Friday, May 24, 2013

DISTRICT 11 BASEBALL: Pine Grove bats come alive in rout of Catasauqua

CATASAUQUA - The hair is dyed golden blonde.

The bright red jerseys are out of storage.

And Pine Grove's bats returned in full force from some late-season struggles.

It must be playoff time.

Kobe D'Agostino's RBI triple in the fourth inning sparked the Cardinal lineup and Jed Blankenhorn was economical and efficient on the hill as Pine Grove beat Catasauqua 10-2 in a District 11 Class AA quarterfinal Wednesday afternoon.

Next up for the No. 5 Cardinals is a semifinal date with top-seeded Salisbury. First pitch is scheduled for 7:15 p.m. Friday at Limeport Stadium.

D'Agostino went 3-for-5 with a pair of triples and three RBIs for the defending district champion Cardinals (13-8). His first triple to right-center came on the heels of a sac fly by Blankenhorn. Those hits were part of a five-run inning that gave Pine Grove a 6-1 cushion and chased starter Zach Stopay.

"The first time through the lineup is always just seeing the ball, getting a feel for it, getting the speed, getting his release point," D'Agostino said.

"The second time through, that's when we really ignited. That's when we started swinging the bats better, putting it in play. That's when I had the triple with it. That just started everything. That's all it takes is that little bit of momentum to get everything going."

The hit parade - Pine Grove finished with 10 - was just what the doctor ordered. It's also become an annual occurrence for the Cardinals to get hot at the plate at the right time.

"We were struggling a little bit the last couple games of the season," D'Agostino said. "We're picking it back up. This is the time you need it. It's the same thing that happened last year with us. We were struggling at the end of the year last year, and we just pulled through."

Pine Grove's entire lineup produced quality at-bats against the Rough Riders (12-10). Those at-bats allowed the Cards to take bases via steals, sacrifices and capitalizing on Catty mistakes.

"Kobe had a great offensive night, which was the key," Pine Grove coach Keith Lehman said. "We had other guys that had good ABs. Then we took advantage of some of their mistakes, too, which is a big part of this great game. If they give you an extra opportunity, take advantage of it."

Blankenhorn was the other key for Pine Grove. Although the junior wasn't overpowering, he was efficient.

The left-hander threw just 90 pitches - 59 for strikes - and escaped several jams in tossing a complete game.

Five times Catasauqua advanced runners to third base. Blankenhorn allowed just two of those runs to score. He also pitched from behind against several batters to record big outs.

"Jed competed outstanding," Lehman said. "He made some quality pitches when he had to when they had runners on. I don't know how many they left on."

Blankenhorn was at his best against the middle of the Rough Riders lineup. The No. 2-7 hitters went just 2-for-15 with one walk and one RBI.

"That's outstanding," Lehman said. "We knew they had some hitters 1-5. Watching them in BP, that was going to be important that we controlled their ABs. Jed did a great job."

Source: http://republicanherald.com/sports/district-11-baseball-pine-grove-bats-come-alive-in-rout-of-catasauqua-1.1493956

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Lawyer: Malaysian accused of rape married the girl

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) ? Prosecutors in Malaysia are pursuing rape charges against a 40-year-old man who allegedly had sex with a 13-year-old girl and then married her.

Restaurant manager Riduan Masmud was charged with committing statutory rape in a parked car in Borneo in February, but the man has defended his actions by saying he since married the girl.

Rights activists have long criticized Malaysian laws that allow very young Muslims to be wedded with the permission of Islamic courts.

Attorney General Abdul Gani Patail said late Wednesday that authorities remain firmly against statutory rape and were compiling a DNA report and other evidence in Riduan's case.

Riduan is already married to another woman and reportedly has four children. Malaysian Muslim men can have up to four wives.

Riduan told local media that he had known the girl for six months and that she consented to their marriage, which took place earlier this month.

"There are many cases of men marrying underage girls. I do not see why my case should be any different," The Star newspaper quoted Riduan as saying Monday after his latest court hearing.

A district court in Malaysia's Sabah state scheduled the next hearing for July 1 after Riduan's lawyer, Loretto Padua, said his marriage documents have been submitted to investigators.

Malaysian media reports say the rape prosecution stems from a police complaint filed by the girl's aunt against Riduan, but the girl has sought to revoke the complaint.

He faces up to 20 years in prison and whipping with a rattan cane if convicted.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/lawyer-malaysian-accused-rape-married-girl-025432039.html

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Thursday, May 23, 2013

Encoding.com's Vid.ly Integrates With FreeWheel To Provide Monetization Of Universal, Cross-Platform Video URLs

Screen Shot 2013-05-22 at 1.07.52 PMCloud encoding vendor Encoding.com launched Vid.ly a couple of years ago to provide video creators with a way to publish a single universal video URL and then have that content accessible on any device. Now it's providing a way to monetize those videos, thanks to an integration with ad delivery platorm FreeWheel.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/GD9JAd84Iyc/

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Massachusetts Employees Will Keep Their Health Plans

Casey B. Mulligan is an economics professor at the University of Chicago. He is the author of ?The Redistribution Recession: How Labor Market Distortions Contracted the Economy.?

Massachusetts and a few neighboring states are likely to experience the Affordable Care Act a lot differently than the rest of America.

Massachusetts is often held up as a window into America?s health insurance future, because it embarked on what came to be called the Romneycare reform six years ago. Like the Affordable Care Act provisions going into effect nationwide next year, Romneycare aimed to increase the fraction of the population with health insurance by imposing mandates on employers and employees and by subsidizing health insurance plans for middle-class families without employer plans.

Because the subsidized plans are available for only low- and middle-income families whose employers do not offer affordable health benefits, some analysts fear employers around the nation will drop their health benefits as the Affordable Care Act goes into full effect, resulting in millions of people losing the opportunity to get health insurance through an employer.

But some people say they believe this fear is likely to be unfounded, because the propensity of Massachusetts employees to receive employer-sponsored health insurance was hardly different after Romneycare went into effect than it was in the years before.

The details and dollar amounts in the Massachusetts health care law differ from the national Affordable Care Act, and for that reason alone I hesitate to infer too much from the Massachusetts experience. Even if the two laws were essentially the same, the effects in Massachusetts could be different than the national effects because Massachusetts has a different population and business environment than the rest of the nation.

Last week I explained how specific types of employers could be expected to drop their health benefits during the next couple of years: those employers that currently offer benefits but nonetheless pay much of their payroll to people living in households below 300 percent of the federal poverty line, who are eligible for the most generous federal subsidies as soon as their employer ceases to offer benefits.

Massachusetts has an extraordinary fraction (almost two-thirds) of its population above 300 percent of the federal poverty line, and as a result practically all Massachusetts employers will prefer to retain their health benefits over the next few years, even though a significant fraction of employers elsewhere will not.

One way to quantify the difference between Massachusetts employers and employers elsewhere is in the percentage of payroll going to employees from families below 300 percent of the poverty line. At a national level, the percentage varies from 4 percent in Internet publishing to about 50 percent in restaurants and private household employers. The national average is 20 percent, compared with 13 percent in Massachusetts.

