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|Videojournalists being prepped for combat reporting
Athletes, artists and creatives know it. Scientists have been trying to understand it - being able to visualise puts you in a state to create or perform.
The celebrated Art philosopher E.H Gombrich talked of schemas and mental states. We draw something, see how it compares to others and then subsequently alter it for the next time. Thus we build schemas - mini formulas in our minds and in Darwinian fashion the good ones survive; others get filtered out.
How else do we create TV shots and why do they look the same? This is a question, within a question whose answer I'll reveal below.
Neuroscientists have recently unveiled results that support the idea of visualisation.
report here]
Two hours later the volunteers were shown a random additional 250 images to see if they could remember the earlier ones. The scientists say something surprising happened.
Just before the volunteers saw the same image from the earlier test the patterns in a part of the brain called the parahippocampal changed to reflect a low level of activity. Gabriel says it was almost as if the brain was emptying itself.
The team performed another test. They showed the volunteers images when they exhibited this brain pattern and found the volunteers' memories improved by 30%.
In some way in trying to remember something appears to put you in a state of learning.
Gabriel says "Knowledge of brain states that correlate with learning creates the opportunity to enhance learning itself".
|BBC TV image
I discovered myself with observations for a thesis that solo film makers use visualisation in varied ways.
Think it; do it
Those with visual pre-thinking skills can accomplish the task of film making with a degree of ease - and I might suggest in a heightened state of learning are best positioned to carry out their tasks.
That also assumes a working knowledge of the task ahead or what I might call "inner-mind catalogue" of what I refer to as visual plates. But the key is what constitutes those visual plates?
The answer to the question I mentioned earlier resides in the last statement, which is if the repository of your images come from television, you'll go on to produce television and I believe if no Darwin-esque figure is able to act to alter the schema for TV, you will continue on that path.
This propensity to act by rules perpetuates a schemas. But what might have been appropriate in say the 1950s may not be now? In fact the 1990s constitute an important year zero with reference to a new convergence culture.
This largely affected a broad range of media, including news, albeit with reservations. There were specific and important alterations to TVnews in the 90s, but today if you're a visualists, documentary maker or videojournalist you could argue it wasn't enough!
In a later blog I'll address some of those schemas.


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QuickTip: Try bonus plugins for free
GreenSock posted a blog post in Learning CenterBefore jumping into Club GreenSock for the super-cool bonus plugins, perhaps you're plagued by questions like: Will the bonus plugins work well for my project? How difficult is the API to work with? Will they play nicely with my other tools? Will they work in Edge? Firefox? ... That's why we created special versions of the plugins that can be used on CodePen anytime...for FREE! The video below shows how to get up and running fast. Video Demo with quick-copy URLs See the Pen Try Club GreenSock Bonus Plugins FREE on Codepen by GreenSock (@GreenSock) on CodePen. Template (fork this): See the Pen GreenSock Bonus Starter Template by GreenSock (@GreenSock) on CodePen. Of course we offer a money-back satisfaction guarantee with Club GreenSock anyway, but hopefully this helps give you even more confidence to sign up. CodePen is an online, browser-based editor that makes it easy to write and share front-end code. If you need help using CodePen check out their interactive editor tour.


