Has the HTC Droid DNA been given its gold watch and sent packing? Verizon CS says yes, and it's no longer listed for sale
A reader sent in a pretty interesting screenshot, accompanied by some equally interesting information about the HTC Droid DNA. According to Verizon customer service, the DNA is now officially retired. The screenshot of chat with a CS (you can find it after the break) actually uses the word retired, and subsequent inquiries led to a statement from Verizon saying "HTC halted production in efforts to push out an upcoming project on the horizon".
Now normally, we would place little to no faith in the words of an online chat with customer care from any provider. We're not judging, they have a difficult job and get way more harassment than anyone deserves. But after hearing about this, we went looking on Verizon's website, and found that the DNA is nowhere to be seen. You can't buy one from Big Red. Verizon loves to take our money, so there must be a reason they don't want to sell us a Droid DNA.
Now consider the on and off rumors about the HTC One coming to Verizon. We're pretty sure that you'll never be able to buy an "HTC One" for use on Verizon. But ask us if you'll be able to buy a premium HTC device with Sense 5, the new camera, Boomsound, a kick-ass display, and all the other goodies that come with the HTC One and our answer would be different. Don't let semantics like official names fool you. We're pretty confident that something very close to the HTC One is "on the horizon" for Verizon Wireless.
We never pretend that we know what goes on inside the minds of carrier corporate executives. We certainly question many of their decisions, but we're not at the meetings and don't have access to the data they use when they decide things like which phones to sell, and when to stop selling them. And of course, all this could be wrong and the DNA is simply out of stock for a while. We're just going to keep watching this, and when it all works out, we'll let you know.
Florida's Will Yeguete dunks against Florida Gulf Coast during the second half of a regional semifinal game in the NCAA college basketball tournament, Saturday, March 30, 2013, in Arlington, Texas. (AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez)
Florida's Will Yeguete dunks against Florida Gulf Coast during the second half of a regional semifinal game in the NCAA college basketball tournament, Saturday, March 30, 2013, in Arlington, Texas. (AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez)
From left, Florida Gulf Coast's Brett Comer, Sherwood Brown, Eddie Murray and Dajuan Graf react during the final minutes of a regional semifinal game against Florida in the NCAA college basketball tournament, Saturday, March 30, 2013, in Arlington, Texas (AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez)
Florida Gulf Coast's Eric McKnight (12) reacts during the final minutes of a regional semifinal game against Florida in the NCAA college basketball tournament, Saturday, March 30, 2013, in Arlington, Texas. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)
Florida's Mike Rosario (3) reacts after beating Florida Gulf Coast 62-50 after a regional semifinal game in the NCAA college basketball tournament, Saturday, March 30, 2013, in Arlington, Texas. (AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez)
Florida's Scottie Wilbekin (5) shoots as Florida Gulf Coast's Sherwood Brown (25) defends during the second half of a regional semifinal game in the NCAA college basketball tournament, Saturday, March 30, 2013, in Arlington, Texas. (AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez)
ARLINGTON, Texas (AP) ? That high-flying act from "Dunk City" busted most everybody's NCAA tournament brackets and left an indelible mark on March.
Bet you know what FGCU is now.
Florida Gulf Coast, the No. 15 seed few people knew much about only a week ago, had its improbable run to the NCAA round of 16 ended by a 62-50 loss late Friday night ? actually only a few minutes before midnight. SEC regular-season champion Florida is headed to its third consecutive regional final.
"We definitely defied a lot of odds," said Sherwood Brown, the dreadlocked guard who is Gulf Coast's only senior starter. "Pretty much no one in the nation expected us to make it this far."
Early against Florida, the Eagles (26-11) seemed even looser than they had in their victories over No. 2 seed Georgetown and No. 7 seed San Diego State. And they had a big run that came early this time.
Chase Fieler had 3-pointers to start and cap an 11-0 run, raising his hands in the air after the second that put Gulf Coast ahead 15-4 and led to a timeout by Florida coach Billy Donovan less than 7 minutes into the game.
In between the 3s, Gulf Coast had some of the schoolyard-like plays that earned them that "Dunk City" moniker.
After Brett Comer stole a pass, he ran down the court and threw up an alley-oop pass for the trailing Brown, who delivered an emphatic slam that sent the announced crowd of more than 40,000 into a frenzy ? except for those in Gator orange.
Comer then flipped another backward pass to Bernard Thompson for a 3-pointer before Fieler's other 3.
"It was very exciting to get out to that big run, playing in the Sweet 16, playing the way we were playing early in the tournament against a great team in Florida," Fieler said.
That run was so similar to extended spurts they had in upsetting No. 2 seed Georgetown and No. 7 seed San Diego State.
But the Gators (29-7) still had plenty of time ? and know how to go on big runs of their own.
"I thought we did a great job of putting pressure and making those guys feel uncomfortable," said Mike Rosario, who led Florida with 15 points.
The Eagles had 12 turnovers in the first half ? one less than they had in each of their first two NCAA tourney games ? and finished with 20.
Michael Frazier made a pair of 3-pointers from in front of the FGCU bench, the only baskets he made, to start a 16-0 run late in the first half.
That put the Gators in the lead to stay.
"As bad as we started off, I'm happy for my team that we fought back. They're a second-half team. We did a good job of attacking them in the first 4 minutes of the second half," said Kenny Boynton, whose three-point play sparked a quick 7-0 Gators run right after halftime.