Employers have a variety of factors to consider in their benefit offering decisions, but I have made some estimates that focus on the payroll-composition statistics noted above. By my estimates, employers with percentages of 26 to 35 percent of employees above 300 percent of the poverty level have a sufficiently high percentage that they are likely to have been offering health insurance benefits before the Affordable Care Act. Yet they have a low enough percentage that their employees gain on average if the employer health benefit is dropped and employees take the subsidies available through the Affordable Care Act?s health insurance exchanges.

About 10 percent of employees with health insurance live in a state and work in an industry with compensation percentages in the range where profits are to be gained by dropping employer health insurance. But none of them live in Massachusetts, and some states that border Massachusetts, including New Hampshire and Connecticut, are in a similar situation.

A number of states and industries ? especially the industries I emphasized last week ? have more than 35 percent of their payroll paid to people in families under 300 percent of the poverty line and are unlikely to be offering employee health benefits.

But those employers in Massachusetts who have 35 percent of their payroll paid to people in families under 300 percent of the poverty line are more likely to offer some kind of health benefit, in part because of Romneycare?s incentives to create ?cafeteria plans? in which employees authorize pretax salary to be withheld from their paychecks for the payment of health insurance premiums.

Under the federal law, the Massachusetts cafeteria plans will lose some of their advantages to employers in terms of avoiding penalties for failure to offer health benefits.

Based on the combination of these two factors ? that no Massachusetts industries have 26 percent to 35 percent of their employees under 300 percent of the poverty line, and that Massachusetts employers will lose the advantages of their cafeteria plans ? I calculate that employers offering health insurance in Massachusetts are one-third as likely to drop their employee health plans over the next couple of years as are employers in the rest of the nation.

That?s because the percentage of the United States work force at risk of losing its employer insurance (because of the tendencies of their industry and states to have low- and middle income employees) is three times the percentage of the Massachusetts work force in the same situation.

Source: http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/22/massachusetts-employees-will-keep-their-health-plans/

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BSkyB paying Virgin Media $74 million for a network makeover

BSkyB paying Virgin Media $74 million for a network makeover

Customers with Sky Broadband might find their speeds begin to crawl northward towards the end of the year. The broadcaster is paying Virgin Media's business arm £49 million ($74 million) for some of Richard Branson Liberty Global's deliciously fast fibre infrastructure. While there's no mention of BT, we wouldn't be surprised if this technological makeover was prompted by its corporate rival's recent assault on Sky's sporty golden goose.

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Via: The Next Web

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/23/bskyb-virgin-fibre-deal/?utm_medium=feed&utm_source=Feed_Classic&utm_campaign=Engadget

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Senator accuses IRS officials of withholding information in 2012 about agency practices

Douglas Shulman, former commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service (Gary Cameron/Reuters)Douglas Shulman, former commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service (Gary Cameron/Re??

Two top Internal Revenue Service officials knew that the agency was using a list to scrutinize applications for tax-exempt status that included the phrase "tea party" as early as the spring of 2012, but did not tell lawmakers until this year.

Former IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman and outgoing Commissioner Steven Miller told the Senate Finance Committee on Tuesday that they knew last year that the IRS had a "Be On The Lookout" list while processing nonprofit applications and that tea party groups were on it. The extent of their knowledge at the time, however, was limited, they said.

The IRS is facing scrutiny after a Treasury Department inspector general report detailed how the agency unfairly targeted conservative groups applying for nonprofit status between 2010 and 2012. IRS officials deny that the practice was politically motivated but have admitted that mistakes were made in the agency's approach to responding to applications.

"What I knew sometime in the spring of 2012 was that there was a list that was being used, knew that the word tea party was on the list," Shulman, who served as IRS commissioner from 2008-2012, said during the hearing. "I didn't know what other words were on the list, didn't know the scope and severity of this, didn't know of groups that were pulled in or groups that would have been pulled in anyway."

Miller, who served as deputy commissioner in 2012 and is acting commissioner until next month, also said he knew of the list in May 2012. Both men emphasized that they weren't made aware of all of the facts surrounding the case until last week when inspector general released a report outlining the IRS practices.

On June 18, 2012, Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, the top Republican on the Finance Committee, co-signed a letter to the IRS leaders requesting information about whether tea party groups had been targeted unfairly. Hatch received a response from the IRS that did not mention the list.

On Tuesday, Hatch asked Shulman and Miller why they did not provide more information when he requested it at the time.

"You knew this was going on, why didn't you let us know?" Hatch asked during the hearing. "That's what we were inquiring about when we sent these letters to you. ... Nowhere in your responses did you indicate that the IRS was improperly selecting tea party organizations for extra scrutiny. Nowhere in your responses did you indicate that you knew that the IRS was asking improper questions about donor contributions. You just sat on that guilty knowledge."

"That's a lie by omission," Hatch said.

"I did not lie, sir," Miller said.

In March 2012, Shulman testified before two House panels that he was not aware of the IRS "targeting" groups for political purposes.

"This notion that we are targeting anyone, I think, is off," Shulman told a House Financial Services subcommittee on March 21, 2012.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/senator-accuses-irs-officials-withholding-information-2012-agency-154929004.html

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Ricoh Aficio SG 3110DNw


The Ricoh Aficio SG 3110DNw is an inkjet printer for people whose first thought is to look for a low-end color laser. Like a growing number of other inkjets?including the HP Officejet Pro 251dw Printer and the Editors' Choice HP Officejet Pro 8100 ePrinter?it delivers laser-like speed and paper handling. More important, its balance of speed, paper handling, and price is enough to make it an Editors' Choice.

Like both the HP 251dw and HP 8100, the SG 3110DNw offers enough capability for heavy-duty use as a shared printer in a micro or small office. Unlike the two HP models, however, it's small enough, at 8.4 by 15.7 by 17.2 inches (HWD) to share a desk with comfortably, making it more appropriate as a personal printer too.

The Ricoh printer also differs from the two HP models in providing only limited support for mobile printing. It can print from both iOS and Android devices over a Wi-Fi connection, for example, but only if you have an access point on your network, since it doesn't offer Wi-Fi Direct. On the other hand, it delivers in spades on the basics, with even more capable paper handling than the HP printers and with faster speed on our tests.

Basics, Setup, and Speed
Like the HP models, the SG 3110DNw comes with a 250-sheet tray and duplexing standard. That should be enough for most micro or small offices, but if you need more capacity, the SG 3110DNw lets you add up to 350 sheets more than you can with the HP printers, with a 100-sheet bypass tray ($140 direct) and up to two more 250-sheet drawers ($153 direct each), for a total of 850-sheets.

Ricoh uses a variation on inkjet technology that it calls GelJet, based on fast-drying, viscous inks. However, setup is standard fare for an inkjet. For my tests, I connected the printer by Ethernet and installed the driver on a Windows Vista system.