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Aston Martin Residences Miami
300 Biscayne Boulevard WayDowntown Miami
Unrivalled prestige, unequalled craftsmanship, uncompromising standards. For over a century, the Aston Martin name has been synonymous with excellence in the field of motorcar design and is one of the world's most iconic, recognisable marques. Each one produced is bespoke and handcrafted, making a highly personal statement about the owner who possesses it.
Stories: 66
Residences: 391
Aston Martin Residences description
For their vision of 300 Biscayne Boulevard Way in downtown Miami, Aston Martin partnered with renowned developer G&G Business Developments LLC to translate its legendary design into an exclusive real estate venture. The result is a prestigious, one-of-a-kind edifice that represents the pinnacle of elegant living.
Aston Martin Residences will include over-the-top amenities, including a helipad on the rooftop, a superyacht marina behind the building, and private outdoor pools on balconies for buyers of penthouse units.
Units with private pools on the balcony will be priced at a premium, with penthouse units on levels 56-60 costing up to $50 million.
Below the penthouses, there will be four levels of amenities for residents, on levels 52-55. An infinity edge pool will overlook the water on the 55th floor.
The Aston Martin Residences at 300 Biscayne Boulevard Way melds a brilliant design aesthetic with an ideal location to create Miami's most striking, coveted address. Situated on one of the last parcels of Miami waterfront property to be developed, Aston Martin Residences at 300 Biscayne Boulevard Way is a symphony of curvilinear glass and steel, soaring 66 storeys into the sky. Of it's 391 generously sized, light-filled homes, half of which have completely unique floor plans.
Residence Features
- Panoramic views of Biscayne Bay, the Ocean, and the iconic Miami Skyline
- 10 FT. ceiling height in residences
- 12 FT. ceiling height in penthouses
- Floor to ceiling windows and sliding glass doors throughout residences
- Top-of-the-line kitchens with European cabinetry and appliances
- Bathrooms with European cabinetry
- Premium marble flooring throughout living area, kitchen, and bathrooms
- Private balconies finished with high-end porcelain flooring and glass railings
The project is already in contract, so buyers will need to place an immediate 10% deposit for their unit. As with other Miami condo projects, a 50% deposit is due at top off.
Building Ameninites And Services
- 1-5 Bedroom Residences, Duplexes, Penthouses, and Triple Penthouse
- Full Service building with concierge and hospitality-inspired services
- Super Yacht Marina facilities
- 24-Hour valet and self parking option
- Charging stations for electric cars
- Bicycle and private storage spaces
- 10 destination controlled super hi-speed elevators and 3 separate dedicated service elevators
- Digital connection to concierge and all building amenities from every residence
- Pet Friendly
Sky Amenities
- 42,275 SF of amenities divided into 4 floors, connected by a monumental glass staircase
- Infinity Pool
- Pool Deck
- Pool Cabanas
- Sky Bar and Lounge
- Pool Concierge
- Grand Salon
- State-of-the-art Chef's Kitchen
- Private Dining Room
- Catering Kitchen
- Level 54
- Fitness Centre (Upper Level)
- Virtual Golf
- Movie Theatres 1 & 2
- Level 53
- Fitness/Spa Lounge
- Spa Lobby/Shop
- Fitness Centre (Lower Level)
- Spinning Room
- Boxing Room
- Spa – Treatment suites, steam room, sauna, meditation room, beauty salon and barber station
3900 Alton
3900 Alton 3900 Alton Rd Miami Beach Rising gracefully amid the turquoise waters of Biscayne Bay, 3900 Alton brings the modern design of internationally acclaimed master architect Ricardo Bofill [...]
18 Brickell Condo
18 Brickell Condo 18 SW 8th Street Miami The City of Miami Board gave its approval to the mixed-use tower proposed to replace Brickell's Burger King-anchored strip mall. The 78-story, [...]
The Bristol Palm Beach
The Bristol Palm Beach 1100 South Flagler Drive West Palm Beach Discover luxury living on the West Palm Beach waterfront. The sleek towers of the Bristol Palm Beach will [...]
Three Hundred Collins
Three Hundred Collins 300 Collins ave Miami Beach The ultra-lux, 19-unit boutique property situated in the heart of South Beach is a breath of fresh air for residents who [...]
The Fairchild Coconut Grove Miami
The Fairchild Coconut Grove Miami 3581 E. Glencoe Street Coconut Grove The Fairchild Coconut Grove is designed thoughtfully to become your ultimate sanctuary. Every residence offers open and airy floor [...]
One River Point Miami
One River Point Miami 24 SW 4th St Miami One River Point brings Viñoly's concept of architecture as a dramatic performance to life. Two soaring symmetrical towers join in [...]
Boulevard 57 Miami
Boulevard 57 Miami 5700 Biscayne Boulevard Miami SMART LUXURY When design, dimension, planning, efficiency and aesthetics all work together seamlessly, you get something that is more than just luxurious - [...]
Aston Martin Residences Miami
Aston Martin Residences Miami 300 Biscayne Boulevard Way Downtown Miami Unrivalled prestige, unequalled craftsmanship, uncompromising standards. For over a century, the Aston Martin name has been synonymous with excellence [...]
Satori, 16201 NW 87th Court Miami Lakes, FL 33018
Satori - Miami Lakes 16201 NW 87th Court Miami Lakes Satori is a master-planned community reflecting the very essence of The Serenity Collection's inspiration. Our architects and designers studied [...]
Metropica, 1800 NW 136th Avenue Sunrise, Florida 33323
Metropica, Sunrise 1800 NW 136th Avenue Sunrise Welcome to Metropica, a 4 million square foot master planned community. Located in West Broward County, it brings the best of city [...]
Porsche Design Tower, 18555 Collins Ave, Sunny Isles Beach, FL 33160
Porsche Design Tower 18555 Collins Ave Sunny Isles Beach Porsche Design Group exceeds all expectations with their newest project – Porsche Tower Sunny Isles Beach – the ultimate in building [...]
Peloro, 6620 Indian Creek Drive, Miami Beach, FL 33141
Peloro, Miami Beach 6620 Indian Creek Drive Miami Beach Life on the water has always been about exploration and discovery. On the bayside shores of Miami Beach, Peloro is about [...]
Hyde Beach House, 4000 South Ocean Drive, Hollywood, FL 33019
Hyde Beach House 4000 South Ocean Drive Hollywood Hyde House Hollywood is a new project located on Hollywood Beach, in the heart of South Florida. The building is perfectly situated [...]
Ritz-Carlton Residences, 15701 Collins Avenue, Sunny Isles Beach, FL 33160
Ritz-Carlton Residences, Sunny Isles Beach 15701 Collins Avenue Sunny Isles Beach The Ritz-Carlton Residences, Sunny Isles Beach is a sumptuous urban oasis composed of 212 condominium homes--including five penthouses with [...]
Jade Signature, 16901 Collins Ave, Sunny Isles Beach, FL 33160
Jade Signature 16901 Collins Ave Sunny Isles Beach Jade Signature's extraordinary resort-like experience is further enhanced by having three floors entirely dedicated to amenities and 53 stories of elegantly sculptural, [...]
Gran Paraiso, 600 NE 31st St, Miami, FL 33137
Gran Paraiso 600 NE 31st St Miami Gran Paraiso - a new project of the developer The Related Group, located in Miami at 600 Northeast 31st Street. The building has [...]
ECHO Brickell, 1451 Brickell Avenue, Brickell, FL 33131
ECHO Brickell 1451 Brickell Avenue Brickell ECHO Brickell is an exclusive high-rise boutique-style hotel in the heart of Miami that will be constructed on the east side of Brickell Avenue. [...]
Brickell Heights, 850 South Miami Avenue, Brickell, FL 33130
Brickell Heights 850 South Miami Avenue Brickell Scheduled to be completed in 2017, Brickell Heights is one of the newest and most anticipated real estate developments in Brickell area. A [...]
Auberge Residences & Spa, 1440 South Biscayne Boulevard, Miami, FL 33132
Auberge Residences & Spa 1440 Biscayne Boulevard Miami Auberge Residences & Spa - a new residential 60-storey skyscraper, which will be located at 1440 South Biscayne Boulevard, Miami. The project [...]
Auberge Beach Residences & Spa, 2200 North Ocean Boulevard, Fort Lauderdale, FL 33305
Auberge Beach Residences 2200 North Ocean Boulevard Fort Lauderdale Each Auberge property is unique and authentic to its location. Carefully curated activities highlight the most desirable aspects of the surrounding [...]
Armani House, 18975 Collins Ave, Sunny Isles Beach, FL 33160
Armani House, Sunny Isles 18975 Collins Ave Sunny Isles Beach Armani House by Cesar Pelli is a new oceanfront master-peace, located in a luxury high-rise condominium community, Sunny Isles Beach.Armani [...]
Aria on the Bay, 1770 N Bayshore Dr, Miami, FL 33132
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AquaBlu, 920 Intracoastal Drive, Fort Lauderdale, FL 33304
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AVVA Residences
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The city on its website and Twitter posted that firefighters on the scene made the decision to let the fire burn out and urged motorists and pedestrians to avoid the area. It tweeted that the tanker cars were carrying crude oil and that three or four of them were breached. The city said 13 or 14 tanker cars were involved in the derailment.
Photos and video show several black tanker cars derailed and extensive flames and smoke.
The city said there was no impact on the drinking water for its 77,000 residents due to spillage into the James River. However, officials for the city of Richmond said its public utilities department is drawing from an old canal system instead of the James River as a precaution.
The train with about 15 cars was traveling from Chicago to Virginia when it derailed, CSX said in a statement. It did not say where the train was headed. The railroad operator said it is "responding fully, with emergency response personnel, safety and environmental experts, community support teams and other resources."
The National Transportation Safety said it is sending investigators to the scene.
Concern about the safety of oil trains was heightened last July when runaway oil train derailed and exploded in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, near the Maine border. Forty-seven people died and 30 buildings were incinerated. Rail and safety officials said they were surprised by the ferocity of the fire. They were used to dealing with sludge-like crude that doesn't ignite easily, but Canadian investigators said the combustibility of the 1.3 million gallons of light, sweet Bakken crude released in Lac-Megantic was more comparable to gasoline.
The city said on in a news release on its website that CSX officials were working to remove the portion of the train that is blocking workers from leaving Griffin Pipe Foundry located in the lower basin.
"We're used to kind of bangs and booms," said Gerald McComas, a security officer at foundry up river from the derailment site. "My first thought was it sounded like one of the guys started a motorcycle and then a realized, wait a minute, no ... that was more of a boom. We walked outside and there was the smoke rolling in."
A portion of the train was blocking the road allowing workers at to leave their parking lot, McComas said. Instead workers were walking along the tracks to get to the other side of the train in order to leave their facility.
"I'm walking home tonight," McComas joked.
A phone message left by The Associated Press with the Lynchburg Police Department wasn't immediately returned.
Gov. Terry McAuliffe said Deputy Secretary of Public Safety and Homeland Security Adam Thiel was dispatched to the site to provide officials with updates on the situation.
In one of her last acts before leaving office last week, outgoing National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Deborah Hersman warned the Obama administration that it needs to take steps immediately to protect the public from potentially catastrophic oil train accidents even if it means using emergency authority.
The safety board has long recommended that the Department of Transportation toughen its design standard for the kind of rail tank cars used to transport crude oil and ethanol.
The cars are too easily punctured or ruptured, even in low-speed accidents. Their flammable contents are then spilled, fouling the environment and often igniting.
"We are very clear that this issue needs to be acted on very quickly," Hersman told reporters at the conclusion of a two-day forum the board held on the safety of rail transport of oil and ethanol. "There is a very high risk here that hasn't been addressed ... We don't need a higher body count before they move forward."
Glen Besa, the executive director of the Virginia chapter of the Sierra Club, reiterated those concerns following Wednesday's derailment.
"This accident is a potent reminder of the dangers that come with our dependence on dirty fuels and reinforces the need for better safety measures and increased emergency preparedness," Besa said in a statement. "The safest place for dirty fuels is in the ground."
In 2011, the oil, ethanol and railroad industries agreed on voluntary measures that toughened standards for rail cars known as DOT-111s, which are the kind of tank cars used to transport most flammable liquids. However, there have since been several accidents in which cars built to the new standards ruptured. NTSB officials have said the voluntary standards don't go far enough.
There have been eight significant oil train accidents in the U.S. and Canada in the past year involving trains hauling crude oil, including several that resulted in spectacular fires, according to the safety board.
Associated Press writer Joan Lowy in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.