The Gators will play Michigan in the South Regional final on that raised court at Cowboys Stadium on Sunday. They are trying to get to their first NCAA Final Four since consecutive national championships in 2006 and 2007.
Michigan overcame a 14-point deficit and knocked off No. 1 seed Kansas 87-85 in overtime earlier Friday night.
Brown led FGCU with 14 points, while Fieler had 12. Scottie Wilbekin had 13 points for Florida and Casey Prather 11.
This is the last chance for seniors Boynton and Erik Murphy to win a title of their own. And there was a business-like feel in the winning Florida locker room after the game.
On the other side, things weren't all that bleak despite the disappointment of being done and matching a season low for points.
"It's sad we lost tonight, but it was a great ride," said post player Eddie Murray, the only other senior on the Gulf Coast roster. "It hurts right now but when you step back and look at it, it's all been amazing."
FGCU heads back to Fort Myers (aka Dunk City), where it has man-made lakes and a beach on campus, having given the tournament a blast of fresh air while its players were just having a blast. The South Florida state school also got about the best free publicity its administrators could ever hope for.
"It was great to see the excitement across the country with the underdog and it's just a real feeling when you're the underdog and you're the talk of the nation," coach Andy Enfield said. "Our plan wasn't to become some great national story. Our plan was to go in and compete and win games. It was unbelievable to see the excitement and passion of not only our local community, the students, but also the national level.
"Our players believed, and they accomplished something special."
Lots of people are talking about a new study that links ?injecting oil drilling wastewater into the ground with the largest earthquake instrumentally recorded in Oklahoma.
Correction: The drilling technique discussed in the report did not involve fracking.
Researchers from Oklahoma and Columbia universities found that over time, depositing used-up drilling fluid into the ground may have snapped geological tension that had built up near rural Prague, Oklahoma, causing a 5.7 quake that destroyed 14 homes and injured two. ?
The authors also write that the number of large earthquakes in and around the center of the country has skyrocketed in recent years.
Here's exactly how they put it:
Earthquakes with Mw?? 5.0 [larger than 5.0 on the Richter scale ? ed.] are rare in the United States east of the Rocky Mountains; however, the number per year recorded in the midcontinent increased 11-fold between 2008 and 2011, compared to 1976?2007. Of the total seismic moment released in the region, ~66% occurred in 2011 (from the GCMT). ?
This echoes findings from a 2012 USGS study that found the frequency of earthquakes greater than or equal to Mw 3.0 had picked up six fold between 2001 and 2011 compared to the average for the 20th century.
The USGS authors say the increase "was?almost certainly manmade," though add, "it remains to be determined how they are related to either changes in extraction methodologies or the rate of oil and gas production."
The authors of the Oklahoma study, meanwhile, are even more reluctant to say humans are responsible for the increase.?
Indeed scientifically proving an exact one-to-one connection is probably impossible.
But the new study provides further evidence that something new is going on.
Expanding Medicaid in Pennsylvania under the Affordable Care Act would boost federal revenue to the state by more than $2 billion annually and provide 340,000 residents with health insurance, according to a new RAND Corporation study.
The increased federal spending on health care in Pennsylvania would provide a $3 billion boost in economic activity and sustain more than 35,000 jobs, according to the analysis.
But the expansion of Medicaid would not be without cost. Expanding Medicaid would require an additional $53 million in state spending in 2014, with the cost rising to $611 million in 2020 as the federal government trims its support for the Medicaid expansion.
"The expansion of Medicaid in Pennsylvania increases health care coverage, net federal inflows, economic growth and employment compared to not expanding Medicaid, but requires a net increase in state spending beginning in 2017," said Carter Price, the study's lead author and a mathematician at RAND, a nonprofit research organization. "Our findings may help policymakers decide whether the benefits are worth the cost."
Researchers from RAND and the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health used the RAND COMPARE microsimulation model to estimate the effect of the federal Affordable Care Act on health insurance coverage and federal spending in Pennsylvania, both with and without expansion of Medicaid. Researchers also estimated the broader economic effects of the Affordable Care Act on the state.
The project was sponsored by the Hospital & Healthsystem Association of Pennsylvania.
Researchers found that under the federal Affordable Care Act, the proportion of uninsured people in Pennsylvania will drop from 13 percent of the population to 8 percent. Expanding Medicaid in the state would further cut the proportion of uninsured residents, down to 5 percent.
Federal payments into Pennsylvania in 2014 for health programs are estimated to be $6 billion in 2014 if Medicaid is expanded and $4 billion without expansion. Because tax payments and other outflows to the federal government from Pennsylvania under the Affordable Care Act will be nearly $5 billion annually in either case, the state receives a net financial benefit only if Medicaid is expanded, according to the study.
Under the federal Affordable Care Act, states have the option to opt in or out of an expansion of the Medicaid insurance intended to provide health insurance to low-income families. The Affordable Care Act provides support to expand Medicaid to include families that earn up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level.
The federal government will pay a much larger share of costs for the Medicaid expansion than it does for current Medicaid enrollees. It will cover 100 percent of the costs for expanding Medicaid beginning in 2014 through 2016, and then gradually decrease support to 90 percent of costs beginning in 2020. The federal government currently pays about 54 percent of the costs for Medicaid in Pennsylvania.
Spending on Medicaid by Pennsylvania will grow whether the program is expanded or not. Without expansion, Medicaid costs are expected to rise $50 million in 2014, growing to $120 million by 2020, according to the study. These costs will primarily be caused by people who are currently eligible, but not enrolled. They are expected to sign up for the program in order to comply with the Affordable Care Act's mandate that individuals have health insurance.