Ricoh Aficio SG 3110DNw

As I've already suggested, speed is a definitive strong point. On our business applications suite (using QualityLogic's hardware and software for timing) the SG 3110DNw came in at 7.2 pages per minute (ppm), making it convincingly faster than both the 8100, at 5.9 ppm, and the 251dw, at 6.0 ppm. And note that both of the HP printers are faster than some lasers.

Output Quality and Other Issues
The SG 3110DNw's output quality on our official tests is best described as more than acceptable for most business use, but unimpressive. Text output was well below par for an inkjet, which translates to printing most fonts on our tests at a quality level that's readable, but not well formed, at sizes below 10 points.

Graphics output was relatively better, but still a touch below par. That makes it easily good enough for any internal business use, but you may or may not consider it high quality enough for PowerPoint handouts or the like, depending on how critical an eye you have.

Photo output was a special case. Unlike most inkjet manufacturers, Ricoh didn't provide photo paper for the printer. Following our standard testing procedures, I printed the photos for our official tests on the same color copy paper we use for lasers. Here again, the quality was well below par for an inkjet. It was easily good enough for printing recognizable photos from Web pages or even printing what you can think of as newspaper-quality photos, but it was well short of the true photo quality that most inkjets deliver.

That said, because the SG 3110DNw's default settings are so aggressively chosen for fast speed, I ran some additional tests as well, using the printer's best quality mode. I also tried printing photos on some glossy paper I had left over from testing another printer. As you'd expect for any inkjet, quality improved dramatically, with photos on the glossy paper at the low end of true photo quality and with text and graphics better than par.

Of, course, the speed slowed down dramatically as well. The time for our two-page Word file, for example, went from 14.8 seconds in the default mode to 161.0 seconds in the High Quality mode. So if you choose the High Quality setting, you clearly give up the advantages of fast speed. The point here is that the default mode is good enough for most business purposes, but when you need better output quality, you can get it if you're willing to wait for it.

The Ricoh Aficio SG 3110DNw won't be your first choice if high quality output is your main concern. Both of the HP printers I've mentioned can best it on that score, with the HP Officejet Pro 251dw Printer delivering the best looking output in the group. If all you need is output that's good enough for business use, however, and you're more concerned with moving lots of paper through the printer, the Ricoh Aficio SG 3110DNw can do the job well enough to likely be your preferred printer. It certainly does the job impressively enough to make it Editors' Choice.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/cClJlzLg0Kk/0,2817,2419175,00.asp

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PA Commission Looks at New System for Paying Special Education ...

?The state hands out special education dollars under a flawed formula that gives schools the same amount of money, regardless of how many students need services or how intense and costly those services are, lawmakers said.

It is a problem that has shortchanged school districts year after year, with some districts having to absorb in excess of a $1 million a year in added costs to subsidize services not covered by state dollars, an analysis done on behalf of the state Legislature found.

To compound the problem, the state has frozen funding for special education for the last six years.

The shortfall is important because it drains dollars that could be used to help teach other children. And the shortfall also creates an incentive for school districts to underestimate the care required to provide appropriate help for children with special needs, advocates warn. How often, if ever, that happens is unclear.

Jennifer Zufall, executive director of The ARC of Cambria County said that what muddies the water is that parents who are fighting to get their children every possible type of support may become frustrated if school officials refuse anything or limit how often the service is offered. It would be difficult to know if there are any school officials who are trying to deny special education services because of costs, Zufall said. The law is clear that the schools must provide the services that are necessary so no school official will admit that cost is driving decisions about how to help a special education student.

The best way to eliminate the tension between financially pressed schools and parents of special needs children would be for the state to adequately fund special education, said Brett Schaeffer, a spokesman for the Education Law Center in Philadelphia, one of the leading advocacy groups on this issue.

A legislative commission that had its first meeting this week will try to figure out the best way to do just that.

The state distributes special education dollars based on the assumption that 16 percent of students require extra services. Statewide, only 15.2 percent of students are receiving special education services. But, 19 of 55 rural Pennsylvania school districts examined for this story had special education populations comprising more than 16 percent of their enrollment, according to analysis of data compiled by the department of education.

The state funding fails other districts as well, because there is little baked into the formula to acknowledge that some special education students require very expensive support, said Rep. Mark Longietti, D-Mercer County, one of the lawmakers appointed to the special education funding commission.

One of the key reforms that the commission will examine will be the development of a three-tiered system for paying special education bills, Longietti said. Under this plan, the state would be able to pay more for those students who require more services, he noted.

One challenge will be determining how to do that in a way that makes sense without creating a system that encourages schools to begin assigning expensive special education services to students who don?t need them.

The special education commission voted to hire Baruch Kintisch, the former director of policy advocacy for the Education Law Center, as a consultant to help them develop a new funding formula. His compensation has not been set.

The commission has until Sept. 30 to come up with a report for the Legislature. But how important the commission?s work becomes will depend on what?s done with it, Schaeffer said. Those efforts will not do much good, he said, unless the state budget also includes an increase in special education funding.

Read more at?Lawmakers looking at special education funding.

[Via -?New Castle News]

Source: http://specialedpost.com/2013/05/21/pa-commission-looks-at-new-system-for-paying-special-education-bills/

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Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Mosquito behavior may be immune response, not parasite manipulation

Mosquito behavior may be immune response, not parasite manipulation [ Back to EurekAlert! ] Public release date: 22-May-2013
[ | E-mail | Share Share ]

Contact: A'ndrea Elyse Messer
aem1@psu.edu
814-865-9481
Penn State

Malaria-carrying mosquitos appear to be manipulated by the parasites they carry, but this manipulation may simply be part of the mosquitos' immune response, according to Penn State entomologists.

"Normally, after a female mosquito ingests a blood meal, she matures her eggs and does not take another one until the meal is digested," said Lauren J. Cator, postdoctoral fellow in entomology and a member of the Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics, Penn State. "If infected, however, mosquitos will wait to eat until the parasites developing within the gut mature and migrate to the salivary glands."

It was thought that fasting until malaria could be transmitted was beneficial to the malaria parasite because if the female mosquito was not feeding, she was not being swatted. The return of hunger seemed to correlate with the migration of parasites to the salivary glands. The hungrier the mosquitos are, the more they feed and the more chances to find new hosts.

Cator and colleagues who included Justin George, postdoctoral fellow; Simon Blanford, research associate; Courtney C. Murdock, postdoctoral fellow; Thomas C. Baker, professor of entomology; Andrew F. Read, professor of biology and entomology and alumni professor in biological sciences; and Matthew B. Thomas, professor of entomology, used a mouse model and showed that indeed female mosquitos behaved in this way.

It was unclear if the malaria parasite caused the mosquitos' response or if something else was in play. The researchers also looked at how the infected mosquitos searched for meals and how they responded to the smell of humans. Although the mosquitos used were biting mice, they also look to humans for a meal.

George ran the experiments testing the mosquito's sense of smell during various stages of parasite maturity and found that the mosquitos responded to human smell much more readily once the parasites were ready to transfer to their hosts. The same was found of the meal-seeking behavior of the mosquitos.

