Sunday, September 30, 2012

10 Hidden Truths About Falling in Love | Love & Lust - Relationships ...

Love is oftentimes connoted with a feeling. Sure, for about five minutes. Then reality kicks in?and then love becomes the conjoined twin of the words for what may?seem like an eternity to some people: "sacrifice", "commitment", "a choice". Lovely!

Like a full-time job, Olympic sport, fitness regimen, or financial investment, love, in its many forms, isn?t made for everyone unless one is truly prepared.?

Here?s what you need to know about falling in love before you fall prey to its spell:

1. Love seems to be the hottest, most popular bachelor we?re never going to get: It?s just too damn elusive.

Thanks to the who-are-they-kidding scenarios Hollywood rom-coms and off-the-charts porn flicks have implanted in our subconscious, the idea of "happily ever after" has set unrealistic expectations for both sexes!

2. Love as they say is like sweet poetry or the perfect dance between two people. But the problem is, not everyone can whip out a sonnet or bust a move like?Usher. It takes much practice, patience, persistence and lonely nights where you?re left with your vibrator to keep those Kegels in check.?

3. It always looks amazing at the start but,?when the label has been made official, romance has now been replaced with too much lazy familiarity that not even?a La-Z-Boy could compete. Promising, isn?t it?

4. Just like having a pet or a child, commitment entails a No Return, No Exchange Policy (for as long as your pride can bear it just to say you didn?t give?up first).?

5. It is the hardest universal subject that involves logic from the whole trial and error process, and yet no matter how many formulas you think you?ve?mastered, it has another aspect in its curriculum that you can?t learn in school: band-aiding a broken heart.?

6. The fact that it is called ?falling,? implies that there is a level of discomfort, uncertainty and vulnerability from appearing to be ?weak? as you?blindly (although others may call it fearlessly to sound less foolish) tread the so-called pathway to love (which is sometimes mistaken with lust).?We smell a one-night stand coming.

7. People are so afraid of bungee jumping or sky diving for the fear of dying in an instant and yet, ?falling? in love, where if you don?t play your cards?right, you can get your head, heart and soul crushed, torn, battered and bruised in a slow almost-death-like experience from the intense anguish. The worst?part: it?s a slow torturous process that never leads to actual death since we were created to be resilient beings. Awesome.?

8. It is a drug that?s got no ?Anonymous? support group other than your girlfriends? place filled with chick flick DVDs, John Mayer?s ?Heartbreak Warfare? on?loop, wine and more wine (cheaper wine as the hours go by because by this time, your tastebuds too, have become numb from the emotional pain that they could care less). Pajama pity party indeed!

9. Another term for lover is a flame. Exactly! Just as a moth is lured to a flame or we are to an ?end of season FINAL SALE? sign, it takes a hold on us, that we become defenseless. Hence the term, ?burned by love...? or your credit card. Same banana.?

10. Just like a damn hiccup, it can happen to anyone, anytime, anywhere. And even if we hold our breath for 30 seconds as Google Facts swears it?ll kill the?annoying reflex, it just won?t go away!!!?

Yet, after all the ice cream, cheesy songs, drunken nights, and random rebound kissing have all served their purpose, by golly, it?s back in the rollercoaster saddle of this funny thing we call love.?

We may have gained a few extra pounds from emotional eating or neglected our roots from not getting its monthly color retouching, but we gained such?incredible insight about ourselves.?

We turn out stronger, wiser, more confident individuals who ultimately seek only one type of revenge that hurts no one: to be happier.

It is only then that we can truly say that our past can no longer hurt us. They were yesterday?s news and today we?re making headlines as we return into the?dating scene larger than life!?

Bottom line, pain is the one thing we need to feel alive. It?s a prick on the nerve endings of our soul to realize how fleeting life and love are, that we?need to grab them for dear life or the moment just might pass. We need love?s nemesis to truly understand, appreciate and respect love?s power on us:?physically, mentally, and emotionally.?

Love truly is a drug and it?s just what the doctor recommended.

I guess that?s why they also call it, ?Crazy in Love.? Anyone who?s ever been in love will say this: to experience the rush or reignite that spark just for a?moment in time, they would gladly go through all the pain, all over again.

Source: http://www.cosmo.ph/love-lust/relationships/10-hidden-truths-about-falling-in-love/

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Saturday, September 29, 2012

Adoption & Foster Care: My Personal Experiences: In It For The Money

Most of the stories in the media about foster care seem to take the most horrendous cases into account, portraying foster children as extremely disturbed or dangerous delinquents and painting foster parents in an equally unflattering light.?

One such unflattering assumption about foster parents which makes me laugh is that ?Foster parents just take in kids for the money.?? Clearly, anybody who believes this has never done foster care.??

Michael and Sarah Gerstenzang were an upper middle class couple who were living in New York City with two young children when they took their first foster placement because, among other reasons they wanted to ?give back to society and help a child.?? Michael was an attorney and as a social worker Sarah always had an interest in child welfare.? When reflecting on her personal experiences, Sarah shared her feelings about the low reimbursement rate foster parents receive:

[My husband ] ?and I were asked numerous times by our friends and acquaintances if we thought that many foster parents were ?doing it for the money.?? (I think middle class people sleep better when we assume that adults are being paid to care for children whom we as a society are responsible for.)? We would first explain that there wasn?t much money in foster care for foster parents, to which some people replied, ?Yeah, but if they take in like ten kids??? And then we would patiently explain that taking in ten kids wasn?t permitted.? But for argument?s sake, if one could take in ten kids, economize, and have a little left over, would it be worth it to have to live with ten kids??

Thank goodness for reforms which limit the number of children in a foster home and thoroughly screen families before giving them a license to make sure they?re fostering for the right reasons.? In our state, one of the requirements for fostering is that the family must be financially independent enough that they don?t have to rely on foster care as a source of income (as verified by income tax returns and paycheck stubs) which hopefully helps to weed out the people who are just doing it for the money versus those who are truly interested in making a difference in the life of a child.