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The commuter train comes in all the way from West Virginia. Some of the people who ride it spend three hours, each way, commuting. That's more time spent with your fellow train riders during the week than with your significant other or family. DC is a crazy commuting city, with long-suffering government servants slogging in and out for 25 years so they're eligible for their federal pensions. In the mornings, people count down the days until they retire, and sometimes, you'll hear the pop of a champagne cork: friends celebrating someone's last schlep into work.
Yes, you're allowed to drink on the train. The Union Station liquor store does brisk business in the afternoon, tanking people up with mini-Chardonnays, beers, and airplane Dewar's bottles for the train ride home. Every once in awhile there's an exposé on the local news about a "party car" on the commuter train, usually an overblown account of some wildness that goes on while people are under the influence. At one stop outside DC, there's a guy who will take pizza orders and deliver them into the arms of waiting passengers.
But I switched jobs, and the new job is in a different part of the District. I take a bus now instead of a train. It's a quieter, more subdued crowd. They come from the 'burbs instead of farms, little-ticky-tacky-box types of folks. We do not drink, at least not alcohol, and probably not coffee because everyone is off of caffeine and gluten. We aren't allowed to eat. I no longer have a cute, cocky young conductor friend who lets me ride for free because I baked him cookies one time.
The changed commute reflects a changed schedule: I go into the city less often now; but for much longer days. Dinner is a real chore on those long days; I am usually ravenous and a little blinded by low blood sugar when I get home.
. . .
Two of my favorite food people on the Internet are Amelia Morris and Tim Mazurek. Amelia interviewed Tim here recently and it was entertaining and thought-provoking, as they both are. But it was a quick little parenthetical that Tim slipped in that I've been thinking about a lot: "…am I the only 9-5 food blogger?", he asked. And he's probably not, but I think he's one of the few successful ones. How odd, really, that the people who we trust to help us find ways to eat and cook realistically for our families and friends are those who make their living writing about cooking. It's probably why I value Tim's voice so much, because I know that he gets up in the morning and goes to kick ass at his full-time, non-food job and then makes time to share his writing and critical eye on recipes that work.
Food media rewards making really good food look effortless and accessible. I kind of think that really good food is the opposite of effortless and accessible. Like a lot of people, I've been digging into the highly anticipated Liz Prueitt's Tartine All Day: Modern Recipes for the Home Cook, but approached it with some trepidation. Prueitt and her husband, Chad Robertson, are at the helm of the San Francisco cult-Tartine empire, professional cooks who make Cali-cool, naturally leavened bread and café fare. Billed as a "hardworking cookbook that will guide and inspire home cooks", you have to wonder if it actually will, considering the source.
Prueitt's intro to the book is reassuringly grounded, though. "You see, there's no way around it: cooking is work. Work in that it requires forethought, a modicum of skill, and time. Work in that you must use your hands, stand on your feet, and wash the dishes. (And, full disclosure: for my husband, Chad, and me, cooking is work. It is how we earn our living.)"
. . .
I've been baking a lot of bread so I've been eating a lot of bread. I've written before that I think bread is a workhorse that can turn little scraps from the fridge into a meal very quickly, which is invaluable lately as I adjust to new rhythms. There's no recipe for that kind of meal, though, it's just foraging in your own kitchen for something that satisfies your hunger. It does feel like foraging, too, digging past Tupperware containers and shaking up old jars of vinaigrette and smelling leftovers to see if it's still good to smash onto a piece of toast. In the end, I have not actually cooked, but I do have what feels like kind of a decent meal, and more importantly, I am fed.
. . .
The types of train folks who eat Domino's pizza, who drink Dixie cups of red wine, and who are bribe-able with homemade cookies are my people. You can't cook on a commuter train, they won't get home until 8 PM, and they are hungry. I like hungry people. Maybe, like me, they're foraging around in their fridge when they walk in the door, smashing stuff onto toast, standing at the kitchen table to eat before they take off their coat. So here's a recipe from Tartine All Day that is not a weeknight dinner by any means, but is still really good, and importantly, makes excellent leftovers. It is a bit of work, but as Prueitt writes, "Your simple hope is that while sitting around the table to share the fruits of your labor, the effort fades to memory." We won't always be, but all we can do is keep on cooking and feeding our hungry selves, and we might sometimes be that lucky.
Savory bread pudding with wild mushrooms & bacon
Several notes here:
1) I tried very hard to get a hold of Liz Prueitt/her people to get permission to share this recipe, which is essentially hers as written, but never heard back. This is what I normally do when basically reprinting a recipe, especially when a new book is out. So I'm sorry, Liz Prueitt! Before your lawyers send me a cease and desist, you can just kindly ask me to take it down, and I will.
2) I did not use wild mushrooms, and it was still very good.
3) It might seem like there's not too much that's special about this recipe from a first glance – technique is pretty normal, we've all had egg bakes before – but the flavor combination is great and the recipe is excellent if you follow it. I will be making it again, and to me, having those types of recipes in my back pocket is more and more important.
You'll need
- Unsalted butter, for the baking dish
- 8 oz/225g country-style bread, preferably day-old
- 8 oz/225g thick cut bacon, cut into 1/4-inch pieces
- 2 small or 1 large/110g leek, white and light green parts sliced 1.2 inch/12mm thick and rinsed (I used green onions)
- 2 Tbsp olive oil, as needed
- 1 lb/455g mixed wild mushrooms, sliced 1/4 inch thick (I used a mix of shiitake and cremini)
- 1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
- 1/3 cup flat leaf parsley, chopped
- 2 tsp fresh thyme leaves
- 1/2 tsp sea salt
- 6 large eggs
- 2 cups/480 ml whole milk
- 1 cup/240 ml heavy cream
- 1/4 cup/25 g grated Gruyere, Comte, or other firm cheese
- Ground black pepper
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F/108 degrees C. Butter inside surfaces of a 9-inch/23 cm square baking dish with at least 2-inch/5cm sides.
- Cut the bread into 1-inch/2.5 cm cubes. Spread them out on a baking sheet and place in the oven to toast for a few minutes, until lightly toasted. Set aside.
- In a skillet over medium-high heat, cook the bacon until slightly crisped but not yet bully browned. Transfer to a large bowl and pour off all but 2 Tbsp of fat from the skillet. Add the leeks to the skillet and cook over medium-high heat, stirring often, until soft, 3 to 5 minutes. Transfer to the bowl with the bacon.
- If the pan looks dry, swirl in 1 Tbsp of the olive oil. Add about half of the mushrooms and saute, stirring occasionally, until crisp and lightly browned in a few places, 3 to 5 minutes Transfer the mushrooms to the bowl and cook the remaining mushrooms, adding as much of the remaining 1 Tbsp of oil to the skillet as needed. Transfer to the bowl and let cool.
- Add the cheese, parsley, thyme, and salt to the cooked mushroom mixture and mix well.
- In another bowl, whisk together the eggs, milk, and cream until well blended. Pour over the mushroom mixture and stir to combine. Gently mix in the toasted bread cubes.
- Carefully pour the bread mixture into the prepared baking dish. The custard should come right up to the top but not cover the highest cubes of bread. (If you have extra, fill a buttered ramekin and make an additional, smaller bread pudding (note from Sarah: I had extra)). Scatter the additional cheese evenly over the pudding and grind a light dusting of pepper on top. Bake until the custard is no longer runny but still a bit wobbly in the center, 40 minutes to 1 hour (and about 25 minutes for a smaller ramekin). It will continue to cook as it sits before serving. Serve the bread pudding hot or at room temperature.
- Any leftovers can be stored, well wrapped, in the refrigerator for up to 3 days and reheated, covered with aluminum foil, in a 350 degree F/180 degree C oven.
§ 39 responses to Savory bread pudding with mushrooms & bacon
This reminded me of Tamar Adler's An Everlasting Meal. I know you know it, but that's a great book on what cooking is actually like. In a sense recipes are just encoded notes for one way of transforming raw materials into cooked food. So no matter what you're doing, it's still cooking. It's either Bittman or Pollan who says cooking is the combining of two things. Sometimes I even take premade foods and just add one thing — like frozen peas. That's still cooking. Love your effort to break down the elitism in the community. Although I must say, I (mostly) quit caffeine this year. Ha! It's for migraines…


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Angel City Jazz Fest Labor Day 2008!
by jazzcat on Jul.09, 2008, under Uncategorized
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Howdy. Welcome to The Jazzcat!
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Sweeping Transgender Bill of Rights Approved in Argentina
By the unanimous consent of all voting lawmakers, Argentina yesterday approved a gender rights package that will allow all adult citizens to change their sex at will — even without undergoing surgery or hormone replacement therapy.
However, should a person opt to make physical changes to their appearance, those treatments will be fully covered by their health care providers, whether public or private.
The vote came on a day of celebration for equal rights advocates in the US who have long waited for a sitting president to support the right of same-sex couples to marry. However, gender rights remain in the dark ages, comparitively, with many hoops transgender Americans must jump through in order to have their sex change legally recognized.
"This law is going to enable many of us to have light, to come out of the darkness, to appear," openly gay Argentinian legislator Osvaldo Lopez is quoted as saying. "There are many people in our country who also deserve the power to exist."
Underage residents of the country will also be able to take advantage of the new rights, with the consent of a parent or legal guardian.
Argentina's president, Cristina Fernandez, has already acknowledged her support for the bill as it heads to her desk for signing.
Argentina legalized same-sex marriage two years ago — the first Latin American nation to do so.
[photo via AP]


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Don't look now, but Facebook is spreading its kudzulike tendrils into yet another part of the Web: the comments field. Last week, the Uber Social Network introduced a free plug-in that replaces the software a site uses to manage its comments with one built by Facebook.
The implications of this are larger than they may appear. If widely adopted, Facebook Comments could kick online trolls to the curb while pounding yet another nail into the coffin of Web anonymity.
[ Get the first word on what the important tech news really means with the InfoWorld Tech Watch blog. | For a humorous take on the tech industry's shenanigans, subscribe to Robert X. Cringely's Notes from the Underground newsletter. ]
Log into a site that uses Facebook Comments and a few things happen. One is that you'll be able to use Facebook as a universal one-time log-in for any site that uses its plug-in -- no more logging in multiple times to different sites each day. Deux, your Facebook profile pic will appear alongside the comments -– in fact, the whole comments field will look like a chunk of Facebook has been plopped down at the end of each story. Trey, you'll see less spam, thanks to Facebook's built-in filters. Quatro, if you leave the "Post to Facebook" box checked, your pithy witticisms, incisive analysis, or (in my case) sophomoric jokes will also appear on your Facebook wall –- and any replies your friends make on your Facebook page will also appear under your comments on that third-party site.
In other words, your friends' Facebook mugshots could end up on sites they've never visited –- though they'd have a heck of a time proving that to the rest of the world. So be careful when responding to comments on AdultMenInDiapers.com, or you might have some 'splaining to do.
Let's put aside for a moment problems with the Facebookization of everything (do we really want to give that much power to a guy who barely got his drivers license?) or the blithe way Facebook lets you butter your friends' identities all over the Web without telling them that's happening.
The biggest thing Facebook Comments does is kill anonymous comment trolls by forcing people to use their real identities. TechCrunch, which implemented Facebook Comments as an experiment last week, reports that while the total volume of comments is down significantly, the comment nastiness quotient is approaching zero -- except, apparently, for nasty comments about their new commenting system.
In other words, people who might have left a trollish comment under the cloak of anonymity are choosing not to comment at all under the new system, turning TechCrunch into a 24/7 lovefest. (In a word: Ewwww.)
Not surprisingly, this notion doesn't sit well with some. Blogger Steve Cheney, author of the cleverly named Steve's Blog (and, presumably, no relation to Dick), says Facebook is "killing [our] authenticity" by making us attach actual identities to comments.


