he owns a multi-million dollar company. I just think he wanted to grow faster than he was able to do and kind of lost track of things," said Sharp.
Royston tells us he's working to "restructure so everyone gets paid."
Meanwhile, customers and vendors say they want their carts and their money.
"I hope that Rory does the right things and all the customers out here are happy and get taken care of and they don't have to deal with losing 10s of thousands of dollars," said Sharp.
Employee Jarvin Aivaz says he will personally help Royston deliver the carts without pay to their rightful owners on Friday.
Royston tells us he did the best he could as a young business owner, but unfortunately failed and hopes to bounce back.
LONDON (Reuters) - World share markets fell and the dollar and safe-haven assets rose on Thursday, a day after minutes of the Federal Reserve's last policy meeting cast doubts over how much longer the U.S. central bank would stick to its stimulus plan.
After the minutes were released the euro skidded to a six-week low against the dollar of $1.3235, Asian shares experienced their worst day in seven months and gold hit its lowest price since last July, at $1,554.49 an ounce.
"Disagreement over the current path is causing concern for a market that demands certainty," Ben Taylor, a trader at CMC Markets, said of evidence Fed officials were divided on policy.
MSCI's world equity index <.miwd00000pus>, which only on Wednesday had touched a 4-1/2 year high, fell 0.5 percent as the benchmark S&P 500 index <.spx> suffered its steepest daily percentage decline since mid-November.
European markets joined in the selloff with the FTSE Eurofirst 300 index <.fteu3> shedding 0.5 percent, led lower by the banks <.sxip>, which have been at forefront of recent gains. London's FTSE 100 <.ftse>, Paris's CAC-40 <.fchi> and Frankfurt's DAX <.gdaxi> were all down as much as 0.7 percent.
However, market sentiment could get some support from the release of first reading from February Purchasing Managers' Indexes (PMIs) from across Europe later in the day.
The euro-zone composite PMI is expected to have risen for a fourth consecutive month in February to around 49.0, adding to evidence that economic conditions across the recession-hit region are gradually improving.
The PMI reading would still leave the composite index below the 50 mark which separates expansion from contraction and analysts estimate it would be consistent with a small fall in GDP for a fourth consecutive quarter.
In the fixed income market, German bonds, normally considered a safe haven, saw prices rise with the main Bund futures contract up 30 ticks to 142.85. The move reversed a fall seen on Wednesday but kept the contract within a narrow band before an Italian general election this weekend.
Spain was set to test market sentiment for peripheral euro zone debt with the sale of up to four billion euros of new paper.
The dollar followed up a big gain on Wednesday against a basket of major currencies to add a further 0.1 percent, although it dipped slightly against the yen to 93.41.
Among commodities, London copper struck its lowest in nearly two months, at $7,880 a metric ton, while crude oil extended losses after posting its biggest daily fall so far this year on Wednesday.
(Reporting by Richard Hubbard; Editing by Alastair Macdonald)
The Democratic National Committee raised $4.3 million in January, but is still weighed down by a significant amount of post-election debt.
While it?s not unusual for political parties to creep into the red after an election, Democratic Party ended the 2012 cycle with a debt of $21.5 million, according to a new filing with the Federal Elections Commission.
The committee?s latest report shows the DNC paying down nearly $700,000 of their post-election debt ? which shrank to $20.7 million.
Earlier Wednesday, the RNC announced it had raised $6.9 million in January, with $7.1 million in the bank. The committee retired the last of its outstanding debt at the end of 2012.
Schizophrenia genes increase chance of IQ lossPublic release date: 21-Feb-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Eleanor Cowie eleanor.cowie@ed.ac.uk 44-131-650-6382 University of Edinburgh
University of Edinburgh news release: Study shows Schizophrenia genes increase chance of IQ loss
People who are at greater genetic risk of schizophrenia are more likely to see a fall in IQ as they age, even if they do not develop the condition.
Scientists at the University of
Edinburgh say the findings could lead to new research into how different genes for schizophrenia affect brain function over time. They also show that genes associated with schizophrenia influence people in other important ways besides causing the illness itself.
The researchers used the latest genetic analysis techniques to reach their conclusion on how thinking skills change with age.
They compared the IQ scores of more than 1,000 people from Edinburgh who were tested for general cognitive functions in 1947, when the subjects were aged 11, and again when they were around 70 years old.