Realistically, it?s not accurate to say that you get PAID for doing foster care- you get reimbursed with a stipend because children not only require much of your time and attention, but cost money to raise.? I love what continued to explain about stipends, drawing on her background of studying social policy as a graduate student:

??The practice of reimbursing foster parents for some of the costs of caring for a child dates back more than one hundred years.? Stipends were initially paid to discourage families from putting children to work to earn their keep.? They were intentionally set at levels slightly lower than the cost of covering the child?s expenses.? The basic argument for the low level of reimbursement applies today:? Foster parents have to want to foster for humanitarian reasons, not for profit. So the people who make the most significant difference in quality of life for the foster children, the foster parents, are the only ones not getting paid; who does get paid are lawyers, judges, social workers, and administrators.? Because they are not employees, foster parents also forgo health insurance and Social Security benefits.? Since the foster system depends on career foster parents and children benefit from their experience, it is a shame that the system doesn?t support and encourage these parents.? And if children can?t be cared for in foster homes (due to either a lack of homes or the child?s difficult behavior) the next step for them is often a group home, which can cost two hundred dollars per day or more, depending on the level of care.?

On a related note, because of a legislative audit last year, my state?s Division of Child and Family Services is shifting its focus on how to spend funds for children in foster care, including less reliance on group homes as well as investing more money on in?home services in an attempt to reduce the number (and cost) of children being placed in out-of-home placements. A newspaper article explaining the changes the recent audit prompted stated, ?While in-home placement provides better outcomes for children, it is unsafe for some children to remain in their own homes.??

Hence the need for foster families!? Herein lies the problem, which the article continues to state:

?The low basic financial reimbursement rate may discourage some people from the 24-hour, seven days a week commitment that foster care requires, national advocates say.?

Props to Utah DCFS Director Brent Platt who was quoted in the article as saying "The reality is, people don?t do it for money.? These are people who want to help children, to give back to their communities."

Source: http://mamamem.blogspot.com/2012/09/in-it-for-money.html

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Friday, September 28, 2012

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Family: Minneapolis gunman suffered mental illness

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) ? The family of the man who killed four people at a Minneapolis sign company says he struggled for years with mental illness.

Police said Friday that Andrew J. Engeldinger of Minneapolis opened fire at Accent Signage Systems just hours after being let go from the company Thursday morning.

His family says in a statement released through the National Alliance on Mental Illness that they aren't trying to excuse Engeldinger's actions, but perhaps partially explain them.

Alliance director Sue Abderholden says the family had approached the group for help about two years ago. That's about when Engeldinger's uncle says his nephew broke off contact with his family.

Abderholden says Engeldinger's parents took a class on understanding and dealing with mental illness. But she says they couldn't convince Engeldinger to seek help.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/family-minneapolis-gunman-suffered-mental-illness-204638081.html

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Bioengineers introduce 'Bi-Fi' -- The biological 'Internet'

ScienceDaily (Sep. 27, 2012) ? If you were a bacterium, the virus M13 might seem innocuous enough. It insinuates more than it invades, setting up shop like a freeloading houseguest, not a killer. Once inside it makes itself at home, eating your food, texting indiscriminately. Recently, however, bioengineers at Stanford University have given M13 a bit of a makeover.

The researchers, Monica Ortiz, a doctoral candidate in bioengineering, and Drew Endy, PhD, an assistant professor of bioengineering, have parasitized the parasite and harnessed M13's key attributes -- its non-lethality and its ability to package and broadcast arbitrary DNA strands -- to create what might be termed the biological Internet, or "Bi-Fi." Their findings were published online Sept. 7 in the Journal of Biological Engineering.

Using the virus, Ortiz and Endy have created a biological mechanism to send genetic messages from cell to cell. The system greatly increases the complexity and amount of data that can be communicated between cells and could lead to greater control of biological functions within cell communities. The advance could prove a boon to bioengineers looking to create complex, multicellular communities that work in concert to accomplish important biological functions.

Medium and message

M13 is a packager of genetic messages. It reproduces within its host, taking strands of DNA -- strands that engineers can control -- wrapping them up one by one and sending them out encapsulated within proteins produced by M13 that can infect other cells. Once inside the new hosts, they release the packaged DNA message.

The M13-based system is essentially a communication channel. It acts like a wireless Internet connection that enables cells to send or receive messages, but it does not care what secrets the transmitted messages contain.

"Effectively, we've separated the message from the channel. We can now send any DNA message we want to specific cells within a complex microbial community," said Ortiz, the first author of the study.

It is well-known that cells naturally use various mechanisms, including chemicals, to communicate, but such messaging can be extremely limited in both complexity and bandwidth. Simple chemical signals are typically both message and messenger -- two functions that cannot be separated.

"If your network connection is based on sugar then your messages are limited to 'more sugar,' 'less sugar,' or 'no sugar'" explained Endy.

Cells engineered with M13 can be programmed to communicate in much more complex, powerful ways than ever before. The possible messages are limited only by what can be encoded in DNA and thus can include any sort of genetic instruction: start growing, stop growing, come closer, swim away, produce insulin and so forth.

Rates and ranges

In harnessing DNA for cell-cell messaging the researchers have also greatly increased the amount of data they can transmit at any one time. In digital terms, they have increased the bit rate of their system. The largest DNA strand M13 is known to have packaged includes more than 40,000 base pairs. Base pairs, like 1s and 0s in digital encoding, are the basic building blocks of genetic data. Most genetic messages of interest in bioengineering range from several hundred to many thousand base pairs.

Ortiz was even able to broadcast her genetic messages between cells separated by a gelatinous medium at a distance of greater than 7 centimeters.

"That's very long-range communication, cellularly speaking," she said.