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Story highlights
NEW: House GOP leader Cantor tells members to expect a vote in the next two weeks
President Obama: The United States has a responsibility to act as a global leader
Obama refuses to directly answer if he'll attack Syria without congressional support
"The American people have gone through a lot" in wars of past decade, Obama says
The United Nations won't help, good pal Britain is sitting this one out, so President Barack Obama will take his case for a military attack on Syria directly to the American people next week.
Obama wrapped up his trip to the G20 summit in Russia by telling reporters he will address the nation on Tuesday as Congress prepares to vote on a resolution authorizing limited military strikes against Syria over its alleged use of chemical weapons.
Facing public opposition reflected by legislators hesitant to support him, Obama said Friday that he understands the skepticism over his call for punishing the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for what U.S. officials call a sarin gas attack on August 21 that killed more than 1,400 people.
"The American people have gone through a lot when it comes to the military over the last decade or so," Obama said.
He also cited a responsibility borne by the United States as a global power to lead what he hopes would be an international response in order to maintain the credibility of treaties and conventions against weapons of mass destruction.
"I believe when you have a limited proportional strike like this, with manageable risks, then we should bear that responsibility," Obama said, noting that military interventions often lack broad public support but that critics also decry inaction in the face of atrocities abroad.
Foreign interventions unpopular
"When people say that it is a terrible stain on all of us that hundreds of thousands of people were slaughtered in Rwanda, well imagine if Rwanda was going on right now and we asked: 'Should we intervene in Rwanda?'" the president said. "I think it's fair to say that it probably wouldn't poll real well."
Opposition by permanent Security Council members Russia and China has scuttled Obama's hopes for U.N. authorization of a military response against al-Assad's regime, and usually reliable ally Britain's Parliament decided against joining a military response.
The inability to muster a significant international coalition, like the NATO-led mission with Arab League support that intervened in Libya, caused the president to seek political cover by requesting congressional authorization.
"We will be more effective if we are unified moving forward," Obama said in explaining why he asked for support from Congress for what he argues is a necessary response to the violation of international norms by Syria.
In a likely foreshadowing of Obama's address to the nation next week, U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power told the liberal Center for American Progress on Friday that non-military alternatives to attacking Syria had been exhausted.
She cited repeated steps by Russia, joined at times by China, to undermine U.N. Security Council action on Syria over the past two years. Because of Russia, Power said, "the Security Council was not even able to put out a statement expressing its disapproval" of the August 21 chemical weapons attack.
Administration lobbying blitz
Obama's speech on Tuesday will culminate an aggressive outreach strategy intended to woo members of Congress to back his pitch for limited strikes, which are expected to be missile attacks at Syrian military command targets but not chemical weapons stockpiles.
The administration says it has intercepts and other intelligence that show the Syrian regime planned the attack and then attempted to cover it up.
Secretary of State John Kerry told a Senate committee this week that U.S. intelligence shows the rockets carrying chemical weapons were launched from territory controlled by the Syrian regime and landed in opposition or contested areas of suburban Damascus.
Kerry and British officials say the gas used in the attack was sarin, according to test results. U.N. inspectors who collected samples from the stricken area are expected to provide their own results in coming weeks.
However, after a week of classified briefings, two congressional hearings and other aggressive lobbying by the administration, a majority of the Senate and House remain "undecided" on whether to give Obama authorization to attack, according to CNN's latest count.
In addition, a growing number of legislators say they oppose the move, though it remains too early to predict an outcome.
A heavy lift for Obama
"I knew this was going to be a heavy lift," Obama said during Friday's news conference in St. Petersburg, Russia.
Supporters and critics have called for the president to directly address the American public and make his case for why a military response was necessary.
"Members of Congress represent the views of their constituents, and only a president can convince the public that military action is required," said Brendan Buck, the spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner, who has said he backs Obama on the issue. "We only hope this isn't coming too late to make the difference."
In the past two weeks, the Obama administration has spoken to at least 60 senators and 125 House members on the issue, a White House official confirmed Friday.
On Thursday alone, while the president was in Russia, he and senior administration officials made more than 25 individual calls to what the White House described as bipartisan members of the House and Senate. Obama called five senators himself, the White House said, but officials refused to reveal the names of the recipients.
In addition, members of the House and Senate were meeting at the White House on Friday with Vice President Joe Biden, an administration official confirmed to CNN. It was Biden's second straight day of meetings with legislators to try to convince them to authorize a military response.
Go it alone?
Should Congress reject Obama's request to authorize military strikes, Deputy National Security Adviser Tony Blinken said Friday on NPR that "the president of course has the authority" to act in Syria without support from Capitol Hill, but "it's neither his desire nor intention to use that authority absent Congress backing him."
A senior administration official from the National Security Council later clarified Blinken's remark, saying "the president's intention is to act with congressional authorization, and we believe they will vote to provide that authorization."
Asked several times at the news conference about Blinken's remark and whether he would attack Syria anyway without authorization from Congress, Obama acknowledged that he would avoid providing a direct answer.
"It would be a mistake for me to jump the gun and speculate because right now I'm working to get as much support as possible out of Congers," he said.
On Wednesday, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved an amended version of the White House's resolution for authorization to attack Syria by a 10-7 vote.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on Friday praised the panel's Democratic and Republican leaders for working together to craft a compromise that was able win approval.
Reid spoke at a brief Senate session that allowed for the procedural step of setting up next week's consideration of the resolution by the full Senate.
Meanwhile, the House also is expected to take up the Syria issue starting Monday, with Majoriy Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia telling his Republican caucus to expect a vote on military authorization "in the next two weeks."
Approval of a resolution is considered more likely by the Democratic-led Senate than the Republican-led House.
45-day delay?
In a step that would buy time for Obama to get more international and domestic support, Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia is working on a proposal that would put off any military action for 45 days while demanding that Syria sign an international convention against chemical weapons or face U.S. military repercussions, according to an aide to Manchin.
It was unclear if the idea would gain any traction among legislators considering the Syria issue.
On the sidelines of the G20 summit Friday, Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin met for what Obama described as a "candid, constructive" conversation despite increasingly strained relations between the two leaders.
Obama acknowledged that Putin was unlikely to shift his position on military action against Syria, and Putin gave a similar account of their meeting, telling reporters that "he doesn't agree with me, I don't agree with him, but we listened to each other."
The two leaders both said they could work together to seek a political solution to the Syrian crisis, which reiterated their longstanding positions.
CNN's Ted Barrett, Kevin Bohn, Virginia Nicolaidis and Gloria Borger contributed to this report.