Researchers say much of the higher state costs for Medicaid will be offset by new state tax revenue that will result from the increased spending on health care.
The study estimates that if the state expands Medicaid, there would be net surplus in state revenue from 2014 to 2016. But beginning in 2017, there will be a net cost to the state. The study estimates that state government will be required to pay $200 million more with expansion of Medicaid than without over the 2014 to 2020 time period.
One benefit of expanding Medicaid would be to lower the amount of uncompensated care provided by the state's hospitals and other health care providers, according to the study. In 2011, uncompensated care cost hospitals $990 million.
Even without expansion of Medicaid, uncompensated hospital costs will drop by up to 33 percent under the Affordable Care Act over the 2014 to 2020 time period. Expanding Medicaid would cut uncompensated hospital care by an addition 10 to 15 percent.
###
The study, "Economic Impact of the Affordable Care Act on Pennsylvania," is available at http://www.rand.org.
Other authors of the study are Julie Donohue of the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health, and Evan A. Saltzman, Dulani Woods and Christine Eibner of RAND.
RAND Health, a division of the RAND Corporation, is the nation's largest independent health policy research program, with a broad research portfolio that focuses on health care costs, quality and public health preparedness, among other topics.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Expanding Medicaid in Pennsylvania would increase federal revenue to the state, study findsPublic release date: 28-Mar-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Expanding Medicaid in Pennsylvania under the Affordable Care Act would boost federal revenue to the state by more than $2 billion annually and provide 340,000 residents with health insurance, according to a new RAND Corporation study.
The increased federal spending on health care in Pennsylvania would provide a $3 billion boost in economic activity and sustain more than 35,000 jobs, according to the analysis.
But the expansion of Medicaid would not be without cost. Expanding Medicaid would require an additional $53 million in state spending in 2014, with the cost rising to $611 million in 2020 as the federal government trims its support for the Medicaid expansion.
"The expansion of Medicaid in Pennsylvania increases health care coverage, net federal inflows, economic growth and employment compared to not expanding Medicaid, but requires a net increase in state spending beginning in 2017," said Carter Price, the study's lead author and a mathematician at RAND, a nonprofit research organization. "Our findings may help policymakers decide whether the benefits are worth the cost."
Researchers from RAND and the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health used the RAND COMPARE microsimulation model to estimate the effect of the federal Affordable Care Act on health insurance coverage and federal spending in Pennsylvania, both with and without expansion of Medicaid. Researchers also estimated the broader economic effects of the Affordable Care Act on the state.
The project was sponsored by the Hospital & Healthsystem Association of Pennsylvania.
Researchers found that under the federal Affordable Care Act, the proportion of uninsured people in Pennsylvania will drop from 13 percent of the population to 8 percent. Expanding Medicaid in the state would further cut the proportion of uninsured residents, down to 5 percent.
Federal payments into Pennsylvania in 2014 for health programs are estimated to be $6 billion in 2014 if Medicaid is expanded and $4 billion without expansion. Because tax payments and other outflows to the federal government from Pennsylvania under the Affordable Care Act will be nearly $5 billion annually in either case, the state receives a net financial benefit only if Medicaid is expanded, according to the study.
Under the federal Affordable Care Act, states have the option to opt in or out of an expansion of the Medicaid insurance intended to provide health insurance to low-income families. The Affordable Care Act provides support to expand Medicaid to include families that earn up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level.
The federal government will pay a much larger share of costs for the Medicaid expansion than it does for current Medicaid enrollees. It will cover 100 percent of the costs for expanding Medicaid beginning in 2014 through 2016, and then gradually decrease support to 90 percent of costs beginning in 2020. The federal government currently pays about 54 percent of the costs for Medicaid in Pennsylvania.
Spending on Medicaid by Pennsylvania will grow whether the program is expanded or not. Without expansion, Medicaid costs are expected to rise $50 million in 2014, growing to $120 million by 2020, according to the study. These costs will primarily be caused by people who are currently eligible, but not enrolled. They are expected to sign up for the program in order to comply with the Affordable Care Act's mandate that individuals have health insurance.
Researchers say much of the higher state costs for Medicaid will be offset by new state tax revenue that will result from the increased spending on health care.
The study estimates that if the state expands Medicaid, there would be net surplus in state revenue from 2014 to 2016. But beginning in 2017, there will be a net cost to the state. The study estimates that state government will be required to pay $200 million more with expansion of Medicaid than without over the 2014 to 2020 time period.
One benefit of expanding Medicaid would be to lower the amount of uncompensated care provided by the state's hospitals and other health care providers, according to the study. In 2011, uncompensated care cost hospitals $990 million.
Even without expansion of Medicaid, uncompensated hospital costs will drop by up to 33 percent under the Affordable Care Act over the 2014 to 2020 time period. Expanding Medicaid would cut uncompensated hospital care by an addition 10 to 15 percent.
###
The study, "Economic Impact of the Affordable Care Act on Pennsylvania," is available at http://www.rand.org.
Other authors of the study are Julie Donohue of the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health, and Evan A. Saltzman, Dulani Woods and Christine Eibner of RAND.
RAND Health, a division of the RAND Corporation, is the nation's largest independent health policy research program, with a broad research portfolio that focuses on health care costs, quality and public health preparedness, among other topics.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Scope put out a website for a brand new product set to debut around April 1: Bacon mouthwash.
Mashable notes that "Procter & Gamble, Scope's parent company, claims this is a real product."