The researchers dissected the insects to determine the exact stage of the parasite in each mosquito they tested and what they found surprised them. They published their results in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B today (May 22).

"There were mosquitos that took an infected blood meal, but didn't get infected or fought off the infection," said Cator. "These mosquitos behaved in the same way as the infected mosquitos."

The researchers then injected mosquitos with killed E. coli to see the response. While the degree of fasting and food seeking was smaller, the noninfected, E. coli-challenged mosquitos behaved in the same way. They fasted for about the same time and then went searching for a meal. Their responses to human smell and meal searching behavior also mirrored that of malaria-infected mosquitos.

"Recently, a group from the Netherlands published in PLOS and while they were only looking at the mature parasites in the salivary glands, they found the same response to human odor," said Cator. "This supports that the response is a generalized response to a challenge rather than a manipulation by the malaria parasite and that our findings are probably relevant for human malaria transmission."

###

The National Institutes of Health supported this work.


[ 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.


Mosquito behavior may be immune response, not parasite manipulation [ Back to EurekAlert! ] Public release date: 22-May-2013
[ | E-mail | Share Share ]

Contact: A'ndrea Elyse Messer
aem1@psu.edu
814-865-9481
Penn State

Malaria-carrying mosquitos appear to be manipulated by the parasites they carry, but this manipulation may simply be part of the mosquitos' immune response, according to Penn State entomologists.

"Normally, after a female mosquito ingests a blood meal, she matures her eggs and does not take another one until the meal is digested," said Lauren J. Cator, postdoctoral fellow in entomology and a member of the Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics, Penn State. "If infected, however, mosquitos will wait to eat until the parasites developing within the gut mature and migrate to the salivary glands."

It was thought that fasting until malaria could be transmitted was beneficial to the malaria parasite because if the female mosquito was not feeding, she was not being swatted. The return of hunger seemed to correlate with the migration of parasites to the salivary glands. The hungrier the mosquitos are, the more they feed and the more chances to find new hosts.

Cator and colleagues who included Justin George, postdoctoral fellow; Simon Blanford, research associate; Courtney C. Murdock, postdoctoral fellow; Thomas C. Baker, professor of entomology; Andrew F. Read, professor of biology and entomology and alumni professor in biological sciences; and Matthew B. Thomas, professor of entomology, used a mouse model and showed that indeed female mosquitos behaved in this way.

It was unclear if the malaria parasite caused the mosquitos' response or if something else was in play. The researchers also looked at how the infected mosquitos searched for meals and how they responded to the smell of humans. Although the mosquitos used were biting mice, they also look to humans for a meal.

George ran the experiments testing the mosquito's sense of smell during various stages of parasite maturity and found that the mosquitos responded to human smell much more readily once the parasites were ready to transfer to their hosts. The same was found of the meal-seeking behavior of the mosquitos.

The researchers dissected the insects to determine the exact stage of the parasite in each mosquito they tested and what they found surprised them. They published their results in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B today (May 22).

"There were mosquitos that took an infected blood meal, but didn't get infected or fought off the infection," said Cator. "These mosquitos behaved in the same way as the infected mosquitos."

The researchers then injected mosquitos with killed E. coli to see the response. While the degree of fasting and food seeking was smaller, the noninfected, E. coli-challenged mosquitos behaved in the same way. They fasted for about the same time and then went searching for a meal. Their responses to human smell and meal searching behavior also mirrored that of malaria-infected mosquitos.

"Recently, a group from the Netherlands published in PLOS and while they were only looking at the mature parasites in the salivary glands, they found the same response to human odor," said Cator. "This supports that the response is a generalized response to a challenge rather than a manipulation by the malaria parasite and that our findings are probably relevant for human malaria transmission."

###

The National Institutes of Health supported this work.


[ 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/2013-05/ps-mbm052213.php

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If you have brain cancer (tumor) does that mean you are dying ...

Unfortunately people have the habit of referring to any sort of tumor in the head or neck as a brain tumor, or even as brain cancer.

There are a number of growths in that area, such as small meningiomas, which show up on scans for something else but have no effect on the brain or body.

Brain Cancer Symptoms
Know the symptoms of Brain Cancer. As the location of cancerous brain tumors changes, the symptoms also change.
Brain cancer is also called Glioma or Meningioma. If cancer starts in the brain itself, it is called "primary brain cancer". If cancer starts elsewhere in the body and then moves to the brain, it is called "metastatic brain cancer". A primary brain cancer usually is confined to the central nervous system. Due to uncontrolled tumor growth in the limited space of the skull, death takes place. A metastatic brain cancer is an advanced disease and is related to poor prognosis. Primary brain tumors may be cancerous or noncancerous. All the cancerous brain tumors are malignant and threaten life due to the aggressive and invasive nature. In the United States, there are 15 to 20 cases of brain cancer in 100,000 people. It is the leading cause of cancer-related deaths in patients younger than 35. In case of children, primary brain cancer occurs in 3 out of 100,000 annually. Secondary brain cancer occurs in 20 to 30% patients with metastatic diseases. This incidence increases with age. Every year, about 100,000 cases of secondary brain cancer are diagnosed.

Brain cancer symptoms

There are about 24 distinct symptoms of brain cancer. These are listed below.
vision problems vomiting nausea seizures headaches behavioral problems brain swelling hydrocephalus dizziness hearing problems motor problems memory loss memory problems cognitive problems personality changes lack of coordination stumbling one-sided body weakness numbness of arms and legs weakness of arms and legs hallucinations speech problems balance problems gait problems Metastatic brain cancer invades the brain tissue indiscriminately. This leads to the following symptoms: vomiting swelling seizures nausea motor dysfunction impaired mental function headache bleeding Symptoms of brain tumor that may be cancerous
Some brain tumors are cancerous. Any brain tumor can hinder the flow of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF). This causes an accumulation of CSF (hydrocephalus) and increased intracranial pressure (IICP). The common symptoms are: vomiting headache nausea The brain tumors damage vital neurological pathways and press the brain tissue. Depending on the location and size of the tumor, the symptoms vary.

If a tumor is present in the brainstem, then the symptoms are: drowsiness behavioral and emotional changes (irritability) hearing loss difficulty in speaking and swallowing headache, especially in the morning muscle weakness on one side of the face uncoordinated gait vomiting muscle weakness on one side of the body (hemiparesis) vision loss, drooping eyelid (ptosis), crossed eyes (strabismus) Meningioma or a tumor of the meninges gives rise to the following symptoms: vision loss seizures prolonged drowsiness (somnolence) mental and emotional change (apathy, disinhibition) incontinence impaired speech (dysphasia) hearing loss headache If a brain tumor is present in the frontal lobe, then the symptoms are: impaired sense of smell paralysis on one side of the body (hemiplegia) behavioral and emotional changes memory loss impaired judgement vision loss and inflammation of the optic nerve (papilledema) reduced mental capacity (cognitive function) If a tumor is present in the parietal lobe, then the symptoms are: lack of recognition impaired speech seizures spatial disorders inability to write If the tumor is located in the right and left hemispheres of the frontal lobe, then this causes: behavioral changes cognitive changes uncoordinated gait If a tumor is present in the occipital lobe, then there may be vision loss in one or both eyes and seizures may also occur.
If a tumor is present in the temporal lobe, then there are no symptoms, but there may be impaired speech and seizures.