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Flights to Mumbai
Special offers to Mumbai
Travel to Mumbai
Stay still for a moment and you can feel the pulse of India beating through Mumbai. This humongous city is home to nearly 21 million people and, whether you're zipping through its packed alleys on a tuk-tuk or watching the latest Bollywood blockbuster, you're sure to feel its currents of energy and excitement. Book your holiday to Mumbai with Air Seychelles and get ready to dive into the flow of a modern 21st century city.
- Top 5 attractions in Mumbai
Lying on the shores of the Arabian Sea, Mumbai has attracted many curious travellers over the centuries and today boasts a fantastic mixture of cultures, tastes, noises, crowds and traffic! Here are some attractions to keep you busy when you fly here with Air Seychelles.
- Take a behind-the-scenes tour of a real Bollywood shoot at Film City, or head to a local cinema and join the crowd in clapping and whistling along to your favourite stars.
- Visit the colossal arch known as the Gateway of India, a triumphal monument built in 1911 to commemorate the royal visit of King George V.
- Join thousands of people as they make the crossing to Haji Ali Dargah, a famous shrine situated off the coast of Mumbai that can only be reached when the tide is low. Relax in the lush greenery of the Sanjay Ghandi National Park, an oasis sitting, surprisingly, in the middle of Mumbai, where you can find stunning rock carvings and exotic animals.
- Go for an evening walk along Marine Drive and watch the sun set over the Indian Ocean, silhouetting the skyscrapers of Mumbai as it does so.
- Shopping in Mumbai
From upmarket stalls to cheap-and-cheerful bazaars, Mumbai comes fully stocked with shopping options. Colaba Causeway, packed to the sides with stalls, hawkers of all kinds and even an errant goat or two, is one of its most popular markets. They say you can find anything in Colaba – even an artist willing to engrave your name into a grain of rice, so don't miss out.
No shopping experience in exuberant Mumbai is complete without a visit to Chor Bazaar. A maze of stalls selling colonial bric-a-brac and stunning antiques from the Raj era, it's a treasure hunter's dream come true. You can spend hours searching for souvenirs to bring back home here.
For fashion-lovers, Fashion Street is the perfect spot for snapping up a new wardrobe. Whatever European trends are in vogue, you'll find them among one of the hundreds stalls here, plus a few pieces with a local flavour, and of course, plenty of sari! With plenty of baggage allowance on Air Seychelles flights to India, there's no need to worry about not having enough space.
- Restaurants in Mumbai
Indian cuisine is known the world over for its flavoursome dishes and deft use of spices, and there's no better place to taste its full repertoire of culinary delights than Mumbai.
The street food in Mumbai is both delicious and abundant. From fantastic "bhelpuri" (a mix of puffed rice, vegetables and tamarind) to "vada pav" (fried-potatoes stuffed into rolls), there are plenty of options to eat well on the go.
For a heartier meal, head into one of the hundreds of local eateries in Mumbai and order a "thali", which literally means plate. You get a complete meal arranged on your plate, with a roti or chapatti, a mix of curries and rice. It's served lightning-quick at lunchtimes and is always great value.
Of course, there are also many upscale restaurants and chic bars which cater to other national cuisines for those who wish to have something else.
- Nightlife in Mumbai
Imagine the city of Mumbai by day, now imagine it by night. As you would expect, the lively buzz goes on long after sunset – if it doesn't get strong.
For a nice start to the evening, go for a stroll along Marine Drive, the famous oceanfront of Mumbai. Walking here in the early evening, as lovers walk hand-in-hand and the far-off skyscrapers start to glimmer in the night, is a great experience. It also has many bars you can deep into for a refreshing cocktail or two.
More active nights can also be found in Mumbai, which has more than enough bars and clubs for even the most hardened of partygoers. For the very best the city has to offer, head to the wildly popular Tryst for its laser shows or Trilogy, where you can rub shoulders with A-listers.
- Planning your Mumbai trip
Book your holiday to Mumbai with Air Seychelles and get ready for a heady concoction of different experiences. It's bewildering at first, but once you get a taste of Mumbai, you'll keep coming back for more.


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JANESVILLE—The mother of a classmate was the last person to see Georgia Jean Weckler alive, watching the 8-year-old girl walk up the lane to her family's farm outside Fort Atkinson after school May 1, 1947.
Weckler's family reported her missing that night, and although hundreds of people took part in searches for her, each came up fruitless.
Her body, her clothes, even the mail the classmate's mother saw her carrying up the drive were never found, and the case grew cold as the decades ground on.
Until a break last Tuesday.
That's when authorities say a man contacted Janesville Police and the Rock County Sheriff's Office, telling them he knew a place where Weckler's body might have been buried: A shallow grave in a vacant lot on the fringe of Janesville's northeast side.
Specially trained dogs brought to the lot on Friday indicated the presence of human remains in an area the man said she could be, sparking a search that intensified Monday.
Dozens of law enforcement officials—from Janesville, Rock and Jefferson counties, K-9 search squads and the state crime lab in Madison—converged on the plot of land at the intersection of North Wright and East Rotamer roads.
Men and women dug up the ground and sifted buckets of earth through mesh screens, looking for the trace of Georgia Jean Weckler that has eluded authorities for 66 years.
As of Monday afternoon, the painstaking search had not turned up any remains, Capt. Todd Christiansen said. But the search was far from over.
"This is just very slow," he said, "but you have to be meticulous."
The crew of Rock County sheriff's deputies and Janesville police officers focused their search on a nearly 5,000-square-foot section at the back corner of the lot, farthest from either street.
Authorities split that section into a grid of 10-foot by 10-foot squares, and were hoping to dig 4 feet deep.
After nearly a day's work, crews had dug halfway down into two of the squares, with little to show for it but a growing pile of sifted dirt off to one side.
There has been talk of using excavation equipment to dig up the land, but Christiansen said he was concerned it wouldn't be as precise as sifting the dirt by hand, searching for the tiniest fragment of evidence.
Crews would break for the night before the sun went down, he said, and get back to work Tuesday morning.
Their search area is near the lot's property line and a home that records indicate has been there since the late-1990s.
Much of the land around the lot has been developed only in the past few years, turning farmland and woodland into a suburban neighborhood of homes and an assisted living facility.
Plans are in place to develop the lot soon, said Doug Marklein, whose company Marklein Builders, is involved in a construction project on the land.
Crews recently had cleared it of trees and heavy brush, which cover what other undeveloped parts of the neighborhood remain.
According to Gazette archives, Georgia Weckler was abducted in daylight, within sight of her parents' farm six miles west of Fort Atkinson off Highway 12.
"Georgia Jean was given a ride to her farm lane by Mrs. Carl Floerke, whose daughter attended the same school," according to a Gazette story from May 1, 1967.
"Mrs. Floerke saw the girl take the family's mail from the mail box along the highway and stroll down the lane. She was never seen again," the story said.
The blonde-haired Georgia was last seen wearing a pink cardigan and jeans and had planned to pick flowers in the woods for May baskets.
The FBI was involved in the case, and despite what was then one of the most intensive hunts in the history of the area, neither the girl nor any abductors were found.
"No evidence ever turned up," Jefferson County Sheriff's Office Capt. Jerry Haferman said on Monday.
A Richland Center man, Buford Sennett, serving a life term at Waupun State Prison for a different murder and kidnapping, confessed to the Weckler abduction, but he changed his story several times.
Roger Reinel, who worked on the case and later became the Jefferson County Sheriff, considered Sennett the likely suspect, but told the Gazette in 1967 he checked out a half-dozen leads a year.
"I don't imagine it will ever be closed," he said. "It will always be on file."
The uncertainty over her disappearance tormented Weckler's family, according to the Gazette story published on the 20th anniversary of her disappearance. Her father, George Weckler, died in 1956 convinced she was alive.
Authorities continued to receive tips for the case, Haferman said. Until last week, the most recent was in 1999.
"But those never went anywhere," he said.
Authorities have been tight-lipped about the source that pointed them toward the lot where Weckler might be buried.
The Rock County man—police have not released his name or his age—told authorities he saw suspicious activity in the area around the time Weckler went missing. When he read news reports about her disappearance, he "put two and two together," Haferman said.
"He had information about this person being missing and that they were possibly in this area," Christiansen said.
When authorities took him out to the land, he showed them where he thought Weckler may have been buried. The dogs seemed to substantiate his claim, Christiansen said, indicating to police human remains were there.
What authorities won't say, though, is how the man knew where the burial site was—or why it took him more than six decades to come forward.
He is not considered a person of interest in Weckler's disappearance, Christiansen said.
In an investigation that has spanned 66 years, he said, this latest chapter has only just begun.
-- Reporter Gina Duwe contributed to this story


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Understanding Google My Business & Local Search
Google Maps: Updated Google places Management UI (LBC)
Google Maps has rolled out a revised interface (thanks to Jim Giangolio of Lunametics, a Pittsburgh SEO, for the heads up) to the multiple business view of the Google places management area.
The changes are both aesthetic and practical. New are the ability to organize the list by business name or status, an active alert of issues, and miniature displays of the listing stats:
The welcome upgrade to the interface which solves some long standing problems with managing multiple listings still has a few quirks. For example regardless of the view (business or status) chosen, it always reverts to the status view after a record change. We can also hope with this initial upgrade that Google will start including more meaningful error and penalty state messages within the new interface. Regardless, it is a welcome upgrade to anyone with more than 2 or 3 listings in an account.
© Copyright 2023 - MIKE BLUMENTHAL, ALL RIGHT RESERVED.