Down the road, the biological Internet could lead to biosynthetic factories in which huge masses of microbes collaborate to make more complicated fuels, pharmaceuticals and other useful chemicals. With improvements, the engineers say, their cell-cell communication platform might someday allow more complex three-dimensional programming of cellular systems, including the regeneration of tissue or organs.

"The ability to communicate 'arbitrary' messages is a fundamental leap -- from just a signal-and-response relationship to a true language of interaction," said Radhika Nagpal, professor of computer science at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University, who was not involved in the research. "Orchestrating the cooperation of cells to form artificial tissues, or even artificial organisms is just one possibility. This opens a door to new biological systems and solving problems that have no direct analog in nature."

Ortiz added: "The biological Internet is in its very earliest stages. When the information Internet was first introduced in the 1970s, it would have been hard to imagine the myriad uses it sees today, so there's no telling all the places this new work might lead."

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Stanford University Medical Center. The original article was written by Andrew Myers.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.


Journal Reference:

  1. Monica E Ortiz, Drew Endy. Engineered cell-cell communication via DNA messaging. Journal of Biological Engineering, 2012; 6 (1): 16 DOI: 10.1186/1754-1611-6-16

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_science/~3/U83jqgGqS48/120928103802.htm

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Thursday, September 27, 2012

Sky+ launches 7-day Catch Up TV, 2TB HD DVRs and adds zeebox extras to its iPad app

Sky launches 7day Catch Up TV, 2TB HD DVRs and adds zeebox extras to its iPad app

Sky+ in the UK has bundled several updates to deliver all at once, including expected ones like zeebox integration into its iPad app and an expanded Catch Up TV lineup, plus a new 2TB Sky+ HD DVR. Viewers will notice the new 7-day Catch Up TV section in their video on-demand section stocked with shows from Sky, ITV Player and Demand 5, with BBC iPlayer arriving this fall and 4oD next year. The Sky+ iPad app has been updated to v4.1 with a notification for possible recording conflicts plus expanded content info and social tie-ins powered by zeebox. Now, you can not only change channels from the tablet, but also find out more about what's playing. Finally, the new expanded size DVR outpaces the stock configuration available from competitor Virgin Media, and we're told it is priced the same as the previous 1TB offering. Check after the break for a press release with all the details, the gallery for screenshots and a look at the DVR or hit iTunes to grab the updated app right now.

Continue reading Sky+ launches 7-day Catch Up TV, 2TB HD DVRs and adds zeebox extras to its iPad app

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Colbert blames Obama for bacon shortage

By NBC News staff

Comedy Central

Stephen Colbert frets over news of a global bacon shortage on "Colbert Report."

Stephen Colbert was in rare form on Wednesday, offending a laundry list of religions with his political theories behind the pending bacon shortage and the movement to get people praying for a Romney win.

Not surprisingly, the bacon story came first. The expected dearth in the supply of America?s favorite breakfast meat has been all over the news, and Colbert isn?t buying the explanation that a drought is the cause.

?Just think about it -- who?s not supposed to eat bacon? Well, Jews first, but most of the Jews I know eat it anyway. No, I?m talking about the really observant Jews -- Muslims. They won?t even touch bacon. Which means this bacon shortage is nothing less than creeping Sharia law.?

And like the commentators whose opinions he channels, Colbert knows who?s at fault.

?You know who I blame? Barack Obama. I have been warning you for years about his kowtowing to Islamic extremists, and now the chicken schwarma is coming home to roost,? he said. The next thing you know, Cat Deeley is hosting ?So You Think You Can Dervish.?

Which would be far from the most bizarre reality show on TV today.

Praying to save America

But anyone worried that Colbert would spend the whole show on Islam didn?t need to worry. He soon turned the topic over to Christianity. More specifically, the? ?40 Days to Save America? website that asks pastors and congregations to commit to asking God for help electing their desired candidates, arguing that ?prayer + fasting + action equals change?

?That?s amazing. Usually prayer plus fasting plus action equals passing out,? Colbert said.

The pastor behind the movement, Rick Scarborough, helped launch Rick Perry?s presidential campaign with a prayer rally. We all know how that turned out. But as Colbert noted: ?Pastor Scarborough did credit the rally with ending the drought in Texas. So clearly his prayers work on natural disasters, which is a perfect match for the Romney campaign.?

As for its effects?

?This prayer will help Mitt Romney win over undecided voters, especially the biggest undecided voter of them all -- God. I mean, he may be all-knowing, but he would still like to know a little bit more about Mitt?s tax returns," according to Colbert. "In fact, God is three undecided voters ? the father, son and holy spirit. And you have to figure the son is leaning Obama, what with the long hair and the loaves and fishes handouts to the poor. Get a job, hippie!?

But if Jesus is a long shot under that scenario, Colbert thinks this approach has a better shot with God, who as traditionally depicted fits the Romney demographic.

?He?s old, male, vengeful, and he lives in a gated community.?

Big budget boom

But there's someone who doesn't connect with either Romney or Obama, at least when it comes to the bottom line. On Wednesday night's "Late Show," David Letterman spoke with British Prime Minister David Cameron, who scoffed at the billion-plus budgets of American political campaigns.

"It's a really big difference between us," Cameron said of the campaign process. "We don't allow political parties to advertise on television, so that massively cuts the cost."

With applause from the "Late Show" audience, Cameron added, "I've never uttered the words, 'I'm David Cameron, and I approve this message.'"

What's in a name?

In honor of the gathering of the United Nations General Assembly in New York this week, Letterman then turned his focus to a Top Ten roundup on Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad -- specifically, "words that almost rhyme with Mahmoud."

"I'm sure in Iran, it's probably a very common name," the host began, "But to us, it has an odd sound to our ear."

So with the help of a rhyming dictionary and a "special thesaurus," he offered such entries as "muumuu," "Brit Hume," "mom nude," and his No. 1 pick, "Mets booed."