The researchers were able to examine people's genes and calculate each subject's genetic likelihood of developing schizophrenia, even though none of the group had ever developed the illness.
They then compared the IQ scores of people with a high and low risk of developing schizophrenia. They found that there was no difference at age 11, but people with a greater genetic risk of schizophrenia had slightly lower IQs at age 70.
Those people who had more genes linked to schizophrenia also had a greater estimated fall in IQ over their lifetime than those at lower risk.
Ian Deary, Director of the University of Edinburgh's Centre for Cognitive Ageing and Cognitive Epidemiology, who led the research team, said: "Retaining our thinking skills as we grow older is important for living well and independently. If nature has loaded a person's genes towards schizophrenia, then there is a slight but detectable worsening in cognitive functions between childhood and old age."
Andrew McIntosh, of the University of Edinburgh's Centre for Clinical Brain Sciences, said: "With further research into how these genes affect the brain, it could become possible to understand how genes linked to schizophrenia affect people's cognitive functions as they age."
###
Schizophrenia a severe mental disorder characterised by delusions and by hallucinations is in part caused by genetic factors. It affects around 1 per cent of the population, often in the teenage or early adult years, and is associated with problems in mental ability and memory.
The study, which was funded by the BBSRC, Age UK, and the Chief Scientist Office, is published in the journal Biological Psychiatry.
The University of Edinburgh's Centre for Cognitive Ageing and Cognitive Epidemiology is funded by the Cross Council Lifelong Health and Wellbeing initiative.
For further information, please contact: Eleanor Cowie, Press and PR Office, tel +44 131 650 6382 or Email Eleanor.Cowie@ed.ac.uk
[ | E-mail | Share ]
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Schizophrenia genes increase chance of IQ lossPublic release date: 21-Feb-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Eleanor Cowie eleanor.cowie@ed.ac.uk 44-131-650-6382 University of Edinburgh
University of Edinburgh news release: Study shows Schizophrenia genes increase chance of IQ loss
People who are at greater genetic risk of schizophrenia are more likely to see a fall in IQ as they age, even if they do not develop the condition.
Scientists at the University of
Edinburgh say the findings could lead to new research into how different genes for schizophrenia affect brain function over time. They also show that genes associated with schizophrenia influence people in other important ways besides causing the illness itself.
The researchers used the latest genetic analysis techniques to reach their conclusion on how thinking skills change with age.
They compared the IQ scores of more than 1,000 people from Edinburgh who were tested for general cognitive functions in 1947, when the subjects were aged 11, and again when they were around 70 years old.
The researchers were able to examine people's genes and calculate each subject's genetic likelihood of developing schizophrenia, even though none of the group had ever developed the illness.
They then compared the IQ scores of people with a high and low risk of developing schizophrenia. They found that there was no difference at age 11, but people with a greater genetic risk of schizophrenia had slightly lower IQs at age 70.
Those people who had more genes linked to schizophrenia also had a greater estimated fall in IQ over their lifetime than those at lower risk.
Ian Deary, Director of the University of Edinburgh's Centre for Cognitive Ageing and Cognitive Epidemiology, who led the research team, said: "Retaining our thinking skills as we grow older is important for living well and independently. If nature has loaded a person's genes towards schizophrenia, then there is a slight but detectable worsening in cognitive functions between childhood and old age."
Andrew McIntosh, of the University of Edinburgh's Centre for Clinical Brain Sciences, said: "With further research into how these genes affect the brain, it could become possible to understand how genes linked to schizophrenia affect people's cognitive functions as they age."
###
Schizophrenia a severe mental disorder characterised by delusions and by hallucinations is in part caused by genetic factors. It affects around 1 per cent of the population, often in the teenage or early adult years, and is associated with problems in mental ability and memory.
The study, which was funded by the BBSRC, Age UK, and the Chief Scientist Office, is published in the journal Biological Psychiatry.
The University of Edinburgh's Centre for Cognitive Ageing and Cognitive Epidemiology is funded by the Cross Council Lifelong Health and Wellbeing initiative.
For further information, please contact: Eleanor Cowie, Press and PR Office, tel +44 131 650 6382 or Email Eleanor.Cowie@ed.ac.uk
[ | 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.
University of Illinois-Chicago computer scientist Jason Leigh stands in the CAVE2 virtual-reality system, where 72 stereoscopic liquid crystal display panels encircle the viewer.