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Many people will say, "I'm spiritual, not religious." What does this really mean, and what significance do these concepts have in our world?
When people describe themselves as "spiritual" they usually mean that they pay attention to aspects of life beyond our personal physical, emotional and mental concerns. By "spiritual" they refer to intangible things like meaning, universal truths, the nature of existence, or, literally, spirits and deities.
When they say they are "not religious," on the other hand, people are usually saying that they are not actively involved with any of the human institutions or traditions that have evolved to address spiritual concerns.
There are many reasons people forgo being religious. They may not have found a religion that appealed to them. They may have been hurt by involvement in a religion and subsequently become suspicious of all of them. They may regard spiritual concerns as a very private matter and prefer to investigate and address such things on their own. They may not feel motivated enough to spend the time, energy and money required for active engagement in a religion.
At least many non-religious people will admit to being spiritual. What a shame it is if they don't! What is a human life lived without attention to aspects of life beyond our personal physical, emotional and mental concerns? Doesn't a lack of interest in intangible things like meaning, universal truths, the nature of existence, or God result in a small, self-absorbed life?
If many people can't be bothered with "spirituality," perhaps part of the problem springs from the way we conceive of it to begin with. When we specify "spiritual," we usually conceive of a realm separate from our everyday lives – that is, our basic physical, emotional and mental concerns. This "spiritual" realm becomes disembodied and well, frankly, rather ethereal and fruity at times: filled with goodness, light, and anthropomorphized trees. To experience something spiritual comes to mean experiencing something special.
For many people "spiritual" sounds like something too removed from their everyday life, something extra. Their everyday life may be rich and challenging and just fine, thank you very much, so who needs this extra thing called spirituality? Or their everyday life may be troubled but "spirituality" doesn't seem to offer anything relevant or useful.
What if we conceived differently our human relationship to aspects of life beyond our personal physical, emotional and mental concerns? What if we considered it a human responsibility to become a student of life and to practice diligently throughout our lifetime to get better and better at being human?
Being a human is an amazingly complex experience, an enormous responsibility, and an incredible opportunity. Our capacity to learn and adapt is unlimited. The different ways we can manifest, express ourselves, create, destroy, heal and harm are infinite. We change throughout our lives physically, emotionally and mentally. And yet we commonly hold that someone knows how to be responsible for a human life once they are eighteen years old. Or maybe 21, 25, 30 or 40. If someone doesn't "have it together" at least by the time they are middle aged we think it's pretty sad.
What does it mean to get better and better at being a human being? You get to know yourself intimately – your strengths, weaknesses and blind spots. You learn how to best handle yourself, like you would learn to handle a car in order to provide a smooth, efficient, safe ride. You carefully examine and work through your stuck places so you can respond to beings and situations with presence, patience and compassion. You search out and face your deepest fears so they can't control you from behind or sneak up on you at a vulnerable moment. You take any opportunity you can to explore your relationship to the universe so you continually deepen your understanding about your place in it, and about the nature of existence.
When we practice being human, it is a process without end. Practicing being human can include every aspect of our lives – physical, emotional, mental, spiritual or religious. It includes our special feelings and insights, and it includes our annoyance at having to take out the trash. Practicing being human is not optional or extra. It is an ennobling responsibility, and utterly fascinating.
So we needn't be religious, or even spiritual, according to the usual definitions of these terms. However, let's not relegate the profound practice of being human only to the spiritual or religious realms. It would greatly benefit ourselves and the rest of the world if we embraced the practice of being human like we might embrace a new area of study or a new kind of physical training. "Practice" means to carry out, apply, and to perform repeatedly so as to become proficient. There is no limit to how proficient, even masterful, we can become at being human.


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VIDEO: The trailer for My Winnipeg
The odds don't look good: from the opening scene, Maddin (played on screen by Darcy Fehr) is trapped not only on a train but in a train of thought. Sleeping with other narcoleptic, bundled-up travelers in some midnight bar car of the mind, he repeats like the narrator in L'année dernière à Marienbad|Last Year at Marienbad the words "snow . . . sleepwalker . . . dream." He cannot escape unless he stays awake — something Winnipeggers appear to have a problem doing. They have, he claims, 10 times the sleepwalking rate of any other city; city dwellers carry the keys to their previous addresses and those of past lovers so that when they wander to their "old dreamy addresses," they can let themselves in.
It may not be true, but it sounds right. Maddin himself has only one key — to his family home, a kind of nightmare portmanteau structure that consists of a suite for his grandparents, his own family's rooms, and a beauty salon, a "gynocracy" where he was raised amid the scents of "female vanity and desperation." His mother (noir icon Ann Savage) looms like the matriarch in Woody Allen's "Oedipus Wrecks" segment in New York Stories. To release her hold on him, Maddin decides to re-create his childhood, restoring the old home to what it was in the '50s, bringing in actors to play family members. They sit around the corpse of Dad buried below the area rug and watch Mom's TV show, Ledge Man, in which every day she "sweet-talks" the title hero out of jumping to his death.
This strategy fails, so Maddin seeks answers in local lore — like what happened that winter when the racetrack went up in flames and the horses fled to the river and froze in place, their twisted heads remaining above the surface for months, providing a trysting spot for lovers and a Goya-esque image that is the most disturbing one I've seen on screen all year. He recognizes that the city he flees is also trying to escape itself. "Demolition is the city's biggest growth industry," he observes. City planners dynamite the elm tree in the smallest park in the world and raze the Winnipeg Arena, where his father once worked behind the bench of the Winnipeg Maroons.
Outsiders might wonder why this latter issue gets him so worked up. That's hockey and Canadians, perhaps. But like all his hobby horses, it has a painful personal root. My Winnipeg is not all laughs. The death of his father and his teenage brother and a sexual initiation of sorts in a public pool offer clues to Maddin's bizarre genius. Any student of his films might find this one a Rosetta Stone. There's almost too much for 80 minutes, and one might ask, with a city this rich in wonders, why would you ever want to leave?
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A service of the U.S. National Library of Medicine
National Institutes of Health
National Institutes of Health
Research Gets to Root of Redheads' Higher Melanoma Risk
Gene mutation tied to ginger tresses may also play role in promoting cancer, mouse study suggests
Thursday, August 22, 2013
Researchers at Harvard Medical School say the genetic mutation responsible for red hair and light skin also appears to promote a well-known cancer-causing pathway.
A person's hair color and skin tone are influenced by a gene receptor called melanocortin-1 (MC1R), and a mutation in MC1R accounts for the 1 percent to 2 percent of people who are born redheads.
In experiments with mice and cell cultures, researchers found that the same MC1R mutation -- called MC1R-RHC -- triggers a specific biochemical signaling pathway when a redhead is exposed to ultraviolet radiation from the sun and other sources.
This pathway, called P13K/Akt, has been tied to breast, ovarian and lung tumors, according to the study, which was published online Aug. 22 in the journal Molecular Cell.
"[The findings] provide a possible molecular mechanism as to why red-haired individuals harboring [these] mutations are much more susceptible to UV-induced skin damage than individuals with darker skin, resulting in a 10- to 100-fold higher frequency of melanoma," study co-senior author Wenyi Wei, an investigator at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and an associate professor of pathology at Harvard, said in a medical center news release.
The researchers also said their findings are a starting point for future studies. For example, people who carry the MC1R mutation might be identified as being at higher skin cancer risk, or drugs that target the P13K/Akt pathway might help treat certain melanomas.
Melanoma is among the rarest of skin cancers, but it also is the most deadly, accounting for 75 percent of skin cancer deaths, the researchers said.
Researchers note that research conducted in animals often does not have the same results in humans.
Copyright (c) 2013 HealthDay. All rights reserved.
- More Health News on:
- Genes and Gene Therapy
- Melanoma


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It's probably one of the most amazing wonders of mother nature. Because of the severe cold weather, huge ice formations are starting to take shape along Niagara Falls—the American side—and the result is an incredible landscape of bubbling, whirling ice.
Earlier this week, a picture of the frozen falls popped up online, but it turned out to be from 2011. Meanwhile, Niagara Falls native Caitlin Dewey took to the internet to set everyone straight, saying, "No, Niagara Falls is not 'frozen solid.'" And she's right—but there is an incredible amount of ice forming along its banks, and it's completely beautiful.
So, what are we seeing here? Well, the falls themselves aren't frozen. Rather, the water along the banks has frozen, reaching out into the falls to cover much of the water. According to one Niagara Falls tourism site, sometimes it gets so cold that the other side will also freeze, creating an "ice bridge:"
Until 1912,visitors were allowed to actually walk out on the ice bridge and view the Falls from below. February 24th of 1888 the local newspaper reported that at least 20,000 people watched or tobogganed on the ice. Shanties selling liquor, photographs and curiosities abounded. On February 4th 1912 the ice bridge broke up and three tourists lives were lost.
Right now, there's no such ice bridge, but it's amazing nonetheless. Flickr is flooded with absolutely magical images of the ice:
Photos: Shaheen Karolia
Photo: dvdmnk
And you can see the partially frozen falls on EarthCam, too:
Or on the Official Niagara Falls webcam:
Twitter also has some amazing images:
Hankering to see photographs from past instances where the falls have truly frozen? So were we. This image hales from around 1896:
Photo: London Stereoscopic Company/Getty Images
While here we see a 1920s view of the frozen water on the Canadian side of the falls:
Photo: AP
Here are the falls under a wall of ice and frozen spray, on February 2, 1951:
Photo: AP
This photos was taken in March of the same year—it shows a Bell Aircraft helicopter flying close to Niagara Falls, which are frozen. Only a trickle of water is coming from the falls:
Photo: Keystone/Getty Images
We'll keep you up to date on any developments at the falls as they emerge—and please, drop your images, if you have them, in the comments below. Here's hoping we'll see one of those mythical ice bridged this year.
Lead image by Shaheen Karolia on Flickr.