If a tumor grows in the pituitary gland (pituitary adenoma), then the secretion of hormones increases, there is discontinuation of menstruation (amenorrhea) and excessive secretion of milk in women (galactorrhea). Men may be afflicted by impotency.
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Source: http://www.cancer-forums.net/if-you-have-brain-cancer-tumor-does-that-mean-you-are-dying-t120432.html

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Tuesday, May 21, 2013

HTC One for T-Mobile: what's different?

HTC One for TMobile what's different

By most accounts, the HTC One is the most compelling Android smartphone on the market today, but only three of the major US carriers are wise enough to sell it. Up until this point, we've put the AT&T and Sprint models through their paces, and now we have an opportunity to round out the trio with T-Mobile's version. Given the carrier's recent shift to an unsubsidized pricing model -- which brings lower monthly fees in exchange for purchasing your phone outright -- you may be in for some sticker shock with the HTC One, which runs $580, but you can also pay $100 down with installments of $20 per month over the course of two years.

If you're currently on the fence about whether the HTC One is right for your needs, you'll definitely want to check out our full review, which features an in-depth look at the phone's design, camera and the many novel features that you'll find with HTC's custom software environment, Sense 5. Here, we'll explore the subtle nuances of T-Mobile's version, with plenty of benchmarks, impressions about the voice quality and battery life, an overview of the bundled apps and a comparison to the One's closest competitors on T-Mo. There's plenty to cover, so join us after the break as we explore everything that you need to know about the HTC One for T-Mobile.

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Killing of gay man in NYC draws protesters

NEW YORK (AP) ? The killing of a gay man who police say was taunted with homophobic slurs drew thousands of people to the scene of the crime to restore a sense of safety to one of the nation's most gay-friendly neighborhoods.

Fabio Cotza, a gay member of an interfaith Bronx church, said he looked around cautiously when he stepped out of the subway in Greenwich Village Monday evening to join the rally.

He said the killing "really makes me scared ... especially since it happened in this area."

His reaction was not unusual after a spate of bias attacks stirred up anxiety, disbelief and outrage even before 32-year-old Mark Carson was felled by a single gunshot to the head early Saturday near from the site of 1969 riots that helped give rise to the gay rights movement.

The crowd Monday carried flags and signs and chanted: "We're here! We're queer!" and "Homophobia's got to go!"

Christine Quinn, the city's first openly gay City Council speaker, marched along with Edie Windsor, whose pivotal case to win the same rights for gay couples as heterosexual couples is before the Supreme Court.

Carson was killed Saturday as he walked with a companion through the Village. Police say a man charged with murder as a hate crime shot Carson in the heart of one of the city's most progressive neighborhoods.

Following the deadly shooting, officials said Monday that police would increase their presence there and in nearby neighborhoods through the end of June, Gay Pride Month.

A group that combats anti-gay violence planned to fan out to various areas on Friday nights through June to talk to people about safety. And public schools are being asked to hold assemblies or other discussions of hate crimes and bullying before summer break.

One of Carson's aunts, Flourine Bompars, attended the march.

"The family would like to have justice be served, so that Mark's death is not in vain," she said at a rally at the march's end.

Elliot Morales is being held without bail in Carson's death. He hasn't yet entered a plea, and his lawyer didn't immediately return a call Monday.

The city and especially the Village have long been beacons for gay people. The gay rights movement crystallized in the Village in June 1969, when a police raid at the Stonewall Inn touched off a riot and demonstrations that came to symbolize gays' resistance to being relegated to society's shadows.

Yet gay-bashing has continued to flare up in New York at times in recent years. In one particularly sinister case, three men connected with a 28-year-old man online in 2006, lured him to a rest stop off a Brooklyn highway with a promise of a date and mugged him, chasing him into traffic; he was hit and killed.

In 2010, authorities said Bronx gang members beat and tortured four people in an anti-gay rage, two men were accused of a gay-bashing beating at the Stonewall Inn itself and a man spewed homophobic insults while throwing a punch at another Village bar ? all assaults that happened within little more than a week.

Police say there has been a rise in bias-related crimes overall so far this year, to 22 from 13 during the same period last year. The New York City Anti-Violence Project, a nonprofit group that tracks police and other reports of hate attacks against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people, says its numbers rose 13 percent in 2011 and 11 percent the previous year.

But officials and advocates can't pinpoint a reason for the recent rash of attacks or even whether it reflects more violence or more aggressive reporting of incidents.

Advocates see such attacks in the context of a culture that has grown more accepting of gays in some ways ? 12 states have now legalized gay marriage ? but doesn't universally ban discrimination based on sexual orientation.

Carson's shooting came after other attacks fueled by anti-gay animus in recent weeks, authorities say. Those include a report last month of a man making anti-gay remarks and attacking a woman with a ketchup bottle at a Village diner; a man told police he and a friend were victims of a gay bashing outside a subway station in Midtown Manhattan this month; and two men walking arm-in-arm near Madison Square Garden report being jumped by a group of men on May 5, police said.

"This happened in Midtown, during the day, with a ton of people around," one of the victims, Nick Porto, wrote in a Facebook posting. "... When are we safe?"

___

Follow Jennifer Peltz at http://twitter.com/jennpeltz

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/killing-gay-man-nyc-draws-protesters-062943751.html

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South Korea: The little dynamo that sneaked up on the world

South Korea, long in the shadow of other Asian 'tiger economies,' is suddenly hip and enormously prosperous ? so much so that it may have outgrown its thankless dream of reuniting with the North.

By Scott Duke Harris,?Contributor / May 19, 2013

Shoppers, tourists, and businessmen and women walk along Gangnam Boulevard at night on March 23, 2013 in Gangnam-gu, Seoul, South Korea.

Ann Hermes/The Christian Science Monitor

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For months the young emperor to the north has been threatening to turn this thriving metropolis into a "sea of fire." But it's not easy to ruffle the jaunty vibe of 75-year-old Kim Chong-shik as he strolls among young couples and shoppers along the boutiques of the Gangnam District.

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Living well, it's said, is the best revenge. "I never imagined it would be like this," he says, grinning, not far from a playfully misplaced sign on a coffeehouse: Beverly Hills City Limits.

The retired civil servant, who remembers the Korean War and its miserable aftermath, cuts a dapper figure against a springtime cold snap, a green silk scarf peeking out from his handsome wool overcoat.

Why so stylish? "Because I live here!"

Ten million people live in Seoul, the heart of a huge sprawl that is home to half of the Republic of Korea's 49 million people. It is a hard-charging, high-pressure, high-tech hub of the 21st-century global economy ? and sits in the cross hairs of an enemy who seems unaware the cold war ended a generation ago. North Korean missile installations are just 30 miles away ? and now the threats are nuclear.