Scope is tweeting about the product nonstop,?and the mouthwash does have its own product page?on Scope's main website.
According to the FAQ: "No pigs are harmed during the making of Scope Bacon. The bacon taste you?ll find in Scope Bacon is a perfectly healthy synthetic flavoring."
But this product seems too amazingly strange to be true.
First of all, there's no way to actually buy the product online.
Second, bacon is the go-to April Fool's prank. Last year?J&D Foods announced a bacon coffin, and?Clorox started offering a bacon-scented cat litter that sizzles when your cat pees;
Scope isn't the first company to release an early April Fool's Day prank this year.?American Eagle advertised a new product:"skinny skinny jeans" that are actually two cans of paint.
Watch Scope's bacon ad below:
SEE ALSO:? American Eagle's New 'Skinny Skinny' Jeans Are Actually ... Body Paint
Excess carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere created by the widespread burning of fossil fuels is the major driving force of global climate change, and researchers the world over are looking for new ways to generate power that leaves a smaller carbon footprint.
Now, researchers at the University of Georgia have found a way to transform the carbon dioxide trapped in the atmosphere into useful industrial products. Their discovery may soon lead to the creation of biofuels made directly from the carbon dioxide in the air that is responsible for trapping the sun's rays and raising global temperatures.
"Basically, what we have done is create a microorganism that does with carbon dioxide exactly what plants do?absorb it and generate something useful," said Michael Adams, member of UGA's Bioenergy Systems Research Institute, Georgia Power professor of biotechnology and Distinguished Research Professor of biochemistry and molecular biology in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences.
During the process of photosynthesis, plants use sunlight to transform water and carbon dioxide into sugars that the plants use for energy, much like humans burn calories from food.
These sugars can be fermented into fuels like ethanol, but it has proven extraordinarily difficult to efficiently extract the sugars, which are locked away inside the plant's complex cell walls.
"What this discovery means is that we can remove plants as the middleman," said Adams, who is co-author of the study detailing their results published March 25 in the early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences. "We can take carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere and turn it into useful products like fuels and chemicals without having to go through the inefficient process of growing plants and extracting sugars from biomass."
The process is made possible by a unique microorganism called Pyrococcus furiosus, or "rushing fireball," which thrives by feeding on carbohydrates in the super-heated ocean waters near geothermal vents. By manipulating the organism's genetic material, Adams and his colleagues created a kind of P. furiosus that is capable of feeding at much lower temperatures on carbon dioxide.
The research team then used hydrogen gas to create a chemical reaction in the microorganism that incorporates carbon dioxide into 3-hydroxypropionic acid, a common industrial chemical used to make acrylics and many other products.
With other genetic manipulations of this new strain of P. furiosus, Adams and his colleagues could create a version that generates a host of other useful industrial products, including fuel, from carbon dioxide.
When the fuel created through the P. furiosus process is burned, it releases the same amount of carbon dioxide used to create it, effectively making it carbon neutral, and a much cleaner alternative to gasoline, coal and oil.
"This is an important first step that has great promise as an efficient and cost-effective method of producing fuels," Adams said. "In the future we will refine the process and begin testing it on larger scales."
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University of Georgia: http://www.uga.edu
Thanks to University of Georgia for this article.
This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) ? Police say a pair of eyeballs found in a medical box in a Kansas City gas station's trash bin aren't human.
Police spokesman Steve Young said Thursday that the police lab examined the eyeballs and determined they likely came from a pig.
Young says a worker at a Conoco gas station in northern Kanas City called police after finding the cardboard box late Wednesday. The box was labeled, "Keep refrigerated."
Surveillance video shows two men in a blue Toyota leaving the package on the trash bin.
Young says police aren't investigating further because no crime appears to have been committed. Earlier, police had said that no eye banks or hospitals in the area were awaiting delivery of any eyeballs.
Mar. 27, 2013 ? A Stanford team has designed an entirely new form of cooling panel that works even when the sun is shining. Such a panel could vastly improve the daylight cooling of buildings, cars and other structures by radiating sunlight back into the chilly vacuum of space.
Homes and buildings chilled without air conditioners. Car interiors that don't heat up in the summer sun. Tapping the frigid expanses of outer space to cool the planet. Science fiction, you say? Well, maybe not any more.
A team of researchers at Stanford has designed an entirely new form of cooling structure that cools even when the sun is shining. Such a structure could vastly improve the daylight cooling of buildings, cars and other structures by reflecting sunlight back into the chilly vacuum of space. Their paper describing the device was published March 5 in Nano Letters.
"People usually see space as a source of heat from the sun, but away from the sun outer space is really a cold, cold place," explained Shanhui Fan, professor of electrical engineering and the paper's senior author. "We've developed a new type of structure that reflects the vast majority of sunlight, while at the same time it sends heat into that coldness, which cools humanmade structures even in the day time."
The trick, from an engineering standpoint, is two-fold. First, the reflector has to reflect as much of the sunlight as possible. Poor reflectors absorb too much sunlight, heating up in the process and defeating the purpose of cooling.
The second challenge is that the structure must efficiently radiate heat back into space. Thus, the structure must emit thermal radiation very efficiently within a specific wavelength range in which the atmosphere is nearly transparent. Outside this range, Earth's atmosphere simply reflects the light back down. Most people are familiar with this phenomenon. It's better known as the greenhouse effect -- the cause of global climate change.
Two goals in one
The new structure accomplishes both goals. It is an effective a broadband mirror for solar light -- it reflects most of the sunlight. It also emits thermal radiation very efficiently within the crucial wavelength range needed to escape Earth's atmosphere.