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Source: http://entertainment.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/09/27/14123857-global-bacon-shortage-stephen-colbert-blames-obama-and-creeping-sharia-law?lite

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Dynamics of DNA packaging helps regulate formation of heart

ScienceDaily (Sep. 27, 2012) ? A new regulator for heart formation has been discovered by studying how embryonic stem cells adjust the packaging of their DNA. This approach to finding genetic regulators, the scientists say, may have the power to provide insight into the development of any tissue in the body -- liver, brain, blood and so on.

A stem cell has the potential to become any type of cell. Once the choice is made, the cell and other stem cells committed to the same fate divide to form organ tissue.

A University of Washington-led research team was particularly interested in how stem cells turn into heart muscle cells to further research on repairing damaged hearts through tissue regeneration. The leaders of the project were Dr. Charles Murry, a cardiac pathologist and stem cell biologist; Dr. Randall Moon, who studies the control of embryonic development, and Dr. John Stamatoyannopoulos, who explores the operating systems of the human genome.

The paper's lead author is Dr. Sharon Paige, a UW MD-PhD student who completed her Ph.D. in Dr. Murry's lab.

The results are published in the Sept. 28 edition of Cell.

Paige, an aspiring pediatric cardiologist, said, "By identifying regulators of cardiac development, this work has the potential to lead to a better understanding of the causes of congenital heart disease, thereby paving the way for therapeutic advances."

Previously UW researchers had examined the signals that prod cells to grow into various kinds of heart tissue. In this case, the researchers entered a relatively unexplored area. They decided to look at the genetic controls behind the transformation of stem cells into heart tissue.

Because stem cells keep their DNA code under wraps until needed, the scientists examined how this packaging is altered over time to permit reading of portions of the code and thereby produce changes in the cell.

DNA is wound up into a structure called chromatin. "DNA can be packaged as tightly closed, neutral or activated," Murry explained. The tightly closed state, he said, is analogous to setting the brakes on a car.

Like a child who clams up when asked, "What will you be when you grow up?" stem cells are protective of the genes that will determine their future cell type, or what scientists call their cell fate.

"We found that stem cells take great care to avoid turning on cell-fate regulating genes at the wrong time," Murry said. "These genes have their brakes on until they are needed." When the time is right, he said, "the brakes come off and the gas goes on."

He explained that the situation is different for genes that regulate cell functions, in contrast to those that regulate cell fate. Genes that control, for example, the production of proteins that allow the cell to contract or to generate electrical signals do not have such a complex braking system. Those genes can be more readily activated.

The researchers pointed out that it was already known that the patterns stem cells follow to modify their DNA packaging distinguished them from progenitor cells -- cells prepared to begin a lineage of a particular type of cell -- and also from cells that already had a working identity, such as blood or muscle cells.

However , the dynamics of the DNA packaging modifications -- how the packaging is programmed to change over time -- and how these dynamics influence which genes are "exposed" and activated to create, for example, heart muscle cells, was poorly understood.

The UW-led research team learned that, as human embryonic stem cells become heart cells, this differentiation is accompanied by distinctive dynamic alterations in DNA packaging. This tell-tale pattern enabled the scientists to distinguish the key regulators of heart development from other genes. The researchers referred to the carefully timed pattern of changes in the DNA wrapping as a "temporal chromatin signature."

Just as a bank robber leaves incriminating evidence in a handwritten note to the teller, the temporal chromatin signature gave the scientists the clues they needed to hunt down new genes that might be responsible for heart formation.

"We found a bunch of them," Murry said. Their system revealed the top candidate to be the homebox gene MEIS2. This gene seemed an unlikely choice because it had no previous record of participating in heart formation. However, when this gene was removed from a new generation of zebra fish, the developing fish embryos had heart tube formation defects and other heart abnormalities.

Murry and other members of the research team think patterns in DNA unwrapping could be broadly applicable to discovering the genes that regulate other aspects of tissue and organ formation beyond only the heart. Such a research approach might help reveal the major developmental decisions that occur inside of cells as an embryo forms and grows. These revelations could provide information useful to spurring stem cells to form specific tissues for organ repair later in life.

Acknowledging the limitations of a lab system in mimicking what happens inside living cells in the early stages of organ formation in humans, Murry said, "The use of the temporal chromatin signature to discover regulatory genes could give us new insights into human development and new tools to control cell fate."

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Washington, 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:

  1. Sharon?L. Paige, Sean Thomas, Cristi?L. Stoick-Cooper, Hao Wang, Lisa Maves, Richard Sandstrom, Lil Pabon, Hans Reinecke, Gabriel Pratt, Gordon Keller, Randall?T. Moon, John Stamatoyannopoulos, Charles?E. Murry. A Temporal Chromatin Signature in Human Embryonic Stem Cells Identifies Regulators of Cardiac Development. Cell, 2012; 151 (1): 221 DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2012.08.027

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/27hegCkUB3w/120927142526.htm

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Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Group claims Da Vinci painted early Mona Lisa work

(AP) ? A Zurich-based foundation says it will prove to the world Thursday that Leonardo Da Vinci painted an earlier version of the Mona Lisa ? a claim doubted by at least one expert on the multifaceted Renaissance artist.

The Mona Lisa Foundation, which has been working with the anonymous owners of the "Isleworth Mona Lisa," says that after 35 years of research, experts believe it predates the famed 16th-century masterpiece by some 11 or 12 years based on regression tests, mathematical comparisons and historical and archival records.

"So far, not one scientific test has been able to disprove that the painting is by Leonardo," said art historian Stanley Feldman, a foundation member and principal author of a foundation book entitled "Mona Lisa: Leonardo's Earlier Version" to be released Thursday. "We have used methods that were not available to Leonardo 500 years ago."