Yet not long ago, the dream of a single Korea ? reconciled in peace like Germany, not through war like Vietnam ? seemed like a destiny within reach. As recently as two months ago, Koreans from the south were still crossing the demilitarized zone (DMZ) to go to work alongside 50,000 northerners at the Kaesong industrial park, a legacy of the South's old "Sunshine Policy" of reconciliation. The Kaesong facility opened four years after athletes from both Koreas marched into the 2000 Sydney Olympics under a flag depicting a united peninsula. That same year South Korea's president was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. And Koreans have long embraced the idea that they are of "one blood." A January 2011 survey by the Korean Broadcasting System found that 71.6 percent of South Koreans favored reunification, and nearly as many said they would be willing to pay taxes to support it.

But the ardor for reunification has cooled with a new round of tensions this year. Pyongyang's threats appear to have decimated the southerners' goodwill: In just six months there was a precipitous drop in the number of South Koreans who consider northerners a "neighbor" or "one of us," from 64.2 percent as late as November 2012 to 37.3 percent in late April, and a spike to 46 percent considering northerners as strangers at best, if not enemies.

North Korea's new weaponry and "Supreme Leader" Kim Jong-un's bombast ? including recent nuclear and missile tests ? raise fears that a single Korea might happen in the worst way possible, through horrible violence.

Thoughts of a path to unity make Kim Chong-shik's smile disappear: "I worry about it a lot. We've gone in opposite directions. The differences are so great. It would be very difficult."

A hip prosperity

South Korea has never been so prosperous, so gregarious, so hip ? so much so that it seems as if the nation sneaked up on the world.

As "the American century" fades, and the 21st century is said to "belong to China," it may make more sense to speak of "the Asian century" ? and now is South Korea's moment. And in that moment, it shines in such stark contrast to the sad state of North Korea ? so impoverished its people literally stand a few inches shorter than their southern cousins. The peninsula's bipolar condition is reflected most aptly in its leading personalities. The stocky K-pop party rocker Psy spreads "Gangnam Style" to the world while the North's pudgy supreme leader, like his father and grandfather before him, spreads menace, Pyongyang style.

The nuclear saber-rattling may have prompted the United States in March to add B-52 and B-2 stealth bombers to its annual military exercises with South Korea, but there are few outward signs of distress among South Koreans themselves. Seoul's stock market took it all in stride, and 50,000 Psy fans jammed a Seoul stadium for a mid-April concert that premi?red his new song and video "Gentleman," in which Psy does not seem gentlemanly at all. Nobody expects him or any act, anywhere, to soon top the 1.5 billion-plus YouTube viewings of "Gangnam Style."

Psy's global success has made him a national hero. He is, in a sense, a flamboyant, fun-loving, globe-trotting version of the "industrial warriors" hailed by South Korean politicians for transforming this small nation into an economic powerhouse. While the Korean Wave exports K-pop and TV and film dramas far and wide, the rest of South Korea Inc. keeps cranking out computer chips, smart phones, TVs, autos, oil tankers, and container ships, while also building skyscrapers, highways, and shopping malls at home and abroad. In the first quarter of 2013, as Pyongyang started to act up, South Korea's gross domestic product jumped markedly over recent quarters. Samsung Electronics recorded a 42 percent spike in profits in its sixth straight quarter of growth as it pulls away from Apple in the smart-phone market.

South Koreans, clearly, aren't easily distracted. At Hyundai Motor Group headquarters, Doh Bo-eun, a mild-mannered economist and father of teenage girls, explains that it's pointless to dwell on Pyongyang when his duty is to study how the European Union's troubles may affect auto exports.

Over at the entertainment firm CJ E&M ? Psy's label ? music division president Ahn Joon likens North Korea's threats to a mild illness, and says he worries more about ways to keep K-pop popping. That's why the colorfully coiffed Wonder Boyz put in marathon rehearsals at a Gangnam studio, working to make it big before they must report for compulsory military duty.

Until recently, South Korea only seemed to make news when North Korea caused trouble. Today's confrontation may portend more than the lethal violence of 2010, when 46 South Korean sailors were killed in the sinking of the naval vessel Cheonan, and later two marines and two civilians were killed in the shelling of the Yeonpyeong Islands. (North Korea denies being responsible for the sinking; an international investigation concludes it was.) At that time, South Korea's cooler heads prevailed, opting for a measured military retaliation against North Korean gun positions and vowing harsher payback for further attacks. The vow continues under newly elected Park Geun-hye, the nation's first female president and the daughter of a former military dictator credited with laying the foundation for South Korea's success and creating its Ministry of Unification. Yet even after the sinking of the Cheonan, Ms. Park's predecessor, President Lee Myung-bak, was optimistic enough to propose a "reunification tax" to prepare the country for its likely destiny.

Korean nationalism is a potent force, whether it refers to one nation, the other, or the imagined third. Yet for much of its history Korea has been dominated by foreign powers. In the first great war of the 20th century, Japan shocked the Western world when its forces throttled Russia to strengthen its domination of the Korean Peninsula and Manchuria ? a part of the Korean "Hermit Kingdom."

South Korea's population is 2/5ths the size of Japan's, 1/7th the size of the US's, and 1/26th the size of China's, but pound for pound, it's outpunching the economic heavyweights. Once also-rans, companies like Samsung Electronics, LG, and Hyundai Motors are going toe-to-toe with the likes of Apple, Intel, Sony, Toyota, and Ford. Critics point out that Apple defeated Samsung in a high-profile patent case last year. Silicon Valley has long portrayed South Korea as "a fast follower," better at imitating than innovating. Samsung, however, is adept at collaboration: Apple used its chips in the iPhone, while Samsung's smart phones run Google's Android operating system. And Samsung has bragging rights to the No. 1 market share in TVs and memory chips ? as well as one of the world's biggest arsenals of patents.

South Korea's tech know-how has also helped drive its success in entertainment. It was the Chinese, in the late 1990s, who first fell hard for Korea's TV melodramas and other entertainment, dubbing it hallyu ? Mandarin for Korean Wave, which has since spread globally by satellite and Internet, winning fans in Europe, the Americas, and the Arab world. South Korea was early to embrace the Internet, rewiring Seoul for lightning-fast connections in the 1990s.

While Psy and several other Korean stars are original talents, K-pop has also thrived through its "idol" model. Mr. Ahn, the music executive, is matter-of-fact about the starmaking machinery that casts young talent for girl groups that resemble Korean Barbies and boy groups that look like Japanese anime characters. The songwriting formula requires English lyrical hooks for wider appeal.

South Korea's export-dependent economy faced a stiff test in the 2008 financial meltdown and the global recession ? and held up remarkably well. Data compiled by the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) shows that South Korea's growth slowed to 0.3 percent in 2009, but the nation, unlike most, never slipped into recession. From 2004 to 2011, its unemployment rate never rose above 3.7 percent while income per capita soared 36 percent, to $30,366. South Korea's yin and yang of capitalism and socialism, meanwhile, has long provided universal health care and other safety-net benefits.