Radiative cooling at nighttime has been studied extensively as a mitigation strategy for climate change, yet peak demand for cooling occurs in the daytime.
"No one had yet been able to surmount the challenges of daytime radiative cooling -- of cooling when the sun is shining," said Eden Rephaeli, a doctoral candidate in Fan's lab and a co-first-author of the paper. "It's a big hurdle."
The Stanford team has succeeded where others have come up short by turning to nanostructured photonic materials. These materials can be engineered to enhance or suppress light reflection in certain wavelengths.
"We've taken a very different approach compared to previous efforts in this field," said Aaswath Raman, a doctoral candidate in Fan's lab and a co-first-author of the paper. "We combine the thermal emitter and solar reflector into one device, making it both higher performance and much more robust and practically relevant. In particular, we're very excited because this design makes viable both industrial-scale and off-grid applications."
Using engineered nanophotonic materials the team was able to strongly suppress how much heat-inducing sunlight the panel absorbs, while it radiates heat very efficiently in the key frequency range necessary to escape Earth's atmosphere. The material is made of quartz and silicon carbide, both very weak absorbers of sunlight.
Net cooling power
The new device is capable of achieving a net cooling power in excess of 100 watts per square meter. By comparison, today's standard 10-percent-efficient solar panels generate the about the same amount of power. That means Fan's radiative cooling panels could theoretically be substituted on rooftops where existing solar panels feed electricity to air conditioning systems needed to cool the building.
To put it a different way, a typical one-story, single-family house with just 10 percent of its roof covered by radiative cooling panels could offset 35 percent its entire air conditioning needs during the hottest hours of the summer.
Radiative cooling has another profound advantage over all other cooling strategy such as air-conditioner. It is a passive technology. It requires no energy. It has no moving parts. It is easy to maintain. You put it on the roof or the sides of buildings and it starts working immediately.
A changing vision of cooling
Beyond the commercial implications, Fan and his collaborators foresee a broad potential social impact. Much of the human population on Earth lives in sun-drenched regions huddled around the equator. Electrical demand to drive air conditioners is skyrocketing in these places, presenting an economic and an environmental challenge. These areas tend to be poor and the power necessary to drive cooling usually means fossil-fuel power plants that compound the greenhouse gas problem.
"In addition to these regions, we can foresee applications for radiative cooling in off-the-grid areas of the developing world where air conditioning is not even possible at this time. There are large numbers of people who could benefit from such systems," Fan said.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Stanford School of Engineering. The original article was written by Andrew Myers.
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Google's finally starting to reveal the winners of its #ifihadglass promotion, and surprise! You're not one of them. Not yet, anyway, unless you happen to be one of the following six golden ticket recipients. More »
Baylor center Brittney Griner (42) blocks a shot attempt by Florida State's Leonor Rodriguez (10) in the first half of a second-round game in the women's NCAA college basketball tournament, Tuesday, March 26, 2013, in Waco, Texas. (AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez)
Baylor center Brittney Griner (42) blocks a shot attempt by Florida State's Leonor Rodriguez (10) in the first half of a second-round game in the women's NCAA college basketball tournament, Tuesday, March 26, 2013, in Waco, Texas. (AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez)
Baylor's Brittney Griner (42) dunks over Florida State's Natasha Howard (33) in the second half of a second-round game in the women's NCAA college basketball tournament Tuesday, March 26, 2013, in Waco, Texas. Baylor won 85-47. (AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez)
Florida State head coach Sue Semrau, bottom left, and the rest of the bench watch the final seconds of a second-round game in the women's NCAA college basketball tournament against Baylor, Tuesday, March 26, 2013, in Waco, Texas. Baylor won 85-47. (AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez)
Baylor head coach Kim Mulkey, left, is lifted off her feet by Brittney Griner as Griner leaves the court in the second half of a second-round game in the women's NCAA college basketball tournament against Florida State, Tuesday, March 26, 2013, in Waco, Texas. Baylor won 85-47. (AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez)
WACO, Texas (AP) ? Brittney Griner caught the pass going toward the basket, took one more step without a dribble and finished with a one-handed slam dunk.
As impressive as that play was, it was only the first of three dunks for Griner in her final home game for Baylor.
In a farewell to remember for Griner and four other Lady Bears seniors, before a partisan crowd that included former President George W. Bush, the 6-foot-8 senior star also had 33 points and a career-high 22 rebounds. The defending national champions beat Florida State 85-47 Tuesday night to advance to the NCAA round of 16 for the fourth year in a row.
"Tonight felt like senior night. Tonight was better," Griner said. "The three dunks. Just going out the way we did. Not everybody's lucky, and we were. We gave the crowd a good game."
After the first dunk, with about 4 minutes left in the first half for a 43-18 lead in a game that was quickly lopsided, Griner ran down the court with her mouth open while bobbing her head back and forth, and clearing enjoying the moment.
The former president may wish he had stayed in his seats behind the Baylor bench a little longer. Griner wasn't finished after that highlight play, dunking twice in a 79-second span before coming out of the game for good after Bush had already left.
Freshman guard Niya Johnson had her second assist of a Griner dunk with 7:46 left. Then with 6:27 left, moments after an assist of her own, Griner grabbed the rebound of a missed 3-pointer between several defenders and went back up with a reverse slam.
Griner, the first woman ever with three dunks in a game, came out during a timeout less than a half-minute later.