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LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) A 31-year-old Lawrence man has been found not guilty of sexually abusing the 5-year-old son of a woman with whom he was living.
The Lawrence Journal-World reports a Douglas County jury acquitted the man Thursday of aggravated criminal sodomy. He could have faced up to life in prison if convicted.
A prosecution witness testified the boy's DNA was found on the man's genitals, which were swabbed by police shortly after the alleged incident in April.
But the man told police the boy had touched him while he was using a toilet next to a tub where the boy was taking a bath.
The man isn't being named because he was not convicted.


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Bagging and palletizing system provides key to company's success
An animal feed manufacturer installs an integrated turnkey bagging and palletizing system for a new production line.
Novus International Inc., headquartered in St. Charles, Mo., is a global supplier of animal feed ingredients and other products for poultry, cattle, pigs, horses, pets, and other animals. The company's Novus Arkansas LLC facility in Little Rock, Ark., produces and exports proprietary animal feed ingredients to more than 70 countries around the world. In 2009, the company expanded the Little Rock facility to boost production to meet increasing customer demand. To ensure that the various products were properly packaged, palletized, and secured for transport, the company needed to find a fast, reliable, and accurate automated bagging and palletizing system.
Finding a turnkey system
When searching for the bagging and palletizing system, the company sent all of the performance requirements and requested quotes from the leading packaging system suppliers in North America. The company needed to accurately fill 25-kilogram pinch-bottom open-mouth bags at 14 bags per minute and 1,000-kilogram open-valve woven polypropylene bulk bags at 12 bags per hour. The 25 kilogram bagger and palletizer also had to be able to handle three different bag types: multi-walled paper bags, plastic-lined paper bags, and low-density polyethylene plastic bags. Additionally, the company needed to ensure that the palletized bags were secure and protected from the elements during transport.
"We wanted a complete automated turnkey system with all of the components coming from one supplier," says Kevin Mowery, Novus senior director of operations and supply chain. "As we went through the bid evaluation process, we found one particular supplier that listened well to our requirements and was very professional in their business and technical approach. We did reference checks on similar equipment that they've installed, and their customers were very satisfied, not only with the equipment but with the follow-up technical support. Additionally, some of our team members had had positive experiences working with the supplier in the past on other projects with other companies."
This supplier, Premier Tech, Rivière-du-Loup, Que., designs and manufactures customized automated packaging, palletiing, dosing, and load-securing equipment and systems for handling dry bulk solids in the food, feed, chemical, pharmaceutical, mineral, construction, and other industries.
Since the company's products are composed of small, free-flowing granular particles with a wide range of sizes, the company sent several different product samples along with the three bag types to the supplier for testing.
Novus team members traveled to the supplier's facility to witness the tests, which proved the supplier could achieve the required bagging rates and accuracies.
"However, we wanted to make sure they could deliver the performance level we were looking for on a large scale, so we also went to a facility near their headquarters and one near our facility to see the system in operation," says Mowery. "One thing we noticed right away is the robustness of their equipment's design; it has very heavy-duty frames and members and an overall higher-quality look and feel to it than some of the other equipment we saw. Another thing we liked is the ability to use third-party replacement parts for off-the-shelf components, such as servo motors, because it minimizes production downtime and maintenance costs since we can get them faster at a lower price. We had a good feeling that the supplier's integrated system would do the job and last a long time, so we decided to purchase one for our facility."
The bagging and palletizing system
The new automated turnkey system consists of a feeder and scale, a single-spout open-mouth bagger, a belt conveyor, a high-level palletizer, a bulk bag filler, a powered roller conveyor, a stretch hooder, PLC controllers, and various ancillary equipment and sensors. The equipment arrived at the Little Rock facility in fall 2010, and the supplier sent several technicians to help the company install, commission, and check out the system. In November 2010, the company started the new automated system without any problems and began bagging and palletizing products that same day.
The integrated bagging and packaging system is programmed to allow the company to fill products into 25-kilogram bags and 1,000-kilogram bulk bags simultaneously, ensuring that the required production rates are always achieved. When filling 25-kilogram bags, the company conveys a product into a hopper installed above a model E-55GHS gravity high-speed feeder, which feeds the product from the hopper to a model E55-NXT electronic net weigher. The servo-driven feeder, which is controlled by the scale, starts gravity-feeding the product with its gate fully open. As the scale nears the set weight, the feeder's gate slowly starts closing in harmonic motion with the increasing weighment so that the gate fully closes at the precise moment the target weight is achieved. According to Anthony Siblall, Premier Tech sales director, this feeding mode provides faster feedrates and more accurate weighments than typical bulk-dribble feeders can.
As the scale doses the product into the model PTK-1700 high speed automatic bagger, the bagger's pickup unit lifts an empty bag from the empty-bag magazine, straightens and opens it, and places it onto the dust-tight filling spout. The product then discharges by gravity from the scale through the spout into the open bag. An integral dust collection system removes the displaced air and dust from the bag for a dust-free bag-filling operation, and a settling device helps deaerate the product while the bag is being filled. The filled bag is transferred to an outfeed conveyor, which moves the upright bag through a bag-sealing system and an ink-jet printer for custom labeling.
From the printer, the bag moves through a bag kicker that lays it down flat onto a belt conveyor. The belt conveyor moves the bag through a leak detector, which signals a bag rejector to remove it from the line if a leak is detected. The bag is then conveyed to an inclined bag flattener that flattens and shapes it for palletizing. Next, the bag is moved over a checkweigher and through a metal detector with an ink-code marker to a short gravity conveyor with a bag rejector. If a bag is outside the preset accuracy range, the checkweigher signals the bag rejector to remove it from the line. If metal is detected in a bag, the metal detector marks it and the rejector removes it from the line, allowing operators to easily differentiate the bags.
After moving down the gravity conveyor, the bag is moved to the model AP-425 high-level automatic bag palletizer, which has automatic empty-pallet and slip-sheet dispensers and can palletize up to 25 bags per minute in a 5-bag pattern. The palletizer's standard overhead turning device turns and orients the bag in the appropriate preprogrammed pattern and places it on the pallet stack. When a bag layer is completed, the palletizer's two-speed electric pallet elevator lowers so that the next successive bag layer can be completed. The palletizer alternates the stacking pattern of each layer to ensure pallet stability.
At the same time the open-mouth bagger is operating, the company can convey a product into a hopper installed above the model BG-931 automatic bulk bag filler. In operation, the bulk bag filler automatically places an empty pallet on the filler's scale deck, which is directly below the hopper discharge. The scale deck is mounted on four load cells that communicate the bag weight to the filler's PLC during filling. After the pallet is in position, the operator manually hangs an empty bag in the filler's bag-holding frame and inserts a double-walled fill spout with an expander band into the bag's open valve to create a dust-tight seal. When the product flows through the spout's center tube into the bag, displaced air and dust are pulled through the spout's outer tube by the dust collection system. After the operator activates the filler, a model E-55GHS gravity high-speed feeder feeds the product from the hopper into the bulk bag. A vibrator operates intermittently to help settle the product in the bag. When the bulk bag reaches the target weight, the operator releases the bag handles and removes the fill spout from the bag. The scale deck's powered rollers then eject the completed pallet onto the powered roller conveyor that moves it to a checkweigher and then to the stretch hooder. If a bulk bag is outside the preset accuracy range, the system stops and an alarm sounds so that a forklift can remove the pallet from the line. To ensure a contaminant-free product, a metal detector installed in the product conveying line just before the hopper diverts any contaminated product out of the conveying line and shuts down the system to alert the operator.
The powered roller conveyor moves the completed pallets from both the palletizer and bulk bag filler to the same stretch hooder. Sensors installed on the conveyor provide traffic control, giving preference to pallets from the palletizer and allowing the company to work both lines at the same time. The stretch hooder places a film hood over the bags to secure the load to the pallet and keep out moisture. The film hood exerts vertical and horizontal tension on the load, gently pressing it down onto the pallet to improve the packaging quality of unstable or heavy loads. From the stretch hooder, the pallets move through a four-sided labeling machine, which applies a label to the sides of the film hood, and then onto an indexing conveyor, where they wait for a forklift to move them to the warehouse.
The bagging and palletizing system uses five PLC controllers: one each for the bagger, palletizer, stretch hooder, bulk bag filler, and traffic control sensors. The bagger's PLC is integrated with the palletizer's PLC, allowing operators to make parameter changes to both at the bagger. All of the other equipment's operating parameters are made individually at the associated PLC. To ensure safe operation, light curtains are installed at strategic locations throughout the system where human entry is considered unsafe. If a light curtain is broken or interrupted, such as by an operator's arm or flying debris, the system automatically shuts down.
Fast and accurate bag filling
Since installing the bagging and palletizing system, the company has been filling bags at the required rates with accuracies of ±56 grams at 2 Sigma for the 25-kilogram bags and ±454 grams at 2 Sigma for the 1,000-kilogram bulk bags. "The bagger's ability to handle different bag types allows us to give customers exactly what they want," says Mowery. "The palletizer does a good job of squaring up the bags and making a nice-looking pallet with neatly stacked bags. And we like the stretch hooder's design and how well it functions. Because its one-piece film hood fits over the bags and pallet to secure the load, it produces a more stable and better weather-proofed pallet during transport than a stretch-wrapper can. That's important for us because we export a lot of the products overseas in containers, and we want the pallets and products to be intact and undamaged when they reach the customer."
According to Mowery, the supplier delivered a cost-effective, efficient, and reliable turnkey bagging and packaging system. "It's completely integrated, and they've taken responsibility for all of the equipment, even if they didn't manufacture it, so there's only one telephone number we need to call when we need service. The system provides dust-free, spill-free, accurate, and fast bag filling for us, and it's user-friendly and cleans out easily between product runs. It was easy for our operators to learn how to use, and only one operator per shift is needed run the entire operation. The supplier has been responsive and knowledgeable and provides us with good support when we need it, which has minimized downtime and maximized production uptime."