Not all news is upbeat. South Koreans' new affluence also produced a housing bubble and an unwise tendency to splurge on status symbols. When Psy sings "Hey, sexy lady," he is lampooning Seoul's strutting nouveau riche. High household debt is considered South Korea's greatest domestic economic challenge. Along with Louis Vuitton, Prada, and other chic brands, signs of affluence include $15 cups of gourmet coffee and occasional glimpses of women wearing hoods to obscure their recovery from cosmetic surgery. South Korea is the world's per capita leader in nipping and tucking, with Westernized eyes especially popular.

South Korea also holds a grimmer global distinction: It is No. 1 in suicides per capita among the 34 nations in the OECD ? and by a wide margin. The rise has been startling and hard to understand. A 2012 report (based on data from 2010), put South Korea's suicide rate at 33.5 per 100,000 people, up from 28.4 in 2009.

Explanations are elusive. As in many Asian cultures, a high premium is placed on reputation, or "face." In one report, South Korea's Ministry of Health and Welfare cited "complicated socioeconomic reasons and a growing number of one-person households" as contributing factors. As South Korea has become more affluent and image-conscious, the flip side of success may be financial ruin and shame. Notably, in 2009, a year after he left office, former President Roh Moo-hyun committed suicide by leaping off a cliff amid allegations of corruption.

Most suicides don't make headlines. At the elite Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, there have been a half-dozen suicides in recent years. Misgivings are expressed about a driven, ultracompetitive culture that produces students who score 97 percent on an exam and consider it a failure.

"Too many young people are very unhappy," says Han Sang-geun, a math professor. "If they don't succeed, you know, they are devastated."

Once a foreign aid recipient, now a donor

Time was that Koreans considered rice a luxury. During the Korean War and for many years after, recalls retired Army Maj. Gen. Ahn Kwang-chan, his village survived on a gruel of barley, which is much easier to grow than rice. Meat was for special occasions.

Well into the 1970s, South Koreans were in worse shape than their northern cousins, who benefited from ties within the Communist sphere. South Korea depended heavily on foreign aid, mostly from the US, including payment for more than 300,000 soldiers who fought communists in Vietnam. Today, South Korea is the world's only nation that has transformed itself from major recipient of foreign aid to major donor ? with North Korea as a beneficiary.

The rags-to-riches tale is sometimes called "the Miracle of the Han River," the waterway that curves through Seoul and empties at an estuary on the DMZ. (Gangnam means "south of the river.") But the wellspring of the nation's success, many say, can be traced to a different han. The word signifies a distinctly Korean pain ? the sorrow, anger, and unresolved injustice borne of subjugation. A prime example: the 200,000 "comfort women" of World War II forced to provide sex to Japanese soldiers.

The Allied victory liberated Korea from Japan but added new layers of han. The Ko-reans were divided by rival superpowers, creating conditions for fratricidal war five years later that began with an invasion ordered by North Korea's Kim Il-sung, whose grandson now leads the Pyongyang regime. The South's soldiers included Park Chung-hee, who in 1961 would seize power in a South Korea military coup and later prevail in an election to formally claim the title of president. The first President Park was an authoritarian figure who threatened to jail the patriarchs of the country's most powerful families ? and later worked with them to create the chaebol system of conglomerates to develop the nation's export-oriented economy. Only 15 years ago, near the dawn of the Sunshine Policy, the Asian financial crisis threatened to crash South Korea's banking system and bring the miracle to an abrupt end. The country was vulnerable in part because the chaebols were considered too big to fail.

"It was the survival of the fattest," explains Tcha Moon-joong, a director at the government-backed Korean Development Institute. On the brink of ruin, South Korea accepted $47 billion in emergency loans from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). South Korea Inc. was stripped down and rebuilt. Four wasteful chaebols were dismantled, with Daewoo selling its auto works to General Motors. Samsung, Hyundai, and others restructured. The result: a leaner, tougher economic machine.

The IMF's, however, wasn't the only help that South Korea received. Thousands of Ko-reans like taxi driver Yoo Man-su lined up to donate gold jewelry and heirlooms to shore up the nation's reserves. Athletes donated gold medals. In raw monetary terms, the value was modest ? but the collective emotional message was powerful. Several Asian countries were in crisis, but only South Koreans had this response. More recently, "when Greece got into trouble, the Greeks reached for rocks and threw them," Mr. Tcha points out. "Here, the people reached for gold and gave it to help the nation."

Such was the patriotism and the sense of sacrifice of the han generation. The Gangnam generation, Tcha says, lacks that "hungry spirit."

Leno can't kick Hyundai around anymore

At Hyundai headquarters, Choi Myoung-wha, vice president of marketing strategy, remembers her days at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va., and laughing about Jay Leno's Hyundai jokes. ("Researchers have discovered a way to double the value of a Hyundai. Just fill it up.")

Today Hyundai Motors is the world's fifth largest automaker, in part because of its reputation for quality ? even if it did issue a massive recall in April regarding faulty air bags. Hyundai put an end to the jokes in 1999 with a "bet the company" move that paid off: "America's Best Warranty" ? a 10-year, 100,000-mile guarantee.

Hyundai and its sister Kia line are ubiquitous in South Korea, but its global reach may be more impressive. Last year, Hyundai's newest factory, in Brazil, started producing hatchbacks designed for the South American market. The new facility signified the completion of a strategy that had already put factories in Russia, India, and China ? the so-called BRIC group of large, fast-growing economies. Hyundai has three factories in China, Ms. Choi says, capable of pushing 1 million cars per year into what is already the world's largest auto market. It also has factories in the Czech Republic, Turkey, and the US, in Alabama.

The ground floor of Hyundai headquarters here doubles as a showroom for leading models such as the Sonata hybrid and popular Elantra. Another display promotes its hydrogen-powered, zero-emission car. Hyundai boasts that it is the first carmaker to introduce the assembly-line production of such vehicles, to fulfill orders from progressive Scandinavian governments.

Choi dismisses the rap that South Korea is merely a fast imitator, considering the innovations coming from Hyundai and Samsung. Now South Korea has become a trendsetter, and the Galaxy smart phones and K-pop have indirectly helped the nation's auto industry.

"The Korean Wave clearly plays into the country-of-origin effect," she says, "and does so in a very positive way."

South Korea's collective success, she suggests, reflects a lesson described in Malcolm Gladwell's "Outliers": Research shows that 10,000 hours of work are needed to achieve mastery in a particular endeavor ? and such mastery creates conditions for creativity.

Long hours are part of the Korean work ethic, starting from grade school on into careers. After a regular school day, students often do a second shift in private academies known as hogwans. Some students spend 12 or 13 hours a day in one school or another. Even parents who find it excessive say they feel compelled to help their children prevail in this competitive culture ? and, it follows, anywhere else in the world.