When Griner got to the bench, she wrapped her arms around coach Kim Mulkey and the two shared an extended hug. Griner even picked her coach up off the ground.
"You just hope she doesn't squeeze the air out of you so you don't pass out," Mulkey said. "Brittney just has a personality about her where she just enjoys life. She's a hugger. She's a people pleaser.
"You'll never see the likes of her again. You just won't," she said. "Not here, I don't think anywhere, ever will you see another Brittney Griner. You'll see great players and you'll see All-Americans, but I'm not sure we'll ever see it in my lifetime."
Mulkey fought back tears after they broke their embrace as the crowd of 9,652 continued to give Griner a loud and lengthy ovation.
Griner is the NCAA career blocks leader, the Big 12's top scorer and her 18 dunks are three more than the combined total of the other six women who have dunked in college.
The Lady Bears (34-1) won their nation's-best 57th home game in a row. They play Louisville (26-8) on Sunday night in Oklahoma City.
When the game was over, Griner thrust both arms into the air. She took a couple of laps around the arena floor, then jumped onto the back of Shanay Washington for a piggy-back ride before returning the favor to her close friend and former teammate, whose career ended early because of multiple knee injuries.
Since the senior trio of Griner, Kimetria Hayden and Jordan Madden got to Waco as freshmen together, Baylor is 71-2 at home. Griner has played in only one loss since she didn't participate in the last home loss, against Texas in the 2009-10 regular-season finale.
The Lady Bears have won every home game the past three seasons ? since point guard Odyssey Sims arrived and when transfers Destiny Williams and Brooklyn Pope, the other seniors, started playing.
Pope had 12 points against Florida State, while Sims had 11 and Hayden 10.
Leonor Rodriguez had 11 points and was the only player in double figures for Florida State (23-10), which at the end of the regular season was the only squad of the 343 Division I teams with five players averaging in double figures.
"Certainly, it's not an easy task to come into this environment and ask your kids to be able to block it all out," Seminoles coach Sue Semrau said.
Baylor needed less than 3? minutes to score the game's first 11 points, and led 51-20 by halftime.
As for Semrau's impression of Griner: "She is better in person. You've got to credit her development and growth."
While hard to imagine, Griner could have had more dunks.
Griner looked like she was going for another slam when she was fouled by feisty 5-foot-2 guard Yashira Delgado before getting off a shot. Right after that, the Lady Bears had three layups in a 37-second span.
There was also a pass from Pope that sailed over Griner's head when she was headed alone toward the basket with just over 11 minutes left in the game.
"Well, she could have had four (dunks), but I was stronger than I thought and I overthrew it," Pope said. "BG knew I wanted to pass it, but by the time I looked down and dribbled and looked up and threw it, she was further down than I thought."
The fans let out a huge collective moan as the ball went out of bounds.
They were cheering wildly only a few minutes later with a double dose of dunks.
The "free" in Free Software refers to "freedom", rather than cost. It is largely a happy coincidence that Free Software is available gratis. Copyleft licensing certainly helps, but there's no overarching reason that Free-as-in-Freedom software need not cost anything. As Free Software has evolved and matured over the years, several major developmental archetypes have emerged.
Ottawa community health centres heaped scorn on a proposed Ottawa casino Monday.
Saying gambling ruins lives and damages already disadvantaged communities, five health centres and four resource centres demanded the city reject any plans to place a casino in Ottawa.
The Centretown Community Health Centre ? which receives provincial and municipal funding ? hosted representatives from each centre to rail against the evils of gambling.
As legal gambling options have expanded, the quantity of problem gamblers has ballooned as well, the centre said in a release.
In addition to obvious potential financial problems, the centre says that mental health issues also flourish where gambling is abundant.
Six other people are affected for every one problem gambler, the centre said.
The poor, the elderly, immigrants and Aboriginals are disproportionately affected by gambling addictions, the centre said.
?The best way to prevent negative impacts of problem gambling is clearly to prevent making gambling more accessible and avoid building a new casino in Ottawa in the first place,? the release said.
Appearing with Centretown were the Pinecrest-Queensway, Sandy Hill, Somerset West and South-East Ottawa Community Health Centres, and the Eastern Ottawa, Lowertown, Orl?ans-Cumberland and Rideau-Rockcliffe Community Resource Centres.
The casino deal had looked briefly in doubt when reports emerged that Toronto might get a bigger cut of gambling revenue than Ottawa.
But Premier Kathleen Wynne soon soothed ruffled feathers, promising no preferential treatment for anyone at all.
In a written statement Monday, Mayor Jim Watson notes the city already has had a ?significant gaming facility? at the Rideau Carleton Raceway.
?When council voted on this issue, it noted that the Province of Ontario has one of the best funded strategies of any jurisdiction in North America to address problem gambling,? Watson says.
?As things currently stand, the city and Ontario incur all of the costs associated with problem gambling on this side of the Ottawa River while a large share of revenue stays on the Quebec side.?
Watson says residents will have opportunities to comment when the OLG comes back with a proposed location.
?I will recommend it to council only if it is in the best long-term interests of the people of Ottawa,? Watson says.
The issue hasn?t generated much buzz around council recently.
?We?re not even talking about it very much,? Kanata North Coun. Marianne Wilkinson said.
Wilkinson, who is against having a casino in the downtown, said she expects the city to go through a larger consultation when the OLG pitches a location.
Facebook incorporates features from Twitter and other social media platforms such as Instagram which they also own. Hashtags have been said may be added to Facebook to add more value in conversations and broaden connection opportunities. This has not been launched yet but was reported here by the wall street journal.