"When we do a very elementary mathematical test, we have discovered that all of the elements of the two bodies ? the two people, the two sitters ? are in exactly the same place," Feldman told The Associated Press by phone. "It strikes us that in order for that to be so accurate, so meticulously exact, only the person who did one did the other ... It's an extraordinary revelation in itself, and we think it's valid."

The Isleworth painting ? likewise a portrait of a young woman with an enigmatic smile ? is slightly larger, was painted on canvas and has brighter colors than the famed Louvre Museum masterpiece painted on wood. The posture, folded hand positions, faces, expressions and clothing are similar, while the landscape in the background is different.

The foundation says the painting turned up in the home of an English nobleman in the late 1800s ? thus the connection to Isleworth ? and was shipped to the United States for safekeeping during World War I. After the war, it was analyzed in Italy, and eventually taken to Switzerland where it remained in a bank vault for the last 40 years, the group said.

The Isleworth Mona Lisa has been known publicly for generations ? if forgotten by the broader public ? and the book excerpts numerous news headlines about the painting and the possibility of its Da Vinci connection in the early 20th century.

Martin Kemp, an Oxford University professor and Leonardo expert, wrote in an e-mail that "the reliable primary evidence provides no basis for thinking that there was 'an earlier' portrait of Lisa del Giocondo" ? referring to the subject of the painting that's known as the Mona Lisa in English and La Joconde in French.

Kemp questioned the "debatable interpretations" of source material about the Isleworth painting, and said that scientific analysis cannot categorically deny that Da Vinci didn't paint it. However, he added: "The infrared reflectography and X-ray points very strongly to its not being by Leonardo."

"The Isleworth Mona Lisa miss-translates subtle details of the original, including the sitter's veil, her hair, the translucent layer of her dress, the structure of the hands ... " Kemp wrote. "The landscape is devoid of atmospheric subtlety. The head, like all other copies, does not capture the profound elusiveness of the original."

The Louvre Museum declined to comment.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/4e67281c3f754d0696fbfdee0f3f1469/Article_2012-09-26-Switzerland-Another%20Mona%20Lisa?/id-d18d5f104f8c45c08731c8292dee93ed

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Chris Brown Breaks Up With Karrueche Tran, Makes Out With ... Nicole Scherzinger?!

Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2012/09/chris-brown-breaks-up-with-karrueche-tran-makes-out-with-dot-dot/

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Video: The Obama-Reagan parallel

PFT: Ref nightmare NFL feared has happened

PFT: Even before Monday night?s Packers-Seahawks game, the officiating lockout had reached a tipping point. Casual, Super-Bowl-only fans were buzzing about the brouhaha, and the NFL?s ?remain calm . . . all is well . . . ALL IS WELL!? mantra was regarded as laughable. But the NFL had been lucky. No game had been decided by a bad call in a decisive moment. So much for that.

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036697/vp/49170569#49170569

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Hiring plans show retailers are confident about holidays

Gerald Storch, Toys R Us chairman & CEO, discusses his company's plans to hire more than 45,000 seasonal workers this holiday season.

By Roland Jones, NBC News

Toys R Us is joining Wal-Mart and other major retailers making bets that they?ll need extra staff for the holiday shopping season.

The toy retailer -- which hired about 40,000 seasonal workers last year and retained about 15 percent of that number after the holidays ended -- said Tuesday it will take on 45,000 seasonal employees in the U.S. this year to deal with the upcoming holiday season.

Last week, Wal-Mart Stores said it plans to hire roughly 50,000 seasonal workers during the holiday season, slightly higher than the number of employees it hired last year. Other retailers, such as Kohl?s and Target, have also announced plans for holiday-season hiring this year.

A rise in holiday hiring is seen as an indication of the retail sector?s expectations for holiday shopping season sales, which are vital to retailers because they account for around a quarter of annual retail sales in a typical year.

This week, outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas said it expects holiday hiring to be up this season from last year?s levels. The retail industry hired just over 660,000 seasonal jobs last year. This year, Challenger expects retailers could add almost 700,000 workers. But that level of seasonal hiring is still below pre-recession levels.

While 57 percent of retailers plan to hire seasonal workers at the same level as 2011, 36 percent say they will be hiring more workers this year -- up from 10 percent in 2011, according to a survey by Hay Group. The management consultancy polled 14 major U.S. retailers in order to gauge retailers? plans for the 2012 holiday season.

Retailers? holiday sales projections and hiring plans show they are more confident in economy, Hay Group said. Seventy-five percent of retailers expect an increase in holiday sales this year, according the survey.

?Retailers are betting big on the 2012 holiday season,? and they are ?calm and cool, rather than concerned,? heading in, said Craig Rowley, who is head of Hay Group?s Retail Practice. After four years of economic turbulence, retailers have figured out how to operate in an uncertain business environment, he added.

However, with the economy still in the doldrums and unemployment stubbornly high, forecasts for holiday shopping this year are cautiously optimistic.

Retail sales in the fourth quarter of the year, which includes the holiday sales period, are expected to grow at a 4 percent annual rate, down from a 6 percent rate last year, according to a report from retail consultancy Kantar Retail.

The past two holiday shopping periods benefitted from a pickup in job growth in October that largely continued through the end of the year, but that sort of boost to the economy isn?t likely to take place in 2012, noted Frank Badillo, Kantar?s senior economist.

This fall, consumers are likely to feel more worried about the future, which will be fed by uncertainty surrounding the U.S. elections, unsettled U.S. tax and spending policies, and no clear resolution to the ongoing European debt crisis.

One area of strength will be e-commerce, Badillo added. He expects online sales to grow 14 percent in the fourth quarter, down slightly from the 15.8 percent page seen in the final quarter of 2011. That?s still robust growth, even though online sales only represent about 5 percent of all retail sales, he added. By contrast, brick-and-mortar retailers will see sales growth of 2.9 percent in the fourth quarter, down from 4.7 percent in 2011.