South Korea's human wave also includes a global legion of multilingual corporate representatives, entrepreneurs, and students. Seoul Global High School is a public boarding school that aims "to nurture international specialists." It selects students through an application and interview process, and teaches in both Korean and English. Twenty percent of its graduates attend foreign universities, mostly in the US, with the rest typically entering South Korea's elite universities. Seoul Global's dorms discourage the hogwan system, but it's still intense: Tae kwon do is mandatory, with first-year students starting at 6 a.m., and music is mandatory as well. "They can graduate only if they know how to play an instrument," the principal explains.

The education obsession, blamed by some as a factor in the high suicide rate, has moved South Korean students toward the top in international academic rankings. Koreans, Choi says, "have a passion for being No. 1."

Electing a woman to face the North

With the inauguration of Ms. Park, South Korea claimed another first. "It's a great thing! Our people selected a lady president!" Ahn, the retired Army general, says. "How wonderful it is!" No other nation in Northeast Asia, he notes, has ever elected a woman as its leader. "When do you think a lady prime minister will be chosen to lead Japan? Or China? Or Russia?"

He has other reasons to be happy. In electing a conservative, Korea's voters, in a sense, affirmed Ahn's recent service as a top national security adviser to conservative Mr. Lee and the handling of the 2010 clashes with North Korea. The election of Park last December signifies continuity more than change.

The looming question is whether Park and Mr. Kim will navigate toward war or peace. Also key is how China, long supportive of Pyongyang and of a divided Korea, will apply pressure, given Beijing's displeasure over Kim's nukes.

In his unpretentious Seoul home, Ahn politely demurs from a discussion of politics, preferring to discuss Korean character. He shows his "family book," which he says records 28 generations. (Mr. Yoo, the cabbie, brags his goes back 31.) There is a box of Titleist golf balls on his desk, and beneath the glass desktop is a favorite proverb: "If there's no road, make it. Hope starts here."

The Sunshine Policy was such a road. The name was inspired by Aesop's fable about a contest between the wind and the sun to force a man to remove his cloak. The wind just made the man grip his cloak tighter, while the sun's warmth inspired him to remove it on his own.

The policy had produced tangible advances. But progress stalled and tensions resumed, culminating in the clashes of 2010. After the North's "Dear Leader," Kim Jong-il, died in late 2011, there was hope that his son, who had been educated in Europe, might chart a new course. But today a common perspective here is that after South Korea offered an olive branch, the young Kim brandished weapons of mass destruction.

A journey to the DMZ offers as little insight into the cloistered, enigmatic North as a shopping spree in Gangnam. Instead, it's better to hike up a hill through an old, gentrified neighborhood north of the Han River and visit the North Korea Graduate School of Kyungnam University. Inside the library, in a room marked "restricted access," a collection of recent North Korean publications includes the nation's largest news-paper, with a front page laid out as sheet music and lyrics extolling Kim and titled "The Person Who Holds the Key to Our Fate and Future." Inside pages display undated propaganda photos flaunting the nation's firepower and resolve.

These glimpses of North Korea's menace contrast with the urbane panorama of Seoul, which from this vantage includes the Blue House, the nation's executive office and home to Park. Like her counterpart in Pyongyang, she is heir to a political legacy, but otherwise the two have little in common. At 61, she is twice Kim's age. While Pyongyang has bizarrely faulted her "venomous swish of skirt," she is perceived as very much her father's daughter, with a toughness and pragmatism tempered by experience. "To most South Koreans, Madame Park is not so much a woman leader as [she is] her father, Park Chung-hee, personified in a woman's body," says Bong Young-shik, a senior research fellow at the Asan Institute.

South Korea's new president was a young student in France when, in 1974, her mother was killed in an assassination attempt on Mr. Park, prompting the young Ms. Park to assume the duties of first lady. Five years later, after her father was killed by his own spy chief during a drinking bout, it's said that her first concern was that North Korea might seize the moment to attack. She never married and later served in the National Assembly, immersing herself in politics. Her campaign played "the gender card," Mr. Bong says, but also emphasizes her experience in the Blue House, the mentorship of her father, and political experience. During the Sunshine period, she met Kim's father in Pyongyang.

On May 7, Park visited President Obama at the White House. At a joint press conference both affirmed the nations' solidarity and vowed that Pyongyang's threats would not win concessions. "North Korea will not be able to survive if it only clings to developing its nuclear weapons at the expense of its people's happiness," Park said. "However, should North Korea choose the path of becoming a responsible member of the community of nations, we are willing to provide assistance ... with the international community."

Can the North do the Gangnam gallop?

Back in Gangnam, Mr. Kim, the retired civil servant, gives a thumbs-up. That's his opinion of Psy, whose popularity is something to behold. Industrial warriors, college professors, students, random shoppers ? all seem to root for Psy. Young people say that when they travel abroad ? and are invariably asked if they're Japanese or Chinese ? new acquaintances are excited by the answer.

"Some people start doing the dance," says a 20-year-old woman at a cos-metics shop, laughing as she demonstrates the Gangnam gallop. Her phone buzzes ? and she answers first in English, then French, then Korean. Later she explains that she recently moved home after several years in Paris ? and that, thanks to K-pop, Parisiennes now tell her they want to visit Seoul.

Many South Koreans profess indifference to Pyongyang, and many are quick to offer political assessments. The comments jibe with that April survey by the Asan Institute that showed, for the first time, more southerners considering northerners strangers or enemies rather than "one of us" or neighbors.

"There is a fundamental break happening in attitudes on the North," Karl Friedhoff, an Asan spokesman, wrote in an e-mail. "While previously South Koreans wanted to see the South absorb the North, there has been a change in that a majority, albeit slim, would prefer to see a federation ? the two states co-existing."

But the future may hold a different scenario. The idea of reunification now seems daunting. There is the human dimension: Time, many point out, has faded old family ties. After generations of divergent experience, are Koreans really still one great tribe of 75 million people? Could South Koreans respect northerners as equals? And then there's the economic effect: How much would this cost? How much would taxes go up? In a merger of strength and weakness, could South Korea lift up the North ? or would the North drag its neighbor down?

The feeling persists that reunification may be inevitable ? even though the differences may be irreconcilable. A single Korea has always been a pretty thought. But getting there, and being there, could get ugly.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/4il4ubspk5o/South-Korea-The-little-dynamo-that-sneaked-up-on-the-world

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3D-printed photographs: a new twist on your holiday snaps

3D-printed photographs: a new twist on your holiday snaps

Got hordes of old photos you don't know what to do with? Well, if you've got access to a 3D printer, what about blessing them with a third dimension? That's what Instructables stalwart Amanda Ghassaei (of 3D printed records fame) has done using an Objet Connex500, some algorithmic wizardry and a bit of left-field thinking. The images, rather than full 3D renderings, are still meant to be viewed in 2D, but use different thicknesses of print to create a silhouette effect. Ghassaei converts images to black and white, and assigns different printing densities to each grayscale pixel value. The results are surprisingly intricate, and still manage to impart a sense of texture. Fortunately for those interested in doing their own, this is Instructables, so, all you need to do is follow along at the source.

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Via: CNET (Crave)

Source: Instructables

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/v6iZC0Tuf_A/

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