What was incorporated just yesterday are reply buttons within the comments. This will allow for better conversations. Facebook's journalism program manager said, "You and your readers will have the ability to reply directly to comments left on your Page content and start conversation threads, which will make it easier for you to interact directly with individual readers and keep relevant conversations connected." This is a feature that Twitter already has that threads conversations. Learn how to incorporate replies and what they mean below:? ?
So what do you think of Facebook now imitating their competitors? It is usually the other way around, so it's interesting to watch them implement these updates. Ideally this will make the overall Facebook experience better.
Listen to what I have to say about these new features on this week's Micro Minute below:?
If you have any questions tweet me @MicroSteph or contact us.
Mar. 25, 2013 ? A new study co-authored by Boston University Assistant Professor of Psychology Peter Blake finds that young children endorse fairness norms related to sharing, but often act in contradiction to those norms when given a chance to share.
This phenomenon has rarely been explored in the context of a single study. Using a novel approach, the researchers presented clear evidence of this discrepancy and go on to examine possible explanations for its diminution with age. In one part of the study, three-to-eight-year-old children readily stated that they themselves should share equally, asserted that others should as well, and predicted that others had shared equally with them. Nevertheless, children failed to engage in equal sharing until ages seven to eight.
In another part of the study, seven-to-eight-year-olds correctly predicted that they would share equally, and three-to-six-year-olds correctly predicted that they would favor themselves, ruling out a failure-of-willpower explanation for younger children's behavior. Similarly, a test of inhibitory control failed to explain the shift with age toward adherence to the endorsed norm. The data suggest that, although three-year-olds know the norm of equal sharing, the weight that children attach to this norm increases with age when sharing involves a cost to the self.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Boston University College of Arts & Sciences.
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Journal Reference:
Craig E. Smith, Peter R. Blake, Paul L. Harris. I Should but I Won?t: Why Young Children Endorse Norms of Fair Sharing but Do Not Follow Them. PLoS ONE, 2013; 8 (3): e59510 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0059510
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Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
Mar. 25, 2013 ? Do the results of recent randomized trials justify the recent U.S. recommendation against yearly measurement of prostate-specific antigen (PSA) as a screening test for prostate cancer? That's the topic of debate in a special "point/counterpoint" section in the April issue of Medical Care.
The recommendation against routine PSA measurement relies too heavily on randomized trial data, according to an article by Ruth Etzioni, PhD, of Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, and colleagues. They argue that modeling studies provide a truer picture of the long-term benefits of PSA screening. But Dr Joy Melnikow of University of California, Davis, and colleagues disagree, asserting that randomized trials provide a sufficient level of certainty to recommend against PSA screening.
Point: Short-Term Trials Don't Reflect Long-Term Risk Last year, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommended against routine PSA measurement to screen for prostate cancer. The recommendation was mainly based on two recent studies -- one conducted in Europe and one in the United States -- in which men were randomly assigned to annual PSA screening or no screening. Both studies concluded that annual screening did not reduce the risk of death from prostate cancer.
But randomized trials have important limitations as a basis for screening policies, according to Dr Etzioni and colleagues. They note that screening trials generally provide short-term results, in contrast to the long-term results generated by population-wide screening programs. They argue that taking the randomized trial data at face value "misrepresents the likely long-term population impact of PSA screening (relative to no screening) in the United States."
Dr Etzioni and coauthors discuss the results of modeling studies that give a different picture of the benefits of PSA screening. Based on those models, screening may explain 45 percent of recent declines in U.S. deaths from prostate cancer, while changes in treatment account for 33 percent. When the randomized trial data are extrapolated to the U.S. population over the long term, the absolute reduction in deaths attributed to screening appears at least five times greater than in the original trial reports.
Modeling studies also suggest a lower rate of overdiagnosis -- screening detection of slow-growing prostate cancers that otherwise would have caused no harm -- than reported in the trials. Dr Etzioni and colleagues conclude, "With a disease whose hallmark is a lengthy natural history, the harms of developing cancer screening policies based primarily on limited-duration screening trials may well outweigh the benefits."
Counterpoint: Trials Are Best Evidence on Screening Effects But in their "Counterpoint" essay, by Dr Melnikow and colleagues notes that the U.S. and European trials provided 11 to 13 years' follow-up in more than 250,000 individuals. They also point out that the U.S. trial was highly representative of the population and showed no reduction in death resulting from annual PSA testing. (Dr Melnikow and colleagues were members of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force when the recommendation was made.)
They add that, because of "competing causes of death," it becomes even less likely that a large reduction in deaths from prostate cancer will appear over long-term follow-up. The chances of overdiagnosis and potential harms from screening are also likely to increase with continued aging. Dr Melnikow and coauthors conclude, "Projections from models are subject to mistaken assumptions and investigator biases, and should not be accorded the same weight as evidence from randomized controlled trials."
In an editorial response, Dr Etzioni's group points out that modeling plays an essential role in addressing questions about the harms and benefits of screening. "While we acknowledge the centrality of screening trials in the policy process," they write, "we maintain that modeling constitutes a powerful tool for screening trial interpretation and screening policy development."
The debate is "no mere academic exercise," according to an editorial by Ronnie D. Horner, PhD, of University of Cincinnati Medical Center. With the increased emphasis on disease prevention under health care reform, it is essential to offer those services most likely to represent value -- including cancer screenings. While there's no easy answer, Dr Horner writes, "I am hopeful that this Point-Counterpoint exchange will initiate a discussion among healthcare scientists that will yield greater guidance for determining whether a health care service is, indeed, value health care."