One retailer who will benefit the most from this trend will be Amazon.com, according to Badillo, who said Kantar expects the web-based retailer to become the most shopped retailer for the 2012 holiday season, surpassing the current leader Wal-Mart.

?Amazon is on a trajectory in terms of online sales that should see it surpass Wal-Mart this year,? Badillo said.

?Online is still very strong and far and away the strongest retail channel in terms of growth,? he continued. ?It?s driving much of the price pressure for big-box retailers; sales growth has been flattening out here for them, or in some cases going negative.?

Indeed, e-commerce tracking firm eMarketer predicts 2012 will see a fourth consecutive year where online holiday sales (defined as sales in November and December) will grow in the mid-to-high teens, after plummeting 8.2 percent in 2008 during the depths of the Great Recession.

eMarketer also estimates that online holiday sales will account for 24.3 percent of the $224.2 billion in U.S. retail e-commerce sales forecast for all of 2012.

Source: http://marketday.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/09/25/14095451-hiring-plans-show-retailers-are-confident-about-the-holidays?lite

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Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Another iPhone Fail: Siri Gives New Yorkers Weather for Texas

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Research shows ants share decision-making, lessen vulnerability to 'information overload'

Research shows ants share decision-making, lessen vulnerability to 'information overload' [ Back to EurekAlert! ] Public release date: 24-Sep-2012
[ | E-mail | Share Share ]

Contact: Sandra Leander
sandra.leander@asu.edu
480-965-9865
Arizona State University

Collective decision-making proves more efficient than individual selection

TEMPE, Ariz. Scientists at Arizona State University have discovered that ants utilize a strategy to handle "information overload." Temnothorax rugatulus ants, commonly found living in rock crevices in the Southwest, place the burden of making complicated decisions on the backs of the entire colony, rather than on an individual ant.

In a study published in the early, online version of scientific journal Current Biology, Stephen Pratt, an associate professor in ASU's School of Life Sciences in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and Takao Sasaki, a graduate student in Pratt's lab, suggest that the key to preventing cognitive overload is found in collective decision-making, rather than in multi-tasking.

"I think the reason people are interested in this is because as humans, we can become overloaded with information and that can possibly be detrimental both to our health and to how effectively we make decisions," Pratt said. "There's a sense that as a society, we are being more and more overwhelmed by information."

Previous research has shown that ant colonies have the ability to compare the quality of two potential nest sites even if no single ant visits both sites. Pratt and Sasaki hypothesized that a colony could choose a high-quality nest from many more options more effectively than individual ants, because each member of the colony assesses only a small part of portion of available sites, and then shares the information with the entire colony.

"People usually think of ants as sort of stupid, that they can't really compare options, or that they don't have good cognition," said Sasaki. "But actually, individual ants can compare options, and that's why they too experience cognitive overload a well-documented phenomenon in human beings."

The pair designed experiments with artificial nest sites to evaluate the ants' decision-making abilities. Both colonies and individual ants were given two levels of tasks. Ants had to choose between two nests, or they had to choose among eight nests. In both experiments, half the nests were unsuitable. Nests are frequently chosen based on entrance and cavity size, as well as darkness and other features.

Researchers discovered that individual ants made much worse decisions when faced with eight options rather than two, meaning that they experienced cognitive overload. Colonies, on the other hand, did equally well with either two or eight options, showing that they could handle the harder problem as a collective.

The study shows what Pratt believes to be the answer to two questions: What do you get out of being a collective intelligence? And secondly, why and how is a group smarter than an individual?

"Living in a group is costly in many ways, so ants must get some benefit from doing it," said Pratt. "By sharing the burden of decision-making, colonies avoid the mistakes that a solitary animal makes when taking on too much information. What's great about these ants is that we can see exactly how they do this, by making sure that no ant has to process more information than it is able to."

Pratt added that this is one problem ants can solve, but that there are other problems ants face that we might be able to learn from.

"What we really want is a more complete understanding as to how this society works as a kind of distributed brain," Pratt said. He believes their research may provide insight into how to handle information excess in society and will have applications in collective robotics.

###

This study was supported by grants from the National Science Foundation (1012029) and the Arizona State University Graduate Research Support Program.


[ Back to EurekAlert! ] [ | E-mail | Share 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.


Research shows ants share decision-making, lessen vulnerability to 'information overload' [ Back to EurekAlert! ] Public release date: 24-Sep-2012
[ | E-mail | Share Share ]

Contact: Sandra Leander
sandra.leander@asu.edu
480-965-9865
Arizona State University

Collective decision-making proves more efficient than individual selection

TEMPE, Ariz. Scientists at Arizona State University have discovered that ants utilize a strategy to handle "information overload." Temnothorax rugatulus ants, commonly found living in rock crevices in the Southwest, place the burden of making complicated decisions on the backs of the entire colony, rather than on an individual ant.

In a study published in the early, online version of scientific journal Current Biology, Stephen Pratt, an associate professor in ASU's School of Life Sciences in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and Takao Sasaki, a graduate student in Pratt's lab, suggest that the key to preventing cognitive overload is found in collective decision-making, rather than in multi-tasking.

"I think the reason people are interested in this is because as humans, we can become overloaded with information and that can possibly be detrimental both to our health and to how effectively we make decisions," Pratt said. "There's a sense that as a society, we are being more and more overwhelmed by information."

Previous research has shown that ant colonies have the ability to compare the quality of two potential nest sites even if no single ant visits both sites. Pratt and Sasaki hypothesized that a colony could choose a high-quality nest from many more options more effectively than individual ants, because each member of the colony assesses only a small part of portion of available sites, and then shares the information with the entire colony.

"People usually think of ants as sort of stupid, that they can't really compare options, or that they don't have good cognition," said Sasaki. "But actually, individual ants can compare options, and that's why they too experience cognitive overload a well-documented phenomenon in human beings."