By Carla K. Johnson, The Associated Press
CHICAGO ??Take a walk through a human brain? Fly over the surface of Mars? Computer scientists at the University of Illinois at Chicago are pushing science fiction closer to reality with a wraparound virtual world where a researcher wearing 3-D glasses can do all that and more.
In the system, known as CAVE2, an 8-foot-high (2.4-meter-high) screen encircles the viewer 320 degrees. A panorama of images springs from 72 stereoscopic liquid crystal display panels, conveying a dizzying sense of being able to touch what's not really there.
As far back as 1950, sci-fi author Ray Bradbury imagined a children's nursery that could make bedtime stories disturbingly real. "Star Trek" fans might remember the holodeck as the virtual playground where the fictional Enterprise crew relaxed in fantasy worlds.
The Illinois computer scientists have more serious matters in mind when they hand visitors 3-D glasses and a controller called a "wand." Scientists in many fields today share a common challenge: How to truly understand overwhelming amounts of data. Jason Leigh, co-inventor of the CAVE2 virtual reality system, believes this technology answers that challenge.
"In the next five years, we anticipate using the CAVE to look at really large-scale data to help scientists make sense of that information. CAVEs are essentially fantastic lenses for bringing data into focus," Leigh said.
The CAVE2 virtual world could change the way doctors are trained and improve patient care, Leigh said. Pharmaceutical researchers could use it to model the way new drugs bind to proteins in the human body. Car designers could virtually "drive" their vehicle designs.
Imagine turning massive amounts of data ? the forces behind a hurricane, for example ? into a simulation that a weather researcher could enlarge and explore from the inside. Architects could walk through their skyscrapers before they are built. Surgeons could rehearse a procedure using data from an individual patient.
Charles Rex Arbogast / AP
Brain surgeon Ali Alaraj talks about the first time he viewed the brain using the CAVE2. "You can walk between the blood vessels," said the University of Illinois College of Medicine neurosurgeon. "You can look at the arteries from below. You can look at the arteries from the side."
CAVEs aren't cheap But the size and expense of room-based virtual reality systems may prove insurmountable barriers to widespread use, said Henry Fuchs, a computer science professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who is familiar with the CAVE technology but wasn't involved in its development.
While he calls the CAVE2 "a national treasure," Fuchs predicts a smaller technology such as Google's Internet-connected eyeglasses will do more to revolutionize medicine than the CAVE. Still, he says large displays are the best way today for people to interact and collaborate.
Believers include the people at Marshalltown, Iowa-based Mechdyne Corp., which has licensed the CAVE2 technology for three years and plans to market it to hospitals, the military and in the oil and gas industry, said Kurt Hoffmeister of Mechdyne.
In Chicago, researchers and graduate students are creating virtual scenarios for testing in the CAVE2. The Mars flyover is created from real NASA data. The brain tour is based on the layout of blood vessels in a real patient.
Brain surgeon Ali Alaraj remembered the first time he viewed the brain using the CAVE2.
"You can walk between the blood vessels," said the University of Illinois College of Medicine neurosurgeon. "You can look at the arteries from below. You can look at the arteries from the side.... That was science fiction for me."
How CAVEs compare Would doctors process information faster with fewer errors using CAVE2? That's the question behind a proposed study that would compare CAVE2 to conventional methods of detecting brain aneurysms and determining proper treatment, said Andreas Linninger, UIC professor of bioengineering, chemical engineering and computer science.
But it's not all serious business at the lab.
In his spare time during the past two years, research assistant Arthur Nishimoto has been programming the CAVE2 computer with the specifications for the fictional Starship Enterprise. He now can walk around his life-size re-creation of the TV spacecraft.
The original technology, introduced in the early 1990s, was called CAVE, which stood for Cave Automatic Virtual Environment and also cleverly referred to Plato's cave, the philosopher's analogy about shadows and reality. It was named by former lab co-directors Tom DeFanti and Dan Sandin.
The second generation of the CAVE, invented by Leigh and his collaborator Andy Johnson, has higher resolution. The project was funded by the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy.
"It's fantastic to come to work. Every day is like getting to live a science fiction dream," Leigh said. "To do science in this kind of environment is absolutely amazing."
More about virtual environments:
Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.?
iOS (Jailbroken): The lock screen on the iPhone hasn't changed much since its inception, but if you're looking to give it a slight overhaul without changing everything, SubtleLock is a simple little jailbreak tweak that gives your lock screen a lot more room to breath. 
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