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Wolters Kluwer Health: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, via Newswise.
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Journal References:
Joy Melnikow, Michael LeFevre, Timothy J. Wilt, Virginia A. Moyer. Counterpoint. Medical Care, 2013; : 1 DOI: 10.1097/MLR.0b013e31828a67d3
Ruth Etzioni, Roman Gulati. Response. Medical Care, 2013; 51 (4): 304 DOI: 10.1097/MLR.0b013e31828a7e1a
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Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
Mar. 25, 2013 ? Getting enough to eat is a basic human need -- but at what cost to the environment? Research published in BioMed Central's journal Agriculture & Food Security demonstrates that as their crops on higher ground fail due to unreliable rainfall, people in countries like Uganda are increasingly relocating to wetland areas. Unless the needs of these people are addressed in a more sustainable way, overuse of wetland resources through farming, fishing, and hunting will continue.
In 2009 it was estimated that about a third of Uganda's wetlands had been lost to growing crops and grazing. While the environmental significance of wetland loss is important, so are National Food Security targets and the Millennium Development Goal of halving the number of people who suffer from hunger by 2015. In order to evaluate how people are using the wetlands researchers from Makerere University, Uganda, with financial support from IDRC surveyed residents living in either Lake Victoria crescent, Kyoga plains, and South Western farmlands.
The survey revealed that more than 80% of people in these areas use wetland resources including collecting water, catching fish, hunting bush meat (Sitatunga, a type of antelope, and wild rat), and harvesting wild fruits and vegetables. Some of these they consume but others they sell in order to be able to buy food. Over half admitted to growing crops in the nutrient rich soil wetlands with its ready water supply. The families who were most likely to use the wetlands in this way were the ones who had the least access to other sources of food.
The locals blame their bad harvests on global warming, and as global weather systems change this can only get worse. Dr Nelson Turyahabwe explained, "Food insecurity is a real problem across the world. In Uganda the families most at risk tended to have younger or female household heads, or were less educated. Large families were also at high risk of not having enough to eat. In these cases use of wetlands allows families to survive. In designing sustainable use policies for wetlands the needs of humans also needs to be considered."
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by BioMed Central Limited, via AlphaGalileo.
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Journal Reference:
Nelson Turyahabwe, Willy Kakuru, Manson Tweheyo and David Mwesigye Tumusiime. Contribution of wetland resources to household food security in Uganda. Agriculture & Food Security, 2013; DOI: 10.1186/2048-7010-2-5
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Mar. 25, 2013 ? Two forthcoming European Physical Journal D papers challenge established wisdom about the nature of vacuum. In one paper, Marcel Urban from the University of Paris-Sud, located in Orsay, France and his colleagues identified a quantum level mechanism for interpreting vacuum as being filled with pairs of virtual particles with fluctuating energy values. As a result, the inherent characteristics of vacuum, like the speed of light, may not be a constant after all, but fluctuate.
Meanwhile, in another study, Gerd Leuchs and Luis L. S?nchez-Soto, from the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Light in Erlangen, Germany, suggest that physical constants, such as the speed of light and the so-called impedance of free space, are indications of the total number of elementary particles in nature.
Vacuum is one of the most intriguing concepts in physics. When observed at the quantum level, vacuum is not empty. It is filled with continuously appearing and disappearing particle pairs such as electron-positron or quark-antiquark pairs. These ephemeral particles are real particles, but their lifetimes are extremely short. In their study, Urban and colleagues established, for the first time, a detailed quantum mechanism that would explain the magnetisation and polarisation of the vacuum, referred to as vacuum permeability and permittivity, and the finite speed of light. This finding is relevant because it suggests the existence of a limited number of ephemeral particles per unit volume in a vacuum.
As a result, there is a theoretical possibility that the speed of light is not fixed, as conventional physics has assumed. But it could fluctuate at a level independent of the energy of each light quantum, or photon, and greater than fluctuations induced by quantum level gravity. The speed of light would be dependent on variations in the vacuum properties of space or time. The fluctuations of the photon propagation time are estimated to be on the order of 50 attoseconds per square meter of crossed vacuum, which might be testable with the help of new ultra-fast lasers.Leuchs and Sanchez-Soto, on the other hand, modelled virtual charged particle pairs as electric dipoles responsible for the polarisation of the vacuum.
They found that a specific property of vacuum called the impedance, which is crucial to determining the speed of light, depends only on the sum of the square of the electric charges of particles but not on their masses. If their idea is correct, the value of the speed of light combined with the value of vacuum impedance gives an indication of the total number of charged elementary particles existing in nature. Experimental results support this hypothesis.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Springer.
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Journal References:
Marcel Urban, Fran?ois Couchot, Xavier Sarazin, Arache Djannati-Atai. The quantum vacuum as the origin of the speed of light. The European Physical Journal D, 2013; 67 (3) DOI: 10.1140/epjd/e2013-30578-7
Gerd Leuchs, Luis L. S?nchez-Soto. A sum rule for charged elementary particles. The European Physical Journal D, 2013; 67 (3) DOI: 10.1140/epjd/e2013-30577-8
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Public release date: 28-Mar-2013
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The "free" in Free Software refers to "freedom", rather than cost. It is largely a happy coincidence that Free Software is available gratis. Copyleft licensing certainly helps, but there's no overarching reason that Free-as-in-Freedom software need not cost anything. As Free Software has evolved and matured over the years, several major developmental archetypes have emerged.