The pair designed experiments with artificial nest sites to evaluate the ants' decision-making abilities. Both colonies and individual ants were given two levels of tasks. Ants had to choose between two nests, or they had to choose among eight nests. In both experiments, half the nests were unsuitable. Nests are frequently chosen based on entrance and cavity size, as well as darkness and other features.

Researchers discovered that individual ants made much worse decisions when faced with eight options rather than two, meaning that they experienced cognitive overload. Colonies, on the other hand, did equally well with either two or eight options, showing that they could handle the harder problem as a collective.

The study shows what Pratt believes to be the answer to two questions: What do you get out of being a collective intelligence? And secondly, why and how is a group smarter than an individual?

"Living in a group is costly in many ways, so ants must get some benefit from doing it," said Pratt. "By sharing the burden of decision-making, colonies avoid the mistakes that a solitary animal makes when taking on too much information. What's great about these ants is that we can see exactly how they do this, by making sure that no ant has to process more information than it is able to."

Pratt added that this is one problem ants can solve, but that there are other problems ants face that we might be able to learn from.

"What we really want is a more complete understanding as to how this society works as a kind of distributed brain," Pratt said. He believes their research may provide insight into how to handle information excess in society and will have applications in collective robotics.

###

This study was supported by grants from the National Science Foundation (1012029) and the Arizona State University Graduate Research Support Program.


[ Back to EurekAlert! ] [ | E-mail | Share Share ]

?


AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.


Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-09/asu-rsa092112.php

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Syrian warplanes bomb Aleppo, kill 3 children

In this Saturday, Sept. 22, 2012 photo, a Syrian boy carries loaves of bread while women stand in line to buy bread outside of a bakery in the Saif al Dawla neighborhood of Aleppo, Syria, Friday, Sept. 21, 2012. (AP Photo/ Manu Brabo)

In this Saturday, Sept. 22, 2012 photo, a Syrian boy carries loaves of bread while women stand in line to buy bread outside of a bakery in the Saif al Dawla neighborhood of Aleppo, Syria, Friday, Sept. 21, 2012. (AP Photo/ Manu Brabo)

A Free Syrian Army soldier, stands on a damaged Syrian military tank, which was destroyed during fighting government froces, in the Syrian town of Azaz, on the outskirts of Aleppo, Sunday, Sept. 23, 2012. Syria's bloody 18-month conflict, which activists say has killed nearly 30,000 people, has so far eluded all attempts at international mediation. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

A Syrian man reacts outside of his damaged home, which was destroyed by a Syrian government airstrike earlier in the day, in Marea village, on the outskirts of Aleppo, Syria, Sunday, Sept. 23, 2012. Syria's bloody 18-month conflict, which activists say has killed nearly 30,000 people, has so far eluded all attempts at international mediation. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

A Syrian boy walks in front of wall painted with colors of the Syrian revolutionary flag, right, in Marea village, on the outskirts of Aleppo, Syria, Sunday Sept. 23, 2012. Syria's bloody 18-month conflict, which activists say has killed nearly 30,000 people, has so far eluded all attempts at international mediation. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

A Syrian man searches through rubble of his home, which was destroyed from a Syrian government airstrike earlier in the day, in Marea village, on the outskirts of Aleppo, Syria, Sunday Sept. 23, 2012. Syria's bloody 18-month conflict, which activists say has killed nearly 30,000 people, has so far eluded all attempts at international mediation. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

(AP) ? Syrian warplanes bombed two buildings on Monday in the northern city of Aleppo, killing at least five people including three children from the same family, activists said.

The Britain-based activist group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the death toll could very well rise with more people feared to be buried under the rubble of the two destroyed buildings.

Aleppo-based activist said Mohammed Saeed said the raid came before dawn. He added that the aim behind such strikes on residential areas is to "terrify the people and try to turn them against the Free Syrian Army rebel group.

"The regime wants people to say that had the Free Syrian Army not entered the city, the regime wouldn't have bombed us," Saeed said.

The fight for Aleppo, a city of 3 million that was once a bastion of support for President Bashar Assad, began in late July and is critical for both the regime and the opposition. If it falls to the opposition, it would be a major strategic victory in the civil war, giving fighters a stronghold in the north near the Turkish border. A rebel defeat, at the very least, would buy Assad more time.

Activists say nearly 30,000 people have already died in the uprising against Assad's rule that began 18 months ago, inspired by the other revolts around the Arab world against authoritarian rulers.

The Observatory the Local Coordination Committees, another activist group, said the airstrikes on the southern neighborhood of Maadi destroyed the targeted buildings. An amateur video showed people digging through a pile of rubble in search of survivors.

Fighting and shelling have been a daily occurrence in Aleppo, Syria's largest city and commercial capital, since late July when rebels attacked it and took over several neighborhoods. Repeated attacks by government troops to regain control of the areas have so far been unsuccessful.

The battle for Aleppo has marked the first time that the regime has used helicopters and warplanes regularly to strike from the air, bringing an even heavier toll of civilian casualties than before when military forces relied heavily on often indiscriminate artillery and tank shelling.

The Observatory said five people were killed in the latest airstrikes while the LCC said eight died. The LCC said the dead included three children from the same family. Rami Abdul-Rahman, who heads the Observatory, said the death toll could rise with more people feared buried under the rubble.

The Observatory and the LCC reported violence elsewhere in the country including attacks by government troops backed by helicopter gunships on the southern town of Sheikh Miskeen in Daraa province.

The Observatory said rebels and troops were fighting near the military air base of Tabaqah in the northern province of Raqqa. Last week, rebels captured a major border crossing with Turkey in Raqqa.