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President Donald Trump declared a national emergency on Friday afternoon to bolster funding for fighting the coronavirus outbreak.
Trump says the emergency will open up nearly $50 billion for state and local governments to respond to the outbreak. Additionally, the president said they would be waiving interest on federally owned student loans in effort to ease financial impact of the virus outbreak.
He added that he has also instructed his Secretary of Energy to purchase large quantities of crude oil for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which stores fuel for emergency use.
Trump held a press conference in the White House Rose Garden to address the spiraling coronavirus pandemic as he seeks to calm a panicked nation amid mixed messages and growing criticism of his administration's scattershot response.
He said he is also asking every hospital in the U.S. to activate their emergency preparedness plan.
The president has faced growing criticism about his mixed messages on the severity of the outbreak and over the administration's scattershot response.
But the president is defending the administration's response, particularly its temporary ban on travel from Europe, saying it will save lives. He says of the virus that "this will pass" and the nation will emerge stronger.
In addition to declaring a national emergency, Trump announced a public-private partnership to increase national coronavirus testing capabilities.
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While the president heralded the upcoming increase in available tests, he stressed that they don't want people to take a test if they feel they shouldn't be doing it.
Trump also said that Google is working to develop a website to help people determine whether a coronavirus test is needed.
The national emergency declaration comes as the virus edged ever closer to the world's power centers, including a positive test for a Brazilian official who spent time with Trump and top administration officials last weekend and an Australian Cabinet minister who met with U.S. Attorney General William Barr and Trump's daughter Ivanka among other top aides.
When pressed by a reporter over why he hasn't been tested or started self-quarantining, the the president said he will "most likely" be tested "fairly soon," but says he has no symptoms.
""This will pass, this will pass through and we're going to be even stronger for it," Trump said Friday afternoon.
Negotiations continue between the White House and Congress on an aid package, but there was no announcement of a breakthrough, as House Democrats prepare to vote on their own measure Friday.
Several cities and almost 30 states have already declared states of emergency in response to the coronavirus outbreak.
There have been more than 1,200 COVID-19 cases in the U.S. and at least 40 deaths, but there has also been criticism regarding a lack of available testing.
WHO officials said March 9 that of about 80,000 people who have been sickened by COVID-19 in China, more than 70% have recovered and been discharged from hospitals.
And to put the coronavirus numbers in context, millions of Americans get the flu every single year and there are thousands of flu deaths annually. Since October 2019, the CDC estimates around 32 million Americans have gotten the flu. That's one in every 10 Americans.


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The Evil Within
Tango Gameworks
After recently playing the little indie survival-horror gem Outlast, I wondered why there was such a lack of really scary games out there for the gaming PC community. Sure, Alien: Isolation as well as the earlier Penumbra series of games were definitely frightening and nerve racking in their own right, but no other games really came to mind. Zombies never really moved the needle for me in the horror department, just the way that vampires, wolf-men, mummies, and the like seem silly and juvenile, at least in my opinion. In that respect, the Resident Evil series was okay but not really my cup of tea since it was all about the shambling dead.
Enter The Evil Within, yet another survival-horror game directed by the genre's big granddaddy, Shinji Mikami, and yet another game with the word "Evil" in it. With it, we get a rather unwieldly third-person perspective, zombie-esque villagers who are possessed by some sort of evil entity, copious pools of blood, gratuitous gore and violence, lots of corny voice acting, and a plethora of tried and true survival-horror troupes, such as being able to run and hide in lockers and under tables.
The game starts off with a bang, as players take the role of police detective Sebastian Castellanos, who is tasked with investigating several messy murders that happened within a mental institution (how original) along with his police buddies. Soon, all hell breaks loose when a disfigured man in a cowl suddenly attacks, and Sebastian is forced to flee for his life. From there, he encounters a whole laundry list of familiar horror entities; zombie types, ghosts; even a chainsaw wielding madman makes an appearance or five.
The Evil Within exists in a schizophrenic universe entirely its own, with many hits instead of misses. It has been described as a combination of Silent Hill and Resident Evil—style and gameplay wise, and in an ode to the former, developer Tango Gameworks makes sure to keep you on your toes at every turn. Much in the way that Dead Space kept constantly pushing the main protagonist forward in order to maintain the frenetic pacing that so many PC gamers seem to crave these days, so The Evil Within throws you into different game levels that have a minimal sense of cohesion, logic-wise.
This can sort of be forgivable to a certain extent since part of the appeal of Evil is that it plays with your mind and that it's hard to distinguish between what's real and what isn't. Unfortunately, it doesn't always work, and sometimes it seemed that I was playing a game full of randomly designed levels, instead of it feeling like an immersive experience.
Gameplay wise, although The Evil Within falls within the survival-horror genre it definitely feels more action oriented than Outlast, or even Alien: Isolation, so in this respect it is more like the Resident Evil series. While this isn't a terrible thing, being able to tote around guns (albeit with scarce ammo) and blast away at enemies can kind of diminish the horror factor, but you don't always have to run and hide. To its credit, however, stealth is much preferred to running and gunning as enemies will make short work of you is you engage in too much of the latter. This combination of action and stealth was previously seen in one of Mikami's more refined games (surprise!)—Resident Evil 4.
Despite some of its drawbacks, The Evil Within keeps a good pace going, and for the most part is fun to play. It kept me intrigued enough to wonder what horror awaited me around the next corner, and the next one beyond that, and so on. There are also a whole plethora of secret areas to discover where you can obtain special loot. Adding to the game's replay value is the fact that there are different ways that you can approach each of the game's levels and the scary antagonists within them.
You're probably wondering by now: "Is this a creepy game?" and that's understandable since Evil is billed as a survival-horror game. This is highly subjective. For most modern gamers who watch a lot of dopey Youtube yahoos screeching and jumping up and down while playing supposedly scary games filled with nothing but jump scares, then perhaps. One thing I will say is that it does set a creepy mood and the atmosphere is grimy and forlorn. The excellent graphics only help to further immerse you in The Evil Within's surreal setting, with environments looking almost photo-realistic. 4k gaming aficionados will see some real eye-candy, while those with even mid-range gaming PCs will also be entranced by its visuals. The minimal music also helps to draw you into the game just as any good horror film can do.
Overall, I found that The Evil Within was a fun game to play and a real thrill right, in spite of its minor shortcomings (crappy over-the-shoulder camera, spotty voice acting, etc.). It is an engaging survival-horror experience that kept me hooked from beginning to end. In all, it is a game about exploration, survival mainly through action with some stealth, and the whole thing can be completed in about twenty hours. It does, however, require a pretty powerful gaming PC to play, so upgrading your machine is a good idea—he's a suggestion:
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