The latest attacks came as the U.N.'s top human rights body prepared to vote on a resolution next week that would condemn abuses in Syria, call for perpetrators to be held accountable and extend the mission of a U.N. expert panel which has been collecting evidence of possible war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The draft resolution was submitted to the U.N. Human Rights Council on Friday by Arab countries including Morocco, Jordan, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia and Kuwait. It is likely to receive a majority in the 47-nation council when it goes to a vote at the end of next week.

The Geneva-based council received a report earlier this month from the Commission of Inquiry it appointed to investigate abuses in Syria. The panel reported that an increasing number of 'foreign elements,' including Islamic militants, are now operating in Syria. The panel also submitted a confidential list of Syrian officials who it said could be prosecuted for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

___

Associated Press writer Frank Jordans contributed to this report from Berlin.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2012-09-24-Syria/id-bb41bbaabb61454fa0b8bbd83400f689

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Flowers and Food in Sidra Forman's "Secret" Garden - Borderstan ...

Borderstan Welcomes new contributor?Melanie Hudson. Email her at melanie[AT]borderstan.com

Who has a Dutch tulip broker and a mushroom hunter on speed dial? One of our neighbors, that?s who. Sidra Forman, a lawyer by training, gave up her legal pad for gardening gloves and a chef?s knife and started a successful flower, garden, food, restaurant consulting and writing business all from her impeccable Borderstan home, and all based around a singular philosophy: simple and straightforward, with the best available ingredients from sources you trust.

"garden"

Food from the garden. (Sidra Forman)

?My food is very clean, ingredient driven and healthy by nature. The best food for you happens to be the best tasting. You don?t need to sacrifice one or the other.?

For Sidra, food was what she had always done, though informally and at home with her family. She briefly practiced law before falling into her first foodie venture: a restaurant she started with her classically trained chef husband and front-of-house-manager brother, called Ruppert?s. Located on 7th?Street in a time ? the mid-90s ? before new businesses began opening on 7th?Street, their forward-thinking food philosophy matched their status as urban pioneers.

Sidra and her husband focused on ingredients, imparting to their guests the idea that the most delicious meals are very ingredient-driven, and that meat could be merely a foil for vegetables.

?So that means best available ingredients ? often means local, but doesn?t always mean local.? If I can get a beautiful white truffle from Italy I?m not going to not serve it because it?s not local. I know that sometimes I can find or purchase local chanterelles, but the season out in Oregon is long, and I have a great connection with a mushroom hunter out there, and I?m not going to not use them.?

After eight years at Ruppert?s, Sidra and her husband closed the restaurant and she turned her attention to flowers, which, she says, is the current centerpiece of her business.

Following the same ?ingredient-driven? and ?know your source? style, Sidra provides centerpieces and arrangements for weddings, corporate events, and parties, mostly through word of mouth and her website. Sidra sources her flowers from a variety of places: she grows some, including peonies, daisies, roses, and herbs and greens used as filler for arrangements; she buys some from local farms and wholesalers; and she purchases others from as far away as co-op farms in South America and the Dutch Auction, where she has a broker on call and can have flowers at her doorstep in two days. Working directly with her sources eliminates not only days from the process, but also increases the variety she can choose from ? and virtually ensures she is going to get the best available.

"garden)

Flowers from Forman?s garden. (Caroline Tran)

Similarly, Sidra knows where her food comes from ? meaning, in many cases, she knows the farmers who grew it. For example, when asked where she grocery shops, the answer is complex: her own garden, local farmers markets, Hana Japanese Market (17th?and U Streets NW), wholesale dry goods purveyor International Gourmet, Whole Foods, and home delivery from an Amish farmers? cooperative in Pennsylvania.

Forman?s career is full of diverse and multi-dimensional projects that lead tangentially to more projects, keeping her moving quickly from one thing to another. She has consulted on restaurants including old favorites like Perry?s and now-shuttered Viridian and Vegetate, and also found a successful career in food writing. With a longtime nutritionist friend, she has worked on books for lifestyle guru (and Oprah favorite) Bob Greene, including developing the recipes for several of his books.

But her favorite project and the one of which she is most proud, is helping to start the farm at Walker Jones Education Campus. She describes it as a real community effort, with neighbors, teachers, a librarian, and a principal taking over a huge piece of land, putting in some ?crazy manual labor?, pulling some strings, and ending up with a functioning vegetable garden for the school. Today the food is used in the cafeteria, sold at farmers markets, and taken home for dinner by the students.

?For those of us who can afford to buy food we have lots of options, unfortunately that?s not available for everyone,? Forman said.

Sidra is particularly tied to the neighborhood and has lived on 6th?Street NW, ?on the edge of Borderstan for 14 years. She has seen not only the arrival of Whole Foods in Logan Circle but the changes, both good and bad, that come with new neighbors and condo developments. Surprisingly, on her block the majority of neighbors have been there even longer than her family has ? meaning not only do they all know each other, they do the neighborly things most of us only wish for: warning each other about parking tickets, looking out for crime and apologizing in the one instance she says there was a break in ? apologizing for not seeing anything. ?It feels like people have your back,? she says.

Not one to rest on her success, Sidra has a book proposal in the works with an agent in New York on a ?new food trend? (she is vegan herself), including research on the science behind it and new recipes. She is busy pulling together flowers for multiple weddings each weekend, and? hosts monthly ?home restaurant? dinner parties serving food such as wood grilled quail with parsley; lamb sausage with fig, arugula, chestnut, balsamic vinegar and roasted garlic; and white peach with tomato and basil.

Plus, she has a 13-year-old ballerina daughter to worry about. It seems like a full plate for most people, but Sidra says it works due to the flexibility she has with her job.? She works a lot, all night sometimes, but can stop and take time to eat dinner with her family. ?I feel very lucky that I have been able to figure out a life that merges these two things.?

Visit Sidra at Sidraforman.com

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Source: http://www.borderstan.com/09/flowers-and-food-sidra-formans-secret-garden/

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